Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Sidereal time ("sidereal" pronounced sy-DEER-ee-əl, sə-) is a system of timekeeping used especially by astronomers. Using sidereal time and the celestial coordinate system, it is easy to locate the positions of celestial objects in the night sky. Sidereal time is a "time scale that is based on Earth's rate of rotation measured relative to the fixed stars". A sidereal day (also known as the sidereal rotation period) represents the time for one rotation about the planet axis relative to the stars. Viewed from the same location, a star seen at one position in the sky will be seen at the same position on another night at the same time of day (or night), if the day is defined as a sidereal day. This is similar to how the time kept by a sundial (Solar time) can be used to find the location of the Sun. Just as the Sun and Moon appear to rise in the east and set in the west due to the rotation of Earth, so do the stars. Both solar time and sidereal time make use of the regularity of Earth's rotation about its polar axis: solar time is reckoned according to the position of the Sun in the sky while sidereal time is based approximately on the position of the fixed stars on the theoretical celestial sphere. More exactly, sidereal time is the angle, measured along the celestial equator, from the observer's meridian to the great circle that passes through the March equinox (the northern hemisphere's vernal equinox) and both celestial poles, and is usually expressed in hours, minutes, and seconds. In the context of sidereal time, "March equinox" or "equinox" or "first point of Aries" is currently the direction from the center of the Earth along the line formed by the intersection of the Earth's equator and the ecliptic, toward the constellation Pisces; during ancient times it was toward the constellation Aries. Common time on a typical clock (using mean Solar time) measures a slightly longer cycle, affected not only by Earth's axial rotation but also by Earth's orbit around the Sun. The March equinox itself precesses slowly westward relative to the fixed stars, completing one revolution in about 25,800 years, so the misnamed "sidereal" day ("sidereal" is derived from the Latin sidus meaning "star") is 0.0084 seconds shorter than the stellar day, Earth's actual period of rotation relative to the fixed stars. The slightly longer stellar period is measured as the Earth rotation angle (ERA), formerly the stellar angle. An increase of 360° in the ERA is a full rotation of the Earth. A sidereal day on Earth is approximately 86164.0905 seconds (23 h 56 min 4.0905 s or 23.9344696 h). (Seconds are defined as per International System of Units and are not to be confused with ephemeris seconds.) Each day, the sidereal time at any given place and time will be about four minutes shorter than local civil time (which is based on solar time), so that for a complete year the number of sidereal "days" is one more than the number of solar days.
Anti-sidereal time and extended-sidereal time are artificial time standards used to analyze the daily variation in the number of cosmic rays received on Earth. Anti-sidereal time has about 364.25 days per year, one day less than the number of days in a year of solar time, 365.25. Thus each anti-sidereal day is longer than a solar day (24 hr) by about four minutes or 24 hr 4 min. Extended-sidereal time has about 367.25 days per year, one day more than the number of days in a year of sidereal time, 366.25. Thus each extended-sidereal day is shorter than a sidereal day (23 hr 56 min) by about four minutes or 23 hr 52 min. All years mentioned have the same length.
Solar time is a calculation of the passage of time based on the position of the Sun in the sky. The fundamental unit of solar time is the day, based on the synodic rotation period. Traditionally, there are three types of time reckoning based on astronomical observations: apparent solar time and mean solar time (discussed in this article), and sidereal time, which is based on the apparent motions of stars other than the Sun.
A unit of time is any particular time interval, used as a standard way of measuring or expressing duration. The base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), and by extension most of the Western world, is the second, defined as around 9 billion oscillations of the caesium atom. The exact modern SI definition is "[The second] is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the cesium frequency, ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyper-fine transition frequency of the cesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1." Historically, many units of time were defined by the movements of astronomical objects. Sun-based: the year is based on the Earth's orbital period around the sun. Historical year-based units include the Olympiad (four years), the lustrum (five years), the indiction (15 years), the decade, the century, and the millennium. Moon-based: the month is based on the Moon's orbital period around the Earth. Earth-based: the day is based on the time it takes for the Earth to rotate on its own axis, relative to the Sun. Units originally derived from this base include the week (seven days), and the fortnight (14 days). Subdivisions of the day include the hour (1/24 of a day), which is further subdivided into minutes and seconds. The second is the international standard unit (SI unit) for science. Celestial sphere-based: as in sidereal time, where the apparent movement of the stars and constellations across the sky is used to calculate the length of a year. These units do not have a consistent relationship with each other and require intercalation. For example, the year cannot be divided into twelve 28-day months since 12 times 28 is 336, well short of 365. The lunar month (as defined by the moon's rotation) is not 28 days but 28.3 days. The year, defined in the Gregorian calendar as 365.2425 days has to be adjusted with leap days and leap seconds. Consequently, these units are now all defined for scientific purposes as multiples of seconds.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.