November 27, 2024
[Dr. Namandjé Bumpus (photo via Johns Hopkins University)]
According to jbhe.com, Dr. Namandjé Bumpus was appointed chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD.
Dr. Bumpus is the first African-American woman to chair an academic department at the highly-rated medical school and the only Black woman currently chairing a pharmacology department at any medical school in the nation, according to Johns Hopkins.
Teyana Taylor dropped a stunning and powerful music video today for “Still” from her third LP, THE ALBUM, which came out on Juneteenth of this year via G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam Recordings.
The video, produced by Teyana’s all-female led production company “The Aunties” and directed by Taylor under her pseudonym Spike Tey, highlights footage of important moments in America’s ongoing fight for social justice, with Teyana blending herself into the iconic imagery of Malcolm X (see photo above), Huey P. Newton and Breonna Taylor by donning their clothes and assuming their poses.
The video also includes words and footage of Malcolm X, footage of Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, Civil Rights Movement protesters, Black Lives Matter protesters and several victims of hate crimes and police brutality including Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice and George Floyd, to name a few. It is, in a word, gripping. Watch below:
According to Variety.com, AMC Theatres will pay tribute to beloved actor and Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman, who died last week of colon cancer at 43, by screening 42, Boseman’s leading man debut as Major League Baseball barrier breaker and icon Jackie Robinson. (To read GBN’s review of 42, click here.)
Warner Bros. and Legendary, the studios behind the 2013 film, have teamed up with the theater chain to make “42” viewable in more than 300 locations. That’s nearly every AMC venue that’s open as coronavirus closures start to lift. Tickets for 42 will only be $5 and will go on sale by the end of Tuesday.
[Jacob Blake III’s father Jacob Blake Jr, left and Dr. Charles Steele, Jr., right; photo courtesy SCLC]
Dr. Charles Steele, Jr., president and CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the organization co-founded and first led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., announced today that the Atlanta-based civil rights organization will lead a campaign to help the family of Jacob Blake secure support for his long term recovery and care.
Dr. Steele made the announcement after a meeting with Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Jr., and other family members at a location in Wauwatosa, a city just west of Milwaukee, where the younger Blake is in a hospital receiving treatment.
Family members have traveled to the Milwaukee area from other regions of the country after receiving news last Sunday of Jacob Blake III being shot in the back seven times by a police officer in Kenosha, a city of approximately 100,000 residents about one hour south of Milwaukee.
Blake, 29, is African American and the unjustified shooting has left him paralyzed. The officer has been placed on leave from the department. The shooting has led to numerous protests around the nation. Blake’s father said the family is receiving overwhelming support from Americans to get them from day to day, but now the family is concerned about his son’s long-term recovery after his release from the hospital.
“As the president and CEO of the SCLC, and in the spirit of our founder, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am here with Mr. Blake to let him and his family know that the SCLC will lead a campaign to secure support for your son’s long term care,” said Dr. Steele during the Saturday afternoon meeting with the father and family.
After a telephone conversation earlier in the week, Dr. Steele said he traveled to the Milwaukee area to personally meet with the father to determine the son’s needs.
Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa / Black Panther (Art by Marlon West)
by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest)
With the passing of the great Chadwick Boseman, I am inclined to hold the playlist I made to share today until next week. I thought instead I’d share this playlist I created in celebration of Black Panther two years ago.
[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:playlist:18oEW1p7SRWOt908mBKC7K”/]
I won’t say how many times I’ve seen the film, so far. Though I made this playlist by imagining what genius Princess Shuri would listen to in her lab.
It was made before the film grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide and broke numerous box office records, including the highest-grossing film by a Black director. Before it became the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time, the third-highest-grossing film in the U.S. and Canada, and the second-highest-grossing film of 2018.
I made before it received seven nominations at the 91st Academy Awards including Best Picture, with wins for Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, and Best Production Design. Black Panther is the first superhero film to receive a Best Picture nomination.
Director Ryan Coogler wrote of Boseman this weekend:
NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps is now poised to be the first Black woman crew member of the International Space Station (ISS), according to sciencetimes.com.
On Tuesday, Epps was assigned to the NASA Boeing Starliner-1. The African-American aerospace engineer and astronaut will join the space administration’s first operational crewed flight for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, in a mission to the ISS.
To quote the Science Times article:
The Boeing Starliner-1 mission will be the first for Jeanette Epps. She first earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Le Moyne College, in her hometown of Syracuse, New York. She then completed her master’s degree in science and her doctorate in aerospace engineering, both from the University of Maryland.
While she was pursuing her master’s and doctorate, Epps received a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Project (GSRP) Fellowship grant, publishing several academic papers on the way. After her doctorate, she started working in a research lab with the Ford Motor Company for more than two years before moving to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where she was a technical intelligence officer for seven years.
In 2009, she was selected as a member of that year’s astronaut class. In January 2017, NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps was assigned to be a part of Expeditions 56 and 57. She was set to fly into Earth’s orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. This was supposed to be the first long-duration ISS mission, including an African-American astronaut.
However, on January 16, 2018, NASA announced that Jeanette Epps would be reassigned to future missions, being replaced by her backup Serena M. Auñon-Chancellor. The reason for the reassignment was never officially explained.
There have been some Black Americans who have traveled to and from space, with a former fighter pilot and astronaut Guion Bluford being the first as a crew member of the 1983 Challenger. However, there has been no Black American assigned to live and work in space for more extended periods. The International Space Station has already seen 240 individuals across 395 spaceflights, since 2000.
Epps will be joining NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada.
https://twitter.com/Astro_Jeanette/status/1298765156298764288
Based on NASA’s current schedule, the first Black astronaut to live and work on the ISS will likely be Victor Glover, who is set to head there on the SpaceX Crew-1 mission on Oct. 23.
To read more: https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/27035/20200825/jeanette-epps-first-black-woman-join-iss-crew.htm
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.
The Ohio Players (Photo Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest)
Dayton, Ohio was already a mecca of grooves, before Lakeside first dubbed it “The Land of Funk” in its swashbuckling cut “Fantastic Voyage.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, southwestern Ohio – particularly Dayton’s west side – was known for its collective of funk bands whose influence can still be heard in hip-hop, house, and other forms popular today.
The Ohio Players, the grandmasters of them all, have seen their songs sampled or remade by Snoop Dogg, Puff Daddy, Salt-N-Pepa, Soundgarden, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to name but a few.
I’ve thrown in tracks by fellow Ohioans — Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, The Isley Brothers and Bobby Womack — to further show the disproportionate amount of funk Ohio has produced.
This will be another one that will make you move. Enjoy.
Stay safe, sane, and kind, you all!
[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:playlist:5zh8DqukyXIKaItwK3HXP7″/]
A 1000-square-foot art installation depicting civil rights, anti-lynching and women’s rights advocate Ida B. Wells will go on display in Washington D.C.’s Union Station on Aug. 24, According to wamu.org.
Artist Helen Marshall created the portrait of Wells out of almost 5,000 black-and-white photographs from the suffrage movement early in the 20th century.
“We need to see her portrait, and African American women need to be a lot more visible,” Marshall says. “She was fighting for the same causes that women are now.”
The project — which will be up through August 28 — was created by the British Marshall after she created a massive portrait of a British suffragist and installed it in a train station in Birmingham in the U.K.
Her American piece was commissioned by the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, created by Congress to commemorate the 19th Amendment’s 100th anniversary.
To read more about Wells, click here.
To read more about the mosaic of her portrait: https://wamu.org/story/20/08/19/union-station-women-suffrage-centennial-ida-b-wells-mosaic/
Former National Football League running back Jason Wright was named the first Black president of an NFL team on Monday, according to The Washington Post. He will be heading up the Washington Football Team.
The hiring by team owner Daniel Snyder of the 38-year-old Wright, who rose quickly in the business world after getting an MBA at the University of Chicago and became a partner at McKinsey & Company, comes at a difficult time for a franchise that in past years was one league’s strongest.
Congratulations Jason Wright! @michaelstrahan talks one-on-one with the first-ever black @NFL team president who will lead @WashingtonNFL. https://t.co/6P7sdBJ5js pic.twitter.com/BKhd25EN8Y
— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 17, 2020
To quote the Washington Post:
The team has had eight losing seasons in the last 11 years; it recently dropped its 87-year-old name, which is considered a racial slur, under pressure from sponsors; it has commissioned an investigation of its corporate culture after The Washington Post published a story detailing allegations of sexual harassment and verbal abuse; and Snyder’s three minority partners want to sell their roughly 40 percent stake in the team.
Yet Wright, who has lived in the Washington area since 2013, said he understands what waits for him when he takes over the team’s business operations next week.
“A lot of the high-stakes stuff that you see in and around the club at this time is something that I’m quite familiar with,” he said. “Hopefully, having not grown up in [Washington’s] front office allows me to bring some catalytic thinking. It’s the same reason organizations bring in people externally — to push the thinking, to have new, creative ways of thinking about things [and] maybe be a bit disruptive.”
