Hidden Figures (History Department)

Art/ D&T

https://www.artfund.org/whats-on/more-to-see-and-do/features/the-hidden-history-of-black-british-artists

Or – USA

Lois Mailou Jones was a highly regarded artist and teacher whose career spanned seven decades. Influenced by the Harlem Renaissance movement, Jones broadened the idea of Black painting and scholarship.

Business

Madam C. J. Walker (1867-1919) was “the first Black woman millionaire in America” and made her fortune thanks to her homemade line of hair care products for Black women

Citizenship

Dr John Alcindor, born in Trinidad, was a physician and activist for racial equality who overcame prejudice and discrimination to help others during the First World War. Dr Alcindor came to Britain after winning a medical scholarship to attend Edinburgh University. Despite having a medical degree and experience of working in several London hospitals, in addition to establishing his own general practice in Paddington, he was rejected by the Royal Army Medical Corps during the war because of his origin.

He persisted with his desire to help those in need by joining the British Red Cross as a volunteer and treated countless wounded soldiers at London railway stations as they returned from the battlefields. The British Red Cross awarded him a medal for his life-saving work.

Dr Alcindor also carried out research and published articles on cancer, influenza, tuberculosis and syphilis. His research set the groundwork for the correlation between poverty, low quality food and unbalanced diets in poor health.

English

Gwendolyn Brooks

Born in Topeka, Kansas in 1917, Brooks moved to Chicago at 5 weeks old and began writing through the encouragement of her mother. After winning her Pulitzer in 1950, she went on to serve as a poetry consultant for the Library of Congress and the poet laureate of the United States. Her work examined the ordinary lives of Black people, often reflecting her political consciousness and the ongoing struggle for civil rights.

French

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas – France’s first Black General

Geography

Wangari Maathai became the first Black woman to win the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her environmental work in Kenya

History

Ivory Bangle Lady

ICT

Mark Dean, Computer Scientist (b. 1957)

§ Co-creator of the IBM personal computer released in 1981.

§ Contributed to the development of the color PC monitor, the first gigahertz chip and the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) system bus.

§ First African-American to become an IBM Fellow (which represents the highest level of technical excellence).

Maths

Melba Roy Mouton (1929-1990) was an American mathematician who served as Assistant Chief of Research Programs at NASA's Trajectory and Geodynamics Division in the 1960s and headed a group of NASA mathematicians called "computers".

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2118526-when-computers-were-human-the-black-women-behind-nasas-success/

Media/ Film

Oscar Devereaux Micheaux; January 2, 1884 – March 25, 1951) was an African-American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and controlled by black filmmakers, Micheaux is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, a prominent producer of race film, and has been described as "the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century".[2] He produced both silent films and sound films.

Performing Arts

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a queer Black woman from Arkansas. Born in 1915 to cotton pickers Katie Bell Nubin and Willis Atkins, she and her mother settled in Chicago in the 1920s, where they performed religious concerts. On the scene before Johnny Cash and Little Richard, she spent the late 1930s and 1940s experimenting with her distinctive guitar style that fused jazz, blues, and gospel music.

PE

Emma Clarke

Clarke made her professional debut for British Ladies in 1895 in Crouch End in front of a crowd of over 11,000, and graced famous stadiums like Wembley, St James’ Park and Portman Road.

Clarke also played in goal, though was actually confused for decades with fellow keeper Carrie Boustead, who was originally billed as the first Black female footballer until historian Stuart Gibbs discovered she was actually white.

RS/ Philosophy

Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin

As the first ever black woman to serve as Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons and Chaplain to the Queen, Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin is one of the most visible women in the Church of England. This straight-talking Jamaican-born minister was ordained as a priest in 1994 and since then has worked in parishes in the West Midlands and London. She has served as a member of the General Synod of the Church of England (from 1995 to 1998, and from 2003 to 2010) and was also one of the panel of chairs of the Synod

Science

Dr Harold Moody

Moody came to London from Jamaica in 1904 to study medicine at King’s College, London. Having been denied a hospital appointment out of racial prejudice, he set up on his own as a GP, establishing a practice in King’s Road (now King’s Grove), Peckham, in 1913.

The Moodys’ house was ‘open to all the travelling black people who couldn’t find a room or a meal elsewhere’.

Sociology/ Psych/ Politics

Institutional Racism – already being planned