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Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, An Order of African-American Nuns in Harlem, Celebrates 100 Years of Service

By goodblacknews on February 22, 2016

Nuns in Harlem (Image: Regina Fleming)

article by Janell Hazelwood via blackenterprise.com
An order of black nuns in Harlem—one of only three original orders of its kind in the United States—is celebrating its centennial this year. It will commemorate its legacy with a gala and benefit on March 29 in New York City.
The Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary (FHM) will celebrate a century of serving the needs of the community at the New York Academy of Medicine in Manhattan, honoring its history and its unsung heroes, the co-founders of the FHM community.
Founded in 1916 in Savannah, Georgia, by the Rev. Ignatius Lissner, the early beginnings of the order were sparked from a social justice mission. It was created in the wake of proposed legislation that would prohibit white religious leaders from educating and providing pastoral care to black people in the state.
Father Lissner, aided by Barbara Williams (who would later become Mother Mary Theodore Williams, FHM), a black woman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, organized a congregation of black women to educate children of color and provide pastoral care to the black community.
In 1923, the order moved to Harlem at the request of Cardinal Patrick Hayes, where they launched one of the first pre-school educational programs in the United States. They’d later establish three schools, which count Harlem’s who’s who among its past students including Congressman Charles B. Rangel and Kevin Lofton, president of the Catholic Health Association of America.
Today, St. Benedict Day Nursery is carrying on the legacy of the order’s educational and ministerial services.
Mother Mary Theodore and Fr. Ignatius Lissner, SMA (FHM)

“We joyously take a moment to reflect on our 100 years of providing vital assistance to the community, but amid a renewed calling to revitalize our purpose and expand our mission of service for the next 100 years,” said Sister Gertrude Lilly Ihenacho, who heads up the majority black order, in a statement.
In their “100 Days of Kindness” campaign, launched last month and running until April 14, the nuns are advocating for citizens to perform a random act of kindness daily—big or small, embodying “the spirit of Ephesians 4:32, ‘Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.’ ”
To read more, go to: http://www.blackenterprise.com/lifestyle/black-history-month-order-of-african-american-nuns-celebrates-100-years-of-service/

 

Joe Morton Promoted to Series Regular on "Scandal"

By goodblacknews on February 21, 2016
Joe Morton (photo via blackamericaweb.com)
article by EURweb via blackamericaweb.com
Papa Pope is boosting his presence on “Scandal.”
The Shonda Rhimes drama has promoted Joe Morton from recurring to series regular, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Morton stars as Rowan (aka Eli Pope), the former head of black-ops group B613. He was revealed in the season two finale as Olivia Pope’s (Kerry Washington) father. The Broadway alum and former Tony nominee has had a recurring guest role since season two and won an Emmy in 2014 for the role.
The series briefly lost Morton last year after he booked a series regular role in TNT drama Proof and had a guest spot on Netflix’s Grace and Frankie. He returned to Scandal after Proof was canceled following its freshman run.
Morton becomes Scandal’s newest series regular and joins Portia de Rossi (Elizabeth North) who was promoted at the end of season four; and Cornelius Smith Jr., who guest starred last season as Marcus Walker and was brought in to be the show’s newest gladiator at Pope & Associates.
Morton recently won an NAACP Image Award as Best Supporting Actor for his role on “Scandal.”

Nigeria’s Booming "Nollywood" Film Industry Lets Africans Put Themselves in the Picture

By goodblacknews on February 21, 2016

Filming against a green screen in Illah, a village in southeast Nigeria, in November. The production is part of the Nollywood industry, which has exploded in Africa. (Credit: Glenna Gordon for The New York Times)

article by Norimitsu Onishi via nytimes.com
ASABA, Nigeria — Sitting on a blue plastic stool in the sweltering heat, Ugezu J. Ugezu, one of Nigeria’s top filmmakers, was furiously rewriting his script as the cameras prepared to roll. “Cut!” he shouted after wrapping up a key scene, a confrontation between the two leading characters. Then, under his breath, he added, “Good as it gets.”

This was the seventh — and last — day of shooting in a village near here for “Beyond the Dance,” Mr. Ugezu’s story of an African prince’s choice of a bride, and the production had been conducted at a breakneck pace.  “In Nollywood, you don’t waste time,” he said. “It’s not the technical depth that has made our films so popular. It’s because of the story. We tell African stories.”

A film set in Illah, a village in southeastern Nigeria, where electricity generators are a necessity for movie production crews.  (Credit: Glenna Gordon for The New York Times)

The stories told by Nigeria’s booming film industry, known as Nollywood, have emerged as a cultural phenomenon across Africa, the vanguard of the country’s growing influence across the continent in music, comedy, fashion and even religion.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, overtook its rival, South Africa, as the continent’s largest economy two years ago, thanks in part to the film industry’s explosive growth. Nollywood — a term I helped coin with a 2002 article when Nigeria’s movies were just starting to gain popularity outside the country — is an expression of boundless Nigerian entrepreneurialism and the nation’s self-perception as the natural leader of Africa, the one destined to speak on the continent’s behalf.

“The Nigerian movies are very, very popular in Tanzania, and, culturally, they’ve affected a lot of people,” said Songa wa Songa, a Tanzanian journalist. “A lot of people now speak with a Nigerian accent here very well thanks to Nollywood. Nigerians have succeeded through Nollywood to export who they are, their culture, their lifestyle, everything.”

Georgetown University Commits to Addressing Racial Injustice, Establishing African-American Studies Dept.

By goodblacknews on February 21, 2016

georgetown university logo
article via jbhe.com
John J. DeGioia, president of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., made a major commitment to address racial issues on campus. Last fall students staged a sit-in outside the president’s office demanding the university address its past ties to slavery, increase the number of Black faculty on campus, and begin an ongoing and discussion of racial issues confronting the university.
President DeGioia stated that the university would create a major in African American studies and create an academic department in the field or a larger interdisciplinary program in the discipline. He also said that the university would establish a new research center “focused on racial injustice and the persistent and enduring legacy of racism and segregation in the American experience.” He vowed to recruit an appropriate number of faculty members to support the research center and African American studies initiative and to hire a new senior executive to oversee these programs.
RELATED:  Georgetown University Renames Two Buildings on Campus That Honored Men with Ties to Slavery
“I hope to encourage all of us to pick up the pace – to commit to a more energized effort to address what has been the besetting conflict – evil – of our American society – racial injustice,” DeGioia said in an address to the university community. “For a place like Georgetown, it is of special importance for us to recognize this history – to recognize its implications for our nation and our responsibilities to one another.”

Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson to Host 2016 MTV Movie Awards

By goodblacknews on February 21, 2016

Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart (photo via blackamericaweb.com)

article by EURweb via blackamericaweb.com
Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, stars of the upcoming summer film “Central Intelligence,” will team up to host the 2016 MTV Movie Awards, airing Sunday, April 10 at 8 p.m., Variety reports.

Taking a page from Fox’s “Grease Live!,” this year’s 25th anniversary telecast will take place across the Warner Bros. backlot, filming outdoors across multiple locations in a taping on April 9. (“Grease Live!” also taped on the Warner Bros. lot.)
“We want to do a big, brave thing to celebrate movies,” the show’s executive producer Casey Patterson says of filming across the backlot. “We love Kevin and Dwayne for doing big, risky, bold things. Most award shows play it safe. They’re the right guys to take big swings.”
“It’s an honor to be hosting the ‘MTV Movie Awards’ with a guy who’s not only one of the funniest guys on the planet, but who’s often mistaken as my twin, Kevin Hart,” said Johnson. “We live for our fans and promise to make this an epic, historic unforgettable night for them.”
Hart commented, “I love hosting — it’s my thing. Dwayne and I are the perfect team for the epic 25th anniversary show. It’s going to go down.”

Albert Woodfox, the Last of the ‘Angola 3,’ Released From Prison After Being Kept in Solitary for Over 40 Years

By goodblacknews on February 20, 2016
Albert Woodfox
Albert Woodfox has always maintained his innocence in the 1972 murder of a prison guard for which he was convicted. (Photograph: AFP/Getty Images)

article by Ed Pilkington via theguardian.com

Albert Woodfox, the last incarcerated member of the “Angola 3,” was released from prison on his 69thbirthday, reports CNN.

Woodfox was going to a third trial for the 1972 slaying of prison guard Brent Miller at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, but pleaded no contest on Friday to lesser charges, according to a statement.
“Although I was looking forward to proving my innocence at a new trial, concerns about my health and my age have caused me to resolve this case,” he said.
Woodfox, who many consider a political prisoner, had spent more than 43 years under solitary confinement for Miller’s death, a practice that many criminal justice advocates, human rights groups and the United Nations equate to torture.
Woodbox was the longest-standing solitary confinement prisoner in America, held in isolation in a six-by-nine-foot cell almost continuously for 43 years.
Woodfox has always professed his innocence and marked his 69th birthday on Friday by being released from West Feliciana parish detention center. It was a bittersweet birthday present: the prisoner finally escaped a form of captivity that has widely been denounced as torture, and that has deprived him of all meaningful human contact for more than four decades.
Police Officer Edwin Raymond Sues NYPD for Violating Ban Against Arrest Quotas

Police Officer Edwin Raymond Sues NYPD for Violating Ban Against Arrest Quotas

By goodblacknews on February 20, 2016
NYPD Officer Edwin Raymond (photo via nytimes.com)
NYPD Officer Edwin Raymond (photo via nytimes.com)

article by Saki Knafo via nytimes.com

Every morning before his shift, Edwin Raymond, a 30-year-old officer in the New York Police Department, ties up his long dreadlocks so they won’t brush against his collar, as the job requires. On Dec. 7, he carefully pinned them up in a nautilus pattern, buttoned the brass buttons of his regulation dress coat and pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves. He used a lint roller to make sure his uniform was spotless. In a few hours, he would appear before three of the department’s highest-ranking officials at a hearing that would determine whether he would be promoted to sergeant. He had often stayed up late worrying about how this conversation would play out, but now that the moment was here, he felt surprisingly calm. The department had recently announced a push to recruit more men and women like him — minority cops who could help the police build trust among black and Hispanic New Yorkers. But before he could move up in rank, Raymond would have to disprove some of the things people had said about him.

Over the past year, Raymond had received a series of increasingly damning evaluations from his supervisors. He had been summoned to the hearing to tell his side of the story. His commanders had been punishing him, he believed, for refusing to comply with what Raymond considered a hidden and ‘‘inherently racist’’ policy.

Raymond checked in to the department’s employee-management office in downtown Manhattan. Three other officers waited there with him, all dressed as though for a funeral or parade, all hoping they would be judged worthy of a promotion and a raise. One officer had gotten in trouble for pulling a gun on his ex-girlfriend’s partner. ‘‘Everyone was nervous,’’ Raymond says. ‘‘I was the only one who was confident, because I knew I’d done nothing wrong.’’

Hours crawled by. Finally, a sergeant announced that the officials — ‘‘executives,’’ as they’re known in the department — were ready to see them. One by one, the officers entered a conference room. Raymond saluted the executives and stated his name. Then the executives began to speak. Beneath the stiff woolen shell of Raymond’s dress coat, tucked away in his right breast pocket, his iPhone was recording their muffled voices.

Edwin Raymond in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. (CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON / MAGNUM, FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Over the last two years, Raymond has recorded almost a dozen officials up and down the chain of command in what he says is an attempt to change the daily practices of the New York Police Department. He claims these tactics contradict the department’s rhetoric about the arrival of a new era of fairer, smarter policing. In August 2015, Raymond joined 11 other police officers in filing a class-action suit on behalf of minority officers throughout the force. The suit centers on what they claim is one of the fundamental policies of the New York Police Department: requiring officers to meet fixed numerical goals for arrests and court summonses each month. In Raymond’s mind, quota-based policing lies at the root of almost everything racially discriminatory about policing in New York. Yet the department has repeatedly told the public that quotas don’t exist.

Since January 2014, the start of the two-year period during which Raymond made most of his recordings, the department has been led by Police Commissioner William Bratton, who has presided over a decline in summonses and arrests even as crime levels have remained historically low. He has revamped the department’s training strategy and has introduced a new program that encourages officers to spend more time getting to know the people who live and work in the neighborhoods they patrol.

Columbia University Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw Honored by the American Bar Foundation

By goodblacknews on February 20, 2016

Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw (photo via twitter.com)
Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw (photo via twitter.com)

article via jbhe.com
Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a professor of law at Columbia University and a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, will receive the Outstanding Scholar Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation.
Professor Crenshaw is the author of many books including Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women (African American Policy Forum, 2015).
Professor Crenshaw is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School. She earned a master’s degree in law at the University of Wisconsin.

Michelle A. Williams to Head Harvard’s School of Public Health, Becomes University's 1st Black Faculty Dean

By goodblacknews on February 19, 2016

Michelle Williams
Michelle Williams (photo via Harvard Gazette)

article by Courtney Connley via blackenterprise.com
Harvard University announced Friday that Michelle A. Williams will become dean of its School of Public Health, making her the first black person to head a faculty at the university and the first female dean of the school.
Currently an epidemiologist and professor in the School of Public Health, Williams will start her new position in July, following David A. Hunter who has served as interim dean for the past six months after Julio Frenk stepped down to become president at the University of Miami.
“She is a skilled builder of bridges—between the theoretical and the practical, the domestic and the international, the different disciplines that drive the School’s academic endeavors, and the different communities that shape its identity and aspirations,” University President Drew G. Faust said in a statement. “I know she will approach her new role with the intelligence, dedication, integrity, and humane spirit that she brings to all she does.”
Williams’s appointment comes at a time when Harvard students have been more outspoken about the lack of diversity in leadership at the institution. Recently, students from the university’s medical school delivered a petition to Massachusetts Hall, calling on Faust to prioritize the school’s need for more diversity as they search for their own new dean.
“As an alumna and faculty member, I have witnessed the transformative impact that this institution can have in education, research, and discovery related to the health of communities in need,” Williams said. “We have an imperative to lead and to serve, and I am looking forward to working even more closely with the School’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni to build on the school’s achievements.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s from Tufts University, Williams attended Harvard’s School of Public Health before joining the faculty at the University of Washington. In 2011, she came back to the Harvard family as chair of the epidemiology department in the School of Public Health. That same year, she was also presented the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring by President Barack Obama.
To read more, go to: http://www.blackenterprise.com/education/michelle-williams-harvard-first-black-faculty-dean/

Morgan State University Receives the Largest Donation in Its History from Retired UPS Executive Calvin E. Tyler Jr.

By goodblacknews on February 19, 2016

(Left-right): Calvin E. Tyler, Tina Tyler and MSU President David Wilson. (photo via baltimoretimes-online.com)
(Left-right): Calvin E. Tyler, Tina Tyler and MSU President David Wilson. (photo via baltimoretimes-online.com)

article via jbhe.com
Morgan State University, the historically Black educational institution in Baltimore, received a $5 million gift from Calvin E. Tyler Jr. and his wife Tina. Tyler is a retired senior executive of United Parcel Service (UPS). The donation will provide need-based scholarships for students from the City of Baltimore. The gift is the largest in Morgan State’s history. The university believes that the $5 million donation is the fifth largest gift by individuals to any HBCU in the nation.
David Wilson, president of Morgan State University, stated that “this incredibly generous donation from the Tylers will provide many talented, hard-working students with a higher education they may not otherwise have achieved. But more than that, it will help ensure the success of Morgan’s mission and benefit the youth of Baltimore City, at this particularly challenging time and far into the future.”
Tyler entered Morgan State University in 1961 but had to drop out in 1963 because he could no longer afford to attend college. He took a job at UPS in 1964 and worked at the company until 1998, retiring as senior vice president of operations.