Dr. Lonnie Johnson…

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Lonnie Johnson holds his patent for the pump-action water gun he developed, now known as the Super Soaker

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Mechanical Engineering, NASA, Nuclear Engineering, STEM

Engineer Lonnie Johnson invented the massively popular Super Soaker water gun and is developing a thermoelectric device to convert solar energy into sustainable power.

Lonnie Johnson invented the Super Soaker in 1989 and has since dedicated his engineering skills to creating more efficient rechargeable batteries and sustainable solar power. As a child, Johnson learned to build toys from his father and was later inspired to make a career of his early talent by fellow Black inventor George Washington Carver. Since the debut of Johnson’s famous toy, hundreds of millions of Super Soakers have been sold, and the water gun was added to the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2015. Seven years later, Johnson was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Today, in addition to working on batteries, the inventor and his team are developing the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter (JTEC), an engine that converts heat from solar energy into electricity more effectively than current technology.

Lonnie George Johnson was born on October 6, 1949, in Mobile, Alabama. His father was a World War II veteran who worked as a civilian driver at nearby Air Force bases, while his mother worked in a laundry and as a nurse’s aid. During the summers, both of Johnson’s parents also picked cotton on his grandfather’s farm.

Out of both interest and economic necessity, Johnson’s father was a skilled handyman who taught his six children to build their own toys. When Johnson was still a small boy, he and his dad built a pressurized chinaberry shooter out of bamboo shoots. At age 13, Johnson attached a lawnmower engine to a go-kart he built from junkyard scraps and raced it along the highway until the police pulled him over.

Out of both interest and economic necessity, Johnson’s father was a skilled handyman who taught his six children to build their own toys. When Johnson was still a small boy, he and his dad built a pressurized chinaberry shooter out of bamboo shoots. At age 13, Johnson attached a lawnmower engine to a go-kart he built from junkyard scraps and raced it along the highway until the police pulled him over.

Growing up in Mobile in the days of legal segregation, Johnson attended Williamson High School, an all-Black facility, where he was told not to aspire beyond a career as a technician despite his precocious intelligence and creativity. Nevertheless, inspired by the story of famed African American inventor George Washington Carver, Johnson persevered in his dream of becoming an inventor.

Nicknamed “The Professor” by his high school buddies, Johnson represented his school at a 1968 science fair sponsored by the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS). The fair took place at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where, just five years earlier, Governor George Wallace had tried to prevent two Black students from enrolling at the school by standing in the doorway of the auditorium.

The only Black student in the competition, Johnson debuted a compressed-air-powered robot, called “the Linex,” which he had painstakingly built from junkyard scraps over a year. Much to the chagrin of the university officials, Johnson won first prize. “The only thing anybody from the university said to us during the entire competition,” Johnson later recalled, “was ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Y’all drive safe, now.’”

After graduating with Williamson’s last segregated class in 1969, Johnson attended Tuskegee Institute (today Tuskegee University) on a scholarship. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1973, and two years later, he received a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the school.

After Johnson received his degrees, he joined the U.S. Air Force and became an important member of the government’s scientific establishment. He was assigned to the Strategic Air Command, where he helped develop the stealth bomber program. Johnson moved on to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1979, working as a systems engineer for the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn, before returning to the Air Force in 1982.

Despite his busy days, Johnson continued to pursue his own inventions in his spare time. One of his longtime pet projects was an environmentally friendly heat pump that used water instead of Freon. Johnson finally completed a prototype one night in 1982 and decided to test it in his bathroom. He aimed the nozzle into his bathtub, pulled the lever and blasted a powerful stream of water straight into the tub. Johnson’s instantaneous and instinctive reaction, since shared by millions of kids around the world, was pure delight.

In 1989, after another seven years of tinkering and tireless sales-pitching, during which he left the Air Force to go into business for himself, Johnson finally sold his device to the Larami Corporation. The “Power Drencher” initially failed to make much of a commercial impact, but after additional marketing efforts and a name change, the “Super Soaker” became a massively successful item. It topped $200 million in sales in 1991 and went on to annually rank among the world’s top 20 best-selling toys.

Dr. Lonnie G. Johnson, Biography dot com

Dr. Ayanna Howard…

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Computer Engineering, Diversity in Science, Electrical Engineering, NASA, Robotics, STEM, Women in Science

Accomplished roboticist, entrepreneur, and educator Ayanna Howard, PhD, became dean of The Ohio State University College of Engineering on March 1, 2021. Previously she was chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing, as well as founder and director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab (HumAnS).

Her career spans higher education, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the private sector. Dr. Howard is the founder and president of the board of directors of Zyrobotics, a Georgia Tech spin-off company that develops mobile therapy and educational products for children with special needs. Zyrobotics products are based on Dr. Howard’s research.

Among many accolades, Forbes named Dr. Howard to its America’s Top 50 Women In Tech list. In 2021, the Association for Computing Machinery named her the ACM Athena Lecturer in recognition of her fundamental contributions to the development of accessible human-robotic systems and artificial intelligence, along with forging new paths to broaden participation in computing. In 2022, she was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and was appointed to the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC).

Dr. Howard also is a tenured professor in the college’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with a joint appointment in Computer Science and Engineering. As dean, she holds the Monte Ahuja Endowed Dean’s Chair, which was established in 2013 through a generous gift from Distinguished Alumnus Monte Ahuja ’70. [View Dean Howard’s full CV]

She is the first woman to lead the College of Engineering. Nationally, only 17% of engineering deans or directors across the country are female, according to the Society of Women Engineers. She also is the college’s second Black dean. George Mason University President Gregory Washington served as interim dean from 2008 to 2011. Throughout her career, Dr. Howard has been active in helping to diversify the engineering profession for women, underrepresented minorities, and individuals with disabilities.

Dr. Howard earned her bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Brown University, her master’s degree and PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California, and her MBA from Claremont Graduate University.

The Ohio State University College of Engineering Dean Ayanna Howard

Katharine Johnson…

Born: Aug. 26, 1918
Died: Feb. 24, 2020
Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV
Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937
Hired by NACA: June 1953
Retired from NASA: 1986
Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Mathematics, NASA, Spaceflight, STEM, Women in Science

Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools is something that many people consider one of their life’s most notable moments. Still, it’s just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, her intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At 18, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school’s math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in mathematics. She graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia. 

When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State’s president, Dr. John W. Davis, selected her and two men to be the first black students offered spots at the state’s flagship school, West Virginia University. She left her teaching job and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her first husband, James Goble.  She returned to teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasn’t until 1952 that a relative told her about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine and her husband decided to move the family to Newport News, Virginia, to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. Just two weeks into her tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine’s temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight tests and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.

The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history—and Johnson’s life. In 1957, she provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA’s first official foray into space travel. Johnson, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, “came along with the program” as the NACA became NASA later that year. She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight. In 1960, she and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, a report laying out the equations describing an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. It was the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission from liftoff to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine.  “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.” Glenn’s flight was a success and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

Katharine Johnson Biography, Margot Lee Shetterly, NASA

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson…

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Particle Physics, STEM, Theoretical Physics, Women in Science

Renowned physicist and university president Shirley Ann Jackson was born on August 5, 1946, in Washington, D.C., to George Hiter Jackson and Beatrice Cosby Jackson. When Jackson was a child, her mother read her the biography of Benjamin Banneker, an African American scientist and mathematician who helped build Washington, D.C., and her father encouraged her interest in science by assisting her with projects for school. The Space Race of the late-1950s would also have an impact on Jackson as a child, spurring her interest in scientific investigation.

Jackson attended Roosevelt High School in Washington, D.C., where she took accelerated math and science classes. Jackson graduated as valedictorian in 1964 and encouraged by the assistant principal for boys at her high school, she applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Jackson was among the first African American students to attend MIT and undergraduate, she was one of only two women.

In 1973, Jackson graduated from MIT with her Ph.D. in theoretical elementary particle physics, the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics in MIT’s history. Jackson worked on her thesis, entitled The Study of a Multiperipheral Model with Continued Cross-Channel Unitarity, under the direction of James Young, the first African American tenured full professor in the physics department at MIT. In 1975, the thesis was published in Annals of Physics.

After receiving her degree, Jackson was hired as a research associate in theoretical physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory or Fermilab. While at Fermilab, Jackson studied medium to large subatomic particles, specifically hadrons, a subatomic particle with a strong nuclear force. Throughout the 1970s, Jackson worked in this area on Landau’s theories of charge density waves in one, and two dimensions, as well as Tang-Mills gauge theories and neutrino reactions.

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, The History Makers dot org

Dr. Ronald E. McNair…

Topics: African Americans, Astronautics, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Lasers, NASA, Space Shuttle, Spaceflight

Ronald McNair (born October 21, 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina, U.S.—died January 28, 1986, in flight, off of Cape Canaveral, Florida) was an American physicist and astronaut who was killed in the Challenger disaster.

McNair received a bachelor’s degree in physics from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, in 1971 and a doctoral degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, in 1976. At MIT, McNair worked on the then recently invented chemical lasers, which used chemical reactions to excite molecules in a gas such as hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride and thus produced the stimulated emission of laser radiation. McNair became a staff physicist at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, where he continued studying lasers.

In 1978 McNair was selected as a mission specialist astronaut by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He, along with Guion S. Bluford, Jr., and Frederick Gregory, were the first African Americans selected as astronauts. His first spaceflight was on the STS-41B mission of the space shuttle Challenger (February 3–11, 1984). During that flight astronaut Bruce McCandless became the first person to perform a space walk without being tethered to a spacecraft. McNair operated the shuttle’s robotic arm to move a platform on which an astronaut could stand. This method of placing an astronaut in a specified position using the robotic arm was used on subsequent shuttle missions to repair satellites and assemble the International Space Station.

Britannica online: Dr. Ronald Erwin McNair

Colonel Frederick D. Gregory…

Ronald McNair, Guion Bluford, and Frederick Gregory, NASA’s first Black astronauts, from the 1978 astronaut class.

Topics: African Americans, Astronautics, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, NASA, Space Shuttle, Spaceflight

Frederick Drew Gregory is the first astronaut born, reared, and educated in the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, which is also home to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. He is a veteran of three space shuttle missions and the first African American to pilot and command a mission in space. He is also the first African American to rise to the second-highest NASA leadership position, Deputy Administrator.

Gregory’s story is generationally entwined with the history of the District of Columbia (DC). In an era of profound racism and segregation, Gregory’s family were respected members of Washington’s influential Black community. When he was born in 1941, his family members were already making history, and Gregory followed suit in his own time.

Gregory’s uncle, Dr. Charles R. Drew, became famous for his medical research and innovation during World War II. His father, Francis Anderson Gregory, was locally prominent as assistant superintendent of DC Public Schools for many years and served as the first Black president of the Public Library’s Board of Trustees; the branch library in the Fort Davis neighborhood where the Gregory family lived is named in his honor. His mother, Nora Drew Gregory, a graduate of Dunbar High School, had a thirty-year career as a teacher in Washington’s elementary schools and led the library board after her husband. Her niece—Gregory’s cousin—Charlene Drew Jarvis served on the DC Council for more than two decades.

Gregory remembers his father taking him to Andrews Air Force Base for air shows and car races when he was a child; that was his earliest exposure to aviation. He also knew several Tuskegee Airmen who were friends of his father and often visited the Gregory’s home, when he was too young to understand their historical significance but enjoyed their tales of flying. As a teenager, he made the connection between flying and the military and decided he wanted to be an aeronautical engineer and military aviator.

Gregory’s life became illustrious after he graduated from Anacostia High School—Washington’s schools were not yet integrated, but Gregory was active in an integrated Boy Scout troop. Nominated by civil rights activist and member of Congress Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Gregory attended the United States Air Force Academy, where he was the only Black cadet in his class and one of very few African Americans at the academy. He graduated with distinction and a degree in military engineering in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer into the Air Force.

When Gregory joined the Air Force, he first flew helicopters and then fighter aircraft, including the F-4 Phantom. He served in Vietnam, where he flew 550 combat rescue missions, and returned to enter the Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent, Maryland. While serving as an engineering and research test pilot for the Air Force and NASA, he earned a master’s degree in information systems from George Washington University, in his hometown. During his career, he logged 7,000 hours in more than 50 aircraft.

Washington, DC’s Renowned Astronaut, Col. Frederick D. Gregory, Valerie Neal, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Dr. Guion “Guy” S. Bluford Jr…

Topics: African Americans, Astronautics, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, NASA, Space Shuttle, Spaceflight

Dr. Guion “Guy” S. Bluford Jr. (Colonel, USAF, Ret.) was the first African American to fly in space. He was also the first African American to return to space a second, third and fourth time. As the first African American to be awarded United States Air Force Command Pilot Astronaut Wings, he has logged over 5200 hours in high performance jet aircraft and has flown 688 hours in space.

Bluford was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1942 and received a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 1964, a master of science degree in aerospace engineering with distinction from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1974, a doctor of philosophy degree in aerospace engineering with a minor in laser physics from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1978 and a master in business administration from the University of Houston, Clear Lake in 1987.

After graduating from Penn State, Bluford earned his Air Force pilot wings and then flew 144 combat missions in Southeast Asia as an F4C fighter pilot. From 1967 to 1972, he served as a T-38 instructor pilot at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas.

Astronauts Scholarship Foundation: Dr. Guion “Guy” S. Bluford Jr.

Dr. Dannellia Gladden-Green…

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdannig/

Topics: African Americans, Applied Physics, Black History Month, Business Consulting, Cybersecurity, Diversity in Science, Economics, Physics, Semiconductor Technology, STEM, Women in Science

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Personal website: Unlock “IT” with DrDanni

Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green…

Image source: Flickr

Topics: African Americans, Applied Physics, Black History Month, Cancer, Diversity in Science, Lasers, Nanotechnology, Physics, STEM, Women in Science

Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green is a STEM pioneer, leader, humanitarian, and entrepreneur introducing the world to the next generation of cancer treatments, charities, and affordable healthcare. She is one of the nation’s leading medical physicists and one of the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in Physics. Dr. Green developed a revolutionary cancer treatment that uses lasers and nanotechnology to eliminate cancer in mice after only one 10-minute treatment in just 15 days with no observable side effects. To ensure the affordability of this treatment, she founded a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation (OraLee.org), to raise funding for human clinical trials. Further, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs awarded her a $1.1 million grant for her research. Her story has been featured in a variety of media outlets, including ABC News, NBC News, New York Times, Forbes, The History Channel, PBS, and NPR. Dr. Green has been distinguished as one of the 100 Most Influential African Americans in the U.S. by Ebony and The Root magazines, Top 30 Under 40 in Healthcare by Business Insider, 100 Women of the Century by USA Today, and 50 Champions by Forbes.

Website: Oralee.org/drgreen

Comorbidities…

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Democracy, Existentialism, Fascism

John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil Company, the first billionaire of the United States of America, and once the richest man on Earth was asked by a reporter, “How much money is enough?”

He calmly replied, “Just a little bit more.” Siddhartha Rastogi, CNBC TV18

A Body Mass Index is a rough estimate of body composition that is used to define an unhealthy versus healthy weight. It is body mass divided by height squared (kg/m2). A BMI under 18.5 is considered underweight, whereas, a BMI of 25.0 to 29.9 is considered overweight, and a BMI over 30.0 is considered obese.

Fifty percent of the United States population is now considered obese; they have accumulated too much body mass, most specifically fat, and this has placed them at risk for illness, disease, and death. Only 1.5 percent of the United States population lacks adequate body mass and qualifies as underweight and unhealthy. They, too, are at increased risk for illness, disease, and death.

Some wealth is clearly protective and leads to better health and more happiness, but there is a paucity of information regarding the physical and mental health of the ultrarich. Subjectively, we see the ultrarich and their descendents suffer from such things as anxiety, depression, addiction, and loss of meaning and purpose. The individuals and their families appear to have an increased level of dysfunction, but it is unclear whether the dysfunction is greater, less than, or the same as in the general population.

Notably, the ultrarich suffer from the trappings of their wealth. They have more to track, manage, and protect. Their wealth can become isolating for them, as well. They can be resented by many and targeted by others. Healthy and meaningful relationships can be hard to find for the ultrarich. Their wealth can also precipitate and facilitate their seeking of pleasure over happiness, a formula for addiction and dysfunction. The ultrarich have some increased risk factors for illness and disease.

Morbid Wealth, David R. Clawson M.D., Psychology Today

“Just a little bit more.” The current richest man on Earth (at least, on paper) is poised to be the world’s first trillionaire, according to Fortune magazine. After him, Amazon’s and the Washington Post’s CEO will likely come. As the title “trillionaire” becomes passe, quadrillionaire is the next obvious goal, and the gulf of wealth inequality will become a bottomless ocean that a nonexistent middle class cannot cross. That is peonage. That is serfdom. For “just a little bit more,” democracy becomes a fairy tale.

Remember the rich that were caricatured in these Sci-Fi movies and stories:

“Don’t Look Up?” “Elysium?” “The Handmaid’s Tale?” “The Hunger Games?” “Parable of the Sower?” “Parable of the Talents?” The wealthy were depicted as callous, dismissive, and unfeeling. Note that they own the corporations that produced them. This was them blatantly shoving their resumes in our faces, so we shouldn’t be at all surprised that “life imitates art.” Now, the South African “Ketamine Kid” has six teenage mutant Ninja turtles sifting through our personal identifying information doing God knows what, without background checks and without security clearances, but, we’re supposed to “trust them!”

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Separate but equal” was always an oxymoron, like “military intelligence” or “United States” of America. My kindergarten was Bethlehem Community Center, still in Winston-Salem, and still on the east side. I found out later that the name was given by the Wesleyan Methodists because of its location and clientele: “Bethlehem” was for black kids, and “Wesleyan” was reserved for the better/whiter side of town. I remember the signs for water fountains.

My kindergarten graduation was on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Dr. King. I remember crying a lot and not a single child smiling in our photo. I remember the thought “We’re not kids anymore!” I don’t know what the kids at Wesleyan were thinking, but I will bet that the Klan wasn’t outside shooting in the air, celebrating.

“All deliberate speed” did not occur for me until 1971 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina: 17 years after Brown v Board, and three years after Dr. King’s death. I was bussed across town to the suburbs of Rural Hall. The night before, my parents watched the news nervously as riots broke out at the high schools, attackers bringing chains, and bats. It didn’t help that my bus was to pick me up before sunrise: Pop waited until I got on the bus before he drove off. I was going to the 4th grade. We grouped by complexion at first, calling each other names: white crackers, and “black crackers” (which wasn’t then or ever has been, a “thing”). We were unconsciously imitating the rioting high school students with a limited vocabulary of epithets. We became friends with a game of football during recess. I assume now in our sixth decade, if they’re still alive, many of those friends now wear red hats.

The books were newer at Rural Hall Elementary: no torn pages, no written epithets in spelling, and math books clearly out of date. My first-grade teacher, Ms. Samuel was my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Perry, and she could “pass” to go to bookstores near Wesleyan Community Center, and purchase the actual books they stencil-copied, and taught us from. I felt like we were moving toward Dr. King’s “beloved community,” and closer to Star Trek without the need for their fictional (and our un-survivable) World War III.

“The Corporation” was a 2003 documentary that asked the question “If corporations are people (by the misapplication of the 14th Amendment), what KIND of persons are they?” The answer was a psychopath: “a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one’s actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies.” That aptly describes the moment that we find ourselves in.

Harry Belafonte describes a conversation with Dr. King the night before he died and Dr. King “feared that he was integrating his people into a burning house.” If there had been no assassination, the next sermon that he relayed by phone to his mother was going to be “Why America May Go To Hell,” a warning to the nation that if we didn’t repent for our sins of militarism, and capitalism with no other thought other than profit for corporations/psychopaths and shareholders, the planet be damned.

Maybe we’re all just finally starting to notice.