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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 7:48 am
Yep that's it! Whew that was gonna drive me insane all day lol. I remember when they read the OJ verdict. I was at work and when they said not guilty all the black folk on the floor cheered. I don't know though but I think it was that glove not fitting that sealed it. Frankly I don't know if he's guilty or innocent.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 8:00 am
I was wondering if the tree still stands at the Jena 6 school and found this and thought this paragraph was amazing:
quote:The “white tree” stands in Jena, Louisiana today while entire neighborhoods and precious lives in the 9th ward of New Orleans are left wasting away, even as the more profitable and less Black areas of the city are rebuilt. It stands while a father, a mother, a fiancée, a child, and many friends are still feeling the devastating loss of Sean Bell who was murdered by the NYPD. It stands while the Rutgers University basketball team gets subjected to racist and sexist verbal assault from a national talk show host. While the N word is spouted with rage by a comedian. In a world such as this, there's nothing left to do but pull this tree up by its roots and get rid of it for good.
link
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Hermione69
Member
07-24-2002
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 8:16 am
It's like the polar (evil) opposite of the Emancipation Oak. I think pulling it up and getting rid of it would be wonderful. Mocha, I truly believe that if it was Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, I, personally, would be just as appalled. In fact, I think I am a little more lenient in my heart with Vick because I have been a fan of his for years. I believe strongly in second chances and redemption, and he strikes me as truly sorry. I would like to see him play again one day. That said, I know there are people out there who are coming down more harshly, or even rejoicing about this because of his race, and I can only imagine how badly that feels to other black people. Spangs, I think OJ did it, too, but I understand your point. I remember thinking that myself at the time, that while I believed it was a true miscarriage of justice, I could see how many black people would feel that the white race needed to be put in that position.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 8:25 am
Oh I would be just as apalled too but I don't think it would get as much media condemnation is all.
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Spangs
Member
10-07-2005
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 9:17 am
Mocha, I can remember where I was too when the OJ verdict was read. My experience was opposite of yours in that I was in a workplace in California, and was the only black face there. I actually heard a man say.."that n***** got away with it". And then he remembered that I was in the room, and profusely apologized, and spent the better part of that day trying to convince me that he did not mean anything by that. It spurred an interesting conversation in the office. Most of those people admitted to having some racial bias, but were okay with me because in their opinion, I was not like most black people that they knew. I resigned that very afternoon.
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Escapee
Member
06-15-2004
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 9:20 am
Spangs that is awful. I am so sorry you had to go through that.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 9:22 am
I don't blame you Spangs.
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Yankee_in_ca
Member
08-01-2000
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 9:30 am
I get that sh*t all the time here in Vancouver. After saying something nasty about "Americans," people, when they find out I'm American, will say something like, "oh, but you're different." And no one understands why that final statement pisses me off even more.
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Hermione69
Member
07-24-2002
| Monday, September 10, 2007 - 11:07 am
African-American students walk up the steps to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas on September 25, 1957. They are flanked by U.S. Army soldiers carrying out President Dwight D. Eisenhower's order to enforce a federal court ruling integrating the school. The school district's lawsuit, Cooper v. Aaron (1958), was an additional unsuccessful attempt to delay the process of desegregating Arkansas schools. This month marks the 50th anniversary of crisis surrounding school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas—an event that would serve as a flashpoint for the growing civil rights movement in the United States. Following the directions of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the Little Rock school district announced plans to integrate its schools. At first, confrontation over the policy seemed unlikely—city buses, parks, and libraries had already been desegregated. But when Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus sent the National Guard to prevent nine African Americans from attending classes, the battle lines were drawn.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Monday, September 10, 2007 - 6:25 pm
Glad you brought this up Hermi. On another board there was a thread about integration and if you thought it was a mistake. This was one of the responses:
quote:Nothing was really integrated at all. We still received sub par treatment in every aspect of life. Racism didn't stop. It was less blatant, but no longer effective. We had a better chance of healing ourselves when we were one unit working together. We were in the process of learning the necessary steps for community building. Integration killed what little unity we had, so the healing process was never able to take place. We are to this day, still a broken people in need of healing. You can't have every aspect of your life controlled to your detriment for 400 years, then suddenly stop the mistreatment and expect the person to know the right things to do. In the military, your training is constantly drilled in to you, so that when the time comes, you just react without thinking about it. The same thing was done to us for 400 years. We were trained to work against our own self interest and allow ourselves to be controlled. We are still struggling to get over that conditioning, because nothing was ever done to counter it's effects. The effects won't even be acknowledged, because by acknowledging it the perpetrators would have to admit responsibility. So many of us buy into the oppressors views of us, that we ourselves don't acknowledge our condition, and we don't do anything to correct it, either. If we could stop pretending that all things are equal and deal with the reality of what we're up against, we'd heal ourselves that much sooner.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Friday, September 14, 2007 - 5:40 am
I cried tears of sadness and joy over this article... Homeless no more Football pulls Morgan State's Roderick Wolfe off the street, away from drugs, into the limelight By Ken Murray | Sun reporter September 14, 2007 Bundled in thermal underwear, a wool sweater and a heavy coat, Roderick Wolfe cranked back the seat in his old Toyota hatchback and closed his eyes. Sleep and morning would come soon enough. The 17-year-old Edmondson High athlete was oblivious to the snow that fell around him and the cold that gripped his bones. He was homeless, drifting from house to house, neighborhood to neighborhood, staying with friends and relatives, teammates and coaches. For four nights in the winter of 2002, the inside of that hatchback was Wolfe's bedroom. He would park in a secluded spot where no one would bother him, turn off the ignition and let the world drift away. He had lost his father to AIDS two days before his 12th birthday. His mother, also lost to AIDS, was unable to help. She would die by the time Wolfe was 19. The car represented independence. LINK great story Mocha. I didn't see it 'til I went to fix the link!- Jan
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Landileigh
Member
07-29-2002
| Friday, September 14, 2007 - 7:04 am
that was an amazing life story, thank you mocha!
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Friday, September 14, 2007 - 7:39 am
Yeah it's very inspiring. I'm giving it to my boys to read.
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Jimmer
Moderator
08-30-2000
| Friday, September 14, 2007 - 7:50 am
That is a fantastic story. Very inspiring. I wish these stories would get more publicity.
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Grannyg
Member
05-28-2002
| Friday, September 14, 2007 - 9:01 am
Great story and I agree with Jimmer.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Saturday, September 15, 2007 - 8:55 am
Stars line up for MLK memorial concert Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds has won Grammys and worked with megastars like Eric Clapton, Madonna and Mariah Carey, but the singer-songwriter still remembers a time when he was blocked by racial barriers. "When I was a child, there was an amusement park that I couldn't go to -- they would open up only one day a year so blacks could go," the 49-year-old recalls. So when organizers asked him to participate in "The Dream" concert to raise money for a national memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C., Edmonds was quick to say yes. "I don't think you have a right to say no," says Edmonds. "It's a major event and something that I wouldn't want to miss." A host of other performers have the same sentiment. Usher, Aretha Franklin, Garth Brooks, Stevie Wonder, Carlos Santana, John Legend and Ludacris are among those scheduled for Tuesday's concert at Radio City Music Hall. So far, about $82 million has been raised for the memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where monuments to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and the troops who died in the Vietnam War stand today. A sculptor has already been selected for the three-story King structure. Organizers are hoping the concert will get them close to their $100 million goal. Tickets for the event range from $150 to $1,000. Rap mogul initially wasn't on board Russell Simmons was approached about the King monument project by designer Tommy Hilfiger years ago, but admits he wasn't interested. "I had no interest in building a shrine," he says, adding that he was more interested in his other charities, specifically for underprivileged children. But one night as he was talking to friends about how the United States could better promote peace and understanding, a friend told him: "That's why you have to help us with the Martin Luther King memorial." Now, Simmons, like Hilfiger, is a co-chair of Tuesday's event, and one of the projects most vocal supporters. The rap mogul says it's crucial to have King's image at the National Mall, where he gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963 during the March on Washington. "Martin Luther King exudes the kind of consciousness that we need in our country today, and kids need an image like his on the mall today, besides the presidents and memorials about the wars," he says. Simmons makes some calls Simmons also called folks like Ludacris, Robin Thicke and Usher to participate in the concert when organizers fretted there weren't enough young performers on the bill. Wyclef Jean was one of the people Simmons called. The singer and producer feels that Martin Luther King Jr. Day is not enough of a tribute to the civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner. A memorial, Jean says, "carries out the legacy. It's the same way, you have a monument of Abraham Lincoln, and that takes you to a place and a time and a history that will never be forgotten. We have to do whatever it takes to make sure the legacy of Martin Luther King is never forgotten." It has been almost 40 years since King was assassinated. Some worry that people are already forgetting about aspects of his legacy, which was broader than his fight for equal rights for blacks. "It goes beyond color lines," Edmonds stresses. "It helped advance the causes of black Americans but women as well and any minority ... he helped all of us. To have that memorialized in Washington D.C., it's the right place, it's the perfect place to do it." The King memorial is expected to be erected by 2009 between the memorials for Presidents Lincoln and Jefferson.
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Slinkydog
Member
11-30-2005
| Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 12:59 pm
Today is the 50th anniversary of the day the Little Rock Nine entered Central High School. Lots of good coverage of the events commemorating this at: www.arktimes.com
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 5:05 pm
HBO is also showing a special on this right now.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 4:37 pm
Smithsonian black history museum bows online Interactive Web site predates opening of brick-and-mortar version by years WASHINGTON - The Smithsonian Institution's museum dedicated to black history and culture launches this week with an interactive Web site — long before its building opens for visitors on the National Mall. Social-networking technology donated by IBM Corp. will allow visitors to help produce content for future exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Almost anything is fair game — long essays, short vignettes of memories or recorded oral histories. The museum plans to add video capabilities in the future. The museum was to announce the site's debut Wednesday. "The culture of the African American experience ... is too important to wait five or 10 years until the building is open," said Lonnie Bunch, the museum's founding director. "I wanted people to know that from the day I was hired, this museum exists." Museum staff will monitor the site for historical accuracy, and technical filters will block racist or inappropriate comments, said Bunch, adding that the site is really a "virtual museum" and a new source of research for curators and scholars. Inspired by MySpace, Facebook Museum officials began thinking about launching the Web site during an explosion in the popularity of social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. That's when Bunch and IBM Chairman Samuel Palmisano, who sits on the museum's advisory board, got to talking. IBM eventually agreed to donate $1 million worth of hardware, software and services to build the site. "The museum thought, 'Let's harness this. Let's build a social network that brings together people interested in the African American experience ... all those people that are your visitors but who have great stories to tell," said John Tolva, IBM's senior manager for cultural programs. One of the first contributions came from Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund and a member of the museum's board. Lomax recalls when, at age 13, his mother moved him and his five brothers and sisters from Los Angeles to Tuskegee, Ala., to cover the civil rights movement for Nation magazine. He submitted a story his mother wrote for the magazine called "Journey to the Beginning," which recounted his family's encounter with the South in 1961. "We traveled at first by automobile, and then our car broke down and we had to ... travel by Greyhound bus from Arizona to Alabama. We thought of it as our family freedom ride," Lomax told The Associated Press. "My mother was a writer accustomed to the privileges of the journalist. We found ourselves in a position where we no longer had privilege. We were being segregated, and we tried to stand up to it and were almost arrested." Lomax said everyone thought his mother was crazy to take her children to Alabama as a single mother during segregation. He said it was "horrifying and exhilarating at the same time" and an experience that changed his life. Contributions welcomed Organizers said they hope people of all ages and backgrounds will post messages on the site. "You've got the sort of historical materials on major people and major moments linked directly to the kind of bottom-up recollections of common folk," Tolva said. "You can link, visually depict, how your memory relates to the other kind of grand narratives of African American history — the narratives of civil rights, Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois." The museum announced a similar partnership in February with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with hopes of recording about 2,000 oral histories from black families over the next year to be placed in the museum's archives. The StoryCorps Griot project has been traveling across the country to collect recordings. By opening the museum online, potential donors see that the museum is alive long before its estimated 2015 opening on the National Mall, said Bunch, who is working to raise half the museum's $500 million cost, with Congress providing the other half. The museum is opening its first physical exhibit in Washington, "Let Your Motto Be Resistance," on Oct. 19 at the National Portrait Gallery. It traces 150 years of history through 100 photographs of well-known abolitionists, scholars, artists and athletes who challenged negative attitudes about race and class. National Museum of African American History and Culture
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 4:51 pm
I bookmarked it. I watched the HBO special last night about Little Rock Central 50yrs later. It was very good and made me very sad. I just felt for the 16yr old girl who had her first child at 13. Her sister is another teenage mom and they had no furniture in their living room. Then they showed another girl's home, she was in AP classes and they didn't even have a working sink or stove. Also Minniejean Brown was conducting a class and it showed and she talked about the self segregation in the class where the blacks sat together and the whites sat together. I asked my kids if they do that in their classes or lunch time. My oldest said somewhat and my youngest said no.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 11:42 am
I love Gale Sayers ... Gale Sayers makes pitch for better benefits
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, October 01, 2007 - 2:47 pm
Museum clings to black WWII history
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Tuesday, October 02, 2007 - 10:21 pm
The Most Important Man You Don't Know You may not have heard of Dr. Mark Dean. And you aren't alone. But almost everything in your life has been affected by his work. See, Dr. Mark Dean is a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is in the National Hall of Inventors. He has more than 30 patents pending. He is a vice president with IBM. Oh, yeah. And he is also the architect of the modern-day personal computer. Dr. Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer that all PCs are based upon. And, Dr. Mark Dean is an African American. So how is it that we can celebrate the 20th anniversary of the IBM personal computer without reading or hearing a single word about him? Given all of the pressure mass media are under about negative portrayals of African Americans on television and in print, you would think it would be a slam dunk to highlight someone like Dr. Dean. Somehow, though, we have managed to miss the shot. History is cruel when it comes to telling the stories of African Americans. Dr. Dean isn't the first Black inventor to be overlooked consider John Stanard, inventor of the refrigerator, George Sampson, creator of the clothes dryer, Alexander Miles and his elevator, Lewis Latimer and the electric lamp. All of these inventors share two things: One, they changed the landscape of our society; and, two, society relegated them to the footnotes of history. Hopefully, Dr. Mark Dean won't go away as quietly as they did. He certainly shouldn't. Dr. Dean he! lped st art a Digital Revolution that created people like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Dell Computer's Michael Dell. Millions of jobs in information technology can be traced back directly to Dr. Dean. More important, stories like Dr. Mark Dean's should serve as inspiration for African-American children. Already victims of the "Digital Divide" and failing school systems, young, Black kids might embrace technology with more enthusiasm! if they knew someone like Dr. Dean already was leading the way. Although technically Dr. Dean can't be credited with creating the computer -- that is left to Alan Turing, a pioneering 20th-century English mathematician, widely considered to be the father of modern computer science -- Dr. Dean rightly deserves to take a bow for the machine we use today. The computer really wasn't practical for home or small business use until he came along, leading a team that developed the interior architecture (ISA systems! bus) that enables multiple devices, such as modems and printers, to be connected to personal computers. In other words, because of Dr. Dean, the PC became a part of our daily lives . For most of us, changing the face of society would have been enough. But not for Dr. Dean.. Still in his early forties, he has! a lot of inventing left in him. He recently made history again by leading the design team responsible for creating the first 1-gigahertz processor chip.. It's just another huge step in making computers faster and smaller. As the world congratulates itself for the new Digital Age brought on by the personal computer, we need to guarantee that the African-American story is part of the hoopla surrounding the most stunning technological advance the world has ever seen.. We cannot afford to let Dr. Mark Dean become a footnote in history. He is well worth his own history book. By Tyrone D. Taborn
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Wednesday, October 03, 2007 - 9:36 am
I remind my kids of him every year.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Wednesday, October 03, 2007 - 12:24 pm
Decades later, an apology for Emmett Till slaying Once an icon of racism, town plans to say it's sorry near where killers were freed. By DREW JUBERA The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 10/02/07 Sumner, Miss. — The courthouse square is now more courthouse than commercial square. Only a handful of storefronts in this tidy Delta town of about 400 are occupied — two pharmacies, three lawyers' offices, no place to eat. So Sumner comes by its slow-motion, passed-by atmosphere honestly. Downtown is bordered at one end by railroad tracks, the other end by a bayou. Beyond that, bean and cotton fields stretch like great lakes. Yet Sumner's century-old courthouse, with its four-story clock tower, still looms over Tallahatchie County's past, present and future. It's where two white men were tried and found not guilty by an all-white jury of brutally slaying Emmett Till, a husky 14-year-old black kid visiting from Chicago. <snip> Now more than five decades later, driven both by conscience and commerce, an interracial group of locals in this desperately poor, majority black region is ready to apologize, and perhaps even capitalize, on this remote soil's dark history. An official apology from the county-appointed Emmett Till Memorial Commission will be read Tuesday in front of the courthouse. A historical marker also will be unveiled — just steps from the Civil War monument planted there at the beginning of the last century. link
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