Black Diamonds

Claudette Colvin (1939 - 2026)

Alexander P. Ashbourne was an early inventor. He was born into slavery in Philadelphia around 1820. There are very few documented facts about his personal life. He grew up cutting wheat alongside his family members. In his youth, Ashbourne began to think of more efficient ways to cut wheat mainly to make harvesting easier for himself and other enslaved people. He approached his owners with these ideas but they refused to adopt them.

Since Ashbourne was born after the Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act was passed in 1780, he was not subject to a lifetime of enslavement. Although the exact date of his emancipation is unknown, by 1847 all enslaved people in Pennsylvania had been freed. Ashbourne disappeared from the public record until 1863, when he reemerged working as a caterer. By this time, he was well known and respected in the city. He catered weddings and buffets of the wealthy elite in Philadelphia, and was selected as one of a handful of local caterers for the 1863 Emancipation Celebration held in the city.

Lt. Charles Bailey Sr.: One of the First Black Fighter Pilots in U.S. History Charles Bailey Sr., born in 1918 in Punta Gorda, Florida, made history as one of the original Tuskegee Airmen—America’s first group of Black military fighter pilots during World War II. He was the first Black pilot from Florida to earn his wings and serve in combat, breaking racial barriers at a time when segregation was deeply rooted in both the military and society.Bailey graduated from Bethune-Cookman College, a historically Black college founded by Mary McLeod Bethune. Inspired by a desire to serve his country and defy the expectations set by racism, he applied to the U.S. Army Air Corps’ segregated pilot training program at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He completed his training in 1943 and became one of the elite pilots of the 99th Fighter Squadron.

Flying P-40 and later P-51 fighter planes, Lt. Bailey completed more than 130 combat missions in Europe. He protected American bombers from enemy attacks, often flying deep into enemy territory. His service earned him the Air Medal and other commendations, but perhaps more importantly, it helped prove that Black Americans were equally capable and deserving of full participation in military service.

After the war, Bailey returned to Florida and worked for the Veterans Administration. Though he and many of the Tuskegee Airmen weren’t fully recognized during their time, their contributions paved the way for the integration of the U.S. Armed Forces in 1948.

Bruce W. Smith’s Bébé’s Kids wasn’t just a movie—it was a cultural moment that broke new ground in the world of animation. When Bébé’s Kids hit theaters in 1992, it marked the first time an animated feature film was directed by an African American. That man was Bruce W. Smith, a visionary who brought the hilarious, unapologetically Black comedy of Robin Harris to life on screen.

At its core, Bébé’s Kids is a funny, relatable, and wild adventure that spoke directly to Black audiences. It gave us characters who felt real—people we knew from our own lives—and blended that with humor and heart. But what made this film truly special wasn’t just the jokes or the unforgettable lines. It was the fact that Bruce W. Smith, a Black man in an industry that had often shut out diverse voices, was behind it all.

For Bruce, Bébé’s Kids was more than just a film—it was about representation. It was about telling our stories through animation, a medium where Black voices had rarely been heard, let alone celebrated. With this film, Bruce didn’t just entertain; he showed Hollywood that Black creators belonged in every space, including animation.

After Bébé’s Kids, Bruce W. Smith went on to create The Proud Family and work on iconic films like The Princess and the Frog. But it all started with Bébé’s Kids, a movie that dared to be different, dared to be bold, and dared to be Black in a way animation had never seen before.

Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of King George III, was indeed the first black queen of England. Born in 1744 in Germany, she became queen consort in 1761 when she married George III. Though there has been debate about her exact racial heritage, some historians believe she had African ancestry through a branch of the Portuguese royal family. Her lineage has been traced back to a 13th-century Portuguese noblewoman, Margarita de Castro e Sousa, who is believed to have been of African descent.

Sophia Charlotte was known for her intelligence, grace, and support for the arts. She was a patron of many musicians, writers, and intellectuals of her time. Her reign coincided with the height of the Enlightenment period, and she was known for her interest in philosophy and science.

Several books explore her life and legacy, delving into her role as queen consort and her impact on British society. One notable example is "Queen Charlotte: A Biography" by Olwen Hedley, which provides a comprehensive look at her life, from her upbringing in Germany to her years as queen consort. Another book worth mentioning is "Black Tudors: The Untold Story" by Miranda Kaufmann, which examines the presence of people of African descent in Tudor England and provides context for Sophia Charlotte's place in history.

BEN HARDY (1921-1994)

Custom motorcycle builder Ben Hardy was born Benjamin F. Hardy on July 25, 1921, in Los Angeles, California. However, historical data regarding his family, upbringing, and obituary have yet to be recovered from the annals of time.

After World War II, as the United States experienced a slight depression with high unemployment, and California had an unemployment rate of 8.8% compared to a national average of 3.9% in 1946, Hardy established Hardy’s Motorcycle Service shop in South Central Los Angeles, located at 1168 E. Florence Avenue. He built two ‘Billy’ bikes and three’ Captain Americas,’ made at that time from a 20-year-old, heavily customized Harley-Davidson Panhead, with the assistance of another Black motorcycle builder, Cliff Vaughn, the most famous motorcycles ever made.

Los Angeles, California, was a city divided and segregated along racial lines, and it did not welcome Hardy and his creation into the mainstream motorcycle world. However, Hardy and Black motorcyclists continued riding the typical ‘Billy’ bike in their limited circle. In the 1950s, during the high point of Jim Crow, some viewed the camaraderie of riding a customized Harley chopper creatively in a group as a revolutionary act.

In 1969, Hardy’s chopper was showcased in the iconic 1969 motorcycle film Easy Rider, in which two bikers travel through the Southwest and South of the U.S. with lots of money from a cocaine deal. His bikes were duplicated for this movie if mechanical failure or wreckage during film shortage were anticipated. The film Easy Rider brought in more than $60 million; however, Hardy was inadequately recognized and did not benefit financially from the movie’s success.

In 2014, 20 years after the death of Hardy, the Captain America bike sold for $1.35 million. Four years later, in 2018, Hardy’s work was featured in the “Black Chrome” at the California African American Museum. This exhibit, sponsored by the Automobile Club of Southern California, the most prominent member of the AAA Federation of Motor Clubs, was about the historical development of African American motorcycle culture. A replica of Hardy’s Captain America bike is housed in one of Germany’s largest motorcycle collections at the German Two-Wheeler and NSU Museum in northern Baden-Württemberg.

Helen Dorothy Martin (July 23, 1909 – March 25, 2000) was an American actress of stage and television. Martin's career spanned over 60 years, appearing first on stage and later in film and television. Martin is best known for her roles as Wanda on the CBS sitcom Good Times (1974–1979) and as Pearl Shay on the NBC sitcom 227 (1985–1990).

Martin attended Fisk University in Nashville for two years before dropping out. After leaving college, Martin moved to Chicago, and New York thereafter to study acting with the WPA Theater and the Rose McClendon Players. She was a founding member of the American Negro Theater in Harlem. Martin became a Broadway character actress for many decades, debuting in 'Orchids Preferred' in 1937 and thereafter Orson Welles' production of Native Son in 1941.

Martin appeared in a dozen Broadway shows, including Jean Genet's The Blacks, the musical Raisin from 1973 until 1975, Ossie Davis' Purlie Victorious (and later the musical version, which was called Purlie), The Amen Corner and Tennessee Williams' Period of Adjustment.

DELLA REESE: FIRST BLACK WOMAN TO GUEST HOST 'THE TONIGHT SHOW'

Delloreese Patricia Early (July 6, 1931 – November 19, 2017), known professionally as Della Reese, was an American jazz and gospel singer, actress, and ordained minister whose career spanned seven decades.

Della Reese was born Delloreese Patricia Early, in the historic Black Bottom neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan.

In 1944, she began her career directing the young people's choir, after she had nurtured acting plus her obvious musical talent. She was often chosen, on radio, as a regular singer. At the age of 13, she was hired to sing with Mahalia Jackson's gospel group. Reese entered Detroit's Cass Technical High School (where she attended the same year as Edna Rae Gillooly, later known as Ellen Burstyn). She also continued with her touring with Jackson. With higher grades, she became in 1947 the first in her family to graduate from high school, aged 15.

After this she formed her own gospel group, the Meditation Singers.

She began her long career as a singer, scoring a hit with her 1959 single "Don't You Know?". In the late 1960s she hosted her own talk show, Della, which ran for 197 episodes.

In 1970, Reese became the first black woman to guest host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She appeared in several TV movies and miniseries, was a regular on Chico and the Man and played the mother of B. A. Baracus in The A-Team episode "Lease with an Option to Die". In 1991, she starred opposite her old friend Redd Foxx in his final sitcom, The Royal Family, but his death halted production of the series for several months. Reese also did voice-over for the late 1980s Hanna-Barbera animated series A Pup Named Scooby-Doo on ABC. Reese achieved continued success in the religious television drama Touched by an Angel (1994–2003), in which she played the leading role of Tess.

From 1975 she also starred in films, playing opposite Redd Foxx in Harlem Nights (1989), Martin Lawrence in A Thin Line Between Love and Hate (1996) and Elliott Gould in Expecting Mary (2010).

AWARDS

▪1994: Hollywood Walk of Fame: 7060 Hollywood Boulevard—Television

▪1996: Image Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series—Touched by an Angel

▪1997: Image Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series—Touched by an Angel

▪1998: Image Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series—Touched by an Angel

▪1999: Image Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series—Touched by an Angel

▪2000: Image Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series—Touched by an Angel

▪2001: Image Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series—Touched by an Angel

▪2002: Image Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series—Touched by an Angel

▪2015: Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars

Ernest Fredric “Ernie” Morrison was the first Black child movie star. Morrison, who performed under the stage name Sunshine Sammy, was most famous as one of the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids.

As the oldest Our Gang cast-member Morrison earned $10,000 a year, making him the highest-paid Black actor in Hollywood. He made 28 episodes from 1922 to 1928 before he ditched Hollywood for New York’s vaudeville stages. He was featured on the same bills with such up-and-coming acts as Abbott and Costello and Jack Benny. After a few years, he returned and acted in the Dead End Kids movies. From the beginning, Morrison tapped into his experiences growing up on the East Side of New York City to shape the character of “Scruno.” He spent three years with the gang before leaving to work with the Step Brothers act, a prominent Black stage and film dance act.

Morrison was born on December 20, 1912 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the oldest child and only son born to Joseph Ernest Morrison, a grocer and later actor, and his wife, Louise Lewis. Ernie was later joined by three younger sisters, Florence, Vera, and Dorothy.

He made his film debut in the 1916’s The Soul of a Child at the age of 3. The story goes that his father worked for a wealthy Los Angeles family that had connections in the film industry. One day the producer friend asked Joseph Morrison if he could bring his son by the studio. Apparently the original child actor hired would not stop crying and they had pretty much given up trying to console him. Joseph brought young Morrison and the producer and director were impressed at how well behaved he was. It was this positive disposition that garnered his nickname, “Sunshine.” His father would later add “Sammy” to the moniker.

From 1917 to 1922, Morrison’s career was mainly in shorts that paired him with another popular child star of the silent era, Baby Marie Osborne. He also appeared in Harold Lloyd shorts and later with another comedian of the day, Snub Pollard and a now forgotten comedic leading lady of the day, Marie Mosquini. A feature was created for him, called The Sunshine Sammy Series, but only one segment was produced. Some critics believed, however, that the Sunshine Sammy episode provided comedy producer Hal Roach with the idea for the Our Gang film shorts, later shown on television and known by several other names, including the Little Rascals.

As the oldest Our Gang cast-member Morrison earned $10,000 a year, making him the highest paid Black actor in Hollywood. He made 28 episodes from 1922 to 1928 before he ditched Hollywood for New York’s vaudeville stages. He was featured on the same bills with such up-and-coming acts as Abbott and Costello and Jack Benny. After a few years, he returned and acted in the Dead End Kids movies. From the beginning, Morrison tapped into his experiences growing up on the East Side of New York City to shape the character of “Scruno.” He spent three years with the gang before leaving to work with the Step Brothers act, a prominent Black stage and film dance act.

Morrison was drafted into the army during World War II, where he appeared as a singer-dancer-comedian for troops stationed in the South Pacific. For several years after being discharged from the war, Morrison turned down a series of offers to return to show business, saying that he had fond memories of the movies but no desire to be part of them again. He left show business entirely, and took a job in an aircraft assembly plant and spent the next 30 years in the aircraft industry, apparently doing very well financially.

After his retirement, Morrison was rediscovered by film buffs who had learned of him after the revival of the Little Rascals in the 1970s. He made guest appearances in several television situation comedies, including Good Times and The Jeffersons.

Morrison died of cancer in Lynwood on July 24, 1989. He is interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood California.

THE WORLD'S FIRST ELECTRIC ROLLER COASTER

Granville T. Woods (April 23, 1856 – January 30, 1910) introduced the “Figure Eight,” the world's first electric roller coaster, in 1892 at Coney Island Amusement Park in New York. Woods patented the invention in 1893, and in 1901, he sold it to General Electric.

Woods was an American inventor who held more than 50 patents in the United States. He was the first African American mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War. Self-taught, he concentrated most of his work on trains and streetcars.

In 1884, Woods received his first patent, for a steam boiler furnace, and in 1885, Woods patented an apparatus that was a combination of a telephone and a telegraph. The device, which he called "telegraphony", would allow a telegraph station to send voice and telegraph messages through Morse code over a single wire. He sold the rights to this device to the American Bell Telephone Company.

In 1887, he patented the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, which allowed communications between train stations from moving trains by creating a magnetic field around a coiled wire under the train. Woods caught smallpox prior to patenting the technology, and Lucius Phelps patented it in 1884. In 1887, Woods used notes, sketches, and a working model of the invention to secure the patent. The invention was so successful that Woods began the Woods Electric Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, to market and sell his patents. However, the company quickly became devoted to invention creation until it was dissolved in 1893.

Woods often had difficulties in enjoying his success as other inventors made claims to his devices. Thomas Edison later filed a claim to the ownership of this patent, stating that he had first created a similar telegraph and that he was entitled to the patent for the device. Woods was twice successful in defending himself, proving that there were no other devices upon which he could have depended or relied upon to make his device. After Thomas Edison's second defeat, he decided to offer Granville Woods a position with the Edison Company, but Woods declined.

In 1888, Woods manufactured a system of overhead electric conducting lines for railroads modeled after the system pioneered by Charles van Depoele, a famed inventor who had by then installed his electric railway system in thirteen United States cities.

Following the Great Blizzard of 1888, New York City Mayor Hugh J. Grant declared that all wires, many of which powered the above-ground rail system, had to be removed and buried, emphasizing the need for an underground system. Woods's patent built upon previous third rail systems, which were used for light rails, and increased the power for use on underground trains. His system relied on wire brushes to make connections with metallic terminal heads without exposing wires by installing electrical contactor rails. Once the train car had passed over, the wires were no longer live, reducing the risk of injury. It was successfully tested in February 1892 in Coney Island on the Figure Eight Roller Coaster.

In 1896, Woods created a system for controlling electrical lights in theaters, known as the "safety dimmer", which was economical, safe, and efficient, saving 40% of electricity use.

Woods is also sometimes credited with the invention of the air brake for trains in 1904; however, George Westinghouse patented the air brake almost 40 years prior, making Woods's contribution an improvement to the invention.

Woods died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Harlem Hospital in New York City on January 30, 1910, having sold a number of his devices to such companies as Westinghouse, General Electric, and American Engineering. Until 1975, his resting place was an unmarked grave, but historian M.A. Harris helped raise funds, persuading several of the corporations that used Woods's inventions to donate money to purchase a headstone. It was erected at St. Michael's Cemetery in Elmhurst, Queens.

LEGACY

▪Baltimore City Community College established the Granville T. Woods scholarship in memory of the inventor.

▪In 2004, the New York City Transit Authority organized an exhibition on Woods that utilized bus and train depots and an issue of four million MetroCards commemorating the inventor's achievements in pioneering the third rail.

▪In 2006, Woods was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Edmond Berger had an interest in increasing the efficiency of engines as at the time the internal combustion engine was still fairly new and had poor reliability issues. This is how in 1839 Berger came about to invent the spark plug in France.