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Archive through May 22, 2006

The TVClubHouse: General Discussions ARCHIVES: Apr. 2007 ~ Jun. 2007: Black History (ARCHIVES January 2006 ~ June 2007): Archive through May 22, 2006 users admin

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Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Saturday, February 25, 2006 - 7:17 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tishala a private message Print Post    
C-SPAN is having Tavis Smiley and Tom Joyner's "State of the Black Union" on almost all day today for those who are interested. They are having great panels well into the evening.

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Monday, February 27, 2006 - 8:40 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tishala a private message Print Post    
Octavia Butler, Noted African American Science Fiction Writer, Dies link

The King County medical examiner's office says science fiction writer Octavia Butler has died. The first science fiction writer to win a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation was 58.

Investigator Brad Gill said Butler died Friday after falling and hitting her head.

The executive director of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America calls Butler the first and most prominent black woman science fiction writer. She wrote 12 novels and won both the 1985 Hugo and 1984 Nebula awards for one and the 1999 Nebula award for another.

Butler was born in Pasadena, Calif. She decided at age 10 that she wanted to be a writer. After earning an associate's degree from Pasadena City College, she attended California State University and UCLA.

i'm not a big fan of science fiction, but her novel Kindred, about an african american woman who time-travels to the pre-civil war south, is a very very good book. it's a great read for anyone interested in african american writers, science fiction, etc.

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Monday, February 27, 2006 - 8:56 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
I love sci fi but don't think I've read any of her books. I don't think I'd want to read Kindred though. I like to stay away from pre civil war or civil war era writing.

Jan
Moderator

08-01-2000

Monday, February 27, 2006 - 9:09 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Jan a private message Print Post    
Ala. Paper Publishes Civil Rights Photos

1 hour, 22 minutes ago

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Dozens of never before released photos from the civil rights era came to light this weekend after an intern discovered them buried in an equipment closet at the Birmingham News.

The photos had been in a box marked: "Keep. Do Not Sell." But at the time they were taken, the newspaper didn't want to draw attention to the racial discord of the 1950s and 1960s, news photographers from the period said.

"The editors thought if you didn't publish it, much of this would go away," said Ed Jones, 81, a photographer at The News from 1942 to 1987. "Associated Press kept on wanting pictures, and The News would be slow on letting them have them, so they flooded the town with photographers."

On Sunday, the photos finally went to print in a special eight-page section called "Unseen. Unforgotten." Others are on the newspaper's Web site at http://www.al.com/unseen .

Several photos vividly show the segregation in the South at the time, including the disparity among school buildings and the different lines for blacks and whites, even at the jail as the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth posts bail after an arrest.

Others show confrontations: a police officer shoving a demonstrator, black children hit with the spray of a firehose, crowds heckling demonstrators on their knees, Freedom Riders being arrested, and whites throwing bricks at cars and blocking blacks from entering "whites-only" areas.

One photo shows a Ku Klux Klan rally with men wearing hoods but their faces uncovered. Others show National Guardsmen with their guns drawn, protecting a bus in one and rounding up rioters protesting a black student's enrollment at the University of Mississippi.

Catherine Burks Brooks, 66, a Birmingham teacher who was part of a group of Freedom Riders while a student at Tennessee State University, was among those photographed.

"I was very, very thrilled to see that we do have them," she said after learning about the newly found photos. "I knew the pictures had to exist, but they were being kept somewhere."

Robert Adams, 84, a photographer who joined the newspaper in 1940 and retired in 1985, said The News didn't want to inflame the situation.

It was also dangerous, said Tom Self, 71, who joined the newspaper in 1952. He described how one photographer's car window was shot out while the photographer was inside.

In the News' centennial edition in 1988, the newspaper said a New York Times story in 1960 forced the paper and the city's white community to confront the racial conflict: "The story of The Birmingham News' coverage of race relations in the 1960s is one marked at times by mistakes and embarrassment but, in its larger outlines, by growing sensitivity and acceptance of change."

Yahoo

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 9:56 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tishala a private message Print Post    
From Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night...

He was an overnight celebrity at the age of 83, turned into one of the faces of baseball by the Ken Burns documentary. Buck O‘Neil, a living link to the great stars who had been prevented from reaching the major leagues because of the color barrier that would not fall until 1947. Himself, Jackie Robinson‘s teammate with the legendary Kansas City Monarchs, later their manager.

buck
Buck O'Neil
Even now at the age of 94, one of the great ambassadors in any sport. And at our number two story in the COUNTDOWN today, baseball might as well have told Buck O‘Neil to get lost. This was the day the game elected to its hall of fame 17 heroes from the era of the Negro leagues, the last such election scheduled, ever, and Buck O‘Neil was not elected.

A special committee first selected 94 candidates, then pared it down to 39 finalists, today announced the 17 inductees. O‘Neil did not make the cut, nor did Minnie Minoso, himself prevented from playing in the majors until he was 27 years old because of the color of his skin. Minoso, playing most with the Chicago White Sox, went on to record the sixth highest batting average in all of baseball during the prime of his career 1951 through 1963.

minoso
Minnie Minoso
Snubbing Minoso and O‘Neil apparently for all time is extraordinary enough, but only baseball could make it worse. In honoring the Negro leagues, it managed to exclude O‘Neil and Minoso, but it did elect two white people. James Leslie Wilkinson was the founder of those Kansas City Monarchs, Jackie Robinson‘s team before he broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Wilkinson was a white businessman.

And today‘s election also had a hall of famer out of Ethel Manley. She was the owner of the Newark Eagles of the Negro-American League. It sounds almost impossible to believe, but she too was white. She was married to a black man and she pretended to be as the term was then, passed as a light-skinned black woman. Most of the 17 electees today were entirely deserving. Such legendary figures as Sal White and Biz Mackey and Jose Mendez will achieve in death and in the hall something they were denied in life.

But just to twist the knife a little further into Buck O‘Neil, the special committee elected Alex Pompez, owner of the New York Cuban‘s team in the ‘30s and ‘40s, also an organized crime figure, part of the mob of the infamous ‘30‘s gangster Dutch Schultz, indicted in this country and in Mexico for racketeering. He‘s in the hall of fame for all time. Buck O‘Neil is not. It‘s not merely indefensible. For all the many stupid things the baseball hall of fame has ever done, this is the worst.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 10:12 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
this is being discussed, debated, screamed about all over ... what an injustice to O'Neill and Minnie ...

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Thursday, March 02, 2006 - 9:30 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tishala a private message Print Post    
More on the Buck O'Neill story here. It has a video of Ernie Baks discussing Mr. O'Neill on Keith Olbermann's show last night.

Twinkie
Member

09-24-2002

Friday, March 03, 2006 - 5:33 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Twinkie a private message Print Post    
church

The Michigan St. Baptist Church in Buffalo, NY was one of a handful of last stops in this country on the underground railroad into Canada. You can read the whole story about it here:

http://www.nyhistory.com/mspa/

Twinkie
Member

09-24-2002

Friday, March 03, 2006 - 5:34 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Twinkie a private message Print Post    
Here is another photo of the church:

church2

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 9:59 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
Afrikaners' sons prepare for less power, opportunity

BY SCOTT CALVERT
SUN FOREIGN REPORTER
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MARCH 7, 2006
PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA //

Between classes at Afrikaans Boys High School, students in their shorts, neckties and blazers chatter and laugh, their conversations in Afrikaans echoing off brick arches and across a courtyard.

High on one wall hangs the school logo: a sun shining down on an ox wagon of the kind ridden by some of the students' forebears during the Great Trek of the 1830s, when Afrikaners moved deeper into the country to defend their ideas of white dominance.

Once meant to groom privileged boys to run a nation, Afrikaans Boys High now teaches that they will have to work harder to succeed. Twelve years after the arrival of democracy, the opportunities in government and business that used to be reserved for whites - Afrikaners as well as those of British descent - are greatly reduced.

South Africa's government aggressively presses companies to hire more black employees and to bring aboard black owners. Quotas limit the number of public university slots open to whites.

"It's sort of payback time," says Principal Pierre Edwards, who attended the high school in the late 1960s. "It was a white man's world when I was here. You had your future mapped out. There were no limits.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.afrikaners07mar07,0,5242111.story?page=1&coll=bal-home-headlines

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Tuesday, March 07, 2006 - 10:00 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tishala a private message Print Post    
GORDON PARKS, director of "The Learning Tree" and "Shaft," documentary & art photographer; 1912-2006

"He was stillborn -- no heartbeat, declared dead by the family doctor, and put aside for later burial. Another doctor in the delivery room had an idea, and immersed the newborn in ice-cold water. The shock caused his heart to start beating, and the baby was soon crying and healthy, and named for Dr Gordon, who had saved his life. In the more than ninety years of his life, Gordon Parks became internationally renowned as a photographer, filmmaker, poet, novelist, and composer.

He grew up poor in Fort Scott, Kansas, the youngest of 15 children. One of his early memories was hearing his all-black class told by their white schoolteacher, "You'll all wind up porters and maids." His mother died when Parks was 14, and he was sent to live with an older sister in Minneapolis, until her husband kicked him out. Between bouts of homelessness, he earned rent as a piano player in a bordello. He also worked as a busboy, a Civilian Conservation Corpsman, and as his teacher had predicted, as a porter and later waiter on the transcontinental North Coast Limited.

At 25, he bought a used camera for $7.50 and began working as a self-taught free-lance photographer"

counter

"Parks, who had admired the Farm Security Administration photographs for some time, planned to spend his fellowship year as an apprentice photographer in Stryker's section and had received encouragement from the FSA Jack Delano when he was applying for the fellowship.4 But when he arrived in Washington, he recalled in 1983, Stryker resisted, expressing worries about the reaction of others--in the agency as well as in the city--to a black photographer. "When I went there," Parks said, "Roy didn't want to take me into the FSA, but the Rosenwald people were a part of that whole Rooseveltian thing. They insisted: 'Roy, you've got to do it.'" As Parks remembered it, Will Alexander--the vice-president of the Rosenwald Fund and the former head of the Farm Security Administration and thus Stryker's old boss--delivered the final nudge.

mop

Parks's autobiography and interviews emphasize the importance of the education Stryker gave him. After asking Parks to leave his cameras in the office, Stryker sent the newly arrived photographer around Washington, instructing him to visit stores, restaurants, and theaters. When Parks was refused service, he became furious and returned to the office ready to "show the rest of the world what your great city of Washington, D.C. is really like," proposing to photograph scenes of injustice and portraits of bigots. In response, Stryker sent Parks to the file to study the work of Lange, Shahn, Evans, Delano, Rothstein, and others. Parks studied their photographs of gutted fields, dispossessed migrants, and the gaunt faces of people caught in the Depression. Although some might lay these tragedies to God, Parks wrote, "the research accompanying these stark photographs accused man himself--especially the lords of the land." As the effectiveness of photographing victims instead of perpetrators and the importance of the words that accompany photographs sank in, Parks concluded, "I began to get the point."

One evening a few weeks later when he was alone in the office with Stryker, Parks said he was still seeking a way to expose intolerance with a camera. Stryker pointed out a charwoman at work in the building. "Go have a talk with her," he said, "See what she has to say about life and things." Parks complied, and later recalled his first conversation with Ella Watson:
She began to spill out her life's story. It was a pitiful one. She had struggled alone after her mother had died and her father had been killed by a lynch mob. She had gone through high school, married and become pregnant. Her husband was accidentally shot to death two days before their daughter was born. By the time the daughter was eighteen, she had given birth to two illegitimate children, dying two weeks after the second child's birth. What's more, the first child had been striken with paralysis a year before its mother died.
young

see also: USA Today

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - 9:31 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
Teachers shed light on slavery in the North

OYSTER BAY, N.Y. - A group of mostly white seventh and eighth graders sleepily sauntered into their school library on a recent morning, soon to get a surprise awakening about a part of their town’s history they never knew existed.

“Did anybody in this room know there were 60 enslaved Africans, people, human beings, buried a mile from here?” Alan Singer, a professor at Hofstra University, asked them. “Those people have been erased from history. It is as if they never existed.”

Singer and Mary Carter, a retired middle school social studies teacher, were in Oyster Bay to speak to the kids — part of a quest to develop a public school curriculum guide focusing on slavery’s impact in the northern U.S., specifically New York.

<more of the story at the above link>

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - 9:45 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
Kool about the teachings.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 - 5:25 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
Dandridge, Dorothy (1922-1965)
dd

Singer, actress. Born November 9, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio. Dandridge’s mother, the actress Ruby Dandridge, urged her two young daughters into show business in the 1930s, when they performed as a song-and-dance team billed as “The Wonder Children.” Dandridge left high school in the late 1930s and formed the Dandridge Sisters trio with her sister Vivian and Etta James. They performed with the Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra and at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, where Dandridge—who had a mixed racial heritage—early on confronted the segregation and racism of the entertainment industry.

more here

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 6:34 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
Black TV shows on shaky ground
Network merger could lead to demise of many sitcoms

BY DAVID ZURAWIK
SUN TELEVISION CRITIC
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 10, 2006

As the new CW network prepares to unveil its fall lineup next week, the way that African-Americans are portrayed on TV hangs in the balance.

The fledgling network, formed by the merger of the struggling WB and UPN broadcast operations, is expected to announce a fall season aimed at young viewers and anchored by series such as WB's Gilmore Girls and UPN's Veronica Mars.

Unlikely to be on the roster, industry insiders say, are several of UPN's eight African-American-themed sitcoms, including shows such as One on One and Half & Half, which now dominate the network's prime-time viewing hours on Monday and Thursday evenings.

Executives at CW declined to comment except to say that their fall schedule will be revealed to advertisers May 18 in New York.

The new lineup will include the shows that exhibit the widest appeal among young viewers and thus command top advertising dollars. None of the eight UPN shows under review, though popular with African-American viewers, has achieved the kind of crossover hit status that ensures high ad rates.

"The only one we're sure of [finding a home on CW] is Everybody Hates Chris," said Rose Catherine Pinkney, executive vice president for programming at TV One, a cable channel targeting African-American viewers that is negotiating for the right to air reruns of some of the canceled shows in the fall.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/bal-te.to.tv10may10,0,5609851.story?page=1&coll=bal-home-headlines

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 6:55 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
that stinks but it does not surprise me ...

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 8:28 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
Yeah I'm ticked that Girlfriends may not come back.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 8:37 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
you know that it took me the longest time to figure out that that girl was Diana's daughter ... lol ... but then when I realized it, I saw the resemblence

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 8:43 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
Lolol

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Monday, May 22, 2006 - 7:51 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
I got this msg twice today already. It made me think...

Dear Disney Company,

In December 2005, I made my first visit to Disney World with my family. The experience was breathtaking. Throughout our journey, the adults were astonished by how the themes were brought to life. The children were fascinated and engaged particularly by the Princess', Minnie's House, the fake snow that fell at night, the parade, meeting the characters and asking questions as well as taking pictures with the characters.

Above all, the girls were intrigued by the Princess' mini shows. However, my daughter had a question. She said, "How come there's no Princess here like me?" I asked, "What do you mean?" She replied, "You know, a Princess like "That's So Raven or Penny Proud". I responded by saying, "Unfortunately, Disney has not created fairytales for children like you. In other words, there are no Princess' of African American descent."

As the evening came to an end, I began to ponder on her question. I thought to myself...well, why aren't there any African American Princesses in such a place where the motto is "We Make All Dreams Come True". I decided to email your company to ask why. A few weeks later, I received a surprising call. The woman I spoke to reassured me that my question and concern was taken seriously and would be looked into further.

During this conversation, I asked why there aren't any African American Princesses. The woman stated because there aren't any African American fairytales. She said, "Well we have Pocahontas who represents Native America, Mulan who represents the Chinese, Jasmine who represents the descendants of the Middle East and the African Americans have Lion King out of Africa". That reply left me with the thought that she just compared African Americans to wild animals.

After that statement, I just laughed and respectfully ended the conversation. One thing I realized was that I can't blame her for her response. Disney has not created an African American fairytale.

As an educator/parent, we all know that through life experiences what we can touch, see, feel, taste, and hear leaves a lasting impression. Disney, you hold the power to make life experiences become a reality to a melting pot world, which includes African Americans. Disney's motto is "We Make All Dreams Come True".
Well Disney, my child and other children like her have a dream and through their Disney experience, they are depending on you to make it
come true.


Thank you,

Katrina Y. Helm and others


Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Monday, May 22, 2006 - 9:38 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
There ARE African Fairy Tales. Disney has just not bothered to look for them or to produce them. I remember being told one about an African Princess, I hate that I can't remember the name of it ...

Texannie
Member

07-16-2001

Monday, May 22, 2006 - 9:49 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Texannie a private message Print Post    
I can't see why they couldn't do an animated "Aida".

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Monday, May 22, 2006 - 9:53 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
There were plenty of African Royalty. Maybe that's the key, it's African and not African American?? Oh wait there's Tarzan, but he ain't black.

Darrellh
Member

07-21-2004

Monday, May 22, 2006 - 9:57 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Darrellh a private message Print Post    
Even if they can't find one (I'm sure they could) what's wrong with creating one?

Vacanick
Member

07-12-2004

Monday, May 22, 2006 - 10:15 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Vacanick a private message Print Post    
I love the story of Harriet Tubman and The Freedom Train! I just recently read it to my 9 year old and he had lot's of really good questions. Very eye opening for a young boy!