Mansa Musa 1 Mali is the richest human being in History

Mansa Musa 1 Mali is the richest human being in History with a personal net worth of $400 billion. 

Mansa Musa lived from 1280-1337, and ruled the Malian Empire which covered mordern day Ghana,Timbuktu and Mali in West Africa. 

Mansa musa's massive wealth came from his country's vast production of more than half the world's supply of salt and Gold. Mansa used his wealth to build massive mosques that still stands today, nearly 700 years later. 

His kingdom and wealth didnt last long after his death. His heirs were not able to fend off civil war and invading conquerors.

Just two generations later, his world record net worth was gone.

#BayeroAdam

Jennie Dean founder of “Manassas Industrial School ...

Jennie Dean founder of “Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth" Jennie Serepta Dean (1848–1913)

She was born a slave in northern Virginia’s Prince William County, but by the late 1880’s she finagled enough money from people like tycoon Andrew Carnegie to build an entire educational campus: classrooms, dormitories, dining halls, libraries and shops to teach both academic classes and trades like carpentry, animal husbandry, cooking and sewing to male and female black students from across the region, who had few other options for continuing their education.

Opened in 1894 with a small group of students and lasting in various forms until the original buildings were torn down in the 1960’s, Jennie Dean’s “Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth” is testament to one woman’s determination and leadership. Her legacy lives on through the hundreds of students she touched, and their families.

What vision she had. 

What persistence in the face of extraordinary odds, from “ordinary” obstacles such as lack of money to the everyday insults of segregation and discrimination. What a gift she gave to so many generations of classes.

Frederick Douglass himself delivered the school’s dedication ceremony address in September, 1894. Here’s what he said, noting the location near major Civil War battles fought over whether people in certain states had the right to own slaves:

“No spot on the soil of Virginia could be more fitly chosen for planting this school….it is a place where the children of a once enslaved people may realize the blessings of liberty and education.”

Before they were torn down,the Manassas Industrial School buildings housed segregated classes during decades of Jim Crow.

The City of Chicago Was Founded & Settled by A Black Man

TEACHING MOMENT 👇

“Did You Know?”

The City of Chicago Was Founded & Settled by A Black Man

Chicago. A Black man. From Haiti. From the continent of Africa. An Immigrant. 

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an immigrant, a black man of Haitian descent, of Origins from the continent of Africa, first settled and founded the entire territory along Lake Michigan, in the 1780's, in what would later be called Chicago. 

Philip Green

2024, The Vine Magazine

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable is the founder of Chicago. Born in Haiti around 1750, Point du Sable traveled to North America in his twenties and settled on the shores of Lake Michigan, an area that would eventually develop into the city of Chicago.

The name Chicago was first recorded in 1688, where it appears as Chigagou, an Algonquian Indian (native indigenous people) word meaning “onion field.” 

Chicago’s first permanent settler in 1779 was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a trapper and merchant credited with building the trading post that evolved into Chicago. 

With French and African parentage, du Sable hailed from Haiti and settled in what was to become Chicago with his Potawatomi wife, Kittihawa. 

He is honored in Chicago with Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive, DuSable Bridge on Michigan Avenue, and the DuSable Museum of African American History.

Du Sable is also commemorated by a huge bust in front of the Evanston Public Library 📚 

Photo 2024 by Philip Green.