Image Credit: "Julian Abele" Duke University
Julian Francis Abele (April 30, 1881-April 23, 1950)
Architect
Julian Abele (1881-1950)
Article from Duke University Archives
Image credit: Oliver Nestus Freeman, NC Collections, DigitalNC
Oliver Nestus Freeman (Feb. 22,1882-Sept. 28,1995)
Brick and Stonemason
Image Credit: David Walker (1785-1830), Documenting the American South
David Walker (Sept. 28, 1758-June 28, 1830)
Writer and Radical Abolitionist
William C. Smith (Born Feb. 12, 1856)
Newspaper Editor
Image Credit: Lucean Arthur Headen - an African American inventor in Camberley, by Dr. Jill D. Snider, Surrey Heritage
Lucean Arthur Headen (Aug. 26, 1879- Sept. 17, 1957)
Aviator and Inventor
Lucean Arthur Headen by
Born in Carthage, North Carolina, Lucean Arthur Headen (1879-1957) grew up amid former slave artisans. Inspired by his grandfather, a wheelwright, and great-uncle, a toolmaker, he dreamed as a child of becoming an inventor. His ambitions suffered the menace of Jim Crow and the reality of a new inventive landscape in which investment was shifting from lone inventors to the new "industrial scientists." But determined and ambitious, Headen left the South, and after toiling for a decade as a Pullman porter, risked everything to pursue his dream. He eventually earned eleven patents, most for innovative engine designs and anti-icing methods for aircraft. An equally capable entrepreneur and sportsman, Headen learned to fly in 1911, manufactured his own "Pace Setter" and "Headen Special" cars in the early 1920s, and founded the first national black auto racing association in 1924, all establishing him as an important authority on transportation technologies among African Americans. Emigrating to England in 1931, Headen also proved a successful manufacturer, operating engineering firms in Surrey that distributed his motor and other products worldwide for twenty-five years. Though Headen left few personal records, Jill D. Snider recreates the life of this extraordinary man through historical detective work in newspapers, business and trade publications, genealogical databases, and scholarly works. Mapping the social networks his family built within the Presbyterian church and other organizations (networks on which Headen often relied), she also reveals the legacy of Carthage's, and the South's, black artisans. Their story shows us that, despite our worship of personal triumph, success is often a communal as well as an individual achievement.
Image Credit: "Mary Kenner (1912-2006)" Blackpast.org
Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner (May 17, 1912- Jan. 13, 2006)
Inventor
Amazing American Inventors of the 20th Century by
The ten Americans profiled in this book may not be familiar to some people, but their inventions certainly are. Today, we take for granted devises such as televisions, microchips, lasers, and even the Super Soaker® water gun. Within the last one hundred years in the United States, creative individuals such as those introduced in this book have pushed technology beyond the dreams of just a few years ago. Each of these inventors began with an idea for improving some aspect of life. Through ingenuity, hard work, and talent, they made their ideas a reality. Includes profiles of William Lear, Philo Farnsworth, Beatrice Kenner, Gertrude Belle Elion, Gordon Gould, Charles Ginsburg, Robert Shurney, Jack Kilby, Stephanie Kwolek and Lonnie Johnson.
Handbook of Black Librarianship by
E. J. Josey and Marva DeLoach have compiled a treasure trove of information about black librarianship. This volume includes history, statistics, and documentation of contemporary issues related both to African American participation in librarianship and to the organizations that they built to provide information resources for their people. Of interest to all librarians, bibliophiles, bibliographers, and students of American culture, this handbook fills a niche in American cultural history.
Crafting Lives by
From the colonial period onward, black artisans in southern cities--thousands of free and enslaved carpenters, coopers, dressmakers, blacksmiths, saddlers, shoemakers, bricklayers, shipwrights, cabinetmakers, tailors, and others--played vital roles in their communities. Yet only a very few black craftspeople have gained popular and scholarly attention. Catherine W. Bishir remedies this oversight by offering an in-depth portrayal of urban African American artisans in the small but important port city of New Bern. In so doing, she highlights the community's often unrecognized importance in the history of nineteenth-century black life. Drawing upon myriad sources, Bishir brings to life men and women who employed their trade skills, sense of purpose, and community relationships to work for liberty and self-sufficiency, to establish and protect their families, and to assume leadership in churches and associations and in New Bern's dynamic political life during and after the Civil War. Focusing on their words and actions, Crafting Lives provides a new understanding of urban southern black artisans' unique place in the larger picture of American artisan identity.
African American Architects by
African-American architects have been designing and building houses and public buildings since 1865. Although many of these structures survive today, the architects themselves are virtually unknown. This unique reference work brings their lives and work to light for the first time. Written by 100 experts ranging from architectural historians to archivists, this book contains 160 biographical, A-Z entries on African-American architects from the era of Emancipation to the end of World War II. Articles provide biographical facts about each architect, and commentary on his or her work. Practical and accessible, this reference is complemented by over 200 photographs and includes an appendix containing a list of buildings by geographic location and by architect.
A History of the public library in Murphy, North Carolina by Asukile, Thabiti. “The All-Embracing Black Nationalist Theories of David Walker’s Appeal.” The Black Scholar 29, no. 4 (1999): 16-24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41068837.
Bishir, Catherine W. “Black Builders in Antebellum North Carolina.” The North Carolina Historical Review 61, no. 4 (1984): 423-61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23518567.
Finseth, Ian. “David Walker, Nature’s Nation, and Early African-American Separatism.” The Mississippi Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2001): 337-62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26476964.
Jarrett, Gene Andrew. “‘To Refute Mr. Jefferson’s Arguments Respecting Us’: Thomas Jefferson, David Walker, and the Politics of Early African American Literature.” Early American Literature 46, no. 2 (2011): 291–318. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41348715.
Spellman, Charles G. “The Black Press: Setting the Political Agenda During World War II.” Negro History Bulletin 51/57, no. 1/12 (1993): 38-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44177228.