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Author Ilyasah Shabazz to Executive Produce Series on her Father Malcolm X’s Life at Sony Television’s TriStar

Author Ilyasah Shabazz to Executive Produce Series on her Father Malcolm X’s Life at Sony Television’s TriStar

By goodblacknews on July 20, 2021

According to Variety.com, author Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of El-Hajj Malik El- Shabazz (aka Malcolm X), will executive produce a series at Sony Pictures Television’s Tristar on her father’s life.

The series will be based on the novels X: A Novel and The Awakening of Malcolm X, which were co-written by Shabazz. X: A Novel was co-written by Kekla Magoon while The Awakening of Malcolm X was co-written by Tiffany D. Jackson.

To quote Variety.com:

X: A Novel follows Malcolm’s life from his childhood — including his father being lynched and his mother being institutionalized against her will — up to his imprisonment at age twenty.

The Awakening of Malcolm X picks up during his time in prison when he decided to join the Nation of Islam, ultimately emerging from incarceration as Malcolm X.

State Street Pictures’ Bob Teitel and George Tillman will executive produce with Shabazz, as well as 3 Arts Entertainment’s Jermaine Johnson and Molly Madden.

In addition the two books the Sony series will be based on, Shabazz has also written Growing Up X, the children’s book Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X, and Betty Before X.

Shabazz is also the co-chair of The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center located at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, the site of her father’s assassination in 1965.

Read more: https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/malcolm-x-tv-series-ilyasah-shabazz-sony-pictures-tv-1235023008/

[Photos: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (l); Ilyasah Shabazz (r) via ilyasahshabazz.com]

(paid links)

GBN Wishes You and Yours a Happy Father’s Day (LISTEN)

GBN Wishes You and Yours a Happy Father’s Day (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on June 20, 2021

We’ve been wanting to post to acknowledge all the fathers, uncles, stepfathers and loved ones who have been parenting, raising and advising the next generations, but our site has been having serious server issues since dawn.

So even though we are nearing dusk, and we posted what we could on our social media, we’re taking advantage of this moment of connectivity to say “Happy Father’s Day” on our main page and offer a playlist dedicated to the dads called “Color Him Father” – A Father’s Day Collection:

This 20-songs compilation offers praise, introspection, dreams, admonition and advice from myriad genres and perspectives – from The Winstons‘ appreciation of a stepfather on “Color Him Father,” to Will Smith‘s heartfelt expression of how it feels to become a dad on “Just The Two Of Us,” to Beyoncé’s appreciation of different aspects of her father on “Daddy” and “Daddy Lessons.”

Also included are Prince‘s declaration of love for his father amid complexities on “Purple Rain” and Kirk Whalum‘s soulful, jazz cover of “Because You Loved Me” which Diane Warren wrote about her relationship with her father, DMX and Usher‘s heartbreaking plea “Letter To My Son (Call Your Father)”, and classics like “Daddy’s Home” – the popular cover by Jermaine Jackson as well as the original version by Shep and The Limelites.

We hope it’s been a great day for all those in the dad role today, and hope you enjoy the above, knowing you are seen, honored and loved through thick and thin.

Juneteenth Signed into Law as a Federal Holiday

Juneteenth Signed into Law as a Federal Holiday

By goodblacknews on June 17, 2021

Today President Joe Biden signed into law that June 19, best known as “Juneteenth” will now be a U.S. federal holiday, effective immediately.

“Juneteeth” is the term that has been used across centuries to commemorate June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, first learned from Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger that the Civil War was over, and they were free by order of the president (Lincoln, who had issued the Emancipation 2 1/2 years earlier). Celebrations occurred every year in Texas on Juneteenth, and later spread across the South as the idea caught on.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which is the human resources office for the federal government, tweeted today that most federal employees will observe the new holiday — Juneteenth National Independence Day — on Friday since June 19 falls on a Saturday this year.

Biden said signing the legislation into law is one of the greatest honors he will have as president. Vice President Kamala Harris also signed the legislation in her capacity as President of the Senate.

By making Juneteenth a federal holiday, “all Americans can feel the power of this day, and learn from our history, and celebrate progress and grapple with the distance we’ve come but the distance we have to travel,” Biden said.

Activist Opal Lee (via marketwatch.com)

Biden also praised the efforts of Opal Lee, 94, an activist who at the age of 89 walked from her home in Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to get Juneteenth named a national holiday.  Biden referred to her as “a grandmother of the movement to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.”

HISTORY: Honoring Memorial Day and its African American Origins

HISTORY: Honoring Memorial Day and its African American Origins

By goodblacknews on May 31, 2021

[Photo/Image via chicagocrusader.com]

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, SC 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.

To quote from history.com:

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:

Read more:

Good Black News Wishes You and Yours Happy Mother’s Day 2021

Good Black News Wishes You and Yours Happy Mother’s Day 2021

By goodblacknews on May 9, 2021

Good Black News wants to take a moment on this day to honor and remember the women who gave us life, who nurtured and raised us, and also offered us solace, counsel, wisdom, humility and humor.

We are excited to acknowledge that because of progress with vaccinations in the U.S., many of us can be with our mothers or mother figures this year when we could not in 2020.

For those of us who still aren’t able to be with our mothers or mother figures in person, we are with you in voice, online and always – in spirit!

And to all the mothers out there – be they Aunties, Grandmothers, Cousins or Friends – thank you for all you do!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Born on this Day in 1927: Civil Rights Activist, Icon and Author Coretta Scott King (WATCH)

Born on this Day in 1927: Civil Rights Activist, Icon and Author Coretta Scott King (WATCH)

By goodblacknews on April 27, 2021

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.

The mother of four founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1968 and activist lobbied tirelessly for fifteen years to have her late husband’s birthday recognized as a federal holiday.

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.

King was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 2009 and the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2011.

To learn more about her life and legacy, watch the video above, or check out the books My Life, My Love, My Legacy and Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange and Kadir Nelson.

(paid links)

MUSIC: Celebrate Mardi Gras 2021 with a Collection of New Orleans Funk and Soul (LISTEN)

MUSIC: Celebrate Mardi Gras 2021 with a Collection of New Orleans Funk and Soul (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on February 16, 2021

Today’s Mardi Gras is unlike practically any other in recent times. With the COVID 19 pandemic still rampant in the U.S. and most of the world, no parades are scheduled, public gatherings are prohibited, bars are shut down and most significantly, Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the epicenter of U.S. Mardi Gras celebrations, is closed.

For those who still want a way to celebrate safely as they enjoy king cake, Good Black News is happy to re-post a playlist by Marlon West entitled “Working in the Coal Mine: A Collection of New Orleans Funk and Soul”:

[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:playlist:3LmULvnXA8bfhxtSrhhGoP”]

As Marlon wrote in his original post:

This collection of New Orleans Funk features acknowledges masters next to some of the earlier artists who shaped the meaning of funk. It covers the period from the emergence of New Orleans Funk in the early 1960s through to the present day.

[This] mix offers The Meters, Queen Ida, Eddie Bo, Professor Longhair, Lee Dorsey, Wild Magnolias and many more.

New Orleans is a port town. Originally owned by the French. Many of the Africans who ended up there came from Haiti and brought with them the religion of Voodoo and its drums and music.

The Crescent City became one of the first parts of America to develop a strong African-American culture leading to the invention of Jazz.

This playlist offers the sound of the New Orleans Funeral March Bands, Mardi Gras Indian Tribes and Saturday Night Fish Fries.

We hope this playlist helps you access the spirit of New Orleans and Mardi Gras. We also hope that in 2022, you can do so in a communal way as well.

Enjoy!

MUSIC MONDAY: An MLK Day 2021 Celebration Playlist (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: An MLK Day 2021 Celebration Playlist (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on January 18, 2021

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest)

More than 50 years after his death, I can only wonder what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would think of the upheaval of 2020; of the push back on the sentiment that “Black Lives Matter,” and a white supremacist insurgency in our nation’s capital.

Would-be nazis and neo-confederates beating and murdering police on their way into storming the people’s house. We have come far as a nation, and yet what Brotha Ta-Nehisi Coates calls the “beautiful struggle” continues unabated.

As well all celebrate, serve, and/or reflect on this special of American holidays, here’s a collection of music for your mind, heart, and soul. (And in some cases, dat booty too.)

[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:playlist:6i4lJaCQX6aes5CpV1judl”]

Many are classics that inspired the Freedom Riders during the civil rights movement, and others were written in the wake of George Floyd‘s murder and the protests that followed.

For my money 2020 was a good year for films by and Black people, as well as the sounds from them. One Night In Miami, Sylvie’s Love, Soul, and the Small Axe series to name but a few. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Da 5 Bloods both featured posthumous performances by the great Chadwick Boseman.

Here’s more than 17 hours of music to help steel you for the days, weeks, and months 2021 is certain to bring.

I plan to be back with more next week, y’all. Stay safe, sane, and kind.

Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)
Good Black News Wishes You and Yours a Happy (and Healing) New Year

Good Black News Wishes You and Yours a Happy (and Healing) New Year

By goodblacknews on January 1, 2021

Good Black News would like to kick off 2021 by thanking our readers and followers, old and new, for working so hard to persevere, create community and foster change in 2020 even in the face of a global pandemic, nationwide protests and political sea changes.

We sincerely wish the best of everything to you and your loved ones in 2021 and beyond. Happy New Year!

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” (VIDEO)

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on December 25, 2020

Donny Hathaway‘s recording of “This Christmas” is a holiday staple on Black radio and in Black households, and we are honored to celebrate its 50th anniversary today.

It’s difficult to remember a time when “This Christmas” wasn’t a popular seasonal tune, but when the song was released on December 9, 1970, the single failed to register on the R&B and Pop charts and didn’t get much airplay.

Decades later, however, Hathaway’s vision for African American representation in modern Christmas music shone through.

Co-written with Nadine McKinnor, Hathaway’s celebration of the season grew in popularity thanks to a 1990s re-release and covers by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Alexander O’Neal, Ne-Yo, The Braxtons, Seal, Mary J. Blige, Patti LaBelle, Destiny’s Child, and Pentatonix.

Preston Whitmore‘s 2007 film This Christmas starring Loretta Devine, Regina King, Delroy Lindo and Chris Brown (who also recorded the title track) helped maintain the popularity of the song.

Today, “This Christmas” has since become one of the most-performed holiday songs of all time, and in honor of its golden anniversary, Rhino Records released the animated video above drawn by famed cartoonist Lonnie Milsap for all to enjoy.