The series chronicles the evolution of Black beauty and its impact on the fashion industry, the civil rights movement, the “Black is Beautiful” era and the influence on American culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fu2Prg0GTg
Supreme Models features trailblazers such as Iman and Bethann Hardison to superstar models Joan Smalls, IndyaMoore and Precious Lee with legends including Pat Cleveland, Roshumba Williams and Veronica Webb.
Anna Wintour, Chief Content Officer, Condé Nast and Global Editorial Director, Vogue, as well as Vogue European Editorial Director Edward Enniful, Vogue.com editor Chioma Nnadi and more also share personal stories of these boundary breaking women who set new standards in the worlds of beauty and fashion – from the 1960s to the unlimited potential of the digital age today.
Happy Monday, you all. It’s your friend and selector, Marlon West, back with another dose of fine music.
Earlier this month we lost jazz legend, Ramsey Lewis. He can be credited with extending the life of jazz on the pop charts with his cover of Dobie Gray’s “The ‘In’ Crowd.”
It spent 16 weeks on the Billboard Top 100 and rose as high as No. 5. The album spent 12 weeks in the top spot among best-selling R&B albums.
Throughout his decades-long career, Lewis was the maestro of jazz crossover. Ramsey Lewis’ trio included bassist Eldee Young and drummer Red Holt.
They received not only chart success with “The ‘In’ Crowd” but also cultural acclamation: the cut earned him the Grammy award for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance.
“Improvisation that should swing, have some forward motion to it, even if it’s a ballad, to have some movement about it. Where are you going to find that spontaneous improvisation in the moment except in jazz?” Lewis told Molly Murphy in a 2006 interview for the National Endowment For the Arts.
Lewis was born in Chicago on May 27, 1935 and grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project. He started taking piano lessons at a young age and played at church, where his father was choir director.
Throughout his life he always returned to his hometown and as a teacher and mentor. Here’s some of the best of Ramsey Lewis. Enjoy!
“See” ya next month! Just in time for a soulful and funky Halloween offering.
The College Board has announced it will begin offering an Advanced Placement(AP) African American Studies course at 60 high schools across the U.S. this fall.
The AP program, which traditionally gives high school students an opportunity to take college-level courses before graduation, currently covers 38 subjects, including U.S. government and politics, biology, chemistry, English, European History and art history.
The AP African American Studies course is the College Board’s first new offering since 2014, according to TIME, and the multi-disciplinary course will cover over 400 years of African American history, literature, civil rights, politics, the arts, culture and geography.
Though a pilot program currently, the aim is by the 2024-2025 school year for this AP offering to be the first course in African American studies for U.S. high school students that is considered rigorous enough to allow students to receive credit and advanced placement at colleges across the country.
The plan for an Advanced Placement course is a significant step in acknowledging the field of African American studies, more than 50 years after what has been credited as the first Black studies department was started after a student strike at San Francisco State College in 1968, said Henry Louis Gates Jr., a former chair of Harvard’s department of African and African American studies and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
“In the history of any field, in the history of any discipline in the academy, there are always milestones indicating the degree of institutionalization,” said Dr. Gates, who is a consultant to the project along with a colleague, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. “These are milestones which signify the acceptance of a field as being quote-unquote ‘academic’ and quote-unquote ‘legitimate.’”
Students will take a pilot exam but will not receive scores or college credit, according to the College Board.
Bank of America recently announced a new zero down payment, zero closing cost mortgage plan for first-time homebuyers, which will be available in certain markets, including African American and/or Hispanic-Latino neighborhoods in Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami.
What BofA is calling “The Community Affordable Loan Solution™” aims to help eligible individuals and families obtain an affordable loan to purchase a home.
“Homeownership strengthens our communities and can help individuals and families to build wealth over time,” said AJ Barkley, head of neighborhood and community lending for Bank of America. “Our Community Affordable Loan Solution will help make the dream of sustained homeownership attainable for more Black and Hispanic families, and it is part of our broader commitment to the communities that we serve.”
The Community Affordable Loan Solution is a Special Purpose Credit Program which uses credit guidelines based on factors such as timely rent, utility bill, phone and auto insurance payments. It requires no mortgage insurance or minimum credit score.
Individual eligibility is based on income and home location. Prospective buyers must complete a homebuyer certification course provided by select Bank of America and HUD-approved housing counseling partners prior to application.
This new program is in addition to and complements Bank of America’s existing $15 billionCommunity Homeownership Commitment™ to offer affordable mortgages, industry leading grants and educational opportunities to help 60,000 individuals and families purchase affordable homes by 2025.
According to the National Association of Realtors, currently there is a nearly 30-percentage-point gap in homeownership between White and Black Americans; for Hispanic buyers, the gap is nearly 20 percent. And the competitive housing market has made it even more difficult for potential homebuyers, especially people of color, to buy homes.
In addition to expanding access to credit and down payment assistance, Bank of America provides educational resources to help homebuyers navigate the homebuying process, including:
BetterMoneyHabits.com free financial education content, including videos about managing finances and how to prepare for buying a new home.
Bank of America Down Payment Center – site to help homebuyers find state and local down payment and closing cost assistance programs in their area. Bank of America participates in more than 1,300 state and local down payment and closing cost assistance programs.
Bank of America Real Estate Center – site to help homebuyers find properties with flags to identify properties that may qualify for Bank of America grant programs and Community Affordable Loan Solution™.
For more information, contact Bank of America at 1-800-641-8362.
Althea Gibson, the first Black tennis player to win a Grand Slam title, was honored in her hometown of Harlem, NY with a street renaming in her honor on what would have been her 95th birthday.
The intersection of West 143rd Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, where Gibson grew up, is now called Althea Gibson Way.
The ceremony took place last week in front of Gibson’s old apartment building on 143rd Street and was attended by Gibson’s family members, who were given a replica of the new street sign.
Born in 1927, Gibson was the daughter of sharecroppers in South Carolina who moved to Harlem in 1929. There, she was introduced to the Harlem River Tennis Courts in 1941, where she developed her skills.
Gibson won the French Open in 1956, and subsequently took home back-to-back Grand Slam singles titles at Wimbledon and the US Open in 1957 and 1958.
Happy Monday, you all. It’s your friend and selector, Marlon West.
I’ve been away for a while, and now I’m back. August 9th would have been the 59th birthday of Whitney Houston.
Sista was one of the biggest pop stars of all time. Her accomplishments as a performer were extraordinary, becoming the first artist to have seven consecutive singles hit number one, from “Saving All My Love for You” (1985) through “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” (1988). Her version of Dolly Parton‘s “I Will Always Love You” (1992) became the biggest hit single in rock history.
Whitney Houston and Whitney, her first two albums, each went diamond platinum. She followed them with a string of additional multi-platinum LPs including the likewise diamond-earning soundtrack for The Bodyguard.
Houston was able to handle stylish dance-pop, adult contemporary ballads, and slick contemporary R&B with equal dexterity.
The result was an across-the-board appeal that was matched by few artists of her era and helped her become one of the first Black artists to find success on MTV.
Over time, she developed a virtuosic singing style given over to swooping, flashy melodic embellishments. The shadow of Houston’s style and technique still looms large over nearly every pop and R&B diva to this day. Please enjoy this collection of the best of Whitney Houston.
Since 2020, West has been drawing and posting ink tributes on his social media of African-American people slain by police or targeted by racists, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland and Michael Brown, to name a few.
“For many of us Black nerds, Marvel’s characters are particularly relatable. They are often hated and hunted by the powers that be,” West said. “There isn’t a more American form of portraiture than black ‘inks’ over white, to honor those that faced this nation’s fear and loathing of the Black body.”
West has also posted ink tributes to civil rights leaders and protestors like John Lewis and Gloria Richardson Dandridge (seen below).
West, who is also a contributor to GBN (check out his prolific and eclectic Music Monday playlists on this site), recently did a Q&A with us to share more insight into the process and journey that led to his drawings and the upcoming exhibit:
GBN: When you started posting and sharing your drawings on social media, what was the response?
Marlon West: The response was very positive. They were met with surprise from many, as I had limited myself to drawing only effects and instructional drawovers for decades. It took being on lockdown, away from some of the best artists on the planet, and feeling the despair that so many of us did around George Floyd’s murder to move to draw what I initially thought would be four drawings. I’ve done more than 40.
Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)
When you decided who you were going to draw, how did you decide what image of them to use?
Almost all of them are based on photos that have been widely seen. Many are in fact selfies taken by the subjects themselves. It felt very intimate to draw them, staring into their eyes while I did so. It was often tear inducing to do so for the hours it took to do each one. But I found it cathartic to sit alone and try to honor each one.
Did you ever receive any feedback from any family or loved ones of your subjects?
A good friend knows Michael Brown Sr. I created, until this exhibit, the only physical copy of any of them to give to him. He was thankful, but understandably guarded.
How did the museum display of your work come about?
My friend and colleague reached out to the museum regarding them. They were very receptive to the idea. I am super flattered and honored. They are also leaning into presenting them in the comic style nature that I drew them.
Harvard University-based historian and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr. will be the editor-in-chief of Oxford’s new dictionary entitled the Oxford Dictionary of African American English.
This dictionary, slated to debut in 2025, will provide a comprehensive collection of words and phrases created and used by Black Americans, past and present.
Gates Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, announced the project officially in an interview with the New York Times.
“Just the way Louis Armstrong took the trumpet and turned it inside out from the way people played European classical music,” Gates Jr. said. “Black people took English and “reinvented it, to make it reflect their sensibilities and to make it mirror their cultural selves.”
“The bottom line of the African American people, these are people who love language.” I am proud to announce I will be the editor in chief for the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. Read more here: https://t.co/fUakIdNo45
— Henry Louis Gates Jr (@HenryLouisGates) July 21, 2022
“Words with African origins such as ‘ ‘goober,’ ‘gumbo’ and ‘okra’ survived the Middle Passage along with our African ancestors,” Gates Jr. said. “And words that we take for granted today, such as ‘cool’ and ‘crib,’ ‘hokum’ and ‘diss,’ ‘hip’ and ‘hep,’ ‘bad,’ meaning ‘good,’ and ‘dig,’ meaning ‘to understand ’— these are just a tiny fraction of the words that have come into American English from African American speakers … over the last few hundred years.”
Resources could also include books like “Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue: a Hepster’s Dictionary,” a collection of words used by musicians, including “beat” to mean tired; “Dan Burley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive,” published in 1944; and “Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner,” published in 1994.
Researchers can look to recorded interviews with formerly enslaved people, Salazar said, and to music, such as the lyrics in old jazz songs. Salazar said the project’s editors also plan to crowdsource information, with call outs on the Oxford website and on social media, asking Black Americans what words they’d like to see in the dictionary and for help with historical documentation.
“Maybe there’s a diary in your grandmother’s attic that has evidence of this word,” Salazar said.
In addition to word and phrase definitions, the Oxford Dictionary of African American English will also provide also where they came from and how they emerged.
“You wouldn’t normally think of a dictionary as a way of telling the story of the evolution of the African American people, but it is,” Gates said. “If you sat down and read the dictionary, you’d get a history of the African American people from A to Z.”
According to Variety.com, award-winning musical artist H.E.R. will play Belle in ABC’s upcoming hybrid special celebrating the 30th anniversary of Disney‘s animated musical classic Beauty and the Beast.
H.E.R. is a five-time Grammy Award winner, including last year’s Song of the Year Grammy for “I Can’t Breathe” inspired by George Floyd, from her 2021 album Back of My Mind.
In 2021, H.E.R. also won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Fight For You” from the film Judas and the Black Messiah.
“I can’t believe I get to be a part of the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ legacy,” H.E.R. said. “The world will see a Black and Filipino Belle! I have always wanted to be a Disney princess, and I get to work with two wonderful directors Hamish Hamilton and my favorite, Jon M. Chu. It is very surreal and I couldn’t be more grateful.”
Beauty and the Beastwas originally released in 1991 and achieved box office success as well as critical acclaim. In 1992, it became the first animated film to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, which helped motivate the creation of a separate Oscar category for animated films.
Although it didn’t win Best Picture that year, Beauty and the Beast won Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.
In addition to re-screening the film in its entirety, the special will also include live, never-before-seen musical performances and feature brand-new sets and costumes inspired by the story.
The special will air on ABC on Dec. 15 at 8pm and will stream the following day on Disney+.
H.E.R. will make her feature acting debut in the upcoming Warner Bros. adaptation of the Broadway musical version of The Color Purple.
According to the New York Times, just after noon today, Ketanji Brown Jackson took the judicial oath, becoming the first Black woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
Justice Jackson, 51, was confirmed in April, when the Senate voted 53 to 47 on her nomination. She has replaced Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, who she once clerked for. Breyer stepped down at the conclusion of the court’s current term.To quote nytimes.com:
Justice Jackson took both a constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, and a judicial oath, administered by Justice Breyer. The brief swearing in ceremony took place in the West Conference Room at the Supreme Court, before a small gathering of Judge Jackson’s family. Her husband, Patrick G. Jackson, held the Bible.
“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Judge Jackson said in April at a White House celebration following her confirmation. “But we’ve made it. We’ve made it. All of us.”
[To listen to GBN’s recent bonus podcast about Jackson’s life and career on our site and read the transcript, click here.To go to Apple Podcasts, click below:]
West, who is also a contributor to GBN (check out his prolific and eclectic Music Monday playlists on this site), recently did a Q&A with us to share more insight into the process and journey that led to his drawings and the upcoming exhibit:
