article by Kimberly Wilson via thegrio.com
The boys of “Moonlight” will be getting their moment.
Both 13-year-old Alex Hibbert and 12-year-old Jaden Piner, are slated to receive keys to the city of Miami Gardens, FL at this year’s Jazz in the Gardens Music Festival. The two students from Norland Middle School in Miami Gardens had starring roles in the Oscar-winning film “Moonlight,” with Alex playing young Chiron and Jaden playing Kevin, Chiron’s best friend.
“We think it’s a great opportunity for us to acknowledge what they’ve done at a young age, and tell them how proud we are of them,” shares Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver G. Gilbert III. “Because so often when you hear about young black kids, people don’t want to tell you the stories of these kids and areas that they excel in,” continues Mayor Gilbert. “We aren’t talking about them most times. Most times we’re talking about young black boys in a negative context, so anytime we get an opportunity to tell them how extraordinary they are, we will do it. And ‘Jazz In The Gardens’ is the biggest stage that we can offer in the city.”
The key ceremony will be just one highlight of the highly-anticipated weekend. As the staple event each year in the city of Miami Gardens, Jazz in the Gardens Music Festival is back for its 12th year, and is quickly growing beyond its borders. Hosted again by veteran comedian Rickey Smiley, the city can expect more than 70,000 music lovers from all over the United States and Caribbean Islands.
The festival will take place this upcoming weekend, March 17-19 at Hard Rock Stadium, featuring performances by Jill Scott, Esperanza Spalding, Common, and LLCoolJ.
To read more, go to: Young stars of Oscar-winning “Moonlight” to receive keys to the city of Miami Gardens | theGrio
Posts tagged as “Florida”
article by Billie1225 via eurweb.com
Black Television News Channel (BTNC), the nation’s only African American news network, is announcing a multi-year carriage agreement with Charter Communications, a leading broadband communications company and the second largest cable operator in the United States.
Under the agreement, Charter Communications will launch BTNC to Spectrum TV subscribers in 14 of the top 25 African American TV markets. These markets include New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, Detroit, Boston, Tampa, Orlando, Cleveland, Charlotte, Birmingham, Norfolk, Raleigh-Durham, and New Orleans. BTNC now has carriage agreements with three of the four major subscription television providers.
Black Television News Channel
BTNC’s network operations center will be located on Florida A&M University’s campus in Tallahassee, Florida. The network operation center will be the first 4K ultra HD newsgathering and production infrastructure of its kind and will include a multimillion-dollar media training center for aspiring young black journalists.
BTNC’s news programming will employ a multi-platform approach that uses traditional linear cable and satellite service for television viewing while also introducing enhanced television services, social media applications, and e-commerce features. BTNC is expected to create more than 100 new jobs in its host city.
BTNC is the endeavor of J.C. Watts, Jr., former congressman from Oklahoma and broadcast and cable news veteran. BTNC’s programming mission is to provide intelligent programming that will inform, educate, inspire, and empower its African American audience.
To read full article, go to: http://www.eurweb.com/2017/02/black-television-news-channel-announces-agreement-with-charter-communications/
article by Camille Augustin via vibe.com
After a fruitful career on the hardwood, former Washington Mystics player, Tamara James, plans to take her talents back to her hometown.
The 32-year-old activist was recently named mayor of her old stomping grounds, Dania Beach, Fla., Broward County’s “oldest community” the Miami Herald reports.
In a statement issued to the SunSentinel, James thanked her supporters for furthering her dreams of enacting change in her community. “I plan on being a voice for our residents, promoting smart economic growth and unifying us as a city… I’m looking forward to winning championships for the oldest city in Broward County.”
To read more, go to: http://www.vibe.com/2016/11/tamara-james-wnba-mayor-florida/
article by Angela Bronner Helm via theroot.com
Chris Bentley and Carlos Miller, two African-American men who have been friends since middle school, have started an innovative way to help the homeless of Palm Beach County, Fla. The two started a nonprofit—Live FRESH (Feeling Revitalized Encourages Sustainable Happiness)—and have launched a mobile shower facility, an air conditioned trailer equipped with six private shower/changing area rooms, to assist the area’s transient population.
The Palm Beach Post reports that the two chose showers specifically: “For us, that’s where dignity and self-respect starts … with the ability to stay clean and be presentable,” says Bentley. “Cleanliness is a fundamental need. We actually see it as basic human right and because the homeless population can be hard to reach, we knew we would have to come to them and make ourselves available in areas they could easily reach.”
Miller writes on the website: “To see a human being, living in the United States of all countries, walk inside a store with apprehension over being shunned or offensive to the atmosphere due to their odor or disheveled state grabbed at the core of my heart.”About 250 people have participated since the program began March 31, reports the Post.
Each participant gets a packet with personal hygiene essentials including deodorant, towels, soap, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss. The organization was able to launch its fund with a $100,000 grant from Impact the Palm Beaches and smaller donations from other organizations.
To read full article and see video, go to: Longtime Friends Start Mobile Shower Facility for the Homeless in Fla.
The first cohort of graduates have received their degrees from the Executive MBA for Artists and Athletes program at the University of Miami in Florida. Some 30 current or former players in the National Football League, most of them African Americans, were among the program’s first graduating class.
Source: Thirty NFL Players Complete an Executive MBA Program at the University of Miami : The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
article by Lauren Victoria Burke via theroot.com
At noon Wednesday, members of the House shut it down—all the way down.
In a historic act of protest, Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives refused to observe the regular order of the House, staging a sit-in protest over the lack of legislation on gun control.
The protest Wednesday occurred after House Republicans ignored several demands from House Democrats to take action on guns after 49 people were murdered in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub June 12. Their first demand came during a moment of silence for the victims of the mass shooting after Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) attempted to ask Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) if action on gun-related measures was possible. Ryan gaveled Clyburn down.
Wednesday’s effort was led by civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and featured several members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have had to deal with continuing gun violence in their districts. The group included Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), who represents parts of Detroit; Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.); and several others.
“This is the right thing to do, when you look at the polling data and it shows that 90 percent of the American public says we should not allow terrorists to be able to walk in a store and buy a gun and kill 50 people,” former Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) told The Root steps away from the House floor. “We don’t lose on this. The Congressional Black Caucus did lead this.”
article by Samara Lynn via blackenterprise.com
Comcast and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today announced a joint effort to deliver Internet access to public housing in Florida’s Miami-Dade County and the cities of Nashville, Philadelphia, and Seattle.
The program is called Internet Essentials. It includes high-speed Internet service with download speeds up to 10 Mbps, a free Wi-Fi router, access to free digital literacy training, and the option to purchase a computer for less than $150.
The initiative is part of the President Obama and HUD ConnectHome program to extend affordable broadband access to families living in HUD-assisted housing.Today’s announcement marks the eighth time in five years Comcast has expanded eligibility for the program in the company’s efforts to aid in closing the digital divide.
Initially, Internet Essentials was offered to families with children in the National School Lunch Program. It was then expanded to those with children in the reduced price school lunch program. Since, Comcast has expanded the program to include families with children in parochial, private, charter, and cyber schools, as well as students who are home-schooled.
Last year, Comcast created a pilot program to offers the service to low-income seniors and low-income community college students.
Source: Comcast and HUD to Provide Internet Access to Public Housing
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
Walt Disney World Resorts, in conjunction with Essence Magazine and comedian Steve Harvey, recently hosted its 9th Annual Disney Dreamers Academy in Orlando, Florida. After selecting from thousands of applications, Disney rewarded 100 U.S. high school students and their chaperones with a four-day seminar (March 3-6) geared towards inspiring, exposing and guiding them on how to achieve their dreams.
After kicking off the long weekend leading a parade down Main Street in the Magic Kingdom and being welcomed by Walt Disney World President George Kalogridis, Walt Disney World Vice President and Executive Champion Tracey Powell, Essence Editor-At-Large Mikki Taylor, gospel singer Yolanda Adams and host Steve Harvey, the Dreamers are immersed in intensive sessions with motivational speakers such as Jonathan Sprinkles and Capital Prep School Founder and Principal Dr. Steve Perry to help them understand how to overcome obstacles, learn from failures and how to work hard to make their dreams become reality.
Additionally, the Walt Disney World theme parks become vibrant “classrooms,” where Dreamers participate in hands-on, intensive “Deep Dive” workshops led by industry experts. Covering a myriad of career paths ranging from animation to imagineering to marine biology, the Deep Dives do more than expose students to a career choice; they bring to life an opportunity that otherwise might seem distant or impossible.
Celebrities such as MC Lyte, Tamera Mowery, Loni Love, Lance Gross, Lamman Rucker, Silento and film producer Will Packer also gave their personal time and shared their knowledge with the Dreamers on what it takes to gain and maintain an unconventional career.
“It has literally been so amazing,” said Dreamer Deja Kirk from Oklahoma City, who is interested in becoming an elasmobranchologist (a marine biologist who specializes in sharks and rays). “I’m not one to be corny at all, I’m usually a very stoic person, so for me to be so excited about this is really huge. Even if you don’t know what you’re going to do, just getting the general exposure to everything I feel like not only am I prepared to pursue my career, if I were to change it in any way I still have a really good foundation for whatever I want to do.”
This week, Good Black News will be bringing you even more stories from this unique event, including spotlights on several Dreamers, perspectives from their parents, as well as interviews with some of the dedicated professionals who gave their time and wisdom to DDA this year.
To learn more about Disney Dreamers Academy, go to: https://www.disneydreamersacademy.com or https://www.facebook.com/DisneyDreamersAcademy/
She was born in Notasulga, Ala., but she didn’t like the way her story started, so she rewrote it and claimed Eatonville, Fla., as her birthplace instead. She wasn’t too partial to 1891, the year her mother delivered her, so she remixed it, and for the rest of her life, she took liberties with the mathematics of her age, knocking as many as 10 years off if the notion felt good to her.
Zora Neale Hurston was a master of creative invention and reinvention, from the personal details of her own life to her artistic catalog, which included four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, and dozens of short stories, essays, articles and plays. She was an original black girl unboxed.
It’s appropriate today, on what would be Zora’s 125th birthday, to honor the social and cultural freedoms she cleared for black female writers who stand on her platform and use our words to tell our own stories instead of allowing them to be told to and for us. She made it OK to be bold and conflicted, to wrestle with our identities and explore our differences as we chip away at the monolith, even to sometimes contradict ourselves and swerve, midaction, without apology.
Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor, both literary geniuses, have credited Hurston as an inspiration, as do others, the famous and not so famous among us, who strip away pretense and dig into our personal wells of realness when we sit at a keyboard. We awe at the musicality of her prose and absorb what she said even in between the lines. This is what Hurston taught us, the black women creatives who came up in her shine.
You don’t need anybody’s permission to love who you uniquely are.
It’s appropriate today, on what would be Zora’s 125th birthday, to honor the social and cultural freedoms she cleared for black female writers who stand on her platform and use our words to tell our own stories instead of allowing them to be told to and for us. She made it OK to be bold and conflicted, to wrestle with our identities and explore our differences as we chip away at the monolith, even to sometimes contradict ourselves and swerve, midaction, without apology.
Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor, both literary geniuses, have credited Hurston as an inspiration, as do others, the famous and not so famous among us, who strip away pretense and dig into our personal wells of realness when we sit at a keyboard. We awe at the musicality of her prose and absorb what she said even in between the lines. This is what Hurston taught us, the black women creatives who came up in her shine.
You don’t need anybody’s permission to love who you uniquely are.
“My mother had a number of books from the canon of black women’s literature. Among them was I Love Myself When I Am Laughing … and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive, Alice Walker’s anthology of Hurston’s work. Just the book cover and the quote did so much to shift my thinking of what it means to be a woman. Her whole damn self is inspiring, a woman who loved herself at a time when self-hatred was expected of her. I find her to be contrary, instructive, insightful, bold and a perfect guide of who I can be if I dare.” —Writer and painter Kiini Ibura Salaam
Be audacious whenever appropriate, which is pretty much always.
Be audacious whenever appropriate, which is pretty much always.
“I first read Their Eyes Were Watching God in college and fell in love. The lyrical prose, dynamic black female protagonist, fresh use of humor and powerful affirmation of sisterhood all bewitched me. Zora’s personal narrative, however, scared me. I aspired to write, had already started publishing some of my work, and the experience of silence and invisibility both in Zora’s work and in her life freaked me out. I was inspired by her resistance to erasure, her insistence on voiced expression, but the last years of her life seemed so tragic. I was haunted by fear of a similar kind of dispossession, even as my own writing took off after college and graduate school. Then I read Wrapped in Rainbows by Valerie Boyd. She helped me understand Zora wasn’t dispossessed at all. She was free. And she could free me.” —Author Eisa Nefertari Ulen
Your talent will stretch across as many mediums and platforms as you will go.
“She refused to be pigeonholed into a single genre and craft. She was an amazing storyteller and cultural curator, as interested in collecting stories as she was in crafting them. Our creative lives are similar in that we study our people, culture and spirituality and write about them in plays, novels, stories and essays.” —M. Shelly Conner, Ph.D., writer and English instructor at Loyola University Chicago
You can’t do black womanhood one way, and you can’t do it wrong.
You can’t do black womanhood one way, and you can’t do it wrong.
“I’ve often said Zora Neale Hurston saved my life. My mother gifted me her copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God when I was 16 and immersed in agoraphobic depression. Reading Zora kept me afloat and made me realize my life would and could be bigger than my sorrows. Because she wrote so powerfully and honestly and amazingly about love and oppression and navigating turmoil from the perspective of a black woman, I wield my pen as a sword to cover the same terrain.” —Evette Dionne Brown, freelance culture, race and gender writer
Know that the minutiae of everyday life can be woven into literary tapestry.
Know that the minutiae of everyday life can be woven into literary tapestry.
“Zora was the first writer to make me feel like I could tell a story that mattered, a story that people would listen to. Her words have so much power, she makes me feel like mine do, too.” —Author Shameka Erby
Say what you have to say in only the way you can say it.
Say what you have to say in only the way you can say it.
“Zora Neale Hurston was fearless. At a time when being black was frowned upon and many writers were hoping to appease white America, she reveled in our culture and wrote in its voice. Whenever I question my voice, or whether or not I should ‘tone it down’ for the ‘mainstream,’ I think of her, and I write.” —Britni Danielle, freelance journalist and novelist
Speak for the people who don’t have the opportunity to be heard.
Speak for the people who don’t have the opportunity to be heard.
“Her work was honest. She wrote based on her experiences with people and provided voice to the voiceless through her characters. She was a true ethnographer depicting working-class black folks through her writing. Like her, I hope to give voice to the women that I write about in my scholarly endeavors.” —VaNatta Ford, Ph.D., visiting professor of Africana studies at Williams College
Trust your own (unconventional) approaches.
“It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much influence Zora Neale Hurston’s life and work had on my own life and work as a young ethnographer. The more I learned about and read her lesser-known anthropological work on black folklore, the more I realized that she, too, struggled early on to find her voice in academia. But what made her a significant influence to me was the fact that she lived by her wits, intuition and imagination. She continued to document black life even when academics criticized her approach. She trusted herself.” —Tara L. Conley, ethnographer and doctoral candidate, Columbia University
Outfit yourself in resilience and perseverance.
Outfit yourself in resilience and perseverance.
“My heart breaks knowing she died in poverty, buried in an unmarked grave. And yes, I know the great Alice Walker found the grave years later and purchased a headstone. Her end-of-life story, however, reminds me that literary notoriety is fickle and arbitrary and, as African-American women writers, we can help redeem the final chapter of Zora Neale Hurston’s life by never giving up in word or deed. That’s how her life and writing inspire me. Never give up. Keep going. Don’t stop. Ever. Always.” —Author Patricia Raybon
High school students nationwide can now apply at DisneyDreamersAcademy.com to be among 100 selected to participate in the 2016 Disney Dreamers Academy with Steve Harvey and ESSENCE, the innovative, outside-the-classroom, educational mentoring program at Walt Disney World Resort.
Entering the search for its ninth class of Dreamers, Disney Dreamers Academy continues to hold true to its mission to inspire and fuel the dreams of teens, help them discover a world of possibilities and help them prepare for the future. Each year, students participate in hands-on, full-immersion workshops related to a variety of career paths, ranging from animation to zoology. Each participant learns important skills such as communication techniques, leadership values and networking strategies.
It all takes place in the very magical and creative setting of Walt Disney World Resort. Dreamers are taken both on stage and behind the scenes, where Disney theme parks become vibrant ‘classrooms,’ leading to career discoveries, the pursuit of dreams and fun memories to cherish for a lifetime.
Disney Dreamers are exposed to motivational speakers and celebrities who share their stories and provide insight on how to achieve success and DREAM BIG. Dreamers have the opportunity to cultivate relationships with other students from across the nation while they gain first-hand knowledge from Disney experts and world-renowned entrepreneurs and executives.
“We’re excited to welcome back Disney Dreamers Academy with Steve Harvey and ESSENCE for the ninth year,” said Tracey D. Powell, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts vice president of deluxe resorts and Disney Dreamers Academy executive champion. “This program stands out for its ability to motivate and inspire teens to think big and achieve their dreams. By applying for Disney Dreamers Academy, high school students from across the country are taking a step toward an experience that can change their lives.”
Applicants must answer essay questions about their personal stories and their dreams for the future. Students are selected based on a combination of attributes, including a strong character, positive attitude and determination to achieve their dreams.