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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Thursday, March 03, 2005 - 3:12 pm
"Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America" by Lerone Jr. Bennett
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Twiggyish
Member
08-14-2000
| Thursday, March 03, 2005 - 3:25 pm
Forgot to add that the lecture drew 800 people! I'll be sure to look for that book.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, March 21, 2005 - 7:22 am
Cabaret singer Bobby Short dead at 80
3-time Grammy nominee was fixture at N.Y.'s Carlyle Hotel The Associated Press Updated: 8:39 a.m. ET March 21, 2005 NEW YORK - Cabaret singer Bobby Short, the tuxedoed embodiment of New York style and sophistication who was a fixture at his piano in the Carlyle Hotel for more than 35 years, died Monday. He was 80. Short died of leukemia at New York Presbyterian Hospital, said Virginia Wicks, a Los Angeles-based publicist. The hospital did not immediately return a call seeking further detail. As times changed and popular music shifted from Sinatra to Springsteen to Snoop Dogg, Short, a three-time Grammy nominee, remained irrevocably devoted to the “great American songbook”: songs by Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, the Gershwins, Billy Strayhorn, Harold Arlen. “I go back to what I heard Marian Anderson say once: ‘First a song has to be beautiful,”’ Short told The New York Times in 2002. “However, ‘beautiful’ covers a wide range of things. I have to admire a song’s structure and what it’s about. But I also have to determine how I can transfer my affection for a song to an audience; I have to decide whether I can put it across.” With his classic songs and suave presence, he entertained thousands over the years in the Carlyle’s Upper East Side boite. In 2003, he celebrated his 35th anniversary there. Rich and famous fans His fans inevitably included New York’s rich and famous: Norman Mailer and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the ’70s, Barbara Walters and Dominick Dunne in the new millennium. Short, despite his veneration of the classics, was no nostalgia act. His musical taste, like his smooth voice and elegant wardrobe, was always impeccable. As an ambassador of vintage songs, Short played the White House for presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Clinton. “My audience,” he once said, “expects a certain amount of sophistication when they are coming to hear me.” When Short first played the Cafe Carlyle in 1968, the Vietnam War was raging and Mayor John Lindsay was in City Hall. The quintessential “saloon singer” remained through another five administrations, becoming as familiar a New York landmark as the Empire State Building or Central Park. He appeared in the movies “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Splash,” along with the television miniseries “Roots” and the program “In The Heat of the Night.” While suffering from a vocal problem in 1970, Short began work on an autobiography, “Black and White Baby.” In 1995, he updated his memoirs with “Bobby Short: The Life and Times of a Saloon Singer.” ‘Miniature King of Swing’ Robert Waltrip Short was born Sept. 15, 1924, the ninth of 10 children in a musically inclined family. By age 4, he was playing by ear at the well-worn family piano, recreating songs heard on the radio. By age 9, the self-taught pianist was performing in saloons around his Danville, Ill., home to earn extra money during the Depression. Even then, his material included Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady.” Within two years, Short graduated to playing Chicago under his nickname, the “Miniature King of Swing.” Short played the vaudeville circuit: St. Louis, Milwaukee, Kansas City. On one date, he teamed with Louis Armstrong. And by age 12, he was headlining Manhattan nightclubs and regular engagements at the Apollo Theater. But Short, afraid of missing out on his youth, returned to his hometown and his high school. Four years later, a still-teenage Short was back performing; by 1948, he had a regular gig at a tony Los Angeles club, the Cafe Gala. Three years there left Short in what he called “a velvet rut,” and he left the United States for gigs in London and Paris. His success overseas led to an album for Atlantic Records. Time in France During the ’60s, Short’s audience began to shrink. The Beatles and the British Invasion dominated music; suburban flight and urban crime cut into the nightclub business. He overcome those woes in 1968 with an extraordinary concert featuring singer Mabel Mercer in Manhattan’s Town Hall; their live album became a success. He signed a deal with the Cafe Carlyle in the same year: six nights a week, eight months a year at the lounge inside the posh East 76th Street hotel. During his vacations, Short spent much of his time in Mougins, France. Short lived on Sutton Place in Manhattan, sharing an apartment overlooking the East River with his pets. He was never married. Short is survived by his adopted son Ronald Bell and brother Reginald Short, both of California, Wicks said.
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Monday, March 21, 2005 - 8:01 am
Good bye, Bobby. We'll miss you.
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Monday, May 02, 2005 - 4:16 pm
Kenneth Clark, 90, helped end school segregation Cleveland Plain Dealer Kenneth Clark, the psychologist and educator whose 1950 report showing the deleterious effect of school segregation influenced the U.S. Supreme Court to hold school segregation to be unconstitutional, died Sunday. He was 90. Clark was a leader in the civil rights movement that developed after World War II. He was the first black to earn a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University, the first to become a tenured instructor in the city college system of New York and, in 1966, the first black elected to the New York state Board of Regents. It was his research with black schoolchildren that became a pillar of Brown vs. the Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that toppled the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation that then prevailed in 21 states. Clark, who grew up in New York, gained firsthand knowledge of the effects of legally entrenched segregation in an extended visit, in 1950, to Clarendon County, S.C. Its school system had three times as many blacks as whites, but white students received more than 60 percent of the funds earmarked for education. Clark administered a test that he had devised years earlier to 16 of those black children, who were between the ages of 6 and 9. He showed them a black doll and a white doll and asked them what they thought of each. Eleven of them said that the black doll looked "bad," and nine of them thought that the white doll looked "nice." [...]
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Goddessatlaw
Member
07-19-2002
| Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - 7:34 pm
Kewl story. Slave Cabin in Maryland to be Restored
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - 9:45 pm
very cool story ... thanks for the link, GAL
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Yankee_in_ca
Member
08-01-2000
| Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - 11:07 pm
GAL, that cabin is about 3 miles from where my parents live. Very interesting.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 6:12 am
I read about that earlier yesterday. Glad they're going to restore it. And surrounded by expensive homes, gotta love it.
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 10:17 pm
That IS cool.
quote:Sevag Balian, president of Haverford Homes, said the rebuilt cabin may be used as a community center. But he said just having the cabin in the middle of a wealthy neighborhood made up mostly of black homeowners carries enormous symbolism. "Here we have African Americans who were slaves, and now it will be an estate community inhabited predominantly by African Americans," he said.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - 6:06 pm
Today I visited the DuSable Museum of African-American History in Chicago. It had a very interesting visiting exhibit about Maroons. Maroons were escaped slaves that escaped to the wilderness and set up colonies. The whole thing intrigued me, but I was very surprised to learn about the still existing tribe/colony in Bracketville, TX. I'm not home right now, but I definitely will be doing more research on this.
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 10:48 am
Wow, Ladytex, I have heard of Maroons, but never heard of Bracketville, TX either.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Friday, June 17, 2005 - 3:30 pm
Juju, here is a link to some info on the Seminole Maroons of Bracketville: http://www.folklife.si.edu/resources/maroon/tour/visit/b3.htm And here is the link to the traveling exhibit: http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibit_main.asp?id=99
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Friday, June 17, 2005 - 5:34 pm
Thanks, Ladytex.
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Friday, June 17, 2005 - 10:45 pm
A friend sent me a link to a wonderful speech by the wonderful Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan. She was amazing--listen to it here.
I remember seeing documentaries about Watergate when I was a kid--sadly or not, after it was over--and I remember Barbara Jordan and her amazing voice, her amazing strength, her amazing bravery. And I hear her now and I feel the same awe I felt when I first saw her at 7 or 8. We need more like her.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 8:50 pm
Barbara Jordan was absolutely AWESOME! When I was younger I aspired to be like her ...
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Hippyt
Member
06-15-2001
| Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 8:57 pm
I visited her grave in Austin.
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Urgrace
Member
08-19-2000
| Sunday, June 19, 2005 - 8:14 pm
Today was Juneteenth!
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Friday, June 24, 2005 - 6:03 pm
'Also on the Oakwood campus a plot of ground almost 100 feet square bounded by four granite stones marks a sacred spot on the campus where 40 to 50 slaves were buried. It is believed that descendants of Dred Scott were buried there. The last record of slaves living on this land was in the year 1821.' I saw this cemetary when I was in Huntsville and I'll post the pics I have later.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 4:10 pm
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 4:11 pm
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 4:14 pm
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 4:20 pm
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 6:04 pm
Great pics, Mocha. Where is the cemetery?
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Seamonkey
Member
09-07-2000
| Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 6:20 pm
Pretty great stuff to be able to visit when you are on a business trip!
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