March 2018 by Black Business News Group

UPDATED ISSUE

Publisher's Message

Earl “Skip” Cooper, II Pubisher/Editor-In-Chief

s always, Black Business News appreciates your continued support. In this issue, we will be celebrating National Women’s History Month. The theme for this salute, is “Nevertheless, She Persisted: Honoring Women Who Fight All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.” Throughout this year, we acknowledge the contributions of outstanding women for their unrelenting and inspirational persistence, and for understanding that, by ﬁghting all forms of discrimination against women and girls, they have shaped America’s history and our future. In the words of the famous poet, Maya Angelou, “And

yet, I still rise.” The power women have wielded in being able to participate in voting was shown with respect to the Vietnam war; and more recently with Black women in Alabama voting against made a difference with their vote in defeating, Roy Moore in December 2017. Another example of the courage and strength demonstrated by African American women is Shirley Chisolm. Chisolm was the first African American woman elected to Congress in 1968; and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties in 1972. Her motto and title of her autobiography, “Unbossed and Unbought,” illustrated her outspoken advocacy for women and minorities during her seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. We see how the failed attempt to keep the voices of African American women and other women silent has failed. We see the proof of failed and dismantled discriminatory practices against women evidenced by the many women who have become successful business owners, entrepreneurs, politicians, educators, athletes and entertainers, astronauts, and their contributions by investing in the lives of their children, shaping many men and women to be positive role models and contributors to the African American culture, the U.S. and world. On a personal note, the contributions of women to our world at large have been more than profound. The world without the positive impact of women, we would have no mothers, grandmothers, aunts, nieces and daughters, sons, nephews, uncles, dads and grandfathers, with a commitment to raise their children who would later dedicate their lives to fair and equitable treatment of all people, regardless of color. Although discrimination has shown us the depravity of the human condition, likewise, women bring a much needed ray of light to our daily lives. They are willing to work shoulder-to-shoulder with men, and tend to be more willing to take a back seat for the greater good. I for one have benefited countless times from the help and wisdom that women bring to the table in our homes, community and business. Some notable women of noteworthy mention who have been fighters, advocates and overcomers in fighting discrimination against women and girls in the U.S., and in some cases globally, include: • All African American mothers who fought for fair treatment of their own children, and raised them to judge people by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin. • Congresswoman Maxine Waters is considered by many to be one of the most

Black Business News Group P.O. Box 43159 Los Angeles, CA 90043 USA 1-323-291-7819 Fax: 1-323-298-5064

www.blackbusinessnews.net PUBLISHER/EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Earl “Skip” Cooper, II

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Sarah Harris Dean L. Jones Phyllis Dixon

ENTREPRENEUR EDITOR Kim Anthony

ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Linda Ware

PRODUCTION MANAGER Narishima Osei

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dean Jones Linda Ware Ralph D. Sutton Timothy Lester, Jr. Veronica Hendrix Giavanna Foster P. Yvette Thomas Bene Uche Aman Williams LaSandra Stratton

GRAPHIC DESIGN Sarah Harris Tia Robinson

STORY EDITORS Wanda Flagg Jennifer Marie Hamilton

PHOTOGRAPHY Ian Foxx Sabir Narishima Osei

CONTENT ADMINISTRATOR La Sandra Stratton

LAYOUT/TYPESETTING Lion Communications Copyright © 2018 by Black Business News All Rights Reserved. The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein. 

see Publisher's Message on page 74 3  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

About

The mission of The Black Business News (BBN) is to inspire and inform public and private sector industry representatives on the importance of smart small business growth. As a versatile source of socioeconomic development activity news, the publications of the Black Business News Group (a division of the Black Business Association) impart current local, national and international industry and social trends and news affecting small businesses across the United States of America (USA), providing guides to greater access to financial capital, management efficiencies, business education, mentorship opportunities and social media networks. The goals of the Black Business News Group include: •

promoting USA-based black-owned business enterprises to a world wide audience.

•

oﬀering business growth enhancing information on education, exhibitioning, international trading, technology, industry trends, and more.

•

exploring major public and private sector contracting methods to educate black-owned and operated enterprises.

•

providing an aﬃrmative inﬂuence for emerging entrepreneurs by sharing innovative design and creative cultural content that exposes them to the history of black enterprises and urges them to participate in the USA’s future.

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advocating and promoting on behalf of black-owned businesses by promoting the need for expanding an economic foundation that supports an unfettered and self-sustained urban society with USA job creation and economic opportunity, where blacks work, live and operate viable business enterprises.

View back issues at: https:// issuu.com/blackbusinessnews

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March

Salute to Black Women March 24th

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Contents

Black Business News… 3

Publisher's Message

Government 7 8 9 10

Dental Health Act Passes House of Representatives The FCC’s Order Gutting Net Neutrality is now Oﬃcial — But the Fight is Just Getting Started Washington State has Passed Laws Protecting Net Neutrality Trump White House Quietly Issues Report Vindicating Obama Regulations

26 27

The Black Panther is the Beautiful One Black Panther, Energized my Weary Soul

Editorials/Perspectives 42 43 44 50 53 54 56

Baltimore Park Space Once Venerated Confederate Generals. Now it honors Harriet Tubman McDonald's is Flipping its Iconic Arches Upside Down in an Unprecedented Statement World of "Black" Women in Business Oldest Black-owned Travel Agency Helps Tourists 'Embrace' Africa THE CHISHOLM EFFECT: Black Women in American Politics in 2018 GQUAL: a Global Campaign to Promote Gender Parity in International Tribunals and Monitoring Bodies. Civil Rights Pioneer Viola Desmond will Take Her Place on Canada’s New $10 Bill

Community/Public Interest 85 86

Colin Kaepernick Lays Out Plan for $1,000,000 in Charitable Donations Kevin Durant Charity Foundation Funds College Track for $10,000,000

International 88 90 92

16 28 32 34 35 60 64 67

Trump Pushes Death Penalty for Some Drug Dealers Google's new YouTube Stories Feature lets you Swap out your Background Top Seven Questions that Investors Ask Startups & How to Handle Them Dropbox Inks Integration Pact with G Suite The 10 Hottest Coursera Courses Building a Safer Gun: Why Silicon Valley Won’t Back Safe Weapons Tech AMC Networks to Acquire Robert Johnson’s RLJ Entertainment in Deal Worth $60 Million Mailing List Accuracy Becomes More Stringent

Entertainment 20

Ramaphosa: 2018 is Nelson Mandela's Year African Stock Exchanges Dangote Donates N1.2 Billion to First Business School in the North to Bayero University, Kano

Columns 83 99

136 139 140

Take A Look! Shopping Gallery Books to Consider... BBA 2018 Master Planner Resource Vault

BBN Show Biz Buzz 5  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

THE WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH 2018 A PROCLAMATION

ur history is rich with amazing stories of strong, courageous, and brilliant women. Since America’s founding, women have played an integral part in American innovation and productivity, while simultaneously raising generations of lively children and providing leadership in their local communities. Time and time again, women have demonstrated resilience in the face of unprecedented challenges. America’s women have readily tackled the disruptive forces and demands of wartime and embraced the technological and industrial advancements of the past 250 years. We have seen the incredible fortitude of women like Mary Katherine Goddard, who, in 1775, served as postmaster of the Baltimore post office and printed the second copy of the then-treasonous Declaration of Independence. We have followed the exceptional leadership of women like Olive Ann Beech, the first female head of a major aircraft company, which produced thousands of aircraft for the Allied effort during World War II. And, we have been transformed by women like Marva Collins, who was working as a full-time substitute teacher in Chicago when she founded a low-cost private school for low-income children being left behind by public schools. We can find similar stories throughout women’s endeavors today. Women are leaders in a range of fields, from business and medicine to government and the arts. And, my Administration is committed to creating conditions that empower women to achieve even more. Access to paid family leave and affordable, high-quality childcare can help enhance women’s ability to participate in the labor force and improve the economic security of their families. The recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provides new tax credits to businesses that offer paid family and medical leave to their employees. This landmark legislation also gives qualifying American families with children a significantly larger child tax credit and ensures that more families will be eligible to take advantage of this credit. When we support family-friendly policies, women have more freedom to explore opportunities and to thrive at work and at home. My Administration is also supporting policies that promote women’s economic empowerment. This is critical, as women now make up 40 percent of the entrepreneurs in the United States. Women business owners employ more than 8 million workers and provide them with more than $264 billion in wages and salaries. Just in the first year of my Administration, the Small Business Administration has increased lending to womenowned businesses by $128 million. We will also continue promoting the next generation of women leaders through mentoring, training, and education initiatives. Through these and other efforts, we will support women throughout our society, recognizing that the successes of women strengthen our families, our economy, and our Nation. As we reflect on the role of women throughout American history, we remember that women must always have access to all the opportunities that our Nation has to offer. Indeed, ensuring access to these opportunities is vital to our Nation’s prosperity. NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2018 as Women’s History Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month and to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, 2018, with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand eighteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fortysecond.  Top to Bottom: Mary Katherine Goddard herstory2.wordpress.com Olive Ann Beech kshs.com Mava Collins tidyteacher.blogspot.com

Government - Health Services

Dental Health Act Passes House of Representatives By TBTNEWSREPORT

he House passed the bipartisan Action for Dental Health Act, co-authored by Congressional Black Caucus

those living in rural and urban communities. Without spending additional dollars, the bill increases oral health care

Congresswoman Robin Kelly and Congressman Mike Simpson. © dailykos.com chair, Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D-IL), and Congressman Mike Simpson (R-ID). This legislation targets crucial federal dollars to organizations that provide oral health care to underserved populations, especially seniors, children and

access by strengthening the impact of existing resources. “Unfortunately, too many Americans lack access to oral health care because of cost or a lack of dentists in their area. This bill starts to change that by making oral health care more accessible,”

Congresswoman Kelly said. “In a time of a deeply divided Congress, I’m glad that Congressman Simpson and I could put forward a bipartisan bill that would win the support of hundreds of our colleagues.” “I am thrilled with the overwhelming bipartisan support for the Action for Dental Health Act,” Rep. Simpson said. “With House passage, we are advancing a solution to better utilize resources to improve early diagnosis, intervention and preventive treatments which can stop the progress of oral diseases. I would like to thank Congresswoman Kelly for her work on this legislation and I look forward to seeing this advance in the Senate.” The Action for Dental Health Act has received the endorsement of the American Dental Association, the National Dental Association, the American Dental Education Association and many other organizations. The legislation now advanced to the Senate. For more details, contact James Lewis (Kelly) at 202.225.0773 or Nikki Wallace (Simpson) at 208.334.1953. 

TELL YOUR SENATORS TO VOTE IN FAVOR OF THE ACTION FOR DENTAL HEALTH ACT. How? Call, E-mail, Text, Meet. But act and act now. Then watch and vote. 7  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Government - Net Neutrality Challenge

The FCC’s Order Gutting Net Neutrality is now Oﬃcial — But the Fight is Just Getting Started By Devin Coldewey

he FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” order, which vastly curtails the agency’s 2015 net neutrality rules, has officially taken effect by being entered the Federal Register. The order, published recently, may sound like the end of the line, but in fact this is the green light for everyone in the country, from citizens to attorney generals to governors and senators, to begin the official battle against the FCC’s ill-advised, technically backwards, and deeply unpopular rule. Little has changed since the December vote, prior to which an intense debate raged between proponents and opponents of the rule. I won’t reiterate them now, but you can read some of the most common arguments and counterarguments here. Let it suffice for now to say that the rule has questionable motivations, is poorly researched, and removes critical protections against the wishes of millions of citizens. Once the rule was voted on, then finalized earlier this year, it was sent

along to be entered in the federal register and thus take eﬀect. Prior to today, many actions contemplated and indeed announced by opponents of the rule were technically not possible, since the rule was technically not yet in force. A state can’t, for example, argue that its own laws are infringed upon by a rule until that rule legally exists. Today is the moment that the net neutrality repeal legally exists, and you’re going to see a lot — a lot — of actions taken against it, all over the country. You can read in detail what happens next here (https:// techcrunch.com/2017/12/14/the-fcc-

just-repealed-net-neutrality-whathappens-next), but in short there will

be a few immediate lines of attack: Congressional Review Act. Democrats in the Senate have far more than enough people to force a vote on blocking the rule from taking eﬀect. While there’s no chance of this getting past the President, it will force every lawmaker to weigh in publicly on the topic. That’s incredibly valuable and will help make this an election issue in the midterms. Administrative Procedure Act. There is a good basis for arguing that the way the FCC adopted this rule violated the APA, which prohibits “arbitrary and

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capricious” rulemaking. The hack of the comments, the lack of public discussions, the ignoring of experts in the field and elected officials’ concerns — these may add up in court. This is the argument pursued by multiple filers in a lawsuit headed by the New York attorney general. State law preemption. A number of states and cities have or will soon have net neutrality rules of their own. Many will argue that by striking down Title II, the statutory authority under which net neutrality was enforced nationwide, the FCC clipped its own wings, leaving it powerless to enforce its new rules or oppose state ones. Other challenges from companies, organizations, and individuals may take other tacks and attempt to get an injunction in place against the enforcement of the rule, or otherwise tie it up in court. The details of this will only become clear as they’re filed and argued, but you can bet there will be at least a few of them.

What can you do? Not too much on your own — ever try taking down a federal rule

without help? Me neither. So continue telling your elected oﬃcials your position on this issue in order to keep it fresh and in the public discussion. The only way this can be settled more or less permanently is by decisive legislation, and that’s a long term goal — we’re talking 2020 here. You can also watch your own broadband and mobile providers closely and tell us (https://techcrunch. com) about any shenanigans they try to pull. It’s unlikely that even ISPs deeply opposed to net neutrality will attempt anything obvious while the new rule is under siege. Should it be overturned and the 2015 rules restored, it’s to their advantage

to appear to have never taken advantage of the situation. There are sure to be interesting developments throughout the challenge, so check back for the latest.  https://ﬂipboard.com/@ﬂipboard/-thefccs-order-gutting-net-neutrality-i/f88564e221c%2Ftechcrunch.com

Washington State has Passed Laws Protecting Net Neutrality By Thuy Ong

ashington has become the ﬁrst state to pass a law that protects net neutrality, preventing internet service providers (ISPs) from slowing down or blocking online content. Democrat Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill (House Bill 2282) on March 6th, which prohibits ISPs from blocking legal content, apps, and services. It will also prevent the slowing down of connection speeds,

The Associated Press points out that this is not technically the first net neutrality law (Oregon has also passed legislation), but it’s the first law where violations by all ISPs are enforceable, under Washington’s Consumer Protection Act. The Federal Communications also known as throttling, as well as paid prioritization, where ISPs favor Commission approved a measure certain traffic that’s beneficial to to remove net neutrality rules in a 3-2 vote back in December 2017. them. “At the core of our action today is The FCC prohibited state laws from consumer protection,” Inslee told contradicting the decision, so it’s The New York Times. “States need very likely ISPs will sue Washington to act because under the Trump state over this new law to find out administration, we have seen if the FCC does have the power to citizens, including seven million preempt the move.  www.theverge.com/2018/3/6/17084246/ in Washington, stripped of core washington-state-laws-protecting-netprotections like the open internet.”

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neutrality-fcc-internet

Government - Vindication Reporting

Trump White House Quietly Issues Report Vindicating Obama Regulations By David Roberts

resident Donald Trump’s administration has been on a deregulatory bender, particularly when it comes to environmental regulations. As of January, the New York Times counted 67 environmental rules on the chopping block under Trump. This is not one of Trump’s idiosyncrasies, though. His administration is more hamhanded and flagrant about it, but the antipathy it expresses toward federal regulation falls firmly within the GOP mainstream. Republicans have been complaining about “burdensome” and “job-killing” regulations for so long that their opposition to any particular health, safety, or environmental regulation is now just taken for granted. For instance, why would the Environmental Protection Agency close a program investigating the effects of toxins on children’s health? Is there some evidence that the money is wasted or poorly spent? Why would the EPA allow more unregulated disposal of toxic coal ash? Don’t people in coal regions deserve clean air and water? Is there any reason to think coal ash is currently well-regulated? These questions barely come up anymore. Republicans oppose regulations because they are regulations; it’s become reflexive, both for the party and for the media the covers them. As it happens, though, we know something about the costs and benefits of federal regulations. In fact, Trump’s own administration,

specifically the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), just released its annual report on that very subject. (Hat tip to E&E.). The report was released late on a Friday, with Congress out of session and multiple Trump scandals dominating the headlines. A cynical observer might conclude that the administration wanted the report to go unnoticed. Why might that be? Well, in a nutshell, it shows that the GOP is wrong about regulations as a general matter and wrong about Obama’s regulations specifically. Those regulations had benefits far in excess of their costs, and they had no discernible effect on jobs or economic growth. OMB, more like OMG, amirite? OMB gathered data and analysis on “major” federal regulations (those with $100 million or more in economic impact) between 2006 and 2016, a period that includes all of Obama’s administration, stopping just short of Trump’s. The final tally, reported in 2001 dollars: • Aggregate benefits: $219 to $695 billion • Aggregate costs: $59 to $88 billion By even the most conservative estimate, the benefits of Obama’s regulations wildly outweighed the costs. According to OMB — and to the federal agencies upon whose data OMB mostly relied — the core of the Trumpian case against Obama regulations, arguably the organizing

principle of Trump’s administration, is false. Environmental regulations have the highest costs and highest benefits At least since Reagan, conservatives have had particular and growing hostility toward environmental regulations. But the right-wing turn against environmental rules is no great mystery. The OMB report reveals the core reason: Of all the regulations passed from 2006 to 2016, it is environmental regulations, specifically air pollution regulations, that had both the highest costs and the highest benefits. EPA rules, OMB writes, “account for over 80% of the monetized benefits and over 70% of the monetized costs” of federal regulation during this period. For example, new fuel economy standards for medium- and heavyduty engines had (in 2001 dollars) between $6.7 billion and $9.7 billion in benefits. But they cost industry $0.8 billion to $1.1 billion. The MATS rule, aimed at reducing toxic emissions from power plants, had between $33 billion and $90 billion in benefits (in 2007 dollars, for some reason), but it cost industry $9.6 billion. In short, air quality rules secure enormous health benefits for the American public, but they also ask a great deal of industry.

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To frame the same point another way: Air quality regulations serve as a downward redistribution of wealth, out of the pockets of industrialists and into the pockets of ordinary Americans, particularly the poor and vulnerable Americans (African Americans and Hispanics in particular) who tend to live closest to pollution. They shift costs, from the much higher health and social costs of pollution remediation to the comparatively smaller costs of pollution abatement. And therein lies the source of industry and GOP rage toward EPA. It’s why EPA delayed and delayed air rules under Bush. It’s why the GOP Congress worked so furiously to block air rules under Obama. And it’s why EPA is weakening or repealing air rules as fast as possible under Trump. The GOP is opposed to downward redistribution of wealth. If one policy goal has unified the right above all else, it is upward redistribution. Even as its base drifts further into a fog of xenophobic, reactionary ressentiment, its moneyed interests and policy leaders remain laserfocused on reducing taxes and regulatory burdens on the wealthy. Upward redistribution is what unites GOP health care policy, tax policy, financial sector policy, and environmental policy. That is why Republicans hate EPA and its rules: They are a burden to industry, but worse, they are a burden to industry that is very obviously worth it. Industry makes a small sacrifice, public health improves, and economic growth continues apace. EPA rules are a living demonstration of the good

that government can do. The “job-killing” thing is also nonsense Okay, environmental regulations produce enormous health and social benefits, but don’t they kill jobs? Not really. This is another myth that conservatives have simply repeated with such tenacity that no one bothers to scrutinize it anymore. The OMB report has a long section looking into the employment effects of environmental regulations, assessing several studies and literature reviews. Mostly it is devoted to explaining how complex and vexed such analysis is. Jobs may be eliminated in one place/ industry and created in another. Jobs may be eliminated in the short term but a larger number created in the long term. Effects on employment must be disentangled from contemporaneous social and economic trends, many of which have much larger effects. And so on. The conclusion — which is in keeping with the broader literature, as I described in this post — is that there may be local and temporary employment effects from environmental regulations, either positive or negative, but at the aggregate national level, such regulations simply aren’t a significant factor in employment. Their effects are lost amid the noise of demographic shifts and macroeconomic drivers. They don’t “kill jobs.” From the perspective of the overall economy, they don’t do much of anything to jobs, other than shift them from certain regions/industries to others. As it happens, those shifts are often unfavorable to GOP constituencies, but that’s not a license to, you know, lie about them. There is no coherent policy justification for Trump’s

deregulatory frenzy If the GOP wants to explicitly align itself behind the interests of particular polluting businesses and against the broader public interest, well, it can. If it doesn’t think the costs to industry of reducing pollution are worth much larger benefits to public health, it can say so. If it wants to transfer wealth back from the public to industrialists by reversing all of Obama’s rules, that is its right as the party in power. But GOP lawmakers shouldn’t be allowed to simply burp up the words “burdensome” and “job-killing” and move on. The OMB finds no evidence that federal regulations have any noticeable impact on aggregate national employment or economic growth. There is evidence that they produce public benefits well in excess of their costs. If EPA head Scott Pruitt wants to say that defending children from toxics or rural communities from coal ash pollution is burdensome, he ought to offer some numbers, or evidence, or ... something. Goofy homilies are not enough. Believing in the inherent costliness and ineffectiveness of federal regulation is not a religious matter. It is certainly not a belief to which journalists owe any particular deference. Until Trump’s administration makes a case that its own OMB and agencies are wrong — not just by a little, but by tens of billions of dollars — the presumption of every journalist and politico in Washington should be that there is no coherent policy rationale for Trump’s deregulatory agenda. It is, like his health, tax, and infrastructure initiatives, simply the polar opposite of populism: the targeted transfer of wealth to the already wealthy, at the public’s expense.  www.vox.com/energy-andenvironment/2018/3/6/17077330/trumpregulatory-agenda-omb

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12  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Government - Vindication Reporting

Trump Pushes Death Penalty for Some Drug Dealers By Dan Merica

resident Donald Trump oﬃcially proposed imposing the death penalty for certain drug dealers on Monday in New Hampshire, arguing that the federal government is "wasting our time" if it isn't willing to put some traﬃckers to death. The speech looked to balance the President's controversial calls for the federal government to get tougher on drug crimes with less heated proposals for increased federal funding to combat the opioid epidemic through ad campaigns and health programs. But his call for the death penalty immediately

drew condemnation from treatment advocates, law enforcement oﬃcials and civil liberty organizations. "If we don't get tough on the drug dealers, we are wasting our time," Trump told the audience in Manchester, New Hampshire. "And that toughness includes the death penalty." Trump went on to say that dealers "will kill thousands of people during their lifetime" but won't be punished for the carnage they cause. He said the punishment would be used against the "big pushers, the ones who are really killing people." "This is about winning a very, very

tough problem and if we don't get very tough on these dealers, it is not going to happen, folks," he said. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an embattled member of Trump's Cabinet who has long frustrated the President, sat in the audience for the remarks. He later backed up his boss with a pledge to "seek the death penalty wherever appropriate." Others were not nearly as supportive. Jesselyn McCurdy, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office, said Trump's proposal was "absurd." "Drug trafficking is not an offense for which someone can receive the death penalty," McCurdy said, referring to a Supreme Court precedent that puts constraints on using the penalty when the person convicted did not commit murder. Trump's talk of stricter penalties for drug crimes has long worried some treatment advocates, who have said there is no way the United States can punish its way out of the opioid epidemic. Many in law enforcement have said previously that "you can't arrest your way out of the opioid crisis," and public policy experts condemned the proposal even before the President rolled it out, arguing that it misses the cause of the opioid epidemic. Even still, Trump pushed ahead with the proposal, while acknowledging Monday that some in the United States may not be ready for the death penalty for drug dealers. "Maybe our country is not ready for that. It's possible ... and I can understand it," he said, later disagreeing with himself and stating, "Although personally I can't understand that." Monday's event marks Trump's first trip back to the first-in-thenation primary state -- and the

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state that that introduced the businessman-turned-politician to the opioid scourge -- since he won the presidency. Trump, who was joined by first lady Melania Trump for the event, described the forthcoming ad campaign as a "large-scale" effort aimed at convincing people not to use drugs. "The best way to beat the drug crisis is to keep people from getting hooked in the first place," the President said. "This has been something I have been strongly in favor of -- spending a lot of money on great commercials showing how bad it is." Trump said he would direct people to make the commercials depict "pretty unsavory situations." That sort of strategy advocates targeting kids and young adults with anti-drug messaging, evocative of the "Just Say No" ad campaign of the 1980s and early 1990s.

available to us, I do not think that cracking down on sanctuary cities is one of them," Keith Humphreys, who was an adviser for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Bush and Obama administrations, said in congressional testimony earlier this year. "That's because the opioid epidemic was made in America, not in Mexico, China, or any other foreign country." Trump later slammed Democrats as playing on politics on immigration before claiming that he, too, would use the issue politically and win. He then turned to sanctuary cities, municipalities that have policies in place to limit cooperation with or involvement in federal immigration enforcement actions. "My administration is also confronting things called sanctuary cities that shield dangerous criminals," Trump said, adding later that the cities are "safe havens for just some terrible people, some Immigration terrible people." Throughout Monday's event, Such cities "are making it very Trump linked his efforts to combat dangerous for our law enforcement the opioid epidemic with the officers. You see it all the time. As familiar immigration rhetoric that the people of New Hampshire have animated his 2016 campaign. learned firsthand, ending sanctuary The President said Monday that a cities is crucial to stopping the drug host of policy proposals -- namely, addiction crisis," the President said. building a wall along the US-Mexico border, ending so-called sanctuary The Plan cities and fighting gangs like MSWhite House officials told CNN 13 -- would stem the tide of opioid that Trump's broader plan will focus abuse in the United States. on key areas: law enforcement "Eventually the Democrats will and interdiction, prevention and agree with us and will build the wall education through a sizable to keep the damn drugs out," Trump advertising campaign, improving said to chants of "build the wall," the ability to fund treatment through giving the official White House the federal government and helping event a campaign feel. those impacted by the epidemic Republicans have long linked find jobs while fighting addiction. immigration policy to the opioid Congress recently appropriated $6 fight, but public policy experts have billion to combat the opioid epidemic, said that while it is part of the opioid and a senior administration official problem, it is not the key issue. told CNN that Trump's plan will lay "I wish to emphasize that while out how the White House believes there are many high-impact policies that money should be spent. At the

time, treatment advocates and drug policy experts were concerned the uptick in funding wouldn't be spent wisely and wasn't nearly enough. Trump has credited voters in New Hampshire with introducing him to the opioid crisis during his 2016 campaign. He frequently referenced the scourge when campaigning in the state, which has been epicenter in the fight against opioids. But in a call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto shortly after his inauguration, Trump referred to the state as a "a drug-infested den," drawing fierce criticism from the state's leaders. Days before Election Day in 2016 -- when time is a campaign's most precious commodity -- Trump even traveled to New Hampshire to discuss opioid addiction and pledge to make fighting the epidemic a focus. His response as President, however, has been mixed, according to epidemic experts. The President has been accused of sidelining the Office of National Drug Control Policy, failing to heed the recommendations of his opioid council and focusing too much on the punitive measure to respond to the epidemic. Trump in October declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, telling an audience of experts and people in recovery that "we can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic." Recently released numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that around 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2016. Since 1999, the number of American overdose deaths involving opioids has quadrupled.  https://flipboard.com/@flipboard/trump-pushes-death-penalty-forsome-dru/f-25c42daf4d%2Fcnn. com

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BBN Show Biz Buzz By Linda Ware

Mary J. Blige to Play Sadistic Hitwoman in Netflix's Umbrella Academy Series

Mary J. Blige

TVLine

or someone who claims to not want any more drama in her life, Mary J. Blige‘s new role sounds awfully dramatic. The Oscar nominee is joining the cast of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, an adaptation of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s series of graphic novels about the “estranged members of a dysfunctional family of superheroes.” The super-powered siblings must come together to solve their father’s murder, all the while “coming apart at the seams due to their divergent personalities and abilities.” (You know, normal family stuff.) Blige is filling the series-regular role of Cha-Cha, a “ruthless and unorthodox hitwoman who travels

through time to kill assigned targets.” Known far and wide for her sadistic, sociopathic tendencies, Cha-Cha believes only in torture and pain — and cares only for her partner Hazel. Blige’s prior television credits include ABC’s How to Get Away With Murder and black-ish, Fox’s Empire and NBC’s The Wiz Live!  Andy Swift www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/mary-j-blige-to-playsadistic-hitwoman-in-netflixs-umbrella-academyseries/ar-BBJ3fFn?ocid=spartandhp

Woods Vice Captain of US 2018 Ryder Cup Team

.S. captain Jim Furyk announced the addition of Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker as vice captains Tuesday ahead of this year's matches at Le Golf National in September 2018. Furyk has now settled on three vice captains with Tiger Woods Getty Woods, Stricker and 2016 U.S. captain Davis Love III, who was announced previously. "(Woods has) been a part of this process from starting back with the task force and Ryder Cup committee," Furyk said. "A lot of (the younger players) fell in love with the game of golf because they wanted to emulate Tiger Woods, play against him on the golf course. To have him in the team room really being that humble guy and helping them do whatever they can to play better means a lot to them in the team room."  Dan Kilbridge www.msn.com/en-us/sports/golf/tiger-woods-stevestricker-named-2018-us-ryder-cup-vice-captains/arBBJnUSX?ocid=spartandhp

‘Black Panther’ Proceeds to Youth STEM Programs

isney said it would donate $1 million of the proceeds from “Black Panther” to STEM programs at the Boys & Girls Clubs of

20  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Everett Collection Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), and Shuri (Letitia Wright) in Black Panther. America, in a nod to one of the movie’s key themes: how technology can empower young people from marginalized communities. The blockbuster film is set in Wakanda, a country whose surplus of the fictional metal vibranium has enriched it tremendously. Many of the technologies in the film are invented or controlled by Shuri, the sister of T’Challa, the Black Panther and Wakanda’s king. Shuri, 16, plays a similar role to “Q” from the James Bond films, providing her brother and the kingdom with vibranium-powered vehicles, weapons and other innovations. In a statement, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, Robert A. Iger, said it was thrilling to see how much the technology in the film had excited young audiences. “It’s fitting that we show our appreciation by helping advance STEM programs for youth, especially in underserved areas of the country, to give them the knowledge and tools to build the future they want,” he said. The $1 million pledged by Disney is only a fraction of the money that the film has brought in. In less than two weeks in theaters, “Black Panther” made more than $700 million worldwide, making it one of the fastest grossing films ever (update: On its fourth Friday in theaters, "Black Panther" became the 33rd film in box office history to gross $1 billion worldwide, hitting the mark on its opening day in China). 

he overarching theme of of the new show created by The Killing’s Veena Sud is of the vector of whose identities matter to whom and what that means. Can marginalized people tell the difference between an accident and an intent to murder? Would they, when presented with the long arch of their people’s history, even care? Seven Seconds tells us no, and, while the premise is flawed, the story unspools in intriguing ways revealing complex characters in a misbegotten concrete world. It isn’t a whodunit. We Regina King know who kills Brenton zimbio.com Butler in the park and we know how. Told as an anthology, the collection of episodes runs the gamut of each character’s pain. Stars include: Regina King, Clare-Hope Ashitey and Russel Hornsby. 

JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH

see page 22

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/disney-to-donate-dollar1-millionof-‘black-panther’-proceeds-to-youth-stem-programs/arBBJFDOA?ocid=spartandhp

"Seven Seconds" Steams on Netﬂix

21  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

BBN Show Biz Buzz

from BBN Show Biz Buzz on page 21

www.okayplayer.com/originals/netflixsseven-seconds-brutal-look-politicsamerican-city-review.html

Celebrity Chef Marcus Samuelsson to Host New TV Show

fter a decade on television — including a powerful 2015 episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown where he visits Ethiopia — Marcus Samuelsson is debuting his own series, No Passport Required, on PBS this summer. A partnership between Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Vox Media (founders of Eater www. eater.com), the show will feature six episodes in which Samuelsson highlights the food of immigrant communities in the United States. “We talked about what TV show we can do that fits this very moment that we’re in right now. As an immigrant, I felt it was important to tell strong immigrant tales,” he said, noting that it will feature Vietnamese culture in New Orleans, Ethiopian culture in Washington D.C., Haitian

culture in Miami, Mexican culture in Chicago and the Arab American communities of Dearborn and Detroit.  Jacob Threadgill http://okgazette.com/2018/02/23/celebritychef-marcus-samuelsson-dishes-onhealthy-recipes-and-gives-chopped-advice/

'Avengers: Infinity War’ Due April 27

nthony and Joe Russo returned to direct “Avengers: Infinity War,” which also sees stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Tom Holland, and Mark Ruffalo reprising their roles. In this latest installment, the Avengers will also team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy, lead by Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord. The Russo brothers directed “Captain America: Winter Soldier” and “Captain America: Civil War,” which became 2016’s top worldwide grosser with $1.16 billion. Joss Whedon directed 2012’s “The Avengers” and 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” The two “Avengers” films have grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide. “The Avengers” is the fifth-highest grosser of all time at $1.52 billion

Avengers: Avengers: Infinity Infinity War War © Provided by Var and “Age of Ultron” is the seventhhighest at $1.41 billion.  www.msn.com/en-us/movies/ news/‘avengers-inﬁnity-war’-releasedate-moves-up-one-week/arBBJLlOD?ocid=spartandhp

JAY-Z Crowned as Forbes' Wealthiest Hip-Hop Act of 2018

Jay-Z

D Marcus Samuelsson at his restaurant in Harlem. wstale.com

iddy has repeatedly held the crown for the wealthiest hip-hop act in 2017, but that reign has since ended as Forbes released its latest Hip-Hop

22  March 2018 Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

for himself once Dre's Apple stock vests this year. Drake and Eminem round out the bottom, tying at No. 5 with $100 million. View the full list of HipHop's Wealthiest Acts of 2018 at: www.forbes.com/ f or b e s / we lc o m e/ ? t o U RL = h t tp s : / / www.forbes.com/sites/ zackomalleygreenburg/2018/03/01/ the-forbes-five-hip-hops-wealthiestartists-2018/&refURL=&referrer=#5fde add447c1. 

riety

Wealthiest Acts of 2018 list with a new mogul notching the no. 1 spot: JAY-Z. This is JAY-Z's first time topping the list. The mogul raked in $900 million in the past year, a huge bump from the $810 million he made the year prior that earned

him the No. 2 spot on Forbes' 2017 list. Hov's net worth increase is due to his many business endeavors including his label Roc Nation, streaming service Tidal, ventures with spirits brands Armand de Brignac and D'Ussé, among others. Hov's friend and fellow rap mogul Diddy trails behind him with $825 million, just a $5 million increase from last year's $820 million, thanks to his growing DeLeon Tequila brand, his partnership with beverage company Diago, Revolt TV, and his lucrative Ciroc vodka line. After all, JAY-Z and Diddy did up for the documentary Black Excellence A Short Film: What's Better Than One Billionaire? Two. celebrating their success and black excellence. Dr. Dre bows at no. 3, pulling $770 million in the last year and is expected to possibly take the crown

www.msn.com/en-us/music/ news/jay-z-crowned-as-forbeswealthiest-hip-hop-act-of-2018/arBBJKM5b?ocid=spartandhp

'Traffik' Due April 27th, Too

n the action packed thriller, Traffik, Brea (Paula Patton) and John (Omar Epps) are off for a romantic weekend in the mountains. Isolated at a remote estate, the couple are surprised by the arrival of two friends, another couple, Darren (Laz Alonso) and Malia (Roselyn Sanchez.) Just when the weekend starts to get back on track, a violent biker gang turns up and begins to torment them. The foursome are forced to fight for their lives against the gang who will stop at nothing to protect their secrets. The film is written and directed by Deon Taylor, and produced by Roxanne Avent, Paula Patton and Taylor. Codeblack Films, a division of Lionsgate will release the film wide on April 27, 2018.  http://traffikofficial.com

And the Oscar (Spirit Award) Winners Are...

23  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

see page 24

BBN Show Biz Buzz

from BBN Show Biz Buzz on page 23

ordan Peele’s horror-comedy “Get Out” dominated the Film Independent Spirit Awards winning best picture and best director. Kobe Bryant became the ﬁrst person to win both a sporting championship and an Oscar on Sunday with his victory in the Best Animated Short Film for “Dear Basketball.” Jordan Peele’s horror-comedy

Michelle and Barack Obama “Get Out” recieved Original Screenplay. 

the

Best

www.msn.com/en-us/movies/awards/spiritawards-‘get-out’-wins-best-feature-ﬁlm-award/ ar-BBJPoOi?ocid=spartandhp https://www.thewrap.com/oscars-kobe-bryantbecomes-ﬁrst-sports-champion-dear-basketballwin/

Netﬂix Courts the Obamas

F Jordan Peele © Provided by Variety

ormer President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are negotiating a major production deal with Netﬂix, The New York Times reported recently. The pending deal would bring exclusive content from the Obamas to the streaming site's 118 million subscribers. It was not immediately clear what types of content they would deliver to the site, but Eric Schultz, a former adviser to the president told the Times: "President and Mrs. Obama have always

believed in the power of storytelling to inspire." Indeed, the Obamas have continued that in the year following their departure from the White House. Additionaly, Obama has sought to remain politically engaged, posting messages to Twitter, often in response to major national news. Barack and Michelle Obama hold massive audiences on social media — 101 million for the former president, and more than 10 million for the former first lady. A deal with Netflix could potentially expand their reach even further. The Times notes that the Obamas have no plans to use Netflix as a vehicle to dish out responses to their critics.  www.businessinsider.com/obamaand-netflix-major-production-dealdetails-2018-3

A Few Summer Movie Projects

Vanessa and Kobe Bryant © dailymail.

Dear Basketball © sacurrent.com

ith the advent of Summer comes the advent of Summer blockbusters— a.k.a the movies that studios pour all their money into in an eﬀort to get you out of the sun and into an air-conditioned theater. Here's what to be excited

co.uk

24  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Sophie Okonedo

broadwayworld.com

about come June. 'Ocean's 8' - it's an all female remake of Ocean's Eleven. Featured actor: Rihanna. 'Incredibles 2' - the latest Pixar animation movie. Featured actor: Samuel L. Jackson. 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' - the concept of an ant-sized superhero will never not be LOL Featured actor: Laurence Fishburne. 'Mission Impossible:—Fallout' - the tried and true action series continues. Featured actor: Angela Bassett. 'Christopher Robin' - Christopher is all grown up and no longer has an imagination, so Winnie the Pooh helps him ﬁnd one again. Featured actor: Sophie Okonedo. 

in the music industry and his unsurpassable contributions to social causes” during the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards on Sunday night. In addition to breaking barriers in his career, the rapper — born Chancelor Bennett — has lent a hand to the youth throughout Chicago through his charity SocialWorks, aimed at “empowering youth through the arts, education, and civic engagement while fostering leadership, accessibility, and positivity.” “I’m committed to help Chicago’s children have quality learning experiences that include the arts,” the rapper said at an elementary school on Chicago’s South Side in March 2017 when he donated $1 million to CPS (Chicago Public Schools). “As an artist and after-

https://ﬂipboard.com/@ﬂipboard/these-are-going-to-be-the-11-biggestmo/f-67c736a0cd%2Fmarieclaire.com

Chance the Rapper Receives Innovator Award

he Chicago rapper, 24, received the iHeartRadio Innovator Award for his “groundbreaking accomplishments

Chance the Rapper

school teacher, I know the arts are invaluable. They teach kids lessons about how small eﬀorts can have big eﬀects and how collaboration can lead to creativity. This check is a call to action. I’m challenging major companies in Chicago and across the U.S. to donate and take action.”  www.msn.com/en-us/music/awards/ chance-the-rapper-shouts-out-princebeyoncé-and-more-as-he-receivesinnovator-award-at-iheartradio-musicawards/ar-BBK73qd?ocid=spartanntp

Paciﬁc Rim: Uprising

egendary-Universal’s “Pacific Rim Uprising” is opening on March 23. Recent tracking on the sequel, which stars John Boyega of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” has been in a wide range of $20 million to $30 million at around 3,700 locations. The original “Pacific Rim” starred Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam, and Robert Kazinsky. Released in 2013, it was set in the near future with Earth at war with the Kaiju, monsters that emerged from an interdimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It grossed a solid John Boyega $411 million at wallpapershome. the worldwide box com office. The cast includes Scott Eastwood, Jing Tian, Cailee Spaeny, Rinko Kikuchi, Burn Gorman, Adria Arjona, and Charlie Day. The film is set a decade after the original, which took place in 2025. Boyega is playing the son of Idris Elba’s character, who sacrificed his life in the first film. http://variety.com/2018/film/news/ pacific-rim-uprising-black-pantherstreak-1202729298

25  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Editorial - The Black Panther

The Black Panther is the Beautiful One By Bene Uche

s an African born in Nigeria, to the glory of God, it was such a great delight to watch the box office hit The Black Panther! This movie is just too much! There is an African adage that says "the beautiful ones are not yet born". Meaning that if you think you have seen it all when it comes to the moment and the beautiful things around you, just wait till nature or circumstances brings in the new. I am drawing this adage in relation to the current box office hit movie The Black Panther which has surpassed and broken all records to gross over 900 million USD. This movie, The Black Panther is the beautiful one that is born bringing a new twist to tinsel town and movies with scientific spacecraft, structures, marksmanship, culture and environment; considering the history of movie making, the movie industry in America over the decades. The Black Panther is a shocker in terms of no one saw it coming and most especially as the majority of the cast were Black

Americans and Africans, featuring in a movie with such techniques and technology. Its success beat the very well known ratings for Beauty and the Beast. It’s amazing reflecting and on this creatively, exceptionally well made, high impact movie that has the movie seats over-subscribed in theaters where it is showing. The beautiful and solid actors and actresses that played key roles in this movie and indeed the overall production team, cast performance, the movie directing, sequences, scenes, plots and my goodness the language/ tonal adaptation of an African dialect by the African American

cast in the movie. The mention in the movie of the Sambisa Forest, a location in the northeastern part of Nigeria and in the southwestern part of the Chad Basin National Park, the plot in the movie on the rescue of the kidnapped women, the Hausa language spoken by the women who were the captives in the movie and their rescue is amazing and relevant. I salute big time as my people would say! This movie was so captivating from beginning to the end. You did not want to leave even for a bathroom break. There are many lessons in this movie. Yes we can do it in the movie business if we take our time to do it right, produce in a way that all races can enjoy and relate to the lessons in the movie, it’s appeal is that it reinforces the fact that Africa has something great to offer the world considering its rich mineral resources. This movie is also a lesson that if Africa’s wealth, resources, development, and leadership agenda if harnessed well and tailored towards the good of the masses, will lead it to become a superpower. The platinum resources in the movie were used to develop a country considered underdeveloped which is a big lesson. The culture and customs showcased the importance of being your brother’s keeper and carrying all along when it comes to equitable distribution of wealth, leadership positions, and resources. The mix of value for culture and application of technology was a wow factor in this movie. The use of traditional weapons, animals,

26  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Finance

Black Panther, Energized my Weary Soul By Susan D. Peters

hen reﬂecting on the movie Black Panther, without spoiling anything, the trailers have shown that there is an element the deep desire to experience pride in being of African descent that is intrinsic and important. Black Panther energized my weary soul in a way

our people to append our American reality to our African ancestry and voila African Americans! I am a person of signiﬁcant African descent and American lineage and language. In 2010, I took the impending publication of my book, Sweet Liberia, Lessons from the Coal Pot as an opportunity

a glimpse at what might happen if persons of African lineage could express their ALLNESS. The search for freedom to express our ALLNESS led our family to leave America in 1979 for Liberia, West Africa. If you are interested in experiencing the journey of my family in Liberia,

that nothing had touched me since the inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44th president of the United States. As an African American I have always searched for my own value in an America that has never aﬃrmed my people. As a little girl we were called Negro (Spanish for Black), at some point that word was translated into Black and we proudly accepted that designation and then in the 70’s the validation of our connection the land, language and culture of mother Africa caused

to connect to my African roots by having my mother’s DNA links traced back to Africa. As it turns out, I am linked to the Bubi people in Bioko Island (Equitorial Guinea) and the Tikar, Hausa and Fulani peoples in Cameroon. I received a spiritual epiphany as I reﬂected years before in Liberia, Fula men often approached me speaking Fula. While in a market on one occasion a Fula man chastised me, “You Fula and you can’t speak your dialect?” The movie Black Panther oﬀers

West Africa, purchase Sweet Liberia, Lessons from the Coal Pot (www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ sb_noss). I would love to get your online review, tell your friends about it, put it in your public library. Like the Black Panther movie, my book and the books of many other African American authors form a building block to energize the weary spirits and rekindle the dreams of persons of African descent to reach our ALLNESS.  www.facebook.com/susandeborahpeters

27  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Technology

Google's new YouTube Stories Feature lets you Swap out your Background By Devin Coldewey

oogle researchers know how much people like to trick others into thinking they're on the moon, or that it's night instead of day, and other fun shenanigans only possible if you happen to be in a movie studio in front of a green screen. So they did what any good 2018 coder would do: build a neural network that lets you do it. This "video segmentation" tool, as they call it is rolling out to YouTube Stories on mobile in a limited fashion starting now — if you see the option, congratulations, you're a beta tester. (www.wikihow. com/Make-a-YouTube-Video)

and environment turned scientific was another wow factor and hmmmmm.... the female guards, warriors! How they displayed marksmanship in their roles, their looks and their costumes were a knockout!

A lot of ingenuity seems to have gone into this feature. It's a piece of cake to figure out where the foreground ends and the

background begins if you have a depth-sensing camera (like the iPhone X's front-facing array) or plenty of processing time and no battery to think about (like a desktop computer). On mobile, though, and with an ordinary RGB image, it's not so easy to do. And if doing a still image is hard, video is even more so, since the computer has to do the calculation 30 times a second at a minimum. Well, Google's

That this movie is being discussed in relation to hits movies like Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Batman vs. Spiderman and the likes are very impressive. I must tell you I would love to watch this movie a second time!

engineers took that as a challenge, and set up a convolutional neural network architecture, training it on thousands of labelled images like the one to the right. The network learned to pick out the common features of a head and shoulders, and a series of optimizations lowered the amount of data it needed to crunch in order to do so. And — although it's cheating a bit — the result of the previous calculation (so, a sort of cutout of your head) gets used as raw material for the next one, further reducing load. The result is a fast, relatively accurate segmentation engine that runs more than fast enough to be used in video — 40 frames per second on the Pixel 2 and over 100 on the iPhone 7 (!). This is great news for a lot of folks — removing or replacing a background is a great tool to have in your toolbox and this makes it quite easy. And hopefully it won't kill your battery. www.msn.com/en-us/news/ technology/googles-newyoutube-stories-feature-letsyou-swap-out-your-backgroundno-green-screen-required/ ar-BBJMdQJ?ocid=spartandhp

The Black Panther in my view is a must watch hit movie.  Bene Uche Former Cultural Affairs Assistant Public Affairs Section, U.S. Consulate General, Lagos, Nigeria

28  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

ALL ANCESTRY TEST KITS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL Don't be fooled by other ancestry test kits pushing highly discounted prices this holiday season. Over the years, countless people have called us disappointed with the lack of specificity from other ancestry test kits. Get the results you want, the first time. Order today! Get the results you want, the first time. Order at https://shop.africanancestry. com

Sincerely, Gina Paige President, African Ancestry Maternal Country of Ancestry: Nigeria Maternal Tribe of Ancestry: Fulani

30  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Startup Funding

Top Seven Questions that Investors Ask Start-ups & How to Handle Them By Suresh Rajan

start-up pitch with investors inevitably leads to a specific set of questions. From the investor’s perspective, the objective of these questions is to determine whether this new venture fits their investment portfolio and will yield lucrative results. These questions are crucial to your pitch and will influence an investor’s decision. To ‘make the cut’ entrepreneurs must be prepared to articulate and answer the following questions.

To develop your understanding of the market and audience, gather data and research, and based on your findings determine your service or product’s validity, longevity, and scope.

longevity and sustainability. Investors usually look for proposals with high returns and a clear exit strategy.

2. Are your Calculations Realistic? Reflect on the market dynamics and share your start-up’s expected growth numbers for the future. For any pitch to succeed, it must present realistic calculations.

3. What Differentiates your Product? Spend time explaining your unique selling proposition (USP): product quality, features, positioning and of course the team's core strengths and achievements. Highlight key differentiators that set your product/ service apart from what is already

1. What are the Benefits of Your Product and What Market Needs Does it Fulfill? I n - d e p t h understanding of the product or service that you plan to sell is essential to your pitch with the investor. The market gap you plan to fill or the solution you provide must be clearly defined. It is essential to highlight your target audience, their needs, why a buyer would choose your product over others, and what they would pay for it. It is important to understand your target audience’s interests, behavior, buying patterns and more. For sketchbubble.com start-ups, the process of gathering this information can Does your product/service provide take time and research, but cannot an incremental value in the form be ignored. It is ideal to create your of revenue and profitability? niche while defining your target The investor will be particularly audience. concerned with your business’s

available in the market. The start-up should lay down its plan for scalingup with timelines that indicate their growth strategy. It is important to recognize that

32  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

techpoint.ng no USP can sustain forever. It is only a matter of time before another competitor copies or changes the rules of the game and begins to provide the same or a similar product/service at either a better price or with better features / superior performance to the target audience. One should plan ahead to handle this inevitable situation.

preferable to not mentioning them at all. Not only does this show a promise in your operating market, it also provides insight on your understanding of market dynamics and how you hold an advantage over your competitors. Exploit your knowledge of the industry and define the strength of your brand and offerings.

4. What do You and Your Team bring to the Table? When you pitch your business, you are also pitching yourself. You want to highlight your past achievements and profound knowledge of your business-domain. Investors bet on people and tend to have more faith in those with a track record of high performance. You must highlight and communicate the passion, experience, knowledge, domain expertise, and commitment that you bring to the table.

6. How will the Investor make Money by Investing in Your Project? Apart from explaining the scalability of the business, it is important to describe its revenue model. Investors are keen to know their return on investment and are particularly interested in your profit margins, the potential to make money, and the increase in valuations of your business. While most will quickly understand whether or not there is a possible exit strategy for them, it never hurts to share your game plan to increase their valuations and your possible opportunities to make money on their investments.

5. How Well do you Know Your Competitors? From a brand and an industry point of view, referencing your competitors in front of an investor is

7. How are You Going to Use our Money and When will You Run Out of Funding? Investors like to have all their bases covered. They prioritize knowing how their funds will be used and where the company sees itself in the coming years. As a start-up founder, you must have a comprehensive business plan with a fair assessment of your projected costs, utilization and deployment of their funds, indicative timelines on drawdown, and a tentative ROI. It is important to give them a true picture of your funding situation and specify if you will require more funds in the future. Your answer must include a tangible monetary milestone, which will help you gain your investor’s trust; no one appreciates surprises when it comes to money. Fair winds and following seas to my fellow entrepreneurs!  https://ﬂipboard.com/@ﬂipboard/-topseven-questions-that-investors-ask-/ffdcf6e4db4%2Fentrepreneur.com Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

33  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Technology

Dropbox Inks Integration Pact with G Suite By Natalie Gagliordi

ropbox (www.dropbox. com) has announced that it's partnering with Google (www.google.com) to develop a series of cross-platform integrations that connect G-Suite's (https:// gsuite.google.com) cloud tools with the Dropbox collaboration platform. The partnership is notable because Dropbox, which officially filed for an initial public offering last week, and G Suite are competitive rivals. In its IPO disclosure, Dropbox noted that it competes with Google in both the cloud storage and content collaboration markets. Dropbox now sees the G Suite tie-up -- a first for the two platforms

-- as a way to ensure that it's offering customers "a unified home for content and the conversations around it." Dropbox posits that more than 50 percent of its customers also use G Suite, but until now there hasn't been a way to store G Suite files inside of Dropbox. "We want to make it easy for our users to work across devices with

the tools they love," said Tony Lee, VP of Engineering at Dropbox. "We're excited to work with Google to break down silos and centralize the information teams rely on everyday." Dropbox said that the native integration will allow users to create, open, and edit Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides that live in Dropbox. Users will also have the option to open and edit compatible files directly in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides from within Dropbox. Administrators, meanwhile,

will be able to manage Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides just like any other content that lives in Dropbox. Beyond docs and files, Dropbox said it plans to develop additional native G Suite integrations with Gmail and Hangouts Chat, including Dropbox link generation from within Gmail. With Hangouts

Chat, users will be able to search for, share, and preview Dropbox files in Google Hangouts. "Our goal is to make G Suite accessible no matter what tools you bring to work, and these integrations help our shared customers better collaborate in the tools they use every day," said Ritcha Ranjan, director of product management at Google Cloud. "Working with Dropbox to make our apps work better together helps our customers focus their time on work that matters."  www.msn.com/en-us/money/ technology/dropbox-inksintegration-pact-with-g-suite/arBBJLV1r?ocid=spartandhp

34  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Education/Online Learning

The 10 Hottest Coursera Courses

By Jessica Stillman

iwcmediaecology.pbworks.com

here are currently over 8,000 online courses available in every subject from artificial intelligence to visual arts. More than 50 million students signed up for one in 2017. This bounty is a gift for anyone who wants to learn a new skill -you can learn basically anything from anywhere these days and pay peanuts for the privilege - but it's also a challenge. In a sea of so many offerings, how do you know which courses are worth your time? One way is to look at what's already popular. After all, in such a competitive environment the courses that attract the most students are bound to offer something to set them above the rest. There are various ways to find top performing courses, but one decent bet is just to ask Coursera (www.cousera.org), the world's biggest provider of MOOCs (massive open online courses). They recently published their top ten most popular courses of the year. Here they are: • Machine Learning - Stanford University • Neural Networks and Deep Learning - deeplearning.ai

• Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Master Tough Subjects University of California, San Diego • Introduction to Mathematical Thinking - Stanford University • Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies - Princeton University • Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) University of Michigan • Algorithms, Part I - Princeton University • English for Career Development - University of Pennsylvania • Neural Networks for Machine Learning - University of Toronto • Financial Markets - Yale University This list can provide inspiration for which courses you might consider for yourself in the coming year, but does it also say anything about the evolution of MOOCs? Are there trends in which type of courses are becoming more popular? And what are the reasons behind those movements? I reached out to a Coursera spokesperson to find out. As you probably already noticed,

tech is booming. The subject is "continuing to draw significant interest: artificial intelligence, blockchain, and anything at the intersection of business and data analytics continue to see growth," Coursera confirmed. Why such massive interest? Greed and anxiety, as you might guess. "With automation continuing to spread throughout the workplace, many professionals are looking for an edge to help them continue to move forward in their careers," notes Coursera. Or, in short, people are polishing up their tech skills in an effort to climb -- or cling to -- the career ladder. Maybe you should join them in 2018.  www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/ the-10-most-popular-courseracourses-of-year.html

35 March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Technology/Communication

e’re proud to announce Viber’s newest feature – Viber Communities! Think group chat—with unlimited members, more admin controls and new conversation features. Viber Communities offers a chat space where up to a whopping 1 billion members will be able to exchange messages and engage with one another, and Community admins now have the perfect product for managing, engaging, and growing large-scale, active groups around interests, experiences, causes and more!

Tiered Management Roles: Superadmins, admins and Community members One of the biggest challenges community managers face when their communities begin to expand is keeping their conversations on track and making sure participants

stay focused on the community’s goals. Viber Communities provides tiered management roles and powerful moderation tools so that every Community owner has the flexibility to create the environment they envision for their Community. Superadmins control Community member roles, with the ability to add members and promote them to admin or superadmin status, ban or block members, decide whether or not they can participate in conversations, and if they can invite new members into the Community. Superadmins can even grow their Communities and make them accessible to new members by enabling a share link, or revoking the link at any time. They can assign admins to support them in moderating conversations, with the option to delete one or all messages sent by any member, and by pinning messages to guide discussions. Admins also have the ability to add or remove members when needed.

N e w Community members have access to the complete history of a Community and can contribute to the conversation with all of Viber’s messaging features—such as GIFs, stickers, pictures, videos, and, of course, simple text. Maintaining Viber’s commitment to user privacy and security, only members’ names are displayed within the Community, with their phone numbers remaining hidden from other members. Today marks the beginning of the gradual rollout to users globally. Stay tuned for more developments and write to us on Twitter about the Community you can’t wait to open! www.viber.com/blog/2018-02-27/ introducing-viber-communities/

36  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Asia Pacific Business Outlook April 16 - 17, 2018 ~ Los Angeles http://apboconference.com/register Special Discount for U.S. Commercial Service Clients, enter code: USCS-AP2018 Now in its 31st year, Asia/Pacific Business Outlook (APBO) is North America’s premier event for business leaders who want to expand their trade and investment in the Asia/Pacific region. The USC Marshall School of Business and the U.S. Department of Commerce have been working together on APBO since 1988 to help exporters take advantage of tremendous opportunities and overcome challenges in the constant changing economies of Asia. More than just a business conference, APBO is a comprehensive networking and learning experience designed to provide business leaders with the contacts and the latest, relevant and valuable information available–all focused, organized and distilled into two invaluable days. The conference attracts a nationwide group of about 300 American executives who operate throughout the Asia/Pacific region. The conference provides a unique mixture of over 50 leading academic, business and government experts to advise a diverse audience of American firms on how to become more competitive in the dynamic Asia/Pacific marketplace, including private one-on-one appointments with senior commercial officers from American embassies and consulates in 18 economies. Access 18 Markets in Two Days: Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam Contacts for APBO: ciber@marshall.usc.edu or tel: 213.740.7130 www.apboconference.com U.S. Commercial Service Contacts: Jason Sproule - U.S. Commercial Service, Los Angeles. Tel: 949-283-0690, Jason.Sproule@trade.gov Erica Ramirez - U.S. Commercial Service, Irvine, Tel: 949-660-7105, Erica.Ramirez@trade.gov

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Adarrius Joseph www.facebook.com/swift.bitness 39 March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Women in History

Baltimore Park Space Once Venerated Confederate Generals. Now it honors Har iet Tubman By Kevin Rector

Tubman's death, took place feet from the now-empty pedestal of a large, bronze, double-equestrian statue of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and oﬃcially renamed the space Harriet Tubman Grove. The statue had stood in the park since 1948, but was removed in August amid a national debate over Confederate symbolism and monuments, and how they are viewed by those who see them

Ernestine Jones Williams, a sixth-generation niece to Harriet Tubman, attends a ceremony dedicating a part of a Baltimore park to the famed abolitionist. (Algerina Perna / Baltimore Sun)com)

ore than 200 residents and elected leaders gathered in a tree-lined corner of a Baltimore park to rededicate the space, which had long venerated two Confederate generals, to the famed abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman. "We stand on the shoulders of this great woman," said Ernestine Jones-Williams, 71, a Baltimore County resident and a Tubman family descendant who spoke on behalf of the family. "We are overwhelmed. Overwhelmed. Thank you, and God bless you." The ceremony in Wyman Park Dell, on the 105th anniversary of

as oﬀensive reminders of the country's racial history and those who proudly consider them a part of their Southern heritage. The public reckoning over the placement and meaning of such statues in public spaces, began in large part in 2015, after white supremacist Dylann Roof shot nine African Americans to death in a church in Charleston, S.C. It grew in August after a violent white supremacist rally to protest the planned removal of a statue of Lee in Charlottesville, Va., led to the death of a counter-protester. Mayor Catherine Pugh's administration removed four Baltimore monuments with ties

to the Confederacy days after the Charlottesville rally in an unannounced, overnight operation, citing "safety and security" concerns. The four were the LeeJackson monument, a monument to Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument and the Confederate Women's Monument. "Since the removal of the LeeJackson statue, this park has become a gathering place for city residents of all backgrounds to meet, talk and enjoy the location as a space that symbolizes hope and positive change," said Ciara Harris, chief of staﬀ to Baltimore Recreation and Parks Director Reginald Moore. "Harriet Tubman Grove will provide the city an opportunity to correct historic injustice to a Maryland native. Our city is properly recognizing an African American hero." City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke called Tubman, who was born a slave on Maryland's Eastern Shore but went on to lead many other enslaved people to freedom along the Underground Railroad, a "heroine and beacon for all ages." "This is now the next logical step in the process of asserting those values, those positive values of inclusion, of tolerance, of speaking out against prejudice", said Jsckson Gilman-Forlini, who also works for the city as a historic preservationist. "These kind of gatherings in many ways are much more powerful than new monuments may necessarily be, because these are about community action and about the experience of the individual working in a community to assert positive values," he said. "In that way I think this is really the best thing that we could be doing right now as a means of healing past injustices."  www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-harriettubman-20180310-story.html

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Business - Salute to Women in Business

By Kate Taylor

might be baﬄed by a sign that has been turned upside down. The golden arches, t y p i c al l y standing as a proud "M," have been ﬂipped over to serve as a "W." But this isn't a bizarre prank or a careless mistake. The upside-down arches are in "celebration of women everywh ere, " a McDonald's spokesperson told Business Insider in an email.

McDonald's in Lynwood, California, has turned its golden-arches sign upside

down. The change was made in "celebration of women everywhere," according to the company. McDonald's is ﬂipping its logo on all digital channels to celebrate International Women's Day on Thursday. People driving by a McDonald's location in Lynwood, California,

Wendy Lewis

Franchisee Patricia Williams flipped the sign at her restaurant in Lynwood, California, in honor of International Women's Day. On Thursday, McDonald's will turn its logo upside down on all digital channels, such as Twitter and Instagram. Additionally, 100 restaurants will have special "packaging, crew shirts and hats and bag stuffers" to celebrate International Women's Day. "In celebration of women everywhere, and for the first time in our brand history, we flipped our iconic arches for International Women's Day in honor of the extraordinary accomplishments of women everywhere and especially in our restaurants," McDonald's Chief Diversity Officer Wendy Lewis said in a statement. Lewis continued: "From restaurant crew and management to our C-suite of senior leadership, women play invaluable roles at all levels and together with our independent franchise owners we're committed to their success." International Women's Day is on Thursday, March 8. A number of brands, including Old Navy and Barbie, have debuted special products to honor the day.  www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/ restaurantsandnews/mcdonalds-isflipping-its-iconic-arches-upside-downin-an-unprecedented-statement/arBBJZ6d8?ocid=spartandhp

43  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Women in Business

World of "Black" Women in Business Njeri Rionge: Earning a Place for Women in East Africa’s Tech Sector

n the East African business circles, few entrepreneurs shine brighter than Njeri Rionge. Rionge is one of Kenya’s most successful and revered serial entrepreneurs; she has co-founded several multimillion dollar companies in quick succession. One of such companies is Wananchi Online, a leading Internet service provider which has gone on to become one of East Africa’s leading cable, broadband, and IP (Internetbased) phone Njeri Rionge company. Rionge started her first business at the age of 19, selling yoghurt at schools in the capital city of Nairobi. She went on to sell clothes and run a few other small businesses. Today, she is one of the pioneer women investors in Africa’s IT sector. Wananchi Online is East Africa’s first mass-market internet service provider which has grown to become the region’s leading internet company. Over the years, Rionge has established a host of other thriving businesses, including Ignite Consulting, a flourishing business consultancy; Ignite Lifestyle, a healthcare consultancy; Business Lounge, one of Kenya’s largest startup incubators; and Incite, a booming digital marketing agency. Despite her busy schedule, her passion to impart knowledge in young entrepreneurs have not been hindered; the serial entrepreneur shares her passion through Ignite Consulting, which she currently runs as a coaching, strategy facilitation, and skills training centre. Through which she shares her skills with young

entrepreneurs in her country, helping them grow their own businesses. Rionge is passionate about growing businesses and igniting potentials, she believes in Africa as the next economic frontier. She has over 26 years of leadership and change management experience, working with SMEs and entrepreneurs to grow indigenous businesses that can be scaled across Africa. She is also a motivational speaker and life coach, passing on her wisdom and experience to upcoming entrepreneurs. Rionge, who’s in her late 40s, shows no sign of letting up on entrepreneurship. She is passionate about Africa’s position as the next big economic miracle and wants to contribute to the capacity of the continent to reach its full potential. Her advice when inspiring upcoming entrepreneurs is to be resilient. Resilience, she believes, or having a strong backbone that can handle challenges, is the key to successful entrepreneurship.  www.amazonswatchmagazine.com/amazonpreneur/njeririonge-earning-place-women-east-africas-tech-sector/

Sibongile Sambo: Setting the Pace beyond the Limits on African Skies

ibongile Sambo, the undeterred queen of aviation was born in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, South Africa, in 1974. South Africa. She showed an interest in aircraft from an early age, watching planes flying overhead and wondering one day if she would fly in those planes herself to different countries, meeting different people. Although her early career took her into the human resources environment, with companies such as De Beers and City Power, her dream of being involved in the aviation sector never left her. In 2003, with the South African government passing Black Economic Empowerment Act enabling people from previously disadvantaged backgrounds to enter and participate in economic life as entrepreneurs, Sibongile saw an opportunity to fulfill her aviation dreams. However, having neither prior

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World of "Black" Women in Business from page 44

experience in the sector, nor the capital to purchase an aircraft, posed an initial challenge, but not one that would deter Sibongile from realizing her dreams. The story is different for how different businesses are started, but a commonality of them all is gotten from the word,“inspiration”. For Sibongile Sambo, she dreamt of being a flight attendant, but she failed to meet the minimum height requirement and was turned away by South African Airways. Instead of accepting defeat, she started her own company, even selling her car and using her mother’s pension in order to set it up. Sibongile’s first taste of success in the aviation sector came as a result of the winning of a tender issued by the South African government for aviation firms to bid on a contract for cargo transport. Her company, SRS Sibongile Sambo Aviation was part of a joint venture with another firm. Although this collaborative project offered a golden opportunity to enter the industry, the other company soon withdrew, leaving Sambo to learn the contracting process on her own. Now, her Johannesburg-based company provides personalized aviation services including helicopter flights and tourist and VIP charters to destinations including the United States and Germany. The company also provides private jet owners with maintenance, sales and fleet management services. But it has been worth it, as she’s now laughing all the way to the bank. The SRS Aviation is the first aviation company in Africa set up by a woman. She started off brokering contracts for aviation services, and by later that year had scored a lucrative cargo transport contract with the South African Government. Despite the difficulties, SRS Aviation received an Air Operating Certificate by the South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), allowing it to operate commercial flying activities, and has helped three women get their private pilot licenses. They are now employed full-time Sambo tells her story as she says; “What I’m proud of about our company is that we have managed to

penetrate the male-dominated industry”. On average her company does 10 charters per annum, and that varies. It was tough at the beginning, but the rewards have been totally worth it. Last year, Ethiopia Airlines dispatched its first flight run by an entirely female crew in a bid to encourage more African women into aviation. She wants more South African women to join the effort and make it big as jet pilots. Aviation is growing in Africa. Sibongile believes SGS will grow with the industry. She also believes in investing in people as she says “I’m where I am today because somebody invested in me; it’s my opportunity now to invest in other people.” In the past decade, Ms. Sambo has scored numerous awards including for the Black Woman in Business Awards (2006), Impumelelo Top Female Entrepreneur of the Year and a finalist at the Cosmopolitan Movers of the Year 2007. She was also named a Leader of Tomorrow by Fortune Magazine.  www.amazonswatchmagazine.com/amazonpreneur/ sibongile-sambo-setting-pace-beyond-limits-african-skies/

D.C. Native Brings Black Entrepreneurship to Airports

uanita Britton traipses through Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, exchanging greetings with shop managers, kiosk employees, TSA workers and travelers. In the truest sense of the word, Britton, known to Washingtonians as Busy Bee (BZB), has become an ambassador of sorts at each of the region’s three airports, operating 21 businesses — including ﬁve restaurants — and employing hundreds of local young people in the process. Britton has meticulously invested proﬁts from a single business into several money-making ventures, all the while cultivating a well-spring of potential clients, partners and employees. As a partner and senior vice president of ParadiesBZB, DC, LLC, the company that operates Brooks Brothers, Heritage Booksellers, SPANX, Washington Pour Bar, Brighton and a host of other businesses in WMAA, Britton is the “it girl” of the airport business hubs. “I’m a southeast D.C. girl who has spent 20 years working within a tight-knit community of businesses,” she said. “I formed a collective and have insisted that all members work together because the biggest part of getting wealthy, is no doubt making money, but also, to bring the community along with me and that’s what I

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see page 46

Business - Women in Business do.” Gaining wealth, particularly within the c l o s e d ranks of an airport economy that Judd said has a $23 billion a n n u a l i m p a c t on the D.C.-area, Juanita Britton marks no small feat. But Britton said that with keen business acumen and being in the right place at the right time, opportunities arose to place her footing. “Opportunities at the airport, not for the faint,” she said. “I happened to be a partner with a conglomerate. It’s not a business where you can open a store and if the money gets tight, you can finesse through it. You cannot tell vendors and employees that you will pay them next week. The reward comes in being able to employ people from my community and worldwide.” Britton employs over 14 nationalities and works tirelessly — on site at some locations as early as 5 a.m. — to assist with managers and assess business margins. “I strive to do training for young people in my community within retail, as it is a career you can have while in school, between school, or even as a full-time career,” she said. “There are a lot of kids who need that type of career counseling and from the day they get employed, they know me,” Britton said, stressing that it remains important for her to know her young employees and for them to know her. “Building up young people as managers or going on to have their own stores, working with them to get a kiosk or to whet their palettes for entrepreneurship, is a must,” Britton said. “I want to activate that in them. My first airport store was Brooks Brothers at National in 2001. I was good with one and then to six and different opportunities came. I kept the credit right, saved money, stayed in the know — information is power — and I stayed in the loop with information. That’s how we win.” Britton serves as annual host and facilitator for the BZB Holiday Gift & Art Show, where Africanand African-American-themed items are sold for the

holidays. Additionally, she manages BZB International Tours, an educational and recreational travel service, and Up, Up and Away, a program that educates young people by exposing them to golf, aviation and airport retail industries. This is done in conjunction with her parent company, BZB International, Inc. (http://bzbinternational.com), which coordinates special events and works with small businesses on retail development, marketing and strengthening consumer and community relations.  http://washingtoninformer.com/d-c-nativebrings-black-entrepreneurship-to-airports/?utm_ source=Washington+Informer&utm_campaign=longway&utm_ medium=email

Girl Scouts Heart of New Jersey welcome ﬁrst AfricanAmerican leader in its history

ne of the largest Girl Scout councils in New Jersey, Girl Scouts Heart of New Jersey (GSHNJ), has announced the appointment of longtime advocate of girl empowerment and Girl Scouting, Natasha Hemmings, to Chief Executive Officer. Hemmings will take the GSHNJ helm on April 9. Hemmings, a Piscataway resident who holds a Masters in Public Administration from Rutgers University, brings 17 years of strategic leadership, community engagement, non-profit programming, and fund development to the council. Currently, she is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Girl Scouts of Central & Southern New Jersey. where she has successfully l e v e r a g e d partnerships with several national and local brands to increase opportunities for girls as well as expanded membership and volunteerism in underserved New Jersey communities. Over the last 12 years, she was selected four Natasha Hemmings consecutive times to serve on the Girl Scouts USA National Convention

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Action Team. She is also Co-Leader of a 32-member multi-level troop in Plainfield. “We support Girl Scouts from the Delaware to Hudson rivers. The counties served by GSHNJ range from some of the most rural areas to the most densely and demographically diverse in the nation," said Lydia Whitefield, Board Chair, GSHNJ. "Natasha joins GSHNJ at a critical juncture for the council as we seek to make Girl Scout leadership programs accessible to all girls, in language and in culture," Whitefield said. “Natasha has a deep understanding that success comes when adult volunteers are well supported in their efforts to serve their troops. She possesses the leadership, experience, and passion needed to promote and provide innovative and relevant programming for girls in every part of our council.” GSHNJ serves more than 17,000 girls, ages 5-17, and 10,000 adult members in the counties of Hudson, Essex, Union, Somerset, Hunterdon, as well as sections of Warren and Middlesex. Hemmings is eager for the challenge. “I am very thankful for this opportunity and extremely excited about partnering with the staff, board, volunteers, and community to make a positive impact on the lives of girls. I am also looking forward to expanding our network of G.I.R.L. Champions (Go-getters, Innovators, Risktakers, and Leaders)™ throughout the region.” GSHNJ’s mission is to help build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place by providing girls access to premier leadership programs and mentors throughout New Jersey. Leadership programs focus on four key areas: outdoor experiences, life skills, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and entrepreneurship.  www.tapinto.net/towns/bloomfield/sections/other-nj-news/articles/ girl-scouts-heart-of-new-jersey-welcome-first-afr-1

Raquan Hall has an Entrepreneur Success Story

aquan (Quan) Hall is managing partner and principal engineer at Hall Group Design Engineering Firm LLC (www.hgdengineering.

com).

HGD, which launched in April 2017, specializes in facility engineering, project management, and the design and planning of facilities. They collaborate with partners in architecture, civil, mechanical, electrical, ﬁre protection, IT and cost estimating to provide buildings that are “an expression

of who you are and what you value.” “I have had the opportunity to learn from some of the best and talented minds in military leadership; local and national Raquan Hall architects, and engineers,” Hall says. No doubt, Hall’s early exposure to experts with industry knowledge helped fast-track her career. She put in 18 successful years with the Department of Navy, gaining experience in budgets, management, and teamwork. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Howard University, Hall was selected into the Department of Navy’s environmental internship program. The Navy program is designed to provide students, from high school to graduate level, with opportunities to explore federal careers while getting paid for the work performed. One of the first challenges Hall worked on won the White House Closing the Circle Award. The award recognizes federal employees and their facilities for efforts that have made an impact on the environment. The mission is to promote pollution prevention, recycling, green products and use of Environmental management systems. Over the next five years of her career, Hall, one of the youngest project managers at the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, got even more exposure to various roles. All relevant experience in managing major multi-million dollar military construction programs. One of the largest teams she led supported the construction of the $1 Billion Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The center now has more than 7,100 staff members who serve military families; active duty, returning war heroes, veterans, and America’s leaders. In 2009, Hall was selected to support a Marine buildup program in Guam and moved overseas with her husband, Damien Hall, and their three kids,

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Business - Women in Business “Living in Guam were some of the best years of our life,” she said. On the idyllic tropical island, Hall earned a number of professional awards and achievements. She received the Meritorious Service Award for implementing solutions that cut a 6-month design program to 3-months, and for managing the Air Force Military Design Program resulting in the agency’s selection as Design Agent of the Year. Hall also received several Commendation Coins for overall engineering and project management support. After returning from Guam in early 2015, Hall toyed with the idea of starting her own company. By the end of 2015, HGD was born. She decided to leave the Department of Defense to grow her business full time. “We are very excited about the opportunities opening up,” Hall said, adding that they will allow “HGD to contribute alongside many notable ﬁrms who have provided quality design services for our community.”  www.blackengineer.com/article/raquan-hall-sharesentrepreneur-success-story

Queen Ahneva Ahneva,

When You Wear Your Culture, You Wear Your Crown

he Black Panther movie may well be on its way to breaking records and setting Fashion Trends. But one such African Couturier Designer has been doing just that for over 30 years. Queen Ahneva Ahneva, “The Frist Lady of African Couture Design”. Ahneva has been incorporating traditional African textiles in her collection for her entire career. Her Chicago born swagger is spiked by her Hollywood red carpet flair as the go-to designer for high fashion Africa in United States and Africa and beyond, Ahneva was formally trained in the USA in Fashion Design and Merchandising. Her passion for African textiles has shaped her entire career. Ahneva, has learned the gentile mastery of weaving and blending these textiles in a romantic fashion statement of "Love for Africa" and its people. Ahneva’s love affair with African Textiles started early while still in high school where she served as Vice President of the Black Student Union. Her job was to create Cultural Experiences for the students which meant wearing African fashion. As a young leader trying to exemplify leadership qualities Ahneva went on a quest to seek out and find African fashion. Unfortunately there were very few in the community. But through her diligence Ahneva met The Cultural Curator of African textiles, Mrs. Yural Johnson. “She

Queen Ahneva Ahneva taught me so much”. I went to her shop every day to learn more…she inspired me to research about the textiles. Ahneva developed a deep understanding and love for the beauty and mystery of African design techniques. She found the fulﬁllment of her fashion design calling by combining those African design motifs with Western design techniques procuring her version of African Centered Wearable Art “Cultural Couture.”

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Ahneva left her native town of Chicago and moved to Los Angeles to join the Hollywood fashion industry. As she struggled to get into the designers guild for costume designs, she saw her dreams quickly fade into an area of racism, sexism and don’t’ forget drugs. Ahneva quickly knew this was not the direction she wanted to go in and quickly made a U-turn and started a new venture DESIGNERS NETWORK INTERNATIONAL, a membership organization meant to galvanize designers into one voice. But it seems her voice was the only one crying for change. After trying and trying to get designers to come together and a series of defeats and no financial means of support, Ahneva soon turned her attention back to her first love Fashion Design. In Hollywood a town where everyone and their mother is a designer, Ahneva knew early on that she needed something that would separate her from everyone else. That something was what she knew and love African textile designs…It was a no brainer. This would be her niche market, the one that proved to be the right choice and changed her life; Queen Ahneva Ahneva Wearable Art was born. Since taking that giant step Queen Ahneva has become the premier designer of African Centered Cultural Couture in the United States, Africa. She is a pioneer of the form and a crusader for the philosophy: “When You Wear Your Culture, You Wear Your Crown”. Ahneva started traveling to Africa in the early 80’s, a designer known for her exquisite designs she felt compelled to go to the source the essence , quintessence of African textiles for her designs. In 2007 Ahneva decided to move her manufacturing headquarters to Nigeria, West Africa, where she was embraced by the African family. Ahneva Ahneva International (AAI) LLC LTD was born. AAI employs over 25 African men and women, artisans, dyers, tailors, painters, batik artists many talented young men and woman who when trained have been able to produce an Incredible collection of Wearable Art. Ahneva’ s collection is a palette of bead works, cord art, unique patterns Batik on Silk Charmeuse, linen’s and the finest Ethiopian cottons. Ahneva’s works have been mainly focus on ONE OF A KIND Haute Couture. Her collections have been worn by such luminaries Angela Bassett, Alfre Woodard, Chris Tucker, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Heads of States, politicians and celebrities from around the world. Having returned to her home in the USA, Ahneva is busy re-establishing her base in Atlanta, GA.

Densua’s African Treasures on the third floor inside Macy’s Greenbrier Mall, recently hosted Ahneva’s first US trunk showcase which was a major success. So much so that the owner has decided to also carry Ahneva’s collection in their Gallery/Boutique permanently. QAA, continues to emerge as an international bridge builder bringing together African Culture Couture and Tradition with the mid-luxury markets. Recently QAA Wearable Art Collection joined forces with Mrs. Jo Roberson Edwards, Founder/Executive Director of CAUSE for Elegance. The Showroom plans to launch her “Ready to Wear Collection” Spring/Summer at Phipps Plaza,.a shopping mall located in the affluent Buckhead District of Atlanta. “This is the ppportunity of a lifetime to finally have a luxury outlet in the US is what I have been praying for”. Ahneva says she is just getting started and will continue to create fabulous fashion. Her main goal is to continue to create opportunities that allow her to support the amazing artists, the young men and women that are so multi-talented, so brilliant to continue to thrive and grow is her life mission. As Ahneva continues to navigate through the International business arena she says it’s a constant learning curve. Every single day but believes in her heart that she is the right one to get it done.  queen@classic97.net

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Business - Women in Business

Oldest Black-owned Travel Agency Helps Tourists 'Embrace' Africa By Michael Cottman

aynelle Henderson was planning to downsize the global, black-owned travel business her parents founded 61 years ago, but there was only one problem: The phone kept ringing. "I was trying to slow down this year," Henderson told NBC News. "My plan was to move the company to a home-based business but more calls continued to come in from clients who wanted to travel to Ghana, Senegal and South Africa." "We're still getting calls," Henderson said. "I can't say no." Henderson, a youthful and energetic 70-year-old, is busy this week in her Silver Spring,

Maryland oﬃce emailing clients, arranging adventure and cultural packages, and chatting with black lawyers about traveling to Ghana and Senegal in June. It's a familiar mission. Henderson Travel Service (http://hendersontravel.com) is the oldest, full-service African-American travel agency in the nation and the ﬁrst black-owned travel company to take large groups of black tourists to Africa. Since 1955, the travel agency has sent hundreds of thousands of tourists to Africa. Six decades later, Henderson, the president of her company since 1984, is continuing a storied legacy. In many countries throughout Africa, Henderson's name remains synonymous with excellence. And it all began with Freddye Henderson's dream. Gaynelle Henderson's late parents, Jacob and Freddye Henderson, were visionaries who founded the travel agency in Atlanta in 1955 during a racially turbulent time in America. Rosa Parks was arrested that same year for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading a civil rights movement for non-violent social change. Henderson said her mother, Freddye, believed that AfricanAmericans would embrace Africa Jacob and Freddye Henderson - and that Africa would embrace stand outside their travel agency in African-Americans, so her parents Atlanta. © Provided by NBCU News Group,

coined their agency motto: "Education through Exposure." Freddye and Jacob led their first group of clients to Africa on a chartered flight in 1957 when Ghana celebrated its formal independence from Britain and Kwame Nkrumah was elected as Ghana's first Prime Minister and President. The Hendersons chartered a plane from Paris, because at that time there were no commercial airlines flying to Africa., a place that was often referred to as "the Dark Continent". "We were pioneers in AfricanAmerican tourism," said Hend erson, who has visited at least 24 A f r i c a n countries. "My parents were taking clients to Africa before Pan Am was flying to Africa." A u t h o r J a m e s Baldwin and Olympic gold medalist J e s s e Owens also traveled with Henderson T r a v e l Service. K a r e n Hoffman, President of The Bradford Group, a marketing, public relations and advertising firm specializing in travel, said she first met Freddye Henderson in the early 1980s when Hoffman opened The Gambia National Tourist Office

a division of NBCUniversal Media LLC

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for the Bradford Group. "It was my first introduction to Africa and my first time on African soil," Hoffman told NBC News. "We invited Freddye on the trip to Gambia and she was my mentor, we learned so much from her about Africa. She was an icon." "Henderson Travel pioneered Africa, and especially West Africa," said Hoffman, who is also a board member with the Africa Travel Association. "They were the leaders and movers and shakers in

international travel and escorted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr to Oslo, Norway when King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Andrew Young, America's former United Nations ambassador, was also part of the historic delegation. The Henderson Travel Service family became a prominent name over the years working with black fraternities and sororities, black churches, historically black colleges, The National Medical Association — a 21-year

professional organizations. Gaynelle Henderson said she has come a long way since growing up in her parent's Atlanta office writing out airline tickets by hand, along her two sisters, Carole Tyson and Shirley Coleman and brother, Jake Henderson, who also played various roles in the family business over the years. Today, Henderson, who manages a second-generation, black-owned and female-owned business, fields queries by email most days. Last May, Henderson planned a trip for 130 members of the National Bar Association, the black lawyers group, and led them to India and Dubai. And this year, when the black attorneys called Henderson again, she agreed to plan an excursion for 65 people to visit Ghana and Senegal in June. And even though she wants to scale back and carve out time to finish the book about her parent's legacy that her mother started, Henderson still arrives at her office by 9 a.m. most mornings to plan trips throughout Africa for eager travelers. "The demand for travel to West Africa, South Africa and other parts of the world has increased s i g n i f i c a n t l y, " Henderson said. "I'm Freddy Henderson's durba and entoolment in Accra as Queen Mother of Travels and busier than ever."  Tours. © Provided by NBCU News Group, a division of NBCUniversal Media LLC West Africa." Freddye and Jacob also arranged

relationship with African-American doctors — and many other black

www.msn.com/en-us/news/ us/oldest-black-owned-travelagency-helps-tourists-embrace-africa/arBBJF6D0?ocid=spartandhp

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Business - Women in Politics

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THE CHISHOLM EFFECT: Black Women in American Politics in 2018

FORWARD

By Kamala Harris (D-CA), U.S. Senator

t’s been 50 years since former U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) became the first Black woman elected to U.S. Congress. Her arrival on the national political stage was validation that our centuries-long work to claim seats at our country’s most powerful decision-making tables was not in vain. Chisholm’s salient, constant voice on behalf of disenfranchised Americans was a clarion call for Black women to continue pushing toward representational parity and for leadership that will work to realize our country’s founding principals of equity and opportunity for all. In the decades since, Black women have hurdled seemingly insurmountable challenges in our march toward full political representation. And while we have yet to reach this goal, The Chisholm Effect: Black Women in American Politics 2018 (www. higherheightsleadershipfund.org/2018_report) shows we continue to make important political gains even as our country struggles against some the most regressive, dangerous leadership and policies propagated since before Chisholm’s emergence. Among other facts, this status update—provided each year by Higher Heights Leadership Fund (www. higherheightsleadershipfund.org) and the Center for American Women and Politics—highlights gains made in 2017 in the number of Black women holding statewide elected executive office and serving as mayors of the top 100 most populated U.S. cities. It also details how Black women remained energized during an off-election year, ultimately playing critical roles in organizing voters and casting decisive ballots in hotly contested races in Alabama, New Jersey and Virginia. The gains we are seeing today are a direct result of Black women’s brilliant strategy, tireless work and bravery in the face of conditions that are often unfair and sometimes dangerous. This determined push forward finds us at a moment when Black women are central to a strategy for potential progressive gains

in 2018. History has shown that we are one of our country’s most powerful, important leadership assets— particularly during moments of crisis. Certainly that was the case when Chisholm won office in 1968, a year marked by one of the most turbulent periods of racial strife and anti-war protest in American history. In response, Chisholm spent her time in Congress working on behalf of veterans, women, and minority education and employment opportunities. This year, we should all be buoyed by the Chisholm effect, which spawned generations of Black women determined to and successful at breaking political glass ceilings. There’s an opportunity in the coming months for Black women to build on these gains by taking decisive action to increase our political representation and provide America with leadership that is powerful, connected and lasting. The information shared in this status update provides an essential snapshot that is useful in understanding where we are making gains, and, more importantly, where the opportunities are for us to claim new seats at decision-making tables.  www.higherheightsleadershipfund.org/2018_report

53  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Women in Law

GQUAL: a Global Campaign to Promote Gender Parity in International Tribunals and Monitoring Bodies. Why is gender parity in international representation important?

he under-representation of women affects virtually all international tribunals and monitoring or adjudicating bodies that play key roles in developing international law, human rights, international relations, and cooperation. For example, as of September 2015 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has no female judges; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has 17 permanent judges and only 2 are women; the Human Rights Committee has 18 members and only 5 are women. Moreover, a study of the numbers shows that this current imbalance has affected most of these international bodies since their establishment. For example, of the 40 individuals who have held positions within the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea since its inception, only 1 has been a woman; and of the 52 Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, 19 have never been held by a woman, including 11 that have been held by more than one mandate-holder. International bodies make important decisions for societies, including issues of security and peace, international boundaries, environmental protection, and the scope of human rights. Shouldn’t these institutions that impart justice and promote international cooperation be examples of fairness and equal representation? We believe that they should be. The underrepresentation of women, who make up more than half of humanity, and a lack of diversity diminishes the legitimacy of international human rights tribunals and monitoring bodies and limits their potential and impact. We also believe that a critical mass of women can add different perspectives and experiences to make visible and help address issues that may otherwise be absent or overlooked. Above all, GQUAL promotes parity in these spaces as a measure of equality.

Why a Campaign? hanging the composition of international tribunals and monitoring bodies to reflect diversity and equal representation is possible.

GQUAL reviewed a total of 84 international bodies, which resulted in a total of 574 positions. A measure of GQUALity will be creating the conditions, procedures, and mechanism that can ensure that 287 qualified women from different parts of the world and with diverse backgrounds are elected. It is unlikely, however, that the imbalance in the composition of these bodies will correct itself overtime. The study we conducted reveals that the underrepresentation of women has affected most of these bodies since their establishment, and that it is not necessarily improving. Most international bodies that have achieved equal representation at some point in time, have experienced regressions and have not been able to sustain the balance. It is also unlikely that awareness and publicity of the issue will be sufficient. That is why we think a campaign is necessary. We believe that achieving change in the composition of these bodies requires concerted and strategic actions from a variety of global, regional, and national actors, including civil society, academia, public official and government representatives, and the international institutions themselves. As a global campaign open to all, we want GQUAL to become a platform, space, and network for the exchange of ideas, actions and engagements across these sectors to affect change.

What are GQUAL´s strategies to achieve change?

QUAL seeks to study nomination and election procedures and implement differentiated strategies with the objective of including gender parity as a consideration and goal within them. This will also require taking into account the many differences between each State that takes part in the nomination process, and the many different procedures established for each international body. Over the next five years, the campaign will deploy three key strategies to promote parity in international bodies. GQUAL will: • Work with a number of States from different regions to adopt pledges to nominate and vote for international positions in parity.

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• Work with international tribunals and bodies and the international organizations that host them to promote the development of legal standards, guidelines, and mechanisms that incorporate gender parity as a criteria and objective of selections procedures, and make them more transparent and participatory • Create an engaged and active network to coordinate, strengthen and globalize the campaign’s actions through coordinated research, advocacy and communications.

and discussions of best practices and experiences in selection processes and to engage with States, the international tribunals and monitoring bodies, and the international organizations that host them to develop guidelines and mechanisms that can promote women´s equal representation

You can also read about GQUAL´s main strategies, as established in the GQUAL Declaration, by visiting: www. gqualcampaign.org/about-gqual/the-gqualdeclaration.

You can also read the campaign´s concept paper for more information.

How does GQUAL seek change? 1. GQUAL Information: making Information available and promoting more transparent procedures. GQUAL raises awareness about the lack of women’s representation in international tribunal and other monitoring bodies Through our Gqual Jobs Board, we monitor the composition of international bodies and publicize information and alert our network on the positions that are open or about to become available and on the respective nomination and voting process. GQUAL also aims to work with States and International organizations to develop more transparent nomination and selection processes. 2. GQUAL Guidelines and Mechanisms: The campaign seeks to open spaces for the exchange

3. GQUAL Rights and Standards: The campaign promotes the study of the underrepresentation of women in international bodies from the perspective of the law of human rights and will engage with international bodies to develop a better understanding of this implication. 4. GQUAL Pledges: The campaign works with Governments to get States to pledge to nominate and vote candidates in a manner compliant with gender parity. 5. GQUAL Network: Create connections, communication and links between GQUAL supporters.  www.gqualcampaign.org/about-gqual/

55  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Women Making History

Civil Rights Pioneer Viola Desmond will Take Her Place on Canada’s New $10 Bil By Adedamola Agboola

iola Desmond, famed for challenging racial segregation in Canada, was unveiled last Thursday as the face of Canada’s new $10 bill. On Nov. 8, 1946, Desmond walked into the Roseland Theater in Nova Scotia province of Canada and sat in the whites-only section of the theater. The designated area for blacks at the time was the main floor to the balcony. Desmond had to be dragged out of the theater because she refused to move to the balcony. A black Nova Scotian, Desmond was convicted of a onecent tax violation, the difference between the seat she paid for and the seat she sat in, which was more expensive. Referred to as Canada’s Rosa Parks, Desmond passed away in 1965 at the age of 50. She was awarded a posthumous pardon by the government of Nova Scotia in 2010, a first in Canada’s history. While interracial marriages were uncommon at the time, Desmond— one of 10 children—was born to a white mother and a black father in 1914 who were active members of various black community organizations. Growing up, she noted the void of professional hair and skin-care products for black women. Desmond built a business career

as a beautician and a mentor to young black women in Nova Scotia through her Desmond School of Beauty Culture, graduating as many as 15 women in a year. She started a program at the Field Beauty Culture School in Montreal, one of the few institutions in Canada that accepted black applicants. She later opened Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture in Halifax catering to the black community. Desmond’s story didn’t receive public attention until her sister, Wanda Robson, at the age of 73, enrolled in one of Graham Reynolds’ course on race relations at the thenCape Breton University. With Reynold’s help, Robson was able to tell Desmond’s story with the publication of "Sister to Courage" in 2010. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in January that his department hasn’t made up its mind whether to have Harriet Tubman on the $20 note. “We haven’t made any decisions on whether we will change the bill or won’t change the bill,” Mnuchin said at a conference in late January. Mnuchin’s assertions run contrary

to the Obama administration's announcement in 2016 that the late abolitionist would become the first

black woman to grace American paper currency and the first woman in more than 100 years.  www.blackenterprise.com/ canadas-rosa-parks-is-the-face-onthe-countrys-new-10-bill

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re you a Small Business interested in selling your product or services to Metro or to Prime Contractors that do business with Metro? Would you like to learn how to win contracts as a Prime Contractor through SB Prime, Metro's exciting set-aside initiative? If so, we invite you to come grow with us and learn about Metro Connect. Start now and register for a How to Do Business with Metro Workshop. Metro staff will show you how to take advantage of the vast array of products, services and transportation related opportunities projected over the coming weeks, months and year. As an added bonus, Metro's procurement staff will host informal interviews with firms before the workshop, starting at 9:00 a.m. Tuesday, 8:30 a.m.: Registration 9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.: One-on-One with Contract Administrators and Continental Breakfast 9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.: Program

Metro Headquarters 3rd Floor, Board Room, One Gateway Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Topics: Highway Project Update, Procurement Update, Certiﬁcation Update, Small Business Prime Update, LA SAFE/511 Next Generation Update To learn more about how Metro Connect's Small and Disadvantaged Business Certiﬁcations can help open the door to contracting opportunities with Metro visit Metro Vendor Portal. For further questions, please contact Marisela Villar at VillarM@metro.net or via phone at 213.922.2235.

From: NAACP Happy International Women’s Day! NAACP celebrates and applauds all women - the freedom ﬁghters - who have dedicated their lives to confronting sexism, racism, classism, homophobia and other expressions of hate and intolerance that we face every day. Today’s holiday gives us the special opportunity to underscore our approach to equality as an urgent global endeavor. On February 13, 2018, we were proud to announce a new strategic partnership with U.N. Women, a United Nations organization working to create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise her human rights and live up to her full potential. Together with U.N. Women, we will strenthen our ﬁght to advance racial and gender equality as we build on our common commitment to engaging African Americans and all in the African Diaspora. Will you join our movement? We cannot do it without your support. Join the NAACP. Give to support our work. In Service, NAACP http://www.naacp.org

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Dear Friends, It is my honor to write to you as your newly elected President and CEO. In the face of a brutal and near-daily national assault on civil rights and progressive issues, the NAACP has recognized the immediate need for a leader to guide the organization during its strategic re-envisioning process. The NAACP has a long legacy of activism and civil rights leadership, but I am committed to retooling and refreshing the Association to best confront 21-century challenges. As president, I seek to shepherd the Association into a period of growth and strength: building our ﬁeld, our funds, and our force as a champion of civic engagement. I will use every tactic in our playbook to ensure that African Americans can achieve equality in the United States. Will you join me (www.naacp.org)? Looking forward,

59  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Gun Technology Editorial

Building a Safer Gun: Why Silicon Valley Won’t Back Safe Weapons Tech By Josh Quittner, Editorial Director at Flipboard

his nation appears to have finally reached a tipping point in our tolerance for guns. Everyone is searching for a fix—with one notable and utterly deplorable exception: Silicon Valley. If the titans of technology hope to stay out of the fray, that’s not going to happen. Anti-gun activists boycotted Apple, Amazon, Google and Roku recently for streaming NRA TV, which has been described as the Fox News of the gun world. None of those companies budged in response. Though Apple CEO Tim Cook had shared one of those feeble “hearts and prayers” tweets at the outset of the Florida massacre, for the most part Big Tech is laying low.

And yet, in most other social issues, Silicon Valley—Cook especially— is on the frontlines. So what gives? As a First Amendment absolutist, I’m fine if those companies are willing to give the National Rifle

Association a platform to stream its point of view. Gun haters may well find some of that stuff obnoxious, but it’s not hate speech, doesn’t incite violence (against law-abiding humans, that is), or do any of the things that would likely bar it from being disseminated on Flipboard, in fact. While Techland might be wrapping itself in the warm and fuzzy cloak of free speech today, its gun problems go much deeper. The fact is, the financiers and others who make great technology happen in this country have largely ignored the entrepreneurs who have come forward with intriguing technology solutions— dating back to the mid 1980s—that would reduce accidental gun deaths, suicides and, possibly, even mass shootings. The same kinds of biometric keys—visual recognition, fingerprint—we use to unlock our phones could be used to ensure that only the rightful owner of a weapon can fire it. In a similar vein, why wouldn’t we use RFID (Find My Gun!) tracking to locate stolen firearms? There are even a raft of patents that would help "geofence" guns and rifles, which, among other things, would automatically prevent those smart firearms from being used in certain places such as, for instance, schools. While you can find some of these innovations in modest ways, for the most part this has been a cause that the best and the brightest in Silicon Valley have avoided. And the VCs who’d fund that kind of thing, which is known as “smart gun” tech, have been ignoring smart gun entrepreneurs. Dan Primack started writing about the topic a few years ago in Fortune (and continued last week in Axios) and found that VCs muster a variety of reasons for their indifference. Some “cite regulatory risks that don’t seem to bother them when investing in Uber or Airbnb or a pharmaceutical company. Others cite fund agreements that restrict ‘sin’ investments like weapons

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The $12,995 Mi8: “The U.S. military has not yet adopted this ﬁrearm, and it is not available to any other military. But it is available to the American public.” via TrackingPoint

and tobacco, but certainly a carve-out could be created either via existing fund amendments, or future carveouts for smart-gun technologies.” But the real answer is far more obvious: “People who want smart guns are the ones who don’t buy them,” Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and the author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, told Mashable. In other words, there’s no market for smart guns. But creating markets and finding opportunities where the common wisdom say none exists is what disruption is all about. It’s what Silicon Valley and the rest of the great tech ecosystem excels at. Personal computers, electric cars, the commercial Internet itself—all of these innovations were launched into markets that were indifferent at best.

So who will step up? The one notable exception to VC apathy out here has been angel investor Ron Conway. “The gun companies have chosen to sit on their asses and not innovate,” he told Newsweek a few years ago. “Silicon Valley is coming to their rescue.” I hope he’s right, but we haven’t seen much evidence or activism in these parts. Yet if anyone can get something going on the smart gun front, it’s Conway, who has always been a force in Silicon Valley. His early investments, or “champagne rounds,” are almost a requirement for any startup looking to get serious funding down the road. So it’s heartening that he’s walking point on this one. “This is going to happen outside the gun industry,” he told 60 Minutes in 2015, in a smart gun story. Conway, who was an early investor in Facebook and Google, said he was looking for the “Mark Zuckerberg of guns” and had invested in 15 smart gun startups. Maybe he’s found one. And maybe, with the current national mood, tech VCs will see a monetary opportunity in doing the right thing and using smart technology to get a handle

on this killer epidemic. In the meantime, you can be sure that other kinds of gun entrepreneurs will find the funds they need to invent tech to make firearms deadlier and more efficient. See for instance the “precision-tracking” invented by TrackingPoint, a Pflugerville, Texas-based “applied technology company.” (Good NPR story here.) Lest you think I’m a pearl-clutching gun hater, I was a riflery instructor when I was a college kid and used to enjoy bird hunting. I have no problem with the sport of hunting. But assault weapons and semiautomatics? Why would any civilian need that? And where is the sport in this?  editorialstaﬀ@ﬂipboard.com

61  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Buy Out

AMC Networks to Acquire Robert Johnson’s RLJ Entertainment in Deal Worth $60 Million By Todd Spangler

MC Networks announced a deal to acquire majority control of RLJ Entertainment, the streamingoriented company headed by Robert Johnson, in a deal valuing RLJ at about $60 million. RLJ Entertainment operates two streaming-subscription services aimed a niche audiences: Acorn TV, which features British television and film content, and UMC (Urban Movie Channel). AMC is offering about $16 million to buy the shares of RLJ Entertainment it doesn’t currently own and are not affiliated with Johnson, who previously founded BET Networks. The deal comes after AMC invested $65 million in RLJ last fall to take a 26% stake in the form of loans (which have subsequently been increased to an aggregate of $78 million). That agreement gave AMC the option to purchase majority ownership, and on Monday AMC said it will acquire the 27% of the outstanding shares in RLJ Entertainment that it doesn’t already own for a purchase price of $4.25 per share in cash. Johnson will retain a minority stake in the company; he currently owns approximately 47% of the outstanding shares of RLJ Entertainment common stock. Shares of publicly traded RLJ Entertainment popped 9.8% Monday, to the $4.25-per-share price being offered by AMC Networks. For the third quarter of 2017, RLJ Entertainment reported net revenue of $20.9 million, up 13.9% year-over-year, driven by a 58.6%

increase in digital channels revenue. It posted a net loss of $2.7 million, versus a net loss of $4.0 million in Q3 of 2016. In January, R L J Entertainment announced that its two streaming services, Acorn TV and UMC, had topped 700,000 subscribers, up 55% from a year earlier and an increase of 13% from Sept. 30, 2017. The Silver Spring, Md.-based company also distributes titles in multiple formats including on broadcast and pay TV, DVD, and digital platforms in North America, the U.K., and Australia. In addition, through its U.K.-based Acorn Media Enterprises development arm, RLJE co-produces and develops new programs and owns 64% of Agatha Christie Ltd. Under the pact, AMC said it would run RLJ Entertainment as a privately owned subsidiary of AMC Networks, with a minority stake held by Johnson. In announcing the deal, AMC Networks said it “has no interest in disposing of its stake in RLJ Entertainment or participating in any other strategic process.” For AMC, RLJ Entertainment is part of its ongoing push into online-streaming and original digital content. AMC took a minority stake in Funny Or Die last year and led

a $16.5 million round of funding in upstart digital studio Adaptive Studios. It operates the Shudder and SundanceNow over-thetop service and AMC Premiere, a commercial-free subscription service offered as an option to payTV subscribers. AMC’s proposed takeover of RLJ still requires the approval of RLJ Entertainment’s board. AMC Networks said it expects the board of directors of RLJ to form a special committee of independent directors to consider the proposal. Neither Johnson nor RLJ directors nominated by AMC Networks will participate in the evaluation of the proposal. AMC Networks enlisted Citigroup Global Markets as financial adviser and Sullivan & Cromwell as legal counsel in connection with the transaction.  www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/amcnetworks-to-acquire-robert-johnson’srlj-entertainment-in-deal-worth-dollar60million/ar-BBJCn8e?ocid=spartandhp

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Mailing List Accuracy Becomes More Stringent By Melissa Global Intellegence Blog

he newest wrinkle from the U.S. Postal Service impacts businesses with substantial mass mailing eﬀorts. New Mail Update regulations are intended to limit an unacceptable percentage of wrong addresses, which are costly for everyone concerned.

The key word here is "unacceptable." Be warned: The threshold at which the Postal Service measures adequate mailing-list accuracy and the way it does it are changing dramatically. Bad addresses already are costing businesses millions. When a letter or bill, package or ﬂat, gets bounced as undelivered as addressed (UAA), the business and its mail house are on the hook not only for penalties, but also for poor customer communications and marketing eﬀectiveness, lagging account receivables, fewer sales, and more unhappy customers. As for the Postal Service, it

doesn't want to eat the cost of hauling the bad stuﬀ back to the mail facility, sorting it again, mailing it back to the mailer, and so on. It's no wonder the Postal Service has been levying compensatory costs on mailers with bad databases. Now, as of March 1, 2018, that cost promises to become increasingly onerous--or shall we say increasingly motivating. The old rules mandated that addresses be screened via a machine with the ungainly name of Mail Evaluation Readability L o o k u p Instrument. It's acronym, MERLIN, implies a certain magical ability to detect bad addresses, but in reality all these machines have been doing was randomly checking a portion of a submitted mailing list. If a generous 30% or more of that sample was faulty, the mailer was hit with a fee of 7 cents per piece for the percent of bad addresses above that threshold. Now, the Postal Service will be leveraging its Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) technology to check every single address a mailer submits in bulk for accuracy, not just a random sample. Further, the allowable threshold of 30% of bad addresses is history.

Now, if only 0.5% of addresses are faulty, failing to mirror Postal Services change of address (COA) records beyond a certain cutoﬀ point, the mailer is hit with an 8 cent fee on each bad address beyond this vastly more stringent threshold. The potential for thousands of dollars in penalties due to out-ofdate mailing lists is now very real.

What are direct mailers to do to achieve 99.5% address list accuracy? First, they should get current with all change-of-address requests ... if they can. Each year some 40 million Americans move, and only a portion bother to submit COAs, and those that are filed only gradually find their way into the Postal Service's system. Further, mailers should assure that all addresses match official Postal Service formats of street address, apartment number, accurate city name, and the like. It's amazing how often an addressee himself doesn't know what town he lives in ("Is it Hollywood or Los Angeles?"), and these sorts of things can easily gum up a mailing list. Yes, there are some Postal Service aids, but they're not particularly user friendly. Fortunately there are easier, more accurate, and less bothersome solutions. Staying on the right side of the U.S. Postal Service's new Move Update regulations is good business for direct mailers and mail houses. It avoids costly penalties while assuring optimal mailing accuracy and customer satisfaction. And you'll want to do it with a industry partner who's focused on data accuracy.  http://blog.melissadata.com/dataquality-authority/2018/02/mailinglist-accuracy-becomes-morestringent.html

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68  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Business - Small Business Conference

www.smallbusinessconference.energy.gov

Registration is now open for the 17th Annual U.S. Department of Energy Small Business Forum & Expo (DOE2018), May 22-24, 2018 at the Westin Galleria Houston, Houston, Texas.

he DOE Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization created the Annual DOE Small Business Forum & Expo to connect the agency's offices, power administrations, laboratory and technology centers, and prime contractors with small business entrepreneurs to meet the mission needs of the Department of Energy (www.doe.gov).. DOE2018 is a great way for small businesses to network and discuss their services and solutions with agency procurement officials, small business program managers and prime contractor representatives already working within DOE. DOE2017 brought in over 800 attendees and over 100 exhibitors! Of those in attendance, 30% were representatives from government agencies, large businesses, and industry. Register now and become part of the Department of Energy's mission.

For more information, visit smallbusinessconference.energy.gov.

www.

Registration Fees: Early Bird Rate - $299 (expires Feb. 28, 2018) Regular - $379 (till 5/19/2018) Onsite - $449 (5/20/2017 to on-site) For Registration and General Information: Mr. Earl Morgan Hotline: (571) 297-4006 Email: InfoDOE@aetherquest.com

Set-Aside Alert For more information about Set-Aside Alert, the "eyes and ears" of small business federal contractors, visit our website at www.setasidealert.com. Or contact Tom Johnson, Publisher at tjohnson@setasidealert. com. 

72  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Publisher's Message powerful women in American politics today. She has gained a reputation as a fearless and outspoken advocate for women, children, people of color and the poor. She serves as the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Financial Services. An integral member of Congressional Democratic Leadership; and serves as a member of the Steering & Policy Committee. She is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and member and past chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. • Condoleeza Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up while the South was racially segregated. She was eight when her schoolmate Denise McNair, aged 11, was killed in the bombing of the primarily black Sixteenth Street Baptist Church by white supremacists on September 15, 1963. Rice has commented upon that moment in her life: “I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father's church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears.” "That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed." She refused to be defined on what an African American woman could not, or should not do, but instead became the first female African-American Secretary of State, as well as the second AfricanAmerican Secretary of State (after Colin Powell), and the second female Secretary of State (after Madeleine Albright). • Ida B. Wells was a prolific investigative journalist and suffragist who campaigned tirelessly for anti-lynching legislation. Her activism began in 1884 when she refused to give up her train

car seat, leading to a successful lawsuit against the train company. Motivated in part by racism within the women’s suffrage movement, Wells went on to found and co-found a variety of civil rights organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Alpha Suffrage Club. • Famous for her 1851 speech “Ain’t I a Woman?,” Sojourner Truth was a strong abolitionist and women’s rights advocate. Today her speech still resonates and continues to encapsulate the intersection of race and womanhood. • Vanzetta McPherson, who grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, was an active participant in the civil rights movement. With help from an AAUW Fellowship, McPherson attended Columbia Law School. She returned to Alabama, where she established a private practice and later became a magistrate judge, dedicated to protecting the rights of working women and African Americans. • Known as the “godmother of civil rights,” Dorothy Height was renowned for her work on the desegregation of schools, equal pay for women, and voting rights and for advising American leaders, from Lyndon B. Johnson to Eleanor Roosevelt. She focused especially on helping advance black women’s equality and served as president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. In 2010, AAUW posthumously honored her as a Woman of Distinction. As the President of the Black Business Association (BBA), headquartered in Southern California, the BBA will be hosting its annual “Salute to Black Women Conference, Business Expo & Luncheon” on March 23, 2018. Please contact the BBA office at (323) 2919334, or email us at mail@bbala.org for additional

74  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

see page 87

Business

www.ustda.gov

78  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump

Welcome to More.

he incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the U.S. election and help Donald T r u m p gain the presidency.  www.amazon.com/dp/B075WVX3MS/ ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_ encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America

estselling author and longtime Trump observer David Cay Johnston shines a light on the political termites who have infested our government under the Trump Administration, destroying it from within and compromising our jobs, safety, ﬁnances, and more. No journalist knows Donald Trump better than David Cay Johnston, who has been following him since 1988. It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America goes inside the administration to show how the federal agencies that touch the lives of all Americans are being undermined.

Open the door to a hotel you don’t just visit. You own it. Choice Hotels® is committed to achieving more diversity in hospitality with exclusive incentive programs designed to reduce up front costs and provide more support to minority hotel developers. And our commitment doesn’t stop there. Choice Hotels promotes and pursues diversity at all levels, ranging from our workforce to our hotel guests, from our suppliers to entrepreneurs looking to create wealth. Like you. Open the door to hotel ownership opportunities with Choice Hotels. Because you’re not in business for less. You’re in it for more. www.choicehotelsdevelopment.com/#&panel1-2

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80  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Women's History OR ANY SPECIAL OCCASION

Business beautiful and professional enough that any American business can feel totally comfortable and proud of doing business there.” Industrious operates shared oﬃce spaces in 25 cities in the USA. 

Technology:

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heck out what these ﬁrms and organizations have to oﬀer for your personal interests, personal wealth building, and business expansion opportunities.

Co-Working Spaces

ndustrious

(www.

is a coworking space for start-ups and small growing businesses but corporate clients are welcome, too. Industrious oﬀers shared amenities and social time to a diverse mix of teams — and helps them actually get some work done. With thoughtful spaces and attentive service, they hopeto make it easier for companies to give employees a productive place to work. industriousoﬃce.com)

So Industrious spaces are built with a variety of needs in mind, from boardrooms to nap pods, party spaces to nursing rooms. Loud, bright areas invite casual collaboration, while private conference areas oﬀer gravitas for client meetings. Industrious community managers stock snacks and set up new employees’ desks, plan parties and celebrate birthdays. “Our goal, from the beginning, was to create a more social or communal work environment that takes advantage of sharing economy dynamics, but still is absolutely

Your Black World News Service

eap.ai (https://leap.ai/welcome), an intelligent recruiting platform, is looking to make life a little easier for those job seekers. The company has launched what it’s calling “Instant Match,” a tool that will match up potential job seekers that upload their resume with the companies

our Black World (http:// yourblackworld.net) is the top black news site in America. You can go to the site without signing up by clicking the logo above, but if you would sign up for our newsletter, we would be greatly appreciative.

Your Black World was created to allow a diverse set of black voices to reveal themselves. There is no shame in being black, whether you are into reading the hottest news, receiving the latest commentary from the top black writers, or seeking sports, finance, advice, politics or celebrity gossip. Our motto is simple: There is no one way to be black. From Flava Flav to Oprah Winfrey – All Black News is here.. 

Matching Job Seekers With Employers

that are based in their database. With a few extra questions, those job seekers can refine those options down further, and the goal is to find what the employee wants to do — not just what’s on their resume. Initially launched looking to use AI to guarantee interviews for job seekers in tech, co-founder Yunkai Zhou now wants to make it as easy as an instant booking on Airbnb. “Right now, for a job seeker, there’s two things you do: You go to job boards, and once you go there, you put in a keyword and it returns 2,000 jobs,” Zhou said. “It takes you a very long time to figure out what works. We really believe the right AI tech to apply to this experience is to understand the user really well and give them the job matching results right away. We’ve seen this instant gratification work in other domains, it actually changes user behavior.” 

Submitted by LaSandra Stratton, Chief Content Administrator of the Black Business News.

83  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Community/Public Interest

Colin Kaepernick Lays Out Plan for $1,000,000 in Charitable Donations By Ryan Velez Colin Kaepernick had quite the year in 2017. While not playing in the NFL despite several teams that could have used him, he has arguably been more prominent over the last year as the flashpoint of a discussion that embroiled the entire sports world and the country in a discussion on protests and the police violence that initially triggered Kaepernick’s actions in the first place. Now, Newsone reports on his follow-up act for 2018. Kaepernick shared how he will allocate the final $100,000 of his $1 million charity pledge. This pledge is being made through his foundation to provide donations to organizations that were dedicated to helping individuals who lived in disenfranchised and underserved communities over the course of a year. Before the end of January, he will name the last 10 organizations who will receive the final $100,000 from his pledge. Other celebrities plan to be getting in on the action as well, matching each of these donations. The first organization he plans on donating to is Silicon Valley De-Bug. This charity has locations in the South Bay and San Jose, and works to support immigrants, low-wage workers, and children. Kevin Durant will be matching the donation with the funds specifically going to families with loved ones that are incarcerated. This is only one of several organizations and partners that are taking part. Kaepernick also partnered with actor Jesse Willams to donate to the Advancement Project, which focuses on racial justice issues

and has teamed up with NBA player Stephen Curry to donate to a violence prevention and youth development organization called United Playaz that is based in San Francisco. Since he initially started his pledge, Kaepernick has donated to over 30 nonproﬁt organizations and charities. “We have to continue to keep making steps toward real change!” wrote Kaepernick on an Instagram post, when he launched

the pledge. He also added that he wanted to help “steer that change in the right direction.” Even if his football days are over, it’s good to see that Kaepernick is leveraging his larger platform to help others in need, both through awareness and in practice by donating.  http://yourblackworld. net/2018/01/26/colin-kaepernicklays-plan-1000000-charitabledonations/

85  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Community/Public Interest

Kevin Durant Charity Foundation Funds College Track for $10,000,000 By Ryan Velez

he Kevin Durant Charity Foundation has announced a 10-year, $10 million commitment to bring College Track's renowned college completion program to Durant's hometown of Prince George's County, Maryland, creating The Durant Center, a new state-ofthe-art educational and leadership facility. Founded by Laurene Powell Jobs and Carlos Watson, College Track empowers students from underserved communities to graduate from college. Its comprehensive 10-year program from ninth grade through college removes barriers that can prevent students from earning a fouryear degree, and prepares them to succeed in the 21st century economy. College Track students graduate from college at a rate that is more than double the national average for low-income and ﬁrstgeneration students. "This is the realization of a dream of mine. To come back home and positively impact the lives of kids – who share the ambitions I've always had – with world-class educational opportunities and resources that can completely change the game in our community for generations to come," said Durant. The Kevin Durant Charity Foundation has a rich history of improving the lives of youth from low-income backgrounds through education, athletics and social programs. In 2015, the Foundation announced its Build It and They Will Ball initiative, building and renovating courts across the globe

CNBC

to increase the number of highquality basketball courts accessible to underprivileged youth. To date, 14 courts have been completed and more projects are on the slate for 2018. Additionally, the Foundation has supported several organizations working to help youth facing homelessness, including Positive Tomorrows, an elementary school for homeless children in Oklahoma, plus Oakland Elizabeth House and Larkin Street Youth Services in the Bay Area. "Every day, we work towards a more just and equitable world, inspiring today's youth to unlock their full potential and become tomorrow's leaders, mentors, and innovators," said Elissa Salas, CEO of College Track. "We couldn't think of a better example of leadership and perseverance for our students than Kevin Durant, and are thrilled to be partnering with his outstanding Foundation and the progressive leaders of Prince George's County Board of Education and Public

Schools." "Kevin Durant's athletic skills and accomplishments are known around the world; however, to Prince Georgians, his compassion, commitment and dedication as a humanitarian is what truly makes him a world class role model to our children," said Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker, III. "On behalf of all the residents of Prince George's County, I want to thank Kevin, his mother, Wanda Durant, his business partner Rich Kleiman and the Kevin Durant Charity Foundation for this investment for our County's youth. The Durant Center will have a tremendous positive impact on our County's next generation of leaders." For more information about The Kevin Durant Charity Foundation and College Track, please visit www.kevindurant.com/foundation and www.collegetrack.org.  www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kevin-durant-charityfoundation-college-track--prince-georges-county-public-schoolsteam-up-to-empower-students-striving-for-college-success-with-innovative-program--new-educational-facility-300604756.html

86  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Publisher's Message from page 74 information. Included in this conference will be a workshop on Financial Literacy open to all conference participants; and for girls 13-18 years of age, there will be workshop titled, “Role Models for Success,” where the participants will have a chance to hear and learn from motivational presentations; be paired with successful professional women for mentoring and instruction on career planning, life lessons and setting and achieving goals. Don’t forget about the women in your lives that supported, educated, helped, trained and/ or mentored you. We owe our African American women and all women a very much deserved salute and recognition for their tireless work and eﬀorts on the war against discrimination, and advocacy for the rights of women and girls in this nation. Lastly, remember to support each other’s businesses, recycling our dollars back to our businesses, communities and families to build sustainable economic empowerment.  www.bbala.org

STILL I RISE You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may tread me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries.

Maya Angelou informedmiss.wordpress.com

Does my haughtiness oﬀend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Maya Angelou 87  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

International

Ramaphosa: 2018 is Nelson Mandela's Year From: Eye Witness News

frican National Congress (ANC) president Cyril Ramaphosa says that the party has decided to use this whole year to honour Nelson Mandela because it wants to reconnect with people and go back to its roots. Ramaphosa addressed a mini rally in Mandela’s home village in Qunu in the Eastern Cape on Thursday afternoon as the party prepares to hold its 106-year birthday celebration in the province. The ANC’s top leadership presented a united front visiting the Nelson Mandela homestead ahead of the party’s birthday celebration

on Saturday. Ramaphosa then addressed ANC members, explaining why the ANC has declared this year the year of Mandela. He also called on ANC members to have faith in the new ANC leadership.

Ramaphosa says the party’s leaders will go across the country interacting with South Africans as it attempts to renew the organisation.  http://ewn.co.za/2018/01/11/ ramaphosa-2018-is-nelsonmandela-s-year

World Travel Market (WTM) Africa 2018 announces the inaugural

WTM Africa Tourism Investors’ Forum ‘Unlocking the Tourism Potential of Africa’ Wednesday, 18 April 2018 - WTM Africa Conference Theatre

World Travel Market (WTM) Africa 2018 - 18-20 April 2018 Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), Cape Town, South Africa For more information and registation visit: https://africa.wtm.com The forum will connect Ministers of Tourism from countries across the continent, with investors. 88  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

International

Africa Innovation Summit

June 6-8, 2018 Convention Center Kigali, Rwanda Information: www.AfricaInnovationSummit.com

The AIS is an Africa-wide and home grown initiative aimed at harnessing the innovation potential of the continent. It aims to mobilize the people and, especially those with the ‘power to act’, including investors, the people with the ideas, the policy makers, the researchers and academics, the business community, the youth, as well as innovators and thinkers into a coalition for collective action to promote and build an enabling environment for innovation in Africa. The goal is to engage as many people as possible in order to build a broad constituency in support of innovation in Africa. The basic fact is that Africa cannot outsource its development.

African Stock Exchanges • Bolsa de Valores of Cape Verde - www.bvc.cv (in Portuguese) • Bond Exchange of South Africa - www.bondexchange. co.za • Botswana Stock Exchange www.bse.co.bw • Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres - UEMOA (Abidjan, Ivory Coast) - www.brvm.org • Casablanca Stock Exchange (Morocco) - www.casablancabourse.com/bourseweb/index. aspx • Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (Tanzania) - www. dse.co.tz • Douala Stock Exchange (Cameroon) - www.douala-stockexchange.com/index_us.php • The Egyptian Exchange - www.

• • • • •

• • •

egx.com.eg/English/homepage. aspx Ethiopia Commodity Exchange - www.ecx.com.et Ghana Stock Exchange - www. gse.com.gh Johannesburg Stock Exchange (South Africa) - www. jse.co.za/Home.aspx Khartoum Stock Exchange (Sudan, in Arabic) - www.kse. com.sd Libyan Stock Market - www. lsm.ly/_layouts/membership/ login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fEnglis h%2fPages%2fdefault.aspx Lusaka Stock Exchange (Zambia) - www.luse.co.zm Nairobi Stock Exchange (Kenya) - www.luse.co.zm Malawi Stock Exchange - www. mse.co.mw

• Mozambique Stock Exchange (in Portuguese) - www. bolsadevalores.co.mz • Namibian Stock Exchange www.nsx.com.na • Nigerian Stock Exchange www.nse.com.ng/Pages/default. aspx • Stock Exchange of Mauritius www.stockexchangeofmauritius. com • Swaziland Stock Exchange www.ssx.org.sz • Tunisia Stock Exchange - www. bvmt.com.tn • Uganda Securities Exchange www.use.or.ug Read the lastest issue of The Exchange Magazine www.nse.co.ke/media-center/ecommunique/exchange-magazine/ category/50-free-version.html

90  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

International

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91  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

International

Dangote Donates N1.2 Billion to First Business School in the North to Bayero University, Kano Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Dangote Group.

he business educational development of Northern Nigeria took a new turn at the weekend when the renowned businessman, Aliko DANGOTE donated a N1.2 billion ultra-modern business school ediﬁce to the Bayero University, Kano, (BUK), ﬁrst of such in the northern part of the country.

Dangote said the Business School, which was commissioned by the Kano State Governor, Abdulzhi Umar Ganduje, was conceived as part of the contributions of the Nigeria’s business mogul, Alhaji Aliko Dangote towards encouraging world class entrepreneurship education at the highest level in

(L-R) Donor of the School, Aliko Dangote; Vice-chancellor of BUK, Prof Mohammadu Yahuza Bello; Jigawa State governor, Alhaji Abubakar Badaru; and Kano State Deputy Governor, Prof. Hafeez Abubakar at the commissioning ceremony Christened Dangote Business School, the business mogul disclosed that talks are on to aﬃliate the school with the popular Harvard Business School, in the United States of America. Speaking to a group at the opening of the School at the new site of the University, Dangote stated that no eﬀort was spared to ensure that the school, building gate was up to international standard and one of the biggest in the sub-Saharan Africa.

Nigeria. He described the School as best of its kind in northern Nigeria, adding that the School, as accredited by the Nigerian University Commission, will be the ﬁrst business school to oﬀer Doctor of Business Administration Ph.D. program in Nigeria. Africa's richest man added that the business school would ease sharing of business information globally and how future African leaders could advance their

92 March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

businesses as well as building capacity which would translate to boosting the continent’s economy. Dangote traced the journey of the construction of the school to the days of Prof. Attahir Jigawa as the Vice Chancellor of the University when he pleaded with him to help in the establishment of a business school that can accelerate entrepreneurship in the country. He said he agreed to build the ediﬁce because of his conviction that good quality education is the bedrock of meaningful development in the country and only a sound mind can facilitate development. The school, according to him, will train African Business leaders by carrying out research on how Nigerians can do business in the very particular kind of environment and succeed. On his part, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Muhammed Yahuza Bello said with the new business school, the university is now poised to serve

the society better through training, research and services. He said the university adopted the name “Dangote Business School”, because the name Dangote (http://Dangote.com) is internationally synonymous with innovation, entrepreneurship and successes in business and industry and pledged that the school will live by its name and tradition. Explaining the uniqueness of the school, he stated that the new structure comprises 650 seating capacity auditorium, two theaters, four lecture halls, two libraries, incubation center, two cafeterias, 800kva soundproof generator and borehole among others. In their separate remarks, Gov. Ganduje, represented by his Deputy, Prof. Hafeez Abubakar, his Jigawa State Counterpart, Gov. Muhammed Badaru Abubakar and the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II showered accolades on Alhaji Aliko Dangote for his several interventions in various sectors in the State and beyond, urging other wealthy individuals to emulate. Kano Deputy Governor, Professor Abubakar who represented Gov Ganduje said Nigerians have a lot to learn from Alhaji Dangote whose wealth has no influence on his humility and is ever willing to do for his immediate environment and make the society better. He pleaded with the University authority to grant Alhaji Dangote opportunity to lecture once in a while in the school, even if it's an interactive session because he has a lot to offer beyond available in the text books as a successful business man. Emir Sanusi said what Dangote has done is what he has always advocated for other Nigerians to do and that until Nigeria gets her education right a lot of things may not fall in place as expected. He expressed his appreciation to Alhaji Dangote for rising up to the occasion each time he calls on him to do one thing or the other in the interest of the society. Emir Sanusi urged other well meaning Nigerians to emulate him and contribute to the development of their society.  https://dangote-group.africa-newsroom.com/press/dangotedonates-n12-billion-to-first-business-school-in-the-north-tobayero-university-kano?lang=en

93  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

COMING TO YOUR E-MAIL BOX. Business/Government Contract Opportunities Business In Africa Commentaries/Editorials Financial Management Tech Tools for Growth Mobilization Africa Travel for Business & Pleasure

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International

One Africa:

Tell the US Government that North Africa is Africa Too!

oin with and support the United Africa Organization’s campaign to petition the U.S. Department of State to include the whole African continent under its Bureau of African Aﬀairs.

Why? The State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, led by Assistant Secretary Johnnie Carson, currently excludes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara from its agenda. Instead, the aforementioned countries are grouped with the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, together with Iran, Iraq, Israel and others. This artificial distinction between North Africa and the rest of Africa

negatively impacts US foreign policy relations throughout the entire continent of Africa. We unequivocally reject the argument that North African countries are outside the scope of African affairs. North Africa is geographically and historically part of the African continent, and all fifty-three (53) independent African states, including North African countries, are represented in the African Union (AU). It would be far more productive for the State Department to engage with the entire continent of Africa, including North Africa, under its Bureau of African Affairs. We are one Africa, from the Cape to Cairo, indivisible and bound together! Therefore, no square inch of African

land should be excluded from African aﬀairs.

Sign The Petition!!! Go to www.change.org/petitions/ one-africa-tell-us-state-departmentthat-north-africa-is-part-of-africa and sign the online petition to support this important proposition. Next tell everyone you know to sign. 

www.uniteafricans.org

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115  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

New Location Leimert Park Village 3347 W. 43rd Street Los Angeles, CA 90008 1-323-299-6383 www.zambezibazaar.com shop@ zambezibazaar.com

116  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

1-484-459-6625 zimbabwegallery@yahoo.com www.shonasculpture.com @ZimbabweGallery www.facebook.com/Zimbabwe Gallery P P 3500 Peachtree Road, Atlanta, GA 30326 G M 2841 Greenbriar Pkwy SW, Atlanta, GA 30331

Downtown Culver City: 9537 Culver Blvd. 310-202-5453 Open Sunday-Thursday 11am-10pm Friday-Saturday 11am-11pm www.honeyskettle.com 117  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Honey’s Kettle Fried Chicken is Incredibly Good By Shirley Hawkins

f you like biting into juicy, succulent, mouth watering chicken just dripping with fall-off-the-bone flavor, look no further than Honey’s Kettle Chicken located in downtown Culver City. People travel from miles around just to savor Honey’s Kettle Chicken, voted “Best Chicken in L.A.” by Los Angeles Magazine and the Huffington Post. And no wonder—its owner, chef Vincent Williams, has spent 45 years frying up millions of pieces of chicken just oozing with that unmistakable Southern flavor. Founded 17 years ago by husband-and-wife team Vincent and Arlene Williams, the duo only uses farm-fresh, hormone and antibiotic-free chickens dipped in a secret-recipe batter and fried in 100% peanut oil. The result is a light and crispy

battered fried chicken is nongreasy and made from scratch. ‘I fry about 600 pounds of chicken a day,” boasted Vincent, who said that he uses only the finest quality ingredients. He always keeps his ingredients top notch because one of his goals was to build “one of the greatest restaurants ever made.’’ The chicken will knock you out-but don’t forget to order Honey’s magnificent sides. If you like handmashed potatoes, freshly prepared. coleslaw, lip-smacking macaroni and cheese, sautéed green beans, scrumptious catfish, delectable corn on the cob, tasty pecan pie, iceshaker lemonade and homemade biscuits dripping with honey, make a bee-line to Honey’s. There is always a lunchtime crowd eagerly lined up and trailing out the door, patiently waiting to get their Honey ‘fix.’ Customers have been known to tear open their orders in the paper bag and start munching the crackling, golden pieces right there on the curb. Fans have even driven from as far away as Las Vegas and San Diego to bite into Honey’s famous bird, and celebrities such as rapper Kendrick Lamar, singers Keisha

Cole and Justin Timberlake, Queen Latifah, Stevie Wonder, talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and former model Tyra Banks have all ordered from Honey’s. Believe it or not, William’s business was not an overnight success. “I went through 30 straight years of pure hell,’’ Williams recalls in his eﬀorts to keep his business aﬂoat. ‘’But my goal now is to build a multi-billion dollar company and to make sure to keep it in the family.” Williams is a long-standing member of the Black Business Association. ‘’The chicken is outstanding,’” said Earl ‘Skip” Cooper II, publisher and editor of the Black Business News and the CEO and president of the Black Business Association. “Their sides, including their mashed potatoes and green beans, are outstanding. And I really have a thing for their original blueberry biscuits.” Honey’s Kettle Fried Chicken is located at 9537 Culver Blvd. in Culver City. Open Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Phone: 1-310-202-5453. Website: www.honeyskettle.com. 

Buy Black! Bank Black! Educate Black! Invest Black!

Shop for all of the NoMu products at: https://shop.nomu. co.za and www.amazon.com

Bernahu Asfaw & Getahun Asfaw

1041 S. Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 323-938-8827 or 323-938-8806 • Fax: 323-932-6047 messob@gmail.com • www.messob.com

Open 7 days a week • 11am - 11pm

Krispy Kruchy Chicken is in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, Los Angeles. Krispy Krunchy Chicken is a cajun-style chicken (bone-in and tenders), served fresh, never frozen and fried in zero trans fat oil. Their menu also includes signature dishes of Traditional Wings; Krispy Wings; Cajun Sweet & Sour Wings; Cajun Tenders; Red Beans and Rice; Jambalaya; Boudin Bites (Cajun rice balls); Krispy Shrimp and Honey Butter Biscuits. For additional information, please call Krispy Kruchy at 1-323-293-3332 or visit www. krispykrunchy.com. 122  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Parker House Sausage

(www.parkerhousesausage.com) was started by Chicago entrepreneur, Judge H. Parker who came to Chicago from Montgomery County, Tennessee with little more than the conviction that there was a potential market for homemade sausage products prepared according to his mother’s recipes. By 1919 Judge Parker began selling his unique blend of herbs and spices mixed with ﬂavorful, savory sausage from a horse drawn cart on a retail basis. Recognized as one of the oldest family owned businesses in the U.S. In 2014 Parker House expanded its product line to include chicken products including breakfast sausage, hot links, and smoked sausage.

LOOK FOR US IN THE FROZEN FOODS SECTION!

SHOP ONLINE! //shop.parkerhousesausage. com

We invite you to browse through our store and shop with conﬁdence. Need a dinner idea. Go to the Recipe Page on our website. Thanks for visiting!

ince people from all walks of life really enjoy Down South cooking, NFL Pro Reggie Kelly thought, why not bring a piece of the South to their homes. Reggie and his wife founded KYVAN® FOODS. KYVAN® Foods is a supplier to great customers like Kroger, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Firehouse Subs, Performance Foodservice, Hot Shots Distributing and more. As stated by Reggie, “It’s my goal to pass down to my kids (Kyla & Kavan) and to everyone the gift passed down to me… An Appreciation Of Good Food.” Thanks and God Bless! Website: http://kyvan82.com Shop Online: http://kyvan82.com/store Store Locator: http://kyvan82.com/storelocator

Delicious Southern Flavors At Home!

Whether you’re north or south of the Mason-Dixon line, east or west of the Mississippi, Grandma Maud’s gives you a taste of the South in your own kitchen.

Try our Recipes:

//grandmamauds. com/recipes

You’ll ﬁnd our Bean Meals, Southern Seasonings and Pie Fixin’s in supermarkets throughout the U.S.A. (Jewel-Osco, Mariano’s, Safeway and Kroger Stores) – and online at: (h ps://eyelevellink.com/collec ons/ vendors?q=Grandma%20Mauds) or call us at: 1-773-493-5353! 126  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Not Just Cookies NJC is a cookie company providing, natural desserts superior in quality and taste. Our cookies and pies are made with the finest ingredients. We offer select gluten free and vegan desserts that are rich in taste. Not Just Cookies is a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) founded by Johnathon Bush.

e can cater for any event or party. We offer custom packaging for all of our cookies and pies to suit any need. Cookie platters also available. Corporate gifts, company parties, restaurants looking to outsource pastries, we're here for you. The menu: Turtle Cookies, Chocolate Chip Oatmeal, Butter Cookies, Oatmeal Raisin, Brownies, Snickerdoodle, White Chocolate Macadamia Nut, Ginger Cookies, Vegan Brownies, Gluten Free Chocolate Chip, Sweet Potato Pie, and Fruit Pies (apple, cherry, blueberry or peach). Visit www.notjustcookies.com for online shopping, store locations, shipping and catering details. Talk to us by calling: 1-800-833-4541 or send NJC an inquiry at: info@ notjustcookies.net. 127  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Ma's Best is a bakery specializing in the production of home-style yeast rolls and baked products. www.facebook.com/masbestrolls/#!/masbestrolls/?tab=page_info#!/masbestrolls/info

Try all 3 ﬂavors!

In your local grocery store or shop online for syrups, recipes, and books. Learn about our special projects and join the recipe contest.

MICHELE FOODS, INC. 1-708-331-7316 www.michelefoods.com

131  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

www.wosa.us www.winetalkwithmarcia.com

http://aaavintners.org

http://shallwewine.com

https://unclenearest.com

Eso Won Books

African American Books 4327 Degnan Boulevard, Leimert Park, Los Angeles

Give the Gift of Books and Music Come see our unsurpassed collection of books, music, videos, children’s books, and games!

1-323-294-0324

www.esowonbookstore.com  //esowon.booksense.com for Calendar of Events

134  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Books to Consider

Books to Consider...

Words That Changed A Nation: The Most

Celebrated and Inﬂuential Speeches of Barack Obama

by Barack Obama

ords That Changed a Nation is a concise collection of the eleven most significant speeches of Barack Obama--the words that defined his campaign, the words that made history, the words that inspired a nation:Dream Big Dreams:dacity of Hope" (DNC Keynote) • "Take Back America" • Announcement for Candidacy • "Yes We Can" (South Carolina Victory Speech) • "A More Perfect Union" (famous speech on race) • Final Primary Night: Presumptive Nominee Speech • "A World That Stands as One" (famous speech in Berlin) • "The American Promise" (DNC acceptance speech) • Election Night Victory Speech • The Inaugural Address • 2009 Economic Address Also included is a brief selection of public declarations on the death of Rosa Parks, the loss of Habeas Corpus, his Father's Day address, and his official 2002 Senate floor statement against the invasion of Iraq. "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy-tonight is your answer." Barack Obama  www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030T1JJO/ ref=pe_851940_273262140_em_1p_2_ti

Dream Big Dreams: Photographs from Barack Obama's Inspiring and Historic Presidency

by Pete Souza

rom former Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza comes a book for young readers that highlights Barack Obama's historic presidency and the qualities and actions that make him so beloved. Pete Souza served as Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama's full two terms. He was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else - and he photographed them all, capturing scenes both classified and candid. Throughout his historic presidency, Obama engaged with young people as often as he could, encouraging them to be their best and do their best and to always "dream big dreams." In this timeless and timely keepsake volume that features over seventy-five fullcolor photographs, Souza shows the qualities of President Obama that make him both a great leader and an extraordinary man. With behind-the-scenes anecdotes of some iconic photos alongside photos withhis family, colleagues, and other world leaders, Souza tells the story of a president who made history and still made time to engage with even the youngest citizens of the country he served. By the author of Obama: An Intimate Portrait, the definitive visual biography of Barack Obama's presidency, Dream Big Dreams was created especially for young readers and not only provides a beautiful portrait of a president but shows the true spirit of the man. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0756D1V4N/ ref=pe_851940_273262140_em_1p_1_ti

The Invisibles: The

136  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House by Jesse J. Holland

he Invisibles chronicles the African American presence inside the White House from its beginnings in 1782 until 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that granted slaves their freedom. During these years, slaves were the only African Americans to whom the most powerful men in the United States were exposed on a daily, and familiar, basis. By reading about these often-intimate relationships, readers will better understand some of the views that various presidents held about class and race in American society, and how these slaves contributed not only to the life and comforts of the presidents they served, but Jesse J. Holland to America as a whole. www.amazon.com/dp/B01B8O6DU2/ref=dp-kindleredirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther?

by Jesse J. Holland

e's known as the Black Panther. His home is Wakanda. Welcome to T'Challa's world. During the last ten centuries, as European colonial powers spread their guns and armies throughout the continent, the African nation of Wakanda stood alone as an unconquerable land inhabited by undefeatable warriors and filled with incredible technological advancements. T'Challa - the latest in a lineage of

warrior-kings - is Wakanda's Black Panther, a hero endowed with enhanced speed, strength and agility - along with a suit made of the metal that secured his country's future: the indestructible Vibranium. Now, outsiders have returned to plunder Wakanda's riches, including its store of the rare metal. Leading this brutal assault is Klaw, an assassin with the blood of T'Challa's father on his hands. Klaw brings with him a powerful army of superpowered mercenaries, all hell-bent on raining death and destruction on this pristine land. Even with Wakanda's might and his own superhuman skills, can the Black Panther prevail against such a massive invading force? An all-new Black Panther novel based on Reginald Hudlin and John Romita Jr.'s groundbreaking 2005 tale!  www.amazon.com/dp/B071WDC5BJ/ref=dp-kindleredirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Sweet Liberia, Lessons from the Coal Pot by Susan Peters “Many have wondered what it would be like to pack up our things and move to a new country, but none of us have imagined having to ﬂee our new homeland with our children and barely more than the clothes on our back. Yet, Susan Peters managed to do just that while maintaining

137  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Books to Consider her faith which would eventually help her rebuild her life and uplift her heart and soul. This book is a wonderful and eye-opening experience that shouldn't be missed!”---Naleighna Kai, National Best-selling author of Speak It into Existence.

Cash, Alonzo Mourning, Chris Webber, Jemele Hill, Anquan Boldin, Jamal Crawford, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, Shannon Sharpe, James Blake, John Carlos, Laila Ali, Michael Eric Dyson, Joakim Noah,

weet Liberia, Lessons from the Coal Pot is a delightful, painfully honest memoir that chronicles the thick slice of humanity sandwiched between Liberia’s April 12, 1980 coup and the Civil War in 1989. Like many others who embraced Black Pride, Afros, African clothing and names in the 70’s, Susan and thousands Susan D. Peters more took it one step further and immigrated to Mother Africa. This touching memoir is set against the author’s personal growth, her cultural struggles, and her triumphs, and is an informative, personally revealing, and often-comical account of her family’s eleven-year journey immersed in the rich culture of Liberia, West Africa. Now, as Liberia stands on the threshold of rising under the leadership of Africa’s ﬁrst elected female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Susan writes about the wisdom, beauty, and resilience she witnessed during her sojourn.  www.amazon.com/dp/B004H4XCAU/ref=dp-kindleredirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

We Matter: Athletes and Activism

by Etan Thomas

eaturing interviews by former NBA player Etan Thomas with over fifty athletes, executives, media figures, and more--and interwoven with essays and critiques by Thomas--We Matter shares the personal tales and opinions of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Dwyane Wade, Russell Westbrook, Steve Kerr, Oscar Robertson, Mark Cuban, Michael Bennett, Carmelo Anthony, Derrick Rose, Swin

Eric Reid, Adam Silver, Soledad O'Brien, John Wall, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Bradley Beal, Tamika Catchings, Curtis Conway, Harry Edwards, Chris Hayes, Chamique Holdsclaw, Scoop Jackson, Bomani Johnes, Shaun King, Jimmy King, Ted Leonsis, Thabo Sefolosha, Ilyasah Shabazz, Torrey Smith, Kenny Smith, Michael Smith, David West, Michael Wilbon, Jahvaris Fulton (brother of Trayvon Martin), Emerald Snipes (daughter of Eric Garner), Allysza Castile (sister of Philando Castile), Valerie Castile (mother of Philando Castile), and Dr. Tiffany Crutcher (sister of Terence Crutcher). This volume will be an inspiration for many different people: sports junkies; young readers who need words of encouragement from their favorite athletes; parents seeking positive messages for their children; activists who want to hear athletes using their voices to address social justice; and schools that need motivational material for their students. www.amazon.com/dp/B0713M7M86/ref=dp-kindleredirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

138  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

BBA 2018 Master Planner March

May

Annual Salute to Black Women Veterans Business Summit Business Conference, Vendor Faire Business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs learn about supplier diversity certifications, which certifi& Awards Luncheon In recognition of National Women’s History Month, this conference highlights the achievements of African American women entrepreneurs, along with workshop, including a workshop designed especially for young ladies between 13 and 18 years of age, entitled “Role Models for Success.” This conference also provides the opportunity for vendors to promote and sell their goods and services in the Vendor Faire. A favorite feature of the annual Salute is the African American Dessert Buffet. For particiation and sponsorship information visit www.bbala.org or call 1-323291-9334. 

cations they are eligible for, how to apply; and how to leverage certifications f o r c on tracti n g opportunities. T h i s workshop is conducted in collaboration with Thomas & Webster. For particiation and sponsorship information visit www.bbala.org and call 1-323-291-9334. 

June Annual Salute to Black Music In recognition of Black Music Month, this gala event. For particiation and sponsorship information visit www.bbala.org and call 1-323-291-9334. 

April All About Supplier Diversity Certification Business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs learn about supplier diversity certifications, which certifications they are eligible for, how to apply; and how to leverage certifications for contracting opportunities. This workshop is conducted in collaboration with Thomas & Webster. For particiation and sponsorship information visit www. bbala.org and call 1-323-291-9334. 

139  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819

Resource Vault Media/Information APO (Africa Wire®/MENA Wire®) -- www.apo-opa.com Africa Interactive Multimedia Press/Content Agency in Africa -- www.africa-interactive.com Africa is a Country -- www.africasacountry.com Africa News & Stories -- http://africatodaytv.com Africa Newsroom -- www.africa-newsroom.com Africa World Now Project -- www.africaworldnowproject.org Africa World Press Books -- www.africaworldpressbooks.com African Trade Magazine -- www.africantrademagazine. com African Vibes Magazine -- www.africanvibes.com The Africapitalist -- www.tonyelumelufoundation.org/ africapitalisminstitute/africapitalist-magazine AfricaFocus -- www.africafocus.org Africast TV -- www.africast.tv The African World -- www.theafricanworld.tv Afritorial -- www.afritorial.com www.facebook.com/Afritorial AllAfrica (news) -- http://allafrica.com Black Wall Street Times -- http://bwstimes.com Black Business News Group -- www.blackbusinessnews.net Black Children's Books and Authors -- http://blackchildrensbooksandauthors.tumblr.com BlackPast.org -- www.blackpost.org Black Press USA -- www.blackpressusa.com Black Then -- https://blackthen.com Blavity Inc. -- www.blavity.com BridesNoir -- www.bridesnoir.com The Chocolate Voice -- www.thechocolatevoice.com CuisineNoir -- www.cuisinenoirmag.com Cybrary -- www.cybrary.it DiasporaVoice -- www.blogtalkradio.com/diasporavoice How Africa, The Rise of Africa -- http://howafrica.com KweliTV -- www.facebook.com/kwelitv Macauhub -- www.facebook.com/Macauhub Publish Africa -- http://wow.gm/publishafrica Red Media Africa -- www.facebook.com/RedMediaAfrica Rock Me Africa -- //rockmeafrica.com YouTube Educational Channels -- http://teacherswithapps.com/197-educational-youtube-channels-know United Nations -- http://webtv.un.org WikiHow -- www.wikihow.com World Library -- www.worldlibrary.org

Commerce/Entrepreneurship #IAMWANDA -- www.facebook.com/IamWANDAorg African Success Stories -- www.risingafrica.org African Technology Foundation -- www.thea25n.com Black Female Founders -- www.blackfemalefounders. org Nigeria (Africa) ﬁnancial news -- //nairametrics.com She Leads Africa -- http://sheleadsafrica.org

Organizations African Leadership Forum -- http://afrialeadership.org African Union -- www.au.int/en African Women in Law -- www.africanwomeninlaw.com Black Business Association -- www.bbala.org Black Emergency Managers Association International - www.blackemergmanagersassociation.org CauseCast -- www.causecast.com www.causecastfornonproﬁts.com Community Healing Network -- www. communityhealingnet.org Pan African Film Festival -- www.paﬀ.org StayWoke -- www.staywoke.org United African Organization -- http://uniteafricans.org Zambia-USA Chamber of Commerce -- www.zambiausachamber.org

Investment/Development Africa Reports -- www.africareports.com African Development Bank -- www.afdb.org African Export-Import Bank -- //afreximbank.com/ afrexim/en AfrigadgetTV -- www.afrigadget.com Breaux Capital -- www.breauxcapital.com Disrupt Africa -- http://disrupt-africa.com/ The Exchange Magazine -- www.nse.co.ke Harlem Capital -- http://harlem.capital

Culture/Arts Cultural Events/Content -- www.okayafrica.com Hungry Black Man -- https://thehungryblackman.com Shadow & Act -- //shadowandact.com/about-us

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

Resource Vault Silicon Harlem -- http://event.siliconharlem.net Ventures -- www.ventures-africa.com

U.S. Government Commerce Department -- www.doc.gov International Trade Administration -- http://trade.gov Minority Business Development Agency -- www.mbda. gov Power Africa -- www.usaid.gov/powerafrica

Small Business Administration -- www.sba.gov State Department -- www.dos.gov Trade Africa -- www.usaid.gov/tradeafrica White House -- www.whitehouse.gov

141  March 2018  Black Business News  www.blackbbusinessnews.net  1-323-291-7819