The premiere of A+E Networks’ four-night Roots reboot logged 5.3 million viewers across History, A&E and Lifetime on Memorial Day. The first installment, which aired simultaneously on the three networks, also got repeated two more times over the course of the evening, to cume a total of 8.5M viewers.
Source: ‘Roots’ Ratings: Reboot Clocks Cable’s Biggest Miniseries Opening Crowd In 3 Years | Deadline
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article by James Poniewozik via nytimes.com
The original mini-series “Roots” was about history, and it was history itself. Airing on ABC in January 1977, this generational saga of slavery was a kind of answer song to the 1976 Bicentennial celebration of the (white, often slave-owning) founding fathers. It reopened the books and wrote slaves and their descendants into the national narrative.
But as an event, it was also a chapter in that story. It shaped and was shaped by the racial consciousness of its era. It was a prime-time national reckoning for more than 100 million viewers. As a television drama, it was excellent. But as a television broadcast, it was epochal.
The four-night, eight-hour remake of “Roots,” beginning Memorial Day on History, A&E and Lifetime, is largely the same story, compressed in some places and expanded in others, with a lavish production and strong performances. It is every bit as worthy of attention and conversation. But it is also landing, inevitably, in a very different time.
Viewers who watched “Roots” four decades ago have since lived with racial narratives of moving forward and stepping back. They’ve seen America’s first black president elected and a presidential candidate hesitate to disavow the Ku Klux Klan.
So in timing and spirit, this is a Black Lives Matter “Roots,” optimistic in focusing on its characters’ strength, sober in recognizing that we may never stop needing reminders of whose lives matter.
The first new episode, much of it shot in South Africa, looks stunning, another sign of the cultural times. Kunta Kinte (Malachi Kirby, in the role made famous by LeVar Burton) is now not a humble villager but the scion of an important clan, and his home — Juffure, in Gambia — a prosperous settlement. Kunta is captured by a rival family and sold into slavery to a Virginian (James Purefoy), by way of a harrowing Middle Passage.
Mr. Kirby’s Kunta is a more regal and immediately defiant character than Mr. Burton’s. But his tragedy is the same: He rebels but fails and is beaten into accepting his slave name, Toby. The name — the loss of identity — is as much a weapon as the whip. As the overseer who beats him puts it: “You can’t buy a slave. You have to make a slave.”
Kunta stops running, but he preserves his traditions, including the practice of presenting a newborn baby to the night sky with the words, “Behold, the only thing that is greater than you.”
That theme of belonging to something larger, of the ancestral family as a character in itself, is essential to “Roots.” Although Alex Haley fictionalized the events of his novel on which the mini-series is based, his story offered black Americans what slavery was machine-tooled to erase: places, dates, names, memories. And that focus keeps the ugliness — the racial slurs, the gruesome violence — from rendering this series without hope. A person may live and die in this system, but a people can survive it.
Still, the individual stories remain heartbreaking, even in small moments, as when the slave musician Fiddler (a soulful Forest Whitaker) recognizes a Mandinka tune he overhears Kunta singing. He’s moved — and, it seems, a little frightened by what the recognition stirs in him. As much as he’s worked to efface his heritage as a survival strategy, it lingers, a few notes haunting the outskirts of his memory.
Kunta’s daughter, Kizzy (E’myri Lee Crutchfield as a child, Anika Noni Rose as an adult), is teased with the possibility of a better life; she grows up friends with the master’s daughter and learns to read. But she’s sold to Tom Lea (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a struggling farmer who rapes and impregnates her. Rape — there are several assaults in this series — is another weapon against identity, another way you make a slave. Ms. Rose burns with Kizzy’s determination to hang on to her sense of self.
article by Carolyn M. Brown via blackenterprise.com
The first annual Detroit Startup Week, powered by Chase, kicked off in May featuring over 100 events with some 2,500 participants attending free activities over the course of five days. Detroit’s inaugural Startup Week is expected to be largest first-year event in the global brand’s six-year history.
Ten learning tracks will be offered to entrepreneurs at all levels: technology, entrepreneurship 101, mobility, music, food-preneurship, art+design, civic innovation, neighborhood collaboration, social entrepreneurship, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
“Our city is unlike any other, with both ingenuity and a welcoming spirit, brilliance and grit, and opportunities abound. Detroit Startup Week is designed to glue together those opportunities, celebrate what’s already working, and lay the groundwork for what’s to come,” notes Kyle Bazzy, lead organizer.
“Entrepreneurs are playing an invaluable role in Detroit’s comeback,” adds Jennifer Piepszak, CEO of Chase Business Banking, whose firm has committed $100 million over five years to Detroit’s economic recovery. “Detroit Startup Week is a great opportunity to recognize small businesses’ importance to the city’s recovery and to ensure they gain access to the necessary resources to support and grow.”
To read more, go to: http://www.blackenterprise.com/small-business/first-ever-detroit-startup-week-helps-black-business-hopefuls/
article via jbhe.com
Shalisha and Shonda Witherspoon are identical twins. They dress alike every day and both recently graduated from the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University in Miami. They also had identical grade point averages of 3.95, which was the best GPA of any graduating student in the College of Engineering and Computing. The sisters also earned minor degrees in Japanese language and literature.
The sisters will stay on at FIU to pursue master’s degrees and to work as graduate assistants for Professor Naphtali Rishe in the High Performance Database Research Center.
Professor Rishe stated that “those two ladies are extraordinarily responsible. They are very smart, they have great attention to detail, they are always reliable. Any project they are asked to do, it’s done perfectly. They are experts in geographic data analytics. They manipulate very large big data sets, and they have excelled. They have a great career path in front of them.”
The sisters’ ultimate goal is to move to Japan and start their own software engineering business together.
article by Breanna Edwards via theroot.com
When Michael Tertsea was 14, he was offered the opportunity to get an education and play basketball at the John Carroll School in Bel Air, Maryland. To pursue his dreams, he left his village in Nigeria and his mother, the Washington Post reports.
Four years later, the towering 6-foot-10 teen, who has received a full scholarship to play Division 1 basketball at the University of Rhode Island, was set for graduation and holding on to hopes of making it to the NBA so that he would be able to bring his mother to the United States.
As it turns out, Tertsea’s classmates were one step ahead of him. They had decided that his mom, Felicia Ikpum, should be here for his big day and raised money to fly her all the way to the U.S. to see her son, whom she hasn’t seen in four years, graduate.
According to the Post, the amazing gesture was meant to be a surprise, but Ikpum let the secret slip in one of her weekly phone calls with her son. However, Tertsea was still in awe when he finally got to see her arrive at the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on May 20 and give her a hug.
“I was so happy to see her,” Tertsea said. “I’ve changed a lot … she’s been amazed at the person I’ve become.”
The senior class had successfully pulled together some $1,600 for the trip, while a school coordinator worked with Ikpum to make sure she could get her visa on time. When it was finally confirmed, the school’s faculty put up another $500 to pay for the trip.
According to the Post, Ikpum had to travel some 12 hours to Lagos, Nigeria, to board her flight to London, from where she would then fly to Baltimore. It was Ikpum’s first time on an airplane.
Mother and son have been enjoying each other’s company since her arrival last week, the Post reports. Ikpum had pasta for the first time and is in awe of her son’s life in the U.S., from the paved highways to the computerized school her son attends. Tertsea plans to take her to Washington, D.C., to see the monuments and the White House before she returns to Nigeria next week. He also plans to take her to Ocean City, Md., to walk the boardwalk and see the beach, and even to Baltimore to see the National Aquarium.
Tertsea, according to the Post, is thankful for his friends for making his graduation so special. He said that the best part of his life in the U.S. is “seeing a lot of people who show love and care towards me.”
To read more and see video, go to: http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/05/classmates-pay-for-teens-mom-to-fly-from-nigeria-to-baltimore-to-attend-his-graduation/?utm_content=buffera63eb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
article by Valerie Rice via okmulgeenews.net
While other graduates prepare for graduation day, Okmulgee High School senior Micah McDade was preparing for much more. Born with cerebral palsy since birth, McDade has had a lifetime of obstacles, numerous surgeries to overcome and hours upon hours of physical therapy. He never gave up on his path to someday do what comes naturally to most everyone else…walk.
Though he has been told by doctors it may never happen, Micah believes with will, determination and the power of God, all things are possible. On the night of his high school graduation May 20, Micah proved this.
Unbeknownst to his friends and classmates, behind the scenes Micah was working harder than ever to achieve his goal and he picked a very poignant day in his life to show the world. Micah was pushed in his wheelchair to the graduation stage in Harmon Stadium. With shock and surprise, his graduating class and the whole audience realized what he was about to attempt. Yes, Micah stepped out onto the stage. There was barely a dry eye in the audience as the crowds stood and cheered him on every step of the way.
Micah made his first walk publicly across the graduation stage that night along with his class of 2016 and accepted his high school diploma.
His parents Mark and Anisa McDade said they couldn’t be prouder. They stood that night along with the crowd, with tears of joy streaming from their eyes.
Cerebral Palsy is a neurological disorder that appears during infancy and early childhood, and affects body movement, coordination and balance. McDade, who endured multiple surgeries and countless hours of physical therapy, has been practicing for sometime to be ready for this moment.
To see McDade’s moment, watch below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDbV76kSqtc&w=560&h=315]
article by Hailey Wallace via blackenterprise.com
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has announced that Eric Holder is set to join the organization’s National Board of Directors.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has announced that Eric Holder is set to join the organization’s National Board of Directors.
Appointed by President Obama in 2009, Holder was the first black attorney general of the United States. During his tenure under the Obama administration, Holder prioritized voting rights and criminal justice reform.
Holder’s connections to the Legal Defense Fund run deep. The former attorney general interned for the LDF in 1974 after his first year at Columbia Law. Last year, Holder received the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award, which the LDF calls its “highest honor.”
Current LDF President, Sherrilyn Ifill, has spoken highly of Holder. “I have been unequivocal in my admiration for Mr. Holder’s leadership. He presided over the restoration of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, launched the groundbreaking criminal justice reforms of President Obama, and confronted the challenges in Ferguson, Missouri, with tremendous sensitivity during a volatile time in our nation,” Ifill said.
In a statement announcing his appointment, the LDF praised Holder for his ‘Smart on Crime’ initiative, which called for “major changes to drug sentencing, the release of elderly prisoners and a decreased length of non-violent crime sentences, were bold measures that will continue to have a major impact on African American communities and are emblematic of LDF’s vision of justice.”
article by Rich Schapiro via nydailynews.com
After 67 years, two prison stints and so many arrests he’s lost count, David Norman, a former Harlem drug dealer, graduated from Columbia University as the oldest member of his class.
Norman shed his dark past for a cap and gown Wednesday after earning his long-awaited bachelor’s degree in philosophy. “It’s always possible to pursue your dreams,” Norman told the Daily News.
Norman’s extraordinary journey from the gritty streets of Harlem to the gleaming lawns at Columbia was studded with obstacles. His decades-old battle with substance abuse began early. Norman was drinking by age 11 and using heroin before his 15th birthday. His high school education lasted all of one day. Norman turned into a street hustler, slinging dope to satisfy his drug cravings. “I had a 35-year run with addiction,” he said.
Norman racked up a mile-long rap sheet filled with arrests for robbery and drug trafficking. His first stint upstate came in 1967. Nearly three decades later, he was charged with manslaughter after fatally stabbing a man in a street fight. The six years he spent in Mohawk Correctional Facility in upstate Rome proved life-changing.
He found joy in books. He started learning Hebrew. And he helped run a program that taught life skills to inmates preparing to return to society. “I had a moment of clarity in which I was able to recognize everything I had done at that point was fairly counter-productive and I needed to engage in some new activities and some new behaviors,” Norman said.
He walked out of prison in 2000 a changed man, eager to devote the second half of his life to raising up the most vulnerable.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow @lakinhutcherson)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a 7-1 decision issued today, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Foster v. Chapman, No. 14-8349, that Butts County, Georgia prosecutors violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution by rejecting two prospective African-American jurors because of their race in the capital murder trial of Timothy Foster, an African-American man who was convicted of capital murder in 1987 by an all-white jury.
Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion, which was joined by five of his colleagues, cited several pieces of evidence from the prosecutors’ files that supported the Court’s conclusion, including the first five names of a “Definite NO” list of six prospective jurors containing the only five African-Americans in the jury pool; multiple documents that identified the African-American prospective jurors by their race; and notes with “N” for “no” appearing next to the names of all the African-American members of the jury pool.
The Court also found that the race-neutral reasons the prosecutors offered for rejecting two of the African-American prospective jurors did not withstand scrutiny because (1) the prosecutors offered shifting rationales at different stages of the proceedings and (2) the reasons offered for excluding the African-American jurors did not result in the prosecutors rejecting white prospective jurors who had the same characteristics that led to the dismissal of the African-American jurors. The Court dismissed one of the prosecutors’ rationales as “[n]onsense.”
“The systematic exclusion of African-Americans from juries, particularly in serious criminal and capital cases, is a problem that we continue to see today,” stated Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The Lawyers’ Committee is pleased with the Supreme Court’s ruling which affirms the longstanding, fundamental constitutional principle that prospective jurors cannot be rejected because of their race. The evidence in this case was overwhelming that prosecutors were determined to try Mr. Foster, an African-American man, before an all-white jury. All defendants are entitled to a fair trial and excluding prospective jurors based on their race taints the process because it means that defendants are not tried by a jury inclusive of their peers.”
The Supreme Court’s decision reversed the Georgia Supreme Court and sent the case back to the Georgia Supreme Court for further proceedings consistent with the opinion. Though he did not join in Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion, Judge Alito concurred in the judgment. Justice Thomas dissented.