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Essence
Member
01-12-2002
| Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 6:02 am
**** Today in Black History – May 20 **** 1746 Francois-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture was born into slavery in Haiti. He led the revolution in his country against French and English forces to free the slaves. Although he nominally ruled in the name of France, he became political and military dictator of the country. His success in freeing the slaves in Haiti caused his name to become the biggest influence in the slave cabins of the Americas. His name was whispered in Brazil, in the Caribbean, and the United States. 1868 The Republican National Convention, meeting in Chicago, nominated U.S. Grant for the presidency. The convention marked the national debut of African American politicians. P.B.S. Pinchback of Louisiana and James J. Harris were delegates to the convention. Harris was named to the committee which informed Grant of his nomination. African Americans also served for the first time as presidential electors. Robert Meacham was a presidential elector in Florida. The South Carolina electoral ticket included three African American Republican leaders, B.F. Randolph, Stephen A. Swails, and Alonzo J. Ransier. 1951 The New York branch of the NAACP honored Josephine Baker for her work to combat racism. Baker, the American chanteuse who was acclaimed in Europe, had led a personal crusade to force integration of clubs where she appeared in Miami and Las Vegas. She also campaigned against segregated railroad facilities in Chicago and buses in Oakland. 1961 A mob attacked freedom riders in Montgomery, Alabama. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy dispatched four hundred U.S. marshals to Montgomery to keep order in the freedom rider controversy. 1964 Buster Mathis defeated Joe Frazier to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team. 1971 A Pentagon report stated that African Americans constituted 11 percent of U.S. soldiers in Southeast Asia. The report also stated that 12.5 percent of all soldiers killed in Vietnam since 1961 were African American. 1985 Larry Holmes retained the heavyweight boxing title of the International Boxing Federation in Reno, Nevada - by defeating Carl Wilson in 15 rounds. The fight marks the first heavyweight title fight in Reno since Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries fought there in 1910. 2003 Howard Sims, tap dancer, died at age 86. He was known as "Sandman" and taught Gregory Hines, Ben Vereen and others.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 7:03 am
$50 Million Gift Aims to Further Legacy of Brown Case By SARA RIMER Published: May 18, 2004 To mark the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a leading black Wall Street money manager and philanthropist announced yesterday that he would give $50 million to institutions and individuals working to improve race relations and to close the class divide between African-Americans who have benefited from the civil rights movement and those who have not. The philanthropist, Alphonse Fletcher Jr., who attributes his success to his aspiring parents and his education, said he hoped his gift would help continue the progress toward racial equality that the Brown decision started. Mr. Fletcher noted that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had written in the majority opinion in a Supreme Court case last year involving affirmative action in college admissions that she expected that racial preferences in higher education would no longer be necessary in 25 years. "We've got to get working," said Mr. Fletcher, 38, who was elected president of his graduating class at Harvard in 1987, and later helped his parents put his two younger brothers through Harvard while working as a trader on Wall Street. "The clock is ticking." His gift is one of the largest individual gifts ever made by an African-American, said Emmett Carson, the president of the Minneapolis Foundation, and an expert on black charitable giving. Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, gave $20 million to Spelman College in Atlanta in 1988, and last year Oprah Winfrey gave $50.7 million to her Oprah Foundation, which provides educational opportunities for disadvantaged children in the United States, as well as humanitarian help for children in South Africa. Mr. Fletcher, the founder and chairman of Fletcher Asset Management, said he planned to model part of his gift after the Guggenheim awards, with fellowships of $50,000 to be awarded over a number of years to scholars, writers and artists whose work furthered the goals of the Brown decision. He said he would also give $50,000 a year over a number of years to support the school reform work of Dr. James P. Comer, an African-American professor of child psychiatry at Yale University who has spent decades helping disadvantaged schoolchildren around the country. "He understands how important it is to give back in a way that supports education because the future not only of African-Americans, but of the country depends on making it possible for many more African-American children to be successful," said Dr. Comer, 69, whose mother, a domestic worker, and stepfather, a laborer in an Indiana steel mill, put all five of their children through college. A significant portion of the money, Mr. Fletcher said, would also be used to give environmental justice scholarships to Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Mr. Fletcher, who will graduate this month with a master's degree in environmental management from the school, said he believed that African-Americans were disproportionately harmed by environmental degradation, such as toxic waste. He said that part of the gift would be given to Howard University School of Law, the N.A.A.C.P. and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. To guide him in working out how the money can best be put to use, Mr. Fletcher, who is known as Buddy, has assembled a committee of advisors, including Henry Louis Gates, the chairman of the African and African-American Studies department at Harvard; K. Anthony Appiah, a professor of philosophy at Princeton; Amy Gutmann, the provost at Princeton who was recently selected to be the president of the University of Pennsylvania; and Thelma Golden, the curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. "This is the first time that an African-American has made a major donation that addresses the class divide within the African-American community," said Professor Gates, who will be the chairman of the committee of advisors. "Buddy Fletcher is keenly aware that his success epitomizes all that Brown v.. Board of Education and the civil rights movement made possible for African-Americans. But he hasn't forgotten the people that Brown and affirmative action left behind. I'm hoping he sets an example for other members of the upper black middle class." Mr. Fletcher grew up in Waterford, Conn. the oldest of three sons of the late Alphonse Fletcher Sr., a technician with General Dynamics in Connecticut, and his wife Bettye, a longtime elementary school principal, who after working for three decades as an educator earned her doctorate from Teachers College at Columbia University. "My parents always said we should always strive to be better than the best," said Mr. Fletcher, who lives with his partner of more than 10 years, Hobart V. Fowlkes Jr., on the Upper West Side. "My mother always emphasized that we should transcend whatever hurdles there are, and not be held back, distracted or derailed." He majored in applied mathematics at Harvard. While he had gone to predominantly white public schools in Waterford, his parents sent his brother Todd to Andover and Geoffrey to Choate. They were acting on Buddy's advice. "Once at Harvard I realized that while I had a great education in public school, the kids who came from those other schools had a larger constellation of opportunities," Mr. Fletcher said. Only a small number of blacks have been admitted to the top echelons of Wall Street, and Mr. Fletcher said that his Harvard degree was a key credential. He was 28 when he gave $4.5 million to Harvard to endow the Alphonse Fletcher Sr. professorship, a position held by Cornel West before he left for Princeton. Professor Appiah said that Mr. Fletcher's gift was in keeping with "a long African-American tradition, the tradition of faith in education." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/nyregion/18gift.html
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, May 24, 2004 - 8:57 am
Black Facts that happened on May the 24th: 1854 - Anthony Burns, celebrated fugitive slave, is arrested by United States Deputy Marshals in Boston, Massachusetts. 1856 - The Pottawatomie Massacre took place in Kansas. A pro-slavery settlement in Franklin County was attacked by an anti-slavery group led by John Brown. 1861 - Major General Benjamin F. Butler declare slaves "contraband of war." 1864 - Two regiments, the First and Tenth U.S. Colored Troops, repulse an attack by rebel General Fitzhugh Lee. Also participating in battle at Wilson's Wharf Landing, on the bank of the James River, were a small detachment of white Union troops and a battery of light artillery. 1881 - Paul Quinn College is chartered in the State of Texas. The college, founded in 1872, had moved from its original site in Austin to Waco in 1877. 1887 - E. McCoy patents lubricator for Safety Valves May 24, 1887, Patent No. 363,529 1905 - Martin Dihigo is born in Havana, Cuba. He will become a baseball player in the Negro Leagues and will be considered by some to be the greatest all-around player of all-time of African descent. He will be elected to the Cuban and Mexican Halls of Fame during his lifetime, and will be posthumously elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977. 1910 - Walter M. Hard, a young black barber, has invented a device which will improve trolley car service enormously. Hard's device, which he has patented, made it almost impossible for the electrical contact on top of a car to slip off the overhead wire. This eliminated the many wasteful delays trolley car riders suffered whenever the contact slips and the car stopped dead. 1937 - Archie Shepp is born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He will become a renowned avant-garde jazz saxophonist and play with a variety of jazz greats including John Coltrane, Bobby Hutcherson, and Donald Cherry. He also will be a composer of jazz instrumental compositions and the play "Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy." He will use free jazz as a vehicle for political expression and will be an important factor in the growing acceptance of African American identity. He will become an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts but will continue his concert career at the same time, working mostly in Europe. He will be a seminal figure in the development of the New Music and influence many saxophonists of the avant-garde. 1944 - Patricia Louise Holt is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She will be better known as Patti LaBelle, organizer and lead singer of Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells in 1960. In the 1970's, she will reconfigure the group and later reteam with Nona Hendryx and Sara Dash as LaBelle. In 1976, LaBelle will pursue a solo career, gain even more critical and popular acclaim, and win a 1992 Grammy. 1951 - Racial segregation in Washington, DC, restaurants is ruled illegal by the Municipal Court of Appeals. 1954 - Peter Marshall Murray is installed as president of the New York County Medical Society. He is the first African American physician to head an AMA affiliate. 1961 - Twenty-seven Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi. 1963 - The Organization of African Unity is founded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 1966 - Leontyne Price opened Metropolitan Opera Season 1974 - Edward "Duke" Ellington died in New York City at the age of 75. For nearly half a century, Duke Ellington led the premier American big-band, and is considered by many sources to be the greatest composer in the history of jazz. 1983 - Jesse L. Jackson becomes the first African American to address a joint session of a state legislature in the 20th century, when he talks to the Alabama legislature. 1984 - Ralph Sampson of the Houston Rockets becomes the first unanimous choice for NBA Rookie of the Year since Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabar) of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1970. 1991 - Hal McRae is named manager of the Kansas City Royals. He will become one of two African American managers serving in major league baseball. 1993 - The African nation of Eritrea gains independence from Ethiopia. 2000 - Isiah Thomas and Bob McAdoo are elected to be enshrined in the 2000 class of the Basketball Hall of Fame. http://www.kellyken.com/today.htm http://www.informationman.com/today.htm http://www.blackfacts.com/results.asp
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, May 24, 2004 - 9:01 am
Happy Birthday, Patti!
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Monday, May 24, 2004 - 11:48 am
Yay! Happy Birthday Patti! ladyt, i forgot to tell you i caught her on an "ellen" rerun on oxygen last week. she was phe-nom-i-nal! she puts those divas in training bras to shame

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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, May 24, 2004 - 12:30 pm
Oh, I just bet she did, Tish. It still kills me how these diva wannabes are so quick to try to take on the name...
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Friday, June 04, 2004 - 3:04 pm
Navy Dedicates Destroyer To WWII Sailor United Press International June 1, 2004 PORT HUENEME - The U.S. Navy dedicated its latest ship to a World War II sailor who earned the Navy Cross, but whose race prevented him from rising in the ranks. Several thousand people lined the docks of Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme, Calif., as naval officials commissioned the Pinckney, a guided-missile destroyer, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. It is only the 10th vessel named for an African-American in the 229-year history of the U.S. Navy. Bill Pinckney was a cook aboard the aircraft carrier Enterprise when he earned the Navy Cross in 1942. During the Battle of Santa Cruz, Japanese bombs killed 44 sailors on the Enterprise. After regaining consciousness after a blast knocked him out, Pinckney hauled a wounded shipmate through flames in an ammunition-handling area. He lost consciousness a second time, but revived and managed to hoist the man up several decks before heading back down on a futile search for other survivors. Pinckney suffered burns and shrapnel injuries. He left the Navy in 1946 to work as a cook on Merchant Marine vessels for 26 years before retiring. His widow attended the commissioning ceremonies Saturday. http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_navy_060104,00.html?ESRC=navy.nl
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Reiki
Member
08-12-2000
| Friday, June 04, 2004 - 3:41 pm
That is really great news Lady. Sounds like any sailor should be proud to serve on the Pinckney.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Friday, June 04, 2004 - 5:42 pm
Soft, smell-good soap spells big success Armed with multiple degrees and a good idea, a determined entrepreneur succeeds over the long haul By Philipp Harper Special to MSN http://yourbusiness.msn.com/profile-article.aspx?aid=9 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patricia Boswell Talk about getting your ducks in a row. When Safonique, a hypoallergenic liquid detergent, makes its supermarket debut this summer — hitting the shelves of nearly 200 East Coast Wal-Mart's among other stores — it will have taken 12 years to bring the product to full fruition. Or, you could say, it has taken a lifetime, because in a real sense Safonique creator Patricia Boswell has spent all 50 of her years preparing for the moment. The daughter of a Harlem butcher who owned his own shop, Boswell was born to the small-business manner, though that was not the direction her career initially took. First she was a nurse, and then she was in management at Avon on the manufacturing side, where she learned about creating a laundry soap. And then there are the degrees: B.A.s in nursing and business, a certificate in financial planning and an MBA in marketing. "I wanted those initials behind my name," Boswell says. She was able to assemble these credentials and begin building her business even while leading a peripatetic life as the wife of a college basketball coach. It was in 1992, while splitting time between New York City and Morganton, W.Va., where her husband, Ronald Brown, was an assistant coach at West Virginia University, that Boswell came up with the idea for Safonique, which she first envisioned as a powder detergent aimed exclusively at the baby market. She found a manufacturer in Carnegie, Penn., near Morganton, and trademarked the name Safonique, which is a play on the French word for soap, savon. She also created a business entity, Browell Industries, combining her last name and her husband's. There followed grassroots financing and marketing efforts. She put together a business plan that netted $40,000 from family and friends, and tested the appeal of her product's name by polling people outside of a Kinko's. Inevitably, there were setbacks. A relationship with a distributor didn't pan out and, more significantly, her industry changed before her eyes. Powder detergent was out, liquid was in. Boswell rolled with the punches. She reformulated Safonique as a liquid, expanded its marketing reach to take in the whole family, and assumed the role of distributor. Most recently she added scent to the soap using the same plant essences that are employed in aromatherapy. The idea is to make doing laundry a more pleasant, if not therapeutic, experience. Her persistence finally paid off. By lobbying both chain-store buyers and minority board members, she succeeded in getting placement for Safonique in 27 Chicago-area CUBS/Supervalu stores and in the East Coast Wal-Mart's. She also is in negotiations with the Ahold and Albertsons chains. Her product, still manufactured in Carnegie under contract, received added validation this spring when it won a new product award in the health and beauty category at the Food Marketing Institute tradeshow in Chicago. From meager Internet sales of less than $100,000 in 2003, New York-based Browell Industries, which now has three employees, could see sales rocket to more than $1 million in 2004 as the chain deals kick in. Check back in two years, Boswell says, and Safonique could be in more than 10,000 stores nationwide. "Nobody sells my product like I do," she says. Her most successful strategy "Thinking outside the box, my research, my tenacity." What she would do differently "Everything has been a learning experience. I wouldn't do anything differently." Her most valuable resource "My friends Agneta, Pam, Nicole and Yolanda, who have been great sounding boards." What you'll find in her workspace "I have to be in an environment I can create in. A lot of the time I create while I walk around the city or while I sleep. I dream it." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Philipp Harper is a freelance writer based in south Georgia.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, June 07, 2004 - 4:29 pm
Black veterans of World War II received few of the honors their white brothers got Some wounds still fresh By Nurith C. Aizenman, The Washington Post http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04151/323578.stm WASHINGTON -- A few months after the Allied victory in World War II, 24-year-old Capt. Harold Montgomery returned to the General Accounting Office here to reclaim his job with the U.S. Post Office Department. Since leaving 41*2 years earlier, Montgomery had led a heavy weapons company of the Army's all-black 92nd "Buffalo Soldiers" Infantry Division up the western coast of Italy through barrage upon barrage of German fire. He had watched wounded men die as shrapnel sliced through the plasma bags set up to give them transfusions. He had grinned and waved as cheering residents of liberated cities pressed flowers and bottles of wine into his hands. But when he walked into the GAO's grand, high-ceilinged lobby, it was as though time had stood still. A large plaque honoring postal employees who had served in the war did not list Montgomery or any other African American veterans, he recalled. And a personnel manager informed him he would not receive a pay raise given to returning white soldiers. "To hell with that," retorted Montgomery, who resolved to find other work. With the dedication of the National World War II Memorial this weekend, the memory of their homecoming still gives Montgomery and many other black veterans a bitter twinge. At events honoring the roughly 1 million African Americans who served in the war, they recall a fight waged on two fronts: against fascism overseas, and against racist laws and attitudes at home. African American newspapers of the time called it the "Double V Campaign." And although the victory over the Axis powers was complete, the results of the second struggle were decidedly mixed. The nation's unparalleled need for troops gave thousands of African American soldiers, including many in noncombat service units, the chance to prove their mettle and put to rest the assertion by military brass that they lacked the courage, discipline and intelligence to fight effectively. But black soldiers generally received few medals for their accomplishments. They were kept in segregated units, made to sit behind German prisoners of war during USO concerts and banished from the very streets they had liberated once white nurses moved in. For James Strawder, one of more than 2,000 black soldiers who answered Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's call for black volunteers to replace white soldiers killed during the Battle of Bulge, the final indignity came after Germany's surrender: The volunteers were immediately transferred back to all-black labor units as their white comrades in arms were being sent home or given more dignified assignments. Strawder and the 200 other black volunteers at his Army post refused to work. When their commanders threatened to court-martial and execute them for insubordination, the men marched to the stockade and dared them to go ahead. "I had already risked death [in battle], I didn't give a john," Strawder, now 83, recalled. The Army relented and allowed the men to return home on a ship bearing other combat troops. But President Harry Truman did not issue his order desegregating the military for three more years. "I was really disgusted with this country," Strawder said. "I was angry, and I stayed angry for years." Strawder, like the overwhelming majority of blacks participating in the war, was assigned to a service unit -- in his case, a quartermaster company at an air base near Cambridge, England, early in 1943 to build landing strips, dig ditches and clean latrines. Four days after the D-Day invasion, they were shipped to northern France to bury the dead. "There were hundreds of bodies all over the place," Strawder said. "We'd spend day after day loading them on trucks. Lordy, was it sickening." Combat was not an option. Before the war, the Marines and the Army Air Corps barred blacks outright. The Navy accepted them only as cooks, stewards or longshoremen. The Army had only a handful of black combat units, mostly led by white officers. When white soldiers taunted him about being in a service role, Strawder said: "I just felt inferior. It hurt." He also remembered the words of one of his high school teachers: "The only way the black man will ever be free is if he is ready to put his blood on the line when the time comes." African American leaders in the United States felt the same way and pressed President Franklin Roosevelt to use more black troops in combat. As casualties among white soldiers mounted and the need for replacements grew, the administration's resistance weakened. The Navy began commissioning a few black officers -- about 60 by the war's end -- and allowing blacks to fill skilled positions such as signalman and electrician on support ships. The Army Air Forces, precursor to today's Air Force, began training nearly 1,000 black pilots. Dubbed the Tuskegee Airmen after their Alabama base, they flew more than 15,000 sorties over Europe, as part of dive-bombing, strafing, patrol and bomber escort missions. The Marines trained several hundred blacks for two combat battalions. Several thousand more were trained for depot and ammunition companies. Though technically not combat units, some companies repulsed fierce attacks by the Japanese in the Pacific. Meanwhile, the Army began deploying black combat troops, including such storied units as the 92nd Infantry Division and the 761st "Black Panther" Tank Battalion, which led a 183-day thrust from France into Germany. Montgomery was in the first contingent of the 92nd Infantry to land in Naples, Italy, disembarking in the summer of 1944 in pitch darkness. So many wrecked boats blocked the harbor that the men had to walk from their transports to shore on a long network of narrow planks, swaying unsteadily under the weight of their packs as German fighter planes strafed them and Allied anti-aircraft guns boomed back in reply. As Montgomery reached the dock, he began to make out a new sound "like the roar of a crowd in a ballpark," he said. Hundreds of black service troops -- cooks, stewards and laborers -- had gathered to cheer the arrival of the first black combat soldiers in Italy. Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the African American commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, was careful to impress on his men the special responsibility they had as representatives of their race, said Charles McGee, who left college to join the Airmen and flew missions over Europe out of southern Italy. At a briefing soon after McGee's arrival, Davis sternly warned the pilots to stick close to the bombers they were assigned to escort into Germany rather than peel off to engage German fighter planes in glamorous, but unnecessary, dogfights that would leave the bombers vulnerable. "He said, 'If any of you go happy hunting, I'll court-martial you,'" McGee recalled. Some pilots chafed under the rules, which prevented all but two from shooting down the five enemy planes required to become an ace. But McGee took pride in the result of Davis' policy: The Airmen, then flying as the 332nd Fighter Group, did not lose a single bomber to an enemy fighter. McGee, now 84, went on to a 30-year career in the Air Force. Today, he still hosts friends from the 332nd for lunch at least once a month -- receiving them in a suburban Bethesda, Md., house packed with photographs and paintings of him in the red-tailed P-51 Mustang he flew during the war. Montgomery, now 83, also turned to the military after his disappointment at the Post Office, serving in Korea and rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Strawder, who became a truck driver, was haunted by how easily combat can turn men into killers. "We were angry young men," he recalled of the black soldiers in his unit. "We used to say, 'If we don't kill these Germans, they'll come home and become our bosses.'" But for Strawder and other black veterans, time and the nation's growing recognition of their sacrifice has helped salve the wounds. When he learned that some of the events surrounding the memorial's dedication will honor African Americans, he gave a smile free of rancor. "It does my heart good that they are giving us credit," he said.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, June 07, 2004 - 4:33 pm
I missed hearing about this .... Remembering Vernon Jarrett by George E. Curry NNPA Editor-in-Chief http://www.blackpressusa.com/News/Article.asp?SID=3&Title=Hot+Stories&NewsID=3333 WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Initially, I began this article with the ordinary things people write about when someone dies. But I hadn’t gotten to the end of the first paragraph before I realized that I couldn’t write anything ordinary about Vernon Jarrett, the pioneering journalist who was extraordinary in so many ways. Vernon died Sunday night at the University of Chicago Hospitals at the age of 84 after a long bout with cancer of the esophagus. This story is not about how Vernon died – it’s about how he lived. Vernon has always been a larger-than-life icon in journalism. He entered the field in 1946, the year before I was born, but we have always shared a special bond. We are both Southerners; he grew up in Paris, Tenn. and I spent all of my childhood in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Both of us were history majors and editor of The Aurora, the school newspaper, at Knoxville College. We both maintained a passion for our alma mater and had been serving together on its Board of Trustees. Beyond that, Vernon Jarrett has set a high standard that I can only aspire to reach. Most important, he was talented. Not only was he talented, he was in the never-ending quest to become the perfect writer. Whenever you saw the Vernon Jarrett by-line on a story, it was solid assurance that everything that followed was well-researched and well-written. You could take it to the bank. Vernon was a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists, served as its second president from 1977-1979, and prided himself on having never missed a convention in more than 25 years. At each annual convention, you were as likely to find Vernon in the hotel lobby advising some newcomer in the business about his or her career as attending a workshop or speech. Vernon Jarrett was a “race man” in the tradition of W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter and Paul Robeson, towering historical figures that he could – and did – lecture about without prompting. He praised and challenged African-Americans and went to his death befuddled that any Black person working in journalism today could part his or her lips to ask whether he was a Black journalist or a journalist who happened to be Black. Vernon and Les Payne, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of Newsday, would direct young journalists to read the birth announcements in newspapers and see if they could ever find a single instance of a mother giving birth a to a 7-pound, 8 ounce “journalist.” Vernon’s position was that we’re born Black, we live as Blacks, we die Black, and we should feel some obligation to help people who are Black. It is only fitting that Vernon ended his professional career at the same place he started it six decades earlier – working for the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper. On his first day at the Defender, Vernon was assigned to cover what was then called a race riot. Not only did he do it well, he has been on fire every since, somehow landing in the midst of every important event that involved Black folks. It is telling that Vernon worked for more than 20 years in the Black Press while the daily newspapers in Chicago maintained all-White editorial staffs. It was their loss, not Vernon’s. He continued to work at the Defender and in 1948 hosted “Negro Newsfront,” the first daily radio newscast produced by an African-American. The Chicago Tribune, then one of the most strident conservative newspapers in the country, finally came to its senses and hired Vernon in 1970 as its first syndicated Black columnist and editorial board member. Whether he was at the Tribune, the Sun-Times or the Defender, Vernon never failed to plead the cause of the poor and disadvantaged. He was a race man who did not allow others to limit him because of his race. Being a race man did not mean letting Black leaders off the hook. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. –who organized funeral services for Vernon on Saturday at Operation PUSH – found that out when he stormed into the office of Jim Squires, the editor of the Tribune, to complain about something that Vernon had written. Vernon invited himself to the meeting and reminded both Jackson and Squires that he would continue to write truthfully or find a new home. In 1983, he moved the rival Chicago Sun-Times in a similar capacity. That lasted for 11 years. In his last column, Vernon wrote: “…I’m not retiring from my profession. I have too many bills owed to the dead, including my own son [William Jarrett died in 1993 of a rare rheumatologic condition; a second son, Thomas, is a photojournalist at the ABC-TV affiliate in Chicago] – debts that only be relieved through work with the living.” When he was living, Vernon was tired of seeing the overemphasis of athletics and entertainment in the Black community. In 1997, he created the ACT-SO, an acronym for Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics. It is held each year in conjunction with the NAACP’s annual convention and students are awarded medals, scholarships, computers and books. Not only was Vernon a towering figure in the newspaper industry – he served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in the industry – and for many years hosted his own television and radio programs in Chicago. After Vernon left the Sun-Times, he returned to writing a column for the Defender. He wrote one column a year ago that prompted more than 100 students to enroll at Knoxville College. With his stellar credentials and accomplishments, there was nothing formal or distant about Vernon Jarrett. He prided himself on being a raconteur. In his 80s, he was calling everyone else old. If you were standing in a crowd with Vernon and a young person walked by, Vernon would often point to someone in the group and tell the young person: “He’s so old that when God said let there be light, he pulled the switch.” He would also say other things that shouldn’t appear in a family newspaper. Vernon and I took great pride in Knoxville College, a historically Black college whose enrollment has never exceeded 1,200 students. Although the college has never had a journalism program, it has produced a long line of successful journalists, including Barbara Rodgers, an Emmy award-winning television reporter for KPIX-Channel 5 in San Francisco and Ralph Wiley, an author and former reporter for Sports Illustrated. The last time we talked, Vernon pointed out that Knoxville College is the only institution that has produced alumni that served as president of the National Association of Black Journalists and the American Society of Magazine Editors, an honor bestowed upon me when I was editor of Emerge: Black America’s Newsmagazine. Of course, Vernon was making that observation to set me up for an idea he had. He wanted us to start a writing institute at Knoxville College, where he and I would come back a couple of weeks in the summer to teach journalism to high school students. He didn’t live to see that happen, but President Barbara R. Hatton has pledged to create such a program at Knoxville College. She said that it will be named in Vernon Jarrett’s honor and knowing Vernon, that would bring a smile to his face. He always preferred deeds over words.
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Rupertbear
Member
09-19-2003
| Monday, June 07, 2004 - 4:36 pm
Thank you so much for posting this Ladytex, it gave me goosebumps as I was reading it. (((hug)))
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 12:55 pm
Ray Charles dies at 73
Thursday, June 10, 2004 Posted: 3:44 PM EDT (1944 GMT) http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/10/obit.ray.charles.ap/index.html BEVERLY HILLS, California (AP) -- Ray Charles, the Grammy-winning crooner who blended gospel and blues in such crowd-pleasers as "What'd I Say" and heartfelt ballads like "Georgia on My Mind," died Thursday, a spokesman said. He was 73. Charles died at his Beverly Hills home surrounded by family and friends, said spokesman Jerry Digney. Charles' last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios, built 40 years ago in central Los Angeles, as a historic landmark. Blind by age 7 and an orphan at 15, Charles spent his life shattering any notion of musical boundaries and defying easy definition. A gifted pianist and saxophonist, he dabbled in country, jazz, big band and blues, and put his stamp on it all with a deep, warm voice roughened by heartbreak from a hardscrabble childhood in the segregated South. "His sound was stunning -- it was the blues, it was R&B, it was gospel, it was swing -- it was all the stuff I was listening to before that but rolled into one amazing, soulful thing," singer Van Morrison told Rolling Stone magazine in April. Charles won nine of his 12 Grammy Awards between 1960 and 1966, including the best R&B recording three consecutive years ("Hit the Road Jack," "I Can't Stop Loving You" and "Busted"). His versions of other songs are also well known, including "Makin' Whoopee" and a stirring "America the Beautiful." Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell wrote "Georgia on My Mind" in 1931 but it didn't become Georgia's official state song until 1979, long after Charles turned it into an American standard.
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Weinermr
Member
08-18-2001
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 1:22 pm
I'm very sad to hear of the death of Ray Charles.
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Rupertbear
Member
09-19-2003
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 1:47 pm
I was coming here to see if the sad news had been posted yet...he was a wonderful talent & will be missed. 
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Reiki
Member
08-12-2000
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 2:31 pm
Very very sad news.
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Moondance
Member
07-30-2000
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 2:38 pm
I am very sad to hear this... he is amazing
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Beachcomber
Member
08-26-2003
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 2:40 pm
What a great entertainer he was. Isn't there a movie being made about his life and the guy who played Wanda on "Living Color" in it?
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Heyltslori
Member
09-15-2001
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 2:51 pm
He has a really amazing website where he has written his autobiography. It's very interesting and parts are very sad. Ray Charles
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Goddessatlaw
Member
07-19-2002
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 3:37 pm
I hate that we've lost another giant. He was one of a kind.
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Essence
Member
01-12-2002
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 3:55 pm
This news makes me very sad. 
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Texannie
Member
07-16-2001
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 3:57 pm
I so very sorry to hear this today. His "America the Beautiful" is just haunting.
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Babyruth
Member
07-19-2001
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 4:25 pm
Sad news, indeed.
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 5:19 pm
I was trying to think of the coolest thing about Mr. Charles. Was it America the Beautiful? Or his great jazz album with Betty Carter where they do maybe the sexiest Baby, It's Cold Outside ever? Or the way his Tangerine label in the early 60s helped some neglected artists, like Little Jimmy Scott? Or Georgia On My Mind and the way he made it an anthem that became a state's theme song? Or the hippest country albums ever made? I don't wanna decide. Mr. Charles was just cool. End of story.
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Egbok
Member
07-13-2000
| Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 6:00 pm
Earlier this afternoon, I was working in my cubicle and had KRTH 101 on the radio, but set really low. I heard Ray Charles singing "American The Beautiful" and so I turned it up a bit...because I love his version so very much. When it ended, the DJ announced the passing of Ray Charles and I was stunned and tears fell onto my desk. This is very sad news for me. Did you all know that Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley named their only daughter "Alexa Ray" after Ray Charles? I always thought that was so neat.
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