Black Inventors (please note: you may have to refresh/reload your screen)
Brigadier Gen. Sheila Baxter is Top-Ranked Female in Army Medical Service Corps
The first female general officer in the Army Medical Service Corps is Brig. Gen. Sheila R. Baxter, a 25-year career officer.
The U.S. flag was flown over the Capitol and a proclamation in her honor was read by Lt. Gen. James B. Peake, the Army Surgeon General, last June when she took over her duties. Except for the Army press, the unusual promotion went unnoticed. Few in the military were aware of the advance.
Today, the officer serves as the Asst. Surgeon General for Force Sustainment for the Army, which encompasses medical logistics, contracting and facility management. The Corps consists of 3,902 skilled, dedicated active-duty officers and enlisted personnel who perform the clinical, scientific, administrative, command and support services. The Corps healthcare system is worldwide.
Asked how it felt to be the highest-ranking female in the Corps, the general responded, "I thank God for the promotion because I will be able to help soldiers and advance the Army's agenda."
Since 1978 she has held a variety of worldwide positions, including chief of staff for the command. At one time, she commanded the material center in Europe, where her unit was responsible for providing medical supplies and medical maintenance support for the Army, Navy, Air Force and State Department in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
A graduate of Virginia State University where she was commissioned in the ROTC, she holds a master's degree in health services management from Webster University. She is a licensed evangelist with the Church of God In Christ and a member of AKA Sorority.
Fire Chief Creates Path for Others to Follow
By Karl W. Ritzler
for the AJC
Sunday, September 07, 2008
When Rosemary R. Cloud walked into her first day at the Atlanta Department of Fire Rescue’s training center as a new recruit in 1980, she was wearing a pantsuit and high heels.
As her fellow recruits began their hands-on training in the dirty and dangerous business of fighting fires, her first question was, “Where do I put my purse?”
East Point Fire Chief Rosemary Cloud is thought to be the first African-American female fire chief in the country.
It wasn’t a question that had been asked before. Cloud was one of the first women as well as one of the first blacks to join the fire department after it agreed to hire more African-American applicants as part of a settlement of a federal lawsuit.
Years later, the story of her first day became part of the good-natured ribbing that’s part of firehouse camaraderie, she said.
Cloud had fit in — and she began her ascent through the ranks, rising to assistant chief in the Atlanta department before she was hired six years ago as the fire chief in East Point. She is believed to be the first African-American woman to be a fire chief in the United States.
Cloud, 54, has been a firefighter and administrator for 28 years, but she never planned on it as a career.
In the 1970s, while she was a paralegal for Atlanta Legal Aid Society downtown, she watched Loew’s Grand Theater burn and said of the firefighters, “That’s great that they’re out there helping people.”
Two years later, after the settlement of the lawsuit, she joined the fire department.
“They say I’m a pioneer,” she said. “I guess that explains why I have so many knots on my head. But nobody gets where they are on their own. I stood on many, many shoulders to make this possible.”
Not only was she among the first significant groups of African-Americans in the department, she was one of the few women.
When she began her firefighter training, Cloud said, she felt as if African-Americans and women were not introduced in a way that made the transition smooth.
Like gardening, she said, “You have to treat the soil first.”
Now, as a fire chief, she endeavors to prepare the environment for new people and ideas. “A fire chief can make vision and ideas happen,” she noted.
She has set up classes with her current staff to provide diversity, gender and generational training.
She believes in stating clearly what is and is not sexual harassment or improper behavior, as well as what is negotiable and what is not.
“It’s OK to talk about differences without offending others,” she said.
Cloud also believes in training for leadership roles.
A key is “buddy to boss” training for those promoted to a supervisory position over former peers.
While that firehouse camaraderie can be good for morale, Cloud noted, “As a lieutenant, I couldn’t initiate it, but I could laugh. As a captain, I couldn’t even laugh.”
She also trains firefighters how to avoid negative outlooks and deal with peer pressure, something she experienced early in her career.
“Troublemakers can be fun,” she said. But once when she went along with a prank, she soon realized the damage it could cause. “I won’t do that again,” she said.
Cloud’s advance through the ranks was not always easy, she said. For example, when she first took the test to be a fire truck driver, “I bombed it out really badly. It looked like anyone could do it.”
She spent most of her time in the Atlanta department assigned to the unit at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. “It wasn’t the best assignment,” she said. “No action.”
But it was a successful career path, she discovered.
“It prepared me to be an excellent leader,” Cloud said. She followed the example of her mentor, former Atlanta Fire Chief Winston Minor, who also had headed the airport unit. She was placed in charge of that unit while Minor was chief, making her the highest-ranking woman in the department.
“I was trying to help my superiors do their work, and get a clear understanding of their jobs,” she said. “I was trying to take the same steps they took.”
Cloud said her legacy will be in molding her successor, “building someone to sit in this chair when I walk out the door.”
It was Minor who encouraged her to apply for fire chief positions elsewhere. “I feared he was trying to get rid of me,” she said. “Instead, he was pushing me out of the nest.”
She reflected, “In the first years of my career, I worried about the wrong things. I wasted my time on things I couldn’t change. Now, I focus on what I can do.”
One is helping her firefighters advance. “I talk about the promotion process, how to get promoted,” she said. “I make myself available as a mentor. … I learned as a lieutenant that no one can block me. I want to help others on the way.”
Dr. Ayanna Buckner, MD
FACTS
Morehouse School of Medicine’s Dr. Ayanna Buckner has been selected as a Marshall Memorial Fellow. Buckner is the associate director of the Public Health and General Preventive Medicine Residency Program and assistant professor and clinical director in the Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine.
She is one of 54 Americans representing 18 states and the District of Columbia who have been awarded this prestigious international fellowship for 2010, officials said. During the 24-day traveling program, fellows will develop extensive knowledge of political, economic, and social institutions and issues facing the United States and Europe.
The MMF program educates the emerging American and European leaders on the importance of the transatlantic relationship and encourages them to collaborate on a range of international and domestic policy challenges.
For the fourth consecutive year, The Community Foundation partnered with the German Marshall Fund to coordinate the selection process for the metro Atlanta region. The Marshall Memorial Fellowship offers emerging leaders ages 28-40, the opportunity to explore societies, institutions and people on the other side of the Atlantic.
The Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2010 Marshall Memorial Fellowship:
- Dr. Ayanna Buckner, Morehouse School of Medicine
- Tony Chan, Habitat for Humanity
- Amol Naik, McKenna, Long & Aldridge, LLP
- Nathaniel Smith, Emory University, University-Community Partnerships
- Jeremy Cole, International Community School (alternate)
A tribute to the artist – Etta James
Her Legacy (credit: Wikipedia)
Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins; January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012) was an American singer. Her style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, gospel and jazz. Starting her career in the mid-1950s, she gained fame with hits such as "Dance With Me, Henry", "At Last", "Tell Mama", and "I'd Rather Go Blind" for which she wrote the lyrics.[1] She faced a number of personal problems, including drug addiction, before making a musical resurgence in the late 1980s with the album The Seven Year Itch.[2]
James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008.[3] Rolling Stone ranked James number 22 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists
Her Style and influence
James's musical style changed during the course of her career. When beginning her recording career in the mid-50s, James was marketed as an R&B and doo wop singer.[13] After signing with Chess Records in 1960, James broke through as a traditional pop-styled singer, covering jazz and pop music standards on her debut album, At Last!.[27] James's voice deepened and coarsened, moving her musical style in her later years into the genres of soul and jazz.[13]
Etta James had once been considered one of the most overlooked blues and R&B musicians in American music history. It was not until the early 1990s when James began receiving major industry awards from the Grammys and the Blues Foundation that she began to receive wide recognition. In recent years, James was seen as bridging the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll. James has influenced a wide variety of American musicians including Diana Ross, Christina Aguilera, Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, Shemekia Copeland,[17] and Hayley Williams of Paramore[28] as well as British artists The Rolling Stones,[29] Rod Stewart,[30] Elkie Brooks,[31] Amy Winehouse,[30] Paloma Faith,[32] Joss Stone[33] and Adele.[34]
Awards
From 1989, James received over 30 awards and recognitions from eight different organizations, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences which organizes the Grammys.
In 1989, the newly formed Rhythm and Blues Foundation included James in their first Pioneer Awards for artists whose "lifelong contributions have been instrumental in the development of Rhythm & Blues music".[43] The following year, 1990, she received an NAACP Image Award, which is given for "outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts";[44] an award she cherished as it "was coming from my own people".[45]
- 1993, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- 2001, Rockabilly Hall of Fame
- 2003, Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Hollywood Walk of Fame, star at 7080 Hollywood Blvd, and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) Lifetime Achievement Award[46]
- 2006, Billboard R&B Founders Award[47]
[edit] Grammys
The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. James has received six Grammy Awards. Her first was in 1994, when she was awarded Best Jazz Vocal Performance for the album Mystery Lady, which consisted of covers of Billie Holiday songs.[48] Two other albums have also won awards, Let's Roll (Best Contemporary Blues Album) in 2003, and Blues to the Bone (Best Traditional Blues Album) in 2004. Two of her early songs have been given Grammy Hall of Fame Awards for "qualitative or historical significance": "At Last", in 1999,[49] and "The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry)" in 2008.[50] In 2003, she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[51]
|
Year |
Nominated work |
Award |
Result |
|
"All I Could Do Was Cry" |
Nominated |
||
|
"The Fool That I Am" |
Best Rhythm & Blues Performance |
Nominated |
|
|
Nominated |
|||
|
"Security" |
Nominated |
||
|
Etta James |
Nominated |
||
|
"St. Louis Blues" |
Nominated |
||
|
"Seven Year Itch" |
Nominated |
||
|
Stickin' to My Guns |
Nominated |
||
|
The Right Time |
Nominated |
||
|
Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday |
Won |
||
|
"At Last" |
Inducted |
||
|
Life, Love & the Blues |
Best Contemporary Blues Album |
Nominated |
|
|
Heart of a Woman |
Best Jazz Vocal Performance |
Nominated |
|
|
Matriarch of the Blues |
Best Contemporary Blues Album |
Nominated |
|
|
Etta James |
Inducted |
||
|
Let's Roll |
Best Contemporary Blues Album |
Won |
|
|
Let's Roll |
Won |
||
|
Grammy Hall of Fame Award |
Inducted |
Blues Foundation
The members of the Blues Foundation, a non-profit organization set up in Memphis, Tennessee, to foster the blues and its heritage,[52] have nominated James for a Blues Music Award nearly every year since its founding in 1980; and she has received some form of Blues Female Artist of the Year award 14 times since 1989, continuously from 1999 to 2007.[53] In addition, the albums Life, Love, & The Blues (1999), Burnin' Down The House (2003), and Let's Roll (2004) were awarded Soul/Blues Album of the Year,[53] and in 2001 she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame
We respectfully appreciate your lifelong efforts in giving of your gifts to this world.
Thank You, Etta James, An African American Legend
FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN RACER
Meet Nicole Lyons, First Black Female Race Car Driver
Written by Hello Beautiful (blog) on June 15, 2010 10:15 am
Move over Danica Patrick, there is a new female race car driver in town and her name is Nicole Lyons and she’s black and gorgeous!!!Lyons is a second generation drag racer. It all started with her father Jack Davis who was a well known street racer and drag racing enthusiast in the Los Angeles area. As a young girl, Lyons followed along her father to many a street race and drag racing event. He taught her the culture of drag racing, how to turn a wrench, and how to drive a fast car. With her father’s untimely passing in 2005, Lyons carries the family racing legacy.
She said:
“I think my father would be proud. He taught me what I know today about racing. He taught me that you can’t be just the driver that gets in the car and drives. You need to know what the car is doing. You need to know the engine set up. My advantage is that by knowing my car, I can make good decisions out there on the track where it counts.”
Esparanza Spalding
Esperanza Spalding!!
Another African American Sensation!!
Go to this link to find out more about this awesome artist!!
Virginia Hamilton - America's most honored writer of children's literature
Click picture for more information