The Apollo pays tribute to 2008 inductee Smokey Robinson and 2008 Ruby Dee & Ossie Davis Arts and Humanitarian Award recipients Pauletta & Denzel Washington

Press Release

The Apollo Theater Foundation, Inc., announced today that on Monday, June 2, 2008, it will host its fourth annual Hall of Fame Induction & Gala — a magnificent affair that includes a glamorous red carpet, a tribute concert and awards ceremony and a grand tented after-party. The star-studded event will bring together the best and brightest in business and entertainment to raise funds in support of the Apollo’s 74-year legacy and its initiatives for emerging artists, education programs and community outreach efforts in New York City and beyond.

Hosted by comedienne and actress Wanda Sykes, this year’s event, in preparation for the Apollo’s 75th Anniversary, will commemorate the life and music of Apollo Legend Smokey Robinson with a ceremony inducting the performer into the Apollo Legends Hall of Fame where he will join predecessors Gladys Knight, James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald and Little Richard. The awards ceremony will continue with the Ruby Dee & Ossie Davis Arts and Humanitarian Award given to Pauletta and Denzel Washington as well as appearances by the presenters of the evening including Oscar nominated actress, Ruby Dee, Oscar nominated actor, Terrence Howard and Grammy-Award winner, Janet Jackson. The corporate award will be presented to Verizon for their ongoing commitment to the community. The much-anticipated evening will commence in the historic, legendary Apollo Theater where guests will be entertained with a wide range of performances and appearances by the Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter India.Arie, Nnenna Freelon, and Earth Wind & Fire. The event will culminate with the Apollo Supper Club — a stylish lounge atmosphere featuring the generous gourmet creations of celebrity chef, Alexander Smalls prepared by Great Performances, plentiful libations courtesy of Belvedere and late-night dancing to music spun by DJ D-Nice.

Jonelle Procope, president and CEO of the Apollo Theater Foundation, explained that, “As the Apollo prepares to enter into its 75th Anniversary next year, we continue to champion the mission of honoring the history of our much revered Theater as well as securing its future. This is more than a venue. The Apollo is an experience and this year’s Spring Benefit, in particular, completely embodies that sentiment. This is the one event where everyone from the business community to the entertainment world to the Harlem community — can come and celebrate and help preserve their Apollo Theater.”

Richard Parsons, chairman of the Apollo’s board of directors, expressed the significance of the evening and the institution as, “The Apollo Theater shares a unique relationship with everyone who walks through its doors — from the countless stars that were born on its stage to its world-famous, international audience to the thousands in Harlem’s communities served by its programs. With the support of businesses combined with commitments from civic-minded individuals, this milestone event will go far in helping to guarantee the future of the Apollo and its programs.”

Time Warner Cable is the Title Sponsor for the event. Lead Sponsors include American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Hearst Corporation, Skadden Arps, Time Warner, TV One, Verizon and W Hotels.

Tickets are available for $1,000. To purchase tickets or to make a donation to the Apollo Theater Foundation, Inc., call 800.618.3444. Press inquiries contact Jake Spitz at 646.688.6379 or jake@expagency.com.

About the Apollo Theater

The Apollo Theater is one of Harlem, New York City, and America’s most iconic and enduring cultural institutions. The Apollo was one of the first theaters in New York, and the country, to integrate, welcoming traditionally African-American, Hispanic, and local immigrant populations, as well as headlining uniquely talented entertainers who found it difficult to gain entrance to other venues of similar size and resources. For that reason, the Apollo has been a pioneer in presenting the cultural contributions of black and Latino communities and played a central role in the development of American music into the 21st century. The Apollo has launched and nurtured the careers of seemingly countless legendary performers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sara Vaughan, James Brown, Gladys Knight, Michael Jackson, Lauren Hill, and Alicia Keys.

The Apollo Theater Foundation, Inc., was established as a nonprofit, charitable organization in 1991 and is dedicated to the preservation and development of the Apollo Theater. The Foundation brought stability to the Theater’s operations and focused its efforts on reinvigorating the Apollo legend. Over the past few years, the Apollo has roughly tripled its operating budget, full-time staff, annual audience, and weekly programs.

The Apollo’s mission is to honor the influence and advance the contributions of African-American artists and advance emerging creative voices across cultures and artistic media through the Apollo Experience of world-class live performances and educational programs. The Apollo reigns as one of New York City’s premiere uptown attractions and is the cultural anchor of the current reinvigoration of the 125th Street corridor.

Art of Achieving

by Kevin Walker
Winston Salem Chronicle

Annual gala honors brilliant black students As a single mother raising children in a society where black youths are likely to be a statistic rather than a success, Glenda Hayden knew that June Cleaver parenting techniques would not work for her; she had to employ more guerilla-like approaches.

“I told my kids flat-out that if I ever had to come to their school because of them acting up, I was going to embarrass them in front of their classmates … and they knew that if they ever got locked up, I was not coming to get them out of jail,” Hayden said matter-of-factly.

The fear factor worked. Her daughter just ended a stellar college career with a degree from the University of North Carolina Charlotte, and her son, Troy Hayden, is a straight-A student at Carver High School who will soon be a freshman at N.C. A&T State University.

Momma Hayden also utilized other keys to ensure her children’s successes. She kept them in “The Word” and involved in programs and activities that preached and practiced the same high standards that she has for them. One of the those programs is the Winston Lake Family YMCA’s Black Achievers. Troy Hayden was one of a dozen high school seniors feted last week at the Black Achievers’ annual gala for completing the academic achievement program. Hayden also was recognized as the winner of the program’s most prestigious honor – the $3,000 Moses H. Lucas Scholarship.

“This program is the cornerstone of this (YMCA) branch,” Jarrod Covington told the hundreds gathered in the Benton Convention Center banquet hall for last Thursday’s gala. At that time, Covington was the executive director of the Winston Lake Y. He left that post last Friday to head two Y branches in Memphis, Tenn.

Y branches across the nation sponsor Black Achievers programs, in which young men and women are paired with adult business professionals for mentoring purposes. The teens also tour college campuses, local corporations and take part in community service projects. Last week’s gala also honored nearly two dozen business professionals who have committed to spend the next year as Black Achievers mentors.

Program leaders brag that Black Achievers has a near-perfect success rate. Nearly all the teens who have participated in the last 11 years have gone on to college and successful careers.

Candice Benbow, a Black Achievers alumna, is an example of that. Benbow is now the Black Achievers Program Director at Winston Lake. She credits the program with her success and says that the many longtime volunteers who help run Black Achievers gave her strong examples to follow.

“They encouraged me and they inspired me,” she said.

Benbow advised this year’s crop of Black Achievers to use the tools they have gained and to follow the sage advise of those who have worked to make them better young men and women.

“Life’s absolute best is on the way for you,” she said.

The Achievers also got an earful of advice from Darryl R. Matthews Sr.

The General President and Chairman of the Board of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Matthews delivered the gala’s keynote address. He devoted much of his remarks to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of many prominent African-American “Alpha Men.”

“What would Martin think?” Matthews asked, borrowing and altering the famous “What Would Jesus Do?” phrase.

Matthews answered the question himself, stating that King would be displeased about things such as black children who are labeled as “acting white” because they soar academically, and even about black fraternities and sororities who devote most of their time and energy to step shows rather than service and academic pursuits.

“What if we spent just a fraction of that time in a business plan competition?”   Matthews pondered.

Alpha Phi Alpha is leading the effort to build a memorial to Dr. King on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. When completed, the memorial will be the mall’s only monument dedicated to an African American.

Although about $94 million of the memorial’s estimated $100 million price tag has already been raised, physical progress on the actual structure has been slow. Matthews said bureaucratic red tape is behind the delay, with the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the Department of the Interior and the DC Department of Parks and Recreation putting the project through hoop after hoop.

“We are on schedule as much as we can be,” he said. “It will be built, and it will be built soon.”

During the gala, honors were also presented to local black businesses and community icons. Police Chief Pat Norris, Fire Chief John Gist, County Attorney Davida Martin, County Commissioner Walter Marshall and Business trailblazer Brenda Diggs received Distinguished Service Achievers Awards. Mary King, the owner of Keona’s Boutique on Fifth Street; Grantheum Johnson, director of Hooper Funeral Home; William Hairston, owner of Hairston Enterprises; Ernie Pitt, publisher and co-founder of The Chronicle; and Tim Watson, one of the operators of the family-owned The Peanut House; received Minority Business Achievers Awards.

The Honorable James A. Beaty Jr., a U.S. District Court judge who is also known for his mentoring work with young people, received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

After a list of Beaty’s lengthy accomplishments – which includes his 1994 appointment by President Clinton to the U.S. Middle District of North Carolina bench – were read, newly-appointed Forsyth County District Court Judge Camille Banks-Payne, who emceed the event, proved that everyone needs mentors, regardless of age or station in life.

“Judge Beaty, I want to be like you when I grow up,” Banks-Payne told the elder judge.

This year’s other Teen Achievers are: Willard Brown (Wachovia Scholarship Winner), William Burnette (N2K Scholarship Winner), Everett Dumas (Wachovia Scholarship Winner), Brittany Gaulden (Barbara Hayes Scholarship Winner), Latisha Hardee (Barbara Hayes Scholarship Winner), Jeremy Hunt (N2K Scholarship Winner), Charon Miller (Wachovia Scholarship Winner), Perry Rowdy (N2K Scholarship Winner), Conisha Solomon (Wachovia Scholarship Winner), Ryan White (N2K Scholarship Winner) and Christopher Young (Wachovia Scholarship Winner).

This year’s Adult Achievers are: Brian Anthony, KJ Bland, Tamie Caldwell, Gwendolyn Collins, Bernard Coulter, Jamma Etter, Shawan Gabriel, Sophia Kennedy, Johnathan Martin, Nisa McMillan, Patrice Mitchell, Dori-Ann Morrison, Darryl Prince Jr., Lisa Redmon, Marcie Rowdy, Annette Scippio, Kerry Wiggins, Deborah Fountain, Marcus Lane, Katherine LaNeave-Whicker and John Teschemaker.

Daytona director wants to get black kids swimming

By SARA KIESLER
News Journal

Nearly 60 percent of black children cannot swim, compared with about 30 percent of their white playmates, according to a May 1 study by USA Swimming.That alarming study is one reason Daytona Beach Leisure Services Director Percy Williamson said it’s imperative to bring internationally known swim instructor Lee Pitts to the new Cypress Street pool to help prevent youth drownings.

“We need to bring attention to the absolute need for young inner-city kids to learn to swim,” Williamson said.

Conducted by the University of Memphis, the study interviewed 1,772 children between the ages of 6 and 16. Hispanic children also had a disproportionate inability to swim, with 56 percent of the kids not knowing how.

Pitts, who plans to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. today at the pool, is expected to talk about the historical reasons black and minority children often cannot swim.

One reason Williamson cited was how in times of slavery, blacks were not taught to swim because “that was thought to be a mode of escape.”

Thus, parents who didn’t learn to swim did not teach their children to swim, he said.

Early Childhood Education Pioneer Brodie Dies At 91

by Keith Morelli
Tampa Bay Online

Altamese Brodie, a pioneer in early childhood education whose philosophies and practices defined 55 years of teaching black youngsters, died Wednesday. She was 91.

“She was born and reared right here in Tampa,” said her daughter, Josephine Hubbard. “She goes back quite a ways.”

As a junior at Middleton High School, Brodie volunteered at Helping Hand Day Nursery, then on Central Avenue, a preschool for black children.

Brodie’s work as a volunteer in 1935 tapped her talent for teaching and love of children, Hubbard said.

“My mother realized then that she loved that profession, and that became her life’s work,” Hubbard said. “She became a teacher and then director. All told, she was there for 55 years. Ten thousand preschoolers graduated from Helping Hand during my mother’s tenure.”

Most of that time, the school taught only black children, Hubbard said.

“It was segregated,” she said.

Brodie ushered in the era of integration.

“She didn’t allow racial or socioeconomic issues to be barriers,” Hubbard said. “Before segregation ended, they were integrated.”

Hubbard said the curriculum Brodie developed became the model for the Head Start program.

“Before there was Head Start,” Hubbard said, “there was Helping Hand.”

The program focused on family and preparing children to attend school, Hubbard said.

Once retired, Brodie traveled, lecturing throughout Florida on early childhood development and the program she established, Hubbard said.

Among graduates of Helping Hand: former state Sens. Les Miller and James Hargrett, Hubbard said.

The Helping Hand Day Nursery was founded by Clara Alston in 1924. Since its earliest days in a two-story frame house on Central Avenue, the program has provided “the same care that the mother would provide if she was able to stay home,” Brodie said in a 1999 interview that marked the 75th anniversary of the school.

“The nursery was like a salvation” for working mothers, she said, offering not only education childhood development but also healthful meals for children of families in need.

The school has expanded to three locations and teaches hundreds of preschool-age children.

Brodie’s granddaughter, Valerie Hubbard-Goddard, who served 12 years as executive director of Helping Hand after her grandmother’s retirement, is chairwoman of the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County. She advises and trains preschool teachers and administrators nationwide.

Hubbard-Goddard said her grandmother’s work lives on.

“Her life was one of service and dedication to the children in our community,” Hubbard-Goddard said. “She was my mentor. The passion I have for service and for children and families is a direct result of who she was and what she imparted to me.”

Funeral arrangements are being made through the Ray Williams Funeral Home. Visitation is scheduled for 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, with family present the final hour, at the funeral home, 301 N. Howard Ave.

The funeral will begin at noon Wednesday at Tyer Temple United Methodist Church, 3305 N. 15th St., with burial afterward at Garden of Memories Cemetery.

Donations can be made through the funeral home to the Altamese Brodie scholarship fund at Hillsborough Community College.

Civil rights activist Lani Guinier to speak on diversity in higher education

by Letisia Marquez
UCLA News

WHAT:
Lani Guinier, one of the nation’s leading civil rights scholars, will be the keynote speaker at the College Access Project for African Americans symposium, organized by UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. Guinier will discuss her latest book, “Meritocracy Inc.: How Wealth Became Merit, Class Became Race and Higher Education Became a Gift From the Poor to the Rich,” which deals with issues of diversity, fairness and affirmative action.

WHEN:
7 p.m. on Friday, May 16

WHERE:
UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, Calif.

BACKGROUND:
Guinier’s work examines democratic theory, political representation, educational equity and issues of race and gender. In 1998, she became the first black woman to receive a tenured professorship at Harvard Law School. Before joining Harvard, Guinier was a tenured law professor for 10 years at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Guinier to be the first African American woman to serve as U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights. Her name was later withdrawn without a confirmation hearing. She turned that incident into a powerful memoir titled “Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback Into a New Vision of Social Justice.” During the 1980s, Guinier was the head of the voting rights project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and she served in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Carter administration. She is the author of several books and numerous articles and op-eds.

Funded by the Ford Foundation, the College Access Project for African Americans examines the current status of, challenges to, and strategies for increasing African Americans’ access to institutions of higher education in California.

PARKING:

Parking will be available for $3 at the Hammer Museum.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Letisia Márquez, UCLA Office of Media Relations, 310-206-3986.

A Ceremony Where Boys Step Up As Gentlemen

by Avis Thomas-Lester
Washington Post

Resplendent in a tuxedo, silver tie, vest and polished-to-perfection black shoes, Keith Jones took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold into the ornate ballroom. The crowd of about 200 family members, friends, teachers and school administrators stopped talking and focused all attention on him.

At his side, his mother, Beverly, beamed proudly. They glided forward, arm in arm — Keith, 14, clutching a long-stem white rose, which he presented to his mother under a giant arch of shimmery black and silver balloons.

“I’d like to introduce our next gentleman, Keith Jones,” said co-announcer Christopher Roorda, a school administrator. “Keith is a member of the Kettering Baptist Church, the National Junior Honor Society, a participant in the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. . . . He looks forward to attending North Carolina A&T University on full scholarship and majoring in architectural engineering.”

Then came Kendrick King, 13, who wants to be a police officer, and Desmond Lewis, 14, “who aspires to have a basketball career, but if that doesn’t work out, he plans to become an engineer,” Roorda told the crowd.

And so it went last Thursday at Martin’s Crosswinds in Greenbelt, where the 32 members of the Ernest Everett Just Middle School Gentlemen’s Association were feted at the school’s beautillion. It’s an annual “coming out” celebration, the equivalent of the time-honored cotillion for black boys that was once sponsored by social clubs. At Just Middle, the Gentleman’s Association is made up of boys from all backgrounds, and the beautillion is their introduction to society and public recognition for outstanding academic achievement, citizenship, leadership and community service.

Prince George’s County Council Chairman Samuel H. Dean (D-Mitchellville) and his wife, Donna, were among the county leaders who attended the event, “Young Men of Strength, Wisdom & Integrity.”

The event included a formal dinner, presentations by several of the honorees, a stirring rendition of Elvis Presley’s “If I Can Dream” by art teacher Jacqueline Gaskins and a keynote address by author Michael Miller.

Other musical performances included a solo by Aarif Bradley, 13, an eighth-grader and aspiring preacher, and a vocal tribute to Roorda and other sponsors. The two highlights of the evening were a mother-son waltz and a pinning ceremony with the fathers.

The beautillion at Just Middle started several years ago at the behest of then-Principal Marian White-Hood, who also started the tradition at Kettering Middle School. The beautillion was created to provide boys with the opportunity girls in the Rose Court had been given with their cotillion. The first year the event was in the school cafeteria; the next it moved to Martin’s.

“The purpose of the Gentlemen’s Association beautillion is to give the young men a major event to prepare for each year, then to carry it out,” White-Hood said. “They are in charge of the program. They emcee, introduce the guests. Adults very much play a secondary role. It is the young men’s night. They are the stars.”

Roorda, who worked with White-Hood at Kettering, said the Just beautillion culminated a year of activities for the students, including two trips to the Self Help and Resource Exchange (SHARE) warehouse in Hyattsville, where they helped prepare food boxes for people in need, a trip to a Washington Wizards game, a leadership workshop and a “lock-in,” where the young men and some of their fathers and male teachers spent the night at school playing basketball and video games and getting to know each other.

Preparations for the beautillion began months ago, organizers said. The students had a candy fundraiser to help reduce the $55 per ticket cost of the event. They sold ads in the color souvenir program, and part of that money was used to pay for gift bags for the young men, Roorda said.

A Rose Court father, Ellis Covington, conducted an etiquette workshop for the young men with two midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. A mother, April Haynes, who works for a catering company, conducted a lesson on table manners.

Eighth-grade member Matthew McIntosh, 14, said the Gentlemen’s Association was a “brotherhood where I was blessed to be able to nurture the seventh-graders through the program and show them the ropes.”

At the beautillion, he was accompanied by his parents, Shirlene and Johnnie McIntosh, and many relatives and friends. The etiquette training came in handy, he said.

“I felt like a basketball player at the championship game who has the job of making the ending shot,” said Matthew, a Just basketball player. “I feel we all made the shot because we accomplished what we set out to accomplish.”

Phyllis Gerald, whose son Caleb was co-emcee of the event with Derwayne Andre Henry, both 13 and in the eighth grade, complimented the youths on their behavior.

“The way they carried themselves was awesome,” Gerald said. “They were so excited about what they were doing.”

Caleb said the best part of the evening was shared with their parents.

“The whole thing was fun, but I really liked the waltz,” he said. “It was really nice being out there on the dance floor with our moms.”

After all the roast beef, baked chicken and chocolate cake had been eaten, all the speeches made and all the congratulations given, it was time for the eighth-graders to turn the organization over to the seventh-grade members with a candle-lighting ceremony.

Each eighth-grader was given a lighted candle. The older boys lit the younger members’ candles. When the candles were extinguished, the seventh-graders were officially in charge.

“I think they will do a good job,” Caleb said. “I know a few of them, and they are already pretty good leaders. We’ll be in high school, but we can always come back to help if they need us.”

Battlefields of the Civil War: Photography by William Earle Williams at Houston’s MFA

ArtDaily

African American men served in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. But in 1861, in the first months of the Civil War, blacks in the North who tried to enlist in the Union Army were turned away. Undeterred, they continued to organize and drill in the expectation the law would change.

Their hope came true on January 1, 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring “all persons held as slaves . . . forever free.” Eventually, more than 180,000 African American soldiers—both freed slaves and free men from the North—fought in 175 regiments, accounting for a tenth of all Union troops. Yet few memorials or historical plaques mark their contributions.

In 1995, American photographer William Earle Williams set out to celebrate these unsung heroes by creating a comprehensive pictorial record of important sites where black troops fought. This exhibition presents a selection of prints from a larger series, which is published in a book available in the museum´s Hirsh Library.

Until the release of the motion picture Glory in 1989, it was not well known that more than 180,000 black soldiers served in the Civil War. The exhibition Unsung Heroes: African American Soldiers in the Civil War features over forty stunning black-and-white photographs by William Earle Williams. The images call attention to the sites made special through these soldiers’ contributions, so that their story becomes a part of our American story. Williams has been pursuing this series for over ten years. He has photographed significant Civil War sites in the South and North, recording both historically recognizable as well as forgotten locations.

According to Williams, “Too often the historical and artistic legacy of black accomplishment is ignored. As an artist the memory of these soldiers has inspired my artistic imagination. The ground they fought on is sacred and an inspiration for all Americans. These sites dispel the myth that blacks were given their citizenship and rights after the Civil War without having fought for and earned them.” He photographs sites where black soldiers trained, fought, or lost their lives. These locations, along with images significant to the Underground Railroad, have often been overlooked and are rarely photographed. Williams’ photographs are rich in history, and he has spent a great deal of time researching the locations depicted in each image. The sites are often forgotten and unmarked–the viewer would not immediately realize the historic importance of these places without Williams’ research.

Williams received his BA in History at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY and his MFA in Fine Arts at Yale University School of Art in New Haven, CT. He has been a professor of fine arts at Haverford College in Pennsylvania since 1978, and a curator of photography since 1979. Williams participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in the summer of 2003.

Killeen’s first African-American graduate 50 years later

Chelsea Hover
News 8 Austin

A congregation had more reason to rejoice Sunday.

That’s because this week marks a special anniversary for one of their long time members Mildred Bernice Anderson Debose.

She was the first African-American ever to graduate from Killeen High School back in 1958.

“I was not the only black but the first one to graduate,” DeBose said.

She remembers being treated differently by the teachers fifty years ago and recalls being called names by her peers.

But now, she sees those hard times in a different light.

Honoree Mildred Debose understands her role as a pioneer in Killeen.

“Years later I said well, the Lord used me to be a trailblazer for other African-Americans to come through the Killeen school system,” she said.

Tierra Martin is a freshman this year at Killeen high school.

“I think there’s more African-Americans there than all the other races put together,” she said.

But she said African-Americans are still faced with racism everyday at Killeen High.

“Saying you don’t belong here, you don’t do this, we were here first, and all that kind of stuff is still going on at Killeen High School,” Martin said.

Mother Debose said it breaks her heart to see the struggles of today’s youth, especially with drugs and violence.

She tries to inspire them to stay in school and get an education.

“Rise above social injustice. Rise above ignorance. Rise above hatred,” DeBose said.

Those are words of wisdom from a woman who’s been through it all.

Oakland students honored for good grades

by Lyanne Melendez
ABC 7 News

It’s a big night in Oakland. More than 1,000 African American students will be honored on Monday for working to close the academic achievement gap. School officials hope these students will inspire many more.

Eunique James is an honor student at Peralta Creek Middle School in Oakland. She’s relied on help from others to achieve a 3.8 grade point average.

“I study more and I get help from the school, they have after school programs, they have counselors, we have teachers who take their time,” says James, a student.

Teachers are key in closing the achievement gap among minorities. That is according to a report by Education Trust West, a nonprofit researching education trends. That same report found low-income students and students of color are consistently assigned to the least qualified teachers.

“What you need is more experienced teachers who have many strategies and know how to teach in different modalities and will be able to say, ‘You need this, as opposed to this,’ and a lot of it comes from experience,” says Wandra Boyd, from the African American Education Task Force.

When it comes to math and reading, the California Department of Education says African American students are still struggling to catch up with their white counterparts.

Take the API results which measure a student’s proficiency in English and Math. In 2007 the average score for white (non-Hispanic) students was 884. For African Americans it was 603. 800 is the goal set by the California Department of Education.

African American students with a 3.0 GPA or higher will be recognized by the Education Task Force and the district.

“It tells me that they are actually trying to make us feel recognized and important, so it makes us want to work harder to achieve higher than a 3.0,” says Roni Owiang, a 4.0 Student from Montera Middle School.

The hope is those honored will be an inspiration for other students.

“It also helps to create more of a culture of, ‘This is also a facet of what we can do,’” says Boyd.

CA installs 1st black female top legislator in US

by Samantha Young
AP

California on Tuesday installed the nation’s first black female legislative leader, swearing in Los Angeles Democrat Karen Bass as speaker of the state Assembly.

Bass said at the ceremony that she feels the weight of history on her shoulders.

“If we could only harness the power of our common humanity, I don’t think there’s anything we couldn’t do for the people of this state,” she said.

The 54-year-old becomes the 67th speaker, succeeding fellow Los Angeles Democrat Fabian Nunez. He is relinquishing the post at the end of the year because of term limits.

Bass was a physician’s assistant before being elected to the Assembly in 2004 and is known for writing legislation on child welfare and social justice issues. As speaker, she will hold what is regarded as the second most powerful post in state government behind the governor.

Bass takes over the 80-member house as lawmakers are turning their attention to the state budget. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will release his revised spending plan for the coming fiscal year on Wednesday and has estimated a deficit as high as $20 billion.

Bass will be among leaders who try to broker agreements on the budget and other major policy issues. She will appoint chairs to legislative committees, set staff budgets and largely control what legislation reaches the Assembly floor.

California’s Assembly is the first state legislative body in the nation to be led by a black woman, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Washington state, Rosa Franklin holds the largely honorary title of Senate president pro tem.

Black Women Playwrights’ Group to Hold Conference 9/4

SOURCE: Broadway world

For nineteen years, Washington D.C.’s Black Women Playwrights’ Group (BWPG) has been a “shelter-in-place” support and advocacy system for playwrights in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. In collaboration with Loyola University Chicago’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts, on September 4-7, 2008, BWPG will convene ‘Whisper. Laugh. Shout. Tell the Story: 1st National Meeting for Women of Color Writing Drama’. Lynn Nottage, winner of the MacArthur Genius Award in playwriting, is a featured speaker. Scholars and professionals in the field will also be present to make this first national conference a memorable and worthwhile event.

The meeting will be historic. For the first time, women of color who are writing for the stage, film, television, and radio will gather in a nurturing environment that aims to support them in establishing prolific, consistent careers writing dramatic literature that illuminates the human condition.

The conference, which dovetails with the University’s year-long focus on gender, diversity, and new initiatives in the American theater, will take place at the newly renovated Mundelein Center for the Fine and Performing Arts on Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus. The four-day meeting will include a staged reading, an awards dinner, workshops, and small group discussions that center on the playwrights’ experiences.

Participants will range from emerging to established artists, expressing their artistic vision in a plethora of forms and genres. BWPG’s mission with this conference is to illuminate the diversity of the experience of being female and of color in America – yet acknowledging the many cultural commonalities.

As theatres across the country cry out for new works for the American literary canon, BWPG’s nurturing of emerging playwrights over the past two decades has positioned us to be part of the solution. This first national conference will introduce opportunities to a vastly broader group of women writers, and the theatres who want to be future showcases for their work.

BWPG President Karen L.B. Evans tells the BWPG story this way: “This summer, I stood in the bank and two black women were at the teller windows in front of me. I saw only their backs. One was in her fifties, with perfectly coiffed silvery hair, a raw silk outfit, lime green pants, and tiny jewels on her mules. Next to her was a woman in her twenties, with dread locks down her back, well-worn cowboy
boots, jeans with a chain belt, and a small purse with a shoulder strap. On the purse was the Harley Davidson emblem. I thought to myself, ‘Here’s a story. Here’s BWPG standing in line right in front of me.’”

Will Smith as a Superhero

by George Alexander
Black Enterprise

It’s summertime! Well, maybe not officially, but definitely for Hollywood. The first weekend in May kicked off the Hollywood summer movie season, which got off to a rousing start. The industry’s first event movie Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, and Gwyneth Paltrow, opened to a whooping $104.2 million domestically and a total of $201 million worldwide.

But Iron Man isn’t the only superhuman to hit the big screen this summer. In fact, the summer of 2008 is expected to be a season of superheroes. In addition to Iron Man, moviegoers can also get their fill of The Incredible Hulk; the Batman sequel, The Dark Knight; Hellboy II: The Golden Army; and Hancock, starring box-office phenomenon Will Smith. Hancock opens July 2 in time for the Fourth of July holiday.

Superheroes are as American as Hollywood itself. Take the box-office success of such franchises as Superman, Batman, X-Men, and The Fantastic Four. America has long had an infatuation with the men and women who can right society’s ills, keeping the world safe for the upstanding good guys.

But black superheroes in Hollywood are a definite rarity. Robert Townsend made an earnest, yet ill-fated attempt at being a superhero in his 1993 film, The Meteor Man. That film, in which Townsend was the star, director, producer, and writer, made a paltry $8.3 million. Wesley Snipes scored favorably with the Blade trilogy, based on the comic book series. That franchise, beginning in 1998, has grossed $417.9 million worldwide. Then there is Halle Berry, who continues to reprise her role as Ororo in the superhero ensemble of the X-Men franchise. Berry also landed the title role as the bad girl and heroine in Catwoman, which was a 2004 box-office disappointment. And let’s not forget Michael Jai White as Spawn back in 1997.

Now it’s Will Smith’s time to show off his super fetes. It’s no accident that Smith has been dubbed Mr. July. It’s a title he’s earned to the tune of a combined $2.5 billion at the box office thanks to such summer spectacles as Independence Day, Men in Black, Men in Black 2, Bad Boys I and II, and I, Robot. This summer, Smith gets a chance to dazzle audiences in Hancock, which is described as an action-comedy.

The movie is directed by Peter Berg, who most recently was behind the 2004 football film Friday Night Lights and 2007’s The Kingdom starring Jamie Foxx. Smith and his longtime producing partner James Lassiter are also producers on Hancock.

The film’s tagline on Internet Movie Database says, “Meet the superhero everybody loves to hate.” Hancock tells the story of a homeless alcoholic (Smith) who possesses superpowers. A publicist (played by Jason Bateman) tries to rehabilitate and revitalize the career of the washed-up superhero who returns the favor by having an affair with the publicist’s wife (Charlize Theron).

Hancock’s less than Mr. Nice Guy persona has been considered a rather dicey move for Smith given his long history, since his days on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, of playing likable characters. But if anyone can handle a gamble, it’s Smith, a face global moviegoers have come to worship. His worldwide gross totals nearly $5 billion. And Hancock is already expected to be a big blockbuster hit: Entertainment Weekly has predicted that the film will make $280.4 million.

If people with special powers aren’t your thing, don’t worry. Look for African Americans in other films at theaters this summer. You can catch Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Get Smart, opening on June 20; Eddie Murphy and Gabrielle Union in Meet Dave, opening July 11; and Ice Cube and Keke Palmer in The Longshots, on July 25. Yes, summer is here and it’s time to get out to the cinema.

Vanessa Williams finally getting her degree from Syracuse

Thanks to Randi523 for spreading Black achievement

AP

Nearly 25 years after leaving Syracuse University, Vanessa Williams will get her bachelor of fine arts degree this weekend.

The 45-year-old actress-singer, who stars in ABC’s “Ugly Betty,” will also deliver the convocation address Saturday to graduates of Syracuse’s College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Williams attended Syracuse’s drama department as a musical theater major from 1981-1983. She earned the remaining credits for her degree through industry experience and performances on stage and screen.

In 1983, Williams became the first black Miss America. She surrendered the title in July 1984 after Penthouse magazine published nude, sexually explicit photographs of her taken several years earlier.

Over her career, Williams has sold more than 4 million albums, won critical praise for her performances on Broadway, made dozens of TV appearances and starred in several movies.

She has won a Tony, received two NAACP Image Awards and nine Grammy nominations.

In 1996, Williams received the George Arents Pioneer Medal, the university’s most prestigious alumni award.

Instilling lofty dreams where hope’s in short supply

Leonard Pitts Jr
Seattle Times

Joaquin Burse wants to go to Harvard and be a laser tech.

You might think that’s a lofty goal. Truth is, you have no idea how lofty it is.

Because Joaquin, 13, is black and lives here, in the heart of Mississippi’s Delta, where median family income is $25,000, the teen pregnancy rate is said to be about 25 percent, and half of all young people grow up in poverty. To get here from Memphis, you drive past two prisons, dozens of cotton fields and innumerable junk cars. This is not, in sum, a place where most people have even heard of the career Joaquin dreams.

But he has an advantage: the Freedom Project.

If the name resonates, you’re remembering Freedom Summer, 1964, when college kids descended on Mississippi to teach black children in “freedom schools” and register their parents to vote. The Freedom Project, created in the idealistic spirit of that era, was founded in 1998 by Chris Myers Asch and Shawn Raymond, alumni of Teach for America, which recruits college graduates to teach in urban and rural schools, and Charles McLaurin, an organizer of the original Freedom Summer.

The result? A nonprofit program, tucked into an obscure corner of an obscure place, offering academic enrichment, martial arts, media-production classes, mentoring, exposure to writers like Rudyard Kipling, Alice Walker, Albert Camus, and field trips to such far-flung places as Mexico, Washington and Orlando. In short, something that works, as mentioned in my series of columns spotlighting that which has proved successful at steering black kids away from the well-worn catalog of dysfunction to which too many are too often lost.

Here are the numbers: 42 kids currently enrolled (families are asked to pay $300 annually, no small amount here); an annual budget of $200,000, much of it from donors like the Kellogg Foundation.

The program accepts students from middle school up. Executive Director Greg McCoy says kids usually see their reading scores improve by a grade level a year and overall grades rise by 15 percent. “Students who stick with the program and make it to that sixth year thus far have had 100 percent college enrollment and high-school graduation rates.”

But, as is often the case, one gets a better idea of this program’s success by talking to the kids who are enrolled in it. They are, bluntly stated, not like the average child who has not gone through this, or a similar program. They are, in a word, focused. They dream things so many black children do not.

Like Amberly, who plans to attend USC to be a vet, like Alesha, who wants to study law, like Joaquin, who’s going to Harvard. “I think it’s somewhere I’ve got to get,” he says, “because most of the people in my family didn’t get a chance to go to college.”

This, says McCoy, is a place where “the images you see on a daily basis are not people actively doing things to benefit the community, but a lot of people standing around. It’s a relatively small town and when the Great Migration happened and the trains stopped coming through, a lot of business went out.”

In such a place it is easy to believe lofty dreams are for other people. So the key to success, says McLaurin, lies in offering young people lessons and experiences that broaden their understanding of the world and their potential in it. That’s what worked for him.

“When I first saw Martin Luther King,” he recalls, “right away I wanted to be like him. The young man who mentioned that he wanted to go to Harvard, I bet you there are not 20 people in this community that’s even thought about Harvard. Maybe something was already in him, but through this project, he has seen the possibility.”

African bodies of evidence

by Cate McQuaid
Boston Herald

In 1810, an English ship’s surgeon brought Saartjie Baartman, a young South African woman, to London. She was displayed on stage and made to squat to show her genitals. After she died in 1816, her brain, skeleton, and genitals went on exhibition in Paris, where they remained until 1974.

Baartman, dubbed the “Hottentot Venus,” was a victim of colonialism at its most vulgar. She plays a generative role in “Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body,” a sweeping, gutsy, and provocative exhibition organized by curator Barbara Thompson at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

“Black Womanhood” draws a powerful portrait, vivid with pride and celebration, degradation, anger, and reclamation. Themes of maternity, sexuality, beauty, and women’s social roles cycle throughout.

The show, which travels to the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in September, grapples with representations of the black female body through history. Over the centuries, African women have been stolen, owned, mocked, and desired by Americans and Europeans. Sex, power, and powerlessness charge images of the black female figure, particularly the nude.

Contemporary artists from Africa and the African diaspora struggle to deconstruct the freighted meanings that lurk within such pictures. In recent years, exhibitions have spotlighted the work of contemporary African women artists, who are still an emerging group, but Thompson digs much deeper.

She places present-day art by men and women alongside traditional African art, making breathtaking links across centuries. She crosses the colonial divide with a hair-raising display of early-20th-century postcards depicting African women - the souvenirs American and European tourists sent home.

Partial nudity was common in 19th-century Africa, but imagine the reaction of Victorian-era Europeans landing there, greeted by bare-skinned natives. They deemed Africans primitive and erotic, applied anthropometry - the measuring of body parts - to attempt to understand them, and sent postcards home, many with photos and captions intended to titillate and reinforce presumptions of white racial superiority.

In traditional African art, evocations of women represented the feminine in its divine and creative aspects. A carving of a woman holding her breasts, such as one by the Temne peoples in Sierra Leone, was a symbol of obeisance to the gods. In the West, we’d likely read it salaciously, as a sexual invitation.

Traditionally, men made figurative art in Africa; women worked with ceramics and textiles. Many masks here were made and worn by men in rituals that evoked the power of the feminine, such as the 19th-century Yoruban cap mask, or gelede, on view here. It topped a full costume, with caricatured breasts and bottom.

Sokari Douglas Camp, a Nigerian artist, re-creates the gelede headdress in “Gelede from Top to Toe.” With bulbous eyes, an enormous rear, and missile-like breasts, the piece adds another level of exaggeration and satire to a tradition already loaded with them. White South African photographer Penny Siopis takes an African breastplate, much like the 19th-century Tanzanian one here swollen with a pregnant belly, and holds it over her own torso in “Mask and Myself.” Setting the African relic against her white skin, Siopis raises questions about her own African identity.

Maud Sulter and Renee Cox tackle Western art history. Sulter’s “Terpsichore,” one of a series of photographs depicting prominent black women as muses, has performance artist Della Street wearing an aristocratic wig and gown, in a pose typical of 17th- and 18th-century portraits of wealthy women, often accompanied by African pages. Here, Street personifies both. She holds a bauble, denoting trade and the dark economic history that filled many a European aristocrat’s coffers. Her eyes meet the viewer’s in quiet accusation.

The reclining nude, a perennial in European art history, has beckoned erotically to viewers at least since the 16th century. By the 19th century, such works often included a black servant hovering in the background; look at Manet’s “Olympia.” Cox tartly upends that scenario, conflating the nude and the servant in her own flesh, lounging in red pumps against a sumptuous gold day bed.

In her collage “Double Fuse,” the Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu exaggerates the African female form, playing on the fears and desires historically projected onto it. Building bold twin figures out of images cut from wildlife, fashion, and car magazines, Mutu creates women who are part superhero, part monster.

“Black Womanhood” aches with old wounds, probed tenderly by artists who still contend with these scars and restrictions. It has a mighty scope, embracing topics such as the spice trade, Josephine Baker, African initiation rituals, and homophobia in South Africa.

The paradigm it sets up - between black and white, woman and man, colonized and colonizers - is one we’re all trying to dig our way out of. It’s easy, and perhaps even necessary, to paint the oppressed in a gauzy, heroic light so they can shed the projections of others and reclaim their own identities.

But I found myself wondering, as I wandered through the traditional African masks, pots, and costumes, reading wall text that emphasized the complementarity of male and female roles among various African peoples, was it really so noble and perfect? Was no one oppressed? What about practices such as female genital mutilation, enacted by African women upon African girls? It may be too much to ask this already ambitious show to examine yet another topic fraught with conflicted meaning, but it certainly adds another layer to the already rich iconography of black womanhood.

Child of Georgetown fights discrimination with education

by Dave Baity
The Sun News

Minnie Kennedy, 91, grew up surrounded by opulent wealth at Hobcaw Barony.

But her life was a sharp contrast to the privileged existence of Wall Street multi-millionaire Bernard Baruch and his family who entertained presidents, prime ministers and powerful generals in the big house up the way.

Minnie’s parents, William and Daisy Kennedy, were servants. Treasured servants, to be sure, but servants nonetheless. And black servants, at that, which Minnie observed at an early age marked them for less than equal treatment in the segregated South.

Even in the one-room schoolhouse on the Barony that she attended to the fourth grade, she simply couldn’t say the last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. The words “with liberty and justice for all” simply didn’t ring true for anybody but folks who were white, she said.

But poring over the tattered, hand-me-down books that black youngsters used at the little school, she came to a revelation: Education was the key to achieving the respect and dignity that all people deserved. And so she read and studied, determined to rid herself and others of the discrimination she chafed under.

William Kennedy was a valued member of Baruch’s staff of servants. He was the Barony handyman and served as a duck-hunting guide for Baruch’s powerful buddies who gathered there during the hunting season.

His wife, Daisy, was the cook who planned and prepared the sumptuous meals the Baruchs served their guests. The couple and their 13 children lived in a two-story tenant house outside the fence that surrounded the posh Baruch mansion. Other servants lived nearby in a village of smaller homes.

Daisy Kennedy was a strong-willed woman who sometimes smarted from being treated as a second-class citizen. And she often muttered retorts just out of earshot to demands made by her white bosses. Once, she adamantly refused a request to enlist her daughter to join her and dance for a gathering of white guests at the Baruch home.

When Minnie and her father visited town in her youth and she asked him to take her into a restaurant to get a sandwich, she was dismayed by his answer.

‘”We can’t go in there,’ he said, ‘that’s for white folks,’” she recalled. And when she questioned her parents about why books - and the U.S. Constitution - declared that all people were created equal but they had to tolerate substandard treatment, her father always told her to calm down.

‘”That’s just the way it is,’ he would say, and then I’d say, ‘But it doesn’t have to be that way,’” Minnie Kennedy recalled.

Even though his acceptance of the way things disappointed Minnie, William Kennedy quietly supported her quest to get an education. He scraped together enough money to buy a house on Queen Street in Georgetown and move his family there so that she and her sisters could attend Howard High School, the town’s all-black high school that went through the 10th grade.

The black school on the Barony ended at fourth-grade, Minnie Kennedy said, and the only way to get to Howard High was to take the ferry to Georgetown - which was a privilege denied to blacks.

And when she graduated with honors and wanted to attend college, William Kennedy put together the $30-per-semester tuition and $12-a-month room and board she needed to get a degree from S.C. State College in Orangeburg that would allow her to become a teacher. Bernard Baruch had told her father he would pay for Minnie’s education, but failed to keep the promise until she sent him a letter after graduating that totaled up her expenses.

“He then sent my father a check for a little over $600,” she said. “He congratulated my father on my graduation, but also said in the letter that I was a rude girl. I always was a rebel.”

With her degree in hand, Minnie Kennedy returned to Georgetown and joined the faculty at Howard High. But after World War II broke out, she ventured North to seek better pay and new opportunities. She quickly learned that discrimination wasn’t limited to the South. When she wanted to use the money she made at the Brooklyn Naval Yard to buy a new dress at a well-known department store, she learned that women of color could buy the clothes there, but weren’t allowed to try them on. Black women had to enlist white women who wore the same size to model the clothes for them, she said.

And, when she applied for a teaching job with the New York educational system, she was turned down because she hadn’t shed her Southern accent.

When the war ended, she used savings from her defense job to return to college and eventually earn a master’s degree in early childhood education. That led to a series of teaching positions in experimental schools where she had the opportunity to work with whites and blacks of all economic backgrounds. One was in Westchester County, N.Y., where she shepherded a kindergarten class that became a model for others in the school district. Based on her success there, she launched workshops for other teachers that demonstrated their need to have a democratic outlook about their charges, an open, unforced acceptance of other races and a willingness to set loving rules for hard-to-teach kids.

The notoriety of her philosophy landed her a job as an adjunct professor at New York University administering an early childhood program for college students interested in joining the field that was funded by a Head Start and a New York state grant.

She refused to allow youngsters taught in the experimental program to be identified by income, and insisted that parents of the young students be available to come to the school to discuss their children’s progress and serve as volunteers when possible.

As a result, she wound up as a Head Start regional training officer that required her to give workshops in many of the New England states.

During summer months, she became a world traveler by attending education workshops in Europe and Asia and earning extra money by serving as a counselor at private camps that often had only well-to-do white students. At one, she had the opportunity to arrange for her campers to set up their tents on former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s Hyde Park lawn.

Minnie Kennedy had campaigned for John F. Kennedy and was invited to his presidential inauguration, where she had met Eleanor Roosevelt. So, when she called to ask if she might bring her 13 youngsters there to meet her, the former first lady agreed.

“She was most gracious,” Kennedy said. “She came out, greeted the children, talked with them and answered their questions. It was a very nice experience.”

And when the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s got under way, Kennedy joined the fray. She joined a group of activists who headed to Louisiana to help register black voters. Kennedy’s job was to teach illiterate blacks in Plaquemine, La., enough about the U.S. Constitution to pass the oral test required to get them on the voter rolls. She also accompanied them to the county courthouse to take the test, which many activists complained had been designed to prevent them from voting.

She and the racially mixed members of her group landed in jail when they decided to take a ferry from Plaquemine to New Orleans for an outing. When they drove their cars onto the ferry and got out to stand by the ferryboat’s railing to enjoy the scenery, the captain ordered them to the other side. They were standing at the railing reserved for whites, he said, and had to head to the black side.

Most were New York and New Jersey residents who’d never experienced such treatment. Kennedy jokingly made a comment that she didn’t understand the captain’s complaint because he obviously couldn’t distinguish colors. She quipped that he wasn’t white, he was pink, never expecting anybody to take that to mean he was a communist.

In any event, the captain turned the boat around, headed back to Plaquemine and radioed for police to be at the dock to haul the group to jail for violating the boat’s segregation rules. It took days for them to finally be released.

Shula Chernoff, 85, and professor emeritus at Southern Connecticut State University, said Kennedy was reluctant to discuss the incident or her work with the late Dr. Martin Luther King with students when Chernoff enlisted her first to fill in for a professor at the university. She finally talked about it, however, while conducting a program when students asked her if she’d ever been to jail.

She figured parents would react badly when students told them she’d said yes, but was delighted when they returned to class to proclaim that their parents had “declared that Minnie is a heroine.”

“Then she began sharing her life story with the children,” Chernoff said.

“She had worked with Martin Luther King and took a lot of risks. Young people and children at the time knew little about that era. She brought them a very powerful message.”

Ojetta Parker Smith, 90, of Georgetown, was Kennedy’s classmate at Howard High. She graduated from Morris College in Sumter with a degree in elementary education and taught 43 years in the Georgetown County schools, several of those at Howard High with Kennedy.

The jailing story doesn’t surprise her.

“Minnie always was a fireball,” she said with a chuckle.” She’s a fighter for what she thinks is right. She’s one of those people who truly believes what she believes in.

“She’s still politically active,” Smith said. “She invites political candidates and her friends to her home so they can come in, meet the candidates and question them about the issues they feel are important. Everybody in Georgetown knows Minnie Kennedy as well as lots of people in New York.”

Norma Johnson, an 83-year-old former teacher turned human resources administrator in New York City, spent years teaching alongside Kennedy at several schools and as an adjunct professor at NYU.

“Minnie influenced me so much,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone so selfless and so humane. She knew how to help children be who they needed to be. Parents really loved her and knew that she wanted what was good for their children. She provoked children to really think. That’s what education is all about.”

Kennedy said her view on “civil rights” has been tempered by age and maturity. She has come to realize the full import of Martin Luther King’s message, she said.

The thrust of what King was talking about wasn’t simply civil rights, she said. It’s about humanity and human relations.

“Civil rights is a manmade thing, a thing for the government,” she said, that speaks to a manmade problem. “Human relations is of God. We are all God’s children. It’s only when we see each other for what we are and give each other respect that we will finally get past seeing only color and how it divides us.”