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MUSIC: “Don’t Look Any Further” – a Celebration of Ultimate ’80s “Slow Jams” (LISTEN)

MUSIC: “Don’t Look Any Further” – a Celebration of Ultimate ’80s “Slow Jams” (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on July 25, 2020

by Jeff Meier (FB: Jeff.Meier.90)

Heading into a hot summer weekend a few weeks ago, Good Black News brought you a mellow, all-day playlist of ’70s slow jams (click here if you haven’t checked it out yet).

Since so many responded to it, we decided to follow it up with a playlist for the ’80s generation to call its own. Thus, on this warm late-July weekend, we happily offer you a throwback “quiet storm” collection: “Ultimate ’80s Champagne Slow Jams.”

[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:playlist:7KuOYglomITRDyxqbrPsMv”/]

Following the civil rights-infused, raw, expansive, pioneering music of the ’70s, the ’80s found soul music veering towards more urbane and sophisticated sounds. Smooth adult soul was the name of the game, with polished veteran artists like Dionne Warwick, Patti Labelle, The Isley Brothers, Melba Moore, Gladys Knight, Michael Jackson all hitting new career highs more than a decade into their illustrious careers.

Many of the decade’s most celebrated newcomers – Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, Sade, Anita Baker, Freddie Jackson, to name a few – were also decked out in fine fashions, singing ballads that married the lush instrumentation of Philly Soul with the new smooth jazz grooves.

The ’80s were also the peak decade for the superstar duet – from Teena Marie & Rick James to Patti Austin & James Ingram to Kashif & Meli’sa Morgan to Dennis Edwards & Siedah Garrett – and our playlist has all the ones you remember.

But BET’s Midnight Love video show wasn’t only packed with slick romance for “grown folks” – the ’80s also had a cavalcade of teen stars working to replicate Michael Jackson/Jackson 5-level superstardom.

Fresh from the pages of Right On Magazine came Stacy Lattisaw & Johnny Gill, New Edition, The Jets, the DeBarge family and Tracie Spencer, among others. Of course, the most successful of those teens was Janet Jackson – and she’s here along with other Minneapolis Sound stars like SOS Band and Human League, all inspired by the one and only Prince, during his premiere pre-symbol peak years.

In the years before hip hop gained a mainstream foothold on the charts, the ’80s provided many of the jams that would ultimately be sampled by rappers – so you can hear some of the underlying inspirations of Notorious B.I.G., Eric B & Rakim, and LL Cool J – along with LL Cool J himself, with the first enormous hip-hop slow jam, “I Need Love.”

Musically, the ’80s also represented the decade where spiritual messages met more traditional soul balladry in a new kind of contemporary gospel that felt at home on R&B radio. Our playlist closes with a set of tracks from The Winans, Howard Hewett, Tramaine Hawkins, The Clark Sisters and others.

So, calling all you ’80s people, whether you’re slipping into a warm bath by candlelight, sipping champagne at sunset on a yacht or imagining yourself doing so, or maybe just seeking a mellow playlist as background to your umpteenth day sheltering in place – we’ve got you covered.

In fact, it’s a mega-playlist long enough to fill most of your weekend waking hours without repeat – you can set it and forget it.  Hope you enjoy!

Michael B. Jordan and Racial Justice Organization Color of Change Partner to #ChangeHollywood

Michael B. Jordan and Racial Justice Organization Color of Change Partner to #ChangeHollywood

By goodblacknews on July 25, 2020

Actor and Producer Michael B. Jordan (“Just Mercy,” “Raising Dion,” “Black Panther”) has teamed up with racial justice organization Color of Change to launch the #ChangeHollywood initiative, with the goal of transforming the entertainment industry’s inequitable power infrastructure.

Through #ChangeHollywood, Jordan and COC plan to offer recommendations as well as forthcoming resources to companies within the industry (e.g.  directories, consulting, task forces, templates) that support actionable follow-through.

The ultimate goal of #ChangeHollywood is to put forth concrete, measurable solutions for Hollywood to affirm, defend and invest in Black lives. Some key aspects include producing authentic Black stories, investing in Black talent and Black communities.

RELATED: Michael B. Jordan Teams With Warner Bros. to Launch Diversity and Inclusion Policy for All Future WarnerMedia Productions

“This roadmap is just the beginning of the journey to racial justice. We are all accomplices in the fight to transform Hollywood, and we invite content creators and industry leaders to join us in working together to #ChangeHollywood,” Jordan said. “We look forward to including a variety of voices in doing what we do best: telling authentic stories, bringing people together, partnering with influential artists, and changing the rules of the game.”

“The legacy of racism in Hollywood is long and unforgivable: excluding Black talent, silencing Black voices, derailing Black careers, and using the economic power of the industry to prop up police who target and enact violence on Black communities,” Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change, said in a statement.

“We know from our advocacy that the industry won’t change on its own, so we’re building off our current work to hold Hollywood accountable to offer these resources and a roadmap toward enacting racial justice. From the writers’ rooms to the streets, we are energized and ready to help Hollywood follow through on their statements that Black lives matter.”

School Board in VA Votes to Rename Robert E. Lee High School after Late U.S. Rep. John R. Lewis

School Board in VA Votes to Rename Robert E. Lee High School after Late U.S. Rep. John R. Lewis

By goodblacknews on July 23, 2020

A county school board in Virginia voted Thursday to rename Springfield, VA’s Robert E. Lee High School after recently deceased Civil Rights activist and U.S. Congress Member John R. Lewis. The new name will be effective for the 2020-21 school year.

According to the Fairfax County Public Schools press release, the Fairfax County School Board voted to change the name of the school and then held a one-month period of public comment on possible new names. A virtual town hall meeting was held on July 15 and a public hearing was held on July 22.

Today’s vote happened during a virtual business meeting, which was broadcast on Zoom.

“The Board heard from students, teachers and staff members, families, and the community about the old name,” said School Board Chair Ricardy Anderson. “It was important for us to be mindful of these comments and to select a name that reflected the diversity and multiculturalism that currently exists at the school and in our community.

Rep. Lewis was a champion of the Civil Rights movement, and our Board strongly believes this is an appropriate tribute to an individual who is a true American hero. We will also honor his life’s work by continuing to promote equity, justice, tolerance and service in the work that we do.”

RELATED: Unedited “Eyes on the Prize” Interviews with John Lewis and C.T. Vivian Available to Stream at American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WATCH)

Lewis, a leading figure of the Civil Rights Movement and the Freedom Rides, represented Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives for 33 years. He was one of the original organizers of the 1963 March on Washington to draw attention to inequalities faced by African Americans.

He also led the Selma to Montgomery march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. Known as “Bloody Sunday,” the demonstrators were marching to the state capital to demand voting rights for African Americans when they were met by armed police who attacked them.

RELATED: “Amazing Grace”: Playlist in Honor of Civil Rights Heroes John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian (LISTEN)

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law later that year and is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. Congressman Lewis was the recipient of many awards throughout his lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. He passed away on July 17, 2020, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

[Photo via Fairfax County Public Schools leehs.fcps.edu]

California State University Trustees Vote to Make Ethnic Studies or Social Justice Class Mandatory for Students Statewide

California State University Trustees Vote to Make Ethnic Studies or Social Justice Class Mandatory for Students Statewide

By goodblacknews on July 22, 2020

According to the Los Angeles Times, all 430,000 undergraduates attending California State Universities will be required to take an ethnic studies or social justice course, a curriculum change approved by CSU trustees today.

To quote latimes.com:

The board of trustees voted in favor of the requirement, which will take effect starting in 2023 in the nation’s largest four-year public university system. Five members voted against it, including State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and social justice activists Lateefah Simon and Hugo Morales. One trustee abstained.

Two questions dominated their debate: How should ethnic studies be defined? And who gets to decide: faculty, trustees or state lawmakers?

The new requirement, advanced by the office of the chancellor, creates a three-unit, lower-division course requirement in “ethnic studies and social justice.” The requirement could be met by a traditional ethnic studies course or by courses focused on social justice or social movements.

The measure was opposed by some faculty and students who argued it was too broad and developed without appropriate consultation with ethnic studies faculty.

They contended that adding the social justice option diluted the core mission of ethnic studies, which focuses on the history and experiences of four oppressed groups in the U.S.: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and indigenous people.

California Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), has drafted an alternative plan that is currently making its way to the governor’s office, which would more strictly define how the requirement could be fulfilled.

Serena Williams Donates Proceeds from Unstoppable Jewelry Collection to Relief Fund for Black-Owned Small Businesses

Serena Williams Donates Proceeds from Unstoppable Jewelry Collection to Relief Fund for Black-Owned Small Businesses

By goodblacknews on July 20, 2020

Tennis legend Serena Williams is the latest celebrity and entrepreneur to help Black business owners in need of relief during the COVID-19 crisis.

Williams announced via Instagram that until August 5 proceeds from her Unstoppable capsule jewelry collection will go to the Opportunity Fund’s Small Business Relief Fund, according to a Black Enterprise report.

Williams, who has won a career-defining 23 Grand Slam titles, started the business in late 2019 and has been wearing pieces from her brand during her tennis matches.

“I wore a circular necklace the last time I won all four Grand Slams in a row,” Williams told People about her collection. “I had won four in a row wearing that necklace. I was just really unstoppable.”

The collection includes a sterling silver bracelet and necklace, and also features a simple polished circle with a glittering round diamond that represents serenity and unity. Check out Serena’s Unstoppable offerings here.

Dr. Billy C. Hawkins to be 1st Black President at Talladega College to have Building Named in his Honor

By goodblacknews on July 20, 2020
Dr. Billy C. Hawkins (photo courtesy Talledega College)

Talladega College will hold a naming ceremony for the Dr. Billy C. Hawkins Student Activity Center on August 14, 2020. The newly constructed 47,000-square-foot student center/arena will be the first-ever campus facility to be named in honor of one of the institution’s African American presidents.

In 2008, when Dr. Billy C. Hawkins became the 20th president of Talladega College, the HBCU was struggling to survive. Dr. Hawkins implemented rigorous plans for renovation and growth that transformed the college.

As a result of his vision, enrollment doubled from just over 300 students to 601 students in one semester; athletic programs were reinstated for the first time in ten years; and major campus beautification projects were undertaken.

The College enjoyed record-high enrollment in both the 2018-2019 academic year and the 2019-2020 academic year.  Talladega College now has over 1200 students.

Under the leadership of Dr. Hawkins, Talladega College is listed among Princeton Review’s best colleges in the Southeast, U.S. News and World Report’s most innovative colleges, and Kiplinger’s Best Value Colleges.  Talladega recently launched its first-ever graduate program, an online Master of Science in Computer Information Systems. In addition, the campus is undergoing a major physical transformation.

New construction on campus includes a 45,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art residence hall, which  opened in 2019, and the Dr. William R. Harvey Museum of Art, which opened in 2020.  The Dr. William R. Harvey Museum of Art houses six critically-acclaimed Hale Woodruff murals, including the renowned Amistad Murals.

Unedited “Eyes on the Prize” Interviews with John Lewis and C.T. Vivian Available to Stream at American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WATCH)

Unedited “Eyes on the Prize” Interviews with John Lewis and C.T. Vivian Available to Stream at American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WATCH)

By goodblacknews on July 18, 2020

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) has made John Lewis’ unedited interview for Eyes on the Prize (1987) and for Eyes on the Prize: They Loved You Madly (1979), available to stream on its website, along with Rev. C.T. Vivian’s unedited interview for Eyes on the Prize. 

Lewis’ discussions center on the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, his friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the relationship between Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), his view on the philosophy of nonviolence and his involvement in the March on Washington.

Vivian and his interviewer discuss in detail over the course of an hour the Nashville sit-in campaign, the Freedom Rides, the Selma campaign and more.

Eyes on the Prize is the groundbreaking 1987 PBS documentary series that tells the definitive story of the civil rights movement.

These interviews are part of a collection of 127 raw interviews from Eyes on the Prize available to stream via AAPB due to a collaboration between Boston public media producer WGBH and the Library of Congress to preserve and make accessible culturally significant public media from across the country.

The AAPB also contains a two-part raw interview conducted with Vivian in 2011 from American Experience’s Freedom Riders. Part 1, Part 2.

“Amazing Grace”: Playlist in Honor of Civil Rights Heroes John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian (LISTEN)

“Amazing Grace”: Playlist in Honor of Civil Rights Heroes John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on July 18, 2020

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest)

With the passing of two Civil Rights Movement titans, the Reverend C.T. Vivian and Rep. John Lewis, I was inclined to honor them with a playlist.

After some poking around, I read that Rep. Lewis was a big fan of Aretha Franklin and saw her sing more times than he could count.

As a teenager, Franklin traveled the country on tour with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte. As she became a musical icon, lending her voice in support of equal rights, Franklin was present with Lewis and Vivian, in person or in song, for some of the Civil Rights Movement’s most pivotal moments.

John Lewis and C.T. Vivian (photo: Getty Images)

“If it hadn’t been for Aretha — and others, but particularly Aretha — the Civil Rights Movement would have been a bird without wings,” Lewis said. “She lifted us and she inspired us.”

Here is a playlist featuring her and other artists who lent their voices to the struggle.

As always, stay safe, sane, and kind.

[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:playlist:35W6wbr2umUcRcaY1UdeC5″/]

Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)

R.I.P. John Lewis, 80, U.S Representative and Civil Rights Movement Icon

By goodblacknews on July 18, 2020
John Lewis (photo by Rick Diamond / Getty Images)

Rep. John Lewis, an iconic pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Rider who literally shed his blood in the fight for Black voting rights and went on to become a 17-term Democratic member of Congress, died yesterday from pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old.

One of the last surviving leaders of the 1960s Civil Rights era and members of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner circle, (the Rev. C.T. Vivian passed yesterday as well), Lewis was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in December.

Regardless of his health issues, Lewis took to the streets again in early June to join protests for racial justice near the White House that were in response to the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, among others.

Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama and attended segregated schools before earning his college degree at Fisk University in Nashville.

While a student there, Lewis organized his first sit-in demonstration at a lunch counter and was soon arrested for what he started to call “good trouble, necessary trouble.”

R.I.P. Rev. C.T. Vivian, 95, Civil Rights Movement Activist and MLK Adviser

By goodblacknews on July 17, 2020
Rev. C.T. Vivian receives 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama (photo: commons.wikipedia.org)

According to nytimes. com, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, a civil rights organizer and adviser for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the struggle for racial justice a half-century ago, died at the age of 95 today at his home in Atlanta. Kira Vivian and Denise Morse, two of Vivian’s daughters, confirmed his passing.

C.T. Vivian was a Baptist minister and member of MLK’s inner circle of advisers, alongside the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and other civil rights luminaries such as Julian Bond and Rev. Jesse Jackson.

To quote nytimes.com:

Vivian was the national director of some 85 local affiliate chapters of the S.C.L.C. from 1963 to 1966, directing protest activities and training in nonviolence as well as coordinating voter registration and community development projects.

In Selma and Birmingham, Ala.; St. Augustine, Fla.; Jackson, Miss.; and other segregated cities, Mr. Vivian led sit-ins at lunch counters, boycotts of businesses, and marches that continued for weeks or months, raising tensions that often led to mass arrests and harsh repression.

Televised scenes of marchers attacked by police officers and firefighters with cattle prods, snarling dogs, fire hoses and nightsticks shocked the national conscience, legitimized the civil rights movement and led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“Nonviolence is the only honorable way of dealing with social change, because if we are wrong, nobody gets hurt but us,” Mr. Vivian said in an address to civil rights workers, as recounted in “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68” (2006), by Taylor Branch. “And if we are right, more people will participate in determining their own destinies than ever before.”

Cordy Tindell Vivian was born in Boonville, Mo., on July 30, 1924, the only child of Robert and Euzetta Tindell Vivian. His family moved to Macomb, Ill., when he was 6, and he later graduated from Macomb High School in 1942. He studied history at Western Illinois University in Macomb, but he dropped out and became a recreation worker in Peoria, Ill., where he joined his first protest, in 1947, helping to desegregate a cafeteria.

In 1945, Mr. Vivian married Jane Teague, who worked at a hardware store, and they had one daughter, Jo Anna Walker, who survives him. The couple separated amicably in the late 1940s and divorced later so that Mr. Vivian could marry Octavia Geans, in 1952. She was the author of “Coretta” (1970), the first biography of Dr. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King. She died in 2011.

In addition to his daughters Kira, Denise and Jo Anna, Mr. Vivian is survived by another daughter, Anita Charisse Thornton; two sons, Mark Evans Vivian and Albert Louis Vivian; nine grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; 28 great-great-grandchildren; and two great-great-great-grandchildren. Another son, Cordy Jr., died in 2010.

To read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/ct-vivian-dead.html