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Salvation Army Opens Its 1st Nonprofit Grocery Store in Baltimore to Combat Food Deserts

By goodblacknews on March 18, 2018
The Salvation Army’s DMG Foods held its grand opening on Wednesday in the northeast Baltimore neighborhood of Abell. (photo via huffingtonpost.com)

by Nina Golgowski via huffingtonpost.com
The Salvation Army is adding healthy grocery shopping to its list of charitable endeavors.
The nonprofit opened its first full-service grocery store in Baltimore on Wednesday in what it hopes will be the first of many stores to help combat the nation’s number of “food deserts,” which are disadvantaged neighborhoods lacking stores that sell fresh meats and produce.
DMG Foods, which is named after the organization’s promise of “doing the most good,” opened in northeast Baltimore with the goal of providing local residents with nutritious, low-cost food as well as nutrition guidance, meal planning and job training. “If this works, Baltimore wants us to open two or three more stores,” Maj. Gene A. Hogg, the Salvation Army’s Central Maryland area commander, told HuffPost on Monday.
The store, which has an on-site butcher and deli, as well as prepared meals and salads by Maryland’s Food Bank, is in a former Salvation Army warehouse that was renovated to offer what Hogg described as “that upper-end grocery store experience” at affordable prices. Inside, it’s bright and spacious, he said, and it features food samplings, recipe ideas, cooking demonstrations and visits by guest chefs and city health department nutritionists.
Because it’s across the street from an elementary school, it also allows parents to pick up or drop off their children and shop for their family’s meals in the same trip, Hogg said. Previously, he said, people would have to travel more than a quarter of a mile to find a grocery store or market, which fits within the city’s definition of a food desert. The definition also includes more than 30% of the surrounding households having no vehicle access and the medium household income at or below 185% of the federal poverty level. “The idea is to strengthen the family table,” he said. “We want to do more than just sell groceries.”
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh attended the store’s opening ceremony to cut the ribbon. She encouraged the Salvation Army’s efforts. “This serves as a beacon for the rest of this community. If we can do this here, we can do this in other parts of the city,” she said, according to local station WJZ.
In addition to providing fresh food, the store will also offer a workforce development program that will help train prospective employees. It will also have special offers and discounts for those who are part of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.  Any money that is made from the operation will be donated to Catherine’s Cottage, a local facility run by the Salvation Army that offers support to human trafficking survivors, Hogg said. “What we’re trying to do is create an environment where the community feels welcome and where they’re engaging for the betterment of their community,” Hogg said.
The Baltimore store is considered the Salvation Army’s test site. It hopes to open more stores around the country if this one succeeds and there is eagerness among outside communities to get involved. Thus far, Hogg said, he’s received calls from around the world inquiring about their efforts.
“We think that we’re going to be successful, but you can’t make any judgment calls after four days of work.”
Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/salvation-army-opens-grocery-store_us_5aa6a6b7e4b087e5aaec85d4

HEALTH: New Study by Dr. Ronald G. Victor Shows Visits to Barbershop Help Reduce Blood Pressure in African American Men

By goodblacknews on March 16, 2018

Barbershop owner Eric Muhammad, left, gives his client Mark Sims a blood pressure check at A New You Barber and Beauty Salon in Inglewood as part of a study on hypertension among African American men who frequent barbershops. (Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai)

by Melissa Healy via latimes.com
When a customer opens the well-worn door to Eric Muhammad‘s barbershop in Inglewood, he’ll be looking to relax in the comfort and camaraderie of a neighborhood meeting place and maybe to take a little off the top or sides. If that visitor is among the close to 40% of African American men with high blood pressure, he might also get a little taken off the top of that vital health reading.
New research suggests that shops like Muhammad’s A New You Barber and Beauty Salon might be just the place to rescue African American men from an epidemic that has ravaged their ranks: uncontrolled hypertension.
The study found that when a group of African American men with untreated high blood pressure got a screening and a friendly nudge from their barber, as well as a visit to the shop from a pharmacist, close to two-thirds of the men brought their blood pressure into a healthy range. Their systolic blood pressure — the top-line number that measures the pressure in your vessels when the heart beats — fell by an average of 27 points. In addition, their diastolic blood pressure — the bottom number that measures pressure on the vessels’ walls between heart beats — fell by an average of nearly 15 points.
The 132 men who got a barbershop visit from a pharmacist were almost six times more likely to bring their blood pressure under control than were those who just got a barber’s advice to eat better, exercise more and see a doctor. Fewer than 12% of the 171 men in the latter group brought their blood pressure under control. (Their average reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings were too small to be considered statistically significant.)
The clinical trial was conducted from February 2015 to July 2017 in 52 black-owned barber shops across Los Angeles County. Two pharmacists specially trained to treat high blood pressure shuttled across a 450-square-mile area bringing advice and an array of medications to the study’s participants. “Bringing rigorous medicine directly to men in a barbershop, and making it so convenient for them, really made a difference,” said Dr. Ronald G. Victor, who led the new study.
“We had hoped for maybe a seven-point difference” between the two groups in their systolic blood pressure, the one that is considered a better predictor of heart attack and stroke risk, Victor said. “But this was a really big difference” — the kind that “could make an impact on a national level” if the initiative were scaled up, he said. “We were really ecstatic.”
The trial results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology‘s annual meeting. Victor said that the inclusion of two pharmacists — a white woman and a woman of color, each of whom turned in similar results — was the “secret special sauce” that appeared to bring participants’ blood pressure in check. But skilled as these pharmacists were, Victor said they might not have gained the trust and influence they eventually enjoyed if they had not been welcomed into barbershops and introduced by their trusted proprietors.
“I can’t emphasize enough how much the barbers’ buy-in made all the difference,” said Victor, the associate director of Cedars-Sinai’s Smidt Heart Institute. The African American shop owners who participated in the study had been in business an average of 17 to 18 years, and the men they enrolled had typically been coming to their shops for more than a decade, typically once every two weeks.
Muhammad was among the first to sign on to the study. The proprietor of his shop for 18 years, Muhammad helped recruit nearly half of the other barbers who participated in the trial. At the busy corner of La Brea and Florence avenues, Muhammad presides over a “refuge” whose door is open “whether you’re a doctor or a gang member.” For a lot of people, he said, “just being here is a blessing.” Muhammad said he has always considered himself a potential agent of health promotion. But “it certainly surprised me for a doctor to come up with that idea,” he said.
Victor said that his own hypertension had been diagnosed by a barber during a training session for an earlier version of this study in Texas. When Victor protested that he must have been momentarily tense while getting tested, the barber gently admonished him. “If you can’t relax in my barber chair, Doc, you’ve got a problem,” the stylist told him. “Now if you’re gonna talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.”
Close to 40% of African American men have high blood pressure, a higher rate than any other ethnic group. And about one-third of those men — compared with 43% of white men and almost 50% of black women — have brought their hypertension under control with medication. This exacts a breathtaking toll among African American men in terms of death and disability. Their high rates of heart attack and stroke largely explain the 3.4-year difference in the life expectancy between blacks and whites in the United States.
Victor was optimistic that barbershops could help close that gap. “These are magical places,” he said. “They’re a window into some of the most positive aspects of black men’s social lives: loyalty, friendship, inclusiveness. There are dads bringing their sons in, customers who have come to the same place since they were children. These men were not in the clinic, that’s for sure.”
In African American communities, “we can map the places of black barbers right there alongside black ministers” as agents of trust and authority, said Vassar College history professor Quincy T. Mills.
Prospective patients might ordinarily view physicians and pharmacists with a suspicion borne of years of systemic abuses, Mills said. But in the familiar environment of their barbershop, “I suspect the men were comforted that these interactions were happening in a crowd of people, giving them space to ask others, to push back.”
Mills, the author of “Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America,” said that a man’s health is not a subject that routinely comes up while he is in the chair. But a barber’s position of leadership, his association with personal care and the connections he forges over time with his customers may allow him to stretch the bounds of what is permissible.
“That level of trust in the barber is the first critical piece here,” he said.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-barber-blood-pressure-20180312-story.html

ICU Nurse Ellen Harris, Who Received Racist Note and Picture of a Noose at Work, Awarded Over $3.8 Million in Damages

By goodblacknews on March 7, 2018

Nurse Ellen Harris (photo via theroot.com)

by Ashleigh Atwell via blavity.com
A jury awarded Ellen Harris, a nurse in Honolulu, Hawaii, over $3.8 million in damages after she claimed her employer ignored her reports of racial harassment, according to a press release from Harris’ lawyer.
Harris, who is black, worked in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at The Queen’s Medical Center from 2006 to 2011. During her time there, she reported a “potentially fatal event” involving another nurse who was allegedly harassing her.
When she told officials about the incident, her supervisor told her to write a statement; which she did. The day after she turned in her statement, she found a note in her work mailbox that read “LAZY *SS N*GGER B*TCH.”
Harris made another report and mentioned that the nurse who was harassing her was also acting “erratic,” and may have been under the influence. That nurse later resigned after the supervisor discovered she had been stealing “tremendous” amounts of fentanyl, a highly addictive narcotic. Harris’ supervisor and the hospital’s human resources director investigated the matter, and concluded that the note wasn’t threatening, but rather “a comment on Harris’ work ethic and communication skills.”
It took seven weeks for the investigators to interview two parties related to the note, and on Christmas Eve 2011, the night after the second person was interviewed, Harris found a picture of a noose taped to her locker. The incident was reported to Honolulu Police and investigated as terror threat.
Harris, who worked the night shift, requested a security escort to her car, additional security in the MICU, the results of any investigations and an apology. The HR department denied her security escort because the incidents didn’t occur in the parking lot.
She filed a lawsuit in 2013. Five years later, after a five week trial, Harris got her day in court. The jury declared that Harris was entitled to $630,000 in general damages and $3.2 million in punitive damages. Harris was happy with the decision and expressed that her safety, along with that of her patients, was important to her.
“I am so grateful to this jury for hearing my case and understood this is wrong.  No one should be degraded or threatened like this,” Harris said. “I was only trying to make sure my patients were safe and received critical care they needed.  After I found the noose on my locker, I did not think my patients or I were safe. Nurses depended on each other in the MICU. I was afraid something would happen to one of my patients or me after receiving this threat of violence.”
 
Source: https://blavity.com/nurse-that-received-note-reading-lazy-ss-ngger-picture-of-a-noose-awarded-over-38-million-in-damages?utm_content=bufferfc805&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Jordan Peele Becomes 1st African-American to Win Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay

By goodblacknews on March 5, 2018

Jordan Peele – Original Screenplay – ‘Get Out’ 90th Annual Academy Awards, Los Angeles, USA – 04 Mar 2018 (Photo by Rob Latour/REX/Shutterstock)

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
At last night’s 90th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, “Get Out” writer/director/actor Jordan Peele won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the first African American to ever earn this honor. On Saturday evening, Peele also won Independent Spirit Awards for Best Feature and Best Director.
Last year, “Moonlight” writers Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the first African American to win an Oscar in either writing category was Geoffrey Fletcher for “Precious” in 2009. The only other African-American to win for writing is John Ridley in 2013 for the Adapted Screenplay to “12 Years A Slave.” “Mudbound” writer/director Dee Rees made her own bit of history this year by being the first African-American woman nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category; the first woman ever nominated in either category was Suzanne DePasse in 1972 for “Lady Sings The Blues.”
Retired NBA superstar Kobe Bryant took home the Oscar with his creative partner Glen Keane for “Dear Basketball,” the first nomination and win for an African American in the Best Animated Short category.
The complete list of last night’s winners is below:

Best Picture:“The Shape of Water” (WINNER)
“Call Me by Your Name”
“Darkest Hour”
“Dunkirk”
“Get Out”
“Lady Bird”
“Phantom Thread”
“The Post”
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Actress:
Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (WINNER)
Sally Hawkins, “The Shape of Water”
Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”
Saoirse Ronan, “Lady Bird”
Meryl Streep, “The Post”
Actor:
Gary Oldman, “Darkest Hour” (WINNER)
Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name”
Daniel Day-Lewis, “Phantom Thread”
Daniel Kaluuya, “Get Out”
Denzel Washington, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.”

Director:
“The Shape of Water,” Guillermo del Toro (WINNER)
“Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan
“Get Out,” Jordan Peele
“Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig
“Phantom Thread,” Paul Thomas Anderson
Original Song:
“Remember Me” from “Coco,” Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez (WINNER)
“Mighty River” from “Mudbound,” Mary J. Blige
“Mystery of Love” from “Call Me by Your Name,” Sufjan Stevens
“Stand Up for Something” from “Marshall,” Diane Warren, Common
“This Is Me” from “The Greatest Showman,” Benj Pasek, Justin Paul
Original Score:
“The Shape of Water,” Alexandre Desplat (WINNER)
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” John Williams
“Dunkirk,” Hans Zimmer
“Phantom Thread,” Jonny Greenwood
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Carter Burwell
Cinematography:
“Blade Runner 2049,” Roger Deakins (WINNER)
“Darkest Hour,” Bruno Delbonnel
“Dunkirk,” Hoyte van Hoytema
“Mudbound,” Rachel Morrison
“The Shape of Water,” Dan Laustsen
Original Screenplay:
“Get Out,” Jordan Peele (WINNER)
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Martin McDonagh
“The Big Sick,” Emily V. Gordon & Kumail Nanjiani
“Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig
“The Shape of Water,” Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor

‘Black Panther’ Tops Box Office for 3rd Week, Now 10th Highest Domestic Grosser of All-Time with $501.1 Million

By goodblacknews on March 4, 2018
(Image via Marvel/Disney)

by Dave McNary via Variety.com
Disney-Marvel’s “Black Panther” is continuing its super-heroic run, grossing a stunning $501.1 million in North America in only 17 days and becoming the 10th highest grosser of all time.
“Black Panther,” starring Chadwick Boseman, dominated domestic moviegoing in its third weekend with $65.7 million at 4,084 locations — the third-highest weekend of all time after “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” at $90.2 million and “Avatar” at $68.5 million.
“Black Panther” is now the second-highest grossing Marvel movie of all time at the domestic box office, surpassing  “Avengers: Age of Ultron” this weekend at $459 million and trailing only “The Avengers” at $623.4 million. “Black Panther” has a realistic shot at reaching that level in the coming weeks and may eventually top “Jurassic World” at $652 million and “Titanic” at $659 million for the third highest domestic total of all time.
Two new titles opened with moderate results that might have been higher without a must-see title like “Black Panther” in multiplexes. Jennifer Lawrence’s spy thriller “Red Sparrow” launched with $17 million at 3,056 sites for Fox and Bruce Willis’ “Death Wish” debuted with $13 million at 2,847 venues for MGM.
Warner Bros.’ second weekend of comedy thriller “Game Night” followed in fourth with $10.7 million from 3,502 sites, edging Sony’s fourth weekend of CGI-live action “Peter Rabbit” with $10 million at 3,607 locations. “Peter Rabbit” has connected with family audiences for $84 million in its first 24 days.
Paramount’s second weekend of “Annihilation” finished in sixth with $5.7 million at 2,112 venues, followed by Sony’s 11th weekend of its sturdy action comedy “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” with $4.5 million at 2,313 sites. “Jumanji” has now grossed $393.2 million in 75 days.
Source: http://variety.com/2018/film/box-office/black-panther-box-office-dominates-red-sparrow-death-wish-1202716966/

Black Construction Companies Working on $350 Million Obama Presidential Center

By goodblacknews on February 24, 2018

Michelle Obama Barack Obama theGrio.com
(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

via thegrio.com
Now that Barack Obama is out of the White House, he’s making a statement on support for Black businesses with a huge deal for the Obama Presidential Center.
The OPC is set to cost about $350 million, and an alliance of minority firms is set to get a large chunk of that. Powers & Sons Construction, UJAMAA Construction, Brown & Momen, and Safeway Construction, all part of the Presidential Partners consortium, have all come together as part of the Lakeside Alliance working on the presidential center, according to Black Enterprise.
The minority companies will be getting a 51% stake, while Turner Company, which is one of the nation’s largest construction companies, will have a 49% stake. It’s a historic move, not just because of the companies involved but because most minority firms will be hired on as subcontractors and not given majority stakes like this.
“The Obama Foundation believes in creating opportunities for diverse and local businesses and building pathways to meaningful jobs for minorities and other underrepresented populations,” said David Simas, CEO of the Obama Foundation.
“The development of the Obama Presidential Center gives us an opportunity to make a major, unprecedented impact on the South Side in terms of hiring talented, local businesses and individuals. We look forward to working with Lakeside Alliance to achieve our goals, set new benchmarks and make the Obama Presidential Center a landmark that our neighbors can be proud of.”
It’s a big win not just for the companies but the communities, because the alliance of minority companies has promised that they will be employing minority workers and people who live in the surrounding area for the massive project. That way, the companies will be giving back to the community and the presidential center will be a boon to Chicago’s South and West sides.
Ground will be broken for the project later on this year.

Source: https://thegrio.com/2018/02/24/black-construction-companies-working-350-million-obama-presidential-center/ 

Ava DuVernay, Netflix, Issa Rae, Dan Lin and Others Partner With City Of L.A. on Inclusion Initiative, the Evolve Entertainment Fund

By goodblacknews on February 22, 2018


by Dominic Patten via deadline.com
“As we radically reimagine Hollywood, it is critically important that young people are included in our vision,” Ava DuVernay said today at the unveiling of the Evolve Entertainment Fund in Los Angeles.
“Real change happens when we take tangible action, and that means giving young women and people of color opportunities in the industry early on so they have the chance to shape its future,” the A Wrinkle on Time director and ARRAY founder added of the new partnership between the City of L.A, studios, networks and nonprofits that seeks to provide placement in the industry for those traditionally left on the outside.
“What is one thing that people can do to instigate inclusion on film set? Hire a woman,” Oscar nominee DuVernay also made a point of noting. “Films directed by women have 76% percent more inclusion across people of color and women.”
Teaming-up with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Issa Rae Productions, Dan Lin’s Rideback, ARRAY, WME, Netflix, HBO, Film Independent, CAA, UTA, Anonymous Content, Lionsgate, Charles D King’s MACRO, Oprah Winfrey Network, the Sundance Institute, Shondaland, Ryan Murphy, Innovative Artists and Warner Bros, among others, the EEF intends to raise over $5 million to fund programs up to and beyond 2020.
With emphasis on creating TV, film and digital career opportunities for people of color, women and low-income residents of the City of Angles and securing mini-grants and placement for eligible filmmakers, the newly announced EEF has already established 150 paid summer internships for students participating in the HIRE LA’s Youth program working with 9-1-1 EP Murphy’s production company, DreamWorks Animation and Kobe Bryant’s Granity Studios. The hope is that the trajectory of those internships will expand to 250 by the end of the year, and up to 500 placements by 2020.

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama Portraits Unveiled at National Portrait Gallery

By goodblacknews on February 12, 2018
Kehinde Wiley has set Mr. Obama against greenery, with flowers that have symbolic meaning: African blue lilies for Kenya, his father’s birthplace; jasmine for Hawaii, where Mr. Obama was born; chrysanthemums, the official flower of Chicago, for the city where his political career began. (Credit: Kehinde Wiley)

by Holland Cotter via nytimes.com
With the unveiling Monday at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. of the official presidential likenesses of Barack Obama and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, this city of myriad monuments gets a couple of new ones, each radiating, in its different way, gravitas (his) and glam (hers).

Ordinarily, the event would pass barely noticed in the worlds of politics and art. Yes, the Portrait Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution, owns the only readily accessible complete collection of presidential likenesses. But recently commissioned additions to the collection have been so undistinguished that the tradition of installing a new portrait after a leader has left office is now little more than ceremonial routine.

The present debut is strikingly different. Not only are the Obamas the first presidential couple claiming African descent to be enshrined in the collection. The painters they’ve picked to portray them — Kehinde Wiley, for Mr. Obama’s portrait; Amy Sherald, for Mrs. Obama — are African-American as well. Both artists have addressed the politics of race consistently in their past work, and both have done so in subtly savvy ways in these new commissions. Mr. Wiley depicts Mr. Obama not as a self-assured, standard-issue bureaucrat, but as an alert and troubled thinker. Ms. Sherald’s image of Mrs. Obama overemphasizes an element of couturial spectacle, but also projects a rock-solid cool.

It doesn’t take #BlackLivesMatter consciousness to see the significance of this racial lineup within the national story as told by the Portrait Gallery. Some of the earliest presidents represented — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson — were slaveholders; Mrs. Obama’s great-great grandparents were slaves. And today we’re seeing more and more evidence that the social gains of the civil rights, and Black Power, and Obama eras are, with a vengeance, being rolled back.

On several levels, then, the Obama portraits stand out in this institutional context, though given the tone of bland propriety that prevails in the museum’s long-term “America’s Presidents” display — where Mr. Obama’s (though not Mrs. Obama’s) portrait hangs — standing out is not all that hard to do.

Amy Sherald’s take on Mrs. Obama emphasizes an element of couturial spectacle (with a dress designed by Michelle Smith) and rock-solid cool. (Credit:  Amy Sherald)

Mr. Wiley, born in Los Angeles in 1977, gained a following in the early 2000s with his crisp, glossy, life-size paintings of young African-American men dressed in hip-hop styles, but depicted in the old-master manner of European royal portraits. More recently he has expanded his repertoire to include female subjects, as well as models from Brazil, India, Nigeria and Senegal, creating the collective image of a global black aristocracy.

In an imposingly scaled painting — just over seven feet tall — the artist presents Mr. Obama dressed in the regulation black suit and an open-necked white shirt, and seated on a vaguely thronelike chair not so different from the one seen in Stuart’s Washington portrait. But art historical references stop there. So do tonal echoes of past portraits. Whereas Mr. Obama’s predecessors are, to the man, shown expressionless and composed, Mr. Obama sits tensely forward, frowning, elbows on his knees, arms crossed, as if listening hard. No smiles, no Mr. Nice Guy. He’s still troubleshooting, still in the game.

His engaged and assertive demeanor contradicts — and cosmetically corrects — the impression he often made in office of being philosophically detached from what was going on around him. At some level, all portraits are propaganda, political or personal. And what makes this one distinctive is the personal part. Mr. Wiley has set Mr. Obama against — really embedded him in — a bower of what looks like ground cover. From the greenery sprout flowers that have symbolic meaning for the sitter. African blue lilies represent Kenya, his father’s birthplace; jasmine stands for Hawaii, where Mr. Obama himself was born; chrysanthemums, the official flower of Chicago, reference the city where his political career began, and where he met his wife.

Mrs. Obama’s choice of Ms. Sherald as an artist was an enterprising one. Ms. Sherald, who was born in Columbus, Ga., in 1973 and lives in Baltimore, is just beginning to move into the national spotlight after putting her career on hold for some years to deal with a family health crisis, and one of her own. (She had a heart transplant at 39.) Production-wise, she and Mr. Wiley operate quite differently. He runs the equivalent of a multinational art factory, with assistants churning out work. Ms. Sherald, who until a few years ago made her living waiting tables, oversees a studio staff of one, herself.

At the same time, they have much in common. Both focused early on African-American portraiture precisely because it is so little represented in Western art history. And both tend to blend fact and fiction. Mr. Wiley, with photo-realistic precision, casts actual people in fantastically heroic roles. (He modifies his heroizing in the case of Mr. Obama, but it’s still there.) Ms. Sherald also starts with realism, but softens and abstracts it. She gives all her figures gray-toned skin — a color with ambiguous racial associations — and reduces bodies to geometric forms silhouetted against single-color fields.

To read full article, go to: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/arts/design/obama-portrait.html

Portraits of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama
At the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; 202-633-1000; npg.si.edu.

CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice Debuts Online Archive on Slavery in New York

By goodblacknews on February 11, 2018

(image from “Slavery In New York” ed. by Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris via amazon.com)

via jbhe.com
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York, has announced the establishment of the New York Slavery Records Index, an online archive of slavery records from 1525 until the end of the Civil War.
The new online archive includes more than 35,000 records. The index includes census records, slave trade transactions, cemetery records, birth certifications, manumissions, ship inventories, newspaper accounts, private narratives, legal documents and many other sources. Include are 1,400 birth certificates of slaves and more than 30,000 records that list the names of slave owners in New York. Also included are more than 500 advertisements seeking the capture and return of enslaved New Yorkers.
Karol V. Mason, President of John Jay College, said that “this vast, public database will serve as an important research tool that will support information-based scholarship on slavery in New York and across the nation. The launch of this index marks a significant contribution to understanding and remembering the country’s history of slavery and advances the college’s mission of educating for justice.”
Source: https://www.jbhe.com/2018/02/john-jay-college-of-criminal-justice-debuts-an-online-archive-on-slavery-in-new-york/
Other resources on Slavery in New York:

New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan
A History of Negro Slavery in New York
New York and Slavery: Time To Teach The Truth

Jackson Elementary School in Utah, Named for Andrew Jackson, Votes to Rename Itself After Mary Jackson, NASA's 1st Black Female Engineer

By goodblacknews on February 10, 2018
Mary Jackson, NASA’s first black female engineer
Mary Jackson, NASA’s first black female engineer(Photo: NASA Langley Research Center)

by Marina Koren via theatlantic.com

An elementary school in Utah has traded one Jackson for another in a change that many say was a long time coming.

Jackson Elementary School in Salt Lake City will no longer be named for Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, whose slave ownership and treatment of Native Americans are often cited in the debate over memorializing historical figures associated with racism.

Instead, the school will honor Mary Jackson, the first black female engineer at nasa whose story, and the stories of others like her at the space agency, was chronicled in Hidden Figures, a 2016 film based on a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly.

A unanimous vote by the the Salt Lake City school board this week was met with a standing ovation from the crowd in the room, reports The Salt Lake Tribune’s Erin Alberty. School employees and parents have discussed changing the elementary’s school name “for years,” Alberty reported, and last year started polling and meeting with parents, alumni, and others. More than 70 percent supported the change. Of the school’s 440 students, 85 percent are students of color, according to the Salt Lake City School District.

Mary Jackson, a native of Hampton, Virginia, worked as a math teacher, a receptionist, and an Army secretary before she arrived at NASA’s Langley Research Center in 1951 as a member of the West Area Computing unit, a segregated division where African American women spent hours doing calculations with pencil and paper, including for the trajectories of the country’s earliest space missions.

Two years in, a NASA engineer picked Jackson to help him work on a wind tunnel that tested flight hardware by blasting it with winds nearly twice the speed of sound. The engineer suggested Jackson train to become an engineer. To do that, Jackson had to take night courses in math and physics from the University of Virginia, which were held at the segregated Hampton High School. Jackson successfully petitioned the city to let her take the classes. She got her promotion to engineer in 1958. After 34 years at the space agency, Jackson retired in 1985. She died in 2005, at the age of 83.