As promised last week, GBN is giving thanks today to three members of the GBN community who entered our giveaway for the chance to receive one free copy each of our “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day® Calendar for 2023 .
Congratulations to Erica Donaldson-Ellison, Lise Andreasen and Karla Stewart-Tyson! We will be contacting you each shortly via email to arrange delivery of your free calendars from Workman Publishing.
Also, thank you so much to all who entered the giveaway. If you didn’t win today — good news! Due to popular demand, we will be holding a second drawing on December 9 and will announce three more lucky winners!
No need to enter again if you already have — you will automatically remain in the running.
To those who have yet to enter – it’s not too late! For a chance to win in December, send your first name, last name and email address with the subject heading “A Year of Good Black News Giveaway” to goodblacknewsgiveaways@yahoo.com from now until 11:59PM PT on December 8. One entry per unique email.
Already a Top 10 release in Multicultural Calendars on Amazon, A Year of Good Black News is filled with facts, history, bios, quotes, jokes and trivia in easy-to-read entries delivered on the daily.
In case you can’t wait to see if you’re the lucky winner, or if you want to buy copies as gifts for family, friends, teachers or loved ones, you can use the code: CYBER22 at Workman.com orpageaday.comuntil November 30 to receive 25% OFF site-wide, plus Free Shipping on orders over $25.
If you want to support a Black-owned bookstore with your purchase, order through this link on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/shop/esowonbooks, search “Good Black News Calendar” to add it to your cart, and a portion of the sale will go to directly to Eso Won Books in Los Angeles, CA.
Or, if you prefer, you can also order from the retailers below:
Good Black News, in collaboration with Workman Publishing, is getting into the holiday spirit once again — by giving away three copies of our “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day® Calendar for 2023 on Thanksgiving Day!
A Year of Good Black News is filled with facts, history, bios, quotes, jokes and trivia in easy-to-read pages delivered on the daily, and GBN will be selecting at random three entrants to each receive one free copy of the calendar.
To enter for a chance to win, send your first and last name and an email address with the subject heading “A Year of Good Black News Giveaway” to goodblacknewsgiveaways@yahoo.com from now until 11:59PM PST on November 23.
One entry per email, and we will announce the names of the three winners in a post on Thanksgiving, then contact them for mailing addresses to receive their individual calendar prize.
In case you can’t wait to see if you’re the lucky winner and/or want to buy copies for gifts to family, friends, teachers, or loved ones, you can order at Workman.com orpageaday.comusing code: CYBER22 from now until November 30, you will receive 25% off.
If you want to support a Black-owned bookstore with your purchase, order through this link on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/shop/esowonbooks, search “Good Black News Calendar” to add it to your cart, and a portion of the sale will go to directly to Eso Won Books in Los Angeles, CA.
The calendar is also available through the following online retailers:
The 2023 calendar’s official drop date is Tuesday, November 1, and if you pre-order now at Workman.com using the code: CALENDAR22 from now until December 31, you will receive 20% off.
A Year of Good Black Newsoffers fun Black facts about inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, comedians, historians, educators, athletes and entertainers.
We’re introducing new monthly categories for 2023 like “In The Paint: Black Artists,” and “Hit The Books: Black Authors,” along with established ones like “Lemme Break It Down: Black Lexicon,”“We Got Game: Black Trivia,”“Get The Knowledge: Black Museums and Landmarks” and “You Know We Did That, Right?: Black Inventors.”
Here’s a sneak peek inside:
Although I’m biased because I wrote it, the A Year of Good Black News calendar is an awesome way to get inspired every day by the good things Black people do (and have done) for centuries, but haven’t always been widely known or shared.
It’s also a great gift for family members, friends, teachers, children and loved ones. Did I mention if you use the code: CALENDAR22 at Workman.com, you get 20% off?
Or, if you prefer, you can also order from the retailers below:
The series chronicles the evolution of Black beauty and its impact on the fashion industry, the civil rights movement, the “Black is Beautiful” era and the influence on American culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fu2Prg0GTg
Supreme Models features trailblazers such as Iman and Bethann Hardison to superstar models Joan Smalls, IndyaMoore and Precious Lee with legends including Pat Cleveland, Roshumba Williams and Veronica Webb.
Anna Wintour, Chief Content Officer, Condé Nast and Global Editorial Director, Vogue, as well as Vogue European Editorial Director Edward Enniful, Vogue.com editor Chioma Nnadi and more also share personal stories of these boundary breaking women who set new standards in the worlds of beauty and fashion – from the 1960s to the unlimited potential of the digital age today.
The College Board has announced it will begin offering an Advanced Placement(AP) African American Studies course at 60 high schools across the U.S. this fall.
The AP program, which traditionally gives high school students an opportunity to take college-level courses before graduation, currently covers 38 subjects, including U.S. government and politics, biology, chemistry, English, European History and art history.
The AP African American Studies course is the College Board’s first new offering since 2014, according to TIME, and the multi-disciplinary course will cover over 400 years of African American history, literature, civil rights, politics, the arts, culture and geography.
Though a pilot program currently, the aim is by the 2024-2025 school year for this AP offering to be the first course in African American studies for U.S. high school students that is considered rigorous enough to allow students to receive credit and advanced placement at colleges across the country.
The plan for an Advanced Placement course is a significant step in acknowledging the field of African American studies, more than 50 years after what has been credited as the first Black studies department was started after a student strike at San Francisco State College in 1968, said Henry Louis Gates Jr., a former chair of Harvard’s department of African and African American studies and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
“In the history of any field, in the history of any discipline in the academy, there are always milestones indicating the degree of institutionalization,” said Dr. Gates, who is a consultant to the project along with a colleague, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. “These are milestones which signify the acceptance of a field as being quote-unquote ‘academic’ and quote-unquote ‘legitimate.’”
Students will take a pilot exam but will not receive scores or college credit, according to the College Board.
The iconic “A Great Day in Harlem” photograph of 57 jazz musicians taken by Art Kane in 1958 was the inspiration for the recently recreated “A Great Day in Animation” photo of 54 Black professionals in animation.
The homage was the brainchild of Disney visual effects supervisor Marlon West (who GBN is exceedingly proud to have as a regular contributor – check out his latest #MusicMonday playlist for Juneteeth here), and was taken just a few weeks ago by Randy Shropshire with Jeff Vespa as production lead.
For decades, West has been moved by “A Great Day in Harlem,” as well as Jean Bach’s Oscar-nominated film of the same name, which documents how the photo came to be.
“I’ve had a framed copy of that photo in my office or somewhere for 30 years,” West tells Variety. “And I thought it would be cool to do the same thing with Black animators.”
Aided by his friends and colleagues Bruce Smith, Peter Ramsey and Everett Downing Jr., West began putting together a list of animation professionals to include, aiming for legends like Floyd Norman, whose work on 1959’s “Sleeping Beauty” made him Disney’s first-ever Black animator, and his close collaborator Leo D. Sullivan.
“In the original photo, Coleman Hawkins is standing front and center. He was one of the elders of those folks,” West explains. “I just envisioned Floyd Norman standing in Coleman Hawkins’ spot, and all of us radiating out from him, and Leo Sullivan and other grandmasters who have upped the game.”
It was also important to West to invite up-and-comers such as Latoya Raveneau, who recently directed “The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder” and Chrystin Garland, a background painter and designer on series like “Solar Opposites.”
“If people look at this photo 10 or 20 years from now, [I hope] they’re like, ‘There’s so-and-so when they were just starting out!” West says.
(2022 photo: Pictured above: Aaron Spurgeon, Abelle Hayford, Ayo Davis, Breana Williams, Brie E Henderson, Bruce W. Smith, Camille Eden, Carole Holliday, Chris Copeland, Chrystin Garland, Constance Allen, Deborah Anderson, Devin Crane, Eric, Ramsey, Everett Downing Jr., Floyd Norman, Frank Abney, Jay Francis, Justin Copeland, Kaela Lash, Kai Akira, Karen Toliver, Kelley Gardner, Kemp Powers, Kenny Thompkins, Kwesi Davis, Latoya Raveneau, Layron DeJarnette, Lennie Graves, Lenord Robinson, Leo D. Sullivan, Leo Sullivan Jr., Lyndon Barrois Jr., Lynne Southerland, Maimuna Venzant, Marcella Brown, Marlon West, Marshall Toomey, Morenike Dosu, Peter Ramsey, Pixote Hunt, Ralph Farquhar, Reginald Hudlin, Robert Tyler, Ron Husband, Ron Myrick, Shabrayia Cleaver, Shari B. Ellis, Shavonne Cherry, Shay Stone, Sidney Clifton, Swinton Scott, Tara Nicole Whitaker, Tyree Dillihay, Umaimah Damakka)
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done a #Juneteenth playlist for GBN. This year it shares a Sunday with Father’s Day.
While I didn’t grow up with the holiday, it’s believed to be the oldest African-American holiday, with annual celebrations on June 19th in some parts of the country dating back to 1866. Well.
Since becoming aware of it, I’ve been all-in for years. As a father and son, I am thrilled with the one-two holiday punch.
I’ve tried to gather a set of tunes that can be enjoyed while the grill is full of food, with folk sitting around the table, or when you’re chilling around the crib.
From its Galveston, Texas roots, is now one of five date-specific federal holidays along with New Year’s Day (January 1), Independence Day (July 4), Veterans Day (November 11), and Christmas Day (December 25).
Juneteenth will coincide with Father’s Day not only this year, but also in 2033, 2039, 2044, and 2050. It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was declared a holiday in 1986.
Do enjoy another free-wheeling and eclectic collection celebrating this uniquely American holiday by your friend and selector.
On Memorial Day 2022, we take a look at the African American origins of the federal holiday established to remember America’s fallen soldiers.
To read about it, read on. To hear about it, press PLAY:
[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and Editor-in-Chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, May 30th, 2022, which is also Memorial Day, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Although May 30, 1868 is cited as the first national commemoration of Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, events lead by African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina to decorate the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers occurred on May 1, 1865, less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered.
Reports of this early version of Memorial Day or “Decoration Day” as it was called, were rediscovered in the Harvard University archives in the late 1990s by historian David Blight, author of the 2018 biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
When Charleston fell and Confederate troops evacuated the badly damaged city, those freed from enslavement remained. One of the first things those emancipated men and women did was to give the fallen Union prisoners a proper burial. They exhumed the mass grave and reinterred the bodies in a new cemetery with a tall, whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
And then on May 1, 1865, something even more extraordinary happened. According to two reports that Blight found in The New York Tribune and The Charleston Courier, a crowd of 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves with some white missionaries, staged a parade around the race track.
Three thousand Black schoolchildren carried bouquets of flowers and sang “John Brown’s Body.” Members of the famed 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments were in attendance and performed double-time marches. Black ministers recited verses from the Bible.
Despite the size of the gathering and newspaper coverage, the memory of this event was “suppressed by white Charlestonians in favor of their own version of the day,” Blight stated in the New York Times in 2011.
On May 31, 2010, near a reflecting pool at Hampton Park, the city of Charleston reclaimed this history by installing a plaque commemorating the site as the place where Blacks held the first Memorial Day on May 1, 1865.
During the dedication of the plaque, the city’s mayor at the time, Joe Riley, was present to celebrate the historic occasion which included a brass band and a reenactment of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment.
In 2017, the City of Charleston erected yet another sign reclaiming the history and commemorating the event:
“On May 1, 1865 a parade to honor the Union war dead took place here. The event marked the earliest celebration of what became known as “Memorial Day.” The crowd numbered in the thousands, with African American school children from newly formed Freedmen’s Schools leading the parade. They were followed by church leaders, Freedpeople, Unionists, and members of the 54th Massachusetts 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Infantries. The dead were later reinterred in Beaufort.”
To learn more about African Americans’ role in the creation of Memorial Day, check out the links to sources provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
If you like these Daily Drops, follow us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon,Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.
For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
In the wake of the recent Kentucky Derby upset, today we take a brief look at Oliver Lewis, the jockey who won the very first Derby, and the history of Black jockeys at the event.
To read about it, read on. To hear about it, press PLAY:
[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, May 9th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Jockey Oliver Lewis won the inaugural Kentucky Derby atop the colt Aristides on May 17, 1875. One of thirteen Black jockeys in the fifteen-strong field, Lewis set an American record with his time of two minutes, 37.75 seconds over the mile and a half distance. (For the record, the Kentucky Derby became a 1.25 mile race in 1896).
Although Blacks dominated horseracing in the late 1800s, winning fifteen of the first twenty-eight Kentucky Derbies, by the early 1900s, they’d been pushed out of the sport, which also had become less accessible to the working classes.
James Winkfield won the Kentucky Derby in 1901 and 1902, but after 1921 there were no Black riders in the race until Marlon St. Julien in 2000.
To learn more about Oliver Lewis and the long heritage of African American people in horse racing, including the recent group of Black women owners who made history at the annual Kentucky Oaks Day horse racing event in Louisville when their horse “Seven Scents” scored first place during competition, you can watch the Kentucky Derby video on the history of Black Jockeys on YouTube, and check out the links provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
If you like these Daily Drops, follow us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon,Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.
For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
[Wilma Rudolph and her parents Ed and Blanche Rudolph as they rode in a parade after Olympic victory in Rome. Rudolph agreed to participate only if the event was desegregated. This was the first desegregated public event in Clarksville, Tennessee. Photo credit: Bob Ray via https://digital.library.nashville.org/digital/collection/nr/id/2227/]
On Mother’s Day 2022, we offer a quote from three-time Olympic gold medalist and international track star Wilma Rudolph, who rightfully and fatefully choose to believe her mother.
To read it and about her, read on. To hear it and more about Rudolph, press PLAY:
[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Sunday, May 8th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
US athlete Wilma Rudolph shows the gold medal she won at the Women’s 100 meters Summer Olympic Games sprint event on September 2, 1960 in Rome, Italy. (AP Photo)
Today, for Mother’s Day, we offer a quote from three-time Olympic Gold Medalist and National Track and Field Hall of Famer Wilma Rudolph, who had polio as a young child:
“My doctors told me I’d never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.”
Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born prematurely in June 1940 and after contracting Scarlet Fever, pneumonia, polio and infantile paralysis, Rudolph wore braces on her legs until she was nine years old.
Because there was so little medical care available to Black people in 1940s Clarksville, Tennessee, Wilma’s mother Blanche took her on weekly bus trips 50 miles away to Nashville to get Wilma treatment at Meharry Medical College.
Blanche and other family members also massaged Wilma’s weakened leg four times a week until Wilma had enough strength to no longer need braces, or the orthopedic shoe she wore until she was 11.
By the time she was 16, Wilma was running in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, bringing home a bronze medal in the 400-meter relay.
Rudolph earned a college scholarship to Tennessee State and in 1960, she headed to Rome with the goal of becoming the best woman runner in the world. She surpassed that goal, winning three gold medals and breaking world records in the 100 and 200 meters.
She was nicknamed “The Tornado” and became an international track star. Rudolph graduated college with a degree in elementary education, and taught for the majority of her life after she retired from athletics. Let’s hear a clip from Rudolph describing the last race she ever ran before she retired:
“It was Palo Alto, California, Stanford University, Russia versus the United States. I was running well, but the heart wasn’t there anymore. I mean, what do you dowhen you win all of it? To keep yourself motivated, you have to be a little bit hungry, to be there and stay there and to stay on top.
And this particular day, we were running a relay we were behind when we started off. And you always think on a staggered start and you know, on a staggered start that, okay, she’s gonna catch her in the turn. And by the time that baton is passed, we were going to be even. That didn’t happen. And then when they pass it the next time I said, well, by the time they get to the next person, we will be even, or be one step ahead.
And by the time it got to me, I saw that we were behind, and I made myself a promise that day I said, if you catch the Russian it’s history – retire. If you do not catch the Russian, you will have to run another four years for the Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. I caught the Russian. I retired, it became history.
It was the fastest single race that I’ve ever ran in the history of my career. And to get a standing ovation in my home country, outdoors, which I’ve never had before, I think it was the grandest moment in my career. I retired that day, and I have never regretted it.”
Rudolph passed in 1994 of brain cancer, the same year her mother Blanche passed. Rudolph has been honored with a U.S. postage stamp, induction into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and National Women’s Hall of Fame, and in 2012 her hometown built the Wilma Rudolph Event Center. A life-sized bronze statue of Rudolph stands near the entrance of the building.
To learn more about Wilma Rudolph, watch videos of her Olympic races on YouTube, read her 1977 autobiographyWilma: The Story of Wilma Rudolph, Wilma Rudolph: A Biographyfrom 2006 by Maureen Margaret Smith and the children’s book Wilma Rudolph: Athlete and Educatorby Alice K. Flanagan and check out the 1977 movie Wilma starring Cicely Tyson, Shirley Jo Finney and Denzel Washington, available on Vudu.
Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
If you like these Daily Drops, follow us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon,Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.
For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
To learn more about Wilma Rudolph, watch videos of her Olympic races on YouTube, read her 1977 autobiography