Each Thursday of #BlackHistoryMonth, we're celebrating pioneers who are changing the game, breaking barriers, and shaping the future.
This week, meet two gamechangers whose work has impacted millions: Dr. Marian Croak, the computer scientist and engineer who pioneered Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), revolutionizing global communication, and Iddris Sandu (@iddrissandu), the tech innovator and digital architect whose work has shaped platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.
Stay tuned every Thursday as we honor more innovators shaping our world.
We're sharing some of our favorite Black History Month features from recent years.
Last year's Historical Trail Blazers and Rising Stars in Marine Science web story shares the stories of three pioneering and three active-career Black marine scientists.
Read all about it here: https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/news/feb21/historical-trail-blazers.html
Image: Dr. Roger Airliner Young, shown here c1931, was the first African-American woman to earn her doctorate in zoology. She did her early work on marine organisms at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratories. Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory under Creative Commons license.
The social media campaign #BlackBirdersWeek hopes to show the world the many black birders and nature lovers of color.
A black child grins widely while holding a falcon bigger than his head. A black ecologist stands in waders beside a beaver pond. He’s studying how to help wildlife thrive. A black evolutionary biologist holds a wriggling bat. She’s working in Belize, studying the processes that led to the diversity of life on Earth.
These photos and hundreds more bird facts, questions and experiences are flooding social media. They are part of #BlackBirdersWeek. It’s a movement that is working to promote black birders and nature fans. The social media campaign runs May 31 through June 5. There are Question & Answer sessions with black birders. There’s a Facebook livestream discussion of birding while black. It also offers prompts for sharing photos of birds and being outside in nature on Twitter and Instagram.
#BlackBirdersWeek comes during nationwide protests. People are protesting the deaths of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor and many other black people at the hands of the police. To the founders of #BlackBirdersWeek, the protests increase the importance and urgency of their campaign.
The founders are a group of black individuals who work in science or related fields. They got together on Twitter, and use the account @BlackAFinSTEM. They began planning #BlackBirdersWeek after May 25. That’s the day that George Floyd was killed. On the same day, Christian Cooper was birding — looking for birds in New York City’s Central Park. Cooper — who is black — saw a white woman with a dog. The dog was not on a leash. Park rules require dogs be leashed.
When Cooper asked the woman to leash her dog, she refused. Soon, she yelled that she was calling the police. She was going “to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life.” A confrontation with the police could have been very dangerous for Cooper.
Other black birders found Cooper’s experience very familiar. “What happened to him could have happened to any of us,” says Danielle Belleny. She is a wildlife biologist in San Antonio, Texas. She is also a cofounder of #BlackBirdersWeek.
#Repost @nasa with @make_repost ・・・ 👩🏾🔬🚀🌟 Mary Jackson never accepted the status quo. Today we announced that our headquarters building in Washington, DC, will be named after engineer Mary W. Jackson, who overcame barriers to become NASA’s first Black woman engineer. Jackson started her NASA career in 1951 at what is now @NASALangley in Virginia as a human computer – a mathematician who performed hand calculations for NASA missions. After two years working in the West Area Computing unit, she received an offer to work in Langley’s Supersonic Pressure Tunnel, where she conducted extensive aeronautics research and authored or co-authored over a dozen research papers. She was promoted and, in 1958, became our first Black woman engineer. In 1979, Jackson made a final career change, leaving engineering to become the program manager for NASA Langley’s Federal Women’s Program. She would dedicate the rest of her career to the hiring and promotion of the next generation of women mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019 and was portrayed by @JanelleMonae in the Oscar-winning film #HiddenFigures. Our Administrator @JimBridenstine noted, "We know there are many other people of color and diverse backgrounds who have contributed to our success, which is why we’re continuing the conversations started about a year ago with the agency’s Unity Campaign. NASA is dedicated to advancing diversity, and we will continue to take steps to do so.” #MaryJackson #BlackinStem #womeninSTEM #nasa https://www.instagram.com/p/CCWYCyflpGe/?igshid=1i2sjp2ps3ljb
Donovan Thomas is a 28 year old native of Orange, New Jersey (973). He has a Bachelor’s in Electronics Engineering, a Master’s in Optical Engineering, a second Master’s in Materials Science & graduated with a Ph.D in Materials Science & Engineering (all at Norfolk State University). ⠀ His research focus is in Semiconductor Device Fabrication. His PhD research covers integrating Quantum Dots, synthesized via a small microwave reactor, into Electronic & Optoelectronic Devices to study their efficiency. He has future aspirations to be an entrepreneur & own an Engineering Contracting/Consulting Firm. ⠀ #LivingWhileBlack #BlackScholars #BlackEngineers #BlackEngineer #EndNegativeBlackStereotypes #BlackMen #IdefyStereotypes #STEM #BlackInSTEM #BlackEntrepreneurs #BlackEntrepreneur #BlackExcellence
It was one in the morning and I was typing my zip code into the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Map. Little icons popped up and I learned that the closest hate group was in Lynchburg, about 90 miles away from Blacksburg. Was I surprised about the closeness of a (registered) hate group to my …
Powerful words from Ph.D. student Asia Murphy on being black in a wildlife field.
🚀 Now in the Sistah Scifi Book Vending Machine at @chapter510!
SIGNED copies of To Boldly Go: How Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek Helped Advance Civil Rights by @angeladalton_author are available now.
This inspiring picture book tells how Nichelle Nichols’ role as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek helped open doors for a more diverse generation of astronauts and STEM leaders—including Sally Ride and Dr. Mae Jemison.
Perfect for young readers ages 4–8 and fans of Hidden Figures and Mae Among the Stars.
✨ Signed via bookplate.
👉 Stop by @chapter510 and grab your copy directly from the Sistah Scifi Book Vending Machine before they’re gone!
In the late 1980s, lawyer and artist Kamal Al Mansour set out to bring pan-African culture to the digital realm. He started with CPTime Clip Art, the first major disk of Afrocentric imagery for personal computers. The title wryly reclaimed the expression “Colored people’s time”. For Al Mansour it became a personal call to action: “It’s our time, it’s time for people of color to be online, to be digital.” He also started a dial-up service for research and messaging called CPTime On-Line.
“. . . on PBS [I] saw a Princeton professor sharing a software program called Culture, and… you’re calling it Culture, but you’re showing Michelangelo. You’re showing Da Vinci . . . You’re showing Greece, and the Greeks, and the Colosseum, but I’m not seeing pyramids. I’m not seeing the Sphinx. I’m not seeing anything else in the world that was the precursor to what you have in your software program, which was the root, for me, of culture. So it was that night that I said, I’ve got to do something.”
— KAMAL AL MANSOUR
Al Mansour made it his mission to change things with CPTime Clip Art. His follow-up program, Who We Are, included hundreds of questions and answers about Black civilizations. He soon had a catalog of titles addressing a variety of topics, including diseases affecting people of African descent, Swahili language courses, and a program that sought to raise the self-esteem of Black youth. His materials were being bought by school districts and universities and were covered in major print and TV media.
Not all who push for change join a protest march. Instead, some people serve as role models or educate the next generation. Others may build
