Practically all Americans celebrate or at the very least know about the national Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. But how many know it came to pass because of the activism and efforts of his widow, Coretta Scott King?
Today, on what would have been Coretta Scott King’s 94th birthday, we honor and celebrate her.
Coretta Scott King worked alongside MLK Jr. throughout the civil rights movement, and continued social justice work for decades after his assassination in 1968 until her own passing in 2006.
In 1983 she finally succeeded when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law declaring MLK Day starting on January 20, 1986. Coretta Scott King honored the occasion in Atlanta, Georgia, placing a wreath on King’s tomb and holding a ceremony at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King had served as co-pastor for eight years before his death.
Coretta Scott King also spoke up for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, against the Vietnam War, against apartheid in South Africa and called out the FBI for its extensive surveillance of both her and MLK. King wrote about her life and work in the book My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr., first published in 1969.
In 2005, King allowed her alma mater, Antioch College, to create the Coretta Scott King Center as a learning resource to address issues of race, class, gender, diversity, and social justice for the campus and the surrounding community. The Center opened in 2007.
To learn more about her life and legacy, watch the video above, or check out the books My Life, My Love, My Legacyand Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange and Kadir Nelson.
Lincoln University in Missouri has become the first Historically Black College and University (HBCU) to train police recruits on campus at the Lincoln University Law Enforcement Training Academy(LULET) established earlier this year.
Led by Lincoln University police chief Gary Hill, the program allows its students to spend their final semester at the university doing full-time police training, in addition to viewing and analyzing bodycam and cellphone footage of incidents as part of the curriculum.
According to time.com, the program runs for 22 weeks on evenings and Saturdays. Students learn how to shoot a firearm and when to use force, as well as how to respond to domestic-violence and child-abuse calls and how to deal with death encountered on the job.
Hill says the academy steers away from the military-style teaching methods that traditional police academies have been criticized for using. He says a chunk of the curriculum focuses on de-escalation strategies and that he has personally vetted the instructors, who are all local law-enforcement officers.
A new study published this February in the journal Science found that Black and Hispanic officers use force less frequently than white officers, especially against Black people, evidence that diversity can improve police treatment of communities of color.
To watch an MSNBC segment on the academy, click below:
Although the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted movie releases in theaters for the majority of 2020, the UCLA report took that into consideration and tracked online and streaming movie releases as well. The data from those releases offer similar results — diversely-cast films generate more interest from audiences.
UCLA’s 2021 report states that in 2020, films with casts with at least 41% to 50% diversity took home the highest median gross at the box office, while films with casts less than 11% diversity performed the worst.
These films include the Will Smith/Martin Lawrence action comedy Bad Boys for Life, which was 2020’s top-earning film at the box office with $426.5 million; the No. 2 Tenet starring John David Washington, which grossed $362.9 million; Birds of Prey, which came in at No. 5 with $201.9 million; and Onward, which came in seventh with $141.9 million.
The UCLA report states that the new evidence from 2020 supports findings from previous reports in this series suggesting that America’s increasingly diverse audiences prefer diverse film content in the following ways:
People of color accounted for the majority of opening weekend, domestic ticket sales for six of the top 10 films released in theaters in 2020 (ranked by global box office), as well as half of the tickets for a seventh top 10 film.
Among the large number of top films released via streaming platforms in 2020 — largely due to the pandemic and theater closures — ratings for White, Black, Latinx and Asian households and viewers 18-49 were all highest for films featuring casts that were from 21 percent to 30 percent minority.
Households of color accounted for a disproportionate share of the households viewing eight of the top 10 films released via streaming platforms in 2020, ranked by total household ratings, and approached proportionate representation for the other two.
In 2020, total social media interactions for films released via streaming platforms peaked for films with casts that were from 21 percent to 30 percent minority.
In 2020, films with casts that were from 41 percent to 50 percent minority enjoyed the highest median global box office receipts, while films with casts that were less than 11 percent minority were the poorest performers.
In 2020, seven of the top 10 theatrical films for Asian and Black moviegoers, ranked by each group’s share of opening weekend box office, featured casts that were over 30 percent minority. Four of the top 10 theatrical films for Latinx moviegoers and just one of the top 10 theatrical films for White moviegoers had casts that exceeded 30 percent minority.
Seven of the top 10 streaming films ranked by the Asian share and Black share of total households had casts that were over 30 percent minority in 2020. Among the top 10 films ranked by Latinx and White household share, six had casts that exceeded the 30 percent minority threshold.
The report also notes that while gains have been made in certain areas in regards to casting, director and writer representation for people of color still has a ways to go, with percentages for both in 2020 were still over 74% white.
Former police officer Derek Chauvin has been found guilty on all counts for the murder of George Floyd. This is an excellent day for justice and accountability.
Continued love and healing to George Floyd’s family, loved ones, the city of Minneapolis and the United States. May this be a true beginning and reckoning for justice in the United States.
Police officer Kim Potter resigned yesterday after shooting and killing Daunte Wright, 20, at a traffic stop on Sunday, officials in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, announced. Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon also submitted his resignation, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott announced at a press conference.
As the Derek Chauvin trial over the police killing of George Floyd proceeds only 10 miles away in Minneapolis, hundreds of people showed up for a memorial protest at the police department in Brooklyn Center in spite of a 7 p.m. curfew that had been called across much of the Twin Cities area.
Protests also spread across the country Monday night after police officials in Brooklyn Center, Minn., said they believed Potter, who shot and killed Wright, had intended to use her Taser but accidentally fired her handgun instead.
Wright’s parents Katie and Aubrey Wright and their attorneys Ben Crump and Jeff Storms discuss the death of their unarmed son during a traffic stop and how they are seeking justice with ABC‘s Robin Roberts below:
Commander Tony Gruenig has been named acting police chief as the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension continues to investigate the homicide.
Mayor Elliott is asking for the attorney general to be assigned the case:
On Friday, State Senator Steven Bradford (D-CA, Gardena) reintroduced a bill to the California State Legislature that would pave the way for the City of Manhattan Beach to return ownership of coveted oceanside property to the descendants of its former owners, Willa and Charles Bruce.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Bruces originally purchased the land in 1912 and ran a cafe, dance hall and lodge on the oceanfront lots to provide resort space and activities to African Americans, and the area started being called “Bruce’s Beach.”
But white neighbors resented the resort’s popularity. Tires were slashed. The Ku Klux Klan purportedly set fire to a mattress under the main deck and torched a Black-owned home nearby.
When harassment failed to drive the Bruce’s Beach community out of town, city officials in 1924 condemned the neighborhood and seized more than two dozen properties through eminent domain. The reason, they said, was an urgent need for a public park.
The Bruces sought $70,000 for their two beachfront properties and $50,000 in damages. They received $14,500.
For decades, the properties sat empty. The Bruce parcels were transferred to the state in 1948, then to the county in 1995. A county lifeguard center occupies the land today. As for the remaining lots, city officials eventually turned them into a park, worried that family members might sue to regain their land unless it was used for the purpose for which it had been originally taken.
Though a plaque designating the and renaming the park area as “Bruce’s Beach” was erected in 2007, this symbolic acknowledgment ]did not address the underlying issues of injustice and racism at the core of why “eminent domain” was invoked by the local government to strip the Bruce’s of their property.
In recent years there has been a grassroots effort to bring the full history of Bruce’s Beach to light as well as a push towards reparations for the Bruce family.
Despite comprehensive efforts over the years to record Los Angeles’ historic places, the city’s historic designation programs, by their own estimation, do not yet reflect the depth and breadth of African American history. Just over three percent of the city’s 1,200 designated local landmarks are linked to African American heritage.
Over the next three years, the project will work with local communities and cultural institutions to more fully recognize and understand African American experiences in Los Angeles. The work aims to identify and help preserve the places that best represent these stories and work with communities to develop creative approaches that meet their own aims for placemaking, identity, and empowerment.
As the African American population of such areas as West Adams and Jefferson Park began growing in the 1940s, new Black churches were founded. One of the most influential was Holman United Methodist, which commissioned architect Kenneth Nels Lind to design this sanctuary in 1958.
The project is led by the Getty Conservation Institute and the Office of Historic Resources (OHR) within Los Angeles’ Department of City Planning, which is responsible for the management of historic resources within the city. A community engagement program will create a space for meaningful input and local partnerships, drawing upon community-based knowledge of lesser-known histories.
“Historic preservation is about the acknowledgment and elevation of places and stories. The point of this work is to make sure that the stories and places of African Americans in Los Angeles are more present and complete than previously,” says Tim Whalen, John E. and Louise Bryson Director at the Getty Conservation Institute. “The work is also about making sure that preservation methods are examined for systemic bias. It’s ultimately about equity.”
Before embarking on this project, Getty and the city convened a virtual roundtable composed of a group of national and local thought leaders with experience in urban planning, historic preservation, African American history, and/or grassroots and community organizing.
Their discussions of diversity and inclusion in preservation policy helped shape the initiative and its goals. In particular, their input shed light on existing processes and practices that perpetuate biases in how places are recognized and protected, and helped expose current preservation policies that prevent the conservation of places of importance to Black communities.
“This project will illuminate overlooked narratives and historic places important to Los Angeles and our nation that deserve protection and recognition,” says Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a member of the project’s initial thought leader round table meeting.
“Through public and private partnership, the Getty and City of Los Angeles can model broader reform in the U.S. preservation field and can work proactively at the local government and city levels to grow pathways for equitable interpretation and community-driven preservation.”
This project will include research to rethink and potentially expand the heritage preservation toolkit. This involves examining how current historic preservation and planning processes and policies may be reinforcing systemic racism. It will also work to bring new and improved processes that address injustices and bring greater inclusion and diversity to historic preservation practices.
Barber shops, such as Magnificent Brothers—in operation in the Crenshaw district since 1970— could be found eligible for listing based on their social significance to the community.
The initial phase of this project will also provide a framework for identifying and evaluating properties relating to African American history in Los Angeles. In 2018 OHR completed a framework for identifying African American heritage in the city, drawing upon nine themes that included civil rights, deed restriction and segregation, religion and spirituality, social clubs and organizations, and visual arts. The project will include deeper citywide community engagement around this framework and allow for the report’s potential expansion.
“As the largest planning department in the United States, City Planning is uniquely positioned to chart a course for a more fair, equitable, and just Los Angeles for future generations, in part, through cultural heritage and education,” says Vince Bertoni, director of planning for the City of Los Angeles. “We are excited to highlight this broader range of values and history that better represents our diverse city.”
In addition to rethinking the preservation toolkit, the project will include official historic designation of a number of African American historic places by the city. The work of the project will also extend beyond traditional preservation tools to address the development of broader cultural preservation strategies with selected historically Black communities.
The project will also provide opportunities for emerging history, preservation and planning professionals through dedicated paid internships. Additionally, Getty and OHR will soon launch a search for a consultant project leader to further develop, manage, and implement the work of this project, under the guidance of a soon-to-be-established local advisory committee representing key stakeholders in the city’s African American communities.
“The history of Los Angeles is incomplete without recognition of the African American individuals and institutions that shaped the economic, cultural and civic narrative of the region,” says Susan D. Anderson, history curator and program manager at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles and a member of the project’s initial thought leader round table meeting. “This important project will expand how heritage is defined and will provide an opportunity to work with local communities and residents to unearth stories that are vital to our understanding of the place we call home.”
The City of Los Angeles and the Getty Conservation Institute have worked together for nearly two decades on local heritage projects. Their joint efforts include SurveyLA, a citywide survey of historic places that was conducted from 2010 through 2017. SurveyLA covered the entire City of Los Angeles—over 880,000 legal parcels in an area of almost 500 square miles—and identified resources dating from approximately 1865 to 1980. The data from SurveyLA was used to create HistoricPlacesLA, a website launched in 2015 that allows the public to explore these places.
Golden State Mutual Life Insurance building designed by Paul Williams
The announcement follows the Getty Research Institute and the USC School of Architecture’s recent joint acquisition of the archives of Paul R. Williams, one of the most significant African American architects of the 20th century. Several Williams buildings are already designated historic landmarks in Los Angeles, including the 28th Street YMCA and Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company.
The new initiative also builds upon the work of City Planning, in establishing the Office of Racial Justice, Equity, and Transformative Planning in 2020 in response to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Executive Order No. 27 on Racial Equity in City Government. Through the office, City Planning is comprehensively confronting how land use policies and zoning practices have reinforced racial segregation, environmental injustice, and poor health outcomes.
The Weeknd donated one million dollars to the United Nations World Food Program to bolster hunger relief efforts in Ethiopia, according to his recent Instagram post.
Born Abel Tesfaye in Toronto, Canada to his Ethiopian immigrant parents Makkonen and Samra Tesfaye, the “Blinded By The Lights” performer is using his platform to shine a light on the conflict between the government in Addis Ababa and the Tigray region that has been going on for months and lead to deaths and the displacement of over two million people.
According to Variety.com, a collaboration between Lionsgate Television, The New York Times, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films will create a docuseries for streaming platform Hulu based on The 1619 Project from New York Times Magazine’s and Nikole Hannah-Jones‘ journalistic examination of slavery and racism in the U.S. from 1619 to current times.
Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winner Shoshana Guy will serve as showrunner and executive producer. Kathleen Lingo, editorial director for film and TV at The New York Times, will also executive produce along with Caitlin Roper, The Times’ executive producer for scripted film and TV.
Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams will produce and oversee the series with producing partner and co-executive producer Geoff Martz and also direct the first episode.
The series falls under a distribution agreement between Lionsgate and Disney General Entertainment Content’s BIPOC Creator Initiative led by Tara Duncan.
The 1619 Project connected the centrality of slavery in U.S. history with an account of the racism that endures in so many aspects of American life today. It was launched in August 2019 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colonies that would become the United States. It examines the legacy of slavery in America and how it shaped nearly all aspects of society, from music and law to education and the arts, and including the principles of our democracy itself.
“The 1619 Project is an essential reframing of American history,” Williams said. “Our most cherished ideals and achievements cannot be understood without acknowledging both systemic racism and the contributions of Black Americans. And this isn’t just about the past—Black people are still fighting against both the legacy of this racism and its current incarnation. I am thrilled and grateful for the opportunity to work with The New York Times, Lionsgate Television, Harpo Films and Hulu to translate the incredibly important The 1619 Project into a documentary series.”
[Torri’ell Norwood (in the back) poses for a selfie with A’zarria Simmons. Norwood performed CPR on Simmons after a car accident on February 20. Photo via CNN.com]
Torri’ell Norwood, 17, saved the life of her best friend A’zarria Simmons, 16, just one day after learning basic life support in class at her high school, Lakewood High, according to cnn.com.
Norwood was driving three friends home in St. Petersburg, Florida, on February 20 of this year when another driver slammed into her from her left and sent her car careening.
The impact jammed shut the driver’s side door, so Norwood climbed out the front window. Two of her friends managed to get out of the car unharmed, but the collision caused Simmons to hit her head on the backseat window.
“When I turned around, I didn’t see A’zarria running with us,” Norwood told CNN. “So, I had to run back to the car as fast as I can. She was just sitting there unresponsive.”
And that’s when the training Norwood had just learned kicked in. She pulled Simmons out of the back seat, avoiding broken glass from the window.
“That’s when I checked her pulse on her neck. I put my head against her chest, and I didn’t really hear nothing. So that’s when I just started doing CPR on her.”
After the 30 compressions and two rescue breaths, Simmons regained consciousness. Paramedics quickly arrived and rushed her to the hospital, where she received stitches for a gash in her forehead.
“I don’t remember the hit or anything about accident. But when I woke up, I was in the hospital. I was in shock. I was trying to figure out how I got there,” Simmons said.
Norwood participates in Lakewood’s Athletic Lifestyle Management Academy. The program exists to prepare students for varied careers in the health sciences.
Thanks to Norwood’s quick thinking,CPR lesson retention and heroic actions, Simmons is recovering well. Both friends plan to pursue careers in the medical field.
“I do want to be a nurse,” Norwood said. “I know that if somebody was in need of help, I’d go to the rescue.”
