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Archive through December 17, 2006

The TVClubHouse: General Discussions ARCHIVES: Apr. 2007 ~ Jun. 2007: Black History (ARCHIVES January 2006 ~ June 2007): Archive through December 17, 2006 users admin

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Jimmer
Moderator

08-30-2000

Monday, December 04, 2006 - 11:13 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Jimmer a private message Print Post    
It would be great if one of the networks would re-broadcast Roots. I know I'd watch it.

Scooterrific
Member

07-08-2005

Monday, December 04, 2006 - 11:21 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Scooterrific a private message Print Post    
Jimmer, I concur & me three.

Denecee
Member

09-05-2002

Monday, December 04, 2006 - 2:32 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Denecee a private message Print Post    
I remember watching Roots, it was a week long. Two of my closest friends were black but I knew almost all of the kids in school. Those two girls continued to be close but several of the girls started giving me the cold shoulder. I didn't understand at the time but I'm sure they didn't decide on their own that they couldn't be friends with me anymore.
I have never and will never be friends with anybody who thinks they are better than another for any reason. If I am at a party and somebody makes a racist joke, I do not not laugh. I either walk out or tell them that it's not funny and I'm offended.
Herckle, great post!

Tater
Member

03-19-2003

Monday, December 04, 2006 - 2:46 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tater a private message Print Post    
Yes I was upset when I watched it. I was mad that it was glossed over in history class. I think I was in 8th grade. I was asking a lot of questions and got admonished by the teacher because that wasn't the topic in his lesson plan for the week. I innocently asked him why not. OY! I was sent to the library. So I said upon leaving class...I bet I can find the answers there. LOL! My i was the little trouble maker!

Jan
Moderator

08-01-2000

Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 6:28 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Jan a private message Print Post    
finally MacLeans magazine has the Brian Bethune article about Brown university's links to slavery, online at this link. The article is called "The university that Slavery built"

Spangs
Member

10-07-2005

Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 7:54 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Spangs a private message Print Post    
tragic....but you meant Brown university, not Howard, right Jan?

lol - thanks Spangs! My Bad - I changed it for future readers!! - Jan

Mameblanche
Member

08-24-2002

Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 3:13 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mameblanche a private message Print Post    
Legal, I read Sidney Poitier's biography years ago when I bought the book. OMIGOLLY, I was already in love with him before I got the book, afterwards, I was fit to be tied... WHAT AN INSPIRATION! And it's one of the few things Mom and I agree on, we both drool over that man. GRIN.

Roots the miniseries, was one of the first programs on tv to really make an impact. It proved that you don't need to simply show drivel to get people to watch. Some of us actually want to think, we enjoy learning, especially when its provided in the excellent way that show was filmed. It was quality programming and it made a difference in future programming. That was a tall order, and they filled it!

Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 7:27 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
i always use the statue of Alex Haley reading to kids as the landmark for people to meet me at in downtown annapolis :-) i cant imagine a better way to remember him in statue form - as long as we all continue to have a living memorial of his story and message too

Westtexan
Member

07-16-2004

Thursday, December 07, 2006 - 7:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Westtexan a private message Print Post    
I loved Roots. I was very young when I watched it (10 or 12 years old?? when did it air?). Anyway, it profoundly affected me. I began to view things differently--was raised in not the most openminded environment or community. Still have to continue working on long ago ingrained stereotypes. Shows like Roots are life changing.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Monday, December 11, 2006 - 6:00 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
U.S. Senator Barack Obama and the One-Drop rule

Why are so many people saying that U.S. Senator Barack Obama could become the first black president ?
If by that they mean that he would become the first African-American president--meaning his father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas--it would make sense.

But I don't think that's what people mean.

Despite the deaths of legal segregation and Jim Crow, apparently most Americans still embrace the one-drop rule.

F. JamesDavis, a retired professor of sociology at Illinois State University, defined the one-drop rule as the belief that any person with "any known African black ancestry" is considered to be black.

Actually, if Obama is elected President of the United States, he would become the nation's first biracial president, wouldn't he? Obama has never shied away from his African heritage, and this is not about how he views his racial identity.

The point is, it doesn't look like the public is giving him much choice. Although his mother is white, and he was raised in a home with his white grand-parents, to many, the one-drop rule still applies.

As pointed out by Stephan Thernstrom in an article published in the National Review in April, 2000, "the United States is the only country in the world in which a white woman can give birth to a black baby but a black woman cannot give birth to a white baby."

link

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - 7:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
Poll: Most Americans see lingering racism -- in others

(CNN) -- Most Americans, white and black, see racism as a lingering problem in the United States, and many say they know people who are racist, according to a new poll.

But few Americans of either race -- about one out of eight -- consider themselves racist.

And experts say racism has evolved from the days of Jim Crow to the point that people may not even recognize it in themselves.

A poll conducted last week by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN indicates that whites and blacks disagree on how serious a problem racial bias is in the United States.

Almost half of black respondents -- 49 percent -- said racism is a "very serious" problem, while 18 percent of whites shared that view. Forty-eight percent of whites and 35 percent of blacks chose the description "somewhat serious."

Asked if they know someone they consider racist, 43 percent of whites and 48 percent of blacks said yes.

But just 13 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks consider themselves racially biased.

The poll was based on phone interviews conducted December 5 through Thursday with 1,207 Americans, including 328 blacks and 703 non-Hispanic whites.
Blind to bias?

University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.

"We've reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don't recognize," Dovidio said.

He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.

"Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways," he said.

That "stealth" discrimination reveals itself in many different situations.

A three-year undercover investigation by the National Fair Housing Alliance found that real estate agents steered whites away from integrated neighborhoods and steered blacks toward predominantly black neighborhoods.

"Racism here is quite subtle," e-mailed CNN.com reader Blair William, originally from Trinidad, who now lives in Lexington, South Carolina. "I think that the issue is twofold. I believe that white America's perception of blacks is still generally negative based on their limited interaction with blacks, whether this is via the media or in person. ...

"On the other hand, black Americans need to stop devaluing themselves and their people," he added. "Another race can only respect you if you respect yourself and currently, I find that blacks still devalue and disgrace each other and themselves."
Applicants' names may sway employers

Racism also can be a factor in getting a job.

Candidates named Emily O'Brien or Neil McCarthy were much more likely to get calls back from potential employers than applicants named Tamika Williams and Jamal Jackson, even though they had the same credentials, according to a study by the University of Chicago.

Racial bias may even determine whether you can flag a cab.

New York Times writer Calvin Sims recently wrote about his experiences in the city.

"If a cab passes you by, obviously it is frustrating, it's degrading and it's just really confusing, because this is akin to being in the South and being refused service at a lunch counter, which is what happened in the '60s and '70s," he said.
'Differences ... make this world exciting'

The Opinion Research poll shows that blacks and whites disagree on how each race feels about the other.

Asked how many whites dislike blacks, 40 percent of black respondents said "all" or "many." Twenty-six percent of whites chose one of those replies.

On the question of how many blacks dislike whites, 33 percent of blacks said "all" or "many," while 38 percent of whites agreed -- not a significant difference statistically because of the poll's 5 percent margin of error.

About half of black respondents said they had been a victim of discrimination because of their race. A little more than a quarter of whites said they had been victims of racial discrimination.

"I am a firm believer that racism is rampant in the United States," wrote another CNN.com reader, Mark Boyle, of Muncie, Indiana.

"The concept of 'race' is flawed," he added. "Our differences as human beings are what make this world exciting and interesting. If we were all of the same culture, how boring would that be? The world needs to take a page from the atmosphere in Hawaii -- the most racially diverse place in which I have lived."

link

Escapee
Member

06-15-2004

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 8:56 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Escapee a private message Print Post    
Interesting how it differs by between 1 and 5 percent. That sure isn't much. Almost equal....

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 3:11 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
Trove of black history gathers dust
Mayme Clayton Collection headed to better quarters

By William Booth
The Washington Post
Updated: 11:52 p.m. CT Dec 12, 2006

LOS ANGELES - Working entirely on her own, spending her librarian's salary and later her Social Security checks, Mayme Clayton amassed one of the finest collections of African American history in the world -- and stored it in her garage.

"I got to warn you, it's scary in here." This is Mayme's son, Avery Clayton, talking. He's jiggling his keys and opening the door. He reaches, finds the light switch, clicks. Inside? It is amazing.

"Originally," Avery apologizes, "there were tables and chairs, like a library, and you could sit down. But as you can -- "

The roof sags, it may leak. There are books, floor to ceiling on shelves, but the passages between the stacks are blocked, with storage cabinets and film cases and cardboard boxes overflowing with photographs, journals, cartoons, correspondence, playbills, magazines, all dusted with a soft fungal dander. Mold.

The old garage appears held together by its peeling paint, out in an overgrown garden, behind a bungalow in a modest neighborhood. For a moment, before the eye begins to settle on the antique book spines in the gloomy light, the garage looks like a hoarder's hiding place, ready for a bulldozer and a trip to the city dump. "She was a hoarder, she was," Avery says. "But she was a hoarder with a vision."

That is the opinion of the experts, too. "She has everything," says Sue Hodson, curator of literary manuscripts at the prestigious Huntington Library east of Los Angeles. "This is probably the finest collection of African American literature, manuscripts, film and ephemera in private hands. It is just staggering. It is just superior in every way."

Hodson says that when the Mayme Clayton Collection is moved, secured, cleaned and catalogued, it will be among the top such archives in the United States, alongside the Vivian G. Harsh Collection at the Chicago Public Library and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. (The Schomburg's director, Howard Dotson, described the Clayton holdings as "major and significant" in the Los Angeles Times.)

Avery, a retired art teacher who is now the force behind preserving his mother's legacy, says this is "only a fraction of the collection." The rest of the Claytonia is scattered in storage rooms around Los Angeles and in a climate-controlled vault at a film warehouse, which protects its vast cinema archive of more than 1,700 titles and represents the largest pre-1959 black film collection in the world, including rare silent reels.

Many people may forget that alongside white cinema was its black counterpart, "race movies" seen in some 600 African American theaters and starring the likes of Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Katherine Dunham and Sammy Davis Jr. The most prolific director and producer was Oscar Micheaux, and Clayton found original prints of many of his films, including the silent movie "Body and Soul," which introduced Paul Robeson to the screen, and "The Exile," Micheaux's first talkie, made in 1931.

‘So-so body with a go-go mind’
By the time she died in October, at age 83 of pancreatic cancer ("I've got a so-so body with a go-go mind," she said in her later years), Mayme Clayton amassed almost 30,000 rare, first-edition and out-of-print books. She was especially strong on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, obtaining first editions and correspondence from Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston.

Her trove includes the first book published in America by an author of African descent, Phillis Wheatley's "Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral," dated 1773, when she was a slave in Boston. Clayton has the only known copy signed by the author; she paid $600 for it in 1972, far more than she usually spent. Her collecting style was more bargain basement than Sotheby's auction. She'd prowl used bookstores, flea markets, estate sales. When old people died, she'd get into their attics.

In the garage, it still feels like a treasure hunt. There are the first issues of Ebony magazine (She picked up Vol. 1, No. 1, for a dime). A book about Denzel Washington next to "The Negro in Tennessee: 1865 to 1880." There's a "How to Box" manual by Joe Louis lying on a box of Jim Crow cartoons with the label "Negro Jokes" beneath the original movie poster for "Porgy and Bess."

"Oh, that's the one that hung at the premiere at the Orpheum Theatre in New York," says Avery. "Here, look at this."

His mother possessed a complete set of the first abolitionist journal in America, "The African Repository," dated 1830 to 1845. Among the manuscripts, there is an emphasis on paper that predates the Civil War: travel passes and bills of sale for slaves, and plantation inventories.

Avery describes one dated 1790. "They had 408 slaves in the inventory, along with the livestock, the chickens and cows and whatnot. For the slaves, it lists occupation. Field hand. House worker. Blacksmith. Distiller. You know the number one job? Breeding stock. Sixty-two women. You can read all about slavery, but when you hold a document like that in your hand, that is powerful."

In an interview with NPR, Mayme Clayton said, "Unless you know where you've been, you really don't know where you're going." She was born in Van Buren, Ark., and went to New York at age 21 to work as a model and a photographer's assistant, which is where she met her husband, a barber 16 years her senior who brought her back to Los Angeles, and the little house and its garage in the West Adams neighborhood where she lived at the time of her death. Clayton was known as competitive golfer, a quiet force in the community, an obsessive collector/stacker/finder/keeper who enjoyed e-mailing bawdy jokes. She went on to get her master's and doctoral degrees, spending most of her career as a librarian at the University of Southern California and UCLA; she began her collecting because the universities didn't seem that interested in African American artifacts.

Robust group of volunteers
Avery Clayton remembers his mother collecting right until the very end. "She bought a poster for a thousand dollars a few months before her transition and I still don't know where she got the money," he says. It was for a black cowboy movie, a popular subgenre, called "The Bronze Buckaroo."

Clayton has assembled a robust group of volunteers and local politicians for the task at hand. He needs to raise $7 million, but doesn't seem too worried. Culver City has already leased him a 24,000-square-foot former courthouse (for a dollar a year), and various universities will provide technical help to curate and organize the pieces. The Mayme Clayton Collection, Avery says, will be out of the garage in weeks. "Before the winter rains," he promises.

Julie Page, head of the preservation department at the University of California at San Diego library, is managing the move, under a federally funded program to save endangered collections. The garage makes her nervous. "I just can't wait to get it all out of there. That collection really needs to be in a secure, safe environment." It is time.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

link

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 3:43 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
Wow truly amazing.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 3:45 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
no kidding ...

Landi
Member

07-29-2002

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 4:04 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Landi a private message Print Post    
thank god for mayme clayton, that all of those important items were saved in a collection.

Pamy
Member

01-02-2002

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 7:04 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Pamy a private message Print Post    
that is amazing

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 7:14 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Juju2bigdog a private message Print Post    
Wow.

Twiggyish
Member

08-14-2000

Thursday, December 14, 2006 - 4:15 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Twiggyish a private message Print Post    
"Unless you know where you've been, you really don't know where you're going."

So true!

Jhonise
Member

07-10-2003

Thursday, December 14, 2006 - 5:58 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Jhonise a private message Print Post    
Wow.

Zachsmom
Member

07-13-2000

Thursday, December 14, 2006 - 7:13 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Zachsmom a private message Print Post    
They should take all of that history and create a museum! Can you imagine all of that history in one place? It needs to be shared. I would love to see it.

Retired
Member

07-11-2001

Thursday, December 14, 2006 - 11:45 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Retired a private message Print Post    
Wow. Glad her collection is going to be preserved and shared.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Friday, December 15, 2006 - 3:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
Museum examines black Vietnam experience
Pittsburgh collection finds soldiers’ lives linked to social change in America

PITTSBURGH - A pair of combat boots. A wristband woven from boot laces with several bullets dangling. A photo of black servicemen standing outside a makeshift African temple.

The items are part of "Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era," a new exhibit at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center that examines the black experience in Vietnam in the context of the era's domestic social fabric.

Samuel W. Black, curator of the center's African American Collections, conceived the exhibit, in part because his older brother, Jimmy McNeil, served two years in Vietnam.

Black was 4 years old when his brother was sent to Vietnam. He died in 1971, unrelated to the conflict, and Black said he really never knew what his brother's experience was.

Black found much had been written about the role of blacks in other wars, particularly the Civil War and World War II, but he found little about blacks in Vietnam.

As he began researching, he found the black experience in Vietnam was also linked to social changes on U.S. soil. The civil rights movement was in full swing. The Black Power movement was growing.

"Two things kind of stood out for me," he said. "One was the level of activism, political and social activism, on the part of African Americans in Vietnam. That was surprising to me. And the other was the presence of African American women in Vietnam" performing administrative, nursing and other duties.

Black Power organizations were active in Vietnam, he said. They weren't sanctioned, but they were not underground, either.

Movements in Africa
"What you begin to see through this movement in Vietnam is a connection, not only an extension of the civil rights movement, but also an embracement of the independence movement in Africa," he said.

One display in the exhibit shows a wooden carving of two fists with broken shackles, with red, black and green stripes at the base — colors associated with African nationhood.

Donald Harris was a young Army artilleryman fighting for Nui Ba Den, a strategic mountain, in 1969. Close to the end of the fighting, he said, a Vietnamese boy approached him with the carving.

"It really caught my eye. I traded him a case of C-rations," said Harris, 61, who lives in the Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg.

The carving spoke to Harris about black struggles, but he also saw it as a good-luck charm, he said. "When everybody went out that door, we rubbed it, even the white soldiers," he said.

Harris said he was naive when he went to Vietnam. He hadn't been out of Pittsburgh before and had never encountered racism until basic training. Once in Vietnam, however, he said he did not experience racism.

"All we cared about was coming back home or taking care of ourselves," he said. "We were soldiers. That was it in a nutshell."

Going beyond recitations of war
The exhibit has nearly 200 artifacts, including photographs, military uniforms, recruitment posters and letters and diaries from servicemen.

Black said he wasn't interested in doing an exhibit about war.

"I wanted to keep the focus more or less on the social aspects of life and the impact of the war," he said. "The war is sort of the background which all of this plays out."

The exhibit, for example, features songs such as James Brown's "Say it Loud (I'm Black & I'm Proud)" and Marvin Gaye's 1971 hit, "What's Going On."

The history center is also publishing an accompanying book, "Soul Soldiers," which will include narratives, essays, poetry, art and photographs.

The Smithsonian Institution, with which the history center is affiliated, is considering having the exhibit travel after its debut in Pittsburgh. The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, which lent several pieces for the exhibit, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, are also interested in hosting it.

Link

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Saturday, December 16, 2006 - 2:00 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
Post-Revolutionary Recognition
Slave Honored as 'African American Patriot' at Capitol

By Sue Anne Pressley Montes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 16, 2006; Page A01

For years, he was known only as the faithful servant. Through the long campaigns of the Revolutionary War, he toiled alongside his famous master. In a painting that has hung in the U.S. Capitol since 1899, he is the figure by the fire, roasting sweet potatoes.

Now Oscar Marion is anonymous no longer. He has had his name restored.

In a ceremony yesterday at the Capitol, Marion was recognized as the "African American Patriot" he always was. A proclamation signed by President Bush expressed the thanks of a "grateful nation" and recognized Oscar Marion's "devoted and selfless consecration to the service of our country in the Armed Forces of the United States."

<snip>

WP Link

Goddessatlaw
Member

07-19-2002

Sunday, December 17, 2006 - 4:40 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Goddessatlaw a private message Print Post    
Ladytex, I just love your posts in here - I hadn't heard of the Mayme Clayton collection, it was a "holy shit" moment. What a treasure trove. Is there any information on where to donate for a permanent home for her collection?