Remembering the Gifts of Black Culture, Creativity and Science

Each February, National Black History Month, we remember an essential part of our national history. It’s one that includes the racism that led to slavery, oppression, segregation, violence, and the marginalization that continues today. ?But it’s also a time to recognize the gifts that Black contributions have made creatively, culturally and scientifically to American life and beyond.

From jazz, blues, gospel and hip-hop music to the visual arts, theater, dance, film, and plays, we have grown from the work of people like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and so many others whose musical gifts have given us so much. Playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson have told us through their stories what life was like for people who were marginalized and persecuted because of their skin color. Talented actors like Sidney Poitier and Cicely Tyson along with directors like Spike Lee and Tyler Perry illuminated stories that changed us.

Others like the dance icon Alvin Ailey and dancer/choreographer Judith Jamieson ?showed us the power of dance while ?painter Faith Ringgold and photographer Chester Higgins, to name just a few, helped challenge social norms as they depicted the struggles and achievements of other Black individuals, sharing the complexities of Black history and culture.

The recent death of Nikki Giovanni, a renowned African American poet, reminds us of other Black women poets, writers, and iconic changemakers. Writers like Zora Neale Hurston, who became a significant black woman writer of the early 20th century with her autobiographical novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the effects of misogyny and racism for Black women of her generation.

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Alice Walker, is best known for her 1982 novel, The Color Purple, which explored female African-American experience as well. Walker also wrote about the taboo topic of female genital cutting in her novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, a tribute to her courage as part of the black feminist movement.

Toni Morrison saw books as “a form of political action.” ?Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, tells the story of a young black girl obsessed with white standards of beauty. Her later novel, Beloved, based on a true slave narrative, won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing the evils of slavery.

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou shared the story of her childhood rape. ?Reading black authors Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois aided her recovery. In the 1950s, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild meeting James Baldwin and other great authors. She wrote and read the inaugural poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” for President Clinton.

Audre Lorde was another iconic figure. A self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” her work championed women breaking their silence, never better than in The Cancer Journals when she was post-mastectomy.

Gwendolyn Brooks, poet, author and teacher, dealt with personal celebrations and struggling people. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 she was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize. She was also the first black woman to be a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.

In the realm of science, among the most recognized names in science are the Black women who worked for NASA on the space program. Katherine Johnson, a mathematician, was one of them. She calculated the path for the spacecraft that put the first U.S astronaut in space and applied her math skills to ?advance electronic computers.

Mary Jackson, an engineer and mathematician joined the NASA Langley Research Center in 1951. She was the first African American female engineer to work at NASA where she worked on a 60,000 horsepower wind tunnel capable of blasting models with winds approaching the speed of sound.

Dorothy Vaughan, a computer scientist and mathematician, applied her math skills to computers at the NASA research center and became the first African American woman to be promoted to supervisor. ?

Dr. Mae Jemison, a physician, engineer, and astronaut was the first African American woman to travel to space in 1992. ?She was a science mission specialist and a co-investigator on a bone cell research experiment conducted during her eight-day mission.

But not all Black scientists of note are female or space experts. Let’s not forget George Washington Carver who founded a research lab where he worked to discover over 300 uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes.

Much later, Emmett W. Chappelle, an American scientist made valuable contributions in the fields of medicine, philanthropy, food science, and astrochemistry. His achievements led to his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on bioluminescence, in 2007.

George R. Carruthers, however, was a space physicist and engineer who worked for NASA. He perfected a powerful ultraviolet camera for NASA to use when it launched Apollo 16. ?Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2003, he was awarded the National Medal for Technology and Invention in 2011.

There are so many others in all sectors to honor this month and so many more who have yet to grace us with their work. For now, let’s be mindful of those we’ve been lucky to be touched by as we look ahead to who are yet to come.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com