Five little known black history facts everyone should know

 Ke’Aria Felix

Staff Writer

Black History Month is celebrated every February, but often, African-Americans are not taught outside of the “standard” material and figures.

Here are five little known Black History facts. Have you ever heard of John Morrow?

According to blackamerica.web.com, John H. Morrow was the first U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Guinea and the first American representative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Born Feb. 5, 1910 in Hackensack, N.J. Morrow earned his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University, and later earned his master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942 and 1952 respectively.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Morrow as the Guinea ambassador in 1959, which was met with much criticism.

Many believed the African-American ambassador was

under-qualified despite his education and study of world affairs, and of course, because he was a black man.

However, he successfully held the post for two years and in 1961, President John F. Kennedy sent him to France to serve as the first American representative for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Morrow returned to academics after years of government service and retired in 1978. The Alpha (Alpha Phi Alpha, Inc.) man passed in 2000 at the age of 89.

Have you ever heard of Claudette Colvin?

According to pbs.org, Colvin was the pioneer of the bus boycott. Most people think of Rosa Parks as the first person to refuse to give up their seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.

There were actually several women who came before her— one of whom was Colvin. It was March 2, 1955—nine months before Rosa Parks’ stand that launched the Montgomery bus boycott.

The fifteen-year-old schoolgirl refused to move to the back of the bus. Claudette had been studying black leaders like Harriet Tubman in her segregated school along with the current day Jim Crow laws they were all experiencing.

When the bus driver ordered Claudette to get up, she refused, “It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side pushing me down. I couldn’t get up,” said the young Colvin.

As one can see, Colvin was standing for her rights at a young age, by sitting down.

Have you ever heard of Onesimus—the slave that introduced inoculation to America?

Onesimus was a gift to the Puritan church minister Cotton Mather from his congregation in 1706.

The enslaved man from Africa informed the priest about the century-old tradition of smallpox inoculation which was created to fight off the widespread disease in his home country.

Onesimus then introduced the method to make others immune to Mather. Extracting the illness from an infected person and scratching it onto the skin of an uninfected person introduced smallpox to the healthy individual making them immune.

Because of this success, Onesimus’ traditional African practice was used to inoculate American soldiers during the Revolutionary War and introduced the concept of inoculation to the United States.”

Most of us have heard of the classic family show, “The Jeffersons”. The hit show made its television debut on Jan. 18, 1975 on the CBS network.

The show featured Isabel Sanford and Sherman Hemsley as George and Louise Jefferson. The show became the second longest-running sitcom featuring a largely black cast and was the first to depict an interracial couple, according to blackamericaweb.com.

Have you ever heard of Grace Bumbry? According to biography.com, Grace Bumbry was considered a master of her craft in the opera world.

She was known as one of the leading mezzo-soprano vocalists in the world. Born in 1937, her parents exposed her to the likes of Marian Anderson—who would be an early inspiration.

At age 16, Bumbry won a contest to enter a local music conservatory but was denied entry due to her race.

The contest promoters, looking to avert controversy, made arrangements for Bumbry to attend Boston University, but it was Northwestern University that she blossomed.

While in Illinois, she studied with opera star and soloist Lotte Lehmann. In 1961, at the age of 24, Bumbry became in an international sensation after appearing as the first black opera singer to perform in Bayreuth, Germany.

Her performance was so mind-blowing that she was dubbed, “The Black Venus.”