The late Mabel Fairbanks might not have been afforded the opportunity to chase Olympic gold as an ice skater, but she is still rightfully recognized as a pioneer of the sport. Fairbanks is the first Black woman inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame, and coached many of the sport’s brightest stars.
Fairbanks was born November 14, 1915 in the Florida Everglades. Little is known about her young life but birth records state she was of Black and Seminole Indian descent. Some reports state she was orphaned and found homeless on a park bench in New York by a wealthy white woman who gave her a job, but she rarely spoke of her past.
What is known is that she was hired as a babysitter by a white woman who lived near New York’s Central Park. While working, she began watching the white children skate at the ice rink and wished to join them. The rink denied her entry because of the color of her skin, but she was determined to learn. Eventually, she was given opportunities to skate in local rinks and given pointers by known coaches of the time. Fairbanks also eavesdropped on lessons by instructors to white skaters and began copying the moves.
Despite her talents, the U.S. Skating Team would not admit a Black woman to its ranks. Instead, Fairbanks skated with ice shows across New York and North America. In some instances, she was the only Black ice skater many had ever seen. With her dreams of competitive skating behind her, Fairbanks traveled to Los Angeles and started a career as a coach.
While on the West Coast, Fairbanks continued performing in ice shows and befriended Hollywood stars like Sammy Davis Jr. and the rest of the Rat Pack. She was also close to Zsa Zsa Gabor and Cary Grant.
As a full-time coach, Fairbanks molded the careers of U.S. Pairs champions Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, Scott Hamilton, 1992 Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, Debi Thomas and countless other U.S. and world champions. Atoy Wilson, the first African-American to win a U.S. skating title, was coached by Fairbanks as well.
Fairbanks was a fierce champion of equality in ice skating, and was instrumental in forcing Los Angeles’ Culver City skating club to admit its first Black member in 1965.
Fairbanks was entered in the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1997.
Fairbanks died in 2001 at the age of 85. In October 2001, she was posthumously entered into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame.
article by D.L. Chandler via blackamericaweb.com
Posts published in “History”
Viola Davis made history Sunday night as the first Black woman to win an Emmy for outstanding actress in a drama series, bringing a sisterhood of Black actresses to their feet at the announcement of her accomplishment.
But Davis’ win was the second history-making moment of her night — as Vanity Fair points out, the nomination of lead actress, alongside Taraji P. Henson’s nomination, was the first time multiple women of color have been considered for the award at the same time.
The significance of the moment was not lost on Henson, who stood to embrace Davis as she made her way to the stage. In a powerful speech that amplified the voices of Black women who have called for more representation in TV, media and film, Davis noted that roles for Black women are scarce in a whitewashed Hollywood.
“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there,” she said.
A quote from Harriet Tubman, which she recited at the top of her acceptance speech, served as a succinct but profound outline of what many Black actresses are facing in the world of film, even in 2015.
“In my mind I see a line and over that line I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.”
You can watch her speech here:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrkGmYbvISo&w=560&h=315]
But Davis’ win was not the first exceptional moment for Black women at the 2015 Emmy Awards. Orange Is The New Black star Uzo Aduba also made her own history when she accepted the Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series, making her the first actress to win both a drama and a comedy award for the same role.
Hollywood veteran and favorite Regina King also took home an award for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Movie for “American Crime.” It was King’s first nomination and win.
For a full list of winners, click below:
2015 Emmy Awards: A List Of The Night’s Big Winners
article by Christina Coleman via newsone.com
After 10 years of searching for the young girl he rescued during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Master Sergeant Mike Maroney finally reunited with his “Katrina Girl.”
According to People, an emotional reunion took place between Maroney and LeShay Brown during a taping of “The Real” on Tuesday (Sept. 15). The reunion comes years after a photo of Maroney and Brown hugging captured the heart of the nation. Earlier this month, Maroney revealed that he finally found Brown.
Reminiscing over the embrace, Maroney said that Brown’s hug was a true inspiration. “If she’s strong enough to handle this, I can handle this,” the 19-year pararescue jumper told “The Real” hosts before he was “re-introduced” to Brown.
“I wish I could explain to you how important your hug was,” Maroney said to a choked up Brown after hugging her again. “Your small gesture helped me through a dark phase. You rescued me more than I rescued you.”
People notes that although times have been hard for the pair since Katrina, “The Real” came through big time with a $10,000 check for each family. Although she doesn’t remember much from the rescue, Brown spoke to People after seeing Maroney again, saying that what he told her “really means a lot.”
For the Air Force veteran, the reunion was a long time coming as he shared with Brown and her mother Shawntrell that that has “dreamt of this day for a long time” and that “finding you guys, and knowing you’re okay, has been a weight off my back.”
“I’ve rescued a lot of people, but there have also been a lot of people I couldn’t rescue, he mentioned to People regarding his job. “Life sometimes gets dark, knowing there are good people who love life and are happy, the resiliency that she had has been a strength for me.”
Brown and Maroney’s reunion will continue, as their families will see each other again in Brown’s adopted town of Waveland, Mississippi. In addition, the pair plans on keeping in touch with each other as Maroney revealed that he and Brown have already been checking in on each other through texting as well as “talking quite a bit.”
Read/learn MORE at People.
Read more at http://www.eurweb.com/2015/09/air-force-veteran-reunites-with-katrina-girl-on-the-real/#ZgTdL8SSw0ObWQ5i.99
President Barack Obama told members of the military Friday that he calls them as he sees them when it comes to the big decisions his job requires.
“When I go to bed, I go to bed easy, because I know that I’ve made the best decisions I could make,” Obama said during a 9/11 military town hall at Fort Meade near Washington, D.C.
The commander in chief took questions from service members piped in from around the world during the event designed to mark the 14th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“On 9/11, I thought it was particularly appropriate for me to be able to address you directly, and to say thank you on behalf of the American people,” Obama told the troops.
Whether in person, via phone, video conference, or the Internet, troops asked questions ranging from the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, to how the president and first lady Michelle Obama raise their daughters in the glare of the White House. (On that last query, the president said, “I just do what Michelle tells me to do and it seems to work out.”)
At one point, Obama says it appears to him that Syrian President Bashar Assad is inviting the Russian military into his country because he’s worried about holding onto power. The president said that the United States has warned Russia that beefing up its support for Assad is doomed to fail.
Obama also said that the United States needs to step up its responses to cyber attacks, and criticized China for some of its cyber practices.
The president chuckled when one of the troops asked him how he dealt with people “hating” and “talking smack” about him all the time.
“Not everyone is talking smack about me,” Obama said. “But there is a sizable percentage in Congress that talks smack about me, no doubt about it.”
Obama said he must own all decisions, whether it’s the operation that killed Osama bin Laden to the initial problems with the health care website, which he described as a “screw-up.”
Said Obama: “If it’s an easy question, it doesn’t get to my desk.”
In closing, the president again thanked the troops for their work in the years since 9/11.
“What you do is vital to our way of life,” Obama said. “America is strong, and it’s strong because of all of you.”
article by David Jackson via usatoday.com
“We are not what we seem.” When the iconic novelist Richard Wright wrote those words, in 1940, he was describing the African-American experience. As a stunning new exhibit at Harvard University’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery shows, the complexity of seeing and identity took its own twists on the other side of the Atlantic when the relatively new art of photography began producing images of people of color in Victorian England.
In more than 100 photographs, including a striking set that has been lost for more than 120 years, “Black Chronicles II” reveals a mash-up of racist imagery and cultural tropes that in many ways will be familiar to American viewers — and still often reveals the timeless humanity of the subjects.
Current issues of cultural identity and self-determination are at the fore of the exhibit, says gallery executive director Vera Grant, although the works themselves were largely made from 1862 to 1899. Curated by Renée Mussai and Mark Sealy of the London-based arts agency Autograph ABP, “Black Chronicles II” was produced through original research in private collections in the United Kingdom in collaboration with the Hulton Archive, London, a division of Getty Images. Part of a larger ongoing project called “The Missing Chapter,” it is the second in a series of exhibitions dedicated to excavating archives that began in 2011 with a small showcase done in collaboration with Magnum Photos in London.
Despite the anonymity of many of its subjects (research is ongoing), “Black Chronicles II” reveals the complicated nature of life for people of color in Victorian England. Ndugu M’Hali, for example, came to the public’s attention as Kalulu, the boy servant of the explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. In this show, he is depicted several times, in both African and Western dress, a child between cultures.
A more formal series of small portraits — largely cartes de visites, or calling cards — opens the exhibit. These include images of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a native of West Africa who was “given” to Queen Victoria as a slave and raised as her goddaughter. In two portraits from 1862, one with her husband, she appears the essence of a calm, well-dressed Victorian lady, despite her tragic history.
In more than 100 photographs, including a striking set that has been lost for more than 120 years, “Black Chronicles II” reveals a mash-up of racist imagery and cultural tropes that in many ways will be familiar to American viewers — and still often reveals the timeless humanity of the subjects.
Current issues of cultural identity and self-determination are at the fore of the exhibit, says gallery executive director Vera Grant, although the works themselves were largely made from 1862 to 1899. Curated by Renée Mussai and Mark Sealy of the London-based arts agency Autograph ABP, “Black Chronicles II” was produced through original research in private collections in the United Kingdom in collaboration with the Hulton Archive, London, a division of Getty Images. Part of a larger ongoing project called “The Missing Chapter,” it is the second in a series of exhibitions dedicated to excavating archives that began in 2011 with a small showcase done in collaboration with Magnum Photos in London.
Despite the anonymity of many of its subjects (research is ongoing), “Black Chronicles II” reveals the complicated nature of life for people of color in Victorian England. Ndugu M’Hali, for example, came to the public’s attention as Kalulu, the boy servant of the explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. In this show, he is depicted several times, in both African and Western dress, a child between cultures.
A more formal series of small portraits — largely cartes de visites, or calling cards — opens the exhibit. These include images of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a native of West Africa who was “given” to Queen Victoria as a slave and raised as her goddaughter. In two portraits from 1862, one with her husband, she appears the essence of a calm, well-dressed Victorian lady, despite her tragic history.
Architect and preservationist Everett L. Fly, who in 1977 became the first African American to earn a master of landscape architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), and Thomas Professor of history and of African and African American studies at Harvard Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham are among the 10 recipients of the 2014 National Humanities Medal announced yesterday.
The National Humanities Medal honors an individual or organization whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience, broadened citizens’ engagement with history and literature or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to cultural resources. Fly’s medal citation praises him:
The National Humanities Medal honors an individual or organization whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience, broadened citizens’ engagement with history and literature or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to cultural resources. Fly’s medal citation praises him:
for preserving the integrity of African-American places and landmarks. A landscape architect, Mr. Fly has worked tirelessly to win historical recognition for Eatonville, Florida, Nicodemus, Kansas, and other sites central to African-American history, preserving an important part of our broader American heritage.
Higginbotham’s citation honors her:
for illuminating the African-American journey. In her writings and edited volumes, Dr. Higginbotham has traced the course of African-American progress, and deepened our understanding of the American story.
According to the biography of Fly provided by the NEH, when he noticed that his GSD classes rarely mentioned buildings and places significant to African-American culture and heritage, he began a career-long study of the origin and evolution of historic black settlements in America. Ever since, he has been unearthing and saving historically significant but forgotten or unrecognized Native- and African-American settlements, more than 1,200 to date. “If we want our American cities to be healthy and sustain them in the future,” he says, “we have to find ways to value not just new office buildings and developers that have the most money and political clout. You find collective history in places where everyday people worked and made contributions that are just as valuable as a big businessperson or landowner. If you can find those connections to their history, people can have a closer relationship to their community.”
Higginbotham “knew from childhood” that she “wanted to teach, research, and write about the history of African Americans,” according to her biographical sketch. She moved from learning the stories of her family’s history to uncovering and sharing the stories of “individuals, groups, and institutions left out of the traditional American narrative” through her own works and as editor in chief of The Harvard Guide to African-American History and as co-editor of the 12-volume African American National Biography.
At Harvard, she has also fostered social engagement among students in the department of African and African American studies, seeking “a curriculum that said you could be socially responsible and engaged, and yet still be intellectually rigorous—that those two things could be wed together.”
Higginbotham and Fly will receive their medals from President Obama in a White House ceremony on September 10, as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) enters its golden anniversary year.
article by Jean Martin via harvardmagazine.com
WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Monday will officially restore Denali as the name of North America’s tallest mountain, ending a 40-year battle over what to call the peak that has been known as Mount McKinley.
The symbolic gesture comes at the beginning of a three-day trip to Alaska where Obama hopes to build support for his efforts to address climate change during his remaining 16 months in office.
The peak was re-named Mount McKinley in 1896 after a gold prospector exploring the region heard that Ohioan William McKinley, a champion of the gold standard, had won the Republican nomination for president.
But Alaska natives had long before called the mountain Denali, meaning “the High One.” In 1975, the state of Alaska officially designated the mountain as Denali, and has since been pressing the federal government to do the same.
Alaskans had been blocked in Congress by Ohio politicians, who wanted to stick with McKinley as a lasting tribute to the 25th U.S. president, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. Under Obama’s action, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will use her legal authority to end the long debate and rename the mountain, which has an elevation of more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).
“This designation recognizes the sacred status of Denali to generations of Alaska natives,” the White House said in a statement.
article via huffingtonpost.com (Additional reporting by Steve Quinn in Juneau, Alaska; Editing by Peter Cooney)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — With prayers, church bells and brass bands, residents across Mississippi and Louisiana will pay homage Saturday to those who died in Hurricane Katrina, thank those who came to rebuild and celebrate how far the region has come from that devastating day.
Ten years ago — on Aug. 29, 2005 — Katrina made landfall in what turned into one of the deadliest storms in American history. The hurricane‘s force and flooding ultimately caused more than 1,800 deaths and roughly $151 billion in damages across the region.
In New Orleans, wide scale failures of the levee system protecting the city left 80 percent of New Orleans under water.
In Mississippi, churches will ring their bells to remember when the storm made landfall. In Biloxi, clergy and community leaders were to gather at MGM Park for a memorial to Katrina’s victims. In the evening, the park will host a concert celebrating the recovery.
Katrina’s force caused a massive storm surge that scoured the Mississippi coast, pushed boats far inland and wiped houses off the map, leaving only concrete front steps to nowhere.
The city has framed the 10th anniversary as a showcase to demonstrate to the world how far New Orleans has come back. In the last week, the city has held lectures, given tours of the levee improvements and released a resiliency plan.
Many parts of this iconic city have rebounded phenomenally but many residents — particularly in the city’s black community — still struggle. Glitzy casinos and condominium towers have been rebuilt, but overgrown lots and empty slabs speak to the slow recovery in some areas.
In New Orleans officials will lay wreaths at the hurricane memorial and at the levee that ruptured in the Lower 9th Ward.
The neighborhood was one of the bastions of black homeownership in America when water burst through floodwalls, pushing houses off foundations and trapping residents on rooftops. The neighborhood still has some of the lowest rates of people who’ve returned after the storm, but it will be having a daylong celebration to mark the progress made.
Former President Bill Clinton will headline a free concert-prayer service-celebration Saturday evening at the city’s Smoothie King Center.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press via thegrio.com
General Frank Petersen, the U.S. Marines’ first Black pilot and general, has died at age 83.
Hoping to escape pervasive racism in his Kansas hometown, General Frank Petersen joined the U.S. Navy in 1950 as a seaman apprentice, reports The Boston Globe.
The following year, motivated by the death of the Navy’s first Black aviator Jesse Brown in the Korean War, Petersen entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program, the report says. From there, he went on to make history himself, earning a Purple Heart for wounds suffered in Vietnam “when he was ejected after his plane was struck by anti-aircraft fire over the demilitarized zone” in 1968.
He died Tuesday at his home in Stevensville, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The cause was complications from lung cancer, according to The Globe:
President Harry S. Truman had ordered the armed forces to desegregate in 1948, but General Petersen later wrote that the Navy and Marine Corps were ‘‘the last to even entertain the idea of integrating their forces.’’ And whenever he left the flight training base in Pensacola, Fla., he was subjected to the indignities of the Jim Crow South.
Bus drivers ordered him to the back of the coach, and he was barred from sitting with white cadets in restaurants and movie theaters. He largely swallowed the treatment, he later told The Washington Post, because he could not fight two battles at once. ‘‘I knew that I couldn’t win if I were to tackle that, as opposed to getting my wings,’’ he said.
One instructor tried to minimize his performance in the air — giving him lackluster ratings — but he said white peers came to his defense. Upon completion of his flight training, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He flew 64 combat missions in Korea in 1953 and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, among other decorations.
Besides his wife, Alicia Downes, of Stevensville, Maryland and Washington, he leaves behind four children from his first marriage, a brother, a sister, four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Rest in peace and thank you, Gen. Petersen.
article by Lynette Holloway via newsone.com
John Ridley is making the most of his producing deal with ABC.
The Oscar-winning producer has optioned Kim Reid’s “No Place Safe: A Family Memoir” for ABC Signature Studios, along with Michael McDonald.
Ridley has also lined up a top-secret Marvel project as well as the second season of the Emmy-nominated “American Crime.” He also recently sold a new detective drama pilot, “Presence,” to the Alphabet.
Ridley and McDonald will produce the limited series via their companies International Famous Players Radio Picture Corporation and Stearns Castle, respectively.
Part mystery thriller, part coming-of-age story and part civil-rights history, “No Place Safe” is a memoir set in 1979 at the time of the Atlanta child murders and told through the eyes of a young African-American teenager. Reid’s mother, an investigator in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office who was on the task force searching for the serial killer, told her in detail about the quest for the murderer of 29 victims, mostly young black boys.
Ridley signed an overall deal with ABC in 2014.
article by Debra Birnbaum via variety.com
The Oscar-winning producer has optioned Kim Reid’s “No Place Safe: A Family Memoir” for ABC Signature Studios, along with Michael McDonald.
Ridley has also lined up a top-secret Marvel project as well as the second season of the Emmy-nominated “American Crime.” He also recently sold a new detective drama pilot, “Presence,” to the Alphabet.
Ridley and McDonald will produce the limited series via their companies International Famous Players Radio Picture Corporation and Stearns Castle, respectively.
Part mystery thriller, part coming-of-age story and part civil-rights history, “No Place Safe” is a memoir set in 1979 at the time of the Atlanta child murders and told through the eyes of a young African-American teenager. Reid’s mother, an investigator in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office who was on the task force searching for the serial killer, told her in detail about the quest for the murderer of 29 victims, mostly young black boys.
Ridley signed an overall deal with ABC in 2014.
article by Debra Birnbaum via variety.com