Journalism professor recognized for latest book
By Trent Goldston, The Lariat
Photo credit, Shanna Taylor
Dr. Mia Moody, Journalism professor, has been receiving great reviews for her latest book, “‘Black and Mainstream Press’ Framing of Racial Profiling: A Historical Perspective,” most notably from the publication Journalism and Mass Communication.
Will Crockett, public relations director for the College of Arts and Sciences, said Moody’s recognition from J&MC is monumental.
“This is the flagship journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and a premier journal in the field,” Crockett said. “The journal provides leadership in developing theory and introducing new concepts to its readership.”
Dr. Clark Baker, chairman of the journalism department said he was very pleased to hear about Moody’s work being recognized.
“It’s great. We are very proud of her,” Baker said.
Using the Web to adjust the color on TV Minorities find a warm reception through online channels
by DeNeen Brown, Washington Post
A black superwoman appears on your laptop in shimmering blue tights, green socks and a midnight blue cape. Her hair in Afro puffs, she is sitting on a promenade bench. She looks worried and a bit worn out. Her makeup is smeared, probably from crying.
She tells us she has just caught her boyfriend with a “second-rate superhero.” The nerve of him.
The woman, who identifies herself as Fantastica, climbs a railing on a ledge several stories aboveground.
She holds tight to the rail behind her, breathes deeply, then announces dramatically: “Death over dishonor.” And lets go.
You shout at your computer: Girl, don’t go out like that over a man.
The camera shifts. You see her falling, slo-mo.
Morgan is state bar’s first African American president
by Tom Saulding, Indy Star
When Roderick Morgan moved to Indianapolis in 1991 to practice law, he said he could count the number of minorities serving as law firm partners on one hand.Nearly two decades later, he says: “I don’t know everyone’s name, and that’s a good thing.”
On Wednesday, he became the first African-American to be named president of the Indiana State Bar Association.
Morgan, a partner with Bingham McHale in Indianapolis, had been in the state bar’s line of succession for the past few years. And he said he appreciates the historical significance and achievement of leading an organization that at one time excluded blacks from membership.
“Slowly but surely, we’re knocking down those barriers, real or perceived,” said Morgan, 61. “Although I am the first African-American president of the state bar, I certainly hope it doesn’t mean that I’m the last.”
Curtis Granderson wins man of year award
by George Sipple, Detroit Free Press
Tigers centerfielder Curtis Granderson has won the Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award.
ESPN Radio’s “Mike & Mike in the Morning” show made the announcement Friday that Granderson had received the honor and that St. Louis’ Albert Pujols was named player of the year.
Awards were presented by the Major League Baseball Players Association.
Granderson talked on ESPN Radio after the announcement.
“The fact that other teammates and other players throughout the league have acknowledged that as well has definitely been a great thing, too,” he said.
Diverse Washington team a rarity in sport of swimming
by Jamie Secola, Pensacola News Journal
Black swimmers are rare.
But that doesn’t seem to bother Washington High freshman Brittney Foster.
“I don’t feel any different,” Foster, 14, said of being a black swimmer. “I’m used to swimming with all white people.”
This year, however, Foster is one of six black swimmers on the Wildcats’ team, which competes in Friday’s District 1-2A championship meet at the University of West Florida Aquatic Center. Washington figures to be one of the strongest teams in the event.
Derek Jeter’s community service awarded
SOURCE: ESPN
Derek Jeter again found himself the focus of unwanted attention in a season full of honors.
This time, though, with a little self-deprecating humor, he didn’t need prompting to cherish the moment.
The New York Yankees captain was the recipient of the 2009 Roberto Clemente Award, given annually to a major league player who combines community service with excellence on the field.
Jeter was presented the award by commissioner Bud Selig and Vera Clemente, Roberto’s widow, before the Yankees played the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 2 of the World Series on Thursday night.
The De Berry’s family sacrifice helps to land the stringed wonders on the stage at Lincoln Center
by Elizabeth Lazarowitz, NY Daily News
The De Berry kids are heading for Lincoln Center.
A group of four violin-playing Brooklyn sisters and their cello-playing brother have so inspired folks at the prestigious performance hub that they’ve invited them all to be their guests.
“We were just so moved by their devotion to music and the arts and their family’s sacrifice,” said Lincoln Center president Reynold Levy after reading Tuesday’s report in The News about the Bedford-Stuyvesant family.
Dad Sean De Berry, 41, and his wife, Sherri, 46, are both out of work, but stretch their budget – eliminating vacations and eating out – to keep their kids in tune.
Yankees captain Derek Jeter lifts Li’l Jeter’s heart with presents, letter
by Edgar Sandoval and Samuel Goldsmith, NY Daily News
It’s been a great October for both Bronx Jeters.
Little Jeter Villacis, the 16-month-old heart transplant patient named after the Yankees captain, will finally leave Montefiore Medical Center after two months in intensive care.
And Derek Jeter is giving the family another reason to celebrate with the team’s first World Series berth since 2003.
After reading about little Jeter in the Daily News, the shortstop sent him a Yankee care package with a heartfelt note of encouragement.
“Life is a daily challenge, some more challenging than others, but you are a true star for giving it your all and I strongly admire your strength and courage,” Jeter wrote.
Bronx beauty Kerry Washington comes home to make Broadway debut in ‘Race’
SOURCE: NY Daily News
You’re in rehearsals for “Race,” which will be your Broadway debut on Nov. 19. Excited about that?
AIt’s ridiculously cool. I grew up in the Bronx, and I wanted to do theater long before I wanted to be in a movie. I’ve never done Broadway before, but I had been longing to return to the theater. Originating a role in a play by David Mamet, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, is just an incredible opportunity.
You, James Spader and David Alan Grier play lawyers. Richard Thomas is a client who is accused of assaulting a young black woman. Potentially explosive?
Yes. And without giving anything else away, I’ll say that I’m enjoying the ride of it. Which includes the fact that Mamet is directing.
You’re 32 now. You were performing on stage when you were 8. Was that a good experience?
Absolutely. I feel like I was really lucky to have started in theater. TADA! [Theater on W. 28th St.] was the first place that anybody told me to take out a notebook and to take notes of what the director said. I learned to be on time. More than anything, it taught me about a work ethic, the respect for fellow actors and the importance of consistency, preparation and teamwork. I built sets. I hung lights. It was a communal adventure. Film is collaborative the same way theater is. It was a really important foundation.
New York is a fab food city — where would you grab a bite if you had some free time?
I like Bonobo’s Vegetarian on E. 23rd St. The coconut soup makes me very happy.
Los Angeles Angels OF Torii Hunter continues to inspire hope in hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas
by Wayne Coffey, NY Daily News
Raymond (R.J.) McGregor is a soft-spoken 16-year-old with a wisp of a goatee, a penchant for mumbling and enough pain in his past to take him from here to the Ozarks and back. For the last two years, he has played centerfield and batted cleanup for a state championship baseball team, a 5-9, 160-pound kid with speed and power and outsized ambition, along with a singular rooting interest in the American League Championship Series.
When the Angels and Yankees got things going in a billion-dollar Stadium Friday night, McGregor watched on a fading, 19-inch TV in his mother’s bedroom in a rundown brick rental home, in the most dangerous metropolitan area in the country, according to one recent study.
R.J. McGregor will mostly be tracking one player in the ALCS, No. 48 of the Angels, another centerfielder from Pine Bluff with a horrific back story. Long before he ever scaled any big-league wall or won any of his eight Gold Gloves or earned a penny of his $90 million contract, Torii Hunter had to escape much more perilous obstacles here in his hometown, a gritty city of 52,000 on the Arkansas River that teems with pawn shops, used-car lots and vacant downtown storefronts; where almost a third of the residents live in poverty and 78% of students in the Pine Bluff School District are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
Former Oroville resident, Tuskegee Airman, dead at 84
SOURCE: OrovilleMR.com
A former Oroville resident, who left the area in the 1940s and became one of a unique group of fighter pilots during World War II known as the Tuskegee Airmen, was remembered at a memorial service Friday in Marysville.Samuel L. Broadnax, 84, died early Oct. 7 at his home in Sacramento, said his son, Brian Broadnax.
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military airmen.
Longtime resident Stu Shaner said Broadnax grew up in Oroville and attended Oroville High School until his senior year, when he enlisted in the military. At the age of 17, Broadnax enlisted in the Army Air Corps and trained to become a pilot at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama.
He graduated in 1945 as a fighter pilot.
He was the author of a book about African-American aviation pioneers, and according to his book biography, was a broadcaster and journalist.
After leaving the military, Broadnax attended Yuba College, Howard University and UC Berkeley.
Broadnax’s son, Brian Broadnax, said there are no other relatives remaining in Oroville. The former Orovillian was 84.
Firefighter, union president retires
by Aaron Organ, Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
Jim Ridley has seen a lot in 29 years as a Fort Wayne firefighter. He’s saved countless lives and doused far too many fires.
In the 11 years he’s been president of the firefighters’ union, Local 124, Ridley has extinguished probably a comparable amount of fires, and accomplished success upon success for the benefit of his colleagues.
Ridley, 52, is now stepping down. But he’s not out.
The International Association of Fire Fighters announced this week that Ridley has been named director of its Hazardous Materials and Weapons of Mass Destruction Training Department.
Ridley will be in charge of 102 instructors throughout the United States and Canada, as well as the 11 staff members at his new headquarters in Washington, D.C. His duties will include writing and overseeing the requests of funds through the association, and making sure the requests are met through grant sources that will keep the program running and the training fluid.
Janelle Monae, Mary J. Blige To Be Honored At Black Girls Rock
by Crystal Bell, Billboard
Janelle Monáe, Mary J. Blige, Salt-N-Pepa’s Spinderella and — oddly enough — Anthony Hamilton are among the honorees for the fourth annual Black Girls Rock! Awards, which take place Saturday (Oct. 17) in New York and recognize women of color making strides in arts and entertainment.
Monáe, who is currently working on the followup to her debut album “Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase,” will receive the “Who’s Got Next” award. The alt-R&B singer tells Billboard.com that the honor feels like a call to duty. “Black girls have always been rockin,’” says Monáe. “I just want to make sure I’m also leading by example. I want to continue to inspire other young girls of color to be artists and express themselves creatively.”
Celebrating the first African American Cover Girl Katiti Kironde
by Moya Stone, NBC Bay Area
We were all very excited earlier this year to see our lovely First Lady Michelle Obama on the cover of Vogue. But back in the day an African American woman gracing the cover of a top fashion magazine was just not done. That is until Glamour magazine broke with convention by putting Katiti Kironde on their August 1968 College Issue.
On Friday October 9th, Ms. Kironde’s daughter Mireille Schwartz hosted a reception to honor her mother and celebrate the 41st anniversary of that landmark issue in fashion magazine history. Local chic elites gathered in the garden of Ms. Schwartz’s San Francisco home sipping cocktails and chatting with Ms. Kironde who hails from Connecticut.
Madison County’s first African-American judge sworn in
SOURCE: WTHR
Madison County – History was made in Madison County Friday where the county court’s first African-American judge.
Gov. Mitch Daniels conducted the ceremony for Rudolph Pyle, the new judge of the Madison Circuit Court. He was a deputy prosecutor in Madison County since 2002 and was an Indiana State Trooper for four years.
The Anderson Republican will complete the term of longtime Judge Fredrick Spencer, who resigned.
“You can sentence someone to jail for a really long period of time for what they’ve done and they can deserve that, but treating them with respect is important and the public expects impartial judges and reliability and results,” said Judge Pyle.
“Justice must be blind in these choices which we take very seriously are blind to anything except quality. I am convinced we have the best person,” said Gov. Daniels.
Judge Pyle went right to work with his first case, sealing the deal for a family adoption.
African-American teens build leadership skills at Kujenga
by Jennifer Brinker, St. Louis Review
For many teens, leadership skills come easily. For others, it takes extra work.
But for all who attended the Kujenga VIII Catholic Youth Leadership Conference last month, everyone had a chance to put those skills to the test.
Sponsored by the St. Charles Lwanga Center, Kujenga is a three-day event primarily for African-American high-schoolers and recent graduates. The Lwanga Center is an archdiocesan agency that provides spiritual and leadership development for the local Catholic African-American community and beyond.
Michelle Obama Becomes National Honorary President of Girl Scouts of the USA
SOURCE: Girl Scouts of America
New York, N.Y. – Girl Scouts of the USA is pleased to announce that First Lady Michelle Obama has agreed to serve as its Honorary National President.
“It is my great pleasure to serve as Honorary National President of Girl Scouts,” said Mrs. Obama. “With their innovative new programming, ground-breaking research, and emphasis on service and leadership, Girl Scouts is preparing the women of tomorrow to be a positive force for change – in their own lives, their communities, and across the globe.”
Another historic transition today at Girard College
by Martha Woodell, Philadelphia Inquirer
Autumn Joy Adkins, an educator with experience in Friends and private schools, will be sworn in as the 16th president of Girard College in a historic ceremony this afternoon on the campus of the private boarding school for low-income students in the city’s Fairmount section.
Adkins, 37, is the first woman and the first African American tapped to lead the school that was created through a bequest of 19th Century merchant-banker Stephen Girard to educate poor, white, orphan boys. The school opened 161 years ago.
It took two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, seven months of around-the-clock picketing by civil-rights protesters led by the late Cecil B. Moore and a visit from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to integrate Girard in 1965. Another lawsuit led to the admission of the first girls in 1984.
Adkins, whose selection was announced in March, has been at the helm of the school since July. She succeeds Dominic M. Cermele, a 1949 Girard alum, who retired in June after serving as president for six years.
This academic year, Girard is providing a free, college-prep education to 623 low-income children from first through twelfth grades.
Adkins is a native of Monongahela outside Pittsburgh who spent much of her childhood in Richmond, Va. Her investiture ceremony will be held in the chapel on Girard’s 43-acre campus at Girard and Corinthian Avenues. CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien is scheduled to deliver the keynote address.
Learning About African-American History at Colonial Williamsburg
by Eileen Ogintz, Chicago Tribune
It’s your personal property. Name it anything you like. Give it as a birthday gift or throw it on the ground when you get angry or frustrated.
That was the way slave children were treated in 18th-century Virginia. They could be sent away from their parents at any time, their name abruptly changed. The kids touring the elegant Peyton Randolph House in Colonial Williamsburg — home to just two adults and 27 slaves, half of which were children and young teens — were trying hard to process that reality as Bridgette Houston, dressed as an 18th-century slave — “interpreted” African-American revolutionary history for the group of parents and kids that visited here recently on a sunny fall day.
Hospital playroom named after Barry Bonds
by Ed Eagle, MLB.com
Former big league slugger Barry Bonds had a children’s playroom named in his honor on Friday after donating nearly $250,000 for renovations at UCSF Medical Center, according to a report by the Associated Press.
Bonds’ donation enabled the hospital to add a new television, audio system, arts and crafts table, and other toys to the playroom. It also included a fund that will maintain and purchase new toys and pay for staff to oversee the room for the next four years.
The Bay Area native Bonds, who spent the final 15 seasons of his 22-year-career with his hometown Giants, has donated his time and money to the hospital in the past by visiting patients and their families and hosting golf tournaments.
UNCF raises over $30,000 at golf tournament
SOURCE: KLTV
The United Negro College Fund (UNCF), the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization today announces that the recently held Jethro Pugh Scholarship Invitational raised more than $30,000 for scholarships and operating support for its five Texas based member historically black colleges and universities.
The annual golf tournament sponsored and organized by airport concessionaire The Paradies Shops and partner Jethro Pugh has raised over $600,000 since its inception. Funds raised support the Jethro Pugh Scholarship Fund, which grants a $10,000 scholarship each year for four years to a deserving student attending a Texas UNCF college. Recognized at the tournament was last year’s scholarship recipient Quincy Bland, who attends Huston-Tillotson University, and this year’s scholarship recipient from Jarvis Christian College, LaChelle Andrews. Both scholars excel academically while also volunteering in their communities.
Film Takes New Look at Negro Leagues Star
by Sean D. Hamill, New York Times
Josh Gibson was one of the best baseball players ever, a catcher who hit as many as 800 home runs and was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, the second year that Negro Leaguers were inducted.
His life off the field was less well known. More often than not, Gibson has been characterized as a drunk and a drug user who was haunted by not making it to the major leagues with Jackie Robinson. Gibson was 35 when he died Jan. 20, 1947, three months before Robinson first took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
A new documentary, however, not only tells of Gibson’s legendary baseball accomplishments — historians and former players debate whether he actually hit a home run out of the old Yankee Stadium in 1934 — but it also tries to make the case that his drinking and apparent demons were a result of the brain tumor that eventually killed him.
GCAC elects first African-American female president
by Eddie Francis, Examiner
The Gulf Coast Athletics Conference (GCAC) elected Kiki Baker Barnes their 17th president at the 2009 fall meetings, held on Dillard’s campus October 5th and 6th. She is the first African-American woman to hold the position. Barnes is Dillard University’s Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, and also serves as head basketball coach of the Lady Bleu Devils.
ASU grant to help recruit African American male students
by Melissa Tune, WRDW
There’s been some progress, but the numbers show that when it comes to getting a college degree, African American
males continue to rank last. That’s why Augusta State University is hoping that a $20,000 “African American Initiative” grant will help.
Back in 2005, fewer than eight percent of African America males graduated from college.That number hasn’t changed that much since then, but ASU is hoping this grant will help some young men get an education and get ahead in life.
Sterling Wimberly could have been anywhere on Monday night, but he chose to be inside a classroom at ASU. The sophomore Marketing major serves in the National Guard and he’s commutes to campus. Somehow, he gets it all done.
“It is getting harder for young African American students to get into college,” Wimberly told News 12. “Not only get into college, but stay in college once they get in there.”
St. Lucie’s first black female firefighter builds on success
by Larry Bailey, Treasure Coast Palm
Eight months ago, Fort Pierce resident La Toya Young became the first black female firefighter in St. Lucie County.
“To actually be a part of history, to be the first at something, it’s an unbelievable feeling that no words can express,” Young said.
Young works out of Station 3 in Port St. Lucie.
Before becoming a firefighter, Young spent seven years driving a school bus. Her dream since she was a little girl has been to join the fire department, but she never got serious about it until the day she actually saw a female firefighter.
“Seeing a woman doing what I wanted to do, made the difference,” Young said.
