Saturday, February 19, 2022

 

TikToker’s viral series reveals ‘Black history facts you’ll never learn in school’

A woman is educating people about the Black history they were never taught in school.

TikToker @therealkamryne has over 101,000 followers. Her ongoing series “Black history facts you’ll never learn in school” examines the untold stories of Black Americans and how the Black community has shaped American history.

In one video, Kamryne discussed Mary Kenner. Born into a family of inventors, Kenner began making creations of her own at 6 years old.

“Eventually, one of her most popular inventions would go to improve the livelihoods of many women around the world,” she said. “In the 1920s, she revolutionized the sanitary belt, which would serve as the precursor for today’s modern maxi pad.”

In 1957, her patent was dismissed due to racial discrimination, but today history remembers Kenner’s contributions.

In another clip, Kamryne explained that the free lunch and breakfast programs available at U.S. public schools were actually founded by the Black Panther Party.

“In January of 1969, the Black Panther Party established the free breakfast for school children program in Oakland, Calif.,” she said. “This program went from feeding a handful of kids in Oakland to expanding all over the country, feeding thousands of kids per day.”

The head of the FBI at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, despised the Black Panther Party and called the program “potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for,” and tried to destroy it. However, parents pushed back on Hoover’s efforts, as Kamryne explained.

“Parents were urging politicians to feed children before school,” she said. “The government established a breakfast program in 1975, but it wouldn’t be possible without the Panthers.”

While some people may only know Duke Ellington as a cartoon ghost from Netflix’s Big Mouth, the jazz musician played a pivotal role in music history.

“He took part in the Harlem Rennaissance. He played with huge names like Ella Fitzgerald, Louie Armstrong, John Coltrane and more,” Kamryne said. “Duke Ellington’s band not only survived the different changes of jazz music but they were also able to gain popularity with white and Black audiences, which was difficult during the time of segregation.”

The post TikToker’s viral series reveals ‘Black history facts you’ll never learn in school’ appeared first on In The Know.

No comments: