Clarence Sumner Greene, Sr. was the first African American neurosurgeon certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery.

Brain Bytes showcase essential facts about neuroscience. Clarence Summer Greene, Sr. became the first African American neurosurgeon certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery in 1953. Greene became interested in neurosurgery in 1927 after finishing dental school. After completing a two-year premedical program at Harvard University and interning at Cleveland City Hospital, he enrolled in the Howard University College of Medicine, earning his M.D. in 1936.

Following a residency at Douglass Hospital in Philadelphia, Greene became an assistant resident at Freedmen’s Hospital (now Howard University Hospital) in Washington, D.C. He was later appointed as an assistant professor of surgery at Howard University School of Medicine in 1943.

 A year after his unexpected death in 1957, the post-operative recovery and intensive care unit he instituted was named after him.

Design by Adrienne Tong. 

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Three thousand Blacks demonstrated and rioted in Philadelphia to protest a theatrical presentation of Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman.

Sixty-two Blacks reported lynched in 1906.

1746 – The College of New Jersey was officially chartered. It later became known as Princeton University.

1797 – Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first recorded parachute jump. He made the jump from about 3,000 feet.

1836 – Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first constitutionally elected president of the Republic of Texas.  – insane!

1844 – This day is recognized as “The Great Disappointment” among those who practiced Millenarianism. The world was expected to come to an end according to the followers of William Miller.

1879 – Thomas Edison conducted his first successful experiment with a high-resistance carbon filament.

1906 – Three thousand Blacks demonstrated and rioted in Philadelphia to protest a theatrical presentation of Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman. Sixty-two Blacks reported lynched in 1906. 2 blackfacts.com

1907 – The Panic of 1907 began when depositors began withdrawing money from many New York banks.

1953 – Clarence S. Green becomes the first African-American certified in neurological surgery.   blackfacts.com

1954 – The Federal Republic of Germany was invited to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

1955 – The first black post office open, Atlanta GA, 1955 blackfacts.com

1962 – U.S. President Kennedy went on radio and television to inform the United States about his order to send U.S.forces to blockade Cuba. The blockade was in response to the discovery of Soviet missile bases on the island.

1963 – Some 225,000 students boycotted Chicago schools in Freedom Day protest of de facto segregation. blackfacts.com

1968 – Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft had orbited the Earth 163 times.

1975 – Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was discharged after publicly declaring his homosexuality. His tombstone reads ” “A gay Vietnam Veteran. When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”

1979 – The ousted Shah of Iran, Mohammad Riza Pahlavi was allowed into the U.S. for medical treatment.

1981 – The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization was decertified by the federal government for its strike the previous August.

1983 – At the Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia, an armed man crashed a truck through front gates and demanded to speak with U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1986 – U.S. President Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 into law.

1991 – The European Community and the European Free Trade Association agreed to create a free trade zone of 19 nations by the year 1993.

1995 – The 50th anniversary of the United Nations was marked by a record number of world leaders gathering.

1998 – The United Nations announced that over 2 million children had been killed in war as innocent victims since 1987.

1998 – Pakistan’s carpet weaving industry announced that they would begin to phase out child labor.

1999 – China ended its first-ever human rights conference in which it defied Western definitions of civil liberties.

1999 – The U.N. Security Council voted to send 6,000 troops to Sierra Leone to oversee a peace plan that had been signed in July.

2008 – The iTunes Music Store reached 200 million applications downloaded.

2010 – The International Space Station set the record (3641 days) for the longest continuous human occupation of space. It had been continuously inhabited since November 2, 2000.

2014 – The iPad Air 2 was released in the U.S.

Dr. Jane Ellen Henney was the first woman to be appointed as commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, a position she held from 1998 to 2001. For 20 years years, she served in senior health policy leadership positions in the public sector, and earned the reputation of being a fair, firm, and forthright leader who builds strong and responsive organizations.

Her experience and expertise lie in managing complex organizations that provide direct health services, educate the next generation of health professionals, conduct biomedical research, and regulate science-based products.

Born in 1947, Jane Ellen Henney grew up in Woodburn, Indiana. She earned her undergraduate degree at Manchester College, her medical degree at Indiana University School of Medicine, and completed her training in medical oncology at the M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute in Houston, Texas, and the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

From 1980 to 1985, she was deputy director of the National Cancer Institute. She later joined the University of Kansas Medical Center as vice chancellor of Health Programs and, for eighteen months, was interim dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine. From Kansas she was recruited back to the federal sector and served as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, where she stayed until assuming the position as first vice president for Health Sciences at the University of New Mexico.

Since leaving the FDA in January 2001, she has been a senior scholar in residence at the Association of Academic Health Centers and has begun service on a variety of boards of directors in the health care field. She was appointed Senior Vice President and Provost for Health Affairs at the University of Cincinnati in 2003.

Dr. Henney has received many professional honors and awards, including election to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, the Society of Medical Administrators and honorary membership in the American College of Health Care Executives. She received the Excellence in Women’s Health Award from the Jacobs Institute, the Public Health Leadership Award from the National Organization of Rare Disorders, the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Recognition Award, and two Commendation Medals from the U. S. Public Health Service.

cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov