THE NATION'S LARGEST AFRICAN AMERICAN ORAL HISTORY ARCHIVE
July 27, 2018 - Vol. 1, Issue 43
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Welcome To Forsyth County Public Library!
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The HistoryMakers is thrilled to announce the addition of our 48th subscribing institution, Forsyth County Public Library (FCPL) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. FCPL is our fifth public library to subscribe; and it joins Charlotte's Johnson C. Smith University as our second North Carolina-based subscribing institution. We are especially grateful to HistoryMaker and library director
Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin
for facilitating this relationship!
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Above:
Curiosity
Self-Portrait at the 'Okoruso' Drill Hole, Mars
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The discovery this week of an underground liquid pool on Mars prompted murmurings about the possibility of life on the planet--both past and future. Indeed, there are a multitude of HistoryMakers whose work in STEM facilitated the ongoing exploration of Mars. In the 1990s, electrical engineer
Ayanna Howard
became a computer scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where she helped engineer the robotics used in the early Mars rover missions. She went on to refine the scheme for terrain traversability--the evaluation of terrain from a robotic perspective:
“We didn’t have a method to say, well, this is a crater. So what would happen is, if you came to a crater, the robot would say, oh, I’m supposed to go forward. So I started coming up with methods of identifying what was traversable and not traversable…At the end of the day I came up with methods where the robot could intelligently navigate and learn based on how a person navigates and learns how to drive.”
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[Ayanna Howard, THMDA 1.4.7]
.
Electrical engineer
Edward Tunstel
was a colleague of Howard’s in the robotics intelligence group at the JPL. He spoke in his interview about the
Curiosity
rover, which landed on the Red Planet almost six years ago. He explains of
Curiosity
’s advancement over previous iterations:
“This is a much bigger rover…It has a lot more instruments on its arm that are used for different science measurements; and its purpose is to detect what we would refer to as organics in the Martian environment--so anything that might be a sign of ancient past life, whether it’s microbial or more complex than that, but organic in some way. Whereas
Spirit
and
Opportunity
didn’t have the capability or the sensors or the instruments to detect that; they could only detect signs of past water activity with their instruments.”
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[Edward Tunstel, THMDA 1.6.8]
. Two more rovers are expected to launch in 2020
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; and Tunstel’s insight about the rapidity of rover advancement is an exciting indication of what the general public and scientific community may expect.
When asked about the future of his field, roboticist
James McLurkin
underscored the ubiquity of robotics throughout our solar system:
“So robots are everywhere, and they’re gonna be even more common--you know, cars, planes, they’re all essentially robots now...there’s a whole bunch of applications that robots are good for: anything that involves mapping or surveillance or searching; and when we get into these tasks, large numbers of robots can do these jobs better than any of us…Robots are the best way to study a large area…So I wanna figure out the right way to send thousands of robots into places like Mars so they can do useful science, and engineer them to do that.
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[James McLurkin, THMDA 1.7.3]
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In his 2013 interview with The HistoryMakers, aerospace engineer
Wesley Harris
also
shared his perspective on the future of space exploration, where he predicted heightened attention to the planets of Jupiter and Mars. He went further with his forecast, and offered:
“We’ll continue to look back toward Earth with our satellites for weather prediction, for example. For changes in our climate looking back toward Earth you can observe changes in the glaciers very easily from satellites…We will probably use those satellites to enhance crop production--have a major impact on food security for all humankind. By 2050, we will have the capability to send a human to Mars and back…There’s no real reason to go back to the moon, but I think we probably will by 2050. But by 2050, we’ll have the capability to go to Mars if we want to.”
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[Wesley Harris, THMDA 1.8.7]
.
Crucial to the continued success of institutions like NASA is the increase in representation of students of color across the STEM fields. Many of our HistoryMakers who pursued scientific careers acknowledged the familial and educational support they received from a young age. Astronaut
Dr. Robert Satcher, Jr.
was motivated by his father, a chemist, to consider a career in STEM.
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In high school, atmospheric scientist
Warren Morton Washington
was similarly encouraged to explore his interests:
“What really kind of got me started was I had a chemistry teacher in my sophomore year who knew how to explain science. And one day I asked her, ‘Why are egg yolks yellow?’ She said, ‘Why don’t you find out?’…And I started searching through journals…and I worked with the librarian in the reference section, and we found some information. I thought that was neat--I mean to be able to find out about how something in nature works.”
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[Warren Morton Washington, 2.7.4]
. As a community, it is imperative that we nurture the interests of our youth, in their formative years and beyond. Above all, we look forward to introducing more ScienceMakers to our history making community in the years to come.
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The HistoryMakers In
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
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Last night, we hosted a reception in honor of our North Carolinian HistoryMakers at Winston-Salem's historic Forsyth County Central Library. Our hosts for the evening (seen above) were WAAA Radio executive
Mütter Evans
, marketing executives
Lafayette Jones
and
Sandra Miller Jones
; and National Black Theatre Festival chief executive
Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin
.
In addition to our gracious hosts, the HistoryMakers in attendance were: U.S. congresswoman
The Honorable Eva M. Clayton
, journalist
Mary C. Curtis
,
Brigadier General Arnold Gordon-Bray
, nuclear physicist
Sekazi Mtingwa
, Diversity Woman magazine chief executive
Sheila Robinson
and bank executive
Lenny Springs
.
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Left to Right:
Sandra Miller Jones
,
Lenny Springs
,
Mütter Evans
,
The Honorable Eva M. Clayton
,
Lafayette Jones
,
Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin
,
Sekazi Mtingwa
,
Sheila Robinson
,
Brigadier General Arnold Gordon-Bray
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Over the course of our three-day stay in North Carolina, The HistoryMakers staff and founder and executive director
Julieanna Richardson
also had the opportunity to meet with a variety of museum and informational professionals. Our tour included visits to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro; the Greensboro and High Point public libraries; the North Carolina A&T State University F.D. Bluford Library; and Winston-Salem State University, where we met with library services director
Wanda Brown
.
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QUOTES FROM THE ARCHIVE:
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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Yesterday in New York City, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture--a subscribing institution of The HistoryMakers--acquired an unpublished chapter of
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
titled 'The Negro,' which was written over fifty years ago in collaboration with author Alex Haley.
Former U.S. Attorney General
Eric H. Holder, Jr.
read the book when he was a teenager; and in his 2004 HistoryMakers interview, he spoke at length about its relevance to his own understanding of humanity:
“I saw Malcolm X, a person who had suffered and done some of the worst things--a guy who was a petty criminal and done a lot of really negative things, and then who, through religion, through Islam, turned his life around. And even then it was a transformation… But then, he never stopped growing. He went from a person who followed Elijah Muhammad to a person who really followed true Islam, and understood that the negative racial things that Elijah Muhammad was preaching were not consistent with the tenants of Islam... And the constant growth of Malcolm X, the constant changing, the constant questioning was something that really had an impact on me…And Malcolm X’s book for me was, in a lot of ways, the affirmation of beliefs that I held, which is that ultimately, people are people, you’ve got to judge them as individuals; and that you have to be centered as a black American. You have to be proud of your heritage--that you can’t let the negative experiences that happen to us as a people be things that somehow limit your ability to try to get ahead and make things better for our people and the future.”
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[The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr., THMDA 1.4.8]
.
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THE HISTORYMAKERS' FAVORITE QUOTES:
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"The door to success is marked, 'PUSH.'"
-Norma White
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Please share with us your stories of how you incorporate The HistoryMakers Digital Archive into your curriculum and research. We'd love to hear from you!
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STAY TUNED FOR NEW CONTENT IN
THE HISTORYMAKERS DIGITAL ARCHIVE
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1. BANNER PHOTO: 'Curiosity Self-Portrait at 'Okoruso' Drill Hole, Mars,' taken on May 11, 2016. NASA Science Mars Exploration Program. Accessed July 27, 2018. https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/curiosity-self-portrait-at-okoruso-drill-hole-mars/.
2. Ayanna Howard (The HistoryMakers A2011.017), interviewed by Larry Crowe, April 15, 2011, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 7, Ayanna Howard talks about robots on Mars.
3. Edward Tunstel (The HistoryMakers A2012.145), interviewed by Larry Crowe, September 15, 2012, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 6, story 8, Edward Tunstel talks about the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Curiosity, and its mission in 2012.
5. James McLurkin (The HistoryMakers A2013.024), interviewed by Larry Crowe, February 4, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 7, story 3, James McLurkin talks about the future of robotics.
6. Wesley Harris (The HistoryMakers A2013.004), interviewed by Larry Crowe, April 26, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 8, story 7, Wesley Harris provides his predictions on the direction of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
7. Dr. Robert Satcher, Jr. (The HistoryMakers A2014.047), interviewed by Larry Crowe, March 3, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 7, Dr. Robert Satcher, Jr. remembers developing an interest in science.
8. Warren Morton Washington (The HistoryMakers A2006.080), interviewed by Ralph Cicerone, June 11, 2012, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 7, story 4, Warren Washington talks about his early interest in science and his decision to pursue science in college.
9. The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr. (The HistoryMakers A2004.266), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, December 17, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 8, Eric Holder notes the profound influence the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" had upon his life.
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to:
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