Throughout February, CSI is celebrating Black History Month, honoring the achievements of African Americans and their central role in US history.
As an association, CSI welcomes the opportunity to acknowledge the countless contributions Black professionals have made to the architecture, engineering, construction and owner industry (AECO). Among them are the following three trailblazers.
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Adrienne Bennett, president and CEO of her contracting company, Benkari LLC, is a pioneer in America’s plumbing and construction industries. Not only is she North America’s first and only female licensed master plumber and plumbing contractor, she is America’s first African-American female plumbing inspector and certified medical gas inspector and installer. She is also one of America’s few minority-owned, woman-owned and operated, self-performing, union specialty trade contractors. Bennett served the City of Detroit as a plumbing inspector and code enforcement officer and is a licensed union plumber from Plumbers Local 98. Read more about Bennett, her company, and her role resurrecting Michigan Central Station with the Ford Motor Company. |
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Beverly Lorraine Greene graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1936, the first African-American woman to earn this degree from the university. Later, she earned a master’s in city planning and housing and was hired by the Chicago Housing Authority. Among her many accomplishments, she helped design the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s development project in New York, obtained a master’s in architecture from Columbia University, designed health facilities with the firm of Isadore Rosefield, and helped plan the Arts Complex at Sarah Lawrence University. Hear more about Greene and her legacy on the ShebuildsPodcast. |
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George Biddle Kelley was the first African-American engineer registered in the state of New York. He graduated from Cornell University's College of Civil Engineering in 1908 and was hired by the New York Engineering Department, where he worked on the Barge Canal, a collection of state waterways, during the 1920s. He is also a founding member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the oldest existing African American fraternal organization, whose members include many historical civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois, and Dick Gregory, musicians Duke Ellington and Lionel Richie, Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens, and Justice Thurgood Marshall. Read more about Kelley and his distinguished career at Blackpast.org. |