As we head into Labor Day Weekend, the unofficial end of Summer, it’s one more chance to relax a little amidst such a stressful year for so many of us.
We’ve had such a great reaction here at Good Black News to so many of our Spotify playlists, including our decade-spanning slow jam playlists that we made for the ‘70s (Ultimate ‘70s Slow Jam Summer) and the ‘80s (Ultimate ‘80s Champagne Slow Jams).
So it only made sense, in time for the long weekend, to unveil our playlist of slow jam faves from the ‘90s – entitledUltimate ‘90s Sunset Slow Jams, available at this link here, and of course you can listen to or access below. All you ‘90s soul music fans, it’s time to favorite this playlist and represent!
R&B music in the ‘90s underwent a true sea change that had been slowly building up through the prior decade. If ‘80s slow jams were the sound of lushly-produced, upscale elegance via superstar duets from well-dressed veteran singers, the ‘90s tossed a lot of that in the rearview mirror.
On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington D.C. to March for Jobs and Freedom.
This month, more than 50 years later, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will commemorate the March on Washington with a digital resource webpage exploring the historical significance of the march with collection objects, stories, videos and content related to the historic march.
This page will include voices of union leader and activist A. Phillip Randolph, Rep. John Lewis, and many unsung activists and a performance by singer Marian Anderson. The resource webpage is available at nmaahc.si.edu/marchonwashington.
To mark the anniversary day (Aug. 28), the museum will also make available the film commissioned for its grand opening by Ava Duvernay, August 28: A Day in the Life of a People. The film will be available to view on the museum’s homepage and YouTube channel starting at 10:00 a.m. for 24 hours.
It’s the middle of August and five months into the coronavirus pandemic – is anyone longing for that summer jazzfest they haven’t been able to attend?
With today’s GBN playlist, which we’ve dubbed “Grown Folks Vacation,” you can press play, imagine yourself slipping into your backyard hammock with a glass of wine, and let a wave of classic songs and sounds wash over you (with a twist) – hopefully getting a little bit of relaxation in these stressful times.
Today, we’re celebrating music coming from the independent New Jersey-based label Shanachie Records, which, for more than 20 years, has been keeping veteran artists and favorite songs alive after many major labels have passed them by.
Shanachie was born in the 1980s as a niche independent label focusing on Celtic, folk, reggae and other branches of world music that the big companies usually ignore. But by the late ’90s, with expansion of the Quiet Storm and Wave radio formats, Shanachie expanded into a new area of music with releases from smooth jazz saxophonists like Walter Beasley and Kim Waters.
Lewis’ discussions center on the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, his friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the relationship between Southern Christian Leadership Conference(SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), his view on the philosophy of nonviolence and his involvement in the March on Washington.
Vivian and his interviewer discuss in detail over the course of an hour the Nashville sit-in campaign, the Freedom Rides, the Selma campaign and more.
Eyes on the Prize is the groundbreaking 1987 PBS documentary series that tells the definitive story of the civil rights movement.
These interviews are part of a collection of 127 raw interviews from Eyes on the Prize available to stream via AAPB due to a collaboration between Boston public media producer WGBH and the Library of Congress to preserve and make accessible culturally significant public media from across the country.
The AAPB also contains a two-part raw interview conducted with Vivian in 2011 from American Experience’s Freedom Riders. Part 1, Part 2.
According to Variety.com, the CBS network has announced it will commit 25% of its script development budget to projects created or co-created by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) beginning with the 2021-2022 development season.
CBS also says it will target having a minimum of 40% BIPOC representation in their writers’ rooms beginning in 2021-2022. The goal is to increase that number to 50% the following season. The network will also hire additional BIPOC writers on some of their series for the upcoming 2020-2021 season.
“While steady progress has been made in recent years both in front of and behind the camera, change needs to happen faster, especially with creators and leadership roles on the shows,” said George Cheeks, president and CEO of the CBS Entertainment Group.
“As a network with ambitions to be a unifier and an agent of change at this important time, these new initiatives will help accelerate efforts to broaden our storytelling and make CBS programming even more diverse and inclusive.”
News of the commitments comes as the entertainment industry, and the United States in general, continues to undergo a racial reckoning following massive civil unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
Under former CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, the company had been frequently criticized for lagging behind competitors in terms of diversity and inclusion on both its broadcast network and in its executive ranks. Last year, former CBS executive Whitney Davis published a piece with Variety about the “white problem” at the company at large.
Photo Credit: Oprah (Harpo Inc./Ruven Afanador) / Nikole (James Estrin/The New York Times )
Pulitzer Prize®-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times have chosen Lionsgate Studios to be the home for a wide-ranging partnership to develop Ms. Hannah-Jones’ landmark issue of The New York Times Magazine, The 1619 Project, and hit New York Times podcast, 1619, into an expansive portfolio of feature films, television series and other content for a global audience.
As part of the ground-breaking venture, Lionsgate has partnered with Oprah Winfrey as a producer who will provide stewardship and guidance to the development and production of The 1619 Project.
Lionsgate, The Times and Ms. Winfrey will join forces with Ms. Hannah-Jones, who will serve as the creative leader and producer in developing feature films, television series, documentaries, unscripted programming and other forms of entertainment enlisting world-class Black creative voices to help adapt her celebrated series chronicling the ways that the original sin of slavery in America still permeates all aspects of our society today.
Jones’ colleague at The Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper, an editor of The 1619 Project and head of scripted entertainment at The Times, will also produce.
One of the most impactful and thought-provoking works of journalism of the past decade, The Times Magazine’s 1619 Project was a landmark undertaking that connected the centrality of slavery in history with an unflinching account of the brutal racism that endures in so many aspects of American life today.
It was launched in August 2019 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colonies that would become the United States, and it examines the legacy of slavery in America and how it shaped all aspects of society, from music and law to education and the arts, including the principles of our democracy itself.
Ms. Hannah-Jones created and was the architect of the initiative at The Times Magazine with contributions from Black authors, essayists, poets, playwrights, and scholars comprising a special issue of the magazine and a special section in the print edition of The New York Times produced in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History & Culture, as well as a five-part podcast that topped the Apple Podcast charts.
One of The Times’ most widely read pieces of journalism last year, The 1619 Project has been discussed in the Senate, is being adapted into a series of books with One World, a division of Penguin Random House, and is already changing the way that American history is being taught in schools.
“We took very seriously our duty to find TV and film partners that would respect and honor the work and mission of The 1619 Project, that understood our vision and deep moral obligation to doing justice to these stories. Through every step of the process, Lionsgate and its leadership have shown themselves to be that partner and it is a dream to be able to produce this work with Ms. Oprah Winfrey, a trailblazer and beacon to so many Black journalists,” said Ms. Hannah-Jones. “I am excited for this opportunity to extend the breadth and reach of The 1619 Project and to introduce these stories of Black resistance and resilience to even more American households.”
“From the first moment I read The 1619 Project and immersed myself in Nikole Hannah-Jones’s transformative work, I was moved, deepened and strengthened by her empowering historical analysis,” said Oprah Winfrey. “I am honored to be a part of Nikole’s vision to bring this project to a global audience.”
Please see a link to The 1619 Project essays here and podcasts here.
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Matthew Cherry recently landed a deal with HBO Max for a 12-episode season of “Young Love,” an animated series based on the characters from Cherry and Sony Pictures Animation’s short, “Hair Love.”
Cherry will jointly run the series with Carl Jones, who is best known for his work on “The Boondocks” and “Black Dynamite.” Blue Key Entertainment’s Monica A. Young, who produced “Hair Love,” will executive produce the show alongside Lion Forge Animation’s David Steward II and Carl Reed.
Matthew Cherry (photo via Twitter)
“Hair Love” explored the relationship between a father and his daughter, Zuri, as he does her hair for the first time. “Young Love” will expand on the story of the family of father Stephen, mother Angela, daughter Zuri and her pet cat Rocky.
“I am beyond excited to continue telling the story of Stephen, Angela and Zuri and further explore the family dynamics of a young Black millennial family we established in our short film “Hair Love” as an animated series,” said Cherry.
“Couldn’t ask for better partners in Sony Pictures Animation and HBO Max in helping us get ‘Young Love’ out to the world.”
According to The New York Times, Dana Canedy was named senior vice president and publisher of its Simon & Schuster‘s named namesake imprint yesterday, one of the biggest jobs in book publishing.
Since 2017, Ms. Canedy, 55, has been the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, overseeing a period when the awards have acknowledged an increasingly diverse body of work, including the music of Kendrick Lamar.
Under Ms. Canedy’s watch, the Pulitzer board also issued a posthumous award to the pioneering Black journalist Ida B. Wells and presented a special citation along with $100,000 to The Capital Gazette, a small daily newspaper in Annapolis, Md., where five people were killed in the newsroom in 2018.
Before that, Ms. Canedy spent 20 years as a reporter and senior editor at The New York Times, where she covered business, politics, race and class. She was part of a Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for the series “How Race Is Lived in America.”
While Ms. Canedy has never worked for a publishing house, she has written a book: a memoir called A Journal for Jordan, about her partner, First Sgt. Charles M. King, and the journal he wrote for their son, Jordan, in case he did not return from the war in Iraq.
He was killed in combat there in 2006. A movie based on the book, starring Michael B. Jordan and directed by Denzel Washington, is scheduled to begin production this fall. Ms. Canedy is a producer on the film.
Ms. Canedy, who will begin her new job on July 27, said she reads books in bed late at night wearing tortoiseshell glasses fitted with tiny lights on either side, which she bought years ago so she could read in the dark when her son would sleep beside her. Jordan, now 14, affectionately calls his mother “word nerd,” she said.
“The ultimate goal of the job is to champion the work of our amazing authors,” Ms. Canedy said of her new position, “to bring in new authors, and to commission books that I and my team think are important. And basically, when you boil all that down, that means applying news judgment.”
According to cnn.com, Kennedy Mitchum, 22, emailed Merriam-Webster last month to let the renowned dictionary publisher know that she thought its definition of the word racism was inadequate. She was surprised when an editor responded and that the company agreed to update the entry.
“Merriam-Webster’s first definition of racism is ‘a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.’
Mitchum said many people she’s talked to use that to dismiss her concerns about racism and overlook broader issues of racial inequality because they don’t personally feel that way about people of color.
Mitchum said she sent her email on a Thursday night and got a reply from editor Alex Chambers the next morning.
After a few emails, Chambers agreed that the entry should be updated and said a new definition is being drafted.
“This revision would not have been made without your persistence in contacting us about this problem,” Chambers said in the email, which was provided to CNN. “We sincerely thank you for repeatedly writing in and apologize for the harm and offense we have caused in failing to address this issue sooner.”
Peter Sokolowski, an editor at large at Merriam-Webster, told CNN that their entry also defines racism as “a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles” and “a political or social system founded on racism,” which would cover systematic racism and oppression.
“I think we can express this more clearly to bring the idea of an asymmetrical power structure into the language of this definition, but it’s there,” Sokolowski said.”
Last week, Warner Bros. made Just Mercy, the 2019 feature film about attorney Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx free to view online all June.
HBO has done the same: True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality, which recently won a 2020 Peabody Award, is available for free online.
True Justice profiles Stevenson and his work at EJI seeking justice for the incarcerated poor and death row inmates in Alabama and the South, offers a searing indictment of the court system, and helps viewers see how the U.S. Supreme Court is historically and directly accountable for sustaining racial violence, white supremacy, and the exploitation of black people through the trajectory of decisions that leads from enslavement to lynching to the death penalty.
The documentary follows 30 years of EJI’s work on behalf of the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. Told primarily in his own words, True Justice shares Bryan Stevenson’s experience with a criminal justice system that “treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.”
While Ms. Canedy has never worked for a publishing house, she has written a book: a memoir called 
True Justice profiles Stevenson and his work at EJI seeking justice for the incarcerated poor and death row inmates in Alabama and the South, offers a searing indictment of the court system, and helps viewers see how the U.S. Supreme Court is historically and directly accountable for sustaining racial violence, white supremacy, and the exploitation of black people through the trajectory of decisions that leads from enslavement to lynching to the death penalty.