60 Unknown Black Achievers: The Stories of Black Excellence Across the African Diaspora, Africa, Europe and America

By Douglas Wavamunno

The stories of Black excellence across three continents: Europe, the U.S., and Africa.

"I am not a professional writer. But out of curiosity, I started collecting information and articles about black inventors, teachers, activists, etc., whilst at university in Scotland. It became apparent there was a canon of information to be read and shared, especially about Black people who helped shape the world we live in. We live in a world with a myriad of ideas and achievements. These 'Men and Women' are part of the development of modern society, past and present, across Africa, Europe, and the United States."

– Douglas Wavamunno
www.60unknownblackachievers.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Nov 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228885719

Douglas Wavamunno

Born in Uganda, raised in the United Kingdom, educated from an early age in Scotland, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in marketing. Having spent over 20 years working and traversing Europe as an executive for some of the world's leading IT publishing brands, the old saying 'there is a book in all of us' kicked in. This is his first book written, and it is a passion project based on scraps of paper collected since university days. The objective being to share the information to anyone who enjoys finding out unknowns, and ideally enlist the expression 'I didn't know that', and hopefully go on to share with friends and family.Having a passion for rugby, food and wine, there might be another book in there too.

Book preview

60 Unknown Black Achievers

Copyright © 2022 by Douglas Wavamunno

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-8570-2 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-8569-6 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-8571-9 (eBook)

With gratitude to:

1.Matama Lilian Immaculate in the Project management and coordination of a great project.

Email: [e-mail]

2.Kamanzi Walter for the amazing pencil art portrait.

Email: [e-mail]

3.Roxanne Namanda Wavamunno for due diligence in fact-checking.

Email:[e-mail]

4.Tumwebaze Jonath for the great book cover and logo

Email: [e-mail]

The initial idea was unplanned but I soon realized that there was an opportunity to shed light on some incredible people that have helped create and shape the world we live in. The more research I undertook the more I learned that there were many uncelebrated Black Men and Women whose contributions needed a platform for their stories. Mostly they had been celebrated on very disparate platforms. I wanted to build an identity around not only ‘unknown black achievers’ but also unknown and under-represented black achievements across the Black diaspora in Africa, Europe, and the US. There is an opportunity to tell great stories around those two distinct areas. The objective is clear but I believe the message will resonate with a lot of people across the three aforementioned areas. If we get the stories out, I believe there is an audience that is willing to engage with the content. The most common expression I keep hearing is ‘I didn’t know that’ For those who love information and history, that would be the legacy of this book and the continuing project work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Mary Seacole

Frantz Omar Fanon

Katherine Johnson

Alexandre Dumas

Daisy Bates

Lyda D. Newman

Geoff Palmer OBE

Miriam Benjamin

Maggie Lena Walker

Joseph Bologne

Zaila Avant-Garde

Garrett A Morgan

Octavia E. Butler

David Diop

Alicia Garza

Ahmet Ali Çelikten

Sir David Adjaye

The Black Medici

Jan Ernst Matzeliger

Frederick McKinley Jones

Mark Dean

Alexander Miles

Henry Blair

Marie Van Brittan Brown

Thomas L. Jennings

Mae C. Jemison

Bessie Coleman

Chinua Achebe

John Blanke

Florence B. Price

Philip Emeagwali

Arthur Ashe

Reginald F. Lewis

Arthur Zang

Benjamin Banneker

Thomas T. Downing

James Hemings

George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower

Toussaint Louverture

William H. Johnson

Juan Latino

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Isaac Burns Murphy

Mary Edmonia Lewis ‘Wildfire’

Wangari Maathai

Onesimus

Bill Pickett

Selma Burke

James Forten

Alice H. Parker

Brian Gitta

Michael Andrew Caines MBE DL

Jack Johnson

William Kamkwamba

Sidney Poitier

Paul R. Williams

Wladysław Franciszek Jablonowski

Cheikh Anta Diop

Roy Allela

Julia Ann Chinn

Douglas Wavamunno

Mary Seacole

Intrepid Traveler, Nurse, and Business Woman.

1805–1881

United Kingdom, Jamaica

Mary Seacole’s journey is an important one as she broke through established social conventions of the time as a black woman and became known as the Jamaican nurse heroine of the Crimean War.

Mary Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant in 1805 in Kingston to a Jamaican mother and a Scottish father. The world that she was born into was very different from the one we live in today. Mary habitually pushed through the social norms and prejudices of the time as she traveled across countries such as England (where she lived for 3 years), Panama, the Bahamas, Haiti, and Cuba. Her love of travel, mixed with razor-sharp business acumen, saw Mary using her travels to identify and address business opportunities around the supply and sale of spices and other medicinal goods.

Traditional, local medicine was used in the treatment of various illnesses in her community in Jamaica. Mary took that understanding of indigenous herbs and spices and made them accessible to a global community. Through her travels and passion for medicine, she learned of the Crimean War, being fought in what was then part of the Russian Empire, Ukraine.

The Crimean War was a religious conflict, with Russia fighting against an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom, and Piedmont-Sardinia. Mary applied to join forces with the renowned nurse Florence Nightingale to help tend to British battlefield casualties in Crimea, though her initial request was turned down by the British authorities. This, however, did not stop her. Through perseverance, fortitude, resourcefulness, and creativity, she made it to Crimea. She set up what was to become known as the British Hotel. In reality, the hotel was a field hospital or business where wounded soldiers went to complete their recovery and also incorporated a shop that sold basic goods to help cover the facility’s operating costs.

She was also a fearless horsewoman whose conspicuous bravery was widely recognized as she frequently rode on horseback directly into active battlefields to assist soldiers on both sides, earning the affectionate title (sobriquet?) of Mother Seacole.

To celebrate her achievements, her friends and associates held an event that attracted 80,000 attendees in Trafalgar Square. To find out more about this remarkable woman, read the biography: "The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands."

Frantz Omar Fanon

Psychiatrist, Revolutionist, and Political Philosopher.

1925–1961

Martinique, Algeria

Frantz Omar Fanon’s legacy as a philosopher on race and the impact on post-colonial movements is part of an important canon of work by intellectual black thinkers that influenced many leaders globally as newly independent countries started to construct a decolonized future in the 1960s and 1970s.

Frantz Omar Fanon (also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon) was born on the French island of Martinique in 1925. He was a psychiatrist and political philosopher. As a classically trained French psychiatrist, his education incorporated philosophical thinking, politics, literature, and medicalized psychiatry. Despite facing daily racism, he fought for France in WW2 and was involved in the resistance fight against the Vichy Regime in the Caribbean.

Fanon could be categorized among a group of scholars from diverse intellectual backgrounds, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi (politicians), Richard Wright, Aime Cesaire, and James Baldwin (authors). The protagonists are many and varied, all challenging and discussing ideas in the 1950s and 1960s against the backdrop of colonial powers such as France and the United Kingdom. These voices, such as Fanon, sought to place the plight of the colonized countries at the center of a new way of thinking. Colonized countries were agitating for freedom from colonization. Fanon was a big critic of the institution of colonization. He was also critical of post-colonial governments that seemed to maintain the status quo.

One of Fanon’s biggest contributions to the decolonization debate was the book The Wretched of the Earth Black. This book has been described as the Bible of decolonization and had a strong influence on political leaders such as Che Guevara (Cuba), Steve Biko (South Africa), Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, and the Black Panthers (movement in the USA).

All these leaders and movements had different outcomes, but a central tenet was "non-violence’’ as a means to explore how to construct societies post-colonization. Race was also central to the thinking, as it was to understanding society and exploring ways to find solutions for people who had been subjugated for hundreds of years by their white colonial masters.

Decolonization was as much about liberating the mind (not ruled by a colonial master) as it was about dismantling the tools of the white state institutions. An important example of this influence was Algeria’s successful struggle for and achievement of independence from the French Colonial Regime, in which Fanon’s philosophical influence is widely acknowledged.

Frantz Fanon’s legacy as a philosopher on race and the impact on post-colonial movements is part of an important canon of work by intellectual black thinkers that influenced many leaders globally as newly independent countries started to construct a decolonized future in the 1960s and 1970s.

There are many published books and other reading material by Frantz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks delves deeper into the intellectual debate and challenges surrounding race at the time.

Katherine Johnson

The Woman whose math helped the USA fly to the moon

NASA Mathematician

1918–2020

USA

Katherine Johnson was born in 1918 in what was then a racist, segregated society. Racism was a big feature of that time. For example, in most public workspaces, black people were not allowed to use the same toilets and other facilities as white people. Against this background, Katherine Johnson rose to be a NASA mathematician. She was a gifted child who was special as a child. She was obsessed with math, numbers, and science. Her innate ability and desire to learn meant that she was able to skip several years of classes and graduate ahead of her siblings and peers. In terms of intelligence, she was unique.

She pursued a career as a research mathematician. Her big breakthrough and opportunity came in 1958 when the NASA research center at Langley (Hampton, Virginia) started recruiting African Americans as mathematicians. As would have been expected at the time, she and her African American colleagues faced institutional racism but prevailed due to their tenacity, intelligence, and hard work.

In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a ‘Space Race’ going on between the USA and Russia. This was a technological space fight as to which country could get the first person or man to land on the Moon. Katherine Johnson was part of the team charged with calculating the math and numbers to enable the process of landing a man on the moon. That was her first assignment as part of the Space Task Group team that made the whole project possible and successful. Her job was to calculate the flight path for the first mission. Her work involved very complicated math equations that ensured the space shuttle followed a very specific trajectory to reach the Moon as a landing target whilst the Earth rotated and the Moon evolved.

Katherine Johnson continued to work for NASA even after the introduction of computers in the 1960s. Her success opened the door for many other black scientists and mathematicians.

It is often stated that John Glenn (the first American astronaut to orbit Earth) would refuse and request that Katherine Johnson verify all the math numbers underpinning the project work before accepting any space assignments.

Finally, Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015. This is the highest civilian honor that can be bestowed upon a citizen.

Alexandre Dumas

An Overachiever

1802–1870

France

Alexandre Dumas (Pere) was a black French writer who was one of the most prolific authors in the 19th-century theater world. He was the author of The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.

Alexandre was born in Villers-Cotterêts, near Paris, in 1802. He had two older sisters, Marie-Alexandrine (born 1794) and Louise-Alexandrine (1796–1797). Dumas’ father was General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie. He was a general in the French Army. His mother was Marie-Cessette Dumas, a black slave from Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (Haiti).

Alexandre’s father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, had been a general in Napoleon’s Army and had risen to the position of a general. This is the first such undertaking for a person of color or mulatto. He gained a strong reputation following a successful campaign against Austria in Italy. The defeated Austrians dubbed him Der Schwarze, meaning the Black Devil.

Due to his father’s connections, Dumas was introduced to Louis Philipe, later to become King Louis Philipe. It