Tag: Black History Month

Please congratulate room 416 (8th grade) and room 319 (11th grade) on winning February’s door decoration contest. It was a very close contest, down to the decimal!

Born into slavery, Frederick Douglas estimated he was born in February of 1817 (scholars would later estimate his year of birth to be 1818 based on records.) Without an exact date, Douglass picked February 14th because his mother called him “her little Valentine.” After escaping slavery in 1838, Douglass and his wife Anna Murray Douglass…

On February 13 1920, the first Negro National League was established during a time when baseball was segrigated. Lasting until 1931, the NNL was the first African-American baseball league to find stability and last for more than one season. Following the end of the NNL many of the teams would continue on as members of…

Working as a mathematician and human computer at NASA’s Langley Research Center, Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughn became the first African-American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center and was later promoted to supervisor. During her 28-year career Vaughn prepared for the introduction of electronic computing in the 60s…

Ann Lowe (1898-1981) was an accomplished dress designer in the United States. She dressed many women for society events, including the wedding party of Jacqueline Bouvier when she married John F Kennedy. Her work was highly praised and recommended by her clients. She was known for her handmade flowers, which she learned to create as…

The world enjoys vanilla extract today because of the horticultural contributions of Edmond Albius in 1841, when he was 12. Edmond was enslaved on a plantation where he learned botany. He developed the method to pollinate the vanilla orchids that allowed them to produce the seed pods used all over the world. Although his development…