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Posts published in “History”

University of Pittsburgh Acquires Archives of Jazz Pianist Erroll Garner

By goodblacknews on July 28, 2015

Garner
Jazz Legend Erroll Garner (photo via jbhe.com)

The University of Pittsburgh announced that it has acquired the professional archives of jazz pianist Erroll Garner.
Garner was born in Pittsburgh in 1921. He began playing piano at age 3 and by the age of seven was performing on the radio. In 1944, Garner moved to New York City where he became a leading performer and composer. He wrote the score for several films and Broadway plays. His ballad “Misty” became a major hit of Johnny Mathis was the featured in the 1971 Clint Eastwood film Play Misty for Me.
To see video of his signature song, click below:
 
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_tAU3GM9XI&w=420&h=315]
The archives were assembled by Garner’s long-time agent and manager, the late Martha Glaser and were donated to the university by Glaser’s estate. Included in the collection are correspondence, performance and recording contracts, sheet music, awards, audio and video recordings, photographs, and memorabilia.
Erroll Garner died in 1977 at the age of 55.
original article via jbhe.com; additions by Lori Lakin Hutcherson 

Will Smith and Jay Z To Produce HBO Mini-Series About Emmett Till

By goodblacknews on July 25, 2015
(Photo: Getty Images)
Will Smith and Jay Z found success when they signed on as producers for the Broadway musical Fela, and now the two will team up again to produce an HBO mini series about Emmett Till.
Entertainment Weekly reports the two, along with Jay Brown, James Lassiter, and Aaron Kaplan are executive producing the untitled mini series. Till was a 14 year-old from Chicago sent to spend the summer in Mississippi. One evening, Till was kidnapped from his bedroom and savagely beaten by white men because he whistled at a white woman. At Till’s funeral, his mother Mamie had an open casket to showcase the brutality of her son’s death.
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, the men responsible for Till murder, were found not guilty of their crimes, but later publicly admitted their involvment. Currently there are no writers for the mini series or an expected release date.
Earlier this year, famed film critic Roger Ebert‘s widow, Chaz Ebert, announced her own Emmett Till project.  We are not sure if both these Till projects will see the light of day, but we certainly hope so.  The more the history of African Americans is explored, and this particular turning point in the early struggle for racial justice and civil rights, the better.

original article by Shenequa Golding via vibe.com; additions by Lori Lakin Hutcherson

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Collects Past Stories of Those Who Wrestled With Their Sexuality

By goodblacknews on July 21, 2015
Nora-Ann Thompson, 65, had three failed marriages behind her when she fell in love with a woman 20 years ago. Her family did not talk openly about sexuality. (EDWIN J. TORRES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

By the time Nora-Ann Thompson fell in love with a woman, she was 45 years old and had three failed marriages behind her. The daughter of a black pastor in the Bronx, she had grown up in a family and a church that did not talk openly about sexuality, let alone homosexuality.

When she finally told her father, all he could say was “that cannot be; you need a man to take care of you and protect you,” she recalled. They never spoke of it again.

Ms. Thompson, now 65, is part of a new oral history project in Harlem that captures the experiences of 13 pioneers in New York City’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. Their stories tell of the hardship and discrimination they faced within their own families at a time when expressing their sexuality was neither encouraged nor accepted.

All of those interviewed for the project are black, and range in age from 52 to 83. They include a transgender woman who was once homeless and took female hormone shots on the street and a transgender man who was shunned by co-workers after they learned of his medical history. Another man was taunted as gay by his sisters long before he moved to New York and came out.

Jimmy Harris, 65, was taunted as gay by his sisters even though he dated girls. He moved from Kentucky to New York and came out, and flourished. (EDWIN J. TORRES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Their stories will be shared Tuesday night at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library system. The project will become a permanent part of the center’s “In the Life Archive,” a trove of thousands of books, photographs, original manuscripts and other works produced by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender New Yorkers. “In the Life” refers both to a phrase used for those lifestyles in black culture, and to the title of a 1986 anthology of black gay writers that was edited by Joseph Beam.

The new oral history project grew out of a February visit to the “In the Life Archive” by a group from a Harlem center for older adults run by Services and Advocacy for G.L.B.T. Elders, known as SAGE. As they pored over the historical materials, many of them saw their own pasts. There were exclamations of “Oh, I remember this place.” One man even picked himself out in a photo.

Fearless Journalist And Early Civil Rights Activist Ida B. Wells Honored With Google Doodle for her 153rd Birthday

By goodblacknews on July 16, 2015


When Ida B. Wells was 22, she was asked by a conductor of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man. She refused, and the conductor attempted to forcibly drag her out of her seat.  Wells wouldn’t budge.
“The moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand,” she wrote in her autobiography. “I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out.”
The year was 1884 — about 70 years before Rosa Parks would refuse to give up her seat on an Alabama bus.  Wells’ life was full of such moments of courage and principle. Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862, Wells was a vocal civil rights activist, suffragist and journalist who dedicated her life to fighting inequality.
On July 16, Wells’ 153rd birthday, Google honored the “fearless and uncompromising” woman with a Doodle of her typing away on typewriter, a piece of luggage by her side.
“She was a fierce opponent of segregation and wrote prolifically on the civil injustices that beleaguered her world. By twenty-five she was editor of the Memphis-based Free Speech and Headlight, and continued to publicly decry inequality even after her printing press was destroyed by a mob of locals who opposed her message,” Google wrote in tribute of Wells.

The journalist would go on to work for Chicago’s Daily Inter Ocean and the Chicago Conservator, one of the oldest African-American newspapers in the country. As Google notes, she “also travelled and lectured widely, bringing her fiery and impassioned rhetoric all over the world.”
Wells married Chicago attorney Ferdinand Barrett in 1895. She insisted on keeping her own name, becoming Ida Wells-Barnett — a radical move for the time. The couple had four children.  Wells died in Chicago of kidney failure in 1931. She was 68.
Every year around her birthday, Holly Springs celebrates Wells’ life with a weekend festival. Mayor Kelvin Buck said at this year’s event that people often overlook “the historic significance of Ida B. Wells in the history of the civil rights struggle in the United States,” per the South Reporter.
article by Dominique Mosbergen via huffingtonpost.com

Chiké Okonkwo Joins Ensemble Cast Of "The Birth Of A Nation"

By goodblacknews on July 15, 2015

Chiké_OkonkwoChiké Okonkwo (Banshee, BBC’s Paradox) has been cast in Nate Parker’s The Birth of A Nation. He joins an ensemble that includes Jackie Earle Haley, Armie Hammer, Colman Domingo, Penelope Ann Miller and Mark Boone Junior in the historical drama based on the true story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner.

Okonkwo plays a brutalized slave who becomes a freedom fighter and ally to Turner (Parker) during the rebellion. Prompted by religious visions, Turner and a band of about 70 slaves killed between 55 and 65 people in Virginia. The rebellion was stopped after two days, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months.
Parker is producing and directing from his own script. The film is a Bron Studios, Phantom Four, Mandalay Pictures and Tiny Giant Productions picture, in association with Follow Through Productions, Infinity Entertainment, and Creative Wealth Media Finance. Producers are Bron’s Aaron L. Gilbert, Kevin Turen, Jason Michael Berman, and Preston Holmes. Filming is underway in Savannah, GA.
article by Jeremy Gerard via deadline.com

South Carolina Gov. Signs Law to Remove Confederate Flag; Signing Pens to Go to Church Shooting Victims’ Families

By goodblacknews on July 9, 2015
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Governor Nikki Haley signs law to take down Confederate Flag (photo via ktla.com)

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley signed a historic bill Thursday that will remove the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol grounds, where it has been a source of friction for more than half a century.
Haley’s signature ends the fighting over the flag, seen as an emblem of Southern heritage by some but condemned as a symbol of racial oppression by others.
The flag flew over the dome of South Carolina’s Capitol in 1961 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the war — and stayed as a protest to the civil rights movement that shattered Jim Crow segregationist laws across the South. After protests from civil rights leaders, the battle flag was moved in 2000 from the dome to its current location on the Capitol’s front lawn.
Haley said the flag will “come down with dignity” at 10 a.m. Eastern time Friday. The banner will be taken to the state’s Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum for display.
“The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse,” Haley told the overflow crowd. “We will bring it down with dignity and we will make sure it is stored in its rightful place.”
Haley had called for removal of the flag in the wake of the June 17 massacre of nine black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston. A white man, Dylann Roof, who had apparently espoused racist ideologies and who had been photographed with Confederate symbols, is being held on nine murder counts and other charges.
Relatives of those slain at the church were among those in the racially diverse crowd who watched the governor use several pens to sign the legislation, whose passage was all but impossible before the church shootings. The governor praised the dead for changing the debate about the flag and race relations.  “These nine pens are going to the families of the Emanuel Nine,” Haley said after signing the bill into law. “Nine amazing individuals who have forever changed South Carolina history.

It's Official: Misty Copeland Becomes 1st Black Principal Dancer at American Ballet Theater

By goodblacknews on July 1, 2015

Prima Ballerina Misty Copeland (Photo via livetalksla.com)
Prima Ballerina Misty Copeland (Photo via livetalksla.org)

One of today’s most famous ballerinas just made history by becoming the first African-American woman to hold the position of principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater. Misty Copeland was promoted Tuesday after more than 14 years with the company, the New York Times reports. She spent eight of those years as a soloist, the Times points out.
Copeland, known for being vocal about the lack of representation and diversity in the company and in the realm of dancing in general, made the cover of TIME magazine just this year. She is also the subject of a documentary screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Times writes.  In addition to being known for a popular Under Armour ad, she has a base of followers on social media larger than some of Hollywood’s finest.
But it’s Copeland’s precision and elegant fluidity while she dances that compound her popularity. That and her tendency to make history — her new post as principal dancer isn’t the first time her name will be written in books. Just this month, Copeland became the first African-American woman to star in “Swan Lake” with the Ballet Theater, a performance so well-attended that cheers from the crowd reportedly stopped parts of the show.
From the NYT:

Ms. Copeland, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was unusually outspoken about her ambition of becoming the first black woman named a principal dancer by Ballet Theater, one of the nation’s most prestigious companies, which is known for its international roster of stars and for staging full-length classical story ballets.

“My fears are that it could be another two decades before another black woman is in the position that I hold with an elite ballet company,” she wrote in her memoir, “Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina,” published last year. “That if I don’t rise to principal, people will feel I have failed them.”

This put an unusual public spotlight on Ballet Theater as it weighed the kind of personnel decision that, in the rarified world of ballet, is rarely discussed openly. If the company had not promoted Ms. Copeland, it risked being seen as perpetuating the inequalities that have left African-American dancers, particularly women, woefully underrepresented at top ballet companies.

Stella Abrera, Alban Lendorf, and Maria Kochetkova were all named principal dancers along with Copeland.
article by Christina Coleman via newsone.com

U.S. Supreme Court Rules All 50 States Must Allow Marriage Equality

By goodblacknews on June 26, 2015

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(Photo via Washington Post)

This morning, the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that same-sex marriage must be allowed in all 50 states, as gay people must be afforded equal rights and protections under federal law.
President Barack Obama hailed the decision, saying “Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle that we are all created equal,” Obama said. “The project of each generation is to bridge the meaning of those founding words with the realities of changing times. Progress on this journey often comes in small increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back, propelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens,” he said. “And then sometimes, there are days like this when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”
To watch his entire statement, click below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3uMTPsa_Dg&w=560&h=315]
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow @lakinhutcherson)
 

Farrakhan Announces Millions For Justice Rally in October for Million Man March 20th Anniversary

By goodblacknews on June 26, 2015
Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakan (photo via Associated Press)
Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakan (photo via Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said Wednesday he plans to hold a Millions for Justice March in the nation’s capital this fall, 20 years after the Million Man March.
During a speech at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Washington, Farrakhan said he intends to hold the rally Oct. 10 on the National Mall, scene of the 1995 march.
“This is the time our people must see our unity,” Farrakhan said. “Let’s make 10/10/15 a meeting place for those who want justice, for those who know what justice is.”
Organizers said they aim to stage a more diverse and inclusive event than the one in 1995, which was billed as a men-only event.
Former NAACP executive director Benjamin Chavis, who helped organize the original Million Man March, said he is optimistic that this year’s turnout will be “in excess of a million.” He said the event’s success would be measured more by the political and socioeconomical impact it has on communities.
“What ultimately will be a success is seeing improvements in the communities where these people are going to come from,” Chavis said. “We want to make sure our public policy demands are aligned with those challenges.”
Farrakhan said the rally is intended to galvanize a more strategic movement for equality as supporters unite under the social media hashtag #JusticeOrElse.
“Walk with the young people, the warriors of God, as we say to America, ‘You owe us,'” Farrakhan said.
The Million Man March was held in Washington on Oct. 16, 1995. Its goal, organizers said, was to encourage black men to make firmer commitments to family values and community uplift. It is among the largest political gatherings in American history, although there were disputes over the size of the heavily black and male crowd it drew. Crowd estimates ranged from 400,000 to nearly 1.1 million.
Farrakhan, 82, also used the march announcement to call for fair treatment and an end to injustice in the wake of the massacre of nine people at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, last week.  “Yes, all lives matter, but the only reason you’re here is because black lives are being slaughtered,” Farrakhan said.
As for efforts to remove the Confederate flag in the wake of that tragedy, Farrakhan said the gesture does little to remove the stain of injustice.
“The media is (still) twisting the narrative of murderers,” Farrakhan added, referring to perceptions that the media tends to portray white perpetrators more humanely than those of other races or ethnicities.
article by Glynn A. Hill via bigstory.ap.org

Jussie Smollett Joins Sister Jurnee in WGN’s Drama "Underground"

By goodblacknews on June 25, 2015

Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Jussie Smollett
Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Jussie Smollett (photo via eurweb.com)

“Empire” star Jussie Smollett will moonlight in a guest starring role on WGN’s “Underground,” joining his famous sister Jurnee Smollett-Bell, the network announced Wednesday.
As previously reported, “Underground” follows a group of enslaved people in Georgia planning a 600-mile escape to freedom. Along the way, they are aided by a secret abolitionist couple running a station on the Underground Railroad as they attempt to evade the people charged with bringing them back, dead or alive.
Smollett will play Josey, a runaway who doesn’t trust anyone, not even those stationed along the way who would try to help him.
This marks the first on-screen reunion for Smollett and his sister in since both starred alongside their other siblings in the 1994 ABC sitcom “On Our Own.”
Smollett joins a cast that includes Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SVU), Reed Diamond (Agents of SHIELD), Aldis Hodge (Rectify), Jessica De Gouw (Arrow) and Marc Blucas (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
Creators Misha Green (Sons of Anarchy) and Joe Pokaski (Heroes) will executive produce the Sony Pictures Television and Tribune Studios entry with Weed Road Pictures’ Akiva Goldsman, Tory Tunnell and Joby Harold of Safehouse Pictures.
Production began in the spring for a 2016 premiere.
article via eurweb.com