Andrew Williams, professor and John P. Raynor Distinguished Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recognized as one of the 50 most Important African-Americans in Technology by BlackMoney.com.

50 most Important African-Americans in Technology include Marquette engineering professor. Professor recognized for inspiring women and minority students to become engineers

Andrew Williams, professor and John P. Raynor Distinguished Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recognized as one of the 50 most Important African-Americans in Technology by BlackMoney.com.

Williams has worked extensively in education, recruiting, retaining, and motivating underrepresented and female students to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in computing and engineering. He started in 2012 at Marquette, where he is the director of the Humanoid Engineering and Intelligent Robotics Lab. His research is currently focused on innovative methods for utilizing robots and artificial intelligence to address childhood obesity.

Williams and the other 49 honorees will be recognized at the 13th annual Innovation and Equity Symposium in Washington, D.C., Thursday, April 4. The theme of this year’s symposium is “Keeping America First in Technology: Public Innovation and Supplier Diversity.” During the event, Williams will be part of a panel that discusses the best practices to improve diversity in the sciences and describe how to spread best practices to classrooms across the country, as well as how to get students to embrace careers in the STEM fields.

Andrew B. Williams, Ph.D. Professor and John P. Raynor, S.J., Distinguished Chair; Director, Humanoid Engineering & Intelligent Robotics Lab

“Dr. Williams has been a beacon in the engineering field for more than a decade, advocating for and improving minority representation in engineering,” said Robert H. Bishop, Opus Dean of the Marquette College of Engineering. “Marquette is thrilled that he is continuing his outreach and research endeavors here in Milwaukee.” Prior to Marquette, Williams was the chair of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Spelman College, a historically black college for women in Atlanta. At Spelman he secured nearly $6 million of research and educational funding and served as the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation-funded project ARTSI (Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact), which encourages minority and underrepresented populations to study engineering and robotics. “I started using robots early in my career because I saw it was a good teaching tool,” Williams said. “Particularly for students who historically don’t consider computing or engineering, robots help draw these students to these fields when they see how engineering can make a positive impact on social issues like obesity.” Williams received his master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Marquette. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas and returned to become the first African-American to graduate from Kansas with a doctorate in electrical engineering. Office of Marketing and Communication Contact: Andy Brodzeller Senior Communication Specialist (414) 288-0286 (office) (414) 587-6241 (cell)

African-American studies director Valerie Babb to discuss legacy of slaver ship Wanderer

Athens, Ga. - Valerie Babb, director of the University of Georgia Institute for African American Studies, will give a lecture on "In the Footfalls of Diaspora: Reflections on the Wanderer" March 5 at 5:30 p.m. in the Ciné Lab, 234 W. Hancock Ave. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Babb's talk will be the last in the six-part Global Georgia Initiative, a series of lectures and conversations organized by the UGA Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

Babb is a professor of English in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Her research is primarily focused on constructions of race and gender in American and African-American literature and culture. She is the author of "Whiteness Visible: The Meaning of Whiteness in American Literature and Culture" and "Ernest Gaines" and the co-author of "Black Georgetown Remembered."

The Wanderer was a converted luxury vessel that, in 1858, brought 409 Africans from the region of present-day Angola to the Georgia coast to be sold into slavery. The voyage took place nearly 50 years after the passage of the federal Slave Importation Act, which made the foreign slave trade illegal in the U.S.

"Nothing has crystallized the complexities of diaspora for me more than researching the Wanderer, a New York Yacht Club pleasure ship that became a slaver and brought Congolese humans into chattel slavery when it landed on Jekyll Island, Ga.," said Babb. "My talk will reflect upon the many reconsiderations of diaspora's significance brought about by my trying to discover who those enslaved might have been and the ways they attempted to pass on their story."

Barbara McCaskill, associate professor of English in the Franklin College and co-director of the Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative, will introduce Babb's lecture.

The goal of the Global Georgia Initiative is to present global problems in local context by addressing pressing contemporary questions—including the economy, society and the environment—with a focus on how the arts and humanities can intervene.

Willson Center for Humanities and Arts

The Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts is a unit of the Office of the Vice President for Research. In the service of its mission to promote research and creativity in the humanities and arts, the Willson Center sponsors and participates in numerous public events on and off the UGA campus throughout the academic year. It supports faculty through research grants, lectures, symposia, publications, visiting scholars, visiting artists, collaborative instruction, public conferences, exhibitions and performances. For more information.

Writer: Dave Marr News Service: University of Georgia Office of Public Affairs UGA Public Affairs Hodgson Oil Building, Suite 200N 286 Oconee Street Athens, GA 30602-1999 Phone 706 / 542-8083 · Fax 706 / 542-3939

Morehouse College founded February 14, 1867

Morehouse College founded February 14, 1867. Title: [Exterior view of Graves(?) Hall, Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia] Related Names: Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963 , collector. Date Created / Published: [1899 or 1900] Medium: 1 photographic print : gelatin silver. Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-124909 (b and w film copy neg.)

Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.

Access Advisory: Original albums; Restricted access; Served by appointment only. Call Number: LOT 11930, no. 333 [P and P] Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Notes: In album (disbound): Negro life in Georgia, U.S.A., compiled and prepared by W.E.B. Du Bois, v. 4, no. 333. B and w copy prints for LOT 11930 are provided as surrogates of original photographs for reference use in P and P Reading Room. A microfilm surrogate is also available. Forms part of: Daniel Murray Collection (Library of Congress). Original albums filed in PR 12 under LOT 11930

Subjects: Morehouse College (Atlanta, Ga.)--Buildings--1890-1900. African Americans--Education--Georgia--Atlanta--1890-1900. Educational facilities--Georgia--Atlanta--1890-1900. Format: Gelatin silver prints--1890-1900. Collections: African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition

Part of: Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. Du Bois albums of photographs of African Americans in Georgia exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900.

On February 14, 1867, the Augusta Institute was founded by William Jefferson White, an Baptist minister and cabinetmaker, with the support of the Rev. Richard C. Coulter, a former slave, and the Rev. Edmund Turney, organizer of the National Theological Institute for educating freedmen. The institution was founded to educate African American men in theology and education and was located in Springfield Baptist Church, the oldest independent black church in the United States. The school received sponsorship from the American Baptist Home Mission Society, an organization that helped establish several historically black colleges. The Institute's first president was Rev. Dr. Joseph T. Robert (father of Brigadier General Henry Martyn Robert, author of Robert's Rules of Order).

Franklin College Celebrates Black History Month

Franklin College Celebrates Black History Month. Release date: February 5, 2013 FRANKLIN, Ind. - As February is national Black History Month, Franklin College's Office of Multicultural Services is kicking off its programs with an event to bring in professionals from the Indianapolis area to talk about issues that impact the community, especially African-Americans.

This event will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 6 in the Napolitan Student Center in Branigin Room East. Topics that will be highlighted during the program include education, HIV/AIDS and women in the media. This event is free and open to the public.

The schedule of additional events for Black History Month includes:

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day This free event will be held at 3 to 5 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 7 in the Napolitan Student Center Health Center.

Front of Old Main on the campus of Franklin College

The Truth about Hip Hop: Hip Hop's Influence on Today's Culture This free event will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 12 in the Napolitan Student Center in Room 245.

National Pan-Hellenic Council Step Exhibition Representatives from the NPHC will be discussing their college experiences and demonstrating traditional step routines. This free event will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16 in the Napolitan Student Center in the Branigin Room.

Black Student Union's 6th Annual Fashion Show This year's theme is Fashion Eclipse. Tickets are $3 per person, or audience members can pay $2 per person and bring in toiletry items. Proceeds and donations will benefit Women in Motion, Inc. This is an Indianapolis-based, nonprofit organization that raises awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention. This event will be held 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 22 at in the Napolitan Student Center in the Branigin Room.

CommUnity Dialogue: Race V. Ethnicity This free event will be held at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 26 in the Napolitan Student Center in Room 245.

All events are open to the public.

For more information, contact the Franklin College Office of Marketing and Communications at (317) 738-8185.

Founded in 1834, Franklin College is a residential four-year undergraduate liberal arts institution with a scenic, wooded campus located 20 minutes south of downtown Indianapolis. The college prepares men and women for challenging careers and fulfilling lives through the liberal arts, offering its approximately 1,000 students 28 majors, 36 minors and eight pre-professional programs. In 1842, the college began admitting women, becoming the first coeducational institution in Indiana and the seventh in the nation. Franklin College maintains a voluntary association with the American Baptist Churches USA. For more information, visit www.franklincollege.edu. Franklin College ⋅ 101 Branigin Blvd. Franklin, IN 46131 (800) 852-0232

Image Credit: This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Mingusboodle at the wikipedia project. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible: Mingusboodle grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Richard Allen "African Methodist Episcopal Church" (AME Church)

First African Methodist Episcopal Church ~ is founded in Phildelphia, Pennsylvania. Richard Allen led a small group of black Methodists. They formed the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1793. In general, they adopted the doctrines and form of government of the Methodist Episcopal Church. On February 4, 1794 Bethel AME was dedicated with Allen as pastor.

To establish Bethel’s independence, Allen successfully sued in the Pennsylvania courts in 1807 and 1815 for the right of his congregation to exist as an institution independent of white Methodist congregations. Because black Methodists in other middle Atlantic communities also encountered racism and desired religious autonomy, Allen called them to meet in Philadelphia in 1816 to form a new Wesleyan denomination, the "African Methodist Episcopal Church" (AME Church).

The African Methodist Episcopal Church has a unique history as it is the first major religious denomination in the western world that developed because of sociological rather than theological differences. It was the first African-American denomination organized and incorporated in the United States. The church was born in protest against racial discrimination and slavery. This was in keeping with the Methodist Church's philosophy, whose founder John Wesley had once called the slave-trade "that execrable sum of all villainies."

Richard Allen from the frontispiece of History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1891) by Daniel A. Payne.

Alfred L. Cralle ice cream scoop

Alfred L. Cralle  September 4, 1866–1920) - Is best remembered for inventing the ice cream scoop, a design still in use today. Born in Kenbridge, Lunenburg County, Virginia. He attended local schools and worked with his father in the carpentry trade as a young man, becoming interested in mechanics.

Moving to Washington, DC he took advanced courses at Wayland Seminary, one of a number of schools founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society to educate African -Americans after the Civil War.

Later, he settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he served as a porter at Markell Brothers' drug store and the St. Charles Hotel. While working Cralle noticed that ice cream, which had become a popular confection, was difficult to dispense. It tended to stick to spoons and ladles, usually requiring use of two hands and at least two implements to serve.

To overcome this, he invented a one handed mechanical device now known as the ice cream scoop and applied for a patent. On February 2, 1897, he was granted U.S. Patent #576395. Cralle’s invention originally called “Ice Cream Mold and Disher” was designed to be able to keep ice cream and other foods from sticking, and easy to operate with one hand. Strong and durable, effective, inexpensive, it could be constructed in almost any desired size and shape, with no delicate parts that could break or malfunction. Alfred L. Cralle went on to become a successful businessman as well. He was named assistant manager when the Afro-American Financial, Accumulating, Merchandise and Business Association in Pittsburgh was organized.