I am especially pleased to help kick off African American History Month, a time to acknowledge and honor the sacrifices and struggles of those who came before us.

His name was Carter G. Woodson. While other children attended school and played during their free time, Woodson, the son of former slaves, worked in the coalmines of Kentucky. He began high school at the ripe age of twenty, graduated within twenty-four months, and eventually obtained a doctorate from Harvard. In the course of his studies, something bothered him. Something was missing. He was struck by the absence of any record of positive contributions by Americans of African heritage. In 1926, he chose the second week of February for designation as “Negro History Week” because it included the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. That week has evolved into African American History month.

I would like to look at some people who have contributed to American history, people who are not well known. People other than those most popularly written about such as Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver or Rosa Parks. Although examples could be drawn from the arts, literature, music, athletics, the sciences or virtually any other sector, I have focused on a few for illustrative purposes only.

Let me begin with story about spies, sex and assassination, something that should capture your attention even this early in the morning. Samuel Fraunces was a free black merchant in New York City during the latter part of the 18th century. For 23 years he owned and operated a tavern on the southern edge of Manhattan. His prominent establishment was steeped in history: in 1768, the first New York Chamber of Commerce was created in Fraunces’ Tavern. It was the place where the Sons of Liberty gathered to mobilize popular sentiment for the coming revolution against the British Crown. At a meeting of the Provincial Congress of New York, Fraunces befriended George Washington who often dined at the tavern, the same place where Samuel Fraunces’ young daughter, Phoebe worked. It appears that the British authorities at that time quite correctly identified Washington as a threat to colonial security and drew up a plan for his assassination. They bribed Thomas Hickey, one of George Washington’s bodyguards to carry out the killing. Hickey, however, had become so infatuated with the comely Phoebe that he confided with her about his intention to poison Washington while the General was dining. When the time came to execute the plot, Phoebe snatched a plate of poisoned peas from in front of the general and threw them out the window. Some chickens quickly ate them; six died on the spot. Hickey was tried and later hanged in public before a large cheering crowd. A grateful Congress later passed a special act thanking Samuel Fraunces. After Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States on the steps of Federal Hall in New York, he returned to Fraunces’ Tavern to celebrate. In 1783 Washington gave his famous farewell address to his officers in the tavern before departing for his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Incidentally, Fraunces’ Tavern remains open to this day at the corner of Broad and Pearl streets in lower Manhattan.

Another story begins with a young black man who was born in 1852 to free black parents in the District of Columbia. He made steam engines at home from old tin cans and coffee pots. His experiments so impressed a local leader that it was placed for public viewing at, among other places, the United States Treasury Department where it was called the work of a genius. This encouraged the young man to build an even more complex model that was subsequently submitted to the U.S. patent office and written up in the local press. Emboldened by these events, he attempted to visit President Grant but was shooed away by a White House guard. Fortuitously, the President somehow learned of the young man’s presence that day, sought him out, congratulated him on what he had done and instructed that he would be admitted to study at the United States Navy Yard. Notwithstanding persistent incidents of discrimination, he succeeded and went on to further study at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the second black ever to do so. In 1873 he helped repair four of the United States Monitors at a Naval Station. He later worked as an engineer of the US Coast Survey, served as the chief engineer and mechanic at the Dept. of Interior’s Freedman’s Hospital and patented a pyrometer which was exhibited at the New Orleans World’s Fair. He also became a member of London’s prestigious Royal Society of Arts and Sciences. His name was Jeremiah D. Baltimore, my great grandfather.

In 1790 a gray-haired man named Tom Fuller was a cause celebre on both sides of the Atlantic. Fuller was born in Africa, arrived in Fairfax County, Virginia at the age of 14 and spent his entire life as a field hand. Without schooling, Fuller developed a new technique of multiplication. Late in his life several Quakers visited him to verify his reputation for tremendous arithmetic feats. One asked him questions while the other man served as a recorder who took notes and worked out the questions on paper. The first question was “How many seconds are there in a year and a half?” Within two minutes Fuller replied 47,304,800. Correct. The second question was how many seconds has a man lived who is 70 years, 17 days and twelve hours old? Fuller’s response came within 90 seconds: 22 billion, 210 million, 500 thousand eight hundred. The recorder objected. Fuller’s calculation was too high. After Fuller turned and said he had included the extra time for leap years, the recorder acknowledged Fuller was again correct. The final question was as follows: “Suppose a farmer has six sows and each sow has six female pigs the first year, and they all increased in the same proportion each year. At the end of the eight years, how many sows will the farmer have? 34,588,806. Tom Fuller died in 1790 at the age of 80, always a slave and never educated.

I’m sure most of you have heard of the African American born free in Maryland named Benjamin Banneker, the surveyor and mathematician who was appointed by President Washington as one of six commissioned to design a capital city for the infant United States. But, did you know that when Major L’Enfant unexpectedly resigned and decided to return to Paris with the plans, Banneker was able to redraft all of the sketches from memory? He also, by the way, was the first in America to construct a clock that struck on the hour.

When one examines virtually any aspect of American history, it is replete with contributions from African American men and women from all levels of society. Dr. Hale Williams performed the world’s first successful open heart surgery in 1893. Charles Henry Turner was the first researcher to prove that insects can hear. Dr. Charles Richard Drew established the world’s first blood bank. Norbert Rillieux patented a process to refine sugar that is still used by the industry today and in the production of soap. Benjamin Bradley was a slave who came up with a steam engine for a warship. Unable to obtain a patent, he sold his invention and purchased his own freedom with the proceeds. Elijah McCoy invented a special breakthrough lubricator for steam engines that he patented in 1872, one of 57, and which formed the basis for his own manufacturing plant. Because users were so concerned that they had Elijah’s McCoy’s genuine product, the phrase “It is the real McCoy” first entered the English language and is still in use today. Among Granville T. Woods’ more than 60 patents was a telegraph system that permitted moving trains to contact each other and railway stations. In the early 1900’s, a widowed Madame C.J. Walker developed a hair care system and beauty product line that made her the first black American female millionaire. Garrett Augustus Morgan patented agas mask that was used to protect soldiers from chlorine gas attacks during the First World War. He also went on to invent the first automated traffic light.

My examples this morning include George W. Bush. No, not our contemporary but the first black pioneer in what was to become the Washington territory in the great Northwest. As Bush and his family departed Missouri in 1844 on the Oregon Trail, he hoped to escape racial prejudice in the West. Because settlers in the then Oregon Territory had just voted to exclude blacks, Bush set up his farm north on Puget Sound far from the newly-populated Willamette Valley and in a place where it would be difficult to enforce the Oregon law. The location near Olympia is now called Bush Prairie. Bush’s decision resulted in other settlers joining him, a fact that was crucial in providing the U.S. with the population base to dispute British claims over the same land. Indeed, in 1846, London yielded and signed a treaty that established the 49th parallel, our northern border between the State of Washington and Canada.

Of course, U.S. military history boasts untold thousands of African American heroes. In 1770, Crispus Attucks, a former slave, was the first American to die in the Boston Massacre. Black and White minutemen fought at Lexington and Concord. Peter Salem and Salem Poor were two of the heroes at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. If you examine the famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware on that bitterly cold Christmas day in 1776, Prince Whipple is sitting next to him. Notwithstanding a 1925 Army War College study which concluded that African Americans were physically and psychologically unsuited for combat and the USG’s refusal to set up flight schools for blacks, because of the insistence of a determined few, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a flight school was founded at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama. Long before the U.S. armed forces were integrated, about 1,000 Americans of African descent completed their training at Tuskegee and about half of them saw combat in Europe and North Africa. Flying P-40’s, they flew bomber escort and ground attack duties on 15,533 sorties between 1943 and 1945. None of the bombers they escorted was ever lost to enemy fighters. The “Tuskegee Airmen” destroyed 251 enemy aircraft and won more than 850 medals. Sixty-six of them were killed in action. One of the original participants, Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. later became the Air Force’s first African American Generals. Another “Tuskegee Airman, Daniel “Chappie” James Jr., was the first African American serviceman to reach the rank of full general and later became the Commander of the North American Air Defense Command.

We would not have the nation we defend today were it not for the efforts of the many ethnic groups that contributed to its success—the Irish, Portuguese, Welsh, French, Scots, Arabs, Spanish, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Poles, Hungarians, Jews, Italians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Latins, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Native Americans, Filipinos plus many others, including, from the earliest period of our national history, African Americans. Together we are “America,” a patchwork quilt made by those whose lives have added to her beauty. A quilt crafted by hands that were black, white, tan, coffee, caramel-colored and everything in-between. Hands that labored in cotton fields, in factories, in sweatshops, on the seas, on battlefields and in offices around America. While we continue to try to master the art of diversity, we respect its enriching quality and openly consider the gifts that it has bestowed on our culture. This quilt reflects the greatness that is America, that shining jewel of democracy that so many admire and yet so few have been able to replicate, that precious entity that we all love and fondly call home, our open society so envied and admired around the world.

In conclusion, I hope you will join me in viewing black history as part and parcel of American history. Whatever your heritage, hundreds of thousands of men women and children of all ethnicities, races and classes have from the beginning and continue to contribute to the American tapestry. To learn and teach this precious heritage is our responsibility for the future generations. African American History Month’s founder, Dr. Carter G. Woodson captured the thought so beautifully when he said, “We have wonderful history behind
us. . . and it is going to inspire us to greater achievements.”