- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Let's make everything about RACE (Unapologetically Black Thread)
- 28,212
- 53,047
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2007
- 68,173
- 103,462
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2010
Ms Maseko is stunning, looks like every woman that ever broke my heart.
- 8,596
- 14,618
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2012
Germany bans far-right, pro-Nazi group; Police raid homes
BERLIN (AP) — More than 180 police officers raided homes in three German states early Tuesday after the German government banned a far-right group, the interior ministry said.apnews.com
Meanwhile in Umurica we call them fine people
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Barbershops are and were extremely important to the African-American community. It was one of the first true respectable professions to open up for black men who quickly established their own shops since they were not allowed in shops with white clientele. By the early 18th century, barbershops, were the centers of the various black communities whether free or slave. Black men not only congregated at the barbershop, they did almost everything there.
This is Rogers Simon, barber and hairstylist to the stars working on Sugar Ray Robinson.
Excerpted from the NY Times:
In 1983, Glenn Caldwell, a music teacher from Maryland, was playing saxophone in a South Carolina bar and began talking with a singer whose dapper outfit and slick hair seemed from a bygone era.
The man complimented Mr. Caldwell’s playing and introduced himself as Rogers Simon and began telling stories about all the musicians he had known, including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Nat King Cole.
Mr. Simon had made such acquaintances as a result of his talents. But he gained notoriety not as a musician, but as a hair stylist who at one time was the king of Harlem hairdressers.
He served as a personal barber for the likes of Mr. Cole and Mr. Ellington. But he was best known for tending to the head of Sugar Ray Robinson, the legendary boxer known as much for his style as his fighting skills.
“He was considered the best hairstylist in Harlem in his day,” said Mr. Caldwell, a professor at McDaniel College near Baltimore. He remembered being transfixed by all the photographs and clippings that Mr. Simon pulled out of his car trunk that night in 1983 to back up his claims that he lived for decades among a who’s who of figures in Harlem and jazz.
That evening stuck with Mr. Caldwell, who wound up connecting with Mr. Simon and interviewing him just before the barber died in 2005. Today, Mr. Simon remains nearly forgotten, but Mr. Caldwell’s research has turned into a book he is writing on Mr. Simon, expanding a historical footnote into a fascinating portrait of a charismatic figure who used his barbering skills to cut a glamorous swath through Harlem in its heyday.
In 1953, Jet magazine credited Mr. Simon with inventing “the process,” a technique of straightening and setting kinky hair by flattening it and greasing it down.
Actually, Mr. Caldwell said during a visit to New York recently, Mr. Simon invented a version of “the process,” in which he would style an S-pattern into the hair, a signature style that became popularized as the “finger-wave.”
“Nobody did it better than Roger,” said the Rev. Robert Royal, 84, whom Mr. Caldwell visited at his apartment. Mr. Royal, a well-known Harlem minister and lifelong friend of Sugar Ray Robinson, knew Mr. Simon better as Roger without an S.
Mr. Simon worked at Mr. Robinson’s well-known Golden Gloves Barber Shop in Harlem and became a vital part of the celebrated entourage that surrounded the champion welterweight and middleweight throughout the 1940s and ’50s.
“Roger and Ray were very close — wherever Ray went, that’s where Roger went,” Mr. Royal said, adding that the hair stylist would touch up Mr. Robinson’s coiffure during boxing matches.
“In between rounds, Roger would be combing it, putting it right back in place,” he said. “No matter how many times Ray fought, Roger would be in his corner. As fast as Ray would display his pugilistic charms, if a hair was out of place, Roger would jump up there and put it back in place.”
Glenn Caldwell, left, walked with Ray Robinson Jr. along a stretch in Harlem where Mr. Robinson's father once owned several storefront businesses, including the barbershop where Rogers Simon worked.
Mr. Simon came to New York from his home in South Carolina in the early 1940s and experimented with his hair-setting process at many different shops. In 1943, Mr. Simon became a barber at the Esquire salon on Seventh Avenue in Harlem and styled celebrities including Mr. Ellington who took Mr. Simon on trips with the band, including one to the Middle East in the early 1960s.
“Rogers was the king of this hairstyle, which enabled him to travel with the highest of highbrows,” Mr. Caldwell said.
During his recent visit to New York, Mr. Caldwell met with Ray Robinson Jr., the boxer’s son, on the Harlem block where the the elder Mr. Robinson once owned a string of storefront businesses, including the barbershop, Sugar Ray’s Quality Cleaners Edna Mae’s Lingerie Shop (named for Mr. Robinson’s wife) and the popular Sugar Ray’s nightclub.
Standing on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard between 123rd & 124th Streets, which last year was renamed “Sugar Ray Robinson Way,” Mr. Robinson said his father would get his hair touched up every day by Mr. Simon — either at the shop or at the Robinson family home in Riverdale, the Bronx.
Mr. Robinson said Mr. Simon used to babysit him, and he recalled traveling to Paris with his father when Mr. Simon was part of a paid entourage of 32 people. The barber was a fixture in the boxer’s custom flamingo-pink Cadillac, and even wrote an ode called “Here’s to Sugar Ray,” which he sang on television in the 1950s.
When the boxer moved to California in the late 1960s and 1970s, straightened hair had gone out of style. Still, the comedian Redd Foxx brought Mr. Simon to Los Angeles for a time to manage his barbershop.
After that, Mr. Simon traveled the country selling hair products. With several marriages in his past, he kept most of his possessions, photographs and mementos in his car, which eventually was towed and lost, Mr. Caldwell said. Mr. Simon died in 2005 with barely any mention.
“Here’s this guy that was at the center of a lot of history because of a hairstyle, and now he’s nearly forgotten,” Mr. Caldwell said. “I just want to help him leave his mark.”
This is Rogers Simon, barber and hairstylist to the stars working on Sugar Ray Robinson.
Excerpted from the NY Times:
In 1983, Glenn Caldwell, a music teacher from Maryland, was playing saxophone in a South Carolina bar and began talking with a singer whose dapper outfit and slick hair seemed from a bygone era.
The man complimented Mr. Caldwell’s playing and introduced himself as Rogers Simon and began telling stories about all the musicians he had known, including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Nat King Cole.
Mr. Simon had made such acquaintances as a result of his talents. But he gained notoriety not as a musician, but as a hair stylist who at one time was the king of Harlem hairdressers.
He served as a personal barber for the likes of Mr. Cole and Mr. Ellington. But he was best known for tending to the head of Sugar Ray Robinson, the legendary boxer known as much for his style as his fighting skills.
“He was considered the best hairstylist in Harlem in his day,” said Mr. Caldwell, a professor at McDaniel College near Baltimore. He remembered being transfixed by all the photographs and clippings that Mr. Simon pulled out of his car trunk that night in 1983 to back up his claims that he lived for decades among a who’s who of figures in Harlem and jazz.
That evening stuck with Mr. Caldwell, who wound up connecting with Mr. Simon and interviewing him just before the barber died in 2005. Today, Mr. Simon remains nearly forgotten, but Mr. Caldwell’s research has turned into a book he is writing on Mr. Simon, expanding a historical footnote into a fascinating portrait of a charismatic figure who used his barbering skills to cut a glamorous swath through Harlem in its heyday.
In 1953, Jet magazine credited Mr. Simon with inventing “the process,” a technique of straightening and setting kinky hair by flattening it and greasing it down.
Actually, Mr. Caldwell said during a visit to New York recently, Mr. Simon invented a version of “the process,” in which he would style an S-pattern into the hair, a signature style that became popularized as the “finger-wave.”
“Nobody did it better than Roger,” said the Rev. Robert Royal, 84, whom Mr. Caldwell visited at his apartment. Mr. Royal, a well-known Harlem minister and lifelong friend of Sugar Ray Robinson, knew Mr. Simon better as Roger without an S.
Mr. Simon worked at Mr. Robinson’s well-known Golden Gloves Barber Shop in Harlem and became a vital part of the celebrated entourage that surrounded the champion welterweight and middleweight throughout the 1940s and ’50s.
“Roger and Ray were very close — wherever Ray went, that’s where Roger went,” Mr. Royal said, adding that the hair stylist would touch up Mr. Robinson’s coiffure during boxing matches.
“In between rounds, Roger would be combing it, putting it right back in place,” he said. “No matter how many times Ray fought, Roger would be in his corner. As fast as Ray would display his pugilistic charms, if a hair was out of place, Roger would jump up there and put it back in place.”
Glenn Caldwell, left, walked with Ray Robinson Jr. along a stretch in Harlem where Mr. Robinson's father once owned several storefront businesses, including the barbershop where Rogers Simon worked.
Mr. Simon came to New York from his home in South Carolina in the early 1940s and experimented with his hair-setting process at many different shops. In 1943, Mr. Simon became a barber at the Esquire salon on Seventh Avenue in Harlem and styled celebrities including Mr. Ellington who took Mr. Simon on trips with the band, including one to the Middle East in the early 1960s.
“Rogers was the king of this hairstyle, which enabled him to travel with the highest of highbrows,” Mr. Caldwell said.
During his recent visit to New York, Mr. Caldwell met with Ray Robinson Jr., the boxer’s son, on the Harlem block where the the elder Mr. Robinson once owned a string of storefront businesses, including the barbershop, Sugar Ray’s Quality Cleaners Edna Mae’s Lingerie Shop (named for Mr. Robinson’s wife) and the popular Sugar Ray’s nightclub.
Standing on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard between 123rd & 124th Streets, which last year was renamed “Sugar Ray Robinson Way,” Mr. Robinson said his father would get his hair touched up every day by Mr. Simon — either at the shop or at the Robinson family home in Riverdale, the Bronx.
Mr. Robinson said Mr. Simon used to babysit him, and he recalled traveling to Paris with his father when Mr. Simon was part of a paid entourage of 32 people. The barber was a fixture in the boxer’s custom flamingo-pink Cadillac, and even wrote an ode called “Here’s to Sugar Ray,” which he sang on television in the 1950s.
When the boxer moved to California in the late 1960s and 1970s, straightened hair had gone out of style. Still, the comedian Redd Foxx brought Mr. Simon to Los Angeles for a time to manage his barbershop.
After that, Mr. Simon traveled the country selling hair products. With several marriages in his past, he kept most of his possessions, photographs and mementos in his car, which eventually was towed and lost, Mr. Caldwell said. Mr. Simon died in 2005 with barely any mention.
“Here’s this guy that was at the center of a lot of history because of a hairstyle, and now he’s nearly forgotten,” Mr. Caldwell said. “I just want to help him leave his mark.”
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Bruce McMarion Wright (born Marion Bruce Wright, December 19, 1917 – March 24, 2005) was an American jurist who served on the New York State Supreme Court. Judge Wright was also the father of Geoffrey D.S. Wright, a New York State Supreme Court Justice, and Keith L.T. Wright, a member of the New York State Assembly.
Wright was born in Baltimore, Maryland, raised in Princeton, New Jersey, and spent the majority of his adult life living in Harlem, New York.
In 1939, Wright was awarded a scholarship to attend Princeton University, but denied admission when he arrived and the university learned that he was black. Wright was denied admission to Notre Dame on the same grounds. He studied at Virginia Union University, and graduated from Lincoln University in 1942.
Wright then served in a U.S. Army segregated medical unit during World War II. He volunteered for combat duty, and was assigned to Company K, 16th Infantry Regiment. After the war, he went AWOL, making his way to Paris, where he was befriended by Senegalese poet Leopold Senghor, who later became his country's first president.
Wright’s early ambition was to become a poet and was introduced and later became a friend of Langston Hughes. Wright's first book of poetry, "From the Shaken Tower," was edited by Hughes and published in 1944. He studied at Fordham University Law School, and obtained his law degree from New York Law School.
New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed Wright as general counsel for the New York City Human Resources Administration in 1967, and named him to the New York City Criminal Court bench in 1970. Judge Wright was soon publicly critical of the judicial system and voiced his belief that race and class all too frequently determined the outcomes of trials. He denounced what he called racism in the criminal justice system, and created a furor by often setting low bail, and sometimes no bail, for poor or minority suspects. In one case, in which bail of $100,000 was requested by the Manhattan District Attorney's office for Joseph Gruttola, who had been accused of shooting a police officer, he set it at $500. After Gruttola posted bail and was released the same day, another judge revoked it and ordered him rearrested. When Grullota was brought into court the next day, Wright again set bail at $500. (Grutolla was eventually acquitted of attempted murder but convicted of assault and robbery.) In another case involving a man named Seymour Popkin, who had been charged in the beating of another man to death in a fistfight in Times Square, Judge Wright released him on his own recognizance after an assistant district attorney declined to release the name of a potential witness, despite Popkin's criminal record extending back 20 years. (The charge was eventually reduced to simple assault, and Popkin was acquitted at trial.)
Wright was given the nickname "Turn 'Em Loose Bruce" by the police officer's unions in New York City because of his bail practices, and it was repeated often in the New York newspapers.
After continued protests by the police officer's unions, Wright was transferred to New York City Civil Court in 1974 by David Ross, the city's administrative judge, who said it was just part of the usual rotations of judges and denied that the move had anything to do with his bail policies. Judge Wright then sued in federal court, seeking reinstatement, but in 1978, as hearings on his long-delayed lawsuit were about to begin, he was transferred back to Criminal Court.
The controversy promptly resumed, with the Transit Police union making their first complaint about Judge Wright a week after he returned to the Criminal Court bench. It peaked in April 1979, when Jerome Singleton was charged with slashing the throat of a white decoy officer, Robert Bilodeau. After bail had initially been set at $10,000 cash by another judge, Judge Wright released Singleton on his own recognizance, saying that he had no previous criminal record, strong family and community ties, and that prosecutors had offered no convincing reason to bar Singleton's release. (Singleton was eventually found guilty of second-degree assault and acquitted of first-degree assault and attempted murder.)
However, while some criticized Wright, others thought he was fair. Despite his outspoken views and practices, Wright was elected to the New York State Supreme Court in 1979.
Throughout his career, Wright held onto his belief that the judicial system, including bail, was stacked against poor and minority defendants. In a lecture at Columbia University Law School in 1979, he said that a more appropriate name for him would have been "Civil" Wright. He retired on December 31, 1994. Several days before his retirement, he said,
"I have never changed my mind about the Eighth Amendment. To say that I would've done things differently means to me I would have been a good boy, kept my mouth shut and availed myself of the benefits of the system. I don't think I can do that. I don't think I could ever do that."
Judge Wright spent 25 years on the bench hearing criminal and civil cases, and had a reputation as a scholarly and provocative jurist who sprinkled his opinions with literary quotations. He was the author of a 1987 book, Black Robes, White Justice, about the role of race in the judicial system, which won a 1991 American Book Award. He later authored an autobiography, "Black Justice In A White World." Sixty-five years after being denied admission to Princeton because of his race, he was made an honorary member of their Class of 2001.
Judge Wright died in his sleep on March 24, 2005, at his home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut at the age of 87.
MUST READING
Wright was born in Baltimore, Maryland, raised in Princeton, New Jersey, and spent the majority of his adult life living in Harlem, New York.
In 1939, Wright was awarded a scholarship to attend Princeton University, but denied admission when he arrived and the university learned that he was black. Wright was denied admission to Notre Dame on the same grounds. He studied at Virginia Union University, and graduated from Lincoln University in 1942.
Wright then served in a U.S. Army segregated medical unit during World War II. He volunteered for combat duty, and was assigned to Company K, 16th Infantry Regiment. After the war, he went AWOL, making his way to Paris, where he was befriended by Senegalese poet Leopold Senghor, who later became his country's first president.
Wright’s early ambition was to become a poet and was introduced and later became a friend of Langston Hughes. Wright's first book of poetry, "From the Shaken Tower," was edited by Hughes and published in 1944. He studied at Fordham University Law School, and obtained his law degree from New York Law School.
New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed Wright as general counsel for the New York City Human Resources Administration in 1967, and named him to the New York City Criminal Court bench in 1970. Judge Wright was soon publicly critical of the judicial system and voiced his belief that race and class all too frequently determined the outcomes of trials. He denounced what he called racism in the criminal justice system, and created a furor by often setting low bail, and sometimes no bail, for poor or minority suspects. In one case, in which bail of $100,000 was requested by the Manhattan District Attorney's office for Joseph Gruttola, who had been accused of shooting a police officer, he set it at $500. After Gruttola posted bail and was released the same day, another judge revoked it and ordered him rearrested. When Grullota was brought into court the next day, Wright again set bail at $500. (Grutolla was eventually acquitted of attempted murder but convicted of assault and robbery.) In another case involving a man named Seymour Popkin, who had been charged in the beating of another man to death in a fistfight in Times Square, Judge Wright released him on his own recognizance after an assistant district attorney declined to release the name of a potential witness, despite Popkin's criminal record extending back 20 years. (The charge was eventually reduced to simple assault, and Popkin was acquitted at trial.)
Wright was given the nickname "Turn 'Em Loose Bruce" by the police officer's unions in New York City because of his bail practices, and it was repeated often in the New York newspapers.
After continued protests by the police officer's unions, Wright was transferred to New York City Civil Court in 1974 by David Ross, the city's administrative judge, who said it was just part of the usual rotations of judges and denied that the move had anything to do with his bail policies. Judge Wright then sued in federal court, seeking reinstatement, but in 1978, as hearings on his long-delayed lawsuit were about to begin, he was transferred back to Criminal Court.
The controversy promptly resumed, with the Transit Police union making their first complaint about Judge Wright a week after he returned to the Criminal Court bench. It peaked in April 1979, when Jerome Singleton was charged with slashing the throat of a white decoy officer, Robert Bilodeau. After bail had initially been set at $10,000 cash by another judge, Judge Wright released Singleton on his own recognizance, saying that he had no previous criminal record, strong family and community ties, and that prosecutors had offered no convincing reason to bar Singleton's release. (Singleton was eventually found guilty of second-degree assault and acquitted of first-degree assault and attempted murder.)
However, while some criticized Wright, others thought he was fair. Despite his outspoken views and practices, Wright was elected to the New York State Supreme Court in 1979.
Throughout his career, Wright held onto his belief that the judicial system, including bail, was stacked against poor and minority defendants. In a lecture at Columbia University Law School in 1979, he said that a more appropriate name for him would have been "Civil" Wright. He retired on December 31, 1994. Several days before his retirement, he said,
"I have never changed my mind about the Eighth Amendment. To say that I would've done things differently means to me I would have been a good boy, kept my mouth shut and availed myself of the benefits of the system. I don't think I can do that. I don't think I could ever do that."
Judge Wright spent 25 years on the bench hearing criminal and civil cases, and had a reputation as a scholarly and provocative jurist who sprinkled his opinions with literary quotations. He was the author of a 1987 book, Black Robes, White Justice, about the role of race in the judicial system, which won a 1991 American Book Award. He later authored an autobiography, "Black Justice In A White World." Sixty-five years after being denied admission to Princeton because of his race, he was made an honorary member of their Class of 2001.
Judge Wright died in his sleep on March 24, 2005, at his home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut at the age of 87.
MUST READING
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Ma Rainey Is Best Known as a Pioneer of the Blues. But She Broke More Than Musical Barriers
Ma Rainey, known as the “Mother of the Blues,” isn’t nearly as famous as the blues artists who built on her foundation, from Bessie Smith to Billie Holiday. But her overlooked legacy is being revisited thanks to the release of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a film adaptation of August Wilson’s acclaimed 1982 play that arrived on Netflix on Friday. In it, Viola Davis plays Rainey with both regal composure and pitch-black fury over the course of a sweltering afternoon recording session in 1927, as she fights for respect and artistic autonomy.
The real Rainey would be out of a job just a year later: classic blues was fading in popularity in favor of swing jazz, and the advent of talking pictures had dented the centrality of live performances. But Rainey’s impact on music, fashion and myth-making still lingers. Here are the ways in which Rainey was ahead of her time.
Rainey was a musical innovator
In the new film, Rainey’s style of blues is portrayed as archaic compared to the faster hot jazz preferred by her young band member Levee (Chadwick Boseman). While this contrast may have rung true in the late ‘20s, it was Rainey who was pioneering a new sound just a few years earlier. That style is now known as “classic blues”—but at the time, it was a unique and radical hybrid of several American forms, and Rainey was pivotal in creating and popularizing it.
Rainey was born in the 1880s in Columbus, Ga.; she performed on the vaudeville circuit for many years across the South, inheriting some performative traditions from minstrelsy and honing her outsize stage presence and comic timing. But while Rainey leaned into onstage maximalism, she was also mesmerized by the blues guitarists she saw on the road who took a more spartan, improvisatory and emotionally raw approach to their music.
So Rainey began to incorporate blues songs and structures into performances, helping to pioneer a genre that would both entertain crowds while also speaking candidly about Black life in America. This approach captured the imagination of many Black Americans at a transformative moment in which, thanks to the Great Migration, the longstanding divides between North and South, rural and urban, antique and modern were becoming eroded or blurred. Rainey’s duality made her a hit before Southern audiences as well as in Chicago where she recorded—and set a template for future waves of high-low Black musical innovation.
Rainey had a perfect voice for her new brand of music: low and gravelly, filled with both raw pathos and brassy authority. And it would likewise inspire imitators for generations to come. A young Louis Armstrong learned from Rainey while playing with her on several recordings (including “See See Rider,” a song that would later be covered by Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Janis Joplin and Old Crow Medicine Show). The gritty-voiced Joplin was open about how Rainey was one of her biggest influences, and so was Bonnie Raitt: during Rainey’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction in 1990, she said that “the fire and gusto of Ma’s singing was exceptional.”
time.com
Ma Rainey, known as the “Mother of the Blues,” isn’t nearly as famous as the blues artists who built on her foundation, from Bessie Smith to Billie Holiday. But her overlooked legacy is being revisited thanks to the release of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a film adaptation of August Wilson’s acclaimed 1982 play that arrived on Netflix on Friday. In it, Viola Davis plays Rainey with both regal composure and pitch-black fury over the course of a sweltering afternoon recording session in 1927, as she fights for respect and artistic autonomy.
The real Rainey would be out of a job just a year later: classic blues was fading in popularity in favor of swing jazz, and the advent of talking pictures had dented the centrality of live performances. But Rainey’s impact on music, fashion and myth-making still lingers. Here are the ways in which Rainey was ahead of her time.
Rainey was a musical innovator
In the new film, Rainey’s style of blues is portrayed as archaic compared to the faster hot jazz preferred by her young band member Levee (Chadwick Boseman). While this contrast may have rung true in the late ‘20s, it was Rainey who was pioneering a new sound just a few years earlier. That style is now known as “classic blues”—but at the time, it was a unique and radical hybrid of several American forms, and Rainey was pivotal in creating and popularizing it.
Rainey was born in the 1880s in Columbus, Ga.; she performed on the vaudeville circuit for many years across the South, inheriting some performative traditions from minstrelsy and honing her outsize stage presence and comic timing. But while Rainey leaned into onstage maximalism, she was also mesmerized by the blues guitarists she saw on the road who took a more spartan, improvisatory and emotionally raw approach to their music.
So Rainey began to incorporate blues songs and structures into performances, helping to pioneer a genre that would both entertain crowds while also speaking candidly about Black life in America. This approach captured the imagination of many Black Americans at a transformative moment in which, thanks to the Great Migration, the longstanding divides between North and South, rural and urban, antique and modern were becoming eroded or blurred. Rainey’s duality made her a hit before Southern audiences as well as in Chicago where she recorded—and set a template for future waves of high-low Black musical innovation.
Rainey had a perfect voice for her new brand of music: low and gravelly, filled with both raw pathos and brassy authority. And it would likewise inspire imitators for generations to come. A young Louis Armstrong learned from Rainey while playing with her on several recordings (including “See See Rider,” a song that would later be covered by Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Janis Joplin and Old Crow Medicine Show). The gritty-voiced Joplin was open about how Rainey was one of her biggest influences, and so was Bonnie Raitt: during Rainey’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction in 1990, she said that “the fire and gusto of Ma’s singing was exceptional.”
Ma Rainey Is Best Known as a Pioneer of the Blues. But She Broke More Than Musical Barriers
Examining the Mother of the Blues' legacy as 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' hits Netflix
- 28,212
- 53,047
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2007
I just watched that movie on Amazon.
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Getting after it tonight!
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner (December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998, also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and field athlete. She is considered the fastest woman of all time based on the fact that the world records she set in 1988 for both the 100 m and 200 m still stand and have yet to be seriously challenged. During the late 1980s she became a popular figure in international track and field because of her record-setting performances and flashy personal style. She died in her sleep as the result of an epileptic seizure in 1998 at the age of 38. She attended California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Griffith was born in Los Angeles, California, one of eleven children born to Robert and Florence Griffith. The family lived in Littlerock, California before Florence Griffith moved with her children to the Jordan Downs public housing complex located in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
When Griffith was in elementary school, she joined the Sugar Ray Robinson Organization, running in track meets on weekends. She won the Jesse Owens National Youth Games two years in a row, at the ages of 14 and 15. Griffith ran track at Jordan High School in Los Angeles. Showing an early interest in fashion, Griffith persuaded the members of the track team to wear tights with their uniforms. As a high school senior in 1978, she finished sixth at the CIF California State Meet behind future teammates Alice Brown and Pam Marshall. Nevertheless, by the time Griffith graduated from Jordan High School in 1978, she set high school records in sprinting and long jump.
Griffith attended the California State University at Northridge, and was on the track team coached by Bob Kersee. This team, which included Brown and Jeanette Bolden, won the national championship during Griffith's first year of college. However, Griffith had to drop out to support her family, taking a job as a bank teller. Kersee found financial aid for Griffith and she returned to college in 1980, this time at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) where Kersee was working as a coach.
Brown, Bolden, and Griffith qualified for the 100-meter final at the trials for the 1980 Summer Olympics (with Brown winning and Griffith finishing last in the final). Griffith also ran the 200 meters, narrowly finishing fourth, a foot out of a qualifying position. However, the U.S. Government had already decided to boycott those Olympic Games mooting those results. In 1983, Griffith graduated from UCLA with her bachelor's degree in psychology.
She came out of semi-retirement in track to dominate the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. Griffith-Joyner's record-breaking performances there were motivated in part by a second-place finish at the 1987 World Championship Games. In the 1988 Seoul Games, she won gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter dashes and in the 400-meter relay. For these accomplishments, she received the Jesse Owens Award, given to the year's top track and field athlete, and the Sullivan Award, given to the year's most outstanding amateur athlete.
Griffith-Joyner earned the nickname "Flo-Jo" for her blazing speed. She was famous for her flashy one-legged uniforms as well as her long and extravagantly painted fingernails. She retired from track in 1989 to devote more time to endorsement activities, modeling, writing, and coaching her husband. President Bill Clinton appointed Griffith-Joyner co-chairperson of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports in 1993. Florence Griffith-Joyner died of an apparent heart seizure in 1998. To many, she represented the embodiment of a new ideal for American women.
She seemed to possess a perfect combination of strength and beauty. She also had an exemplary record of community service for which she won the 1989 Harvard Foundation Award for outstanding contributions to society.
Griffith's nickname among family was "Dee Dee".She was briefly engaged to hurdler Greg Foster. In 1987, Griffith married 1984 Olympic triple jump champion Al Joyner, whom Griffith had first met at the 1980 Olympic Trials. Through her marriage to Joyner she was sister-in-law to track and field athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Griffith Joyner and Joyner had one daughter together, born November 15, 1990.
On September 21, 1998, Griffith Joyner died in her sleep at home in the Canyon Crest neighborhood of Mission Viejo, California, at the age of 38. The unexpected death was investigated by the sheriff-coroner's office, which announced on September 22 that the cause of death was suffocation during a severe epileptic seizure. She was also found to have had a cavernous hemangioma, a congenital vascular brain abnormality that made Joyner subject to seizures. According to a family attorney, she had suffered a tonic–clonic seizure in 1990, and had also been treated for seizures in 1993 and 1994.
According to the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner's office, the only drugs in her system when she died were small amounts of two common over-the-counter drugs, acetominophen (Tylenol) and Benadryl.
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Kansas City Star apologizes for decades of racist coverage of Black community
The Kansas City Star's top editor apologized Monday for the newspaper having "disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians."
Mike Fannin, who has worked at The Star since 1997 and served as its top editor since 2008, wrote in a letter to readers titled "the truth in Black and white" that the Star had "robbed an entire community of opportunity, dignity, justice and recognition."
Fannin said the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, the subsequent eruption of nationwide racial justice protests and a suggestion from reporter Mará Rose Williams sparked a investigation into the Star's coverage of race and the Black community in particular that stretched all the way back to its founding in 1880.
Reporters reviewed thousands of pages of archived stories and compared the Star's coverage to how events were reported in the Black press. Fannin said the team spoke to those who lived through the events, retired reporters and editors, and scholars and community leaders to produce a six-part package and "an honest examination of our own past."
"Reporters were frequently sickened by what they found," he wrote.
What is systemic racism?:Here's what it means and how you can help dismantle it
Fannin described how Black people were written about as "criminals living in a crime-laden world," and ignored stories about Black families whose homes were bombed. The paper failed to cover Black cultural icons such as influential jazz musician Charlie "Bird" Parker until his death, "and even then, his name was misspelled and his age was wrong."
The Star failed to report on the growing civil rights movements and fight against desegregation and continued to do so even as the staff diversified in the 1960s.
Still, Fannin said progress is being made citing recent work on communities of color and the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent hiring of an editor to focus on race and equity issues. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas called the series a "positive step."
JRepp23
So long ago, had nothing to do with me, correct?
The Kansas City Star's top editor apologized Monday for the newspaper having "disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians."
Mike Fannin, who has worked at The Star since 1997 and served as its top editor since 2008, wrote in a letter to readers titled "the truth in Black and white" that the Star had "robbed an entire community of opportunity, dignity, justice and recognition."
Fannin said the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, the subsequent eruption of nationwide racial justice protests and a suggestion from reporter Mará Rose Williams sparked a investigation into the Star's coverage of race and the Black community in particular that stretched all the way back to its founding in 1880.
Reporters reviewed thousands of pages of archived stories and compared the Star's coverage to how events were reported in the Black press. Fannin said the team spoke to those who lived through the events, retired reporters and editors, and scholars and community leaders to produce a six-part package and "an honest examination of our own past."
"Reporters were frequently sickened by what they found," he wrote.
What is systemic racism?:Here's what it means and how you can help dismantle it
Fannin described how Black people were written about as "criminals living in a crime-laden world," and ignored stories about Black families whose homes were bombed. The paper failed to cover Black cultural icons such as influential jazz musician Charlie "Bird" Parker until his death, "and even then, his name was misspelled and his age was wrong."
The Star failed to report on the growing civil rights movements and fight against desegregation and continued to do so even as the staff diversified in the 1960s.
Still, Fannin said progress is being made citing recent work on communities of color and the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent hiring of an editor to focus on race and equity issues. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas called the series a "positive step."
Kansas City Star apologizes for decades of racist coverage of Black community
Mike Fannin, the newspaper's top editor, wrote that the paper had "disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians."
www.usatoday.com
JRepp23
So long ago, had nothing to do with me, correct?
Last edited:
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Jrue Holiday Donates the Rest of His 2020 NBA Salary to Black-Owned Small Businesses and Nonprofits
www.lovebscott.com
Jrue Holiday Donates the Rest of His 2020 NBA Salary to Black-Owned Small Businesses and Nonprofits [Photos] | lovebscott.com
Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday is embracing the spirit of the season of giving. In an Instagram post…
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Black Woman
Beyoncé To Give $5,000 Grants To Families Facing Eviction
www.lovebscott.com
Beyoncé To Give $5,000 Grants To Families Facing Eviction
Beyoncé To Give $5,000 Grants To Families Facing Eviction [Photo] | lovebscott.com
Beyoncé is doing her part to help families out during the pandemic in 2021. Beygood, the singer’s charitable…
- 28,212
- 53,047
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2007
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
- 156,887
- 136,606
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2001
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Yup.
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
On this date in 1831, during the Second Seminole War, a force of Seminole Indians defeated U.S. troops in the Battle of Okeechobee in Florida.
Chief John Horse (a Black man) shared command with Alligator Sam Jones and Wild Cat. Blacks had a reputation as “fearless” fighters in the numerous battles with U.S. troops. Blacks also served with the American troops as scouts, interpreters, and even spies. In 1849, the U.S. attorney general's office ruled that Black Seminoles were slaves by law. The U.S. government actively promoted slavery among relocated Native American tribes.
Even tribes who had never practiced slavery before were encouraged to do so. It was in the same year that John Horse founded the city of Wewoka in Oklahoma. It served as a refuge for runaway slaves.
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer-songwriter, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. A progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music and dance, he is often referred to as the "Godfather of Soul". In a career that lasted 50 years, he influenced the development of several music genres.
Brown began his career as a gospel singer in Toccoa, Georgia. He joined an R&B vocal group, the Gospel Starlighters (which later evolved into the Flames) founded by Bobby Byrd, in which he was the lead singer. First coming to national public attention in the late 1950s as a member of the singing group The Famous Flames with the hit ballads "Please, Please, Please" and "Try Me", Brown built a reputation as a tireless live performer with the Famous Flames and his backing band, sometimes known as the James Brown Band or the James Brown Orchestra. His success peaked in the 1960s with the live album Live at the Apollo and hit singles such as "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World". During the late 1960s he moved from a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music-making that influenced the development of funk music. By the early 1970s, Brown had fully established the funk sound after the formation of the J.B.s with records such as "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" and "The Payback". He also became noted for songs of social commentary, including the 1968 hit "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud". Brown continued to perform and record until his death from pneumonia in 2006.
Brown recorded 17 singles that reached number one on the Billboard R&B charts. He also holds the record for the most singles listed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart which did not reach number one. Brown has received honors from many institutions, including inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In Joel Whitburn's analysis of the Billboard R&B charts from 1942 to 2010, James Brown is ranked as number one in The Top 500 Artists. He is ranked seventh on the music magazine Rolling Stone's list of its 100 greatest artists of all time. Rolling Stone has also cited Brown as the most sampled artist of all time.
Brown began his career as a gospel singer in Toccoa, Georgia. He joined an R&B vocal group, the Gospel Starlighters (which later evolved into the Flames) founded by Bobby Byrd, in which he was the lead singer. First coming to national public attention in the late 1950s as a member of the singing group The Famous Flames with the hit ballads "Please, Please, Please" and "Try Me", Brown built a reputation as a tireless live performer with the Famous Flames and his backing band, sometimes known as the James Brown Band or the James Brown Orchestra. His success peaked in the 1960s with the live album Live at the Apollo and hit singles such as "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World". During the late 1960s he moved from a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music-making that influenced the development of funk music. By the early 1970s, Brown had fully established the funk sound after the formation of the J.B.s with records such as "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" and "The Payback". He also became noted for songs of social commentary, including the 1968 hit "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud". Brown continued to perform and record until his death from pneumonia in 2006.
Brown recorded 17 singles that reached number one on the Billboard R&B charts. He also holds the record for the most singles listed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart which did not reach number one. Brown has received honors from many institutions, including inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In Joel Whitburn's analysis of the Billboard R&B charts from 1942 to 2010, James Brown is ranked as number one in The Top 500 Artists. He is ranked seventh on the music magazine Rolling Stone's list of its 100 greatest artists of all time. Rolling Stone has also cited Brown as the most sampled artist of all time.
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
I LOVE Black Women.
aepps20
Supporter
- 40,997
- 86,623
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2004
Love it when a trainer's plan comes together.
- 8,596
- 14,618
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2012
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
Last edited:
- 8,596
- 14,618
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2012
You should, because I am not some hotep.
Malcolm X wouldn't have accepted money from white women marrying negroes.....
- 10,957
- 19,973
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2018
