Beyond MLK: Let’s celebrate some of America’s unsung heroes this Black History Month

“Eleven years before [Rosa] Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white man on an Alabama bus, Irene Morgan did the same thing on a Greyhound bus in Virginia. But Morgan’s response was far from soft-spoken,” writes DeRamus. “She first refused to let the young, baby-carrying woman sitting next to her give up her seat. Morgan then ripped up her arrest warrant and threw it out a window. The high-heels-wearing Morgan also kicked a sheriff’s deputy in what she called ‘a very bad place.’ When another deputy tried to touch her, she tore his shirt.”

Above: The civil rights pioneer in 2000. (Kyndell Harkness / Associated Press)

Feb. 10, 2014 5:15 PM PT

Black History Month gives us the opportunity to celebrate heroes who’ve enriched America, among them Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and George Washington Carver. But what about the many other African Americans deserving of recognition? Betty DeRamus shines a spotlight on a few such men and women in our Op-Ed pages, writing: “Black History month shouldn’t be an annual oldies roundup. It’s too rich, too varied and too surprising for that. It’s the many-layered saga of people who took what sometimes seemed like very little and turned it into more than enough -- claiming their slice of an often elusive dream.” Here’s a look at some of the people DeRamus highlights. READ MORE: Beyond the Black History Month hit parade

“NAACP lawyers appealed Irene Morgan’s 1944 arrest and fine all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. That resulted in a 1946 decision ending segregation on interstate buses,” writes DeRamus. “In the South, though, some Greyhound drivers ignored the ruling. As a result, young white and black activists began testing the decision by riding together on interstate buses. Often arrested and sometimes beaten, they became known as Freedom Riders. One rider was Bayard Rustin, who would later organize the unforgettable 1963 March on Washington.” (Dugald Stermer / For The Times)

“The scientific contributions of George Washington Carver are celebrated each February, and rightly so,” writes DeRamus. “But what about Carver’s good friend Claude Harvard, whose automatic piston pin inspection device was one of the stars of the 1933-34 Chicago World’s Fair? The son of a Georgia sharecropper and a maid, Harvard worked for Ford Motor Co., where he invented a machine that inspected piston pins and rejected faulty ones at the rate of 1,500 an hour. He also created a process enabling workers to roll steel into thinner, stronger sheets, which Ford sold to U.S. Steel for a quarter of a million dollars. Harvard helped build testing devices for two-way car radios for Detroit’s Police Department as well. Later, he brought together George Washington Carver and Henry Ford.”

Above: Ford Motor Co.’s Highland Park Plant is seen in 1913. (Ford Motor Co. / AFP/Getty Images)

“Moses Rodgers and other blacks owned highly productive gold mines outside Stockton,” writes DeRamus.

Above: Rodgers’ house. (Michael Aivaliotis / Handout)

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Beyond MLK: Let’s celebrate some of America’s unsung heroes this Black History Month

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