This week in Black history

Alice Walker, novelist, poet and essayist, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Color Purple on this day. The novel, which was made into a hit movie, is told in letters between two sisters, one living in poverty in rural Georgia and the other a missionary in Africa. Ranked among the top contemporary American writers, she was born February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, GA, to sharecropper parents. She was the youngest of 12 children. Walker attended Spelman in Atlanta and Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1965. Lauded as one of the best modern-day contemporary American writers, her later novels include The Temple of My Familiar (1989) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992).

April 19, 1887--

Elijah McCoy, engineer and inventor, patented the machinery lubricator attachment on this day (Patent #361,435). His oiling devices made it possible for trains, steam boilers and factory machinery to be oiled without shutting down. Elijah McCoy was born in 1843 in Colchester, Ontario. His parents escaped slavery in Kentucky by traveling along the Underground Railroad. At age 15 he was sent to Scotland to study engineering. But when he returned to Canada, the only job he could get was as a railway fireman (the person who puts wood into the furnace). It was during this time that his mind started to look for better ways to do things. Throughout his life, McCoy worked to improve lubricator systems for trains and other machines. The expression "the real McCoy," meaning--the real thing--is said to have originated with machinery buyers who insisted that their new equipment have only McCoy lubricators. McCoy invented and patented over 60 inventions. He died in 1929.