For the first time ever, McDonald’s is looking to the public to help them decide who should be the lucky recipient of their Community Choice Youth Award and be honored during the 11th annual 365Black Awards.
The chosen winners, one female and one male, will receive a $10,000 scholarship along with recognition at the star-studded event that takes place Saturday, July 5th in New Orleans during the ESSENCE Festival.
Know an exceptional teen between the ages of 13 and 18? Nominate them for this prestigious award by visiting 365black.com, filling out a nomination form, answering three questions about the nominee and submitting a three-minute video highlighting the teens contributions to the community. The deadline to submit is Saturday, May 31.
We’re just going to say it: Gabourey Sidibe is awesome.
She’s made to put up with a lot, but she doesn’t let the haters get her down. Not anymore.
Once again, the 30-year-old actress proved why she’s one of the strongest women in Hollywood with a powerful and moving speech about confidence at the Gloria Awards and Gala in New York City on May 1.
Sidibe opened by declaring that she loathes questions about the source of her confidence.
“I hate that,” Sidibe told the crowd. “I always wonder if that’s the first thing they ask Rihanna when they meet her. ‘RiRi! How are you so confident?’ Nope. No. No. But me? They ask me with that same incredulous disbelief every single time. ‘You seem so confident! How is that?'”
After telling a story about the cruelty of children and the importance of thinking highly of yourself, she circled back:
“Gabourey, how are you so confident?” It’s not easy. It’s hard to get dressed up for award shows and red carpets when I know I will be made fun of because of my weight. There’s always a big chance if I wear purple, I will be compared to Barney. If I wear white, a frozen turkey. And if I wear red, that picture of Kool-Aid that says, “Oh, yeah!” Twitter will blow up with nasty comments about how the recent earthquake was caused by me running to a hot dog cart or something. And “Diet or Die?” [She gives the finger to that] This is what I deal with every time I put on a dress. This is what I deal with every time someone takes a picture of me. Sometimes when I’m being interviewed by a fashion reporter, I can see it in her eyes, “How is she getting away with this? Why is she so confident? How does she deal with that body? Oh my God, I’m going to catch fat!”
The former “American Horror Story” star went on to say that every day she went to school, people made fun of her, and that she had to go home to a place where everyone made fun of her as well. But when she moved in with her aunt, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, whom she described as a “feminist, an activist, and a lifelong friend of Gloria Steinem,” a portrait of her aunt and Steinem together gave her hope and strength.
The actress closed out her speech returning again to the question of confidence — something she hopefully won’t have to address again.
“How are you so confident?” “I’m an asshole!” Okay? It’s my good time, and my good life, despite what you think of me. I live my life, because I dare. I dare to show up when everyone else might hide their faces and hide their bodies in shame. I show up because I’m an asshole, and I want to have a good time. And my mother and my father love me. They wanted the best life for me, and they didn’t know how to verbalize it. And I get it. I really do. They were better parents to me than they had themselves. I’m grateful to them, and to my fifth grade class, because if they hadn’t made me cry, I wouldn’t be able to cry on cue now. [Dabs tears] If I hadn’t been told I was garbage, I wouldn’t have learned how to show people I’m talented. And if everyone had always laughed at my jokes, I wouldn’t have figured out how to be so funny. If they hadn’t told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if they hadn’t tried to break me down, I wouldn’t know that I’m unbreakable. [Dabs tears] So when you ask me how I’m so confident, I know what you’re really asking me: how could someone like me be confident? Go ask Rihanna, asshole!”
CEDA National Debate Champions holding championship cup Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson with Towson University debate team coaches Ignacio Evans, left and Amber Kelsie, right.
Towson University Debate Team members Ameena Ruffin ‘15 and Korey Johnson ’16 made history at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) National Championship in late March.
“Ruffin and Johnson are the first African-American women’s team to win a national tournament,” said Mike Davis, president of the Cross Examination Debate Association. In a sense, it’s a double record. “No [individual] African-American woman has ever won our tournament before,” Davis confirmed.
The Towson team beat Oklahoma in the final round to claim the national title. The competition featured teams from elite schools including Harvard, Trinity, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, Wayne State, Cal State Fullerton, Florida, Bard College, Pepperdine, Sacramento State, Vanderbilt, NYU and others.
Ruffin and Johnson also earned a first-round bid to the 2014 National Debate Tournament, an invitation-only national championship for collegiate policy debate in the United States. The distinction designated them as one of the top 16 teams in the country.
“We are thrilled and very proud of Ameena and Korey on this amazing accomplishment,” said Towson Universeity College of Fine Arts and Communication Dean Susan Picinich. “Their historic success is exemplified by their passion, dedication and commitment to the art of debate, and the leadership of Towson University’s debate coaching staff, Amber Kelsie and Ignacio Evans.”
The Melvin B. Tolson/Denzel Washington Forensics Society of Wiley College has added another historic feat to its list of accomplishments by winning the Overall Sweepstakes Championship of the 2014 Pi Kappa Delta National Comprehensive Tournament. Wiley is the first historically black college to earn this national award.
Wiley’s win comes during a record-making year for Pi Kappa Delta’s prestigious annual tournament – the 2014 event saw 80 schools (with 2,000 entries) competing to prove they have the best forensicators (speech and debate) in the country.
“We earn victories at Pi Kappa Delta each year, but this year’s overall championship victory is especially meaningful to Wiley,” said Haywood L. Strickland, Wiley’s President and CEO. “We are pleased that our students performed so well against all these strong teams. Their accomplishment is a clear reflection of the legacy of excellence at Wiley,” he said. “We are grateful to Professor Melvin B. Tolson, Denzel Washington, and all who paved the way for this victory to occur.”
Forensic speech and debate is woven into the fabric of Wiley College. Notably, the College’s 1935 debate team, led by Professor Melvin B. Tolson, defeated the then reigning national forensics champion, University of Southern California.
The 2007 movieThe Great Debaters tells the story of this competition, and the movie’s star and director, Denzel Washington, donated the funding that helped relaunch the College’s debate team in 2008.
Wiley’s 23-member Forensics Team is coached by Chris Medina. The team will next travel to Tempe, Arizona, to compete in the American Forensics Association Nationals – a tournament of champions for selective student who qualify through earlier high tournament rankings. On the heels of that event, two members of the team will travel to Ypisilanti, Michigan, to compete in the National Forensics Association Nationals.
Morgan State University, back-to-back national champions, look to three-peat at the 2014 25th anniversary Honda Campus All-Star Challenge
Brainpower from America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will be on display at the 25th annual Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HCASC) National Championship Tournament. Hundreds of HBCU students have spent the past year diligently preparing to compete in the final round of this unique academic tournament, April 12-16, 2014, on the campus of American Honda Motor Co., Inc., in Torrance, California.
This year’s road to the championship began in the fall of 2013, with 76 HBCUs vying for the final 48 slots. Through countless hours of study, drills and practice, elite teams emerged, knowledgeable and ready to take on the competition. Their goal is to beat Morgan State University, the reigning national champions with two consecutive titles, while Morgan State will be seeking a threepeat.
The competitors will be split into eight divisions and will compete in a modified round-robin format. The top two teams from each division will advance to the “Sweet 16” and will compete in a single elimination playoff. The final two teams that emerge from the playoffs will compete for the title of National Champions and the grand prize of $50,000. The grand prize, along with the other institutional grants, will support academic activities at the participating HBCUs.
“Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” is among the animated series highlighted in a new traveling exhibition at the Schomburg Center for Black Culture. CreditCollection of Museum of UnCut Funk
Growing up in the 1970s at opposite ends of New York State, two girls were immersed in all things cool, black and funky.
Saturday morning cartoons won their hearts. Loreen Williamson, in Rochester, and Pamela Thomas, in the Bronx, would park themselves in front of the The Jackson 5ive, featuring a tiny Michael sporting a big Afro, and Josie and the Pussycats, with the black tambourine-playing Valerie Brown performing in a hip girl band.
Eventually, the two met and bonded over their mutual interests. Not content to leave the funk (or their pasts) behind, Ms. Williamson, now 49, and Ms. Thomas, 51, have amassed more than 300 pieces of black animation art from the 1960s and ’70s, a collection that they believe is one of the world’s most extensive in that field. In 2007, they created the Museum of UnCut Funk, an online showcase for original animation cels, posters, storyboards and other objects celebrating black culture of the 1970s and its standard-bearers. Now, the two collectors have hit the road with a traveling museum exhibition, Funky Turns 40: Black Character Revolution, which represents 24 animated productions, including Saturday morning and after-school cartoons and animated feature films.
Pamela Thomas, left, and Loreen Williamson, who created the exhibition, have have amassed more than 300 pieces of black animation art from the 1960s and ’70s. (Photo Credit: Christopher Gregory for The New York Times)
The revolution that it documents is from stereotype to superhero: Funky, which is currently at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and will travel to museums in Chicago, Seattle and West Reading, Pa.honors the cartoons’ image-affirming black characters, including those of The Harlem Globetrotters, Kid Power, Schoolhouse Rock and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.
The programs are more than entertaining nostalgia, the two curators and some cultural historians say. They represent the fruits of a struggle for a say in the representation of blacks in television images, among other rights, and the newfound ability of popular black entertainers to get such programming on the air, based on their own appeal to a wide audience.
The shows offered a striking counterpoint to the previous stereotypical portrayals of blacks as buffoons in mainstream films, books, theater, advertising and cartoons. “It shows a time in American history when art and diversity and civil rights aspirations all came together,” said Christopher P. Lehman, a professor of ethnic studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota and the author of The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954 (University of Massachusetts Press). “Before 1970, African-Americans were not much on television at all, except as the domestic servants of Jack Benny and Danny Thomas or as guests on variety series.”
It was no accident that Hey, Hey, Hey, It’s Fat Albert, described by curators as the first “positive” black-cast cartoon on TV (and the basis of the later series), was an NBC prime-time special in 1969, or, in the same vein, The Jackson 5ive, the first Saturday morning cartoon series featuring black musicians, made its debut in 1971. Both were created by two entertainment powerhouses, Bill Cosby (Fat Albert and the gang were part of his stand-up comedy routine) and Berry Gordy Jr., the founder of Motown Records, who marketed the family music act to appeal to the broadest possible audience.
Recalling her generation’s response, Ms. Williamson, who works as an independent consultant for marketing and business, said, “We got to see Martin Luther King’s dream, at least in cartoon form.”
“There was a lot of cross-pollination with what was going on in black culture,” she said. “You could watch the cartoons, go to the concerts, see the stars on variety shows. And our white friends were watching, too.” Ms. Thomas, a preschool teacher, said: “It made me feel like, wow, I see myself on TV. I started feeling good about myself.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama is bringing together an impressive group of female artists for a White House concert celebrating women of soul. The lineup for Thursday’s concert includes Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Melissa Etheridge and Janelle Monáe. Also performing will be The Voice winner Tessanne Chin, Ariana Grande and Jill Scott. The show will be streamed live Thursday night on the White House website and broadcast April 7th on PBS stations as Women of Soul: In Performance at the White House.
It is designed to celebrate what the White House describes as great “foremothers” of American music, with songs exploring the struggles and achievements of women. In connection with the concert, the White House will hold a workshop for students to learn about the history of women in soul. article via newsone.com
12 Years A Slave topped off its amazing awards-season run by earning the Best Picture Oscar tonight at the 86th Academy Awards. 12 Years director/producer Steve McQueen and producer Brad Pitt accepted the award at the end of a night that also saw writer John Ridley win for Best Adapted Screenplay, and rising star Lupita Nyong’o triumph in the Best Supporting Actress category. According to Variety.com, McQueen made history by becoming the first black producer to ever win an Academy Award for Best Picture.
The star-studded night also saw an energizing performance of “Happy” by Original Song nominee Pharrell Williams (who danced with Nyong’o, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in the aisles), a brief a cappella version of “Eye on the Sparrow” from Darlene Love during the Best Feature Documentary acceptance speech for 20 Feet From Stardom and Oscar presentations from Will Smith, Whoopi Goldberg, Jamie Foxx, Michael B. Jordan, Tyler Perry, Gabourey Sidibe, Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, and the first black man to ever win a Leading Actor Oscar, Sidney Poitier. One of the biggest highlights of the evening was Nyong’o’s acceptance speech, where she honored those who suffered so she could shine:
Thank you to the Academy for this incredible recognition. It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s. And so I want to salute the spirit of Patsey for her guidance. And for Solomon, thank you for telling her story and your own.
Nyong’o then went on to thank McQueen, co-star and Best Actor nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, her family and her chosen family, before closing with encouragement to children everywhere:
When I look down at this golden statue, may it remind me and every little child that no matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid. Thank you.
Black community leaders are taking a stand against the controversial “Stand Your Ground” law. On March 10, 2014 in Tallahassee, Florida, leaders across the country including Reverend Al Sharpton and the National Action Network are gathering in the Sunshine State to rally and a hold a prayer vigil in protest of SYG.
Sharpton will also be joined by Attorney Ben Crump and the parents of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. The march begins at 9:30am ET at the Tallahassee Leon County Civic Center, located at 505 W Pensacola St, Tallahassee, FL 32301. After the march is completed, the rally begins at the State Capitol located at 400 South Monroe St, Tallahassee, Florida, FL 32301. article via blackamericaweb.com
Steve McQueen wins Best Director and accepts Best Picture Award for “12 Years A Slave”
Lupita Nyong’o wins Best Supporting Actress
John Ridley wins Best Adapted Screenplay
According to Variety.com, 12 Years a Slave dominated the Independent Spirit Awards today, winning Best Feature, Best Director for Steve McQueen, Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong’o and Best Adapted Screenplay for John Ridley. 12 Years also took the cinematography award for Sean Bobbitt.McQueen dedicated his Best Director award to Solomon Northup, whose life and book was the basis for the searing historical drama, and also gave thanks to Chiwetel Ejiofor — the “soul” of the film.
In her acceptance speech, a composed Nyong’o said breathlessly that she had not been aware initially of the distinction of independent films, but said she then realized, “Independent film is where stuff actually happens.” Nyong’o noted that it was her birthday and concluded her speech by thanking her mother for supporting her choice to become an actress. Fruitvale Stationfinally gained some much-deserved recognition this awards season, winning Best First Feature for writer/director Ryan Coogler and its cast. Coogler gave a moving acceptance speech honoring Oscar Grant that received a standing ovation. Matthew McConaughey won the best actor trophy as an activist for Dallas Buyers Club and Cate Blanchett took the best actress award for her portrayal of the neurotic title character in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. A full list of winners appears below.
In order to be nominated, each film has to have less than a $20 million production budget. To vote, one need only buy a $95 per year membership in Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization that also produces the Los Angeles Film Festival.
For the first time ever, McDonald’s is looking to the public to help them decide who should be the lucky recipient of their Community Choice Youth Award and be honored during the 11th annual 365Black Awards.
One of the biggest highlights of the evening was Nyong’o’s acceptance speech, where she honored those who suffered so she could shine:
