Brothers Sulaiman Lee, Leone’s Darealest and Noel Kerr (l-r) aim to boost the self-esteem of black children through books. (photo via voice-online.co.uk)
article by Rianna Raymond-Williams via voice-online.co.uk
Three brothers from Tottenham, North London, are on a mission to raise the self-esteem of African Caribbean children through books.
Sulaiman Lee, Noel Kerr and Leonegus Darealest are the trio behind Black Child Promotions, which aims to give children a positive view of their identity through the works of a range of authors.
The men hope to give young people access to knowledge about prominent black figures such Marcus Garvey and Martin Luther King, Jr., successful black empires and movements, African Caribbean fables and folk stories as well as the writings of influential black political leaders.
One of the trio, Lee, told The Voice: “We have titles from the likes of Maya Angelou to Iyanla Vanzant to Amos N. Wilson and Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan. We have something for everyone, children’s stories, political books, poetry, autobiographies and more.”
He added: “For us, Black History isn’t just for one month, it’s all year round and that’s exactly what we want to show people. We believe we need to promote black history more, as it isn’t something we see widely in the media or something that our children are learning about at school.”
The trio has recently set up a stall outside Brixton tube station and another one outside Stratford tube station in a bid to reach as many people as they can and engage them about the importance of reading.
However their main location for the last 12 years has been in Seven Sisters, north London.
Before becoming involved with books, the three men sold educational DVDs outside Seven Sisters tube station. Among the titles they sold were the acclaimed documentary series Hidden Colors by Tariq Nasheed and films about influential figures such as Malcolm X.
Akai Gurley’s family, including his mother, Sylvia Palmer, center, after Officer Peter Liang was found guilty of manslaughter in February. (BRYAN R. SMITH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
New York City has agreed to pay more than $4 million to the family of Akai Gurley, the unarmed man killed in a Brooklyn housing project in 2014 by a police officer on patrol, according to a lawyer for Mr. Gurley’s family.
The city will pay the bulk of the settlement, $4.1 million, said Scott Rynecki, who represents Mr. Gurley’s domestic partner, Kimberly Ballinger, and their 4-year-old daughter, Akaila Gurley. The New York City Housing Authority will pay an additional $400,000, and the officer, Peter Liang, will pay $25,000, Mr. Rynecki said.
The settlement, reported by The Daily News, was finalized on Monday afternoon by Justice Dawn M. Jimenez-Salta of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, after two months of negotiations. Efforts to reach a lawyer for Mr. Liang and the city’s Law Department late Monday were unsuccessful.
Mr. Gurley was killed on Nov. 20, 2014, by a ricocheting bullet fired by Mr. Liang, who was on a night patrol in a dark stairwell in the Louis H. Pink Houses in the East New York neighborhood.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow @lakinhutcherson)
The trailer for “Hidden Figures”, the Fox 2000 drama starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer,Janelle Monae, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons, directed by Theodore Melfi, with original music from Pharrell Williams, debuted last night on NBC during the women’s gymnastics individual event finals at the Rio Olympics. In case you missed it – watch it here and mark your calendars – the movie will go into wide release on January 13, 2017.
The film, based on the upcoming book by Margot Lee Shetterly, is the true story of the black female mathematicians who worked at NASA in the 1960sand helped put John Glenn into orbit. To learn more about the movie and the history, click here.
Usain Bolt of Jamaica (l) wins 3rd consecutive Olympic Gold Medal in men’s 100M race (photo via usatoday.com) article by Sean Gregory via time.com
On a pleasant Sunday night in Rio’s Olympic Stadium, Usain Bolt, the fastest human in history, became the first to ever win the 100-m sprint in three straight Olympic Games, finishing with a time of 9.81. Justin Gatlin of the United States, the 2004 Olympic champion, took an early lead but fell just short of completing his late-career comeback with another Olympic gold, taking silver with a time of 9.89. Canada’s Andre de Grasse won bronze in 9.91.
Even though he’s run the fastest 100-m in history––9.58 seconds, at the 2009 world championships––Bolt insists this is his weakest event. He has a funny way of showing it. “This is what I came here for,” Bolt said after the race. “This is the first step in the right direction. I’m happy and I’m proud of myself. It wasn’t perfect execution, but I got it done.”
The 100M, known as the fastest ten seconds in sports, was relatively slow by Bolt’s lofty standards. In 2012, the American Tyson Gay ran 9.80 and only managed to finish fourth. Bolt blamed the times on the quicker than usual turnaround, less than 90 minutes, between the semifinals and finals. “It was really stupid,” Bolt says. “I don’t know who decided that. I was really stupid.”
Whatever the pace, Bolt luxuriated in his victory. Fans screamed for him before the race. During his warmup, while his opponents were lingering at the starting line, Bolt jogged out about 30 meters down the track, turned around and held his arms up, soaking in the adulation as if he were royalty. He shimmied for the cameras, pointed, tried his best to be a showman. The act works.
When the starting gun blasted, Bolt knew he was off his game. “I kind of felt dead at the start,” he said. Gatlin took an early lead, but Bolt never panicked and passed him shortly after the halfway mark. The win in hand, Bolt pounded his chest before the finish. He grabbed a stuffed Olympic mascot afterward and paraded it around the stadium, mugging for selfies with adoring fans. As is his tradition, he hammed it up on the track with his “lighting-bolt” poses.
Bolt has always performed best on the biggest stages. And none are bigger than the Olympics, where he’s now won 7 straight golds, in 7 races, over three Games. He’ll shoot to go an incredible nine-for-nine later in the week, with the 200-m final Thursday night, and the 4 X 100 relay on Friday. “I really want the 200-m world record,” says Bolt, who set the mark, 19.19 seconds, at that same 2009 world championship meet. “If I can get a good night’s rest after the semifinals, it’s possible that I could. I’m going to go out there and leave it all on the track.” To read full article, go to: http://time.com/4451806/usain-bolt-gold-rio-2016-olympics-100-meters-gatlin-blake/
Kim Drew has been photographed in all shades of lipstick.Chalk-white, indigo — like she’s just had a Slurpee. When she walked into the Black Art Incubator on a recent Thursday, it was with red lips and a navy dress fit for a tennis court. At her chest hung a white pipe fragment, bought in Miami. “I wish I could remember the artist who made it,” she fretted when I admired the necklace.
She looked punk and prep, red-white-and-blue speared with a pipe. It’s a tension that shapes Drew’s work. She runs social media for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but she’s credited with starting a slow-burn revolution via Tumblr, arguably the lowest-fi gallery there is. Her high-traffic account Black Contemporary Art — a simple visual catalog of work by black artists — operates on the premise that black artists have been left out of art history. She slots them in without bitterness. “It’s either that people are recorded, or they’re not,” she tells me matter-of-factly.
That same current of low-key, savvy correction undergirds the Black Art Incubator, Drew’s new project, birthed with three other black women also in their twenties. Billed as a “social sculpture,” the incubator takes blackness — and all that racial identifier suggests about what a person might know or feel — as a given. To see the space as a critique, Drew says, is reductive. The project isn’t so much oppositional as an inversion of what we tend to expect. “Most art institutions are rooted in whiteness, but it’s implied, it’s this normalized thing,” she says. With the project, “we’re normalizing being rooted in blackness without beating people over the head with it.”
Drew and her co-founders — Jessica Bell Brown, an art historian, and Jessica Lynne and Taylor Renee Aldridge, both art writers — took a year to build the space and its offerings. “We still have a running group text,” Drew notes wryly. “It’s very internet. Very 2016.”
In practice, it wends a little 1960s. The incubator lives through August 19 at Recess, a residency space on the Lower East Side. The feel is of a secret clubhouse, convivial with an insider edge. You get the sense that while anyone is welcome, Berkeley coffeehouse–style, there’s more fun to be had if you’re part of the group. At quieter times, those anxieties recede; the space charms. A bench hugs the front window. Plants flare against white walls. Ginger cookies, mint tea, and a soulful Spotify playlist are all on tap.
Black Art Incubator
Recess
41 Grand Street
646-863-3765, recessart.org
Through August 19
During structured hours, there are sessions: Talks fall into two genres (“art and money” or “archive”), while “office hours” and “open crits” mimic MFA programming — but with the expectation that “you know who Richard Wright is,” as the legendary East Village artist Sur Rodney (Sur), who recently gave a talk, puts it to me via phone. The incubator interests him for how it overturns expectations of knowledge, eschewing the usual canon in favor of one not often taught in schools. “There’s a certain standard, a bibliography of material that we’ve all had to study,” he says, citing Moby Dick and Charles Dickens. On top of playing that game, people of color “have to do all this other research to understand where they fit in.” Joshua Moton, a cellist who performed at an open crit last month, has experienced this firsthand. He explains the bodily discomfort his training in the European classical tradition gave him. In college, he found jazz. “Coltrane, Ayler, Silva, Davis,” he says. “I was able to heal,” to find “parts of the cello that I never really thought were there.” While crits are known as stress-bombs in academia, Moton says his — led by Adrienne Edwards, the dynamic curator-at-large of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, clad in metallic pants — felt like a “safe space.”
Therapeutic spaces face similar accusations as art schools over what their members tend to assume about their peers, whether to do with money, access, or personal history, and the incubator also addresses those issues. Moton, for one, returned the next day for a meditation hour. Here, too, he felt a difference. He drew a contrast for me, mentioning a yoga class he recently attended in which an Australian woman near him went on about “wage slaves,” throwing off his balance. “What does it mean to have a black space?” he asked. “When you can be a black person and breathe and not feel off.” To read full article, go to: http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/black-art-incubator-aims-to-invert-art-world-normal-8960371
Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson celebrates after winning the women’s 100-meter dash on Saturday night. (Buda Mendes / Getty Images) article by Helene Elliott via latimes.com
The good citizens of Banana Ground, Manchester Parish, Jamaica, might still be partying in honor of their most famous resident, Elaine Thompson, now known as the world’s fastest woman.
Thompson, raised by her grandmother in that remote Jamaican community, ended the Olympic reign of her compatriot, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, with a strong and powerful performance Saturday in the women’s 100-meter dash. Pulling away over the last 30 meters from Fraser-Pryce — who won gold in the two previous Games — and from American Tori Bowie, Thompson won in 10.71 seconds before a joyful crowd at Olympic Stadium.
Bowie, a first-time Olympian, finished second in 10.83 seconds. Fraser-Pryce, she of the green-and-yellow hair dyed to show her Jamaican pride, won bronze with a time of 10.86 seconds.
Thompson, 24, wasn’t sure how to celebrate at the finish line, but she knows the folks back home rejoiced for her. “There is a big screen back home in my community in Jamaica. I can’t imagine what is happening there right now,” she said, smiling.
Fraser-Pryce, who was hampered by a toe injury and was in tears after her semifinal Saturday afternoon, said she was happy the Olympic title stays in the island nation. She didn’t want to discuss the injury other than to call this her greatest medal ever because she had to fight hardest. “I don’t want to take someone’s shine. This is Elaine’s time,” she said. To read more: Elaine Thompson keeps queen of the track title, and 100-meter gold, in Jamaica – LA Times
Daryl Homer celebrates victory over Matyas Szabo of Germany in the men’s individual saber quarterfinal at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at Carioca Arena 3 on Aug. 10, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. (photo via teamusa.org) article by Rebecca Harris via teamusa.org
RIO DE JANEIRO — As he was being chased down, nearly tripping off of the strip entirely, American saber fencer Daryl Homer somehow snuck his blade into German fencer Matyas Szabo’s ribs for a point during his quarterfinal bout. The point was heralded with chants of “U-S-A” from the audience, with the painted faces and bodies usually reserved for American football games, not for what could be called modern-day dueling.
Homer lost the gold-medal bout to Aron Szilagyi of Hungary, 15-8. He became the first U.S. medalist in men’s saber since Peter Westbrook won a bronze medal in 1984 and the first U.S. men’s silver medalist since William Grebe in 1904.
The U.S. has never won gold in men’s saber.“I wouldn’t have found an access point to fencing without Peter,” he said. Homer’s journey into fencing was a happy accident and he owes partial thanks to Westbrook. Homer came across the sport in a book one day. He took one look at the shiny masks and vests and told his mom he wanted to fence. She wasn’t a fan of the idea until she saw Westbrook in a TV commercial. Westbrook actually gave Homer entrée into the sport through his Peter Westbrook Foundation, which teaches fencing to New York area kids of color. To read more, go to: Daryl Homer Scores Team USA’s First Men’s Saber Silver Since 1904
Simone Biles flying high during Olympic Vault finals in Women’s Gymnastics (photo via nytimes.com)
article by Bill Chappell via npr.org
With two main goals already accomplished – gold medals in both the team competition and in the individual all-around – Simone Biles turned to the vault to grab more Olympic gold Sunday.
Going last in a field of eight gymnasts, Biles needed an average score of more than 15.253 to claim gold. She unleashed a soaring Amanar on her first vault, taking only a small hop backwards as she landed. Score: 15.900.
For her next vault, Biles turned to a Cheng — a difficult vault that, compared to the Amanar, is worth an extra tenth of a point on the judges’ scale — and performed it nearly flawlessly. Her score was the highest of the group: 16.033.
In the final, each athlete performs two vaults; the scores are then averaged. For instance, while Switzerland’s Giulia Steingruber started strong with a 15.333, she scored a 14.900 on her second attempt, dropping her final score to 15.216. She held on for a bronze medal behind Maria Paseka of Russia.
As U.S. Gymnastics tells us, with today’s gold medal, Biles sets a U.S. record for the most gymnastics gold medals in one Olympics for a female athlete. She also becomes the first American woman to win gold on the vault.
If you’re unsure what an Amanar and a Cheng are, NBC can help clear that up:
“The Amanar consists of a round-off onto the springboard, back handspring onto the vault table and then a flip with two and a half twists in the straight body position. It’s the vault that McKayla Maroney made famous at the London Olympics and is worth 6.300 points.”
“The Cheng is worth 6.400 points. It consists of jumping onto the springboard, doing a half twist before pushing off the vault with your hands, then doing a flip with one and a half twists.”
Jemima Jelagat Sumgong of Kenya celebrates her victory in the women’s marathon. (Photo: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY Sports) article via usatoday.com
RIO DE JANEIRO — Accomplishing a distance-running first for Kenya, a nation known for distance running, is no easy feat. So Jemima Sumgong‘s accomplishment Sunday at the Rio Olympics was indeed an accomplishment.Sumgong beat 156 competitors along a picturesque course on the sweltering streets of Rio, surging in the final 2 kilometers to claim Kenya’s first gold in the Olympic women’s marathon.It was an accomplishment that was nearly derailed, and not by the competition. Less than a mile from the finish line, a man with a sign jumped over the railings ahead of Sumgong and dashed onto the course.
Police officers immediately cut off the protester, who leaped over the fence and ran away.”I was scared,” Sumgong said initially. “I thinking he could maybe … he could grab one of my colleagues.”But she ran on undeterred.Sumgong finished in 2 hours, 24 minutes, 4 seconds. Kenya-born Eunice Kirwa of Bahrain was second (2:24:13), and world champion Mare Dibaba of Ethiopia (2:24:30) was third. Shalane Flanagan (2:25.26), who hung on with the lead pack for about 40 kilometers, finished sixth to lead all three Americans in the top 10. Des Linden (2:26:08) was seventh, and Amy Cragg (2:28:25) was ninth. To read full article, got to: Jemima Sumgong of Kenya wins Olympic women’s marathon
U.S. Shot Put Gold Medalist Michelle Carter (photo via dailymail.co.uk) article by Shekhar Bhatia via dailymail.co.uk Michelle Carter, daughter of a former top American football player and Olympian, won the USA’s first-ever women’s shot put Olympic gold after a dramatic final twist.
The thirty-year-old Californian, whose father Michael Carter played for the San Francisco 49ers and won a silver in the shot put in the 1984 LA Olympics, struck gold with her final throw.
The American record holder gave everything as she hurled the shot 20.63 meters to snatch gold from New Zealand’s Valerie Adams. Bronze was secured by Anita Marton of Hungary. To see more, go to: Michelle Carter wins shot putt gold for USA with last throw at Rio Olympics | Daily Mail Online
