KeKe Palmer was born Lauren Keyana Palmer on August 26, 1993, in Robbins, Illinois. Palmer's first big break came via her acting skills, making her big screen debut in Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004) as Queen Latifah's niece. In only a few years, she has appeared on an episode of the critically acclaimed CBS Show Cold Case (2003), booked a national K-Mart commercial, and was chosen from a nationwide search to play opposite William H. Macy in a TNT movie. Palmer's performance in The Wool Cap (2004) earned her a Screen Actors Guild Nomination, to date, she is the youngest actress (then at age ten) ever to receive a nomination in a Lead Actress Category.
Within 2 years, Palmer appeared landed a leading role as Akeelah Anderson in the critically acclaimed, award-winning film Akeelah and the Bee (2006). Her debut single, "All My Girlz", is featured on the Akeelah and the Bee soundtrack. Later that same year, Palmer appeared in Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion (2006), which was number #1 at the box office for two consecutive weeks.
Palmer went on to win a 2007 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture for her breakout role in Akeelah and the Bee (2006). She also received a ShoWest Award for Rising Star of the Year. Shortly after, Palmer lit up the small screen starring in the Disney Channel's hit movie Jump In! (2007) (TV). KeKe also landed a role in the feature film, Cleaner in 2007.
In 2008, Palmer began her starring role as the title character in Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP. Palmer also performs the theme song for the series. Check out the theme song below.
At the 2010 BET Awards, Palmer was awarded YoungStars Award. She beat out Wizards of Waverly Place star Selena Gomez, 17; Willow Smith, 9 year; comedian/actor/musician Lil JJ, 19, and 17 year old Everybody Hates Chris star Tyler James Williams.
KeKe is making waves in hollywood as a young, black and beautiful young woman. Holding her own against acting giants like Angela Basset and Eva Mendez has helped KeKe make her mark as a household name in Hollywood. Palmer currently stars in Nickelodeon's True Jackson, VP. Follow her on twitter @KeKeinAction!
Random fact: Did you know my friends call me KeeKey (pronounced Key-Key)? Gotta love us!
Today is the anniversary of the death of the one and only King of Pop, Michael Jackson. I know you may be feeling bombarded by all of the television specials, video dedications, news spots, etc. This is going to increase two-fold because it is African American Music Appreciation Month and who made greater contributions than the King?
In honor of his contributions, HUSL Today has declared today "King of Pop Friday!"
Today's salute is unconventional in that it is all about Jackson's music. Take a moment and listen to a few tunes:
PYT:
Dirty Diana:
Smooth Criminal:
Share your favorite MJJ tune amongst friends.
Its still so hard to grasp his absence. His family, friends and fans are in my prayers.
James A. Emanuel was born on June 15, 1921 in Alliance, Nebraska. Emanuel is a published poet, scholar, and critic. As a poet, Emanuel has published more than 300 poems and 13 individual books. Emanuel has been called one of the best, and most overlooked, poets of his time. Critics have put forward several reasons for Emanuel's poetry being neglected by the larger literary world, including the fact that Emanuel writes more traditional poetic forms, that he no longer lives in the United States, and the fact that he refuses to take part in the politically correct world of Black academia.
Emanuel is also credited with creating a new literary genre, jazz-and-blues haiku, which he has read to musical accompaniment throughout Europe and Africa. For this creation he was awarded the Sidney Bechet Creative Award in 1996. He was also awarded the Dean's Award for Distinguished Achievement in 2007 from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and has also been honored with a John Hay Whitney Award, a Saxton Memorial Fellowship, and a Special Distinction Award from the Black American Literature Forum.
His books include Jazz from the Haiku King (1999), Whole Grain: Collected Poems, 1958–1989 (1990), The Broken Bowl: New and Uncollected Poems (1983), Black Man Abroad: The Toulouse Poems (1978), and At Bay (1969). He is also the author of Langston Hughes (1967) and the editor, with Theodore L. Gross, of Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America (1968).
You can check out a few of Emanuel's works by clicking here. An expatriate African-American, Emanuel lives in Paris.
Charles Hamilton Houston was born on September 3, 1895 in Washington, DC. Houston started at Dunbar High school and then matriculated to Amherst College in 1911. He was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society,and graduated as valedictorian in 1915. He returned to DC to teach at Howard University. As the US entered World War I, Houston joined the then racially segregated U. S. Army as an officer and was sent to France. He returned to the US in 1919, and began attending Harvard Law School. As a member of the Harvard Law Review, Houston became the review's first African American editor; he graduated Harvard cum laude.
[The] Negro lawyer must be trained as a social engineer and group interpreter. Due to the Negro's social and political condition . . . the Negro lawyer must be prepared to anticipate, guide and interpret his group advancement. . . . [Moreover, he must act as] business advisor . . . for the protection of the scattered resources possessed or controlled by the group. . . . He must provide more ways and means for holding within the group the income now flowing through it.
In 1924 he began to teach part time at Howard University School of Law, then a part-time night school. In 1929, the Howard University Trustees recreated Howard University School of law as a full-time day school and put Houston in charge as the Resident Vice-Dean. Since Houston had the responsibilities of a dean he was dean in all but title. During Houston's six year tenure, he oversaw the process that led to the school being accredited by the American Bar Association and meeting the standards for being admitted to the the Association of American Law Schools.Additionally, Howard Law had become a premiere law school for African American training almost a quarter of the nation's black law students. Houston was also a mentor to Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board of Education and was later appointed to the Supreme Court.
Houston is the brains behind the strategy to end Jim Crow by first attacking unequal education. By demonstrating the failure of states to even try to live up to the 1896 rule of "separate but equal," Houston hoped to finally overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had given birth to that phrase.
(My favorite part-as if you asked) Houston designed a strategy of attacking segregation in law schools — forcing states to either create costly parallel law schools or integrate the existing ones. The strategy had hidden benefits: since law students were predominantly male, Houston sought to neutralize the age-old argument that allowing blacks to attend white institutions would lead to miscegenation, or "race-mixing". He also reasoned that judges deciding the cases might be more sympathetic to plaintiffs who were pursuing careers in law. Finally, by challenging segregation in graduate schools, the NAACP lawyers would bypass the inflammatory issue of miscegenation among young children.
Image source: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/images-cms/king.jpg Find out more when you read the rest.
Henrietta Bell Wells was born Henrietta Pauline Bell on Oct. 11, 1912 in Houston, Texas near the Buffalo Bayou.She was the only female and only freshman on the 1930 team for Wiley College when they participated in the first collegiate interracial debate in the U.S. The team was coached byMelvin B. Tolson when they competed against students from the Law school at University of Michigan.Wiley won. Other debates with white schools followed, culminating with Wiley’s 1935 victory over the national champion, the University of Southern California.The character Samantha Book from The Great Debatorsis based on Wells.
Who is the judge? The Judge is God.
Why is HE the Judge? Because HE decides who wins or loses, not my opponent!
Who's your opponent? He doesn't exist!
Of her experience Wells recalled to the Houston Chronicle, "I told him[Tolson] I don’t know anything about debating and I don’t have any money to take off from class to be on the debate team...I was the only girl, and I was the only freshman. They [the boys] didn’t seem to mind me.”
Her advice to today’s students was straightforward: “Learn to speak well and learn to express yourself effectively.”
Before Wells passed, she was the last surviving member of the 1930 debate team from Wiley College. Wells was the recipient of the Omega Psi Phi Colonel James E. Young Medal of Honor, given for character, scholarship and service to Wiley College. She also did work as a social worker and was a teacher in the Houston Independent School District for five years as the first African-American teacher at Bonner Elementary School. Well was the third president of the Houston area alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
Join Talented Generation as we *Salute* Henrietta Bell Wells!
Alphonso Michael (Mike) Espy was born November 30, 1953 in Yazoo City, Mississippi.He is the grandson of Thomas J. Huddleston, Sr., the founder of the Afro-American Sons and Daughters, a fraternal society that operated the Afro-American Hospital. The hospital was a leading provider of health care for blacks in the state from the 1920s until the 1970s.
He received his Bachelor's degree in 1975 from Howard University in Washington, D.C., majoring in law. Espy earned his Juris Doctor from the Santa Clara University School of Law in California in 1978. He was an attorney with Central Mississippi Legal Services between 1978 and 1980 and was later the assistant secretary of state to Mississippi Legal Services.
Espy was the assistant secretary of the state's Public Lands Division from 1980 to 1984 and the assistant state attorney general from 1984 to 1985.
Espy was elected as a Democrat to the 100th Congress and was reelected to three succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1987, until his resignation January 22, 1993. President Clinton appointed Espy as our nation's first African American Secretary of Agriculture, a position he maintained from 1993–1994.
Check out footage of Mr. Espy at an environmental justice rountable on nuclear power at Howard University School of Law:
He currently works as a private sector attorney, counselor, and agricultural advisor, having his own law and consulting firms: Mike Espy, PLLC, and AE Agritrade, Inc. Mr. Espy also keeps busy as a speaker and lecturer, and is frequently asked to comment on current political, economic, legal and social topics. He has appeared on Nightline, the ABC Nightly News, the Today Show, and various other television news programs. He has also been featured in a host of national magazines and periodicals.
Shirley Clarke Franklin was born on May 10, 1945. Franklin received her B.A. in sociology from Howard University and her M.A., also in sociology, from the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin served as the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs under Mayor Maynard Jackson. Subsequently, she was named Chief Administrative Officer and City Manager under Mayor Andrew Young.
"My dream as a child was to be a dancer. I wasn't the class president or the student government president or anything like that. The first time I ever ran for a major office was to be mayor."
The 58th mayor of Atlanta, she was the first female to hold the post and became the first black woman to be elected mayor of any major Southern city. Franklin was Atlanta's fourth black mayor. In 2005, TIME Magazine named Franklin of the five best big-city American mayors. In October of that same year, she was included in the U.S. News & World Report "Best Leaders of 2005" issue.
In July of 2009, Mayor Franklin (along with Frances Townsend and Judge William H. Webster) was appointed to an ad hoc Department of Homeland Security special task force for 60-day review of the Homeland Security Advisory System. Frances served as mayor of Atlanta, Georgia from 2002 to 2010. She is succeeded by Kasim Reed.
Mayor Franklin was the recipient of Profile in Courage Award in 2005, issued by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. The foundation praised her management of the city of Atlanta during the critical period of enormous deficit and loss of public confidence in government following the corrupt administration of Mayor Bill Campbell. She is an Honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Constance Baker Motley was born on September 14, 1921in New Haven, Connecticut. She initially attended Fisk University, a historically black college in Tennessee, before deciding to move to an integrated university. Motley graduated from New York University in 1943, then received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 1946. Her legal career began as a law clerk in the fledgling NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she worked with Thurgood Marshall, Jack Greenberg, and others. The LDF's first female attorney, she became Associate Counsel to the LDF, making her the NAACP's lead trial attorney.
In 1950 she wrote the original complaint in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. The first African-American woman ever to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, in Meredith v. Fair she successfully won James Meredith's effort to be the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi. Motley was successful in nine of the ten cases she argued before the Supreme Court. The tenth decision, regarding jury composition, was eventually overturned in her favor. She played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement, helping to desegregate Southern schools, buses, and lunch counters.
Benjamin Hooks was born in Memphis, Tennessee on January 31, 1925. Hooks enrolled in LeMoyne-Owen College, in Memphis, Tennessee where he undertook a pre-law course of study 1941–43. He graduated in 1944 from Howard University nd joined the Army working as a guard of Italian prisoners of war. He was discharged from the Army after the end of the war with the rank of staff sergeant.
After the war he enrolled at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago to study law. He ventured to Chicago for his studies because no law school in his native Tennessee would admit him. He graduated from DePaul in 1948 with his Juris Doctor (J.D.). Hooks passed the Tennesee bar exam and set up his own law practice. He recalled in an interview with Jet Magazine “At that time you were insulted by law clerks, excluded from white bar associations and when I was in court, I was lucky to be called Ben...usually it was just ‘boy.’ [But] the judges were always fair. The discrimination of those days has changed and, today, the South is ahead of the North in many respects in civil rights progress.”
He was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1956 and began to preach regularly at the Greater Middle Baptist Church in Memphis, while continuing his busy law practice. He joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (then known as Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration) along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also became a pioneer in the NAACP-sponsored restaurant sit-ins and other boycotts of consumer items and services.
In 1965 Tennessee Governor Frank G. Clement appointed him to fill a vacancy in the Shelby County criminal court. With this he became the first black criminal court judge in Tennessee history. His temporary appointment to the bench expired in 1966 but he campaigned for, and won election to a full term in the same judicial office.
On November 6, 1976, the 64-member board of directors of the NAACP elected Hooks executive director of the organization. Shortly after his induction, Hooks proclaimed, “The civil rights movement is not dead. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop agitating, they had better think again. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop litigating, they had better close the courts. If anyone thinks that we are not going to demonstrate and protest, they had better roll up the sidewalks.” Hooks assumed his position at a time when the NAACP was suffering a decline in membership but he managed to turn it around. Hooks maintained his position until 1992.
In 1996, the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change was established at the University of Memphis. The Hooks Institute is a public policy research center supporting the urban research mission of the University of Memphis, and honoring Hooks’ many years of leadership in the American Civil Rights Movement. The Institute works to advance understanding of the legacy of the American Civil Rights Movement – and of other movements for social justice – through teaching, research and community programs that emphasize social movements, race relations, strong communities, public education, effective public participation, and social and economic justice.
President George W. Bush awarded Hooks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in November 2007. "As a civil rights activist, public servant, and minister of the gospel, Dr. Hooks has extended the hand of fellowship throughout his years," Bush said.
"It was not an always ... easy thing to do. But it was always the right thing to do."
He passed away on April 15, 2010. The Tennessee House has cancelled its activities so lawmakers can attend the funeral today. He was an avid supporter of civil rights and he will be missed dearly. Benjamin was a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity.
Mordecai Wyatt Johnson was born on January 4, 1890 in Paris, Tennessee.Johnson's formal education began in a small elementary school in his native town. From there he went to Roger Williams University in Nashville, then to Howe Institute in Memphis, and later transferred to the Atlanta Baptist College (now Morehouse College) where he completed his secondary and undergraduate education.
During his college career, he was a member of the debating team and the Glee Club, a star athlete in three sports, and quarterback of the football team. Johnson received his B.A. from Morehouse College in 1911, and second bachelor of arts degree from the University of Chicago two years later. Offered a faculty position at the college upon graduation, he taught English and economics and served a year as acting dean.
He studied at several other institutions of higher education, including the Rochester Theological Seminary, Harvard University, Howard University, and the Gammon Theological Seminary.
He traveled 25,000 miles a year speaking principally on racism, segregation, and discrimination. Early in his career, he was frequently in demand to lead religious-weeks in colleges. He was the annual speaker on Education Night at the National Baptist Convention, USA, and a regular on the program at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston. Johnson served as Professor of Economics and History at Morehouse and as Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Charleston, West Virginia.
On June 26, 1926 Johnson was unanimously elected President of Howard University, becoming the first African American to head that institution. Johnson's election was a significant achievement because ever since the establishment of schools for freedmen by white missionaries from the North following the Civil War, most of these institutions had been headed by Caucasians, as had Howard from its inception in 1867.
In 1951 he was a member of the American delegation to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that met in London. On that occasion he was selected to speak on behalf of his sub-committee at the plenary session of the gathering. He pleaded for the favored nations to consider the plight of the underprivileged and dispossessed people of the world and stressed the need for a sense of justice that the nations should display with those under their domination.
He served at President of Howard University until 1960. Among his accomplishments, he had greatly expanded the campus and built a library and new structures for several schools within the university. Finances were sound can his ghost come back and do this again?. Enrollment increased from 2,000 in 1926 to more than 10,000 in 1960.
Lena Frances Edwards was born on September 17, 1900 in Washington, D.C. She graduated Howard University Medical School in 1924, and started her medical practice in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1925 within the immigrant community of Hudson County, New Jersey.
She advocated natural childbirth. Because of racism and sexism, it took years before she was admitted to the residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Margaret Hague Hospital in Jersey City. She also taught obstetrics at Howard University Medical School but told them she could not accept a department chair because of her religious objections to abortion. She was a devoted Catholic and a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis. Her religious beliefs underlay a life of service. Among other things, she was the medical adviser to the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and volunteered at a mission for Mexican migrant workers in Texas. Her service was recognized by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1966 she was awarded an honorary degree from Saint Peter's College, New Jersey. She was awarded the Poverello Medal in 1967. She passed away in 1986 in Lakewood, New Jersey.
HUSL Today Salutes Lena Frances Edwards!
Sidenote (shameless plug) Support Howard and buy some HU gear!
On November 9 1731, Benjamin Banneker was born in Ellicott's Mills, Maryland. He was the descendent of slaves, however, Banneker was born a freeman.
Benjamin Banneker was educated by Quakers, however, most of his education was self-taught. Banneker was a self-educated scientist, astronomer, inventor, writer, and antislavery publicist. He built one of the first watches made in America, a wooden pocket watch in 1753.
Twenty years after he made the first watch, Banneker began making astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfully forecast a 1789 solar eclipse. His estimate made well in advance of the celestial event, contradicted predictions of better-known mathematicians and astronomers.
Banneker is best known for his six annual Farmers' Almanacs published between 1792 and 1797. In his free time, Banneker began compiling the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris. The almanacs included information on medicines and medical treatment, and listed tides, astronomical information, and eclipses, all calculated by Banneker himself.
On August 19 1791, Banneker sent a copy of his first almanac to secretary of state Thomas Jefferson. In an enclosed letter, he questioned the slaveholder's sincerity as a "friend to liberty." He urged Jefferson to help get rid of "absurd and false ideas" that one race is superior to another.
He passed away on October 25, 1806. He was one of the first African Americans to gain distinction in science.
HUSL Today Salutes Benjamin Banneker!!!
Sidenote: He gets an extra special hip hip hooray because he shares a birthday with my mother. Hi Mommy! *waves* Speaking of birthdays, today is a celebration of life for one of my favorite girls T-Flu. Happy Birthday!!
Billie Holiday was born Elinore Fagan (her birth certificate says Elinore Harris yea I'm confused too) on April 7, 1915. She spent most of her childhood in Baltimore, Maryland. At the age of 18, Holiday was discovered by producer John Hammond while she was performing in a Harlem jazz club. Hammond was instrumental in getting Holiday recording work with an up-and-coming clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. With Goodman, she sang vocals for several tracks, including her first commercial release Your Mother's Son-In-Law and the 1934 top ten hit Riffin' the Scotch.
Nicknamed Lady Dayby her friend and musical partner Lester
Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Above all, she was admired all over the world for her deeply personal and intimate approach to singing. Critic John Bush wrote that she "changed the art of American pop vocals forever." She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably God Bless the Child, Don't Explain, Fine and Mellow, and Lady Sings the Blues.
Holiday toured with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1937. The following year, she worked with Artie Shaw and his orchestra. Holiday broke new ground with Shaw, becoming one of the first female African American vocalists to work with a white orchestra. Promoters objected to Holiday—for her race and for her unique vocal style—and she ended up leaving the orchestra out of frustration.
She became famous for singing jazz standards including Easy Living and Strange Fruit. Strange fruit, a story about African American lynching, debuted in 1939 and was banned by some radio stations-a practice which helped make it famous.
Although she had her share of struggles in her final years, Holiday remains one of the most greatest jazz vocalists of all time. Her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues (1956), was written in collaboration by William Dufty. Her raw emotion is easily felt in her songs Holiday passed away on July 17, 1959.
Her autobiography was made into the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues with famed singer Diana Ross playing the part of Holiday. In 2000, Billie Holiday was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Diana Ross handling the honors.
Check out footage of her singing my favorite tunes below:
Tyler Perry was born Emmitt Perry, Jr. on September 13, 1969, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Although Perry had it rough his first few years, even being homeless at one point, he proclaims that writing about his pain proved to be the avenue to his success.
His first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which went on and grossed $50.6 million domestically, while scoring a 16 percent approval rating at the film review web site, Rotten Tomatoes. On its opening weekend, February 24, 2006, Perry's film version of Madea's Family Reunion opened at number one at the box office with $30.3 million. The film eventually grossed $65 million; as with Diary, almost all of the Madea's earnings originated in the United States. Perry and the co-stars promoted the film on the Oprah Winfrey show.
Perry's next LionsGate project, Daddy's Little Girls, starred Gabrielle Union and Idris Elba and was released in the U.S. on February 14, 2007. It grossed over $31 million. Perry wrote, directed, produced and starred in his next movie, Why Did I Get Married?, released on October 12, 2007. It opened number one, grossing $21.4 million at the box office that weekend. Janet Jackson, Sharon Leal, Jill Scott and Tasha Smith appeared in the film. Perry's 2008 film, Meet the Browns, released on March 21, opened at #2 with a $20,082,809 weekend gross. The Family That Preys opened on September 12, 2008, and grossed over $37.1 million.
Madea Goes to Jail opened #1 on February 20, 2009, grossing $41 million and becoming his largest opening to date. This was Perry's seventh film with Lionsgate Entertainment. At the request of director J. J. Abrams, Perry had a cameo appearance in the movie Star Trek, which opened on May 8, 2009. This was his first movie appearance outside of his own projects.
Perry next wrote, directed, and starred in I Can Do Bad All By Myself, a film structured around his Madea character. Perry also teamed with Oprah Winfrey to present Precious, a movie based on the novel Push by Sapphire.
Perry movies are co-produced and distributed by Lionsgate Entertainment while he retains full copyright ownership under his corporate name, Very Perry Films, and places his name in front of all titles.
In 2005 Forbes reported that he had sold "more than $100 million in tickets, $30 million in videos of his shows and an estimated $20 million in merchandise" and that "the 300 live shows he produces each year are attended by an average of 35,000 people a week."
Perry produces a television show entitled Tyler Perry's House of Payne, which follows an African-American household of three generations. After a successful pilot run, Perry signed a $200 million, 100-episode deal with TBS. Additionally, Perry wrote, directed and produced the sitcom Meet The Browns, which premiered on TBS on January 7, 2009.
Check the footage below for the trailer for Perry's latest flick Why did I get married too? Which raked in over $30 million at the weekend box office.
His efforts to bring more minorities to the big screen and urban theatre are admirable to say the least.
Dr. Maya Angelou was born on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. As a teenager, Dr. Angelou’s love for the arts won her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. At 14, she dropped out to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor.
In 1954 and 1955, Dr. Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and, in 1957, recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. In 1958, she moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom.
In 1960, Dr. Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt where she served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer. The next year, she moved to Ghana where she taught at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama, worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times.
While in Ghana, she met with Malcolm X and, in 1964, returned to America to help him build his new Organization of African American Unity. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the organization dissolved. Soon after X's assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked Dr. Angelou to serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published to international acclaim and enormous popular success. The list of her published verse, non-fiction, and fiction now includes more than 30 bestselling titles. Image source: http://www.whitbyforum.com/uploaded_images/maya_angelou-753123.jpg
Dr. Angelou wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia. Her script, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
She appeared in the landmark television adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots (1977) and John Singleton's Poetic Justice (1993). In 1996, she directed her first feature film, Down in the Delta. In 2008, she composed poetry for and narrated the award-winning documentary The Black Candle, directed by M.K. Asante, Jr.
She captured the essence of every woman with one of my favorite poems "Phenomenal Woman." Check it below:
Dr. Angelou has served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and has received 3 Grammy Awards. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Dr. Angelou's reading of her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world.
Dr. Angelou has received over 30 honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.
"A people without the knowledge of their history, is like a tree without roots."
Rt. Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr. was born Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr. in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on August 17 , 1887. He spent his younger years in Jamaica where he fostered a love for books and worked as an apprentice. In May 1917, Garvey and thirteen others formed the first UNIA division outside Jamaica and began advancing ideas to promote social, political, and economic freedom for Blacks. On 2 July, the East St. Louis riots broke out. On July 8, Garvey delivered an address, titled "The Conspiracy of the East St. Louis Riots," at Lafayette Hall in Harlem. During the speech, he declared the riot was "one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind."
By October, rancor within the UNIA had begun to set in. A split occurred in the Harlem division, with Garvey enlisted to become its leader; although he technically held the same position in Jamaica.
Garvey next set about the business of developing a program to improve the conditions of those of African ancestry "at home and abroad" under UNIA auspices. On August 17, 1918, publication of the widely distributed Negro World newspaper began. Garvey worked as an editor without pay until November 1920. By June 1919 the membership of the organization had grown to over two million.
On June 27,1919, the Black Star Line of Delaware was incorporated by the members of the UNIA, with Garvey as President. By September, it obtained its first ship. Much fanfare surrounded the inspection of the S.S. Yarmouth and its rechristening as the S.S. Frederick Douglass on September 14, 1919.
By August 1920, the UNIA claimed four million members. That month, the International Convention of the UNIA was held. With delegates from all over the world in attendance, over 25,000 people filled Madison Square Garden on August 1to hear Garvey speak.
In September 1929, he founded the People's Political Party (PPP), Jamaica's first modern political party, which focused on workers' rights, education, and aid to the poor. Also in 1929, Garvey was elected councilor for the Allman Town Division of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC). However, he lost his seat because of having to serve a prison sentence for contempt of court. But, in 1930, Garvey was re-elected, unopposed, along with two other PPP candidates.
"How can you be happy living in luxury and your brother is living in disease?"
In April 1931, Garvey launched the Edelweiss Amusement Company. He set the company up to help artists earn their livelihood from their craft. Several Jamaican entertainers — Kidd Harold, Ernest Cupidon, Bim & Bam, and Ranny Williams — went on to become popular after receiving initial exposure that the company gave them.
In 1935, Garvey left Jamaica for London. He lived and worked in London until his death in 1940.
Schools, colleges, highways, and buildings in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States have been named in his honor. The UNIA red, black, and green flag has been adopted as the Black Liberation Flag. Since 1980, Garvey's bust has been housed in the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes in Washington, D.C.
Regardless of the criticisms wielded at Garvey from Hoover, W.E.B. Dubois and many others, we cannot deny his influence on the African diaspora. For that reason (and several others), he is one of my personal favorites and I am delighted to salute him.
Take a few minutes (or 45) and watch the documentary on the influence of Marcus Garvey.
Part 1:
Dorothy Height was born on March 24, 1912 in Richmond, Virginia. In 1929, Height moved to New York to enroll at Barnard. When she arrived at the college, the dean told her that even though she had been accepted, she would have to wait a year because the college only allotted two slots for Negro women both of which had already been filled. According to the dean, she was “young enough to wait another year." Undaunted, Height, who had been awarded a four-year scholarship for both her grades and her oratorical skills, headed downtown to the NYU Washington Square campus to talk to Dean Ruth Shaffer. Even though Height had not formally applied to NYU, Shaffer invited her to enroll based on a copy of her high school transcript and her acceptance letter from Barnard.
At NYU, Height helped to organize discussion groups for African-American students, and after graduation she took a job with the New York Home Relief Bureau (later the Department of Welfare). She soon moved on to the Harlem branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and eventually joined the YWCA’s national staff, where she spearheaded a movement to integrate the organization. In 1957, she took her place in the forefront of the civil rights movement by becoming president of the NCNW. Often, her memoir reveals, she was the only woman privy to high-level discussions with all the great civil rights leaders. When Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, Height was on stage. Image Source: http://blacksuperwomen.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/g25145_u23939_a_c_motley.jpg
Image source: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3209/2827300140_7e452f8384.jpg
“Every struggle has the same concerns at the bottom of them,” Height says. “Race, color, creed, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, it all matters. We need to go back to the time of the March on Washington. That time in 1963. That coming together of all backgrounds with a fiery sense of righteous indignation.”
In 2004, then President Bush commended Height on her achievements with a Congressional Gold Medal. Check the footage below:
Height has also been commended on countless other occasions. The footage from a few can be found below:
As chair and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), Height has been at the epicenter of the civil rights movement for more than seven decades. And the poet Maya Angelou, in the memoir’s foreword, gives Height her due—ranking the activist with Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman—as those who "somehow have been elevated beyond this mortal coil." Angelou goes on to write, “It is difficult to believe they ever really inhabited human form, they were so noble, so fierce."
Her impact on the African American diaspora remains a token of her life's work. Please keep her uplifted in fellowship and prayer while she remains in Howard University Hospital in stable but critical condition.
