Jahvaris Fulton has a great opportunity on his hands. The older brother of Trayvon Martin is currently serving as a congressional intern for Florida Representative Frederica Wilson. Her office confirmed the news to NBC. Fulton, according to his Twitter page, attends Florida International University in Miami, FL.
Wilson’s office also said that Fulton is a part of the 5000 Roll Models of Excellence Project. The project, founded by Wilson 20 years ago, is a drop out prevention and mentoring program that serves the needs of at-risk boys in Miami-Dade schools. Good look to the young Mr. Fulton. It would be great if both he and Rachel Jeantel ended up working in law enforcement, hopefully fighting the injustices that were so evident in his brother’s case.
article by Veronica Wells via madamenoire.com
Posts tagged as “Miami”
DAYTONA BEACH — As the lights went out and his fellow students settled into their dorms, Joshua Williams would store two duffel bags of belongings in a friend’s room and disappear into the darkness.
He would leave the secure surroundings of the Bethune-Cookman University campus and head across the International Speedway Boulevard bridge and walk, sometimes all night. In the early morning hours, he would sneak into the lobby at the Bronson Hall dorm and sleep a few hours on a couch as if he lived there.
“I would go down to the beach sometimes,” he recalled. “Sometimes I would just take any direction and get lost and try to find my way back — I would just walk.”
Williams, 23, who is graduated last Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, was homeless for most of his first three years at the school but too proud to tell anyone.
But just like on his nightly walks, he always found his way. He survived on handouts, slept in empty trucks or on a couch at the apartments of classmates who thought he just didn’t want to go home after a late-night study session.
Remembering the poverty, drug dealers and random shootings he’d seen growing up near Miami, he knew he was on the right path. At school, he would find family, a sense of purpose and even win the title of Mr. Bethune-Cookman University and become the first student to organize a scholarship — but first he had to find a place to sleep.
“Before the sun comes up, I would make sure I was somewhere to lay down,” Williams remembered. “I knew I was homeless, but I said to myself I’d rather be in Daytona homeless trying to go to school than ever go back to Miami.”
NO PLACE TO LIVE
Williams arrived at B-CU in the fall of 2008 with $3,000 he saved from working at a gas station in Miami. He knew it wasn’t enough but felt confident. Then he found out tuition, room and board ran about $10,000 a semester. Williams wasn’t about to let that stop him.
“I would go down to the beach sometimes,” he recalled. “Sometimes I would just take any direction and get lost and try to find my way back — I would just walk.”
Williams, 23, who is graduated last Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, was homeless for most of his first three years at the school but too proud to tell anyone.
But just like on his nightly walks, he always found his way. He survived on handouts, slept in empty trucks or on a couch at the apartments of classmates who thought he just didn’t want to go home after a late-night study session.
Remembering the poverty, drug dealers and random shootings he’d seen growing up near Miami, he knew he was on the right path. At school, he would find family, a sense of purpose and even win the title of Mr. Bethune-Cookman University and become the first student to organize a scholarship — but first he had to find a place to sleep.
“Before the sun comes up, I would make sure I was somewhere to lay down,” Williams remembered. “I knew I was homeless, but I said to myself I’d rather be in Daytona homeless trying to go to school than ever go back to Miami.”
NO PLACE TO LIVE
Williams arrived at B-CU in the fall of 2008 with $3,000 he saved from working at a gas station in Miami. He knew it wasn’t enough but felt confident. Then he found out tuition, room and board ran about $10,000 a semester. Williams wasn’t about to let that stop him.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A white Steinway grand piano salvaged from musician Fats Domino’s home after Hurricane Katrina has been restored and will be the centerpiece of an exhibit in New Orleans’ French Quarter. The piano was damaged after water poured through a broken levee during the August 2005 storm, flooding Domino’s home in the Lower 9th Ward. Its restoration came through $30,000 donated to the Louisiana Museum Foundation.
The largest gift of $18,000 came from Allan Slaight, a retired music producer in Miami. Other donations came from Sir Paul McCartney, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Tipitina’s Foundation. The piano was to be unveiled Thursday at the Old U.S. Mint, now a museum in the French Quarter. It will be part of the Louisiana State Museum’s music exhibition opening in 2014 but separately will go on display at the Mint in June. A second Steinway piano belonging to Domino is on permanent display at the Presbytere Museum in the exhibition “Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond.”
“Fats Domino is a seminal figure in American music, and he will have a prominent place in the coming Louisiana music exhibit,” said Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, who oversees the Louisiana State Museum. “His beautiful grand piano, fully restored, will serve as the perfect symbol for Louisiana’s resilient nature and ever-evolving musical heritage.”
Born in New Orleans in 1928, the pianist, singer and songwriter sold more than 65 million records between 1950 and 1963, made Billboard’s pop chart 77 times and its rhythm and blues chart 61 times. Katrina tore into Louisiana and Mississippi on Aug. 29, 2005. Flooding from storm surge and broken levees washed over an estimated 80 percent of New Orleans.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press; article by Stacey Plaisance via thegrio.com
LeBron James is getting his fourth Most Valuable Player award — and the only mystery left is whether the vote was unanimous. The Miami Heat star will be introduced Sunday as the award winner, according to a person familiar with the results and who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the league has not publicly announced the result. James will become the fifth player with at least four MVP awards, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.
No one has ever swept every first-place vote in the NBA’s MVP balloting. After the season he had, James could be the first. “I don’t know who else you’d vote for,” Heat forward Chris Bosh said Friday. “No offense to everybody else, but that’s just how good he has played this year.”
James averaged 26.8 points, 8.0 rebounds and 7.3 assists this season, shooting a career-best 56 percent. It was absolutely no surprise that he won the award, and given the timetable for Miami’s next game — the Heat don’t open Eastern Conference semifinal play until Monday night against Brooklyn or Chicago — it had been widely assumed for several days that Sunday would be the day.
Barrington Irving , a 23-year-old Jamaican-born pilot, at a news conference at Opa-locka Airport Wednesday, June 27, 2007, ending a three-month journey he said would make him the youngest person to fly around the world alone. (Alan Diaz/AP)
This Black History Month, NPR’s “Tell Me More” is taking a look at African Americans in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) who are inspiring future generations.
Today, Barrington Irving shares how his sky high dreams became a reality. A chance encounter in his parents’ bookstore put him on a path that would make him the youngest person and first African American to fly solo around the world.
Barrington Irving remembers a man walking into the store dressed in a pilot’s uniform. The man asked whether Irving might consider a future in aviation. “I immediately just said to him, I don’t think I’m smart enough to do it,” Irving remembers. “Then I asked him how much money he made and after he answered that question, I took an interest in aviation.”
MIAMI – An African-American has been selected to lead the Miami-Dade Police Department. County Mayor Carlos Gimenez made a formal announcement Friday morning during a press conference.
The new director, J.D. Patterson Jr., was one of six candidates in the running for the county’s most senior cop. He has been the department’s acting head since November.
The mayor had whittled down the applicants to six possible successors following the early retirement of director Jim Loftus last October. All of the finalists came from within the department.
Patterson, a 28-year veteran of the department, has risen through the ranks from patrolman to assistant director and now this latest post as director. The 52-year-old has overseen a variety of units including auto theft, sexual batteries, and internal affairs.
Mickalene Thomas: Qusuquzah, Une Trés Belle Négresse 2, part of the 2012 Art Basel
The 11th annual art carnival known as Art Basel Miami Beach is set to kick off next week and will feature Art Africa Miami as its cultural hub. The Miami Beach Convention Center will be hosting the showcase for more than 50 contemporary artists from the global African Diaspora from Dec. 6 to 9. Typically, Art Basel (which was founded in 1970) pulls from more than 250 leading art galleries from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, exhibiting modern artworks by more than 2,000 artists. Until 2011, when Neil Hall — owner of TheUrbanCollective’s Art Africa Miami — stepped in, the main show hadn’t had black galleries represented.
Tarell Alvin McCraney (“The Brothers Size”) will direct and adapt a new production of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” as part of a collaboration among the Public Theater, GableStage in Miami and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Public announced on Monday. The play will have its premiere at the Stratford-Upon-Avon home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where Mr. McCraney is an artistic associate, in November 2013, before being staged in Miami in January 2014 and later that month at the Public.
In addition to directing the production, Mr. McCraney edited the text, reordered the scene structure and relocated the play to “the late 1700s against the backdrop of Saint-Domingue, on the eve of the Haitian Revolution against the French,” according to a news release. Casting will take place in London, New York and Miami, Mr. McCraney’s hometown.
A 2007 graduate of Yale, Mr. McCraney has also written the trilogy “The Brother/Sister Plays,” “Wig Out” and other plays, including “Head of Passes,” which will have its premiere in Chicago next year.
The production will be the latest collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company and a New York stage. In 2011 the company had a residency at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. In March 2013 its production of “Matilda the Musical,” based on the Roald Dahl children’s book and now running in London, is to begin performances on Broadway.
article by Erik Piepenburg via nytimes.com
Dwyane Wade attends the Night on the RunWade For Wades World Foundation at Moore Building on September 27, 2012 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by John Parra/WireImage)
NBA champion Dwyane Wade has hosted his first fashion fundraiser Thursday evening in Miami for his philanthropic organization, Wade’s World Foundation. A Night on the RunWade included live performances, a scrumptious three-course dinner, and a fashion show featuring clothing from the likes of Dsquared2, Versace and The Webster. The Miami Heat player made his catwalk debut and wooed the audience with a backward somersault as he walked the runway.
NBC Miami – The Dade County Federal Credit Union opened its doors at Booker T. Washington High School Tuesday and put the students in charge. “These students are actually manning the credit union during lunch and after school,” said Principal William Aristide. “They have the opportunity to interact with their schoolmates, parents and people in the community.”