May has always been an exciting month. As a kid, I looked forward to the school year ending and the warm weather welcoming me just in time for my birthday at the end of the month. Summer also means swimming and dancing in the water from the fire hydrant and water guns!
Introducing Lonnie Johnson, the inventor of the super soaker!
Lonnie Johnson was born in Mobile, Alabama, on October 6, 1949. Signs of Lonnie’s brilliance could be seen when he was a child reverse-engineering his sister’s baby doll to understand how the eyes closed. He also built his own go-cart from a lawnmower engine he attached to scraps he found in the junkyard.Ā
Before enlisting in the Air Force, he worked as a research engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He also worked at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the acting chief of the Space Nuclear Power Safety Section.
Johnson holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering, an M.S. degree in Nuclear Engineering, and an honorary Ph.D. in Science from Tuskegee University.
In 1989, Johnson formed his own engineering firm and licensed his most famous invention, the super soaker.Ā It generated over $200 million in retail sales and becameĀ thenumber-one-selling toyĀ in America.
Today, Johnson is president and founder of Johnson Research and Development Co., Inc., a technology development company, and its spin-off companies, Excellatron Solid State, LLC; Johnson Electro-Mechanical Systems, LLC; and Johnson Real Estate Investments, LLC.
As of 2023, Lonnie Johnson’s net worth was an estimated $160 million. This substantial fortune is primarily the result of the royalties he received for the Super Soaker, which generated billions of dollars.
So the next time your child plays with a super soaker, be sure they know about itsĀ amazingĀ inventor!
“I give a holler to my sisters on welfare Tupac cares, if don’t nobody else care”
You know, it’s funny when it rains it pours They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor.”
-Tupac, Keep Ya Head Up
Even though life tried to take me out in a toilet, I got here healthy, drug-free, and a head full of hair.
After two weeks in the hospital, Mama was allowed to take me home, if that’s what you wanna call it. Our building had been built in the 60s, but it wasn’t much of a building by the late 80s and into the early 90s.
Rats and roaches plagued our apartments, and the housing authorities couldn’t care less. Brand-new babies like me were brought home to nothing but drug dealers and addicts, children sprawled about like clothes somebody left on the floor and forgot to wash, so it wasn’t no surprise when The White Lady came.
That’s what people said when the social workers came to inspect the low-income apartments, “The White Lady.” They ain’t never have a name.
The woman stood in the kitchen, talking to Mama, and looking around our place with distaste. She gazed at the Crisco on top of the stove, as well as the dish rack, which was piled high with plates, bowls, cups, and cutlery. It wasn’t cute, but it was clean.
Her gaze moved to my brother and me, who were playing on the thick blanket on the floor we called a pallet. Well, he was playing, and I was doing whatever it was babies do.
My Uncle Rome hid in the closet next to the bathroom cause he wasnāt on the lease. Black women werenāt allowed to have a man in the house in those days if they wanted to get the Welfare. We also had to hide the new toaster, dish rack, and telephone so they wouldn’t take away any money.
“Mrs. House, your son is developing slowly for his age…”
The short, green-eyed blonde balanced a clipboard in her arms and scratched her nose with the tip of her writing pen. The hoop ring in her right nostril and the sunflower tattoo on her exposed arm caught my Uncle Jerome’s eye.
My favorite uncle and unofficial babysitter, we called my motherās little brother Rome for short. He thought he was Romeo to every woman’s Juliet. His dark chocolate skin tone and thick lips drove them crazy. Mama said if he took the time to read Romeo and Juliet’s story, he might want to be somebody else.
“Ain’t nothing romantic about no Romeo and Juliet,” she’d lecture him when he bragged about his latest escapades.
“Why is that?”
“They both died fool.”
Uncle Rome said he wasn’t into white women like that, but this one was “sho-nuff fine.” Unk was lying. He loved him some white women. He just wanted to know why she was so young and how long she’d been working with social services to where she could take his sister’s kids.
“…and your 2-month-old is malnourished,” said the White Lady.
āIt’s Miss House,ā said Mama, taking a drag of her cigarette, inhaling smoke, and blowing it out of her nose. āSince you know so damn much.ā
Uncle Rome did one of those fake coughs you do to cover up a laugh.
The lady ignored my mother. āMiss House, have you been using the Food Stamps?ā
Unk said Mama frowned, āYes, I use my stamps. Fuck I look like not to use Food Stamps?ā
āI just wanna make sure you didnāt sell them, is all,ā said the white lady.
āOh, so you my judge now? I look incompetent to you?ā
See, thatās what I loved about Mama. Yeah, she was a heroin addict, but she wasnāt no fool. A wordsmith with a mouth like a two-edged sword, she’ll curse you out every which way but loose and diversify her vocabulary while at it so you can know she’s cursing because she wants to, not because she doesn’t have the words to say what’s on her mind.
Mama used to write poems and stories before she got pregnant with Aaron. She also went to school to do hair. There wasn’t nothing my Mama couldn’t do. I wished she would get back to her art. Maybe that would help keep her away from the drugs.
āLook, are you done? Cause, as you can see, I have kids to look after.”
The woman scanned the apartment once more, frowning at a roach crawling on the wall. āLetās just hope you are taking care of these children. This is your final warning, Miss House. If I have to come back here againā¦ā
āYeah, I know,ā interrupted Mama, blowing out more smoke. āAre we done?ā
The woman nodded, āWe are.ā
As she walked toward the door, she stopped to look once more at us and then back at my mother. “Probably not a good idea for you to smoke in front of the children.”
Mama rolled her eyes, dropped the cigarette on the floor, stomped it with her foot, and waved the woman off.
According to my uncleās story, the woman left us alone after that. But, in my fifth month, someone new came to visit, and I was taken away from Mama and placed in foster care, where I would stay for the next five years.
“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? It learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else cared.”
– Tupac Amaru Shakur
I was almost born in the toilet.
My brother, Aaron, had just turned two, and Mama was only five months pregnant when Theresa (we call her Reese) caught her shooting up in the bathroom. Thatās when she felt my head. āI think I feel my baby,ā she slurred.
People around my way love to quote Tupacās Rose That Grew from Concrete, but they donāt really know what it means. They donāt know nothing about coming up from the hardest part of the earth, snuggled between nothing but weeds, dirt, and the butts of cigarettes.
Then, the sun is so hot sometimes, the poor flowers (that are not really flowers cause they aināt get the nutrients they need) just wither up and die. Thatās what we really fight against here in these slums, in this place they want us to call home, but it aināt never feel like it. Never felt like a hug or Big Mamaās greens.
That’s how the bathroom was almost my birthplace. Right there at 4840 South State Street, apartment 602. I feel sorry for Reese having to see her auntie slumped over like that and her own mother high as a kite in the other room. How is somebody supposed to get ready for school in this mess?
Reese was strong, though. She banged her fist against the door real hard like the police when they raided the sniper apartments. What is a sniper apartment? It’s just what it says: Empty flats on the top floors drug dealers used to shoot their enemies down below, like snipers on the battlefield.
Photo Cred: Williams Humbles
āAunt Helen! Auntie, I gotta get ready for school!ā
Frustrated, my mother, belly hanging over blue jeans now too small to zip up all the way and a dingy white t-shirt, finally opened the door.
āCome on, girl, shit,ā she said, pointing to the tub. āHurry up,ā she rushed as Reese undressed and ran the water.
Mama sat back on the toilet and wrapped the belt tight around her forearm, a burned spoon dangling on the edge of the sink like it was supposed to be there. Like it was a toothbrush waiting to be used. Reese said she remembers praying Aunt Helen wouldnāt ask her to help tie her off like the other times.
āClose that curtain. Hurry up!ā
After Mama said she could feel my head, Reese ran out of the bathroom, butt naked, and into her motherās room. Dazed from her own high, Auntie Lorraine jumped up nevertheless. She knew her sister was pregnant and hurried to the bathroom, except she didn’t use her fist like her daughter. Auntie Lorraine, big-boned and shaped like Sara Baartman, used the back of her foot, slamming it against the door.
āHelen!ā she screamed, but Mama wasnāt opening the door, so Auntie Lorraine had to kick it in, the needle falling from my motherās long, skinny fingers like a witness eager to expose her secrets.
And as they say, the rest is history.
My name is Rosalind House, but everybody calls me Rose for short. I was born two months later, on June 21, 1987, premature and weighing a whopping 3 lbs and screaming at the top of my lungs. They say that’s why my voice is so high-pitched and sweet. They say it’s like something the Lord made. Say, I’m gone use it to shout my way out of this place.
And I did.
Let me tell you how it happened.
I missed writing fiction, so I started a new story!
I am calling it Concrete Rose (for now). I’ll be sharing the first few chapters based on response, so if you wanna read more, let me know! š
Nobody talks about society’s addiction to black trauma. How much more profitable it is to talk about pain than poems, depression than joy.
Like we don’t have feelings just bad experiences turned into songs of sorrows and spirituals of reaching heaven cause there can’t be no freedom here on Earth for Black people.
Maybe this world still doesn’t consider us human enough to be happy someone hand society a roadmap for getting to know black people.
Tell them they can find us laughing even when life is lifeing cracking jokes and turning sadness into praise. Tell them we are not just guns and gangs.
Our hope does not hang on by string on some cracked-out corner or trap house Tell them how we dream. Big Mama musta had mustard seeds underneath the mattress cause she moved mountains. Food and faith ain’t never been hard to find. We gone eat.
Talk about our love our sense of community our building our builders our beauty.
We’ve had a wild ride here in this country But it was not all bad.
Together, we forged a world of our own found solace in the cracks made meals from scraps and carved out our own sense of enjoyment and purpose.
Tell them about how the cells of a black woman saved the world and the genius of a Black man lit it up. Talk about how we bless everything we touch.
Tell the whole truth that we are not made up only of pain.
Joy lives here, too.
You can listen to this poem on TikTok and YouTube! I’m @yecheilyah on both.
Black History Facts is back! If you’ve been waiting for a signed copy, this is your chance to get your hands on it. We are back in stock. Go now to: https://www.blkhistorybook.com/.
The preciousness of this life has been on my mind heavily.
It could be because a sister I’ve known for years lost her oldest son to a senseless murder last week. Gianni was only 20 years old.
Then, I woke up this morning to see that O.J. Simpson had died.
Or, it could be that this September will mark four years since my mother’s death.
As generations pass, I reflect on the fragility of this life and wonder if I am making the most of it.
No, not I. We. I wonder if we are making the most of it.
When we say that life is short and that every day isn’t promised, do we understand the power of that revelation?
It humbles me to think that every day we are getting closer to our deaths and have no idea. That, when we were born, it also came with a death date that we will only know when the it comes knocking on our door.
What will history say about the lives we’ve lived?
What are we writing in the spaces?
Photo Cred: Tehilayah
I want to express my gratitude for your support in this work. If you’ve ever supported me in any way, I appreciate you and what you have contributed to this blog, my books, or me personally.
I do not take any of it for granted.
You are supporting not only me but also the community and a movement by bringing to life the stories of those who have been silent and resurrecting the voices of the voiceless.
Black History Facts returns! If you’ve been waiting for a signed copy, this is your chance to get your hands on it. We are back in stock starting Friday, 4/12 at https://www.blkhistorybook.com/.
I’ve discovered the deaths of family members on social media from people who have my number.
I’ve watched loved ones be more open on Facebook than they are with the people they can reach out and touch.
I’ve watched passive aggression and sneak dissing become new forms of communication.
I’ve watched as people open themselves up online in unprecedented ways. I don’t judge them, but I do wonder, does this person have something to come home to?
In an age where it’s expected to parcel pieces of our souls to social media platforms in the name of vulnerability, I wonder if there is anything we still hold sacred.
Anything still holy?
Is there any part of ourselves we still keep personal? Intimate?
I wonder.
I am not a big Beyonce fan, but I agree that “we live in a world with few boundaries and a lot of access. There are so many internet therapists, comment critics, and experts with no expertise.”
For those who make a home on social media, I hope you are not giving it everything.
I hope there is still some things you keep to yourself for yourself.
The PBS Blog 