Dr. Freddie L. Thomas, University of Rochester (Geneticist) and Eastman Kodak (Scientist and Inventor) Dr. Thomas medical breakthroughs at the U of R ushered in a new way to study the genome of humans.
• Benjamin Banneker, a black astronomer made the first clock made in America in 1754.
• George Washington sent a black slave to Barbados to be exchanged for a hogshead of molasses, a cask of rum and other good spirits.
• The black race arrived in the New World free from tuberculosis, and syphilis or other venereal disease. Livingston, the famous African Missionary, and medical doctor says, syphilis “Dies out in the African interior. It seems incapable or permanence in any form of persons of pure African blood.” Syphilis originated in Europe in 1494, when there was a great epidemic of it. As this was two years after the discovery of the New World, it was erroneously believed to have been brought back by sailors of Columbus.
• People of the black race was the first artist. The oldest drawings and cravings yet discovered were executed by the negro people 15,000 years ago in Southern France, Northern Spain, Palestine, South Africa, and India. The drawings on rocks, the cravings on bone, basalt and ivory.
• The oldest known representation of the human body is that of a black woman. It was craved by a black person of Grimaldi race from 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. It is called the “Venus of Willendorf” after the place in Austria where it was found and is in the Vietnam museum.
• Beethoven, the world’s greatest musician was without a doubt of mix race. He was called “The Black Spaniard.” His teacher, the immortal Joseph Haydn, who wrote the music for the former Australian national Anthem was black too.
Ancient Civilizations
• The Grimaldi, a Black race lived in Europe as late as 12,000 years ago. Two complete Grimaldi skeletons are in the Museum of Monaco near Monte Carlo. Abundant traces of their culture have been unearthed in Southern and Central Europe.
• Elam, a mighty black civilization of Persia flourished about 2900 BC and is perhaps older than Egypt and Ethiopia.
• Cheops, a black man built the Great Pyramid, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It is 451 feet high, has 2,500.000 blocks of granite, each two and a half tons, covers 13 acres took 100,000 men 30 years to build and was completed in 3730 BC.
• There were a at least eighteen Ethiopian or unmixed Black rulers of Egypt, the best known of which is Piankhi. Leaving his country in Central Africa, Piankhi conquered all Egypt to the mouth of the Nile in 750 BC.
• The most ancient lineage in the world is that of the Ethiopian royal family. It is said to be older than that of King George VI’s by 6130 years. The Emperor Haile Selassi I, ruler of Ethiopia, traces his ancestry to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and beyond that to Cush, 6280 BC.
• Blacks lived in America thousands of years before Columbus. Central American monuments show numerous carvings of them as gods. When Columbus came to the New World, Blacks had been crossing from Africa to South America. A distance of 1600 miles. The first white men to reach the American mainland tell of seeing blacks. Columbus who visited South America said that he heard of them.
• Estevanico, a black from Morocco was one of a party of four to cross the North American continent in 1536 for the first time. The journey took nine years. In 1539 he headed an expedition that discovered Arizona and New Mexico. Estevanico’s travels served to open the Southwest and the states west of Florida, as far as the Pacific.
• The founder of the city of Chicago was Baptist Pointe de Saible, a Black in 1797.
• For years human beings had been trying to reach the top of the world. Thousands of lives and millions of dollars were lost in the attempt. On April 6, 1909, Matthew Henson, a New York black man was the first of a party of six to do so.
• Jan Ernest Matzeliger, a Dutch West Indian Black living in Lynn, Mass., invented the first machine for sewing the soles of shoes to the uppers. This invention, which was eleven years in the making revolutionized the industry and gave shoe supremacy to the United States.
• Imhotep of Ancient Egypt was the real Father of Medicine. He lived about 2300 BC Greece and Rome had their knowledge of medicine from him. In Rome he was worshiped as the Prince of Peace in the form of a Black man. His Ethiopian portraits show him as a black man. Imhotep was also Prime Minister to King Zoser as well as the foremost architect of his time. The saying, “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,” has been traced to him. Hippocrates, the so-called “Father of Medicine” lived 2,000 years after Imhotep.
• Aben Ali, an African Black was a private physician to Charles VII, King of Frances (1403-1465). When the king fell dangerously ill at Toulouse, Aben Ali was sent for and he cured him. Thereafter the king made him a member of his suite.
• Dr. C. Tavares, an African Black was the private physician to King Carlos I of Portugal until his death in 1908.
• Dr. Daniel Williams, Chicago surgeon who died in 1931 was the first to perform a successful operation on the human heart.
