The Capitol building sits on a 59-acre park that includes hundreds of trees. The newest, a sycamore, was planted Monday, in memory of a black teenager who, nearly 60 years ago, was murdered for whistling at a white woman, helped spark the civil rights movement.
His name was Emmett Till.
On August 28th, 1955, the Chicago teen was taken by a group of white men from his great-uncle’s home while visiting Money, Miss. His shot and battered body was found three days later in a nearby river. Two white men were acquitted. At Till’s funeral, his mother Mamie proclaimed: Let the world see what they did to my boy.
Fifty thousand people filed by his open casket.
Documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson says Till’s murder served as a catalyst for supporters of civil rights.
“All those people who are about his age, you are about 14 in 1955, then became the front ranks of the civil rights movement,” said Nelson.
Perhaps this young American Sycamore Tree will help keep Till’s memory alive.
article by Elaine Quijano via cbsnews.com
Posts tagged as “Mississippi”
NEW YORK — Jimmy Ruffin, the Motown singer whose hits include What Becomes of the Brokenhearted and Hold on to My Love, died Monday in a Las Vegas hospital. He was 78.
Philicia Ruffin and Jimmy Lee Ruffin Jr., the late singer’s children, confirmed Wednesday that Ruffin had died. There were no details about the cause of death.
Ruffin was the older brother of Temptations lead singer David Ruffin, who died in 1991 at age 50.
Jimmy Lee Ruffin was born on May 7, 1936, in Collinsville, Miss. He was signed to Berry Gordy‘s Motown Records and had a string of hits in the 1960s, including What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, which was a Top 10 pop hit. He had his second Top 10 hit, Hold on to My Love, in 1980.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thinking she’d never become a mom, single nurse Sara Gibbs decided to adopt the newborn girl abandoned on the doorstep of a Corinth, Mississippi, doctor’s office. Eighteen years later, Gibbs is sending her adoptive daughter, Janessa, to college.
“I was single. I worked night shift. I worked 12-hour-nights,” says Gibbs. “There was nothing in my life that had prepared me for a baby.”
Gibbs says she wasn’t even on the schedule for work that day, but she was called in and among one of the first responders. “I feel like it was divine intervention, it had to be, because I wasn’t even supposed to be there,” she says.
But with help from her pastor and her hospital friends, she found the courage to adopt Janessa. “She always tells me that whoever my mother is did it for her,” Janessa says. “She’s the best mom ever,” she adds of Gibbs. “She’s always been my mom.”
Janessa heads to college in the fall.
To see video of this story, click here.
article by Teronda Seymore via clutchmagonline.com
“Good Morning America’’ co-anchor Robin Roberts will receive the 2014 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism from Arizona State University’s Cronkite School.
The university announced that Roberts will receive the award during an Oct. 6 luncheon in Phoenix, reports the AP. Past winners include Bernard Shaw, Tom Brokaw, Diane Sawyer, Jane Pauley, Brian Williams and Helen Thomas.
Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan says Roberts has made outstanding contributions to journalism and demonstrated great personal courage.
The Mississippi native, a graduate of Southeastern Louisiana University, faced public battles with breast cancer in 2007 and a bone marrow disorder in 2012. She worked for several radio and television stations and ESPN before being named co-anchor of ABC’s ‘‘Good Morning America’’ in 2005.
article via eurweb.com
In her first screen starring turn since the ferocious portrayal as an abusive mother in 2009′s Precious won her the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Mo’Nique has joined Isaiah Washington in the Patrik-Ian Polk-directed Blackbird, an adaptation of the novel by Larry Duplechan. Washington took the lead in this indie last fall off his starring role as the DC sniper in Blue Caprice earned him a Gotham Award nomination. The film just shot in Hattiesburg, MS.
Mo’Nique is also executive producer with her husband, Sidney Hicks, through Hicks Media. Newcomer Julian Walker plays the star singer in the church choir who feels like a misfit in his high school and struggles with his sexual awakening and the realization he is gay, something that doesn’t land well in a religiously conservative small Mississippi town. This coincides with his younger sister going missing and his parents splitting up. Mo’Nique plays another character who’s not going to win mother of the year awards: the youth’s heartbroken mom, who blames her son’s lifestyle revelation for his sister going missing. Washington plays his supportive father trying his best to help his son’s transition to manhood.
“Blackbird is a film about the choices people are forced to make as they struggle to figure out how to be themselves,” Hicks said. “And why should just being who you are be a struggle? Since Mo’Nique won the Oscar, we have received a flood of scripts, but nothing captured our attention until Isaiah — who we have a high level of respect for — sent us Blackbird. We became instant fans of Patrik-Ian Polk and knew we had to get behind this important film.”
Polk is producing through Tall Skinny Black Boy Productions, Keith Brown through Kbiz Entertainment, Washington through his Coalhouse Productions, and Carol Ann Shine. Terrell Tilford, Gary L. Gray, Kevin Allesee, Torrey Laamar, Nikki Jane and D. Woods round out the cast. Worldwide sales for the film are being handled by Hicks Media and attorney Ricky Anderson of Anderson & Smith.
article by Mike Fleming Jr. via Deadline.com
Natasha Trethewey, the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta, was reappointed to another term as Poet Laureate of the United States. She is also serving a four-year term as the poet laureate of the state of Mississippi.
James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, stated, “The Library and the country are fortunate Natasha Trethewey will continue her work as Poet Laureate. Natasha’s first term was a resounding success, and we could not be more thrilled with her plans for the coming year.”
Professor Trethewey is the author of four collections of poetry. Her collection, Native Guard, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize. Her fourth collection, Thrall, was published late last year by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is also the author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press, 2010).
A native of Gulfport, Mississippi, Professor Trethewey is a graduate of the University of Georgia. She holds a master’s degree from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
article via jbhe.com
The life of Medgar Evers was cut far too short 50 years ago, when the civil rights activist and war veteran was assassinated at just 37-years-old by a White supremacist. Although Evers would not live to see the Civil Rights Movement blossom, he helped plant early seeds of change in the Deep South that eventually took hold. Born in the small town of Decatur, Miss., on July 2, 1925, Evers was one of five children to his parents,James and Jesse.
The family lived on a small farm, while James worked in a nearby sawmill. Young Medgar would have to walk 12 miles to school each day, eventually earning his high school diploma. In 1943, Evers was drafted into the U.S. Army and fought in World War II in the countries of France and Germany. Discharged honorably in 1946 after earning the rank of sergeant, Evers entered into Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) to study business administration.
During his senior year, Evers would marry fellow student Myrlie Beasley (now Evers-Williams) and the couple went on to have three children, Darrell, Reena, and James. Evers graduated from Alcorn College in 1952. The young couple moved to Mound Bayou in Mississippi, and Evers worked for notable civil rights activist T.R.M. Howard as an insurance salesman. Evers also served as the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL). The RCNL staged boycotts in the state against gas stations that denied Black patrons from using their restrooms.
Former Ward 2 Councilman and civil rights activist Chokwe Lumumba, 65, is the new mayor of Jackson, Miss., winning the general election on Tuesday with 87 percent of the vote, reports Fight Back! News.
He will succeed Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr., who finished third in this year’s Democratic primary. Lumumba ran as a mainstream candidate who would represent all city voters. He defeated businessman Jonathan Lee in the Democratic primary runoff last month.
Lumumba spent part of the ’70s and ’80s as vice-president of the Republic of New Afrika, an organization which advocated for “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern United States and reparations for slavery. He wrote on Facebook Tuesday night, “Thank you, Jackson. None of this would be possible without faith and your support.” He went on to say, “This is the people’s victory. Together we will make Jackson rise!”
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press via thegrio.com
Achille Messac was named dean of the James Worth Bagley College of Engineering at Mississippi State University. He will be the first African-American dean in the university’s history.
Dr. Messac has been serving as distinguished professor and chair of the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Syracuse University in New York. Previously, he taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and Northeastern University in Boston.
Dr. Messac is a native of Haiti. He holds bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
article via jbhe.com
Jackson State University in Mississippi has announced that foster care youth from outside the state of Mississippi can now enroll at the university and pay substantially lower in-state tuition. Actress Vanessa Bell Calloway has established an endowed fund at Jackson State to help these students pay for college.
Many students from the foster care system have great difficulty paying for college because once they reach the age of 18, they lose government benefits from the foster care program. Jackson State President Carolyn Meyers stated, “We want to remove as many barriers as possible so that students from all walks of life get the opportunity to succeed.”
In-state tuition for certain population groups outside of Mississippi was made possible by a new state law enacted last year. In addition to the new program for foster youth, Jackson State offers in-state tuition packages to high achieving students from urban schools outside of Mississippi, STEM majors, children of military families, and children of alumni donors.
article by jbhe.com