Facts

 Black History Month Facts

• Phillis Wheatley is known as the first published African American poet

• Andrew J. Beard invented the rotary engine on July 5, 1892

• Guion S. Bluford, Jr. was the first African American in space.

• Bernard A. Harris, Jr. was the first African American to walk in space.

• Garrett Augustus Morgan invented the automatic traffic signal, as well as, the gas mask used by soldiers in World War I and by firemen in the early 1900's.

• Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

• Sojourner Truth was a true force in the abolitionist movement, as well as, a preacher. She added the women's rights movement to her cause in 1859.

• Jan Ernst Matzeliger invented a machine to make shoes that lasted in 1883.

• Crispus Attucks is remembered as one of the first men to lose his life for the cause of American independence at the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770.

• Henry T. Sampson was the black man who invented the cellphone

      http://www.powertolearn.com/spotlights/black_history_month_2004/funfacts.html