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Remembering The Historic Black Miami Community Destroyed To Build A Whites-Only School
At least 200 Black towns and communities had been formed across the United States by 1888. According to a Washington Post article, several of these towns were modeled after Black communities founded during the American Revolution and during the antebellum period, which lasted from the late 1700s until 1860.
Some settlements vanished completely as time passed. Others were confiscated to create schools – for whites only — after being destroyed by lakes or natural parks. Railroad Shop Colored Addition, founded in 1917 in Miami’s Allapattah district, was one such Black community. According to WLRN, Railroad Shop was made up of Black laborers who built and serviced local rails and trains.
Meet Granville T. Woods who Invented Telegraphony, Roller Coaster, Multiplex Telegraph, Air-Brake System And 60 Other Inventions
Granville T. Woods was a black inventor who received at least 50 government patents for his numerous inventions. Over a dozen of these patents were for electric train inventions, but the majority of them were for electrical control and distribution. The induction telegraph, a technique for communication with and from moving trains, was his most notable invention. Granville T. Woods was dubbed “the black Thomas Edison” by many.
Granville T. Woods was born on April 23, 1856, in Columbus, Ohio, and went to work after irregularly attending school until he was ten years old. Working in railroad machine shops and steel mills, as well as reading about electricity, helped Woods expand his education.
Due to the exclusion of African-Americans from many libraries at the time, he frequently had acquaintances take out library books for him. Woods relocated to Springfield, Illinois in 1874 to work in a rolling mill. In 1876, he relocated to the East and worked part-time in a machine business. He also attended a mechanical engineering course at a college in the east.
Meet Eunice Hunton Carter Who Took Down One Of America’s Most Notorious Mob Bosses
Eunice Hunton Carter was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to William Alphaeus Sr. and Addie Waite Hunton on July 16, 1899. The family would flee to Brooklyn, New York when Eunice was five in response to the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906. Eunice Hunton Carter graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, with a B.A. and an M.A. in 1921.
She met then-Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, who became her trusted advisor while writing her master’s thesis at Smith College. Carter worked as a social worker after graduating in 1921 and married dentist Lyle Carter in 1924. She began studying law at Fordham University a few years after her son was born. Then, in 1934, she became the first African-American woman to be admitted to the New York State Bar.
Carter first joined politics in 1934, when she was elected to the State Assembly from New York’s 19th District by the Republican Party. Carter was the first African-American to get the Republican presidential nomination. Her campaign emphasized on the need to lower the pension age limit, ensure tenement housing compliance with legal norms, and keep unemployment insurance in place. Carter was likewise against racial discrimination in government jobs. Carter would lose by 1,600 votes in the election.......
“Carter provided the essential legal strategy in convicting Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the most important Mafia crime boss in New York City by marshaling a massive assault on organized prostitution in New York City. Authorities raided 200 brothels to gain testimony against Luciano which eventually came from three sex workers. At the time, this was the largest organized crime prosecution in U.S. history. Carter served as Assistant District Attorney of New York County for ten years. In 1938, Carter was named to Dewey’s staff to lead the Abandonment Bureau of Women’s Courts. In 1945, she entered private practice and connected her work with the National Council of Negro Women to international issues.
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