Florida Courier, February 16, 2018

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FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

VOLUME 26 NO. 7

IT JUST WON’T STOP

At least 17 children and adults are dead and a former student is in custody after America’s latest mass shooting in a school – the fourth this year – this time in South Florida.

multiple people.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said two people were killed outside the school, one in the street, 12 inside the school and two died from their wounds at area hospitals. Three of the injured were in critical condition in various hospitals at press time.

Assault-style rifle

COMPILED FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

PARKLAND – An American nightmare unfolded Wednesday afternoon – just prior to the Florida Courier’s press time late Wednesday night – at a North Broward County high school when a former student came onto campus and opened fire, killing 17 students and adults, and injuring

The suspect was identified as Nikolas Cruz, 19, a former student at the school. He used an AR-15style rifle the type used in previous mass shootings, and multiple magazines.

Details remained cloudy at the newspaper’s press time amid a flurry of police activity at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland off the Sawgrass Expressway.

Students, who heard a fire alarm go off just before dismissal, followed by gunshots, fled off

JOHN MCCALL/SUN SENTINEL/TNS

Medical personnel tend to a victim outside of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland – northwest of Fort Lauderdale – after reports of an active shooter on Wednesday. campus and hid under desks as police sped to the scene. Parents, blocked from getting onto campus, stood by helplessly.

Caught off-campus Cruz, the shooter, managed to

make it off campus. He was cornered and taken into custody in a townhouse at Pelican Pointe at Wyndham Lakes in Coral Springs.

“It’s a day that you pray every day when you get up that

you will never have to see. It is in front of us. I ask the community for prayers and their support for the children and their families,” Robert Runcie, superintendent of Broward Schools, appearSee SHOOTING, Page A2

Rural White youth selfdestruct

THE OBAMAS

Official portraits unveiled in D.C.

Opioids, alcohol, suicide blamed

BY MELISSA HEALY LOS ANGELES TIMES / TNS

An epidemic of despair is disproportionately claiming the lives of rural White Americans in the prime of adulthood. And for a second year in a row, their deaths by drugs, drink and self-destruction have caused life expectancy in the United States to fall.

That milestone, suggests an editorial in a respected medical journal, marks a sustained reversal of close to a century of improving health for Americans. And it raises a puzzling mystery: What is causing the despair, and what will restore hope and health to these battered Americans?

Just the beginning

OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/TNS

Former First Lady Michelle Obama and former President Barack Obama pose with artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald during the unveiling of their official portraits at the National Portrait Gallery on Monday in Washington, D.C. See the full story on Page A6.

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

Elderly veteran shot by police ENTERTAINMENT | B2, B3

‘Black Panther’ makes debut

BY JOSH MAGNESS MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU / TNS

BLACK HISTORY | B4, B5

A primer on pioneer women

ALSO INSIDE

Study says weed better than booze for the brain A new study from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that alcohol is much more damaging to your brain than marijuana.

In fact, the study – which was published in the journal Addiction – suggests that weed use doesn’t seem to alter the structure of a person’s brain at all.

No consistent answers Kent Hutchison, a co-author of the study, told Medical News Today that he wanted to examine what effect pot has on a person’s brain because there isn’t a conclusive answer to the question.

“When you look at these studies going back years, you see that one study will report that marijuana use is related to a reduction in the volume of the hippocampus,” he said. “The next study then comes around, and they say that marijuana use is related to changes in the cerebellum.

“There’s no consistency across all of these studies in terms of the actual brain structures.”

The opioid epidemic, which claimed the lives of 64,000 Americans in 2015 alone, “is the tip of an iceberg,” a pair of public health scholars wrote in the journal BMJ. In an even larger public health crisis unfolding in the United States, death rates from alcohol abuse and suicides have also seen sharp increases in recent years, wrote Steven H. Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University and Laudan Aron of the Washington-based Urban Institute.

Between 1999 and 2014, the suicide rate rose by 24 percent. And mounting evidence has shown that deaths linked to alcohol abuse are rising as well among White Americans.

Less secure lives Nowhere are these trends more dramatic than in rural counties, where decades of social and economic changes have made the lives of White Americans less secure than their parents’, write Woolf and Aron.

About 15 percent of the nation’s population – some 46 million persons – lived in counties outside metropolitan areas in 2014.

In a January 2017 analysis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that those living in nonmetropolitan areas are more likely to smoke cigarettes, to be physically inactive and obese

See STUDY, Page A2

See EPIDEMIC, Page A2

COMMENTARY: CHARLES W. CHERRY II: RANDOM THOUGHTS OF A FREE BLACK MIND | A4 GUEST COMMENTARY: MARILYN M. SINGLETON: THERE’S MORE TO BLACK HISTORY THAN SLAVERY | A5

FOCUS

A2

FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

True love is hard to find Looking for love? Well, you can find it anywhere you look if you know what love is.

Many people think that they know what love is, but most don’t even have a clue!

What love is not A demonstration of love is not always a dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, a three-day Carnival Cruise, payment of a cell phone bill or a new pair of redbottom shoes.

Nor is a twerk show and lap dance at your favorite strip club, a Colin Kaepernick football jersey or a new pair of classic Air Jordans!

Loving someone is not putting that man or woman on “house arrest,” waiting until they go to sleep and going through their phone, checking their social media inbox, or frying them chicken anytime you think they want some greasy food!

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

All about happiness When you love someone, it is not about doing things you think they like, want or need. Giving someone money, sex, time or anything else will not make them love you if they don’t love you.

When you love someone, you do everything you can to make them happy. Sometimes that includes letting him or her go!

A romantic chain is not so much different than a chaingang chain. A house should be a home, not a cellblock!

Lust is not love. Physical attraction is not love.

You will know You don’t have to wonder or

guess when a man or woman loves you. When someone loves you, they live to make you happy.

They accept you, they appreciate you, they help you, they listen to you, they communicate with you, they value your opinion, they protect you, they do their best to provide for you, they acknowledge and claim you, they motivate you, they inspire you.

They do their best to please and satisfy you and they make you smile!

I could go on, but hopefully you got the message.

Know when to run When someone says, “If you love me, you’ll do what I tell you to do,” you should turn into The Flash and run away as fast as you can!

When a woman or a man loves you, you don’t have to tell them what to do. They will volunteer to do what they know will make you happy.

If they like surprises, you will make the most imaginative, creative and unexpected moments and memories happen when

your loved one least expects it.

You don’t have to be married to honor vows. If your loved one is sick, you take care of them. If they are short on cash, you step up financially. If they need a little time for themselves, some quiet time or some relationship space, you give it to them.

Love and criticism You can criticize the person you love, but you have to do it constructively. You can disagree with the one you love, but you don’t have to be disagreeable.

You can check your man or woman, call them out or even confront them. But you should do it in a calm, non-abusive and nonviolent manner.

Even though love is in the air, love flows and grows, and “Love can make you do right and come home early” like in the song Al Green recorded, true love is hard to find!

However, if you are smart, if you are observant and if your feelings and emotions are intact, you will recognize true love when that love is for you!

EPIDEMIC and to suffer from high blood pressure than are metropolitan county-dwellers.

Non-Whites improving

ing at a media staging area near the school, told WSVN Channel 7.

“We received no warning … Potentially there could have been signs out there.

But we didn’t have any warning or phone calls or threats that were made.”

A known threat?

A teacher at the school, however, told The Miami Herald that Cruz, 19, had been identified as a potential threat to fellow students in the past.

Math teacher Jim Gard says he believes the school administration had sent out an email warning teachers that the student had made threats against others in the past and that he should not be allowed on the campus with a backpack. Another student interviewed on the scene by Channel 7 said the student had guns at home.

“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” said Gard, who said the former student suspected in the shootings had been in his class last year.

Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.

“Like” The Gantt Report page on Facebook. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants. net.

“Poverty rates don’t capture the frustration and hopelessness people experience when they can’t get ahead or can’t give their kids a better life,” Woolf said.

When the social fabric of a community is frayed, its residents may be more inclined to salve their woes in self-destructive behaviors, he added.

A look at broader U.S. trends and policies may also shed light on the roots of some Americans’ despair, Woolf and Aron wrote.

During the three decades during which U.S. life expectancy has slid, the nation’s educational performance weakened. Its social divides (including income inequality) widened. Its middleclass incomes stagnated. And its poverty rates exceeded those of most rich countries.

“These are all factors we know are important to health,” Woolf said.

Fully 18.1 percent of rural Americans lived in poverty, compared with 15.1 percent of those living in and around cities. And people in rural counties reported less access to healthcare and a lower quality of healthcare than do those in metropolitan counties.

In October, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that, while premature deaths were down among all American adults between 1999 and 2015, nine of 48 subgroups studied saw increases in early mortality.

The lives of non-Latino Whites, largely in rural or small or medium metropolitan counties, were mostly being shortened by suicide, drug overdoses and liver disease – a condition closely linked to alcoholism.

from A1

Love doesn’t hurt. Believe that!

When someone loves you, your friends and coworkers can see your “glow.” Your homies can see a smile every time you hear your loved one’s name or hear his or her voice.

If you’re looking for love, I hope you find it! It’s even better if true love finds you!

‘Frayed’ fabric

Rising poverty

SHOOTING

Others can tell

be too easy an explanation for rural White communities’ epidemic of despair, said Woolf, who has studied the urban-rural health divide across the country. More important might be the fraying of communities’ social fabric that followed.

from A1

That study’s data showed steep declines in deaths due to HIV infection, cardiovascular disease and motor vehicle crashes among African-Americans and Latinos and in urban and suburban areas.

But those declines were more modest or nonexistent among Whites living in any setting. And they were offset by dramatic increases in drug overdoses and suicides in Whites, no matter where their victims lived.

The authors of the BMJ essay note that the roughly 15-year run-up in drug deaths and suicides has not been seen in Black Americans.

While the racial gap in health is narrowing, African-Americans’ rates of premature death

Brothers and sisters, you can’t pimp everybody! You might have the clothes, the car, the bankroll or even the conversation. But the person that loves you wants none of that!

The person that loves you knows if they make you happy, chances are they will find happiness too!

DREAMSTIME

Opioids abuse has become a major factor in the shortened lifespan of White Americans living in rural areas of the country. have always been starkly higher than those among Whites, Woolf said. And it may be that the uptick in “deaths of despair” seen in Whites will eventually be detected among Blacks as well, he adds.

Black ‘resilience’?

But Woolf says it’s also possible that Black Americans have some “resilience factor” that White Americans do not. Perhaps, he said, African-Americans’ response to the discrimination, structural disadvantages and health inequities they’ve long endured has buffered them from

“There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”

Maybe a drill The shooting began just before dismissal, after someone pulled the fire alarm. Students and teachers were puzzled because the school had already held a fire drill that day. Ironically, schools around the county were all undergoing similar drills.

Then a code red, school lingo for a lockdown, was read over the loudspeaker.

“Six kids ran back into my room, and I locked the door, turned out the lights and had the kids go to the back of the room,” Gard said.

“I told the kids to hang in there, it may still be a drill.”

On the first floor, freshman Geovanni Vilsant, 15, said he was in a Spanish classroom when a fire alarm went off, urging all the students out of their classrooms. Then, two minutes later, gun shots rang out enveloping the three-floor building in explosions.

Geovanni Vilsant said he saw three bloody bodies on the floor as he was fleeing the school. “There was blood everywhere,” he said.

“They weren’t moving.”

following Whites down their path of self-destruction.

At the same time, the despair of Whites is “unclear, complex, and not explained by opioids alone,” Woolf and Aron wrote.

In once-thriving communities outside the nation’s metropolitan areas, industries have collapsed. As steel mills and coal mines have closed, timber production has gone bust, and automation has left rural communities behind, their economies and their residents’ health have suffered. The result is a national phenomenon that has been unfolding for at least three decades.

Ran off-campus His older brother, who jumped a fence and sought refuge in a nearby neighborhood, ran back around to try to find his brother.

“I had to go back for him,” Bradley Vilsant said from a nearby Wal-Mart where the brothers fled with about 100 other students.

Most of the students remained calm. One high school senior elsewhere at the school told The Miami Herald that there were “SWAT teams everywhere with big guns, cops everywhere, helicopters.” She said parents trying to reach their children were unable to make it to the school because the streets are closed off.

A real shooting But by 2:40 p.m., Gard says, they knew it wasn’t a drill. Bullets flew.

Initially, the Coral Springs Police Department urged teachers and students to remain barricaded inside until police reach them. Students posted pictures to social media taken from under their desks.

Police, who flooded the school, began clearing buildings one at a time. Students streamed out in a line

Quality of life slipping Relative to life expectancy in other affluent, industrialized countries, Americans’ oncecommanding lead in longevity began slipping in the early 1980s.

By 1998, U.S. life expectancy had fallen below the average for industrialized countries. It is now 1.5 years behind that benchmark.

“It’s really sad that a baby born today will likely live less long than one born even a year ago.

It’s not the direction you’d expect the richest country on Earth to be going,” Woolf said.

But economic collapse might

with their hands up. Others frantically ran, book bags strapped to their backs. The evacuation started under the direction of police officers, and the students were guided to nearby parking lots by officers as well.

Investigation begins Law enforcement and the district’s Special Investigative Unit are on site, as is the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Federal authorities said they don’t believe the high school shootings are related to terrorism.

The FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force, consisting of local, state and federal agents, sent a squad to the school to assist the Broward Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement.

“My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting,” President Donald Trump tweeted.

“No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.”

Kyra Gurney, David Smiley and Connie Ogle of the Miami Herald / TNS all contributed to this report.

What can be done?

If policymakers want to reverse the trend of shortening U.S. lifespans, “they would promote education, boost support for children and families, increase wages and economic opportunity for the working class, invest in distressed communities, and strengthen healthcare and behavioral health systems,” Woolf and Aron wrote.

At the end of the day, Woolf said, “it’s probably not a good time to make policy choices that don’t invest in helping these people. A policy agenda that’s focused on improving value for shareholders is not really going to bring relief to these families and communities.”

STUDY from A1 Gray and white matter For the study, researchers wanted to see the relationship between alcohol and marijuana use and the volume of gray and white matter in a person’s brain. Both gray and white matter are important for a healthy and functioning brain.

The study involved 853 people aged 18 to 55 and 439 teenagers. They had “a range of alcohol and cannabis use,” the researchers wrote.

It was found that among those who drank alcohol, adults – and to a lesser extent, teens – had a reduction in gray matter volume.

The study found that white matter was affected in adults, but not teenagers, who drank.

These effects were especially seen in adults with a history of drinking for years, according to Medical News Today.

But among marijuana users (defined as

those who had smoked in the past 30 days), there was no relationship between getting high and the structure of a person’s brain.

“While marijuana may also have some negative consequences,” he told Medical News Today, “it definitely is nowhere near the negative consequences of alcohol.”

Physical vs. psychological Of course, some studies have suggested weed can be harmful to a person’s psychological wellbeing – and especially for those with developing brains.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, those who consume marijuana as an adolescent have higher school dropout rates, greater unemployment and lower life satisfaction.

Another study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging found that a high intake of marijuana is associated with psychosis, depression and schizophrenia.

FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

FLORIDA

A3

Elderly veteran facing eviction shot to death by police

BY CHARLES RABIN AND DAVID OVALLE MIAMI HERALD/TNS

A despondent military veteran — slated for eviction because of complaints about his service dogs — was shot to death after police say he pointed a gun at officers Monday afternoon near Homestead.

Raymond Bishop, 84, died in his home at the Hidden Grove apartments. Miami-Dade police officers had rushed to the home after receiving a call about an armed man threatening to kill himself.

At least four Miami-Dade of-

ficers wound up opening fire on Bishop from just outside the doorway where he stood, gun in hand, after pleading with him extensively to put his weapon down, law enforcement sources told the Miami Herald.

‘No choice’ One officer praised Bishop’s military background in an attempt to get him to surrender peacefully.

“These officers begged this gentleman to put the weapon down,” said Florida Police Benevolent Association President John Rivera. “They had no choice.

These are situations officers are confronted with daily, and it’ll re-

main with them forever.”

The dogs were inside the apartment and were not harmed, a source said.

Bishop, who served in the Korean War, was upset about the apartment complex’s eviction attempt, according to a neighbor.

‘Nowhere to go’ Bishop lived there, according to court records, under a MiamiDade County government subsidy program.

“They were throwing him out.

He had nowhere to go,” said neighbor Jonathan Rodriguez, who often fed Bishop and took him to the veterans’ hospital for medical treatment.

Bishop was fighting his eviction from the apartment complex, which went to court in July 2017 to get him booted from his ground-floor unit.

has provided invaluable emotional therapeutic benefit,” Dr. Ernesto Grenier wrote in a letter filed in the court record.

Lawyer stunned

Dogs helped His animals were a 13-pound dog named Roxie, and a 30-pound one named Ranger.

Bishop, who was disabled and used a walker, was being treated for “mood disorder,” according to court records. He also owned fish.

A psychiatrist at the Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center said the dogs had a “tremendously favorable influence” on Bishop.

“Mr. Bishop’s pets, in this case,

The case had been in mediation, but talks between the two sides failed, according to the court record. The case was ongoing.

The killing stunned his lawyer, Christopher Brochyus, of Legal Services of Greater Miami, which represents low-income clients.

“He was a really nice guy to talk to,” Brochyus said. “He loved his animals.’’

Plan would lead to more kids on school buses NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Despite concerns from school districts and lawmakers about the projected costs, a Senate committee Monday approved a bill that would lead to more students being able to take school buses.

The bill (SB 188), filed by Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, would require that buses be available for students who live more than 1.5 miles from school – down from the current standard of two miles.

It also would make other changes, such as ensuring that buses would be available to all students who encounter “hazardous walking conditions” going back and forth to school.

Cost a concern

ORLANDO SENTINEL/TNS

A school bus stops at a site in Kissimmee, Florida.

T:8.375”

The Senate Education Committee voted 8-1 to approve the bill, which Steube said was aimed at helping keep children safe.

But some lawmakers said they had heard from school districts worried about the potential costs of such an expansion of busing.

A staff analysis said the changes would lead to the transportation of an estimated 61,765 additional students, at a cost of nearly $58.5 million. Also, it said an estimated 908 additional buses would be needed, at a cost of more than $97.1 million.

Companies helping low-income students attend school

History isn’t just something you read about, it’s something you make every day.

T:10”

Republic National Distributing Company, the nation’s second largest wine and spirits wholesaler, Cigar City Brewing, a Tampa area brewery, have announced major donations to Step Up for Students’ scholarship program for this school year.

Step Up For Students is a nonprofit that administers the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program for lower-income children throughout the state.

The donation of $65 million by Republic National Distributing Company was announced last week during its state sales meeting at Universal Studios Orlando.

The donation, the sixth year for the Tampa-based company, will allow more than 9,940 K-12 students to attend the school of their choice through Florida Tax Credit scholarships for the 2017-18 school year. It was made during a state sales meeting in Orlando.

Step Up scholarship graduate Orlando Rivera and his mother, Deborah DeJesus, attended the event to share their story with RNDC associates.

During his junior year of high school, Orlando’s grades had dropped to nearly failing. With help from a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, Orlando was able to change schools and attend Heritage Christian School in Kissimmee.

“Going to Heritage turned my life around,” said Orlando. “Today, I’m a freshman at Embry-Riddle (Aeronautical University), studying aeronautical science on the airline pilot specialty track. I’d like to thank Step Up For Students and donors like RNDC for making this possible.”

This is the first time that Cigar City Brewing has partnered with Step Up For Students. The company’s $30,000 contribution will fund four K-12 scholarships.

For more information, visit stepupforstudents.org.

This Black History Month and 365 days a year, McDonald’s® celebrates all those who lead our community by taking chances, stepping up, making a difference and creating greatness throughout the world.

Deeply rooted in the community® ©2018 McDonald’s

EDITORIAL

A4

FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Russiagate and the surveillance duopoly Republican and Democratic Party dueling over “Russiagate” provides us with a teachable moment.

It should teach us to disrespect and discredit the law enforcement system as it exists in this country. We must oppose the surveillance state altogether and we should not be tricked by duopoly theatrics into thinking that either of the evil twins are acting in our interests.

Dysfunctional system Local cops plant drugs and weapons in order to arrest and convict anyone they want. They kill an average of three people every single day. Cash bail keeps the poor in jail not because they are necessarily dangerous, but because they are poor. Those are just some facts in the litany of oppression used by law enforcement against mostly poor, Black people.

But there is another order of wrongdoing that engulfs the whole world.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created a system which determines when the federal government may spy on anyone suspected of acting on behalf of a foreign agent. FISA set up a rubber-stamp kangaroo court with only a handful of warrants being rejected in the 40-year history of this law.

FISA authority was used to keep Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page under surveillance in 2016. Republicans claim that the warrant was granted as a result of the Christopher

MARGARET KIMBERLEY BLACK AGENDA REPORT

Steele opposition research dossier that was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

All political No one knows if this assertion is true, but the fight over declassifying the memo predictably turned into political theater.

Republicans said the memo would end the suspicion of Trump collusion with the Russian government. Democrats asserted that the system would fall apart if the memo was ever declassified and released.

If Republicans are correct, the FISA warrant was problematic and the case for collusion is tainted. Democrats now make the case for declassifying their own memo and continuing the foolish spectacle of irrelevance.

Despite the drama, both assertions are beside the point. The larger and more important issue is that the America justice system is decidedly unjust.

Rich vs. poor Prosecutors are among the worst criminals in this country. From small towns to federal courthouses, they wield power that few can circumvent.

Rich people need not worry because they exist in a bub-

The catfight between Trump and the FBI As a Malcolmite watching the catfight between Donald Trump and his Trumpettes – especially Sean Hannity and the FBI – I am inspired to say, “Smash each other up!”

Neither the Trumpettes – many of whom are the blood and/or ideological descendants of those who fought against equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunities – nor the FBI have ever shown any concern for Black folks. In fact, they have been responsible for any number of hostile, deadly acts against us.

Have they forgotten?

I don’t remember all those people who are now weeping and wailing about the way the FBI is being treated by Trump and his Trumpettes weeping and wailing when J. Edgar Hoover and his boys were consistently and brutally attacking those fighting in the war against White supremacy.

The Washington Post has a

A. PETER BAILEY TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

front-page headline, “At FBI, fears of lasting damage” which led me to wonder where are the articles and commentary about the lasting damage done to the civil and human rights movements by the FBI in the 1950s and 1960s.

The agency launched a Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) whose expressed mission was to harass and destroy people who they considered a threat to the status quo. In his book, “Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover”, Anthony Summers noted:

‘Kill one another’ “Although King had been in the

Random thoughts of a free Black mind, v. 313 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High – Add that name to the tragic list of mass school shootings: Columbine High. Sandy Hook Elementary. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly known as Virginia Tech. Marshall County High.

(You may not be aware of the Marshall County High School shooting in Benton, Ky., on January 23, because the 15-yearold gunman killed ‘only’ two people and shot ‘only’ a total of 14.)

As of the writing of this column late Wednesday night,

QUICK TAKES FROM #2: STRAIGHT, NO CHASER

CHARLES W. CHERRY II, ESQ. PUBLISHER

there, there have been 12 shootings (including Douglas) since New Year’s Day 2018. Researchers say there’s been an average of one school shooting a week in America since 2013.

I’m listening to all the main-

ble with laws of their own making. Public officials bow down to them and happily violate statutes in order to keep them happy. It is all rotten.

The case for and against Trump is an opportunity to discuss how few rights we have, and how the system is rigged against all but the apex predators at the top of the food chain.

Instead of making the case for tearing up this monstrosity, otherwise intelligent people are pointing fingers and choosing one disreputable side over the other.

Every Republican voted to extend the FISA program. They were joined by Democrats like Congressman Adam Schiff, who leads the case for collusion, and who has made a name for himself by stoking the Russiagate fire.

Schiff did nothing Schiff cried the loudest against releasing the Republican memo and claimed that declassification would pose a threat to the nation. When he had the chance to do something for the judicial system, he joined with the people he allegedly opposes and supported continuing the FISA travesty. Our individual rights are obviously of little concern to Schiff. Then again he is a former prosecutor, so little can be expected of him in this regard.

Russiagate is a sinkhole of political confusion and that is precisely why it was created. It began with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, a lackluster effort meant to continue the neo-liberal agenda,

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS AND DONALD TRUMP

BOB ENGLEHART, CAGLECARTOONS.COM

make war, and do little else. She had nothing to offer voters and hung her hat on making Trump look like “Putin’s puppet.”

Had she done a minimal effort, there would have been no need for payoffs to British spies or whipped-up Russophobia.

The entire Democratic Party was complicit in the debacle. They welcomed a tale of collusion in order to deflect the blame they so richly deserved.

The sorry spectacle continues as Republicans are equally determined to keep Trump in office and make their dreams of kleptocracy and diminished governmental authority a reality. Democrats are looking to explain away a string of electoral failures and maintain the illusion of being the inclusive party when they are merely shadows of the hardright Republicans.

ism.

Defending the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency or any of the other “intelligence community” agencies is to be a dupe of the highest order. Police in Baltimore and other cities may plant drugs and weapons on suspects, but the mega-killers lie about weapons in entire nations and cause death and suffering on a mass scale.

Sooner or later, Russiagate will play out. Whatever the result, this country will still be the one that locks up more of its people than any other. It will still be a threat to world peace. When the wheels of injustice grind on, only fools will have chosen between the two corrupt parties.

Complete transparency

Margaret Kimberley is a cofounder of BlackAgendaReport.com, and writes a weekly column there. Contact her at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Let all the memos be released.

There should be no sanctity bestowed upon government secrets. They are a ruse meant to cover up for worldwide gangster-

Convenient assassinations

A 1976 report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities states, “The FBI program to destroy Dr. King as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement entailed efforts to discredit him with churches, universities and the press.”

The FBI files on the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), which was launched

by Brother Malcolm in 1964, includes the following; “A recording of the remarks of Malcolm X at this meeting indicates that the aim of the OAAU is to eliminate differences between Negroes so they can work together for human rights, while the initial objective is to ‘internationalize’ the American Civil Rights Movement by taking it to the United Nations.”

On another of the FBI file pages, it is noted that “This report is classified ‘confidential’ since revelation of information furnished by all sources might reveal sources of continuing value and impair their future effectiveness and such impairment might have an adverse effect on the national defense interests of the government.”

The FBI OAAU files also declared, “The goal of the Counter Intelligence Program is “to prevent the coalition of militant Black Nationalist groups...An effective coalition of Black Nationalist groups might be the first step towards real ‘Mau Mau’ in America, the beginning of a true Black revolution.”

stream talking heads, from FoxNews to CNN, and there’s finger-pointing, snap judgments, and Monday-morning quarterbacking going on even before all of the dead bodies have been removed from the school.

They are blaming students for not telling school officials the shooter was a threat. They are blaming school officials for not doing more, despite the fact that the shooter had been expelled from the school. A Fox commentator even blamed local law enforcement officials for not taking the shooter’s guns away as a consequence of “disturbing” social media posts.

But no one, not even King Don Trump’s most hated “fake news” cable outlet CNN, has said one peep about the fact that NONE of these school shoot-

ings happen without somebody – whether a nutcase or a cleareyed, cold-blooded murderer – getting ahold of just one of the 400 million guns in legal circulation in America.

I just returned from a great trip to Medellin, Colombia.

When I mention the city, the first thing most Americans say is, “That place is dangerous and full of drugs and drug cartels.

Isn’t that where Pablo Escobar lived?”

I sicc my teeth, roll my eyes, and tell them, “I’m safer walking in downtown Medellin, downtown Accra, Ghana, or downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone (West Africa) at night than I am walking in downtown Miami or Jacksonville. I’ll get shot ‘Only In America.’” And as a Black man who’s 6 feet, 4 inches and 235 pounds, I’m doubly at

risk for getting shot to death in the “I felt threatened, so I killed him” so-called “stand your ground” Gunshine State.

And that’s the damn truth.

Guns are God in this dysfunctionally fearful country and the Second Amendment is America’s Eleventh Commandment. (“Thou shall pry my assaulttype weapon only from my cold, dead hands.”)

NOTHING good will come from this latest tragedy. There will be another school shooting next week that most of us will never read about. And the name of the late great savior of Florida’s Everglades, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, will forever be linked with the shedding of innocent blood.

public eye for some five years, Hoover lumped him together with advocates of violent struggle such as Malcolm X. ‘We wouldn’t have any problem,’ he had once grunted over lunch with (Lyndon) Johnson in his senatorial days, ‘if we could get those two guys fighting, if we could get them to kill one another off...’”

“Those two guys” were Brother Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., towards whom Hoover had a special hostility. He feared that they could launch a national movement.

According to reporter Tony Capaccio in the August 28, 2013 Washington Post, “The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech inspired the world. It also galvanized the FBI into undertaking one of its biggest surveillance operations in history.”

MLK targeted

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher

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Another goal was “to prevent the rise of a ‘Messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant Black Nationalist movement.

Malcolm X might have been such a ‘Messiah’.” After the assassination of Brother Malcolm, Hoover reportedly considered Dr. King as a candidate to be the “Messiah” they so feared.

What really caused Hoover to have nightmares was a possible coalition between Brother Malcolm and Dr. King. Their assassinations conveniently did away with his nightmares.

The FBI’s fear of lasting damage to them by attacks from Trump, Sean Hannity and the rest of the Trumpettes is absolutely nothing compared to the damage done to the civil and human rights movements’ war against White supremacy/racism by the FBI. Rather than taking sides in the current catfight, we should hope they scratch each other’s eyes out.

A. Peter Bailey’s latest book is “Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher.”

Contact him at apeterb@verizon.net.

Hit me up at ccherry2@ gmail.com.

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FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

There’s more to Black history than slavery Black History Month is a time to celebrate Americans whose accomplishments are sometimes overshadowed by the eye-catching negative news stories.

It was discomfiting to watch the State of the Union address while Black congresspersons churlishly sat with their arms crossed even as President Trump announced that Black unemployment was at its lowest recorded rate. This sort of behavior does nothing except promote the notion that rudeness and incivility is accepted congressional protocol.

Lost opportunity The employment news could have been a great segue into Black History Month. These “resisters” could have transformed a statistic into an opportunity to let their unquestionably loyal constituents know that ordinary Black people can rise to the top.

Black leaders should help dispel the myth that the only money in the Black community is in the hands of sports figures and entertainers. Maybe they should read “Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?”, the autobiography of Reginald Lewis.

Lewis attended college on a scholarship and Harvard Law School, worked his way up in the financial world of leverage buyouts and in 1987 bought Beatrice International for $985 million. Renamed TLC Beatrice, this snack food, beverage, and grocery store conglomerate was the largest Black-owned and managed business in the U.S. Lewis’s philanthropy built the Museum of Maryland AfricanAmerican History and Culture.

MARILYN M. SINGLETON, M.D., J.D. GUEST COMMENTARY

The first major facility at Harvard named in honor of an African-American was the Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center.

No victimization Instead of stirring the racial and gender identity victimization pot, Black leaders should display the qualities that we would want to develop in our children.

Take persistence in achieving one’s aspirations, exemplified

by Bessie Coleman. She was the daughter of sharecroppers who became the first Black American female pilot and the first Black American to have an international pilot license.

Denied admission to American flight schools because she was Black and refused private training because she was a woman, Ms. Coleman was undeterred.

She learned French and in 1921 went to a Paris flight school. She first appeared in an American air show in 1923 at an event honoring veterans of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I.

‘Dared to dream’ Before she could fulfill her dream of starting a flying school, she died in 1926 while practicing for an air show. Lieutenant William J. Powell, a decorated World War I veteran, wrote, “Because of Bessie Coleman, we have over-

Twenty-five years and going strong –Part 1 Starting and running a Black business association during the early 1990s was more than a dream or a challenge. It was alHARRY C. most impossible.

ALFORD The concept was hardly credible back then. Most people could GUEST COLUMNIST not conceive of a Black group of people to start a new organizaWe did this in Indianapolis, Intion that was centered around diana, Kay’s hometown. Little Black business development. did we know that all hell would break loose. How dare a marCode names ried couple living in Indianapolis Sure, there were plenty of start an organization like that in Black organizations, most of a conservative and passive city? which would use code names like “National” to imply the ac- More challenges tivity of Black people. “Colored” It didn’t take long for various and “Negro” were alright, but to groups and individuals to chalsay “Black” apparently was taboo lenge our use of the name, let or dangerous. So my wife Kay alone expound on the concept. and I clung to the title of “Black.” We eventually had to debate and We had our attorney do a challenge others who laid claim search on the viability or avail- to the name before we officially ability of the term “National registered it.

Black Chamber of Commerce.”

There was a guy out in OakTo our surprise, there was no of- land, Calif., who challenged us ficial group that used or official- verbally, but he never had any ofly laid claim to the term. Off we ficial documentation of the rights went with the name, and began to the name. Within six months, the incorporation procedure and all of those who laid challenge to the application process with the the name backed off.

Internal Revenue Service.

As of May 23, 1993, the Nation-

Super Bowl ad using MLK’s voice was crass exploitation It is incredibly sad to watch how the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life and legaREV. cy inspired and changed the lives BARBARA of millions, is now being used to REYNOLDS hawk trucks.

The ad for Dodge Ram Trucks TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE used words from one of his most inspiring speeches, “The Drum group led by Isaac Farris, Jr. the Major Instinct,” which he deliv- nephew of Dr. King. He showed ered on Feb. 4, 1968. up at the White House to celebrate Dr. King’s birthday with MLK would be protesting President Trump, only days afThis ad was so unlike Dr. King. ter the president announced If he had involved himself at all that Africans had lived in “shitin football, he and perhaps even hole” countries. This show-up by Mrs. King who continued the a King relative, which was aired movement after his death, would continuously, provided cover for have joined the NFL protest a president to claim he was in movement who have been taking sync with people of color. a knee against social injustice.

What next? Dr. King ads for Coretta was different sleeping bags, tennis shoes? If Ironically there was a time this is not exploitation or “pimp- when the King family fought valing,” what else could this be? iantly to protect Dr. King’s intelAnd the Super Bowl ad was not lectual property from the very the only act that had me holding deconstruction we are witnessmy breath and my nose. It was a ing today.

EDITORIAL VISUAL VIEWPOINT: DONALD TRUMP AND ‘WIFE BEATERS’

come that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream.”

Congresspersons, tell your constituents that prior to the Reconstruction there were Black legislators such as Matthias de Souza of the Colonial Maryland Legislature, (1641-1642) and Alexander Twilight of the Vermont Legislature (1836-1837). And as early as 1783 an ex-slave, James Derham, could become a skilled and respected physician with a successful practice, treating both Black and White patients.

None of these successes denies the reality of social and health issues affecting the poor and some ethnic minorities.

Distrust in healthcare Despite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), non-elderly Black Americans, among others remain significantly more likely than Whites to be uninsured. Disturbingly, a degree of fear and distrust of medical care exists in some Black Americans. A public hospital focus-group study found several contributing factors, including an expectation of racism.

In today’s climate where some Black leaders imply that White Americans are racists, only personal experiences can slay that fire-breathing dragon.

Another determinant was fear of experimentation, noting the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study.

Only a deep, detailed discussion about treatment choices can allay such fears. This is impossible in a 7-minute visit.

All about money? al Black Chamber of Commerce was incorporated in Washington, D.C. Kay and I had plans to officially move to Washington by 1996. However, our founding attorney, Derrick Humphries, had other plans. He knew we had a big concern about placing our sons into a decent school in Washington.

A great school We proudly had our boys in public school in Indianapolis but in Washington, that wasn’t a good option. Luckily, and through the efforts of Derrick, we got our sons accepted into St. Albans School for Boys. Unbeknownst to us, it was the toprated school for boys in the nation. It was a blessing and our twin sons have benefitted from that ever since.

So, here we were new citizens of Washington starting in September 1994. This was not greeted too well by more than a few groups throughout the nation.

Washington greeted us with open arms, but the rest of the nation was “green” with envy or intimidation.

There was one very important fact about our relocation to the nation’s capital. The newlyelected Clinton administration sent us an invitation to the White House. White House Liaison Alexis Herman invited us and

In my recent memoir of Coretta Scott King, “My Life, My Love, My Legacy”, I explain the background of how Dr. King’s name, images, writing and speeches that embody his message were the intellectual property that the family spent millions challenging because they felt other entities were either using it for their own gain or maligning his works.

There were several lawsuits involved. In one case, for example, against CBS, Dr. King sued and then after his father’s death Dexter sued over an infringement of copyright. A court ruled in their favor.

Mrs. King explained, “The network had included footage of virtually the entire “I Have a Dream” speech along with other speeches in a five-part series that they sold for profit. They used my husband’s words, name, image and speeches to make money, but Martin’ heirs received nothing. It was unfair, but a court of law upheld the conclusion, ruling that the copyright protected Martin’s words.”

Mrs. King, who died in 2006, had made protecting the integrity of her husband one of her top priorities. “As I shifted into retirement from the Center, Dexter took on the challenge of safeguarding Martin’s property. The goal was not to make ourselves

A5

STEVE SACK, THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

Additionally, offices’ requests for insurance information made patients feel like money was the prime concern. This perception could be invalidated by instituting government policies that encourage medical care on a charitable basis – something physicians have happily done since the days of Hippocrates.

The key factor engendering distrust was poor “interpersonal competence,” with participants complaining “physicians barely spoke to them, did not examine them, and immediately took out a prescription pad.” Sadly, this is becoming the norm for all patients, Black and White.

The way to rid the health system of disparities is not give everyone the same level of robotic treatment. We physicians can contribute our time and use every patient encounter to let patients know they will be treated with re-

spect and dignity.

And as for our ornery congressional “resisters,” they should rent the film “Remember the Titans,” take its message of receptivity and cooperation to heart, uncross their arms, roll up their sleeves, and join the winning team.

our board of directors to come and introduce ourselves.

Different missions

Changed under Obama It was the beginning of a great relationship. It was so natural at the time. Little did we realize that eventually a conservative pro-business organization and the liberal arm of the Democratic Party were not destined for each other. Times were good and cordial all the way until the Obama administration came into power in 2008. In the interim, there were good relations between us and both political parties.

As a national organization, we began with 14 local Black chambers in our fledgling federation.

It all started off with a positive effort and continuity by all, regardless of where they were located.

Soon, jealously and envy started to set in and mini-rebellions would start taking place by two factions. Chambers in Texas and in California would start to challenge our leadership and direction. An organization of one soon became a three-pronged entity going in circles.

We would eventually tell the California chapters to “get lost,” with the exception of the San Francisco African-American Chamber of Commerce. Also, the various Texas chapters became adversarial and still are, with few exceptions.

rich, but to pass on a sacred legacy for future generations.”

Protection or greed?

Despite the wishes of their parents, the question is often raised.

Are the King siblings protecting the legacy, or getting bogged down in get-rich schemes?

While Bernice King – Dr. King’s only surviving daughter and president of the King Center – took some of the heat for the commercial, in a tweet she quickly distanced herself from any decision-making involving the ad: “Neither myself nor the King Center is the entity that approves the use of Dr. King’s words, imagery in merchandise, entertainment or advertisement, which included the Super Bowl.”

As it was explained to me, Bernice only manages the estate of her mother. Dexter is CEO of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. corporation responsible for approving the licensing for his father’s intellectual property – a bifurcation that is ripe for misunderstandings.

Each of the siblings – Martin Luther King III, Dexter and Bernice – reportedly have one vote, which means any two of them can cancel out the desires of the other.

Dr. Marilyn M. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist and president-elect of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers. Click on this commentary at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

We do just fine without them.

Our missions are quite different.

We are worldly and growth-driven; they are provincial and reclusive.

Another organization would become contentious with the NBCC. That would be the National Minority Supplier Development Council. We never considered them competition, but for some reason they feared us.

In the beginning stages of our growth, they would try to confront our mission.

We have grown immensely during the past 25 years. They seem to be in a state of “mission creep” and are fluttering.

We have no time to stop and fight. We continue to enjoy our growth around the world and nothing is going to stop us now.

We are the largest Black business association in the world. The future is quite bright!

Harry C. Alford is the cofounder and president/CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Contact him via www.nationalbcc.org. Click on this commentary at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Fight over bible For example, last year, the King siblings had feuded in court over whether or not their father’s travel bible and Nobel Peace Prize should be sold to a private bidder.

Reports show Dexter and Martin wanted to sell the bible. Bernice, who argued the property was sacred, did not. She was outvoted and the matter is still being settled out of court.

In an interview last year, Dexter told me: “Land is the real estate of the past. Intellectual property is the real estate of the future. If you stand back and let others steal Dad’s material, then you are affecting every minority writer, every songwriter, every composer, every storyteller, every creative person.”

But Dr. King’s legacy commercialized and hoisted on a Ram Truck sloshing through the mud in a Super Bowl ad does not feel like “protection.” It’s just plain old crass exploitation to me.

Dr. Barbara Reynolds is a lecturer at universities and seminaries, an author of six books, and a book coach. Contact her via www.reynoldsworldnews. com. Click on this commentary at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

NATION

TOJ A6

FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

National Portrait Gallery unveils Obamas’ portraits

BY KATHERINE SKIBA CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

WASHINGTON – Portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were unveiled Monday at the National Portrait Gallery, showcasing works from the first AfricanAmericans to create paintings for the gallery’s collection of U.S. presidents and their wives.

The former president’s portrait features flowers in the background: chrysanthemums referencing the official flower of Chicago, jasmine evoking his native Hawaii and African blue lilies in memory of his late father.

The former first lady’s shows her in a long, flowing, sleeveless black-and-white dress embellished with geometric shapes by designer Michelle Smith’s label, Milly.

The Obamas were joined by family members, friends and current and former staffers. The former first couple selected the artists before leaving the White House in 2017, gallery officials said.

OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/TNS

Wiley’s bio Kehinde Wiley, who is based in New York, was chosen for the former president’s portrait.

He is known for creating vibrant, large-scale paintings of young African-Americans, according to a biography provided by the gallery.

He typically portrays people of color posing as famous figures in Western art, “challenging the visual rhetoric that is dominated by elite white men,” the bio said.

Sherald’s bio Amy Sherald of Baltimore painted the former first lady’s portrait.

Sherald is noted for stylized, archetypal portrayals of AfricanAmericans, and she herself is the “personification of resilience,” according to a bio from the gallery.

Former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attend the unveiling of their official portraits at the National Portrait Gallery on Monday.

Sherald was diagnosed with congestive heart failure shortly after earning a master of fine arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004 and underwent a heart transplant eight years later, the bio said.

Celebs attend Monday’s ceremony was invitation-only.

The Obamas were joined by celebrity friends including Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, as well as Obama administration officials, including former Attorney General Eric Holder and Chicago attorney Tina Tchen, who was Michelle Obama’s chief of staff.

Other guests included former assistant White House chef Sam Kass and Denis McDonough, a

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former White House chief of staff.

Two celebrity couples — Spielberg and actress Kate Capshaw, and singer John Legend and model Chrissy Teigen — were among more than 45 donors who contributed to commissioning the Obamas’ portraits, according to the gallery.

About the gallery The National Portrait Gallery has the only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House.

The museum opened in 1968 in a Greek Revival building that during the 19th century housed the U.S. Patent Office.

Other portraits of the Obamas, bound for the White House, have yet to be unveiled.

Former first lady Michelle Obama, with artist Amy Sherald, unveils her official portrait at the National Portrait Gallery on Mondayvin Washington, D.C.

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“You have to look close up.

See, I used different types of black cloth to show the different walks of life these people were from. Because you could be anyone and get lynched.” quilter April Shipp most on the end of a hang noose, some by other means including being tied to a tree and burned alive.

February display Shipp did the research, extracting names that she calls “my 5,000 souls” from news stories about each murder, compiled by historians in books she acquired.

“It’s terrible to think about, but they’re resting now, and they live on in my cloth,” Shipp said.

Her beautiful tribute to cruelty took its place recently amid nearly 60 other quilts, most sewn in bright cheery colors, in the annual show of quilts unfurled each February at Detroit Unity Temple.

Each quilter in the church’s audience — including some from other churches, others who submitted work through quilting societies — was asked to stand “and be acknowledged for their beautiful work” during Sunday’s service, said the Rev. Gregory Guice, the church’s pastor.

Protest quilts

April Shipp points out names and places on the quilt of Blacks lynched in the U.S.

Fabric of history Black history quilt memorializes 5,000 souls lost to lynch mobs

From Holiday song The stitches in Shipp’s quilt bear witness to a more sordid history, stopping viewers in their tracks.

“I love what she did with this,” said church member Alma Greer, 84, of Orchard Lake, a retired teacher and school administrator. “There’s so much to learn with this.’’

Shipp said she named her soft, shining testament to cruelty after a song about lynching by jazz legend Billie Holiday. Embroidered atop her quilt are the words “Strange Fruit” — a Century of Lynching and Murder, 1865 to 1965.”

Families hung together

BY BILL LAITNER DETROIT FREE PRESS/TNS

DETROIT – The quilter’s fabric is soft, her stitches shine with golden thread and the setting for seeing her handiwork is the stillness of a church.

Yet, viewers can’t help but be jarred because, attached to the top of this 10- by 10-foot piece of black cloth, a pair of full-sized hang nooses seem to leer in bitter tribute to the countless African-Americans who died at the hands of lynch mobs.

Beneath the nooses, quilter April Shipp from suburban Detroit stitched thousands of names of AfricanAmericans, all known to have lost their lives to mobs,

In observing African-American history month, Metro Detroit’s Black quilters said their tradition speaks to the homespun history of American slaves, forced to stitch makeshift fabric from scraps of their masters’ cloth.

“And they a lot of times used this to send a message – that’s why we have several, what we call, protest quilts in this show,” said Shirley Phillips-Horne, 80, of Detroit, a church member and co-organizer of the quilt show.

One protest quilt has, stapled to it, the actual paper receipt for the last poll tax paid by the quilter’s grandmother in the early 1960s – remnant of a barrier to voting for generations of Blacks in the South.

PHOTOS BY ROMAIN BLANQUART/DETROIT FREE PRESS/TNS

Strange Fruit, a quilt listing names of African Americans who were lynched and murdered between 1865 and 1965, is by fiber artist April Shipp, shown on Feb. 7.

She listed victims state by state. Under the southern states, the rosters seem endless, with names that suggest macabre cruelty. Brothers were hanged together, mothers and their children strung up side by side, Shipp said.

Under Michigan, only two names shine in gold thread.

Beneath the names Eddie Cook and Albert Martin, her quilt reads “And twenty seven others unnamed.”

Among those 27 unnamed victims, Shipp included 25 Blacks who — according to news stories of the time — were killed by roving mobs and by police during Detroit’s race riot of June 1943.

Took three years Shipp’s quilt has been displayed at several museums See QUILT, Page B2

New book of essays explores King’s political philosophy

BY DR. GLENN C. ALTSCHULER SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

In “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?’’ (1967), Martin Luther King Jr. examined the impact on AfricanAmericans of “the white man’s problem.”

Asserting that “the central quality of the Negro’s life is pain,” attributable to economic exploitation and racial oppression, Dr. King added that “No society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.”

A year later, King was assassinated.

BOOK REVIEW Review of “To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.’’ Edited by Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry. Harvard University Press.

449 pages. $35.

In-depth study King continues to be revered as one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century. Nonetheless, his political philosophy has rarely been examined in depth.

Edited by Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry, both of whom are professors of African American History at Harvard University, “To Shape a New World’’ con-

tains more than a dozen essays by distinguished scholars who engage King’s ideas on a wide array of subjects, including non-violent resistance; color-blind and color-conscious policies; economic justice; Black Power; patriarchy, masculinity, and feminism; conscientious citizenship; hope, hate, despair, dignity, and love.

Quality varies As with so many collections, the quality of the essays in “To Shape a New World’’ vary considerably.

One contributor, for example, focuses almost exclusively on slavery, conflates logical inference with historical fact, and has little to say about King.

Another essayist takes gratuitous shots at Barack Obama’s “deference” to political violence. Most important, perhaps, several contributors to the book offer interpretations that seem designed to pull King closer to their own political positions.

Unresolved tensions The most insightful essays in “To Shape a New World,’’ it seems to me, identify and analyze unresolved tensions in King’s political philosophy.

In “Gender Trouble: Manhood, Inclusion and Justice,” for example, Shatema Threadcraft, a professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and Brandon Terry “think with King against King” to illuminate sexism in the civil rights movement.

Women were central to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Threadcraft and Terry demonstrate.

Traveling to work as domestics, Black women spent more time than men on buses; drivers often subjected them to verbal and physical abuse.

Despite the image of Rosa Parks’ quiet resistance, female protestors could be “profane and militant.”

Women unnamed Nonetheless, King tended to depict See REVIEW, Page B2

BOOKS & EVENTS

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FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Tampa: The Platinum Comedy Tour is Feb. 17 at the USF Sun Dome in Tampa with Mike Epps, DeRay Davis and Don “DC” Curry.

Fort Lauderdale: The African Presence Art Exhibition is open through March 12 at Nova Southeastern University’s Alvin Sherman Library.

More info: nova.edu/blackhistory Ponte Vedra: Mavis Staples takes the stage of the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall on Feb. 25 for an 8 p.m. show.

Tampa: The Florida State Fair continues at the Florida State Fairgrounds to Feb. 19. Full list of entertainment, attractions and events, visit floridastatefair.com.

Hollywood: Mary J. Blige’s Strength of a Woman tour stops at Hard Rock Live on Feb. 19 and Tampa’s Amalie Arena on Feb. 21.

Tampa: Rema Ma featuring 6ix9ine, Jacquees, Ball Greezy and Mike Smiff will perform Feb. 23 at the USF Sun Dome.

Punta Gorda: The Ultimate Motown Experience is Feb.

FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

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27 at the Charlotte Harbor Event and Conference Center.

St. Petersburg: Wyclef Jean will be at Jannus Live in St. Petersburg on Feb. 18.

Fort Lauderdale: The Robert Cray Band performs Feb. 20 at the Parker Playhouse and the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall on Feb. 21.

Daytona Beach: The Legendary Ladies of Motown show is 7:30 p.m. Feb. 24 at The Peabody. Performers: Mary Wilson, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.

Miami Gardens: The Fifth Black Heritage Festival is Feb. 17 noon to 4 p.m. at the Betty T. Ferguson Recreational Complex. Vendors: Call 305-474-3011. Sponsors: Call 305-914-9070.

MELBA MOORE

The Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe in Sarasota will present “Lady Day at Emerson Bar and Grill” starring Melba Moore starting Feb. 28. Westcoastblackthreatre. org

Overtown: The fourth annual “Walk Together Children’’ walking tour is 10 a.m. to noon Feb. 17 starting at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 301 NW Ninth St. More information: Call 305633-3583 or e-mail glwillingham@hotmail.com.

Fort Lauderdale: The Fort Lauderdale Community Center will continue its fourth annual Black Empowerment Summit on Feb. 22 at Dillard High School’s Recital Hall from 6 to 9 p.m. More information: www.flccenter.org.

JOE

Jazz in the Gardens returns March 17-18 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. Performers will include Anita Baker, Smokey Robinson, Chaka Khan, Fantasia, and Joe. Full lineup: www.jazzinthegardens.com

ASHANTI

Ja Rule, Ashanti, Fat Joe, Trina and Piles are scheduled Feb. 22 at the James L. Knight Center for an 8 p.m. show.

Florida mental health counselor releases ‘The Hangover’ FROM STAFF REPORTS

Dr. Carleah East, a licensed mental health counselor from St. Petersburg, has released a new book, “The Hangover: Overcoming Emotional Addiction – 12 Steps for Emotional Sobriety.’’

Inspired by conquering her own challenges with abusive relationships and selfdoubt, the author outlines a compelling

self-help framework, with advice for creating transformational healing. “The Hangover’’ is considered an excellent resource for women’s empowerment and is available for purchase online at http://thesapphirewoman.com.

This book defines an emotional addict as, “an individual who is addicted and emotionally attracted to the highs and lows of a relationship. When this happens, the emotional chemistry in the affect-

ed individual’s brain and receptors create an addiction, East stated. “As a result, the addict adjusts him or herself to a “roller coaster” of emotions and feelings,” she further notes.

The book takes the reader through the 12 steps of recognizing, dealing and healing from emotional addiction.

“You already know what didn’t work in your past relationships, now let’s understand why and how not to repeat the same

nonsense. Having a sober heart and mind is the only way to really find happiness. Once this is a reality, intimacy and love won’t be far behind,” East added.

East is dedicated to empowering women of all Dr. Carleah backgrounds through The East Sapphire Woman, an organization inspiring women to reclaim their power, embrace their truth, and design their destiny.

‘Black Panther’ review: A sleek Marvel of a kingly superhero leadingly exuberant start with the first “Iron Man” in 2008.

Back then we hadn’t gotten used to the all-star, dutifully interlocking “Avengers” pictures that now roll off the assembly line on a Disney stockholder-friendly schedule.

It’s pretty clear “Black Panther” is going to be a huge hit. One of the best things about it is a simple one: It feels like a story and an achievement unto itself.

BY MICHAEL PHILLIPS CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

“Just because something works does not mean it cannot be improved.”

So says the tech-wizard sister of the title character in “Black Panther.”

It’s an apt credo for this soulful, stirringly acted and pretty terrific movie’s place in the Marvel Studios realm.

As a rule, these movies basically work, most of them, even if they sometimes feel more like a product, launched, than a superhero world, imagined.

But co-writer and director Ryan Coogler’s film qualifies, handily, as his third consecutive and undeniable success, following the roiling docudrama “Fruitvale Station” (2013) and the improbable, irresistible “Rocky” sequel “Creed” (2015).

Expect huge hit “Black Panther” is also the first Marvel superhero movie I can remember with a serious emotion-

QUILT from B1 around the country, including Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History, although its permanent home is in her house, she said.

“This took me three years,” said Shipp, 55, a native of Detroit who lives and sews at her home in Rochester Hills.

By day, she’s a shop assistant for Fiat-Chrysler of America in an auto-research lab in Auburn Hills.

After hours, she sews and is known for it.

Recently, Shipp turned out 100 black armbands — embroidered on her computerized sewing machine — for officers in mourning to wear at the funeral of slain Detroit police officer Glenn Doss.

A super cast MATT KENNEDY/MARVEL STUDIOS

Chadwick Boseman is suited up for his “Black Panther’’ role. al wallop. More important, it has a forceful, natural sense of how to let the mythic world converse with the racial politics of the real world.

These last 10 years of officially sanctioned Marvel Cinematic Universe movies got off to a mis-

In his current incarnation, the character first appeared in “Captain America: Civil War” (2016), and he’s reporting for world-saving duty in the upcoming “Avengers: Infinity War.” But the movie opening this week is the one where he gets the room to breathe. Put another way: Chadwick Boseman’s regal, rocksolid portrayal gets its due, and a dozen or more wonderfully acted supporting roles get theirs, too.

‘Rounded-out quality’ Created by Stan Lee and Jack

Recent trend

Different types used

Recently, she was at Detroit Unity Church to assist in mounting the church’s quilt show.

Quilts are a handicraft sewn throughout history by people of all races; historians say the process of sewing two or more layers of fabric together to make a thicker, padded material goes back thousands of years.

Still, African-Americans say they have a special fondness for quilting.

One recent trend? Using cloth made in Africa, said Cynthia Ferguson, a Detroiter who imports quiltsized swatches in bright designs from Mali and Ghana, then sells them to Detroit-area quilters.

Ferguson, calling her business Fergie’s International Fabrics, had tables of fabric on display for a quilters’ workshop held after the church service.

Like most quilters, African Americans habitually fashioned patterns with a technique called “patchwork quilting” — using scraps of cloth in various shapes and multiple layers to create bedding, and sometimes to make clothing or purses.

Although Shipp’s “Strange Fruit,” with its allblack background, appears not to be a patchwork design, it is.

“You have to look closeup. See, I used different types of black cloth to show the different walks of life these people were from.

“Because you could be anyone and get lynched,” Shipp said.

The quilts will be on display through February at Detroit Unity Temple, 17505 2nd Avenue in Detroit. To arrange a tour, call 313-345-4848.

Kirby in 1966, the title character is the son of the king of the (fictional) African nation Wakanda.

The screenplay, which Coogler wrote with Joe Robert Cole, follows familiar storytelling grooves, but you don’t get that hectic, blurry feeling some of the Marvels impart as they hustle between action sequences.

There’s a pleasing fullness and rounded-out quality to the best scenes in “Black Panther.” Coogler and his comrades maximize each new vignette and new set of characters rolling in and out of the story.

Substance of film In brief: Wakanda, consisting of five tribes, was blessed long ago by a meteorite made of a magical substance called vibranium.

The glowing alien metal gives humans the strength, agility and star billing of superhumans, and feeds the special herbal potion that turns the king of the moment into Black Panther, a warrior, a protector and an extremely fast and high-leaping wonder.

REVIEW from B1 Montgomery women less as agents than as victims, leaving them unnamed in his accounts of the boycott.

On the other hand, Threadcraft and Terry, indicate, King challenged prevailing ideas about African-American manhood “by staging and performing an enactment of manhood commensurate with non-violence.”

In contrast to militants who were “all talk,” King emphasized, non-violent protestors put their bodies on the line, exhibiting self-mastery, “a higher order vision of manhood.”

Reformation over nationalism In “Requiem for A Dream,” Brandon Ter-

Key allies In the early stages of Coogler’s film, king T’Chaka (John Kani) expires, leaving the throne to be filled by his son, T’Challa (Boseman).

The newly crowned king’s key allies include T’Challa’s brash, delightful sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), who’s constantly showing off the latest in Wakandan technology and gadgetry.

With a lively wit and urgent fire in the eyes, Lupita Nyong’o portays T’Challa’s ex, currently one of the nation’s undercover “war dogs” surveying the outside world.

Female force General Okoye, the spearwielding standout in Wakanda’s all-female Special Forces team, comes to vivid life in the hands of Danai Gurira.

Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker are inevitably perfect casting as the queen and the kingdom’s Obi-Wan, respectively.

May Marvel learn its lesson from “Black Panther”: When a movie like this ends up feeling both personal and vital, you’ve done something right.

ry points out that King showed, “with unmasking clarity,” that Black Power radicals “never exercised, and perhaps could not exercise,” the capacity to “begin, lead, or control” the urban uprisings of the 1960s.

Seeing no separate road to power and fulfillment, King devoted more attention to Black cultural reformation than to Black nationalism.

At the same time, Terry adds, the Black Power movement stimulated King to go into the slums, fight for better schools, better jobs, and a guaranteed minimum wage, and embrace “color-conscious” remedies.

‘A hope’ In a concluding essay, Cornel West, a professor of Public Philosophy at Harvard, reminds us that 50 years after King’s assassination, the “intense fight” over his legacy continues.

Attributing King’s depression at the end of his life to his sense that American was a “sick, neurotic nation,” West asserts that, more recently, many African-Americans have been “seduced” by the success of Black elites, allowing social misery to become “an afterthought in public discourse,” while Blacks “break-dance in the air and sleep walk on the ground.”

Trying to think with King against King in “this ugly Trump moment,” West writes that even as he gave up hope as his sole comforter, Martin Luther King remained a Christian who chose “to be a hope” – and a fighting force for good.

Dr. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

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FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

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Think you’re one of Florida’s Finest?

E-mail your high-resolution (200 dpi) digital photo in casual wear or bathing suit taken in front of a plain background with few distractions, to news@flcourier. com with a short biography of yourself and your contact information. (No nude/ glamour/ fashion photography, please!) In order to be considered, you must be at least 18 years of age. Acceptance of the photographs submitted is in the sole and absolute discretion of Florida Courier editors. We reserve the right to retain your photograph even if it is not published. If you are selected, you will be contacted by e-mail and further instructions will be given.

Thousands of Caribbean culture lovers converge on South Florida every year before and during the Columbus Day weekend to attend the annual Miami Broward Carnival, a series of concerts, pageants, parades, and competitions. On Carnival Day, “mas” (masquerade) bands of thousands of revelers dance and march behind 18-wheel tractor-trailer trucks with booming sound systems from morning until nightfall while competing for honors. Here are some of the “Finest” we’ve seen over the years.

Click on www.flcourier to see hundreds of pictures from previous Carnivals.

Go to www. miamibrowardcarnival. com for more information on Carnival events in South Florida.

CHARLES W. CHERRY II / FLORIDA COURIER

How Boseman brought power, purpose to ‘Black Panther’

BY JEN YAMATO LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

BEVERLY HILLS – Long before he was cast as the first Black superhero of the modern Marvel era, and before he brought the Avengers-adjacent King T’Challa of Wakanda to life in his own groundbreaking standalone tentpole, Chadwick Boseman was keeping notes on what a “Black Panther” movie should be.

“I can remember several times writing in my journals, ‘That would be a cool thing to see in Black Panther’ — ideas from real life, from real history, or real archaeology or architecture,” said Boseman, 40, taking in the sunshine on a Beverly Hills hotel terrace in the midst of a frenetic press tour.

“The projects that I end up doing, that I want to be involved with in any way, have always been projects that will be impactful, for the most part, to my people — to Black people,” said Boseman, a playwright and theater director turned actor and, now, blockbuster movie star.

“To see Black people in ways which you have not seen them before. So ‘Black Panther’ was on my radar, and in my dreams.”

Even the setting — the fictional African country of Wakanda, a tech-forward tribalist nation that has long kept its advances, and its stockpiles of the powerful metal vibranium, secret from the outside world — is revolutionary in the comic book genre.

Coogler’s world-building is transporting and vibrant, weaving the DNA of African cultures into the fabric of the film with the help of collaborators both new (veteran costume designer Ruth E. Carter) and familiar (production designer Hannah Beachler, cinematographer Rachel Morrison).

History and heritage But it’s within the fraught dynamic between the hero and his primary adversary where “Black Panther” deftly explores subversive and probing concerns around race, history, heritage and identity.

Building off T’Challa’s introduction in “Captain America: Civil War,” Boseman steps fully into the hero’s suit with stately gravitas as the newly crowned king wavers between his late father’s isolationist principles and the impulse to open Wakanda to the world.

In the process, he encounters a new threat in the form of a mysterious American dubbed Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan, who has starred in each of Coogler’s films).

Cultural connection

Go-to actor “Having first come to wide attention as baseball legend Jackie Robinson in 2013’s “42,” Boseman went on to play James Brown in “Get On Up” the following year and then-future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in last year’s “Marshall.”

That run of critically acclaimed performances cemented Boseman as a go-to actor for (real life) heroes even before the highprofile “Black Panther” gig came along.

Fifty-two years after debuting in the pages of Marvel Comics, the character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby is getting his biggest pop culture berth yet.

Directed by “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed” helmer Ryan Coogler and co-written by Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, “Black Panther” arrives in theaters on a wave of overwhelming critical acclaim and is poised for a domestic box office opening in

Fictional country

MATT KENNEDY/MARVEL STUDIOS

Chadwick Boseman is shown in a scene from the film, “Black Panther.” The movie’s U.S. debut is Feb. 16. the range of $150 million.

Mostly Black cast Boseman and Coogler, 31, have already made an impact with their take on “Black Panther,” a sprawling work of Afrofuturistic fantasy flair exploding its way out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe formula and flourishing in the absence of, well, the Avengers.

Instead of Tony Stark and his crew, it’s Boseman’s T’Challa and

his fellow countrymen and women — played by Lupita Nyong’o, Daniel Kaluuya, Danai Gurira, Forest Whitaker, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke and Angela Bassett, leading a predominantly Black cast — who take center stage.

The lineup of Black talent in front of and behind the camera, unprecedented for a movie of this scale, has already established Coogler’s film as a standard-bearer for Black representation in Hollywood.

“Most African Americans have had a moment where they’re like, ‘I know I’m of African descent — but I don’t have that connection,’” said the South Carolinaborn Boseman. “That’s something that needs to be healed.

That’s something that’s broken and has to be made whole.

“That conflict within the movie, and the conflict between an African American and his African (counterpart), is one that has existed since colonialism and since slavery.

African identity He’s excited for young people, especially Black men and women, to see themselves reflected onscreen.

“The thing that I’ve noticed is that I have brothers from the continent — people from Nigeria and Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Senegal, South Africa — coming up to me and saying, ‘I know

you’re from here, but you represent what we are back home.’

“It’s touching to me that they get to see an African character onscreen and that they identify with him.

“There will be other people from the States who will see (Michael B. Jordan’s) character and identify with him. I actually do.

Because his argument is a valid argument, the disconnection from Africa and the need to know where you come from.”

Reaching others too But people of all ages and walks of life will leave the theater with what they bring to it, he muses.

“There are also a lot of little White kids that are excited about ‘Black Panther’ — who I’ve seen in Black Panther costumes, who want autographs and toys signed — kids that are Asian, Latino,” he said. “There’s no limitation on ethnicity and gender or even age.

All of that is humbling, to say the least.”

2013 Marvel call Back in 2013, Boseman was overseas in Zurich promoting “42” when he got the careerchanging call from Marvel’s head honchos.

Boseman admits he weighed the pros of taking on the role against the only con, in his mind — “that Marvel might not be as committed as they should be to making a ‘Black Panther’ movie on par with the other movies that they make … that it would be some kind of second-class citizen, a second-class superhero movie for Black people.”

Walking into his first meeting with Marvel’s cinematic brain trust, including studio head Kevin Feige and executive producers Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso and Nate Moore, put those fears at ease.

“I went in and I met with them — and I saw that Nate was Black,” he said with a laugh, “which was important because as a minority you can have this viewpoint of how it looks inside the corporation and inside the building, this view that it’s a table full of White men, because we’ve had to deal with tables full of White men a lot.

“To walk in there and see that there were women and that one of the shot-callers was Black made me feel more comfortable with what was going on.”

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

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FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

BY GREGORY CLAY McClatchy-Tribune News Service

ost of us know prominent Black women in Hollywood — from Cicely Tyson to Halle Berry to Kerry Washington.

We know superstar Black female athletes, such as the tennis-playing Williams sisters, and we remember bronze medal-winning figure skater Debi Thomas from the momentous Calgary Winter Olympics of 1988.

But sports and entertainment aren’t the only arenas in which Black women have achieved.

Here, we examine a historical roll call of Black women firsts and their legacies as we celebrate Black History Month and Women’s History Month with an eclectic and challenging trivia quiz.

1. Who was the first Black

woman named to a U.S. Cabinet position?

A. Condoleezza Rice B. Alexis Herman C. Patricia Roberts Harris D. Hazel R. O’Leary

2.

Michelle Obama became the first Black first lady when Barack Michelle Obama Obama won the presidential election in 2008. At what college did she complete her undergraduate studies?

A. Yale B. Princeton C. Illinois D. North Carolina

3.

Debi Thomas became the first Black woman to win a medal in a Winter Games when she captured the bronze in figure skating in 1988. What professional discipline did she enter after her skating career?

A. Chiropractor B. Accountant C. Attorney D. Physician

RICHARD HODGES/COLUMBUS LEDGER-ENQUIRER/MCT

4.

Who was the first Black woman to win a Nobel Prize in literature?

A. Lorraine Hansberry B. Toni Morrison C. Alice Walker D. Maya Angelou

5.

Who was the first Black woman to moderate a U.S. presidential debate?

A. Gwen Ifill B. Suzanne Malveaux C. Fredricka Whitfield D. Carole Simpson

6. Hal-

le Berry, in 2002, became the first Black woman to receive an Academy Award in the Best AcHalle tress categoBerry ry. Name the movie in which she appeared for said award.

A. “Losing Isaiah” B. “Monster’s Ball” C. “Solomon & Sheba” D. “Gothika”

7.

Name the first Black woman to play for a Negro League baseball team.

A. Althea Gibson B. Wilma Rudolph C. Toni Stone D. Wyomia Tyus

Surveying the historical and cultural contributions of Black women B. Archer Daniels Midland C. Hewlett-Packard D. Avon

11. Who was the first Black woman named Playboy Magazine’s Playmate of the Month?

A. Halle Berry B. Vanessa Williams C. Jennifer Jackson D. Dorothy Dandridge

12. Vanessa James and Yan-

nick Bonheur became the first Black couple to compete in Winter Olympic pairs skating when

8.

Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Name the company.

A. Xerox

woman who was a nonsupermodel or a nonathlete to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition.

A. Beyonce B. Rihanna C. Aaliyah D. Iman

woman to earn her pilot’s license?

A. Bessie Coleman B. Mae Jemison C. Shirley Ann Jackson D. Ella Fitzgerald

9.

10. Ursula Burns is the first

13. Name the first Black

14. Who was the first Black

Who was the first Black female flight attendant?

A. Ruth Carol Taylor B. Bessie Coleman C. Shirley Chisholm D. Aretha Franklin Vonetta Flowers became the first Black woman to win a gold medal in a Winter Olympics in the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. In which sport did she participate in before bobsledding?

A. Track and field B. Basketball C. Softball D. Soccer

they participated in the Vancouver Games in 2010. Which country did they represent in that Olympics?

A. United States B. England C. Canada D. France

15. Alice Coachman became the first Black woman to win a gold medal in an Olympics. In what year did she win the gold?

A. 1960 Rome B. 1936 Berlin C. 1948 London D. 1956 Melbourne

GEORGE BRIDGES/TNS

Vanessa James and Yannick Bonheur compete in the ice skating pairs event at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia.

16. Name the first Black

woman to receive a Ph.D. from Duke University.

A. Susan Rice B. Melissa Harris-Perry C. Michelle Bernard

D. Ida Stephens Owens

17. Who is the first Black

woman named to the NCAA’s College Football Playoff Selection Committee?

A. Pam Oliver B. Jemele Hill C. Condoleezza Rice D. Lisa Salters

18. Who was the first Black

female millionaire in the United States?

A. Nichelle Nichols B. Madam C. J. Walker C. Oprah Winfrey D. Judy Smith

19. Gabrielle Douglas be-

came the first Black woman to win a gold medal in the individual all-around gymnastics competition, during the 2012 London Olympic Games. What is her nickname?

A. “Supergirl” B. “Ace” C. “Queen of the Mat” D. “Flying Squirrel”

20. Who was the first Black

female author to win a Pulitzer Prize?

A. Gwendolyn Brooks B. Zora Neale Hurston C. Nikki Giovanni D. Terry McMillan SOURCES: BIOGRAPHY.COM, IMDB. COM, PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES, ESPN, HISTORY CHANNEL, PBS

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ANSWERS 1. C. Patricia Roberts Harris was named secretary of housing and urban development in 1977 during the administration of President Jimmy Carter.

2. B. At Princeton, Michelle Obama majored in sociology with a minor in African-American studies, earning a B.A. in 1985.

She received her law degree from Harvard in 1988.

3. D. Physician. Debi Thomas graduated from Stanford University in 1991 with a degree in engineering, then graduated from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 1997. She performed her surgical residency at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Hospital and an orthopedic surgery residency at the Martin Luther King Jr./Charles Drew University Medical Center in South Central Los Angeles.

4. B. Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993 for the body of her work “characterized by visionary force and poetic import.”

5. D. Carole Simpson moderated a debate in 1992 between U.S. presidential candidates George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

6. B. Halle Berry played the role of Leticia Musgrove, the troubled wife of an executed murderer in “Monster’s Ball.” Her performance was awarded the National Board of Review and the Screen Actors Guild best-actress awards. In a most interesting coincidence, she became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress when earlier in her career, she portrayed Dorothy Dandridge, the first Black woman nominated for Best Actress.

7. C. Toni “Tomboy” Stone played second base for the Indianapolis Clowns in 1953. She even got a hit off legendary pitcher Satchel Paige.

8. A. Ruth Carol Taylor became the first Black flight attendant in 1958, working for Mohawk Airlines.

9. A. Vonetta Flowers initially participated in track and field as a sprinter and long jumper. Flowers originally aimed to compete in the Summer Games, but, after several failed attempts at the trials, she switched to bobsledding, teaming with Jill Bakken to take the gold in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

10. A. Ursula Burns, who grew up in a housing project in New York City, replaced Anne Mulcahy in 2009 as CEO of Xerox, the world’s largest maker of highspeed color printers. A math whiz, Burns earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University in 1981.

11. C. Jennifer Jackson became the first Black woman to appear as Playmate of the Month for the March 1965 issue. She later became a social worker; her twin sister, Janice, also worked as a Playboy Bunny.

12. D. Vanessa James and Yannick Bonheur represented France.

They placed 14th in the competition.

13. A. Singer Beyonce created a major buzz in 2007 when she appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition.

14. A. Bessie Coleman received an international pilot’s license in 1921 in France instead of the United States because of segregationist laws in America.

15. C. Alice Coachman won the high jump in the 1948 London Games with a height of 5 feet, 6 1/8 inches. In fact, she was the only U.S. woman to win a track and field gold medal in that games; Coachman’s dominance was so pronounced that she won the AAU outdoor high jump championships from 1939 to 1948. She was only 25 in 1948, so imagine how many medals she would have won had the 1940 and 1944 Summer Olympics not been canceled because of World War II. 16. D. Ida Stephens Owens received a Ph.D. in physiology in 1967 from the Duke Graduate School.

17. C. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, also an accomplished figure skater and classical pianist, was named to the 13-person panel that determines the four teams that will play in major college football’s playoff system.

18. B. Sarah Breedlove, also known as Madam C. J. Walker, was a U.S. entrepreneur and philanthropist who earned her million-dollar fortune by developing and marketing beauty and hair-care products for Black women. She died in 1919 at age 52, amassing her wealth several decades before Oprah.

19. D. Gabrielle Douglas was nicknamed the “Flying Squirrel” because of her acrobatic performances on the uneven bars.

20. A. Gwendolyn Brooks, in 1950, won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry with her book, “Annie Allen.”

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FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

B5

How much do you know about Black leaders in arts and entertainment? Take our test and find out.

Louis Armstrong. Denzel Washington. Oprah Winfrey.

Black Americans, all, who’ve left a vital, indelible mark in the world of entertainment.

But that’s just a start. For Black History Month, we offer a board game on important people in the arts. Use this game to test how much you know. Or use it to learn something.

By working your way around the board, you’ll meet fascinating people who’ve made remarkable contributions to literature, music, dance, television and film.

Some questions are about people living today, so current you can see them on TV, in movies or concerts. Others focus on people from the past, their stories found in books or on the Internet.

OK, everybody ready? You

need one die and playing pieces for each team (coins for one team, buttons for the other, for example) to mark the squares. The game ends when every square has a marker. It might be helpful to have a nonplayer checking answers.

Here’s how to play: Divide into two teams and flip a coin to see who goes first.

The first team throws the die and moves the appropriate spaces. If the team answers the question correctly, place a marker on that square (the marker remains throughout the game). If the team gets it wrong, the other team tries to answer that question and mark the square. If no team answers the question correctly, the square remains empty for this round. The second

9

10

Which record company, founded

by Berry Gordy (right), launched Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas?

Atlantic Motown

team then throws the die and proceeds around the board.

(Note: Each turn begins at the open square after the last question asked. For instance: The first team rolls a three and lands on the question about the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. The next team starts counting with the fourth square. Let’s say that team rolls at two. The team’s question will be about the St. Louis dancer.)

Teams continue throwing the die and moving around the board, skipping squares filled with markers. Teams will have to travel around the board more than once to hit every square. The team with the most markers on the board wins.

But if you’ve learned something along the way, how can you lose?

1

She was the first Black performer to win an Oscar for her controversial role as Mammy in the epic film “Gone With the Wind.”

Sun

Hattie McDaniel

Chess

Cicely Tyson

Called “Poet Laureate of Harlem,” he rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Richard Wright

Eddie Rochester Anderson

Ernest Gaines

Leslie Uggams

James Weldon Johnson Langston Hughes

8

2

Famed comedian who co-starred in “Silver Streak” and “Harlem Nights” and won Grammy Awards for his comedy albums.

This hip-hop innovator who started her career as the lead singer of the Fugees won five Grammy Awards in 1999 for her solo work.

BY LIZ DOUP AND MARGO HARAKAS SUN-SENTINEL, SOUTH FLORIDA ILLUSTRATIONS BY BONNIE LALLKY-SEIBERT

Redd Foxx

Richard Pryor

Lauryn Hill

Whitney Houston

Chris Rock

Eddie Murphy

Lil’ Kim

Queen Latifah

7

3

The artist and professor is known for her “story quilts,” including “Tar Beach,” which shows a child soaring through the clouds over Harlem.

This playwright and civil rights activist won two Pulitzer Prizes, for “Fences” in 1986 and “The Piano Lesson” in 1990.

Faith Ringgold

Margaret Burroughs

Charles Fuller

Alice Childress

Betye Saar

Elizabeth Catlett

August Wilson

Langston Hughes

He photographed for Life magazine, authored about a dozen books and directed several motion pictures, including 1971’s “Shaft.”

Bill Cosby

Robert Townsend

Gordon Parks

Sidney Poitier

SOURCES: THE WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA; BRITANNICA.COM; “BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA”; THE NEGRO ALMANAC; SUN-SENTINEL RESEARCHER BARBARA HIJEK.

4

5

Since her start in TV news in Nashville, she’s built a media empire that includes a TV show, a magazine and movies.

Born in St. Louis, she danced her way across the United States, then moved to France and became the toast of Paris.

Lena Horne

Josephine Baker

Melba Moore

Leslie Uggams

Cicely Tyson

Diahann Carroll

Ruby Dee

Oprah Winfrey

ANSWERS: 1-D, 2-A, 3-B, 4-D, 5-C, 6-B, 7-A, 8-C, 9-B, 10-A

6

FOOD

B6

FEBRUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 22, 2018

S

The benefits of breakfast Skipping the morning meal is not a good idea in the long run, study finds

BY LAUREN OTTO STAR TRIBUNE/TNS

A

lthough there have been countless opinions over the years about the importance of breakfast, researchers studying how it affects overall health are now saying that your mother was right when she told you it’s the most important meal of the day.

A study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology shows a correlation between skipping breakfast or eating low-calorie breakfasts and having a higher risk of early-stage atherosclerosis.

According to Nancy Sherwood, an associate professor in the School of Public Health’s Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota, skipping or eating an insufficient breakfast is part of a “chain of events” that often causes people to get overly hungry later in the day.

This tends to lead to overeating and consumption of less healthful foods, which can eventually increase the risk of obesity and cardiovascular risk factors such as fatty deposits or plaque buildups that can clog arteries.

Better overall health Mark Pereira, a professor of epidemiology and community health in the School of Public Health, said the study contributes to literature showing that eating a substantial breakfast usually corresponds with better overall health.

“It may have some direct benefits to things like appetite control, and it might be a really useful way to achieve dietary guidelines on a regular basis,” Pereira said.

“It might be easier for people to get good nutrition when they’re not skipping the first meal of the day.”

Balance calories Participants in the study who ate “highenergy” breakfasts, or a meal containing at least 20 percent of their daily calorie intake, appeared to have the lowest chance of early stages of atherosclerosis.

It’s not about eating an extremely high-

DREAMSTIME/TNS

Researchers are saying that Mom was right: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. calorie breakfast, Sherwood said.

“It’s really just balancing calories across the day, which is what we want people to do.”

Susie Nanney, a registered dietitian and an associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, noted that because the study was conducted in Spain, the participants were mostly following Mediterranean diet patterns, which are largely plant-based and include mainly lean proteins and more whole grain, which makes a difference.

Not a cure-all

Good options

And Sherwood cautioned that the study should not be seen as offering a cure-all.

“Sometimes people are just looking for the one thing to do that’s going to make the difference in their health and so forth … and it’s not just going to be eating a healthy breakfast alone, but your whole dietary pattern,” she said.

“This study is providing more evidence that it’s important to start with a healthier breakfast to set yourself up for a healthier eating pattern throughout the day.”

Sherwood suggested whole fruit, whole grains, eggs and low-fat dairy as good breakfast options, while Pereira said that minimizing refined grains, added sugars and fatty breakfast meat is important as well.

And Nanney said some of her favorite breakfasts include avocado with an egg and a whole-grain English muffin with almond butter, oatmeal with fresh or dried fruit and nuts and a glass of milk, and an omelet with spinach and other vegetables.

The Star Tribune is based in Minneapolis.

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