Three African-American Chemistry Students Earn Doctorate, Set University Record
(Newsone.com) At the University of Mississippi (UM), a year-long initiative to increase graduates in fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has paid off in epic fashion. Ole Miss News reports that three African-American chemistry students graduated on May 11 with doctorates, setting a school record.
See Also: Top 25 Transformative High Schools
The trio who received their degrees was Kari Copeland (pictured left), Margo Montgomery (pictured center) and Jeffrey Veals (right). A fourth African-American student, Shanna Stoddard, will earn her doctorate in chemistry this coming December. Professors at UM beamed with pride with this latest achievement for the university.
“On average, about 50 African-American students receive Ph.D.s in chemistry nationwide each year, so UM produced 6 percent of the national total,” said Maurice Eftink, associate provost and professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
This isn’t the first time UM has done well in the STEM arena. In 2006, the school had four African-American Ph.D.s in Mathematics.
“That was an even more outstanding achievement given that there are only 15 to 30 African-American Ph.D.s in Math granted each year, but the current achievement is still pretty noteworthy,” Eftink said. [D.L. Chandler - Newsone.com]
OUR HAIR
JOURNALISM - GIL NOBLE
Black journalists lost an inspirational role model, pace setter and television news icon when Gil Noble, the long-time producer and host of WABC-TV New York’s Like It Is, passed away on April 5, 2012, at 80, due to complications resulting from a stroke he suffered last year. For more than 40 years, Like It Is was one of the few shows (along with WNBC-TV New York’s Positively Black and FOX New York’s The McCreary Report) that African Americans could trust to tell the stories and cover issues of importance to us. It’s not a stretch to say that shows like Our World with Black Enterprise are direct descendents of Like It Is. And Noble, along with original Like It Is co-host Melba Tolliver, inspired several generations of African Americans to believe that a career in television news was achievable, even in the nation’s No. 1 media market.
Under Noble’s direction, Like It Is covered issues that were routinely ignored and dismissed by mainstream television news. The show also interviewed African Americans and Black people from throughout the global Diaspora, ranging from Dizzie Gillespie to Fannie Lou Hamer to Zimbabwe head of state Robert Mugabe, at a time when people of color were virtually non-existent in television news, outside of athletes, entertainers, and coverage of civil rights uprisings and criminal activity. In fact, Noble broke into television journalism when he was hired by WABC-TV to cover the Newark (N.J.) riots in 1967. Like many Black television reporters of his generation, he was hired primarily because White reporters lacked the courage, relationships and skills to report thoroughly and accurately on what was happening in Black urban communities. Noble would go on to earn seven Emmy Awards and several honorary doctorates. He also created notable documentaries on such topics as Malcolm X, W.E.B. Dubois, Hamer, and Charlie Parker. For me, his most memorable documentary effort, Essay On Drugs, kept me and thousands of others of my generation from trying addictive and illegal drugs, de-glamorizing drug abuse by giving viewers a horrifying and haunting close-up look at addicts shooting dope into their veins in a heroin den. [Read Full Story]
THE VOICE OF ALL TIME – Whitney Elizabeth Houston (1994) South Africa
For the latest info on the next RHETORIC or new poems coming out on YouTube or DVD check out http://rhetoric.p4cm.com. The latest RHETORIC was off the hook. If you missed it or even if you were there, you should see the closing poem which left everyone in awe.
Soul Train Line Takes Over Times Square
NEW YORK (AP) — Fans of “Soul Train” boogied down Broadway wearing afro wigs and bell bottoms on Saturday while others recounted their favorite episodes at a Harlem meeting hall in tribute to the show’s late creator, Don Cornelius.
About 100 dancers descended on Times Square in a “flash mob” organized through the Internet. As startled tourists looked on, they recreated one of the show’s “Soul Train lines” in which people would take turns dancing toward a TV camera while showing off their most outrageous moves.
“Don Cornelius was a big influence in my life, and I just wanted to pay tribute,” said disc jockey Jon Quick, as he held up a speaker blasting disco grooves. “He was playing the music that nobody else wanted to play. He was an amazing man.”
Cornelius, 75, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Wednesday. He had suffered from health problems, a difficult divorce, and had pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor spousal battery charge in 2009.
But on Saturday fans praised Cornelius’ vision in creating, hosting and selling “Soul Train” to television stations that were originally skeptical about programming aimed at blacks. The show aired from 1971 to 2006.
“Don Cornelius brought soul to the whole world,” said Ramona Hamm, 37, who came to Times Square with her 9-year-old daughter, Kayla Charles. The dancers bounced down Broadway for about 45 minutes until police told the party to disperse.
In Harlem, activist Al Sharpton led a tribute to Cornelius as part of the weekly community meeting at the headquarters of his National Action Network. In 1974, a 19-year-old Sharpton appeared on “Soul Train” to present an award to musician James Brown.
Singer Roberta Flack said Cornelius was an inspiration to other black performers and entrepreneurs.
“He didn’t have a great big light telling him, `Go over here, don’t go over there, watch where you step, there’s a hole right there,’” Flack said. “He stepped.”
Former “Soul Train” dancer Tyrone Proctor recalled how he hid in the trunk of a friend’s car to get through the gates of the studio where “Soul Train” was filmed in 1972. Cornelius liked his dance moves and let him stay, dubbing Proctor “The Bone” because he was so skinny.
“He turned us into stars,” Proctor said. Moves that “Soul Train” dancers developed spread nationwide and are now staples of music videos and pop concerts. [READ FULL STORY]
We are overwhelmed with the news regarding the passing of Don Cornelius. Our deepest sympathy and thoughts are with his family at this time. He was a true television visionary and his contributions to African American culture and music entertainment are immeasurable. The outpouring of affection and tributes to his legacy are a true testament to the profound impact that his life’s work had on many generations. – Kenard Gibbs, Partner/CEO Soul Train Holdings, LLC
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Prominent figures of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Clockwise from top left:W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks,Martin Luther King, Jr.
The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South.
The emergence of the Black Power Movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from oppression by white Americans.
Major campaigns of civil resistance characterized the movement between 1955 and 1968; acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis between activists and government
authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to the situations that highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) in Alabama; “sit-ins” such as the influential Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina; marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities.
Among noted legislative achievements, during this phase of the Civil Rights Movement, was passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It banned discrimination based on “race, color, religion, or national origin” in employment practices and public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights. The Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965 that dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional European groups; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and across the country, young people were inspired to action.
After the disputed election of 1876 resulted in the end of Reconstruction, Whites in the South regained political control of the region, after mounting intimidation and violence in the elections. Systematic disfranchisement of African Americans took place in Southern states from 1890 to 1908 and lasted until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s. For more than 60 years, for example, blacks in the South were not able to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.
During this period, the white-dominated Democratic Party regained political control over the South. The Republican Party—the “party of Lincoln”—which had been the party that most blacks belonged to, shrank to insignificance as black voter registration was suppressed. By the early 20th century, almost all elected officials in the South were Democrats.[citation needed]
During the same time as African Americans were being disfranchised, white Democrats imposed racial segregation by law. Violence against blacks increased. The system of overt, state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged out of the post-Reconstruction South became known as the “Jim Crow” system. It remained virtually intact into the early 1950s. Thus, the early 20th century is a period often referred to as the “nadir of American race relations“. While problems and civil rights violations were most intense in the South, social tensions affected African Americans in other regions as well.
Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period:
- Racial segregation. By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate “white” and “colored” domains. Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.
- Disfranchisement. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more inaccessible to blacks. Black voters were forced off the voting rolls. The number of African American voters dropped dramatically, and they no longer were able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans.
- Exploitation. Increased economic oppression of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination.
- Violence. Individual, police, organizational, and mass racial violence against blacks (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in California).
African Americans and other racial minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through litigation, education, and lobbying efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that rejected separate white and colored school systems and by implication overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson.
The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). From 1910 to 1970, African Americans sought better lives by migrating north and west. A total of nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the Great Migration.
Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about desegregation. They were faced with “massive resistance” in the South by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. In defiance, African Americans adopted a combined strategy of direct action with nonviolent resistance known as civil disobedience, giving rise to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of 1955–1968.
The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation in the court system that typified the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the 20th Century broadened after Brown to a strategy that emphasized “direct action”—primarily boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, marches and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. This mass action approach typified the movement from 1960 to 1968.
Churches, the centers of their communities, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses, mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges.
In 1952, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), led by T. R. M. Howard, a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter, organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Nashville which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a “credit squeeze” by the White Citizens’ Councils.
The Montgomery Improvement Association—created to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott managed to keep the boycott going for over a year until a federal court order required Montgomery to desegregate its buses. The success in Montgomery made its leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the highly successful Tallahassee, Florida, boycott of 1956–1957.
In 1957 Dr. King and Rev. John Duffy, the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge; and other activists such as Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison, to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The SCLC, with its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made non-violence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism.
In 1959, Septima Clarke, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins, with the help of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, began the first Citizenship Schools in South Carolina‘s Sea Islands. They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on Johns Island. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere. [This article continues here} WIKIPEDIA
THEATER
Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living in Chicago's Southside sometime between World War II and the 1950s. When the play opens, the Youngers are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000 from the deceased Mr. Younger’s life insurance policy. Each of the adult members of the family has an idea as to what he or she would like to do with this money. The matriarch of the family, Mama, wants to buy a house to fulfill a dream she shared with her husband. Mama’s son, Walter Lee, would rather use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends. He believes that the investment will solve the family’s financial problems forever. Walter’s wife, Ruth, agrees with Mama, however, and hopes that she and Walter can provide more space and opportunity for their son, Travis. Beneatha, Walter’s sister and Mama’s daughter, wants her mother to use the money for whatever be her will. Mama does mention she'd also like to use the money for Beneatha's medical school tuition. She also wishes that her family members were not so interested in joining the white world. Beneatha instead tries to find her identity by looking back to the past and to Africa.
As the play proceeds, the Youngers clash over their competing dreams. Ruth discovers that she is pregnant but fears that if she has the child, she will put more financial pressure on her family members. When Walter says nothing to Ruth’s admission that she is considering abortion, Mama puts a down payment on a house for the whole family. She believes that a bigger, brighter dwelling will help them all. This house is in Clybourne Park, an entirely white neighborhood. When the Youngers’ future neighbors find out that the Youngers are moving in, they send Mr. Lindner, from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, to offer the Youngers money in return for staying away. The Youngers refuse the deal, even after Walter loses the rest of the money ($6,500) to his friend Willy Harris, who persuades Walter to invest in the liquor store and then runs off with his cash...
THE HUSTLE - THE WORK ETHIC
The story is sweeeeeeet. This brother is working his legal, legitimate hustllllllllllllle. And because of it, he is taking care of himself and his family. My prayer is that no one lays a hand on him to do him harm, and I also hope that he has all the legalities covered.
AVIATION
Kimberly Anyadike is greeted after landing at Compton Woodley Airport on Saturday. She is believed to be the youngest African-American female to complete the flight across the country. Trained how to fly in a program for disadvantaged youths, she is believed to be the youngest African American female pilot to make the trip across the U.S. A 15-year-old Los Angeles girl who navigated a single-engine Cessna through thunderstorms in Texas and took in breathtaking aerial views of Arizona’s sunsets landed her plane to cheering crowds at Compton Woodley Airport on Saturday. She is believed to be the youngest African American female pilot to fly solo across the country. Kimberly Anyadike took off from Compton 13 days ago with an adult safety pilot and Levi Thornhill, an 87-year-old who served with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. They flew to Newport News, Va., making about a dozen stops along the way. Anyadike learned to fly a plane and helicopter when she was 12 with the Compton-based Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum, which offers aviation lessons to at-risk youth and economically disadvantaged students through an after-school program. The organization owns the small plane Anyadike flew. Anyadike said she loved the feeling of streaking across the sky. She told her mother that it was like a wild ride at Magic Mountain. [Story by My-Thuan Tran]
MEDICINE - SURGEON
Date: Sun, 1893-07-09 On this date in 1893, the first successful American open-heart surgery was performed by a Black surgeon, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams.
Dr. Daniel Williams completed the operation on a young man named James Cornish. He had been rushed to Provident Hospital in Chicago–a hospital which Dr. Williams had founded and one of the few hospitals that welcomed African Americans–with a stab wound. Williams repaired the wound with the use of sutures.
Black First: 2,000 years of extraordinary achievement by Jessie Carney Smith Copyright 1994 Visible Ink Press, Detroit, MI ISBN 0-8103-9490-1 Date: Sun, 1817-07-13
ENTERTAINMENT - SINGER
On this date, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield was born in 1817. She was a Black singer whose exceptional voice made her a popular performer in Great Britain.
Taylor was born a slave in Natchez, and as a child accompanied her mistress to Philadelphia, PA. When her mistress joined the Society of Friends and freed her slaves, Elizabeth chose to remain with her and to take her surname, Greenfield. Encouraged by Mrs. Greenfield, she began to develop her natural musical talent. She continued to study music after Mrs. Greenfield’s death in 1845, eventually focusing on singing. In 1851, Elizabeth Greenfield gave her first public performances, in Buffalo, NY. Soon afterwards, she made a concert tour of several cities, including Boston and Chicago.
A testimonial concert in March 1853, arranged by friends in Buffalo, raised funds for a trip to Europe for additional training. Her London manager, handling a British concert tour for her, defaulted, leaving her stranded. She sought and received help from Lord Shaftesbury, the recently arrived Harriet Beecher Stowe, and from the Duchess of Sutherland, who became her special patron. She gave her first London performance in May 1853, and sang in several cities in England and Ireland.
Settling in Philadelphia, she became a vocal teacher and for some years gave occasional concerts. Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield died on March 31, 1876, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Reference: Black Women in America An Historical Encyclopedia Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Darlene Clark Hine Copyright 1993, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New York ISBN 0-926019-61-9
www.aaregistry.org
HOME COOKED MEALS
ENTERTAINMENT - SCREENWRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
Shonda Rhimes (born January 13, 1970) is an American screenwriter, director and producer. She is best known as the creator, head writer, and executive producer of television series Grey’s Anatomy and its spin-off Private Practice. In May 2007, she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 people who help shape the world. She is also currently working on another Medical drama series.
MEDICINE – ANTI-ABORTION ADVOCATE
EDUCATION – VALEDICTORIAN
This is Deonte Bridges and he is the 2010 VALEDICTORIAN of the graduating class of Booker T. Washington High School. I remember a statistic that said 1 in 4 black males makes it to the age of 25. Deonte Bridges looks like he is on the way. He made it to the head of the class and my prayer is that he will make it to a ripe old age. Unfortunately, Deonte’s brother was one of the three that lost his life.
THE CHURCH – THE GOSPEL
The Church and the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been a strong force in the African-American Experience in America.
THE NOBEL LAUREATE – TONI MORRISON
‘Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.’ (excerpt) – Nobel Prize Lecture 1993
Toni Morrison Petri Liukkonen (author) and Ari Pesonen (2008).
We know they were white boys, but they were bad…HALL and OATS! -Blue Eyed Soul- This Martin Lawrence Show was hysterical…I loved it. One thing that was always apart of Black Culture is “cracking jokes.” Humor is such an essential part of our culture. Humor wasn’t only about laughing, although laughter is good for the soul and we need that. But some of our comediens used their comic genius to make us socially and racially aware. This episode and the menu sounds familiar to the many Thanksgiving Day gatherings in my childhood. My father was one of thirteen siblings, the majority of which lived in the same city, so we had a big turnout during the holidays and birthday parties. This clip is referring to the effect of a sitcom about a black family called, the HUXTABLES. This family was unlike the stereotypical black family, that had been portrayed on tv up until this show. This was a two-parent family, both of whom were successful “Cliff” was a doctor, and “Claire,” was an attorney. This was not atypical in the black community at the time, just on national television.
Of course I had to include this video, because MalcolmX was a prominent part of Black Culture and History, and made in his time, a huge impact on the American fabric, and African-American lives then and now. I didn’t agree with all of his points of view though.
Excessive Force…
This video captures an incident in which an elderly woman, with Alzheimer, was wondering the parking lot of Wal-Mart in Ohio, with a knife in hand. This incident reflects an on going problem in the African-American community, excessive force. This woman is elderly and walks with a cane. If the officer had simply waited for another officer, the two could have gotten the knife out of her hand by distracting her. Instead the cop slammed the woman to the ground with enough force to crack her head open. This woman could have lost her life, thank God she did not. But the point is that many African-Americans are dead because of excessive force used by police officers. The message to the African-American community is that there is no premium on our lives, which is a lie, fashioned by slavery. Yet, I believe that it is important to take the emphasis off of African-Americans, and put it on the psychological well-being of police officers. Police officers should undergo extensive psychological evaluation, background investigation and intensive police training to diffuse situations without taking lives unnecessarily. Police officers are to be defenders of law, protectors of America’s citizens, not criminals with a license and excuse to do harm, and/or kill. (This I don’t love).
more about “msnbc.com:Chicago teens charged with …“, posted with vodpod
This video captures violence committed against DERRION ALBERT, an honor roll student, who unfortunately died of his injuries. He was a junior at a Chicago high school, and on this day he was going to the local community center, which he did daily, until his grandfather came to pick him up. This level of violence and anger unfortunately, is also a part of black culture. I understand the root of the anger and violence but I cannot imagine how it must feel for black African men to live their lives with the possibility of being assaulted and/or murdered by those outside their own community or inside. Derrion’s family said he was excited about school and he was looking forward to college, and he went to the community center to stay active and out of trouble. He was doing the right things in his life, and was a good kid. So, why did this good kid have to die. It is a tragedy of enormous proportions. I am sad that DERRION ALBERT and many others by another name, won’t get the opportunity to live out their lives to the fullest. By the way, this is the part of black culture that I hate.
Black History is a love of mine that I will share with you…
OMG, does this one brings back memories of get togethers we use to have with all the extended family members. I wish I had footage to post from those days. This is for my MOM, she loved Stevie Wonder.
Okay, I had to add this one. Let me give a shout out to my oldest brother Junie, this one is for you bro. My brother is a musician too, and the family thought that he looked like Stevie Wonder.
Remember the Mack? I was in love with John back in the day!! PLEASE forgive the cursing, so sorry, but it goes with drugs and pimping. In the background you can hear the music from “brothers gonna work it out, that was the “jam.”
Back in the day we use to jump rope all day long. You could not find a bunch of girls that didn’t own a super long rope. That was before video games and the internet. We weren’t this crazy, but we were good!!!
more about “Media | Filipino Christian Blogger Ga…“, posted with vodpod
I added Ganns Deen to this page because I love his remix of Amazing Grace. And because I can see and hear that black culture has invaded his life.
Enjoy
Why was Derrion beaten to death?
Hey Perez Christina, thank you for your question. Unfortunately, Derrion walked into a gang against gang fight. He was on his way to the community center, which is something he did each day, to stay out of trouble. Come again PC, Peace.