Civil Rights Era American Girl Melody Ellison (photo via cbsnews.com)
article via cbsnews.com American Girl is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Since 1986, the business has sold more than 29 million dolls and more than 153 million books.
This summer, it will release a new historical doll. CBS News went where no cameras have been allowed before — inside the design studio to get the first exclusive look at Melody Ellison, the company’s third African American doll in its BeForever historical line.
For the last 30 years, American Girl dolls have brought countless smiles to faces of little girls. “I think it’s that we stayed true to our mission and purpose and while it’s easy to call us a doll company, we’ve always seen ourselves as storytellers,” said Julia Prohaska, vice president of marketing.
Prohaska said their dolls come with books that tap into imaginations, while providing a rich history lesson. “We put at the center stories and advice for girls that really are intended to help them be their personal best,” Prohaska said.
Villa Lewaro, Madam C.J. Walker Estate, Irvington, NY (Photo: Historic New England/David Bohl)
The history of African Americans is typically thought of as people and events, but those could not come together without places and spaces. In an effort to preserve many of the sites where Black History…
To see more, go to: A Walk Through the Sites of African American History via ebony.com
(photo via www.brandeis.edu) article via jbhe.com Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, has announced the establishment of the Diversity, Excellence, and Inclusion Scholarships. The program will provide full-tuition scholarships for five students in master’s degree programs in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts. Recipients of the scholarships will also receive a $10,000 stipend. Laurie Nichols, Director of Admissions, stated that “we are looking for any students who may be traditionally overlooked by graduate admissions processes.”
Eric Chasalow, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, added that “a commitment to diversity is one of Brandeis’ core values, and some that we take very seriously. We have seen similar program provide benefits to our undergraduate students, so it made absolute sense to bring those benefits to the graduate student population.”
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 CongressmanCharles 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/
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.”
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.
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.
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.
(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.
Uptown Ventures Group, the parent company of UPTOWN Magazine, announced today they will honor award-winning television and film actress Nia Long at their annual “UPTOWN HONORS HOLLYWOOD” Pre-Oscar Gala, presented by Lexus and hosted by comedian Chris Spencer. The event will take place on Thursday, February 25 at Lure, in Hollywood, CA.
The evening will pay tribute to Long’s career including her memorable roles in John Singleton’s critically-acclaimed film, Boyz n the Hood, family comedy dramaSoul Food, romantic drama Love Jonesand comedy drama The Best Man. Long has won three NAACP Image Awards, hosted several awards shows including “Black Girls Rock” and the “Trumpet Awards,” and has also been honored by PETA.
“We are excited to celebrate the accomplishments of our friend, the talented Nia Long. Her career continues to flourish and we have supported and been a part of her Hollywood journey from the beginning. This evening will salute her many past, present and future works and contributions to the entertainment industry,” said Len Burnett, Co-CEO and Chief Revenue Officer, UPTOWN Ventures Group.
Past honorees have included Malcolm D. Lee, Will Packer, Salim Akil, Lee Daniels, Ava DuVernay, as well as Reggie Hudlin and Warrington Hudlin.
