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Black History Fun Fact Friday – Jan Matzeliger

Growing up, my brother was a collector of the latest Nikes. He was the Air Force One version of the Air Jordan lover. He’ll collect all kinds of pairs of “Air Ones” and stack them in his room or in the basement. It was truly a work of art and since he actually is an artist, sometimes he even drew on them! In any event, it’s no secret, black people love shoes! I don’t say that in a discriminatory way, for African Americans are known to set the trend. There’s nothing wrong with our love for fashion which is often mimicked all over the world. It makes sense then, why it was an African American man who helped to revolutionize the shoe making industry. Meet Jan Matzeliger.

Jan Matzeliger was born in Surinam, formerly known as Dutch Guiana, in South America. Of mixed ancestry, Jan’s father was a Dutch engineer and his mother of African ancestry. Naturally, since his dad was an engineer, Jan would accompany his father to work and developed a skill for repairing complicated equipment.

At nineteen, Jan left home to explore the rest of the world, and began work aboard an Indian ship. He found his way to America and settled in Pennsylvania where he became interested in shoe making and worked at a shoe making factory.

Jan Matzeliger Machine — The Lasting Machine

Though Jan was interested in improving how shoes were made, two obstacles were in his way: He could barely speak English and at that time shoes in the U.S. all came from the small town of Lynn, Massachusetts where “Hand Lasters” (people who could attach the different parts of the shoe together by hand), could only produce 50 pairs of shoes per ten-hour day. Though paid well, Jan had the discernment to see that what Hand Lasters were doing was not as good as everyone thought. There had to be a better way.

Specifically, there was no machine that could attach the upper part of a shoe to the sole and this is basically what the “Hand Lasters” were doing and they were the experts. According to them, “No matter if the sewing machine is a wonderful machine. No man can build a machine that will last shoes and take away the job of the Laster, unless he can make a machine that has fingers like a Laster – and that is impossible.” Jan Matzeliger thought they were wrong and set out to build a machine that would do just that.

Jan's Finished Lasting Machine — Jan’s Finished Lasting Machine

Jan is a great inspiration for setting out to achieve something that no one thought would work. He worked hard on this machine using whatever he could find – cigar boxes, nails, paper, scrap wire—and after six months had a workable model. Jan however, did not have much money. He also kept his project secret. Still, the “expert” Hand Lasters found out and made fun of him for his project. Someone offered him $50.00 for the machine but Jan wasn’t having it. They tried to play him, but he was smarter than that. He turned down more and more offers and continued perfecting his machine until a better offer came from which he could acquire the tools to perfect the machine even more.

In March of 1883, the United States Patent Office issued a patent for Jan’s machine, which could produce 700 pairs of shoes a day, to the Hand Lasters 50 pair and the rest is history. Jan had officially revolutionized the shoe making industry.

Some of my brother’s art, “The Shoe King”

How does Jan’s invention help us today?

Today, shoe making involves four departments: Clicking or Cutting, Closing or Machining, Lasting & Making, Finishing Department and the Shoe Room. The Lasting and Making part is where Jan’s invention would come in. “In the early days of shoe making, shoes were made mainly by hand. For proper fit, the customer’s feet had to be duplicated in size and form by creating a stone or wooden mold called a “last” from which the shoes were sized and shaped. Since the greatest difficulty in shoe making was the actual assembly of the soles to the upper shoe, it required great skill to tack and sew the two components together. It was thought that such intricate work could only be done by skilled human hands.” (Wikipedia)

That is until Jan’s machine. Today, soles, which were once laboriously hand-stitched on, are now more often machine stitched or simply glued on by shoe making manufacturing.

In Case You Missed It:

Black History Fun Fact Friday: Sarah Rector

Sources.

Jan Ernst Matzeliger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Ernst_Matzeliger

Now Everyone Can Afford Decent Shoes.”5 Dec 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120821203314/http://www.users.fast.net/~blc/xlhome9.htm Archived from the original on August 21, 2012.

“Jan Matzeliger”. The Black Inventor Online Museum.

Jan H. Liedhard. “No. 522: Jan Matzeliger (transcript of radio show Engines of Our Ingenuity episode)”. University of Houston.

“Jan Ernst Matzeliger ‘Lasting Machine'”. Lemelson-MIT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 29 February 2016.

Reference: Hayden, Robt. C., Eight Black American Inventors. Addison-Wesley, 1972

Black History Fun Fact Friday – Sarah Rector

Welcome Back to Black History Fun Fact Friday!

I introduce to you Sarah Rector who was just eleven when she received international attention for being a millionaire.

In 1913, The Kansas City Star publicized the headline, “Millions to a Negro Girl.”

Sarah Rector was born on March 3, 1902, in Twine, Oklahoma, on Muscogee Creek, Native American land where her family had been enslaved.

The Dawes Act of 1887 was created by the United States to “bridge the gap” concerning their acquisition of Indian Land. Authorized to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians and their families, Native Americans were offered U.S. Citizenship in return.

This included land for the people they formerly had enslaved.

In 1907, The Dawes Allotment Act divided the land among the Creeks and their former slaves, and thus, Sarah and her family all received land.

“Long before the births of Sarah and her three siblings, the Creek Nation agreed with the federal government to emancipate their 16,000 slaves, giving them citizenship in their nation and entitling them to equal interest in soil and national funds. They became known as Freedmen.”

-Steve Gerkin, The Unlikely Baroness

One fact this story brings to light is the ownership of blacks as enslaved people by the Five Civilized Native American Tribes. The Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations all had Blacks as slaves. In fact, Sarah and her family had a rich history as enslaved by the Creeks.

“Sarah’s father Joe Rector was the son of John Rector, a Creek Freedman. John Rector’s father Benjamin McQueen, was a slave of Reilly Grayson a Creek Indian. John Rector’s mother Mollie McQueen was a slave of Creek leader, Opothole Yahola. Their history is a rich one. The son Joe was enrolled with them on the same card.”

-Angela Y. Walton-Raji Educator, Genealogist, Author & Researcher

Per the Act, the head of a family would receive a grant of 160 acres, and this is what Sarah and her family received. “The Creek Nation was sliced up into 160-acre squares, “more or less,” and doled out to the Natives and former slaves; each received 120 acres for agriculture and 40 acres for homesteading.” (Gerkin)

This is when the story gets interesting concerning Sarah’s portion.

To help with taxes on the land, Sarah’s father leased her portion to the Devonian Oil Company of Pittsburgh, and in 1913, everything changed when it struck gold. The oil was booming, bringing in 2500 barrels a day, bringing Sarah $300 a day. Multiple new wells were productive, and Rector’s portion became part of the Cushing-Drumright Field in Oklahoma, “The most prolific early oil field in Oklahoma discovered in Creek County about twelve miles east of Cushing and one mile north of present Drumright.” (Oklahoma Historical Society)

As word of Sarah and her wealth circulated, many people sought to ask for her hand in marriage and acquire loans, and perhaps the most bizarre is her change in identity. Sarah went from a young black girl to a white one.

Being that this was the early 1900s, after all, many whites could not accept that someone like Sarah could have so much money. Thus, many began to seek to change her from black to white. Even more, Sarah’s guardianship, like our story last week, also changed, switching from her parents to a white man named T.J. Porter.

An article published in 1914 by The Chicago Defender claimed that Sarah was being ill-cared for by her “ignorant” parents, that she was uneducated, dressed in rags, and lived in unsanitary conditions.

On the contrary, Sarah and her siblings attended an all-black school in an all-black town (Taft, a town in Muskogee County, Oklahoma) in a five-room house. Rector would also go on to attend Children’s House, a boarding school for teens at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, now Tuskegee University. This could have something to do with her acquaintance with men like Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Dubois.

Sarah left Tuskegee when she turned eighteen and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, with her family. By now, she was a full-fledged millionaire owning a Busy Bee Café, boarding house, and bakery, stocks, and bonds. As Sarah’s money increased, so did her male suitors. At twenty, she married Kenneth Campbell, and together, they had three sons. The couple divorced, and she married again, this time to William Crawford.

Sarah Rector died on July 22, 1967, at 65. Though there is much speculation on the remainder of her life, I believe that because she is not as known as some, Sarah shielded herself and her family from the spotlight as much as possible. After the false claims and accusations concerning her identity, her life seemed to fade away in the background. She went on to college and afterward moved to a different state where she and the family lived in what is known as The Rector Mansion today.

Sources: Special to The Chicago Defender

The Chicago; Nov 15, 1913; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Chicago Defender (1910 – 1975)

Remembering Sarah Rector, Creek Freedwoman

http://african-nativeamerican.blogspot.com/2010/04/remembering-sarah-rector-creek.htmlThe Unlikely Baroness by Steve Gerkin http://thislandpress.com/2015/03/24/the-unlikely-baroness/

CUSHING-DRUMRIGHT FIELD.

http://www.okhistory.org/index.php?full

Find more Articles at Black History Fun Fact Friday

Black History Fun Fact Friday – The Fultz Sisters

As a twin, I could not help but be attracted to this story, and as I studied their life in preparation for writing this article, it wouldn’t take long for me to see the red flags. From the media perspective, you’d think the quads and their families were wealthy, with a house on 150-acres of land and the live-in nurse.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Mary Louise, Mary Ann, Mary Alice, and Mary Catherine were born on May 23, 1946, at Annie Penn Hospital in North Carolina. Known as “The Fultz Quadruplets,” they were the first recorded identical black quadruplets globally and the first set of quads to survive in the South.

If the fact they are all named marry isn’t weird enough for you, their white doctor, Dr. Fred Klenner, delivered and named the girls after women in his family. His wife, Mary Ann, his aunt Mary Alice, his daughter Mary Louise and his great aunt Mary Catherine.

The girls were born at the segregated hospital wing, which was really just the basement. Mr. Fultz (whose name was James, not Pete as he was called) was a Sharecropper, and Mrs. Fultz being both deaf and mute, couldn’t read and write according to “And Then There was One” by Lorraine Ahearn, (August 2002). Besides this, the Fultz’s had six other children without a car, electricity, phone, and running water.

Thus, they didn’t debate when Klenner negotiated a deal with a Pet Milk Company that paid all medical expenses, food, land, a house, and a live-in nurse to care for the girls. All of this was in exchange for using the girls for promotional purposes. Klenner even created a schedule where people could come and visit the quads, who were put on display behind a glass screen.

Pet Milk sales skyrocketed as the girls helped to brand the product, becoming the face of Pet Milk. Pet Milk?

“And so it was that the Fultz Quadruplets left Annie Penn Hospital: under contract, named after their white doctor’s relatives, headed home to a glass-enclosed nursery and driven there in a pair of McLaurin Funeral Home ambulances.”

– Lorraine Ahearn

Blogger Ladyrayne on Talking Stuff, who wrote a post on the Quads after listening to The Tom Joyner Morning Show last year wrote, “According to Edna Saylor, the nurse who worked at the Annie Penn Hospital and who would eventually become the quads legal guardian, the farm that was given to the Fultz family really didn’t amount to much and PET could have done a better job when it came to helping the Fultz family. Ms. Saylor stated that PET took advantage of the Fultz family because they were considered backwoods type of people.”

The Quads were adopted by Charles and Elma Saylor, who moved them to Yanceyville, and their travels became more frequent. They flew to Chicago at the invitation of Ebony publisher Johnnie Johnson. He featured them on his cover four times, appeared in Chicago’s star-studded Bud Billiken Parade, went on TV with Roy Rogers and Texas Pete, and would go on to appear in many more ads and make TV appearances. At thirteen (1959), the sisters performed as a string quartet in the annual Orange Blossom Festival in Miami, Florida, and at sixteen (‘ 62), they were featured in a Pet Milk ad for an autographed picture. Many remember them most from their visit to meet Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy.

Pet Milk became the first to offer nonfat dry milk, an advance over the powdered milk developed in the 1920s. Sales soared when Pet Milk took advantage of the post-war baby boom and promoted The Fultz Sisters, a national sensation due to their rarity, making 1950 the all-time-high sales year for Pet Evaporated Milk.

“For no matter what the public thought, the highly publicized Pet Milk advertising contracts had brought in just enough money—$350 a month— to keep the Fultz Quads off North Carolina’s welfare rolls.” (Chares L. Sanders, Ebony Magazine, November 1968)

Sadly, all the Fultz sisters developed breast cancer later in life, with only one sister who survived it (Mary Catherine).

SOURCES:
EBONY, “The Fultz Quads” by Charles L. Sanders, Nov. 1968.

Ebony’s Spread on the Sisters can be found on Google Books HERE (Page 212) (Its cool going through the Ads from 1968 too!)

News & Record

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=caswellcounty&id=I37423

“And then there was one” by Staff Writer Lorraine Ahearn, Aug. 2002.

http://www.roccomanzi.it/IMP-VITAMINERALI/SCIENZIATI/scienziati-docu/klenner/FultzQuadswasone_file/FultzQuadswasone.htm

Talking Stuff Blog

https://talkinstuff.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/the-fultz-quadruplets/

Unfamiliar Faces – Lost to History: Afro Puerto-Ricans, Cubans, Jamaicans, Haitians

porto_rican_peones_puerto_rican_peons-_children — Enslaved Afro Puerto Rican children

Though many students will learn about slavery in the U.S. at some point, our teachings are usually narrow in that we only learn about the European Slave Trade and the wrongs that Europeans have done. We won’t be told that we weren’t just dropped off in America. We won’t be told that every people, from Jews to the Five Civilized Native American Tribes, held us as slaves. We won’t be told of the difference between the Africans themselves who had slaves and those who were enslaved, and we won’t be told of the many different tribes and nations of black people that occupy the continent.

Contrary to popular belief, mostly brought on by television and movies, slave traders did not go into the interior of Africa to pick up any “African” but they were looking for a specific people. However, since the continent has been lumped up into one big mass, all blacks are assumed to be the same people and as a result, many ancient practices and truths faded from memory.

Engraving of Arab slave-trading caravan transporting African slaves across the Sahara.

The trade of slaves across the Sahara has a long history. Dr. John Alembellah Azumah in his 2001 book, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa estimates that over 80 million black people died en route to the Islamic world. Having enslaved blacks about one thousand years before the Europeans, the Arabs had already identified the people of the book. That is the people of the covenant. The people of scripture. The chosen and the prophecies surrounding their captivity.

Indeed, they were not after just any African, but the ones who held principles that were distinct from the other tribes. Differing by way of culture and spirituality, these blacks could easily be spotted by way of their traditions. Olaudah Equiano, known as Gustavus Vassa, captured, enslaved, and then freed, told in his book, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, of his life in Africa before the abduction.

Born among the Ibo people in the kingdom of Benin, along the Niger River, Olaudah recounts in his narrative of how they still held many Hebrew customs and traditions, such as the circumcision, the division of the tribes by twelve, and the marrying of their brother’s wife after death just to name a few. What is not recounted is that not only did Olaudah’s family uphold such traditions but so did many so-called African tribes.

That said, many of the slaves who came to Puerto Rico were from Congo, the Ashanti, Yoruba, Igbo and Bantu tribes. In all, 31 known African tribes were brought to the island from Central and West Africa through the slave trade but they weren’t the only ones.

Not only was Afro-Puerto Ricans largely made up of these Hebrew tribes, but so were the Jamaicans, Dominicans, Cubans, and so-called African Americans of today. Though we see each other as separate, the truth is that many of us (even if we’ve mixed) are all the same people and were all part of the dispersion.

Today’s lost to history segment focuses not on one individual but a group of individuals who have gone on to war within themselves due to the lost historical fact that we are not a different people but the same. Having been separated by land, we were taken from the same areas because we are descendent of the same people. The only difference is that we were dropped off in different places. Some to Jamaica, some to Haiti, some to Puerto Rico, and so on. As a result, some of us speak English, some of us speak Spanish, and some of us speak French.

Why I Speak

“We often forget that the current state of Black Americans is directly related to history.”

– Black Then Staff

It is clear that we live in a system that is unfair and a civilization that is not just. I speak of these things not because I want to focus on the negative experience of blacks in America only. I speak of these things not because I’m a dark person who just wanna keep bringing up bad stuff. I speak of these things because we’ve become comfortable here in this land. We have been blinded from the truth as a people. We’ve forgotten that the constitution did not include us and that civilization for us is outside of this system. We’ve been tricked into believing that we are citizens in this land and that we have some kind of rights here. We’ve forgotten that when “All men were created equal” that didn’t include us. For what to the slave is the 4^th of July?

You see we’ve forgotten where we’ve come from and as a result have no idea where we’re going. How can a slave pursue freedom when he thinks that he is already free? You see the black man does not exist. Black is a color, not a nation of people. Where is African American land? It does not exist. Africa and America are the combinings of two continents. There are over 50 countries in Africa, how then can “African” properly define a people? Which country in Africa are we talking about? African American is also therefore not a nation of people.

I speak because our roots stretch deeper than colors, bywords, proverbs, and mockeries that conceal true identities. I speak because we forget that we were never part of this constitution. To amend. It means to alter, modify, and to revise. This document had to be revised, altered, and modified just to include you. No justice no peace, my people. It means that there’s no justice for you here and there’s no peace here either. This is the world we live in. We condemn the Confederate flag and we praise the American flag because we’ve been blinded to think there’s a difference between the two. They both drip with the blood of the saints.

We continue to march and to protest because we believe it will change things. How is it that we’ve gone from fighting for freedom to settling for Civil Rights? What is a civil right? What about human rights? So yes, I speak. I speak because we think we know slavery and we know nothing. I speak because we think we know freedom and we know nothing. I speak because we think we have rights and we have nothing. I speak because we think we know justice in a land that is anything but just. Don’t matter who becomes president. It is the system that is broken and it is my responsibility to speak.

This Month in Black History – September

This month sped by so fast I almost missed this month’s history wrap up!

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September 5, 1859 – Harriet Wilson’s novel Our Nig is published

September 8, 1965 – Dorothy Dandridge found dead

September 8, 1986 – The Oprah Winfrey Show debut

September 9, 1739 – The Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies prior to the American Revolution, occurs in South Carolina

September 10, 1963 – Schools in Alabama desegregated

September 11, 1977 – Roots wins 9 Emmy Awards

September 12, 1905 – Master Horseman John Ware is killed when his horse trips, crushing him and breaking his neck

September 12, 1913 – Jessie Owens is born

September 12, 1947 – Jackie Robinson named rookie of the year

September 13, 1885 – Alain Locke of the Harlem Renaissance is born

September 15, 1963 – The 16^th Street Baptist Church is bombed in Birmingham Alabama leaving 4 little girls dead and one blind in one eye

September 15, 1978 – Muhammad Ali becomes the WBA Champ

September 16, 1794– The French Abolish Slavery. (Slavery is reinstituted under Napoleon in 1802 along with the reinstitution of the “Code noir”, prohibiting Blacks from entering French colonial territory or intermarrying with whites).

September 17, 1858 – Dred Scott dies of Tuberculosis 17 months after emancipation

September 18, 1850 – The Fugitive Slave Law is passed by Congress

September 18, 1919 – Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard is the first African American professional football player for a major team

September 18, 1970 – Jimi Hendrix dies in London (at the young age of 27)

September 20-24^th 1830 – The First National Negro Convention met in Philadelphia

September 20, 1958 – Martin Luther King Jr. stabbed in the chest while signing copies of Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein’s department store in Harlem

September 24, 1957 – Eisenhower orders the 101^st Airborne Division to Little Rock Arkansas to force desegregation at Little Rock Central High School

September 24, 1935 – Joe Louis defeats Max Baer at Yankee Stadium, Bronx New York

September 26, 1967 – Riots erupt in Tampa, FL after police shoot Martin Chambers, an unarmed black teen

September 28, 1991 – Miles Davis dies

September 30, 1919 – Oct 1 – The Elaine Race Riots (also known as The Elaine Massacre) occurs in the Elaine town of Phillips County Arkansas

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In Case You Missed It: This Month in History – August

Discover My Top 8 Historical Reads (That you’ve probably never read!) Get it Here.

Unfamiliar Faces – Lost to History: Before Parks

“They said they didn’t want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott,” Colvin says.

– https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43171799

Was Rosa Parks the only woman to refuse to give up her seat on a segregated bus? Below are a few of the women left out of the history books.

Irene Morgan – We have all heard of Rosa Parks, but there were at least three women who refused to give up their seats on the bus in the Jim Crow south throughout history. Eleven years before Parks, Irene Morgan, later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman, was arrested in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1944 for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate bus according to a state law on segregation. The Irene Morgan Decision inspired the men and women of CORE to create a nationwide protest movement called “The Journey of Reconciliation” when groups of civil rights activists rode buses and trains across states in the South in 1947, a precursor to The Freedom Rides of 1961.

The Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, handed down a landmark decision on June 3, 1946, when they agreed that segregation violated the Constitution’s protection of interstate commerce. Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth catalyzed further court rulings and the Civil Rights movement. Eight years later, the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation violated Equal Rights Protection.

Irene Morgan died on August 10, 2007.

Claudette Colvin – Born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger months before Rosa Parks on March 2, 1955. Colvin was only 15 years old but she was poor. She didn’t have the NAACP or the connections Parks had. As a result, little is know of her. The NAACP considered using Claudette but they said she was too young. They also looked away because she was pregnant and they did not want to represent a young, unwed mother and bring about negative attention to the movement. They thought Colvin’s condition would make blacks look bad. Colvin went on to serve as a plaintiff in the landmark legal case Browder v. Gayle, which helped end the practice of segregation on Montgomery public buses. Today, Claudette Colvin is still not a name you hear very often concerning bus desegregation, even though she was there before Parks.

“Whenever people ask me: ‘Why didn’t you get up when the bus driver asked you?’ I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail,” she says.

Aurelia Browder – After Colvin, Aurelia Browder followed suit and was arrested on April 19, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat. Browder was born on January 29, 1919. She joined the NAACP, SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), the Women’s Political Council (WPC), and the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Aurelia could join all the organizations she wanted but with six children and no husband, her refusal to give up her seat on a bus did not stick, even though she was before Parks.

Mary Louise Smith – Mary was born in 1937, in Montgomery, Alabama. She attended and graduated from St. Jude Educational Institute. On October 21, 1955, at the age of 18, Mary was returning home on the Montgomery city bus. At a stop after Mary had boarded and seated, a white passenger boarded. There was no place for the white passenger to sit and Mary was ordered to give up her seat. She refused. Mary was arrested and charged with failure to obey segregation orders and given a nine dollar fine, which her father paid.

Irene, Claudette, Aurelia, and Mary Louise was followed by Susie McDonald, and Jeanetta Reese, all had been arrested and charged with violating various policies regarding segregated seating on city buses.

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