(The Emotions, September 1977 Pamela Hutchinson, center: Michael Putland/Getty Images)
Pamela Hutchinson, singer from the famed R&B group The Emotions, has died at the age of 61, according to a post on the band’s official Facebook page Sunday.
The Emotions were comprised of Hutchinson and her sisters, Wanda Hutchinson-Vaughn, Jeanette Hutchinson-Hawes and Sheila Hutchinson-Witt. The family act got its start in Chicago, IL as the gospel group the Hutchinson Sunbeams before transitioning to disco/R&B.
“Pam succumbed to health challenges that she’d been battling for several years,” the post said. “Now our beautiful sister will sing amongst the angels in heaven in perfect peace.”
The Emotions’ two biggest hits were the R&B/disco classics “Best of My Love” and “Boogie Wonderland,” the latter of which they collaborated with Earth, Wind & Fire. Other hit singles include “Don’t Ask My Neighbors,” “I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love,” “You’re the Best” and “Turn it Out.”
On Monday, Netflix will debut A Love Song For Latasha, a short film by first-time filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison that explores what life could have been like for 15 year-old Latasha Harlins had she not been fatally shot by a Korean convenience store owner in Los Angeles in 1991.
Harlins was shot in the back of the head by Soon Ja Du, then a 51-year-old Korean woman who suspected Latasha was trying to steal a $1.79 bottle of orange juice. Security footage later confirmed that Latasha had money in her hand and intended to pay for the beverage and Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.
Though the jury recommended a 16-year prison stint, Du was sentenced to time served, five years probation, community service, funeral expenses and $500 restitution. Harlins’ killing and the trial outcome were factors that served as a catalyst for the unrest that erupted in Los Angeles in 1992 after the police who brutalized Rodney King were acquitted.
A Love Song For Latasha explores the teenager’s life and dreams through accounts from her family and friends. Watch the trailer below:
“As an LA native, I’m really interested in what it means to interrogate and conjure and excavate stories of the community and stories of Black women and Black girls,” Allison told theGrio exclusively.
“Being a young girl during the riots, Latasha wasn’t a name I often heard. It was always Rodney King. It’s still a story people don’t talk about and her name is often forgotten. She played such an important and devastating role in that shift that happened in South Central and I wanted to see her story live in its fullness.”
Tupac Shakur immortalized Latasha’s story in several of his hits, including “Keep Ya Head Up,” which he dedicated to the slain teen. He referenced her in other tracks like “Something 2 Die 4,” “Thugz Mansion,” and “I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto” and Ice Cube included a song about her on his album, Death Certificate, entitled ”Black Korea.”
“Latasha could have been a family member, or one of my friends. Latasha could have been me,” said Allison. “I wanted to make sure this archive, this story, and this memory existed for Latasha and that there was this evidence of her outside of just the trauma. Her story needed to exist beyond what we have seen.”
Director and Academy Award-winning writer John Ridley (12 Years A Slave) also devoted a section of his 2017 documentary Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992 to Harlins, her tragic killing and the relative lack of justice her killer faced. Let It Fall can also be found on Netflix.
San Francisco Mayor London N. Breed, in partnership with Expecting Justice, announced this week the launch of the Abundant Birth Project, a pilot program that provides targeted basic income to women during pregnancy and after giving birth.
The pilot will provide an unconditional monthly income supplement of $1,000 to approximately 150 Black and Pacific Islander women in San Francisco for the duration of their pregnancy and for the first six months of their baby’s life, with a goal of eventually providing a supplement for up to two years post-pregnancy.
Expecting Justice, a collective impact initiative led by Dr. Zea Malawa at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and supported by the Hellman Foundation and the UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative, will study the resulting health impacts of the pilot program, which is the first of its kind in the United States.
The Abundant Birth Project is a simple, yet novel, approach to achieving better maternal health and birthing outcomes: provide pregnant Black and Pacific Islander women a monthly income supplement for the duration of their pregnancy and during the postpartum period as an economic and reproductive health intervention.
Prematurity is a leading cause of infant mortality and has been linked to lifelong conditions, such as behavioral development issues, learning difficulties, and chronic disease. In San Francisco, Black infants are almost twice as likely to be born prematurely compared with White infants (13.8% versus 7.3%, from 2012-2016) and Pacific Islander infants have the second-highest preterm birth rate (10.4%).
Furthermore, Black families account for half of the maternal deaths and over 15% of infant deaths, despite representing only 4% of all births. Pacific Islander families face similar disparities.
Mara Brock Akil, the creator and writer/producer behind such hit series as Being Mary Jane, Black Lightning, Girlfriends and The Game and has signed a multi-year overall deal with Netflix to create new original content, according to Deadline.com.
The deal was announced the same week that Akil’s beloved comedy Girlfriends debuted on Netflix, marking the series’ 20th anniversary. All eight seasons of the sitcom starring Tracee Ellis Ross, Golden Brooks, Persia White and Jill Marie Jones join The Game on the platform.
“We are thrilled to welcome Mara Brock Akil to Netflix,” said Channing Dungey, VP Original Series, Netflix. “Her signature storytelling, authentic perspective and captivating characters have long entertained audiences and proven to be relevant, timely and endlessly engaging. We look forward to bringing her distinct voice, vision and passion to our global members.”
Akil becomes the latest showrunner to sign with Netflix and joins a roster of powerhouse content creators that includes Shonda Rhimes, Kenya Barris and Ryan Murphy, among several others.
Yesterday, city workers in Charlottesville, VA brought down a Confederate statue near the site of a violent white nationalist rally three years ago, where dozens were injured and one woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when a self-avowed white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of people protesting the rally.
The removal of the bronze figure of a Confederate soldier known as “At Ready,” is what is being seen in Charlottesville as a milestone in eliminating oppressive symbols of the Civil War from public properties shared by all taxpayers.
According to the Washington Post, Albemarle County supervisors voted earlier this summer to take down “At Ready,” even though the statue was not the focal point of the 2017 rally, but a block away from the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups said they were defending in the clash.
Naomi Osaka came through in all ways during her journey to today’s victory in the women’s singles title match of the 2020 U.S. Open.
Not only did now two-time U.S. Open winner Osaka rally to beat challenger Victoria Azarenka (who bested six-time U.S. Open champion Serena Williams in the semi-final in three sets with the mirrored score of 1-6, 6-3, 6-3), she did so while making powerful protest statements before every match.
Osaka wore seven different masks with seven different names of Black individuals who have died violently, unnecessarily, and mostly at the hands of police officers: Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Elijah McLain, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile and today, before her final match, Tamir Rice.
(Photo of high school students by AP/Jaime Henry-White via Creative Commons)
Years in the making, the influential College Board is launching an ambitious national curriculum on race with an Advanced Placement (AP) program on the African diaspora, the Washington Post reports.
Given AP’s current importance on high school transcripts and influence on college admissions, the program has the potential to make Black studies a college-prep offering in coming years.
Black students’ scores on AP tests in recent years have remained significantly lower than those for other groups. In 2019, Black students passed 32 percent of the AP exams they took, compared with 44 percent for Latino students, 65 percent for White students and 72 percent for Asian students.
The College Board collaborated on the project with African Diaspora Consortium a not-for-profit organization, as well as Columbia University’s Teachers College.
The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies has a nice ring to it. As of September 4, it’s the name the University of Maryland‘s Women’s Studies department will bear.
[This is] the first honorific naming of an academic department at UMD, the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. It is fitting that this heroic Marylander is now honored at the state’s flagship university.
The department is widely acclaimed for its unique concentration in Black feminist thought and intersectionality, and it is the only department in the nation that offers a Black women’s studies minor, jointly with the Department of African American Studies.
Historically, Black women have played a brave and critical role in social justice. Harriet Tubman’s life and her dedication to freedom and equality speaks directly to the department’s mission, now and in the years ahead.
Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland said to WTOP News she hopes the name change helps to bring awareness to Tubman’s contributions locally and nationally.
In today’s “Power Shot,” TEDx speaker,Power Lab performance coach and GBN’s “This Way Forward” contributor Dena Crowder explains so clearly and succinctly in three simple steps exactly how and why mobilizing to vote is so crucial this November, Good Black News is adding a fourth step:
WATCH and SHARE Dena’s video everywhere so anyone who is on the fence about voting can hop on over into the right side of history and utilize their power to affect significant change.
To quote just some of Dena’s insightful guidance:
There is no perfect, uncorrupted, ideal candidate, do not get caught up in that… Whoever wins this election is going to set the tone for the direction that we take on every single issue facing Black Americans.
We’re talking prison, we’re talking police, we’re talking human rights, we’re talking civil rights, we are talking healthcare and housing. So prioritize what really matters and vote the bigger picture.
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.
