Black Kos, Week In Review

Commentary: Black Scientists, Explorers, and Inventors
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor

Henry Ransom Cecil McBay (1914–1995) was an African – American chemist and a teacher.

McBay was born “Henry Ransom McBay” (named from his maternal grandfather, Henry Ransom) in 1914 in Mexia, Texas. His father, William Cecil McBay, was a barber who eventually became an embalmer and funeral director; his mother, Roberta Ransom (McBay), was a seamstress.

McBay was able to receive a good education because of his proficiency in math, and was able to gain admission to Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. He paid for his education by working in the college’s dining-hall and post office. Inspired by his math and chemistry professors, McBay studied organic chemistry and earned his B.S. degree in 1934. His Wiley professors helped him acquire a scholarship to Atlanta to work on his next degree.

With only $1.65 in his pocket, McBay immediately took a job in the Atlanta University dining hall so he could eat. After only a few days on campus, his faculty advisor, Professor K. A. Huggins, arranged for him to work in the chemistry laboratory.

McBay began to help Huggins study new types of plastics that had properties similar to natural rubber. Soon, McBay was performing his own analysis of the plastics. When the project was finished, he received his master’s degree from Atlanta University and Huggins received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. This indirect connection to the University of Chicago would later be important to his career.

After earning his master’s degree, he returned to Wiley College so he could help his younger brother and sister pay for college. However, going “home” proved to be a disappointment. Some faculty members still thought of him as their student and never accepted McBay as an academic peer. Because of his devotion to his siblings, however, he remained at Wiley until his brother received his college degree and his parents were able to pay for his sister’s education.

In 1938 McBay took a better-paying teaching job at a Quindaro, Kansas junior college. At the end of the first year, he enrolled in the University of Chicago summer school program, where he received good grades for that term. When he returned to Quindaro, he found that the new junior college principal had, for political reasons, hired an instructor in his place.

McBay then moved to a high school mathematics teaching position in Huntsville, Texas, where he stayed for three semesters. He then joined a newly formed research team at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama assigned the task of finding a suitable substitute for jute fiber. Indian shipments of jute, which was used for rope and fabrics for sacks, had ended due to World War I.

The Tuskegee team hoped to prove that okra stems would be an effective substitute, but McBay proved that by the time an okra plant had matured, the stems were too brittle. Okra could be harvested for food or for fiber, but not for both. Ironically, McBay had worked himself out of a job…….Read More

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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor

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As the GOP continues its multipronged offensive on free and fair elections, democracy desperately needs an army of its own in the field. The New Republic: An Idea for Democrats: Reboot ACORN

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On Wednesday, Politico’s Heidi Przybyla reported on the Republican Party’s latest venture on the voter subversion front. According to leaked video recordings, GOP operatives have been developing a “multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts” with the support of “grassroots activists,” who plan to recruit true believers to serve as “regular poll workers”—with a direct line to Republican lawyers to aid in the blocking of Democratic votes in swing states. Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director in Michigan, says that he’ll have “an army” of lawyers ready to stage “real-time interventions” based on what the GOP poll workers bring them.

It’s apt that Seifried is using martial metaphors. The Republican Party’s only real policy proposal these days is the destruction of free and fair elections. This isn’t a secret: As the Brennan Center for Justice has spent the past year and a half documenting, the GOP is going after voting rights with a zeal that borders on the elemental. It is fighting a well-funded battle on as many fronts as it can imagine; this most recent disclosure feels like another fail-safe it’s building into its plan to destroy democracy.

It’s been an asymmetric battle. While there are many people participating in the effort to preserve democracy, it’s clear that the Democrats aren’t treating it like the existential threat the GOP absolutely intends to unleash. Multiple efforts to pass voting rights bills that might protect voters from Republican predations have failed because several Democratic senators believe that preserving the Senate filibuster is more important than protecting the right to vote. The White House has said it will be necessary for voters to “out-organize voter suppression.” How they will pull that off is anyone’s guess, but it sure looks like Democrats could really use the help of some kind of association of community organizations for reform—now.

Of course, there used to be an organization with this very name: ACORN, which played a vital role in liberal grassroots organizing and voter registration. It’s also best known for being the victim of the first “sting” operation of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, whose now-familiar deceptively edited videos captured members of the organization in seeming flagrante delicto, aiding and abetting O’Keefe in a series of lurid schemes. Later investigations found that no one at ACORN had, in fact, violated the letter or the spirit of any law, but it didn’t matter—ACORN did not survive the scandal.

O’Keefe may never get as big a scalp, but even if he spends the rest of his career face-planting, his ACORN takedown looms as a big kill—one that decisively affected the trajectory of contemporary politics. But it’s worth noting that O’Keefe didn’t pull the idea to target the organization out of the ether: ACORN had long been a bedevilment to the GOP; years before Donald Trump’s Big Lie, ACORN was the target of John McCain’s equally flamboyant deceptions. The now comparatively revered Republican made a habit of accusing the organization of phantasmal election treachery and stealing races for the Democrats; his accusations seeded more than 1,700 newspaper stories in the October before the 2008 election, according to The Huffington Post. ACORN’s eventual demise was so meaningful to the GOP that it continued to insert language into budgets banning the federal government from contributing to ACORN’s nonexistent coffers many years after the organization ceased to exist in 2009. Republicans were worried enough about the work ACORN was doing to make sure that once it died, it stayed dead.

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The consequences of police violence reach far beyond those directly assaulted. As recent studies show, there is a link between living in areas with fatal police violence and preterm birth and pregnancy loss in Black women. The Grio: The attacks on Black maternal health go far beyond Roe

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Since the recent leak of a draft of the Supreme Court decision that could overturn Roe v. Wade, news outlets have given increased attention to maternal health. The overturning of Roe would be disastrous. But the attacks on Black maternal health go far beyond Roe.

I remember the horror I felt 10 years ago when I heard the news: Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black child from Miami Gardens, Fla., was killed by a neighborhood vigilante. I was terrorized a year and a half later when his accused killer was acquitted. It was a clear reminder that our criminal legal system sanctions the murder of Black people, even kids.

As I witnessed that verdict in real time, I rubbed my pregnant belly, which was carrying two Black boys, thanks to a longed-for IVF pregnancy. I was 21 weeks and three days in, at the moment when you feel flutters. Our twins fluttered the most when my wife cooed the song “Shoo Fly” to them. This verdict confirmed my worst fears as a Black parent: I could not keep these Black boys growing inside me safe.

I started to bleed hours after I learned that Trayvon’s killer walked. I later learned that the rhythmic pain in my back meant labor. I was left in the waiting room for what felt like an eternity: my anguish ignored until blood started pouring from my body, echoing the experiences of countless Black women who have contributed to the staggering Black maternal mortality rate.  Within an hour, I gave birth to our tiny boys, born too early to survive.

There is no way to know whether our loss was directly caused by the torment I felt as I watched our legal system sanction Trayvon’s murder. What I know for sure is the fear I experienced is collectively felt by Black parents in the U.S.: What happened to Trayvon could just as easily happen to our children.

The consequences of police violence reach far beyond those directly assaulted. It is no wonder recent studies show that there is a link between living in areas with fatal police violence and preterm birth and pregnancy loss. Fears and worries about police violence are linked to distress and depression among adults in general and among pregnant Black mothers in particular. The ancient terror of police violence scorches underneath our skin.

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What Juneteenth reveals about community, faith, and thriving — then and now Boston Globe: The Black church and its cornerstone connection to the health of a people

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As the granddaughter of a minister who once had a vibrant congregation in a small church in Detroit’s Grandale neighborhood, I could relate. Holidays and celebrations often meant donning a dress and my best shoes, listening to my grandfather preach the Word, then gathering in the event space in the church’s basement for a celebratory repast. In that church, I recited scripture during Easter programs and sang at my sister’s wedding.

Now, all that remains of Peace Temple Church of God in Christ, around which the life of my grandfather the Rev. Amos Warren revolved so much that he lived and died in the house next door to the church building, are old files in a Michigan digital database showing the nonprofit was dissolved.

Unfortunately, Peace Temple is not the only place of salvation that couldn’t be saved. Black churches have always had a higher rate of closures than other houses of worship due to a number of factors, from neighborhood gentrification to the disproportionate economic barriers faced by congregants whose tithings and donations keep church doors open.

But a recent Brookings Institution study found not only the highest rates of church closures per general population were in the areas with the highest percentage of Black people but also the loss of those spaces meant far more than silencing hymns and sermons. It meant the absence of crucial centers Black communities depend on for critical public health services, whether residents were part of the churches’ congregations or not.

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Pulse oximeters can reportedly overestimate blood oxygen levels in people of color, making them appear healthier. The Grio: Lifesaving treatment delayed for Black COVID-19 patients based on how device assesses darker-skinned people, study finds

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A study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that the distribution of potentially lifesaving therapies was significantly delayed for Black and Hispanic patients due to inaccurate oxygen readings from devices that can work poorly for darker-skinned people.

The findings were based on the efficacy of the widely-used pulse oximeter, which measures oxygen levels by assessing the color of the blood. According to STAT, which is reporting on the study, the device can overestimate blood oxygen levels in darker-skinned patients compared to white patients. It may make them appear healthier than they are — and may have been one reason behind the disparity in COVID-19 mortality rates among communities of color.

The new study is not the first to find that pulse oximeters may have inaccurately detected low blood oxygen levels in Black patients versus white ones. One study took place in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, and the Food and Drug Administration issued a safety warning two months later saying that the devices could be inaccurate for darker-skinned patients.

The JAMA study found that the inaccuracies were present in other communities of color, including Hispanic and Asian patients. Further, it noted that the inaccuracies had real-world consequences, such as delays in Blacks and Hispanics getting lifesaving treatments, like the drugs remdesivir and dexamethasone, or some patients not getting care at all.

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For the first time, the NFL will have a Black woman with an equity stake in a team. The Root: Mellody Hobson Set To Become Part Owner of the Denver Broncos

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One of the most influential Black women executives in the country is a partner in the ownership group that just struck a deal to buy the Denver Broncos.

The Broncos announced that the team had reached a deal to be bought by a group led by Walmart heir Rob Walton, and ESPN reported today that that group included Mellody Hobson, the co-CEO of Chicago-based Ariel Investments. Hobson, 53, is one of the most powerful executives in the country. In addition to leading Ariel alongside co-CEO John W. Rogers Jr., Hobson also chairs Starbucks Corp.’s board of directors and sits on the board of financial services giant JP Morgan Chase. She’s also the spouse of legendary filmmaker George Lucas.

It’s unclear what percentage of the Broncos that Hobson would own but the sale price suggests that owning even a small percentage would be worth a considerable amount. The Walton group is expected to $4.65 billion for the team, a record amount, a record for an American sports team. The Broncos were last valued by Forbes at $3.75 billion in 2021, ranking 10th in the NFL.

The NFL, which is being sued for discrimination by three current and former coaches, issued a statement from the 32 current team owners in March that said the group would encourage having nonwhite partners among any group seeking to purchase a team in the future. Thirty-one of the current owners are white, the exception being the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Shad Khan.

In its statement, the league did not say it would require nonwhite participation in the bidding for the Broncos or any other squad. 

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