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Posts published by “goodblacknews”

Congressman Tim Scott to Become First Black Senator from the South Since Reconstruction

By goodblacknews on December 21, 2012

TimScottOrangeTieGovernor Nikki Haley of South Carolina announced she will tap Congressman Tim Scott for South Carolina’s vacant Senate seat. Rep. Scott’s appointment will make him the first black senator from the South since the 19th Century.

The Senate seat became vacant after Sen. Jim DeMint announced he was stepping down to take on a leadership role at the Heritage Foundation in January, causing many to wonder who Gov. Haley would pick to fill the vacancy.

After a lot of debate, Gov. Haley ended the speculation today when she announced that she was appointing Rep. Scott.

“It is with great pleasure that I am announcing our next U.S. senator to be Congressman Tim Scott,” Gov. Haley said. “I am strongly convinced that the entire state understands that this is the right U.S. senator for our state and our country.”

Rep. Scott, who was raised in a single-parent household, credited his mother’s guidance for positively affecting his life.

New York Woman Wins $1M Jackpot, Can Now Pay For College

By goodblacknews on December 21, 2012

linza ford lottery new york state

Linza Ford (pictured), a 19-year-old Brooklynite who had to drop out of college and work to help her family makes ends meet, won a $1 million jackpot this week, the New York Daily News reports. She was one of ten New Yorkers who won a share of $13 million in winnings.

Ford had just finished her freshman year at Hofstra University when her father had to go on disability, forcing her family to make tough choices.  “I didn’t want to leave,” she said. “That’s one of the colleges I really wanted to go to. I was sobbing.”

‘African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde’ at the Met

By goodblacknews on December 21, 2012

Masks in Malvin Gray Johnson’s painting “Negro Masks” (1932). (Librado Romero/The New York Times)

It’s easy to take for granted just how quickly art travels today, whether by JPEG or shipping crate. For a sense of how slow things were just a century ago, and how much could get lost en route from one continent to another, visit “African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde,” a small but highly compelling show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s one of several exhibitions timed to the centennial of the Armory Show of 1913, where many New Yorkers caught their first glimpse of Modern art from Europe (much of it influenced by African sculpture).

Meticulously researched and thoughtfully presented by Yaëlle Biro, the Met’s assistant curator in the department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, it tells the story of African art’s early reception in the United States with exceptional candor. And it makes clear that Americans received Modern art and African art as a single import, derived from French and Belgian colonies, distilled in Paris and presented on these shores by a few tastemaking dealers and collectors.

Meet Twenty-Two People Exonerated in 2012

By goodblacknews on December 21, 2012

Exonerated: James Harden, Jonathan Barr, Michael Saunders, Robert Taylor, Vincent Thames, Harold Richardson, Terrill Swift (CBS)

For the fourth year in a row, the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions as well as making substantive reforms to the criminal-justice system, has released an annual report of people who were exonerated this year after spending time behind bars for crimes they did not commit.

This year’s roundup includes 22 people — 13 of whom are black — who, combined, served more than 279 years because of problems like eyewitness misidentification, faulty forensics and false confessions before they were freed. The Innocence Project says that nearly half of its cases involved innocence proved by new developments in DNA technology.

Teen Achieves Perfect 2400 Score on SATs

By goodblacknews on December 21, 2012

Perfect SAT teen

Every year teens struggle to study and get through the nation’s most-widely-used college admission exam, the SATs, and only a small handful ever achieve a perfect score. Cameron Clarke (pictured), a senior at Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Pa., just happens to fall in to the category of “perfect scorer,” according to the Huffington Post.

Clarke scored 2400, a perfect score, this past spring, and according to SAT officials, out of the 1.6 million of its test-takers this year, a mere 360 were able to achieve the grade.

Obama Named Time Magazine Person of The Year

By goodblacknews on December 19, 2012

timeobamaPresident Barack Obama has been named Time’s Person of the Year.

Managing editor Richard Stengel unveiled the magazine’s choice on Wednesday’s “Today.” He said it was remarkable that the president won two terms with over 50 percent of the popular vote as a Democrat. He also noted that Obama took office in an economic crisis, and credited him with creating a new political “alignment like Ronald Reagan did forty years ago.”

This is the second time that Time has chosen Obama. The magazine said it named him Person of the Year in 2008 for winning against the odds and becoming the first black president of the United States.

“For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is TIME’s 2012 Person of the Year,” Stengel explained in his note this year.

Time’s Michael Scherer wrote in a profile of the president:

Beyond the Oval Office, overwhelming challenges remain: deadlocked fiscal-cliff talks; a Federal Reserve that predicts years of high unemployment; and more unrest in places like Athens, Cairo and Damascus. But the President seems unbound and gives inklings of an ambition he has kept in check ever since he arrived at the White House to find a nation in crisis.

article via huffingtonpost.com

Innocent Brooklyn Man Freed After Year in Prison

By goodblacknews on December 18, 2012
RonaldBozeman
Ronald Bozeman

Ronald Bozeman was in good spirits according to the New York Post after being released from prison last week. Bozeman, 65, had spent over a year in jail for a crime he did not commit.

Bozeman was cleared of all charges related to a $9,000 robbery that occurred in downtown Brooklyn last year. Two witnesses had asserted to a grand jury that Bozeman was the gunman. Court records show these witnesses subsequently named another man, George Johnson, as the gunman during a second grand jury.

Prosecutors have moved forward in the case against Johnson. A spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said in a statement: “Based on a faulty ID procedure which we discovered and alerted the defense attorney to, we moved to have the charges against Bozeman dismissed.” Johnson has pleaded guilty to participation in the robbery.

Bozeman, who was held without bail and faced life in prison, was freed last Wednesday. “I feel relieved and not as bitter as I thought I would be,” he told the press. “The first thing I’m going to do is go get something to eat with my family.”

This mishap is being compared to the case of Jabbar Collins, an innocent man who went to prison for 15 years after being prosecuted by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Collins is now suing for $150 million in damages amid accusations that Michael Vecchione, who prosecuted this case, threatened a witness and withheld evidence for over a decade that could have exonerated Collins. Vecchione is now a top aide to Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.

article by Alexis Garrett Stodghill via thegrio.com

Smithsonian Exhibit Parallels Emancipation, Civil rights

By goodblacknews on December 18, 2012
Smithsonian parallels Emancipation, Civil Rights

Smithsonian parallels Emancipation, Civil Rights

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington for Civil Rights were 100 years apart, but both changed the nation and expanded freedoms.

Beginning Friday, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is presenting a walk back in time through two eras. A new exhibit, “Changing America,” parallels the 1863 emancipation of slaves with the 1963 March on Washington.

Meet the Youngest African-American Engineer in America

By goodblacknews on December 16, 2012

Brittney Exline is special, very special. She’s the Michael Jordan of intellectuals, and getting the attention that she deserves.  Brittney has been named, according to Ebony.com and other sources, to be the young black engineer in the entire United States.   At 19 years old, the University of Pennsylvania grad has achieved more than most will achieve in their lifetime.

In addition to being an extraordinary engineer, Brittney also speaks five languages.  She graduated with minors in five different fields, including Math, Psychology and Classical Studies.  She has worked on Wall Street and also participated in numerous beauty pageants.

Trumpet Awards 2013 Honorees Announced

By goodblacknews on December 15, 2012

*The Trumpet Awards Foundation announced the 2013 Trumpet Awards honorees at a press conference in Atlanta.

The Trumpet Awards Ceremony is one of the most respected televised award shows saluting African American achievement in the world.  The following Trumpet Award honorees will attend and receive their award at the ceremony on Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 4pm.

Chaka Khan – Legend Award
Debra Martin Chase – Entertainment Award
Michael McMillan – Community Service Award
Alonzo & Tracy Mourning – Humanitarian Award
Mayor Kasim Reed – Public Service Award
Charlie Wilson – Lifetime Achievement Award
Edward Welburn – Corporate Award