Ospreyshire Origins: About A Benjamin II: Montgomery

Lyrics:

Born into chains and auction blocks
I was under the eyes of the Davis family
I vowed not to be chattel and kept myself learned
Those steamboats in the South enraptured me
Yet they could only do so much
One bad turn and a famine or shortage can occur
No need to steer people wrong and I would figure the right angles for this problem

Enter the propeller! (X4)

My design made these steamboats faster, more efficient, and had better navigation
Shame how my patent was denied (X4)

My former captors including the president of the South tried and failed to credit themselves for what I made
I dreamed of more despite my heartbreak

Isaiah, the rest is up to you.

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On Wednesday, I gave a crash course on my Art Theft tracks, but today we’re going to focus on my About A Benjamin series on Dear Innovare. Part II involves the inventor Benjamin Montgomery. His biggest claim as an inventor is creating the steam-powered propeller. Sure, we don’t hear about that propeller that much in 2020, but this was an archetype for controlling boats. Back in his day, he was in the South, so you had all these steamboats around, but they didn’t have any control as they do now when it comes to aquatic transportation. These boats would ship medicine, food, clothes, and other important things. One wrong move, and people will lose major business at best…or die from sickness or famine at worst. Montgomery grew up as a slave, but he was able to make this propeller which causes the boats to actually steer and maneuver in different ways. However, when he made the propeller, it was around the time when black people legally couldn’t patent anything and white people would steal the patents and get all the credit.

This is part of American history, warts and all!

Montgomery’s captors and patent thieves were the Davis family which also involved Jefferson Davis. Yes, the same person who was the president of the freaking Confederacy tried to steal his invention! I’m sick of this thievery and this notion that black people can’t invent anything which sadly people still think about that fallacy even today. Show them this fact and call it a day.

The image of Benjamin Montgomery is from Black Inventor Online Museum.

Ospreyshire Origins: About a Benjamin I -Banneker-

Lyrics:

Hours upon hours were spent reverse engineering and solving boring math problems given to me to kill time
I didn’t want to kill it
I wanted to keep it watch after watch
I took them apart and reconstructed them at will
I wanted something bigger, so I stretched my hands
Every minute and hour of my life
These faces grew as did my ambitions
The majority of this country were confounded that someone they oppressed made something
America, I am the grandfather of your clocks
You can count on that.

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How did I not know about this man when I was younger? If that isn’t evidence how much schools don’t tell you, then I don’t know what is. Benjamin Banneker built the first working clock in America and it worked for decades. Banneker was an innovator in watchmaking, irrigation, education, and even astronomy in his time. Anyone who thinks black people can’t do anything constructive or innovative seriously needs their head examined for real. I can’t stand how certain inventors and creators never get appreciated especially in this country.

The image of Benjamin Banneker is from Afrikhepri.

The College Cheating Saga Continues! American and UK-based college/university students pay Kenyans to write their essays. (or, If entitled racist jerks insist Africans have low IQs, then why are they paying them to write essays for them?)

I found out about this story and all I can say is WOW! JUST, WOW!

In addition to the drama going on with Lori Laughlin and company in court with all of this college cheating going on, apparently there was a trend of college students in America and the United Kingdom at large where students have been caught paying Kenyans dirt cheap to write their papers for them. It’s not just undergrads, even graduate and PhD level students have gotten these Kenyans to write full-on theses and dissertations. Apparently, there are essay factories down in that country where these writers work twelve hour shifts while getting paid slave wages to write papers for the Americans and the UK. The latter has a brutal sense of irony when you consider that Kenya was a former British colony. Just saying.

You see, I went to a four year private university to get my Bachelor’s Degree. I got in on my own merits and did everything I could while working two campus jobs and I still graduated on time. I’ll let you in on a little secret during my tenure there. There were students who would fake their way in classes like reading only Cliff Notes or online summaries in the English/Literature courses I took without reading the full books, admitting to cheating in tests in classes I didn’t take with them, and those same people graduated while some are making more money than me. Well pardon me for being an honest student. I’m sorry to have a little thing called integrity to not steal, cheat, or plagiarize compared to those who claimed to have higher IQs than me.

So if I want to expose myself to plagiarized works involving Africa, I can either read some of these paid essays or watch The Lion King. SHOTS FIRED!!!

Seriously, shame on all of those students for plagiarizing their works and shame on that essay factory owner for being a part of this scandal. You wonder why I hate it when people steal and copy from others without crediting people? I bet you money these plagiarists are from far far richer families than mine (okay, I’ve been middle-class for a good portion of my life), and got away with it for years now, and have well-paying careers. Inexcusable! If honesty, integrity, and hard work were merited as much as the media lies to us, then I’d be a millionaire by now.

The video is property of African Diaspora News Channel. That’s more credit than these thieving douchebags will ever give for these paid-for essays.

Could Teresa Klein AKA Cornerstore Caroline get charged?

So there are some interesting questions that are being raised about this irksome situation.

For those of you not in the know, recently, there was this devil named Teresa Klein who was in a corner store in Brooklyn who claimed that a 9-year-old Black boy sexually assaulted her even though she lied about it. There was even video evidence from said store which shows the boy’s backpack brushing against her by accident. She flipped out, took her outrage on a child and his mother who was there. Also, Teresa decided to do some sexual poses at the store presumably to mock that family at the child’s expense before calling the cops on a CHILD! There was some smartphone footage of her arguing with the family and some passersby who were angry at her and she gets called Cornerstore Caroline as a way to continuing the trend of Caucasian people calling the cops on Black people for stupid reasons (see: Barbecue Becky, Permit Patty, et all.). On the same footage, Cornerstore Caroline claimed she was a police officer even though she’s not.

The videos went viral and these Brooklyn residents are rightfully upset at the situation. Had this not have been recorded, this could’ve been a modern-day Emmett Till situation given the history of wild and false accusations like this one. If the DA decides not to charge her with abusing 911, racial profiling, slander, or even doing lewd acts in front of a minor (why would she be worried about a 9-year-old touching her non-existent behind? Just saying.), one felonious thing she did while being caught on camera is lying about being a police officer! That alone should get her jail time and she was found dead to rights in making this false claim. I hope the people of Brooklyn pressure the DA to do the right thing. We can’t have individuals lying about being sexually abused let alone feeling threatened just because a Black person just happened to be in their vicinity. When they call the police, they’re implying that they want to see those people dead or at least locked up and people should be aware of that. This can’t go on and those heinous people need to be punished for threatening and traumatizing the community. Come on, if a Black person or any ethnic minority were to do the same thing to a White child by making up a story to call the cops on them, the caller would be in jail right now and laws would be passed to prevent anything like that from happening again. Cornerstore Caroline can’t get away with this form of child abuse via false claims to 911.

Video courtesy of The Advise Show.