VOICE MAGAZINE SPRING 2013 ISSUE by Voice Magazine

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Willie “Pete” Reeves Lamar Davis Teresa Haley, MPA Maria Thompson Maleek SNF

VOICE Magazine is published bi-monthly. © Copyright 2011 by VERVE MEDIA Group™ All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without permission is prohibited. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: VERVE MEDIA Group ™ 2519 South Grand Avenue East, Springfield, Illinois 62703. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Send $50 a year: (Add $15 per year for overseas delivery.) Manuscripts, photographs, illustrations and letters to the editor are welcome, but VOICE Magazine can take no responsibility for them while in transit or in the office of the publication. Letters may be edited. Information published in VOICE Magazine is gathered from reliable sources, but the accuracy of this information cannot be guaranteed. Opinions expressed in VOICE Magazine are those of their authors, and no information or opinions expressed in VOICE Magazine represent an endorsement or solicitation for purchase or sale by VOICE Magazine or its staff.

Welcome to the spring 2013 issue of VOICE Magazine. This year we are trying a new publication schedule which would allow us to bring a diverse mixture of entrepreneurs, artists, innovators and visionaries. This year we will publish quarterly with a Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter issue. The Summer issue will be published in June 2013, the Fall issue in August 2013 and the Winter issue in November 2013. Our goal is to continue to bring our readers authentic, real and empowering information supported with bold imagery ensuring an exciting and visually stimulating reading experience. Our focus for will be on exploring and supporting the Black Business Experience. Whether you own a lawn car business or a biotechnology company we want to highlight your successes and your failures. It is through our failures that we learn who we are as a person and as a servant of the Creator. It is through our success that we learn from one another so that we can share the best practices with one another thus mutually increasing the abundance of all. In this issue we are profiling seventeen individuals so my introduction on each will be limited but I encourage each of you to take the time to learn what these exciting individuals are doing to in their faiths, families and communities. First (in order of appearance in publication) we profile Iyanifa Mahealani Uchiyama, is a priestess of S’ango and Ifa, and a high priestess of Nana Buuken (Iyaami). She was initiated by and an associate of the Ifa Foundation. We profile Iyanifa in our Inspiration section. Next we briefly highlight the news that the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Board of Directors has named the Rev. Lisa L. Thompson as assistant professor of homiletics. She will begin June 1, 2013. Congratulations Dr. Thompson. Finally there is a site available where Black businesses can showcase their products and services at an reasonable price while building brand awareness at the same time. The site is called Plugology.com (“Plugology”). Plugology is the brain child of social media guru Al Rem. Al Rem is an Engineering graduate of the University of Illinois program with fifteen years of experience in corporate America and is currently the President and Founder of Plugology.com. Next we profile political neophyte Charles Ware. Charles is a native of Springfield, IL. His proven commitment to the community and family values brings a needed perspective to Springfield’s eastside. We are looking forward to some great things from Charles.

Next we profile the amazing Quencie. Quencie is a dynamic ball of energy that never meets a stranger. Her career as a Celebrity Interviewer began back in 1995 on the campus of Clark Atlanta University. She did her first TV interview with platinum-selling So So Def Recording Artist, DA BRAT for a show called Premiere TV. After that interview, Quencie never looked back. Most of all she had a very personal and hearlt felt relationship with the great Whitney Houston. The two became instant friends at first meeting. Next we profile myself Afic Camara a/k/a Pete Reeves and the release of my eBook PLEADING OUR OWN CAUSE; The Black Press in Springfield, IL. (18862013). This profile is being republished from an article in the Springfield Business Journal (“SBJ”). I want to thank Brant Mackey , SBJ Publisher and Editor for publishing the article. Next we profile DJ Captain. DJ Captain hails straight from St. Louis, Missouri. He’s succeeded in accomplishing a great deal in his music and DJ career between 2002 and present. He’s also been a great asset to the central Illinois community as he’s continuously fund raising and planning entertainment events, along with working in low income public schools, mentoring teenagers and working as a DJ. Nesxt we profile R&B artist Jasmine Garcelle Leonard, known by her stage name Jazz Garcelle, made her entrance into the world three months premature on August 4th, 1986 and literally has fought to survive and persevere against the odds. We got you Jasmine just keep moving forward. Yorli Huff’s fascinating and captivating Comic Book, “Superhero Huff” second comic book is now available. Super Her Huuf is female undercover police officer that has special powers from birth. She is a no non-science Foxy Brown/Christy Love type that is tech savvy. She understands from growing up in the hood that she needs to be more of a giver than a taker and she moves back to the hood to do just that. Get your copy today! Next we profile a real beauty queen. Chattanooga, TN. native Lorean C. Mays has been competing, judging, and coaching in pageantry for past eight years. She is the first African American woman to hold three state titles as a born native of the state of Tennessee. She is the former "Miss Black Tennessee USA 20052006”, “Miss Tennessee National US 2008-2009”,“Miss Tennessee Essence 2009”, and the new Director of the Miss Black Tennessee USA Pageant (The official state preliminary for Miss Black USA, Inc.). In addition to her professional accomplishments Lorean is a steward of her community. We wish her continued success. Fashion Designer Victoria Reed made her first shirt at the age of twelve while in her grandmother’s boutique. After school Victoria spent countless hours in her grandmother’s boutique waiting for her mother to return home from work. 29

During that time she picked up a lot of sewing techniques. Victory Reed is a name you will hear a lot about in the near future. Next we highlight the union of two special people. On Friday, February 15, 2013 Andy Dantzler and Tametria Conner were wed. The bride, TV reporter Tametria Conner has reporting and anchoring experience at three stations: WICS in Springfield, Illinois, WTOK in Meridian, Mississippi and the Raycom station WDAM in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The groom Andy Dantzler is a native of Hattiesburg, MS. Mr. Dantzler currently works in the production industry in Montgomery, Alabama. Together we wish them a a very happy life together. Next we profile the very talent and very busy Katrina Gurl. Since becoming an author in 2009 with her first book of short stories, Katrina Gurl has been going strong ever since. The California resident has astonishingly avid readers and book lovers alike. We are looking forward to doing some cross marketing with Katrina Gurl in the very near future. Next, the beautiful Shaniqua White Campbell is a true success story. Shaniqua White Campbell known by her professional name “Shawna C.” has the potential to be an industry favorite. While only in the industry since 2009, her professionalism and work ethics have kept her progressing in her craft. With a portfolio most models will kill for, Shawna C. has yet to become content with her success. She recently worked with Tyler Perry Studios and we expect to see a lot more of her both onscreen and off screen. The lovely Chef Ahki is a true practitioner of her craft. Chef Ahki is one of the most profound, relevant, thought leaders in the modern era. She presents cutting edge information on natural health decorated with beautiful imagery, real-time content and what she calls "Delicious. Indigenous" cuisine or "The Creators Food" as a Colon Hygienist and Living Foods Activist, she has guided thousands towards lifestyle change through detox programs, colon therapy and nutritional Counseling. Next we profile Dr. Jerry Bobo who is a very amazing thought leader in the personal finance and personal empowerment arena. Dr. Bobo is multidisciplined professional with more than fifteen years of counseling, consulting and business ownership experience and ten years network marketing experience with top recruiting and top income earning accolades. Keep teaching Doc! Lastly but not least we profile young basketball phenom Herman Senor the Central State Eight Conference’s Player of the Year. Herman Senor has a very bright future ahead of him and we wish him and his family the very best. Happy Mother’s Day!! Hope you enjoy it! Peace , Blessings and Abundance

W. E. “Pete” Reeves Founder/Publisher 30

Young, Urban and Culturally Savvy, Meet the Afropolitans

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Isis Sun

Sereda Aleta Dailey

ANGELA DAVIS; THE MAKING OF A LEGEND

Left: September 1970 issue of Life Magazine with Angela Davis on the cover. Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of "Critical Resistance", an organization working to abolish the prisonindustrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department. Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s. Early Life Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father, Frank Davis, was a graduate of St. Augustine's College, a historically black college in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was briefly a high school history teacher. Her father later owned and operated a service station in the black section of Birmingham. Her mother, Sallye Davis, a graduate of Miles College in Birmingham, was an elementary school teacher. The family lived in the "Dynamite Hill" neighborhood, which was marked by racial conflict. Davis was occasionally able to spend time on her uncle's farm and with friends in New York City. Her brother, Ben Davis, played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Davis also has another brother, Reginald Davis, and sister, Fania Davis Jordan.

Above: Still of Angela Davis in The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Davis attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a black elementary school; later she attended Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High School in Birmingham. During this time Davisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mother was a national officer and leading organizer of the Southern Negro Congress, an organization heavily influenced by the Communist Party. Consequently Davis grew up surrounded by communist organizers and thinkers who significantly influenced her intellectual development growing up. By her junior year, she had applied to and was accepted at an American Friends Service Committee program that placed black students from the South in integrated schools in the North. She chose Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village in New York City. There she was introduced to socialism and communism and was recruited by a Communist youth group, Advance. She also met children of some of the leaders of the Communist Party USA, including her lifelong friend, Bettina Aptheker.

Above: Still of Angela Davis in The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Education Brandeis University Davis was awarded a scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she was one of three black students in her freshman class. She initially felt alienated by the isolation of the campus (at that time she was interested in Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre), but she soon made friends with foreign students. She encountered the Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse at a rally during the Cuban Missile Crisis and then became his student. In a television interview, she said "Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar, and a revolutionary." She worked part-time to earn enough money to travel to France and Switzerland before she went on to attend the eighth World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki, Finland. She returned home in 1963 to a Federal Bureau of Investigation interview about her attendance at the Communist-sponsored festival.

During her second year at Brandeis, she decided to major in French and continued her intensive study of Sartre. Davis was accepted by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program and, she wrote in her autobiography, she managed to talk Brandeis into extending financial support via her scholarship. Classes were initially at Biarritz and later at the Sorbonne. In Paris, she and other students lived with a French family. It was at Biarritz that she received news of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, committed by the members of the Ku Klux Klan, an occasion that deeply affected her, because, she wrote, she was personally acquainted with the young victims. Nearing completion of her degree in French, Davis realized her major interest was in philosophy. She became particularly interested in the ideas of Herbert Marcuse and on her return to Brandeis she sat in on his course. Marcuse, she wrote, turned out to be approachable and helpful. Davis began making plans to attend the University of Frankfurt for graduate work in philosophy. In 1965 she graduated magna cum laude, a member of Phi Beta Kappa University of Frankfurt In Germany, with a stipend of $100 a month, she first lived with a German family. Later, she moved with a group of students into a loft in an old factory. After visiting East Berlin during the annual May Day celebration, she felt that the East German government was dealing better with the residual effects of fascism than were the West Germans. Many of her roommates were active in the radical Socialist German Student Union (SDS), and Davis participated in SDS actions, but events unfolding in the United 39

States, including the formation of the Black Panther Party and the transformation of SNCC, encouraged her to return to the U.S. Postgraduate work Marcuse, in the meantime, had moved to the University of California, San Diego, and Davis followed him there after her two years in Frankfurt. Returning to the United States, Davis stopped in London to attend a conference on "The Dialectics of Liberation." The black contingent at the conference included the American Stokely Carmichael and the British Michael X. Although moved by Carmichael's fiery rhetoric, she was disappointed by her colleagues' black nationalist sentiments and their rejection of communism as a "white man's thing." She held the view that any nationalism was a barrier to grappling with the underlying issue, capitalist domination of working people of all races. Davis earned her master's degree from the San Diego campus and her doctorate in philosophy from Humboldt University in East Berlin. University of California, Los Angeles Davis was an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), beginning in 1969. Although both Princeton and Swarthmore had expressed interest in having her join their respective philosophy departments, she opted for UCLA because of its urban location. At that time, she also was known as a radical feminist and activist, a member of the Communist Party USA and an associate of the Black Panther Party. The Board of Regents of the University of California, urged by then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, fired her from her $10,000 a year post in 1969 because of her membership in the Communist Party. Black students and several professors however, claimed that they fired her because of her race. The Board of 40

Regents was censured by the American Association of University Professors for their failure to reappoint Davis after her teaching contract expired. On October 20, when Judge Perry Pacht ruled the Regents could not fire Davis because of her affiliations with the Communist Party, she resumed her post. The Regents, unhappy with the decision, continued to search for ways to release Davis from her position at UCLA. They finally accomplished this on June 20, 1970, when they fired Davis on account of the “inflammatory language” she had used on four different speeches. “We deem particularly offensive,” the report said, “such utterances as her statement that the regents ‘killed, brutalized (and) murdered’ the People’s Park demonstrators, and her repeated characterizations of the police as ‘pigs.’” Arrest and Trail On August 7, 1970 Jonathan Jackson, a heavily armed, 17-year-old African American high school student, gained control over a courtroom in Marin County, California. Once in the courtroom, Jackson armed the black defendants and took Judge Harold Haley, the prosecutor, and three female jurors as hostages. As Jackson transported the hostages and two black convicts away from the courtroom, the police began shooting at the vehicle. The judge, one of the jurors, the prosecutor, and the three black men were killed in the melee. Davis had purchased the firearms used in the attack, including the shotgun used to kill Haley, which had been purchased two days prior and sawed off. She had also written numerous letters found in the prison cell of one of the murderers. Since California considers “all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense… principals in any crime so committed,” San Marin County Superior Judge Peter Allen Smith charged Davis with “aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley” and issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours after the judge issued the warrant on August 14, 1970 a massive attempt to arrest Angela Davis began. On August 18, 1970, four days after the initial warrant was issued, the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made Angela Davis the third woman and the 309th person to appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List.

Above: Angela Davis on FBI Most Wanted Poster, 1970

Soon after, Davis became a fugitive and fled California. According to her autobiography, during this time she hid in friendsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; homes and moved from place to place at night. On October 13, 1970, FBI agents found her at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in New York City. President Richard M. Nixon congratulated the FBI on its â&#x20AC;&#x153;capture of the dangerous terrorist, Angela Davis". On January 5, 1971, after several months in jail, Davis appeared at the Marin County Superior Court and declared her innocence before the court and nation: "I now declare publicly before the court, before the people of this country that I am innocent of all charges which have been leveled against me by the state of California." John Abt, general counsel of the Communist Party USA, was one of the first attorneys to represent Davis for her alleged involvement in the shootings. While being held in the Women's Detention Center there, she was initially segregated from the general population, but with the help of her legal team soon obtained a federal court order to get out of the segregated area.

Left: Angela Davis was arrested in New York by the FBI on Tuesday October 13th 1970. She had been on the run for over two months, crossing the country from Los Angeles to New York.

Across the nation, thousands of people who agreed with her declaration began organizing a liberation movement. In New York City, black writers formed a committee called the Black People in Defense of Angela Davis. By February 1971 more than 200 local committees in the United States, and 67 in foreign countries worked to liberate Angela Davis from prison. Thanks, in part, to this support, in 1972 the state released her from prison. After spending 18 months behind bars, Davis was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury. On February 23, 1972, Rodger McAfee, a dairy farmer from Caruthers, California, paid her $100,000 bail with the help of Steve Sparacino, a wealthy business owner. Portions of her legal defense expenses were paid for by the Presbyterian Church (UPCUSA). She was tried and the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The fact that she owned the guns used in the crime was judged not sufficient to establish her responsibility for the plot. Her experience as a prisoner in the US played a key role in convincing her to fight against the "prison industrial complex" that she says exists in the US. John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded their song "Angela" on their 1972 album Some Time in New York City in support. The jazz musician Todd Cochran, also known as Bayete, recorded his song "Free Angela (Thoughts...and all I've got to say)" that same year. Also in 43

Above: Angela Davis is a leading Feminist Studies professor who was a prominent member of the Black Panther and Communist Parties in the 1960s and 1970s.

1972, Tribe Records co-founder Phil Ranelin released a song dedicated to Davis intitled "Angela's Dilemma" on Message From The Tribe, a spiritual jazz collectable. The Rolling Stones song "Sweet Black Angel", recorded in 1970 and released in 1972 on their album Exile on Main Street, is dedicated to Davis and is one of the band's only overtly political releases. In Cuba After her release, Davis visited Cuba. In doing so she followed the precedents set by her fellow activists Robert F. Williams, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, and Assata Shakur. Her reception by Afro-Cubans at a mass rally was so enthusiastic that she was reportedly barely able to speak. During her stay in Cuba Davis witnessed what she perceived to be a racism-free country. This led her to believe that â&#x20AC;&#x153;only under socialism could the fight against racism be successfully executed.â&#x20AC;? When she returned to the United States her socialist leanings increasingly influenced her understanding of race struggles within the U.S. Criticism by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn In a New York City speech on July 9, 1975, Russian dissident and Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told an AFL-CIO meeting that Davis was derelict in supporting prisoners in various socialist countries around the world, given her stark opposition to the U.S. prison system. He claimed a group of Czech prisoners had appealed to Davis for support, which he said she refused to offer. Solzhenitsyn stated, "Little children in school were told to sign petitions in defense of Angela Davis. Although she didn't have too difficult a time in this 44

country's jails, she came to recuperate in Soviet resorts. Some Soviet dissidents– but more important, a group of Czech dissidents–addressed an appeal to her: `Comrade Davis, you were in prison. You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent. You have such great authority now. Could you help our Czech prisoners? Could you stand up for those people in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the state?’ Angela Davis answered: `They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.’ That is the face of Communism. That is the heart of Communism for you.” In a speech at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, Davis denied Solzhenitsyn's accusations. Activism In 1980 and 1984, Davis ran for VicePresident along with the veteran party leader of the Communist Party, Gus Hall. However, given that the Communist Party lacked support within the US, Davis urged radicals to amass support for the Democratic Party. Revolutionaries must be realists, said Davis in a telephone interview from San Francisco where she was campaigning. During both of the campaigns she was Professor of Ethnic Studies at the San Francisco State University. In 1979 she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union for her civil rights activism. She visited Moscow in July of that year to collect the prize. Davis has continued a career of activism, and has written several books. A principal focus of her current activism is the state of prisons within the United States. She considers herself an abolitionist, not a "prison reformer," and has referred to the United States prison system as the "prison-industrial complex". Davis suggested focusing social efforts on education and building "engaged communities" to solve various social problems now handled through state punishment. Davis was one of the primary founders of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement to abolish the prison system. In recent work, she argues that the prison system in the United States more closely resembles a new form of slavery than a criminal justice system. According to Davis, between the late 19th century and the mid-20th century the number of prisons in the United States sharply increased while crime rates continued to rise. During this time, the African American population also 45

became disproportionally represented in prisons. "What is effective or just about this "justice" system?" she urged people to question. Davis has lectured at San Francisco State University, Stanford University, Bryn Mawr College, Brown University, Syracuse University, and other schools. She states that in her teaching, which is mostly at the graduate level, she concentrates more on posing questions that encourage development of critical thinking than on imparting knowledge. In 1997, she declared herself to be a lesbian in Out magazine. As early as 1969 Davis began publicly speaking, voicing her opposition to the Vietnam War, racism, sexism, and the prison industrial complex, and her support of gay rights and other social justice movements. In 1969 she blamed imperialism for the troubles suffered by oppressed populations. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are facing a common enemy and that enemy is Yankee Imperialism, which is killing us both here and abroad. Now I think anyone who would try to separate those struggles, anyone who would say that in order to consolidate an anti-war movement, we have to leave all of these other outlying issues out of the picture, is playing right into the hands of the enemyâ&#x20AC;?, she declared. In 2001 she publicly spoke against the war on terror, the prison industrial complex, and the broken immigration 46

Left: Angela Davis in the Black Panther newspaper.

system and told people that if they wanted to solve social justice issues they had to “hone their critical skills, develop them and implement them." Later, after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she declared, the “horrendous situation in New Orleans,” is due to the structures of racism, capitalism, and imperialism with which our leaders run this country. Davis opposed the 1995 Million Man March, arguing that the exclusion of women from this event necessarily promoted male chauvinism and that the organizers, including Louis Farrakhan, preferred women to take subordinate roles in society. Together with Kimberlé Crenshaw and others, she formed the African American Agenda 2000, an alliance of Black feminists. Davis is no longer a member of the Communist Party, leaving it to help found the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which broke from the Communist Party USA because of the latter's support of the Soviet coup attempt of 1991. She remains on the Advisory Board of the Committees. Davis has continued to oppose the death penalty. In 2003, she lectured at Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts women's college in Atlanta, on prison reform, minority issues, and the ills of the criminal justice system. At the University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz), she participated in a 2004 panel concerning Kevin Cooper. She also spoke in defense of Stanley "Tookie" Williams on another panel in 2005, and 2009. As of February 2007, Davis was teaching in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In addition to being the commencement speaker at Grinnell College in 2007, in October of that year, Davis was the keynote speaker at the fifth annual Practical Activism Conference at UC Santa Cruz. On February 8, 2008, Davis spoke on the campus of Howard University at the invitation of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. On 47

Right: Davis, a legendary political activist, took issue with Flying Dutchman using her name, photographs and voice on an album titled Soul and Soledad. Flying Dutchman Records was a legendary Jazz label that was owned by music industry executive and producer Bob Thiele. Other artists who recorded for the label include Oliver Nelson, Lonnie Liston Smith and Gil Scott-Heron Soul in Soledad was recorded in June of 1970, just two months before the infamous incident in which a judge was kidnapped from the Marin County Courthouse in California, and executed.

February 24, 2008, she was featured as the closing keynote speaker for the 2008 Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference. On April 14, 2008, she spoke at the College of Charleston as a guest of the Women's and Gender Studies Program. On January 23, 2009, she was the keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King Commemorative Celebration on the campus of Louisiana State University. On April 16, 2009, she was the keynote speaker at the University of Virginia Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies symposium on The Problem of Punishment: Race, Inequity, and Justice. On January 20, 2010, Davis was the keynote speaker in San Antonio, Texas, at Trinity University's MLK Day Celebration held in Laurie Auditorium. On January 21, 2011, Davis was the keynote speaker in Salem, Oregon at the Willamette University MLK Week Celebration held in Smith Auditorium where she declared that her biggest goal for the coming years is to shut down prisons. During her remarks, she also noted that while she supports some of President Barack Obama's positions, she feels he is too conservative. On January 27, 2011, Davis was the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration speaker at Georgia Southern University's Performing Arts Center (PAC) in Statesboro, Georgia. On June 10, 2011, Davis delivered the Graduation Address at the Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. On May 12, 2012, Davis delivered a Commencement Address at Pitzer College, in Claremont. On October 31, 2011, Davis spoke at the Philadelphia and Washington Square Occupy Wall Street assemblies where, due to restrictions on electronic amplification, her words were human microphoned.

Teaching Davis was a professor in the History of Consciousness and the Feminist Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1991 to 2008[49] and is now Distinguished Professor Emerita. Davis was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Syracuse University in Spring 1992 and October 2010. She was hosted by the Women's and Gender Studies Department and the Department of African American studies. “A Million Roses for Angela Davis” Shortly after U.S. authorities captured Angela Davis in October 1970, a comprehensive solidarity campaign for her emerged in East Germany. One of the main bodies driving this effort was the Junge Welt [Young World], the daily newspaper of the state-controlled youth organization FDJ, the Freie Deutsche Jugend [Free German Youth]. The paper provided extensive information about Davis’s case and her trial, as well as covering any activities in her support in the U.S. and in East Germany. During a delegate conference of the local FDJ branch at the clock factory Ruhla (VEB Uhrenwerke Ruhla) on January 15 in the presence of Günter Jahn, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the FDJ, Angelika Löffler, a local programmer, allegedly advanced the idea of a large postcard writing campaign for Angela Davis. The pre-formatted postcards, featuring the silhouette of a rose, were to be sent to Angela Davis’s prison cell in California on the occasion of her 27th birthday on January 26, 1971. The FDJ and the Junge Welt, endorsed by the communist party, subsequently called for a widespread public, solidarity campaign with the theme “A million 49

roses for Angela Davis,â&#x20AC;? which became the signature feature of East German support for Davis. Templates of these postcards were printed on a full page in the Junge Welt, and children, young people and adults were officially encouraged to participate in the initiative or craft their own solidarity greetings. Mailbags with thousands and thousands of postcards and letters were delivered to Angela Davis in prison, banners with roses were on display during East German solidarity events on her behalf, and during her visits to East Germany in 1972 and 1973, roses were frequently given to her as a welcome gift and expression of commitment to her cause, thus firmly anchoring this campaign in public memory.

In February 1998, Davis conducted the following interview as part of PBSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Frontline documentary, The Two nations of Black America: INTERVIEWER: Your mentor, Herbert Marcuse once back in '58, as I recall, said that one of the things that would happen as blacks made gains in the civil rights movement was that there would be the creation of a black bourgeoisie and that's certainly been one of the things that's happened as we look back from the vantage point of 1997. How do you see the role of the black bourgeoisie in the continuing struggle?

DAVIS: Actually we've had a black bourgeoisie or the makings of a black bourgeoisie for many more decades.... if we look at one of our great leaders, W.E.B. Du Bois, he was associated with a very minuscule black bourgeoisie in the 19th century so this is not something that is substantively new although the numbers of black people who now count themselves among the black bourgeoisie certainly does make an enormous difference. In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the US has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable. What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before. INTERVIEWER: Isn't that inevitable though? Hasn't every immigrant group, as it becomes part of the American mainstream, left behind its roots in a certain way? DAVIS: That's true but I think the contemporary problem that we are facing increasing numbers of black people and other people of color being thrown into a status that involves work in alternative economies and increasing numbers of people who are incarcerated. This is new. This is not the typical path toward freedom that immigrants have traditionally discovered in the US. And I guess what I would say is that we can't think narrowly about movements for black liberation and we can't necessarily see this class division as simply a product or a certain strategy that black movements have developed for liberation. But rather we have to look at the structural changes that have also accompanied the gains of the civil rights movement. We have to look at for example the increasing globalization of capital, the whole system of transitional capitalism now which has had an impact on black populations -- that has for 51

example eradicated large numbers of jobs that black people traditionally have been able to count upon and created communities where the tax base is lost now as a result of corporations moving to the third world in order to discover cheap labor. I would suggest is that in the latter 1990s it is extremely important to look at the predicament of black people within the context of the globalization of capital. INTERVIEWER: One of the things that struck me as I've gone back and revisited this history --is that Martin Luther King starts this movement for economic justice just before he's assassinated. The Black Panther party is just getting off the ground here in California and in a way there seems like there was a march towards merging these issues of class and race in the late 60s that somehow got derailed. DAVIS: Yes, I think it's really important to acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the moment of his assassination, was re-conceptualizing the civil rights movement and moving toward a sort of coalitional relationship with the trade union movement. It's I think quite significant that he was in Memphis to participate in a demonstration by sanitation workers who had gone out on strike. Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of black people who are in the leadership of the labor movement and this is true today. INTERVIEWER: We also see an increasingly weaker labor movement. DAVIS: Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital. So yeah, you're absolutely right, but I'm thinking about some developments say in the 80s when the anti-apartheid movement began to claim more support and strength within the US. Black trade unionists played a really important role in developing this US anti-apartheid movement. For example, right here in the Bay Area one of the first major activist moments was the refusal on the part of the longshoremen's union to unload ships that were coming in from South Africa and the ILWU then took the leadership here in the Bay Area, particularly as a result of the black caucus within the ILWU, they took the 52

leadership in creating an antiapartheid movement that spread to all of the campuses, UC Berkeley, Stanford. INTERVIEWER: At least from my vantage point, back then it seemed we were attacking structures and institutions and after a certain point it began to feel like it wasn't possible. Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was -- 28 Panthers were killed by the police but 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within -internecine warfare. It just began to seem like we were in an impossible task given what we were facing. How do we reawaken that sense that one person can really make that difference again now? And kids these days are kind of going back to Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg as examples of people that stand for something. DAVIS: It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it's not going to solve the problems. I guess I would say first of all that we tend to go back to the 60s and we tend to see these struggles and these goals in a relatively static way. The fact is important gains were made and those gains are still visible today. For example, the number of African-American studies programs that are on college campuses today. Those institutional changes are inconceivable outside of that development within -- related to the Black Panther party and other organizations. Young people began to take those struggles onto the campuses INTERVIEWER: The last line in the essay Skip Gates has in The Future of the Race is-- "only sometimes do I feel guilty that I was one of the lucky ones. Only sometimes do I ask myself why." I wonder whether you ever feel guilty for having been one of those who have survived? DAVIS: Well, I think about it. But I don't know whether I feel guilty. I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of 53

responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities. The door is opened only so far. If some of us can squeeze through the crack of that door, then we owe it to those who have made those demands that the door be opened to use the knowledge or the skills that we acquire not only for ourselves but in the service of the community as well. This is something that I guess I decided a long time ago. INTERVIEWER: But still there were those who were arrested around the same time you are were still in prison? You got out -- you got off in some ways because you had become such a cause celebre that there were others who didn't have. DAVIS: I mean that's true but I am actually addressing your question about guilt, and I'm trying to suggest that maybe there are other ways to deal with it than with guilt. So rather than feeling guilty is what I have done is to continue the work. As soon as I got out of jail, as soon as my trial was over, first of all, during the time I was in jail, there was an organization called the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, and I insisted that it be called National United Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners. As soon as my trial was over, we tried to use the energy that had developed around my case to create another organization, which we called the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression. And, what? in June it will have been 25 years since my trial was over. I'm still working for the freedom of political prisoners, Mumia Abu Jamal, the Puerto Rican political prisoners, such as Dinci Pargan, for example, Leonard Pelletier. I'm involved in the work around prison rights in general. I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement. Then I don't think it's necessary to feel guilty. Because I know that I'm still doing the work that is going to help more sisters and brothers to challenge the whole criminal justice system, and I'm trying to use whatever knowledge I was able to acquire to continue to do the work in our communities that will move us forward.

INTERVIEWER: One of the problems, as we came into the 70s is it seemed as though we were fighting institutions and structures that were so big that there just seemed to be nothing that one person could do about them... How do we recapture that sense of a kind of power of being bold enough to take on those structures again? DAVIS: I don't know whether the movement crashed as a result of the overwhelming character of the institutions we set out to change. I think repression had a lot to do with the dismantling of the movement and also the winning of certain victories had something to do with the inability of the movement to take those victories as the launching point for new goals and developing new strategies. But I do think it's extremely important to acknowledge the gains that were made by the civil rights movement, the black power movement. I don't think we do that enough.. Institutional transformations happened directly as a result of the movements that people, unnamed people, organized and gave their lives to. INTERVIEWER: Such as? DAVIS: I'm thinking about the desegregation of the south, for example, and the fact that some black women decided to boycott the bus system and this was actually done and eventually those laws were transformed or changed. INTERVIEWER: The other thing that happened of course is that the struggle isn't so much taking place on college campuses any more, it's taking place in corporate board rooms or within the corporate structure and those of us who are there are both -- it's a weird thing happening. On one hand we're more reticent about 55

taking on the racist things that we see happening within that environment, but the other thing that's happening is we're becoming more Afrocentric at the same time. It's almost like, we kind of feel like if we show up wearing our kente cloth that that's it, we've done our struggle. What is that about? Where does that come from? DAVIS: I think it arises out of a tendency often to conflate cultural blackness with antiracism. I think this is another case where there are lessons to be learned during the period of the 60s when organizations like the Black Panther Party were coming into being, there were other cultural nationalist organizations such as US Organization, such as the organization that Amiri Baraka developed and of course Amiri OK, there was the black arts movement which was extremely important, but there was also Baraka's political organization in Newark that took a cultural nationalist position that assumed that if we were able to connect with the culture of our African ancestors that somehow or another these vast problems surrounding us, racism in education, in the school, racism in the economy, in health care, etc would disappear. They were very interesting conflicts and debates between groups like the Black Panther party and the cultural nationalist groups in the 60s. INTERVIEWER: What were those debates? What was the nature of that debate between the Black Panther and say a group like US? DAVIS: The debate often focused on what young black people wanting to associate themselves with a movement for liberation should do, whether they should become active in campaigns against police violence, for example, or whether they should focus their energy on wearing African clothes and changing their name and developing rituals. One of the names members of the Black 56

Panther Party used to call those who focused on Africa and African rituals was sort of pork chop nationalists. There were some of us who argued that yes, we need to develop a cultural consciousness of our connection with Africa particularly since racist structures had relied upon the sort of cultural genocide going back to the period of slavery so that many of us were arguing that we could affirm our connection with our African ancestors in political ways as well, following for example Dr. Du Bois' vision of pan-Africanism which was an antiimperialist notion of pan-Africanism rather than the pan-Africanism that projected a very idealized, romantic image of Africa, a fictional notion of Africa and assumed that all we needed to do was to become African, so to speak, rather than become involved in organized anti-imperialist struggles. So I think that the debate around pan-Africanism at the beginning, in the aftermath of world war I, for example, that Dr. Du Bois participated in, took on a different character but recapitulated some of the very same kinds of concepts and issues in the 1960s. INTERVIEWER: So what does it say to you that here we are in 1997 and the pan-Africanist/cultural nationalist agenda is the one that the commercial side, that Wall Street has fastened onto--that side seems to have been triumphant and that the anti-imperialist movement is, not in retreat, but certainly not being heard from as much. DAVIS: It doesn't surprise me that aspect of the black nationalist movement, the cultural side, has triumphed because that is the aspect of the movement that was most commodifiable and when we look at the commodification of blackness we're looking at a phenomenon that's very profitable and it's connection with the rise of a black middle class I think is very obvious. As far as the tradition of struggle and tradition of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist struggle I think that is one that has to be fought for and recrafted continuously. It's not going to happen on its own, it's not going to be taken up by the capitalist corporations and presented as something that is both profitable and something that is pleasurable to masses of people.

INTERVIEWER: In a way I find it interesting that Kwanzaa -- you know Karenga's ideas which apparently seem to have been financed by the FBI, at least in part, are the ones that now most black folks would say they would hold to and not the ideals of the Panther Party which were about survival, at least in some part an economic survival. DAVIS: To a certain extent I think both traditions have survived. The cultural nationalist tradition has been commodified and therefore it has been worked into the whole institution of capitalism in a way that the traditions of struggling against police violence have not, but those traditions are still very much alive. As a matter of fact I think that the response to the OJ Simpson trial was based on a kind of sensibility that emerged out of the many campaigns to defend black communities against police violence. It just so happened that a figure like OJ Simpson was the one who benefited from those sensibilities, but I think it's important to affirm the fact that sensibility continues to exist and a kind of desire for black movements continues to exist even, I think, among middle class black people. This accounts, I think, for the success of the Million Man March because black people tend to think of themselves as a people in struggle. This has been our 58

history within this country and there's a kind of nostalgia for those moments where the struggle becomes dramatic and visible and powerful, although the Million Man March wasn't such a moment, I would argue, because there were no political demands that addressed the major problems that black communities are confronting yet there were the images of struggle, there were the images of masses of people that I think affected and brought pleasure to and moved so many black people. Now perhaps we can use that. Perhaps we can rely on that as we try to build movements that will address the impoverishment of masses of black people, the prison/industrial complex. I have to maintain some hope that that's possible. But at the same time I think it is important to acknowledge the extent to which the black middle class tends to rely on a kind of imagined struggle that gets projected into commodities like kente cloth for example on the one hand and images like the Million Man March. INTERVIEWER: You were critical of the Million Man March before? What was the substance of your criticism? DAVIS: We developed this criticism on a number of accounts. First of all, the failure to integrate gender into the vision of what the black community needed, the exclusion of women from the march itself although finally I think someone said it's OK for black women to come, they don't have to stay at home with the babies as they were urged to before. But my criticism was also based on the conservative politics of the Million Man March, the conservative politics, the tendency to rely on voluntarism, the way in which the politics of the march coexisted quite harmoniously with the politics of a Newt Gingrich, for example the focus on family values that again linked the march to some of the most conservative developments in US society today, the assault on women's reproductive rights, etc. If this march of a million black men had raised issues such as the assault on the welfare system, the assault on women's reproductive rights, if there had been a sense of how to address this vast issue of violence against women, rather than assuming that a patriarchal family structure in which black men would --

INTERVIEWER: Atone. DAVIS: Atone but also assume their role as the patriarchs in the family, cause that's what the atonement was all about. The black men were not really being the fathers that they needed to be, not really taking on the burden of the family in the way they needed to do it. I found that extremely problematic because I think it's important for us to recognize that although historically black communities have been very progressive with respect to issues of race and with respect to struggles for racial equality, that does not necessarily translate into progressive positions on gender issues, progressive positions on issues of sexuality and in the latter 1990s we have to recognize the intersectionality, the interconnectedness of all of these institutions and attitudes. INTERVIEWER: Now that the Million Man March is over, do you still feel it was not a correct thing to have done? DAVIS: Those of us who criticized the Million Man March -- were not arguing that it shouldn't happen. We were arguing that debates around the issues taken up by the march needed to be allowed particularly within black communities. I guess what I would criticize today is the tendency to conflate that dramatic moment with a movement. The nostalgia within black communities for this mass movement which involves vast numbers of black people coming together is something that can often lead us 60

in unproductive directions. Because in the past the demonstrations that we think about -- the 1963 march on Washington, for example, that march wasn't this moment that was organized against the backdrop of nothing else. It was a demonstrating of the organizing that had been going on for years and years and to assume that one can call a march on Washington and have that be a movement in the 1990s is I think a tremendous mistake. I would say perhaps the importance of the Million Man March was that it stimulated a great deal of discussion. Perhaps it brought to people's attention the fact that we need to begin to regenerate an approach towards grassroots organizing that will help us in the direction of a mass movement. There was a tendency of the middle class men who I think participated in that march to passionately identify with the brother on the street without taking up the kinds of political issues that are required to move black people who are in poverty in a progressive direction. INTERVIEWER: Of course the brothers on the street are identifying with the gangster rappers or at least the younger brothers on the street are, which is a whole other level of symbolic identity. DAVIS: And not only the brothers on the street but the middle class brothers are also identifying with the gangster rappers because of the extent to which this music circulates. It becomes possible for the -- not only the young middle class men, but it becomes possible for young middle class white men and young men of other racial communities to identify with the misogyny of gangster rap. INTERVIEWER: Well, it's not just misogyny. Now it's kind of moved just a straight crass materialism. The latest ones are just -- they just name off name brands. That's the progression of it. How have we reached a point where in 1997 61

that the ethic of being black means that you don't go to school to learn. That learning is equated with whiteness and that somehow that is bad? DAVIS: Well, whether it's the approach that all young black kids are encouraged to take or decide to take. Because you do have this rising middle class and you do have the young brothers and sisters who are moving toward the corporate arena and who are encouraged to do this arena from the time that they are very young. I think this is one of those moments where we also have to talk about the deterioration of the institutions. I can't really blame a lot of young sisters and brothers who believe that education has anything to offer them. Because as a matter of fact, it has nothing to offer them. Suppose they do get a high school diploma that is meaningful. What kind of job is awaiting them. The jobs that used to be available to working class people are not there as a result of the de-industrialization of this economy. Therefore, often young black people are looking towards the alternative economies. They are looking towards the drug economy.... the economies that are going to -- that apparently will produce some kind of material gain for them. You can't criticize people for wanting to have a decent life or wanting to live decently. While I think that it is true that there is a great deal to be done with respect to the ideas that circulate among young people within arenas such as hip hop. At the same time, we can't forget about the deterioration of the institutions and the structural influence on young people. INTERVIEWER: Bring us back to globalization of capital. How do you mobilize around an issue like globalization of capital? DAVIS: Well, you mobilize around globalization of capital in local ways. Obviously there are some organizations that go out on the street and say we want 62

an end to the capitalist system. But obviously that is not going to happen as a result of just assuming that stance. I think in black communities today we need to encourage a lot more cross racial organizing. For example, we look at the assault on immigrants. Both legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants. Where does the black community stand with respect to that issue? I think it is important to recognize that there is a connection between the predicament of poor black people and the predicament of immigrants who come to this country in search of a better life. The de industrialization of the US. economy based on the migration of corporations into third world areas where labor is very cheap and thus more profitable for these companies creates on the one hand conditions in those countries that encourage people to emigrate to the US. in search of a better life. On the other hand, it creates conditions here that send more black people into the alternative economies, the drug economies, women into economies in sexual services, and sends them into the prison industrial complex. So we have to figure out how to formulate issues that are going to bring those of us together who are affected in one way or another by the globalization of capital...When we consider how much a young black person wants to, or is willing to pay for a pair of Nike's, right? -- and then think about the conditions under which tose shoes are made in Indonesia or wherever, uh, at the same time that that young sister or brother will be treated on the labor market here as indispensible and perhaps as someone to be cast away into the prison system. So there are reasons for coming together if we can figure out some specific kinds of strategies and tactics that will allow it. I think this is the real challenge for this era, which means we have to get away from a narrow conception of blackness. We can't talk about the black community. It's no longer a homogeneous community; it was never a homogeneous community. At one point, it did make sense to talk about the black community because we were struggling against the profound impact of racism on people's lives in various ways. We still have to struggle against the impact of racism, but it doesn't happen in the same way. I think it is much more complicated today than it ever was.

INTERVIEWER: Does the fact that black folks are now a heterogeneous community absolve us from the obligation to keep reaching back -- everybody to reach back, each one -- reach one? DAVIS: I think we need to insist on a certain responsibility, which people have -particularly those who have made it into the ranks of the middle class because as Dr. King said many years ago in a sense they have climbed out of the masses on the shoulders of their sisters and brothers and therefore, they do have some responsibility. But whether people would be willing to assume that responsibility or not is something that is up to them. We cannot assume that people by virtue of the fact that they are black are going to associate themselves with progressive political struggles. We need to divest ourselves the kinds of strategies that assume that black unity -- black political unity is possible. INTERVIEWER: What's the coalition? DAVIS: Political coalition. Politically based coalitions. I think we have to really focus on the issues much more than we may have in the past. I think we have to, as I said before, seek to create coalitional strategies that go beyond racial lines. We need to bring black communities, Chicano communities, Puerto Rican communities, Asian American communities together. 64

Free Angela & All Political Prisoners â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Black Power icon is celebrated more than examined in Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, Shola Lynch's involving account of how Angela Davis found herself first on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, then the hero of a global protest movement. More limited in scope than last year's Black Power Mixtape, which also conjured this excited moment in American history, it likely has a smaller audience than that film but will be welcomed on small screens. Benefitting from lengthy present-day interviews with Davis, the film introduces us to a young woman who left Birmingham for college just before civil-rights upheaval, then found herself studying in Germany before realizing she needed to be in her own country to participate in social change. Ample news clips capture the revolutionary spirit surrounding the Black Panthers, but Davis recounts a scene that was at first hard to join -- with her academic background, she was treated as an outsider until connecting with the Che-Lumumba Club. Davis found the spotlight when, as an assistant prof at UCLA, she was fired for her membership in the Communist Party. She became an outspoken advocate of the Soledad Brothers, three black prisoners accused of killing a guard, and fell in love with one of them, George Jackson. When Jackson's teenaged brother Jonathan attempted to free the three men in a raid that resulted in the death of a Superior Court judge -- and used guns bought by Davis -- Davis was immediately accused of participating in the plot. She went on the run, hiding her distinctive Afro, but was caught in New York City and imprisoned without bail. 65

With the film devoting so much time to the U.S. government's pursuit and prosecution of Davis, and to the personalities who mounted her defense and rallied international support, it's interesting how little we hear about the event in question. Davis's decision to own guns is easily understood -- her notoriety made her the victim of routine threats -- but the doc offers no explanation of how those guns might have wound up being used in the raid, and never shows Davis denying knowledge of Jonathan Jackson's plan.

"No one knows the full truth of what happened," Lynch says in the doc's press kit, adding that "for the first time, [Davis] gives her fullest account of what happened." But that won't jibe with the impressions of viewers who arrive with a critical eye or without knowing the story. Free Angela Davis seems to assume that the viewer either intuits her innocence or believes Jackson's plot was righteous enough that prosecuting a possible participant was the same as persecuting a dissident thinker. An all-white jury eventually found Davis not guilty, of course. Lynch ends her film there, leaving those who are new to this story wondering what Davis did with the rest of her life, and whether her work (and that of the nameless "political prisoners" referred to in the film's title but barely discussed) had an impact commensurate with the government's fervor for silencing her. Production Companies: Realside Productions, De Films En Aiguille 66

Above: Will Smith, Danny Glover, Angela Davis, Shola Lynch, Jaden Smith and Willow Smith at event of Free Angela & All Political Prisoners

Director-Screenwriter: Shola Lynch Producers: Carole Lambert, Shola Lynch, Carine Ruszniewski, Sidra Smith Directors of photography: Sandi Sissel, Bradford Young Music: Vernon Reid Editors: Lewis Erskine, Marion Monnier Other producers include Judy Aley, Suzannah Herbert, Jay Z, James Lassiter, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sidra Smith and Will Smith.

Innovative jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd dies at 80 70

Jazz musician Donald Byrd, a leading hard-bop trumpeter of the 1950s who collaborated on dozens of albums with top artists of his time and later enjoyed commercial success with hit jazz-funk fusion records such as "Black Byrd," has died. He was 80. He died Feb. 4 in Delaware, according to Haley Funeral Directors in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Mich., which is handling arrangements. It didn't have details on his death. Byrd, who was also a pioneer in jazz education, attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit, played in military bands in the Air Force and moved to New York in 1955. The trumpeter, whose given name was Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II, rose to national prominence when he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers later that year, filling the seat in the bebop group held by his idol Clifford Brown. He soon became one of the most in-demand trumpeters on the New York scene, playing with Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. He also began his recording career by leading sessions for Savoy and other labels. In 1958, he signed an exclusive recording contract with the Blue Note label and formed a band with a fellow Detroit native, baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, making their label debut with the 1959 album "Off to the Races." The band became one of the leading exponents of the hard-bop style, which evolved from bebop and blended in elements of R&B, soul and gospel music. A 1961 recording, "Free Form," brought attention to then 20-year-old pianist Herbie Hancock. "Donald had this beautiful tone and had a very lyrical sense of playing and a real sense of melody," said Hancock, who two years later joined Miles Davis' famed quintet and later formed his own Grammy-winning jazz-funk band. In a telephone interview Monday night, Hancock said Byrd was a key influence earlier in his career. He said Byrd took him "under his wings" when he was a struggling musician newly arrived in New York, even letting him sleep on a hidea-bed in his Bronx apartment for several years. 71

"He was the first person to let me be a permanent member of an internationally known band," Hancock added. "He has always nurtured and encouraged young musicians. He's a born educator, it seems to be in his blood, and he really tried to encourage the development of creativity." Hancock also said Byrd encouraged him to make his debut album for Blue Note and hooked him up with Mongo Santamaria, who turned Hancock's tune "Watermelon Man" into a chart-topping hit. He also urged him to accept Davis' offer to join his quintet. In the 1960s, Byrd, who had received his master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music, turned his attention to jazz education. He studied in Paris with composer Nadia Boulanger, became the first person to teach jazz at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and started the jazz studies department at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Byrd began moving toward a more commercial sound with the funk-jazz fusion album "Fancy Free" in 1969, taking a path followed by fellow trumpeters Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard. He teamed up with the Mizell brothers to release "Black Byrd" in 1973, a blend of jazz, R&B and funk that became Blue Note's highest selling album at the time. Jazz critics panned Byrd for deviating from the jazz mainstream, but he was unperturbed. "I'm creative; I'm not re-creative," Byrd told the Detroit Free Press in a 1999 interview. "I don't follow what everybody else does." Byrd invited several of his best students at Howard to join a jazz-fusion group called the Blackbyrds that reached a mainstream audience with a sound heavy on R&B and rock influences. The band landed in the Top 10 on the R&B charts with the mid-'70s albums "Street Lady," ''Stepping Into Tomorrow" and "Place and Spaces." 72

Hancock said the Blackbyrds "laid the groundwork for the direction" that led him to form his own jazz-funk band, The Headhunters, and eventually record the Grammy-winning instrumental single "Rockit." In 1982, Byrd, who also had a law degree, received his doctorate from New York's Teachers College, Columbia University, and turned his attention from performing to education. Byrd, a longtime resident of Teaneck, N.J., was a distinguished scholar at William Paterson University and twice served as an artist-in-residence at Delaware State University. Byrd didn't have much training in mathematics but created a groundbreaking curriculum called Music + Math (equals) Art, in which he transformed notes into numbers to simultaneously teach music and math. "I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop," he told The Star-Ledger newspaper of Newark, N.J. In the late '80s and early '90s, he returned to playing hard-bop on several albums for the Landmark label, which also featured saxophonists Kenny Garrett and Joe Henderson. He performed on Guru's 1993 jazz-rap album, "Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1," and his recordings were sampled on more than 100 hip-hop songs by such performers as Black Moon, Nas, Ludacris and A Tribe Called Quest. In 2000, the National Endowment for the Arts recognized Byrd as a Jazz Master, the nation's highest jazz honor. http://townhall.com 73

“I’LL TAKE YOU THERE” MEMBER OF STAPLE SINGERS DEAD AT 78 Cleotha Staples, a founding member of the beloved Chicago soul group the Staple Singers, died Wednesday after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, her sister Mavis Staples’ rep has confirmed. She was 78. Staples had suffered from the disease for 12 years, and recently had been under 24-hour home care. Mavis Staples told the Chicago Tribune that Cleotha’s longtime caretaker was with her when she died Wednesday morning in her high-rise condominium on the South Side of Chicago. Belting the distinctive soprano parts on the Staple Singers soaring harmonies, Cleotha was a crucial part of the group’s success on hits such as “I’ll Take You There,” “Respect Yourself” and “Uncloudy Day.” Cleotha, the oldest child of Roebuck “Pops” and Osceola Staples, began learning to sing in the late Forties when Pops taught her and her siblings – Mavis, Pervis and Yvonne – the songs he had sung as a child with his family at Dockery Farm plantation in Mississippi. Soon the Staple Singers were performing at churches throughout the South Side, and by 1953 they were cutting records and playing shows outside of Chicago.

Chinua Achebe Dead: 'Things Fall Apart' Author Dies Chinua Achebe Obituary: A Look At The Life Of 'Things Fall Apart' Author By Jon Gambrell in London

Chinua Achebe, the internationally celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident who gave literary birth to modern Africa with "Things Fall Apart" and continued for decades to rewrite and reclaim the history of his native country, has died. He was 82. Achebe died following a brief illness, said his agent, Andrew Wylie. "He was also a beloved husband, father, uncle and grandfather, whose wisdom and courage are an inspiration to all who knew him," Wylie said. His eminence worldwide was rivaled only by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison and a handful of others. Achebe was a moral and literary model for countless Africans and a profound influence on such American writers as Morrison, Ha Jin and Junot Diaz.

As a Nigerian, Achebe lived through and helped define revolutionary change in his country, from independence to dictatorship to the disastrous war between Nigeria and the breakaway country of Biafra in the late 1960s. He knew both the prestige of serving on government commissions and the fear of being declared an enemy of the state. He spent much of his adult life in the United States, but never stopped calling for democracy in Nigeria or resisting literary honors from a government he refused to accept. His public life began in his mid-20s. He was a resident of London when he completed his handwritten manuscript for "Things Fall Apart," a short novel about a Nigerian tribesman's downfall at the hands of British colonialists. Turned down by several publishers, the book was finally accepted by Heinemann and released in 1958 with a first printing of 2,000. Its initial review in The New York Times ran less than 500 words, but the novel soon became among the most important books of the 20th century, a universally acknowledged starting point for postcolonial, indigenous African fiction, the prophetic union of British letters and African oral culture. "It would be impossible to say how `Things Fall Apart' influenced African writing," the African scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah once observed. "It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or Pushkin influenced Russians. Achebe didn't only play the game, he invented it." "Things Fall Apart" has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 50 languages. Achebe also was a forceful critic of Western literature about Africa, especially Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," 77

standard reading for millions, but in Achebe's opinion, a defining example of how even a great Western mind could reduce a foreign civilization to barbarism and menace. "Now, I grew up among very eloquent elders. In the village, or even in the church, which my father made sure we attended, there were eloquent speakers. So if you reduce that eloquence which I encountered to eight words ... it's going to be very different," Achebe told The Associated Press in 2008. "You know that it's going to be a battle to turn it around, to say to people, `That's not the way my people respond in this situation, by unintelligible grunts, and so on; they would speak.' And it is that speech that I knew I wanted to be written down." His first novel was intended as a trilogy and the author continued its story in "A Man of the People" and "Arrow of God." He also wrote short stories, poems, children's stories and a political satire, "The Anthills of Savannah," a 1987 release that was the last full-length fiction to come out in his lifetime. Achebe, who used a wheelchair in his later years, would cite his physical problems and displacement from home as stifling to his imaginative powers. Achebe never did win the Nobel Prize, which many believed he deserved, but in 2007 he did receive the Man Booker International Prize, a $120,000 honor for lifetime achievement. Achebe, paralyzed from the waist down since a 1990 auto accident, lived for years in a cottage built for him on the campus of Bard College, a leading liberal arts school north of New York City where he was a faculty member. He joined Brown University in 2009 as a professor of languages and literature. Achebe, a native of Ogidi, Nigeria, regarded his life as a bartering between conflicting cultures. He spoke of the "two types of music" running through his mind_ Ibo legends and the prose of Dickens. He was also exposed to different faiths. His father worked in a local missionary and was among the first in their village to convert to Christianity. In Achebe's memoir "There Was a Country," he wrote that his "whole artistic career was probably sparked by this tension between the Christian religion" of his parents and the "retreating, older religion" of his ancestors. He would observe the conflicts between his father and great uncle and ponder "the essence, the meaning, the worldview of both religions."

For much of his life, he had a sense that he was a person of special gifts who was part of an historic generation. Achebe was so avid a reader as a young man that his nickname was "Dictionary." At Government College, Umuahia, he read Shakespeare, Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jonathan Swift among others. He placed his name alongside an extraordinary range of alumni â&#x20AC;&#x201C; government and artistic leaders from Jaja Wachukwa, a future ambassador to the United Nations; to future Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka; Achebe's future wife (and mother of their four children) Christine Okoli; and the poet Christopher Okigbo, a close friend of Achebe's who was killed during the Biafra war. After graduating from the University College of Ibadan, in 1953, Achebe was a radio producer at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corp., then moved to London and worked at the British Broadcasting Corp. He was writing stories in college and called "Things Fall Apart" an act of "atonement" for what he says was the abandonment of traditional culture. The book's title was taken from poet William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming," which includes the widely quoted line, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." His novel was nearly lost before ever seen by the public. When Achebe finished his manuscript, he sent it to a London typing service, which misplaced the package and left it lying in an office for months. The proposed book was received coolly by London publishers, who doubted the appeal of fiction from Africa. Finally, an educational adviser at Heinemann who had recently traveled to west Africa had a look and declared: "This is the best novel I have read since the war." The opening sentence was as simple, declarative and revolutionary as a line out of Hemingway: "Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond." Africans, Achebe had announced, had their own history, their own celebrities and reputations. In mockery of all the Western books about Africa, Achebe ended with a colonial official observing Okonkwo's fate and imagining the book he will write: "The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger." Achebe's novel was the opening of a long argument on his country's behalf. 79

"Literature is always badly served when an author's artistic insight yields to stereotype and malice," Achebe said during a 1998 lecture at Harvard University that cited Joyce Cary's "Mister Johnson" as a special offender. "And it becomes doubly offensive when such a work is arrogantly proffered to you as your story. Some people may wonder if, perhaps, we were not too touchy, if we were not oversensitive. We really were not." Achebe could be just as critical of his own country. The novels "A Man of the People" and "No Longer at Ease" were stories of corruption and collapse that anticipated the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 and the years of mismanagement that followed. He not only supported Biafra's independence, but was a government envoy and a member of a committee that was to write up the new and short-lived country's constitution. He would flee from Nigeria and return many times and in 2004 refused the country's second-highest award, the Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic, in protest over conditions under President Olusegun Obasanjo. "For some time now, I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay," he said in an open letter to the president, referring to allegations of corruption and lawlessness in Achebe's southeastern home state of Anambra. "A small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. ... I

had a strong belief that we would outgrow our shortcomings under leaders committed to uniting our diverse peoples." Besides his own writing, Achebe served for years as editor of Heinemann's "African Writer Series," which published works by Nadine Gordimer, Stephen Biko and others. He also edited numerous anthologies of African stories, poems and essays. In "There Was a Country," he considered the role of the modern African writer. "What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue," he wrote. "A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories â&#x20AC;&#x201C; prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal." www.ap.com

Bob Teague, One Of New York City's First Black Television Journalists, Dies

Bob Teague, a former news anchor, reporter and producer and one of New York City's first black television journalists, has died. He was 84. WNBC says Teague died Thursday. Teague's widow, Jan, told The New York Times that he suffered from T-cell lymphoma. Teague joined the station in 1963 after starting his career at the Milwaukee Journal. Soon after joining the local NBC station in 1963, he became correspondent for "Harlem: Test for the North." It was an hour-long program started after riots broke out in the neighborhood. He also covered other minority communities during the tumultuous 1960s. WNBC calls Teague a broadcast pioneer with a passion for news and serving his New York viewers. Teague was the author of several books, both fiction and nonfiction. His most prom9nent book was, Letters to a Black Boy.

Art Worth Millions, Yet No Cash for Burial By Patricia Cohen and Peter Lattman

Juliette Pelletier

Above: The Merton D. Simpson Gallery, with some of the samples of African art objects the owner collected, in 2011.

Family and friends gathered in Charleston, S.C., on Friday for the funeral of the New York-based artist Merton D. Simpson, a painter and pioneering champion of African art who accumulated a collection said to be worth millions of dollars. Gathering in the city of his birth, eulogists celebrated Mr. Simpsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expertise on the saxophone, his generosity and his visionary artistic taste.

Above: Merton Simpson

But after the ceremony, Mr. Simpson was not buried. His body was returned to the funeral home in Charleston, where it has been for more than two weeks since his death on March 9 at 84. Despite Mr. Simpsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collection of museum-quality art, some of it housed in the Manhattan gallery he owned, which is now under lock and key, his family said it 84

lacked the money for a burial. “We got him in a store room in the back,” said Bernard Fielding, a retired probate judge and president of the century-old Fielding Homes for Funerals in Charleston. Last week Merton Simpson Jr., the artist’s son, sent an e-mail to his father’s friends asking for contributions for a funeral, including wiring instructions for a PayPal account. “While my father had considerable assets, they are illiquid, and the family needs immediate financial assistance for a proper funeral,” Mr. Simpson wrote. “He deserves no less.” The appeal grew partly out of a long-running and rancorous dispute over Mr. Simpson’s care and his prodigious art collection. With Mr. Simpson’s death, the finger-pointing and recriminations have reached a head, with accusations of mismanagement and exploitation. Things got really ugly “while this man was still alive, and I knew that when he passed, it was going to get really ugly,” said Luna Devin Crystal, a longtime friend of Mr. Simpson’s, who at one point helped run the gallery. Mr. Simpson was an Abstract Expressionist painter and arguably the most significant dealer of traditional African art in the United States, a man whose exquisite taste made him a pre-eminent expert in his field. But now his singular archive and extraordinary collection are matters of contention among an array of friends, family and staff members, who all claim to have his best interests at heart. As Mr. Simpson’s health deteriorated in recent years, control of his personal and business affairs bounced among his son Merton Simpson Jr., who is a legislator in Albany County, New York; Ms. Crystal, a former actress and fashion model; a court-appointed guardian; his Charleston relatives; and a noted Wall Street banker and friend, Raymond J. McGuire. Last week lawyers filed a will for Mr. Simpson in Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan. Dated April 7, 2011, it names his son Merton Jr. as an executor, and divides the bulk of the assets among his two sons, his brother and a nephew. The will states that it supplants any previous wills, which would include one Mr. Simpson signed in 2007 naming Mr. McGuire as executor.

Until the court determines that the 2011 will is legally valid and names an executor, the artist’s estate is controlled by Ann Pinciss Berman, an elder-care lawyer appointed by a judge last year as Mr. Simpson’s guardian. Ms. Berman said she had authorized $3,000 to pay for death-related expenses in New York and another $3,000 to be spent in Charleston. Additional funds, she said, are simply not available. For example, a year ago, Ms. Berman said she cashed in a $76,000 life insurance policy of Mr. Simpson’s to pay expenses for his 24-hour care and his Upper East Side apartment. “I can’t spend money that I don’t have,” Ms. Berman said. “This guardianship has been operating hand-to-mouth.” But $3,000 does not cover the cost of a modest burial in Charleston, Mr. Fielding said, noting that a grave site and cemetery fees alone often cost about $2,500. For many of his 84 years, Mr. Simpson was a prominent figure in the art world, known for his Abstract Expressionist paintings and work with the Spiral Group, a politically minded artistic movement in the 1960s that included Romare Bearden. He may have been best known, however, for his love affair with African art, becoming an internationally renowned dealer and among the foremost authorities in the field.

Yet while Mr. Simpson has been honored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his work was exhibited in museums, behind the scenes his family, friends and staff were feuding for control of his legacy. Former employees disagree over who was responsible, but they agree that for long stretches, the Merton D. Simpson Gallery was in disarray. Art was poorly cared for, sales faltered, the doors were closed to customers for long periods, and inventory control was slack. Mr. Simpson’s son Merton Jr. also complained that people who knew his father sometimes would take pieces of art that they claimed Mr. Simpson had either given them as gifts or on consignment. Michael Chisolm, a New York appraiser specializing in African art, who was hired last year to appraise Mr. Simpson’s archives, made a preliminary estimate of $1.75 million, explaining that the archives, with their documentation of travel, acquisitions, sales and exchanges, contain “the history of collecting African art in the United States.” He did not formally appraise the artwork but estimated that the inventory was worth millions of dollars, and when asked whether there were many pieces at the gallery, Mr. Chisolm replied, “Oh my goodness, yes. Hundreds.” Over the years, as Mr. Simpson’s health declined and his gallery faltered, Mr. McGuire, a wellknown collector of both African and African-American art, provided critical financial support, paying bills and making loans. When Merton Simpson Jr. decided to play a more active role in 2010, a rift developed between him on one side and the gallery employees and his Charleston relatives on the other. They complained that Merton Jr. had been mostly absent from his father’s life, but the son rejected that characterization, saying he had a loving relationship with his father. The elder Mr. Simpson signed a new will in April 2011 naming two new coexecutors: Merton Simpson Jr. and Ms. Crystal (the actress, who is also known as Sheila Anderson). Soon after, Ms. Crystal, who was supervising the gallery,

replaced the staff. On Monday she said in a telephone interview that she was asking to be removed as co-executor because of the turmoil. In November 2011 Merton Simpson Jr. filed a petition in Manhattan Supreme Court to become his father’s guardian, arguing that Mr. Simpson’s condition had precipitously declined and that he was incapable of caring for himself. A judge agreed to appoint a guardian, but it was Ms. Berman. Asked why he wasn’t selected, Mr. Simpson Jr. said, “That remains a great mystery to myself.” Now he said he worried that Ms. Berman might try to sell his father’s art at bargain prices before he gains control of the collection, or possibly challenge the 2011 will. Ms. Berman said she had no standing to challenge the will and also dismissed the notion of a quick sale. “I think that my mission certainly is and always has been to preserve the legacy of Merton D. Simpson and to maximize the estate for his heirs,” she said. Meanwhile, Mr. Simpson’s body remains at the Fielding funeral home. Mr. Fielding of the funeral home said that in his 53 years of practicing law, he had never seen a situation like this. “They need to figure out what they want to do,” he said, “and then somebody’s got to come up with the money.” http://www.kulturekritic.com 88

Deceased Financier Left a Powerful Legacy of Wealth Building and Community Investing By Bowatkin

Chicago just lost a hero in the black business community. Jacoby Dickens, a major financier in the city, has died in Florida. Dickens was one of the major economic figures in black Chicago for over thirty years. He died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 81. Dickens was chairman and majority owner of Seaway Bank & Trust Co., the largest blackowned bank in the city of Chicago. He was also on several boards, including Chicago State University, the School of Business at Florida A&M University and the Chicago Urban League. Dickens has given more than $1 million to Chicago State. According to ChicagoBusiness.com, Dickens grew up as one of six children and had humble beginnings. He and his family moved to the south side of Chicago in 1946, where Dickens attended Wendell Phillips High School. After saving his money earned as a building engineer, Dickens began to invest in real estate. He bought an apartment building and sold it in 1971. He also invested in bowling alleys and eventually became chairman of the Seaway Bank in 1983. “He was a visionary in terms of being a minority banker on the South Side,” said Eugene Katz, managing director at investment bank D.A. Davidson & Co. in Chicago. “He created a half-billion-dollar organization. It’s one of the top three African-American banks in the country.” Seaway Bank is one of the healthiest in Chicago, reaching out and acquiring other black-owned banks during the recent financial crisis. “Jacoby Dickens could have used his wealth anywhere in our time,” Norman Williams, CEO of Illinois Service Federal Savings & Loan Association of Chicago. “He made the choice to use it to support a bank that served African-Americans, in their community, at a time when they needed a bank in their neighborhood the most. He will never know how many businesses he helped stay open, how many family homes that he preserved and how many families that he helped financially remain intact. In my presence, he carried himself as a man who considered himself no greater than any other. He was easy to know, easy to talk to and easy to like as a human being.” http://www.blackbluedog.com 90

Iyanifa Mahealani Uchiyama High Priestess of Nana Buuken

Image: Sun, Moon and Stars by Julia Cairns

Iyanifa Mahealani Uchiyama, is a priestess of S’ango and Ifa, and a high priestess of Nana Buuken (Iyaami). She was initiated by and an associate of the Ifa Foundation. Iyanifa is also a dancer and musician. She is also the founder of the Mahea Uchiyama Center for International Dance and has produced and been part of numerous major performances in a career spanning nearly thirty years. Many years ago when she was a member of the Orinoco Caribbean Dancers and Drummers, Iyanifa performed dances to S’ango. At that time she received the call from the Orisa to study and become a part of this beautiful tradition. “My ancestors are Wolof, Mande, Yoruba, and Cherokee. In search of my own truth, I have traveled, lived and studied in many parts of the world, including Hawai’i, Tahiti, New Zealand, India, Senegal and Zimbabwe. I am bi-lingual, and in addition to having shared and learned culturally-based music and dance, I developed family and friends in each of these communities. In doing so, I have become a true citizen of the world,” says Iyanifa “I am also a recording artist, and endeavor to motivate my community to recognize their own unique gifts and their value to others. Two of my CDs, “A Walk by the Sea” and “Ndoro dze Madzinza” are both recipients of Hawai’i Music Awards. My Way of Life (Odu Ifa) is Owanrin Meji, a journey in which utilizing the wisdom of Ifa directs me on the path to my destiny, free of impediment. And my Ifa name is Olayinka, “Honor Surrounds Me”. My organization, The Sacred Forest, is dedicated to the preservation, appreciation and understanding of Ifa. At home and at work, creating dance or in my community, I live my life according to Ifa. Orunmila, the Orisa and the Ancestors have poured blessings on me.” The Sacred Forest “The Sacred Forest is dedicated to the preservation, appreciation and understanding of indigenous spiritual practices, particularly those of Ifa, an 92

African Spiritual Tradition. Our goals are to provide opportunities for African based spiritual healing and peacemaking, to facilitate the strengthening of the family and community through the African village model, and to develop a multiethnic community involved in the perpetuation of pan-African spirituality and performance arts. We ultimately seek to provide facilities for prayer, meditation, education and fellowship,” says Iyanifa. In many sub-Saharan African societies, the forest is synonymous with spirituality. There, the presence of Spirit can readily be experienced. In indigenous societies the world over, it is customary to go into the forest for ceremonies which commemorate important life transitions. According to Iyanifa, ‘although in the post-industrial world we do have some life passage rituals, such as graduations, weddings and funerals, we often lack deeply meaningful ways to recognize other key transitions. For example, many people never experience a genuine initiation ritual as they move from boyhood to manhood, or from girlhood to womanhood. It is this and other imbalances that The Sacred Forest seeks to address. Many of us are drawn to the culture, music and dance of Africa, whether or not we are directly from there. Africa has much to offer the Western world: beauty, strength, wisdom, a sense of community and recognition of the presence of our ancestors. All of these can act as a balm in industrialized nations where so many have lost their sense of place. A sense of connection to one another, to our environment and to our ancestors is Africa’s gift to us all.” http://thesacredforest.org/ola-olu 93

Slave Girl By joya The runaway black slave girl Who ran away and dug her own grave To hide in while the massa tried To run her down and catch her The massa not the Master I hope you know the difference They had every white man on that plantation Looking for her as she ran Way back deep down in the woods Covered herself up the best she could With tree leaves and pieces of wood

So they wouldn’t find her When they caught her They would surely beat her near death Of just kill her She was all alone on the run In a dirty ragged dress Running with her bare feet She ran while she could

Running throughout the night Like a g waiting to attack Scared out of her mind Every time she heard a loud sound She would duck and hide And say, “Oh Jesus Please” She kept repeating her self She had no food She had no water What was she to do the word was out “If you see her bring her to me.” The mass said Everyone in that town Everyone on that plantation Was scared to help her They were riding horses and shooting big shoots guns You could hear the sounds ringing throughout the air As she kept on running scared Never looking back She ran all day and most of the night Until she was out of breath And fell and rolled and bumped her head I don’t know how long she laid there 95

But when she woke up she was in someone else’s bed She tried to get up but fell and made a thump When she looked up there stood a white woman Standing there looking down on her She had a fierce look on her face Her eyes seemed like They were going to pop out of her head The woman said, “Don’t be scared I will help you get away But until then you must be quiet and very still I will hide you in the ground she said I said to myself, “Lawd Jesus this white woman Is gon en to kill me and leave me dead” But I was to tired to keep on running So I had no choice but to pray And do what the white woman said I gave up but God didn’t Lawd have mercy she took me the next day And helped me get away in a horse and buggy To the border line Put me out and told me to keep on running And don’t look back And that’s what I did In my wildest dreams I a black slave girl never thought a white woman Would be the one to save me I made it and today I write the story As I thank her for what she did She must’ve had a good heart The woman took a chance on me She could have lost her life for what she did I told her thank you I know it was God the woman said no it wasn’t It was the fear that I saw in your eyes Then the woman said keep safe and God speed So what does that tell you Could she have believed I don’t know Who uses words like God speed Of they don’t believe or could it be An angel God sent to me I will always remember that white woman And what she did for me As I thank God for the miracle angel, He sent to me Just a black slave girl who was running scared And just wanted to be free

Caught By Isis Sun Unfaithful. I’m caught…like fibers unpleasantly picked From the comfort of the sweater. Spliced between what I desire, and what feels good. Your dreams are dazzling-And sparkle like hot fire dancing across brisk winds. They summon like lustful echoes in lieu of sin you write off Willfully..skillfully. But...deep in the segments of my linear mental stretch, My hands reach for primal fires unleashed.. Pleasantries that spill like simple energy signatures I can’t ignore. I plant all fours for you as pillars to keep score and tally all the reasons to stay…daily.

Then… The day ends, and I’m left daydreaming about him. Holding torches that drip the scent of a language I completely understand When he speaks… I don’t feel caught up in madness when the transparency gleams And I think…he’s different. When I try, it matters. When I cry, the interpretation lathers around his ears and he hears My hope. That fire…doesn’t dim, but like snow on the highest slope, It accumulates and grows when he’s near. I feel…vindicated by his passion, And if it weren’t for the ache that plagues my days with unrequited love, His everything + the above wouldn’t reign king. …but you gave up the crown a long time ago, And he... He makes my temple sing the jewels back into resilience. He prays in tongue disconnected from complacent shields And I...yield in crossways I never dreamed of stopping before. It's that, porous spillage of my pain I was tired of Again and again... Now… Caught ©, 2013, Isis sun. All Rights Reserved.

The Spirit in Us By Nicole Renee Boisseau What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is IN you, which ye have of Yahweh, and ye are not your own? For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify Yahweh in your body, and in your spirit, which are Yahweh's. -1Cor 6:19-20 Let's say the last time you checked your bank account it was $4.98-. In between time $1mil was deposited into your bank account, however you hadn't received notification of this. Would you be able to use the $1mil? No, not based upon your knowledge. Let's say that you did receive notification of the $1million deposit into your bank account. How would you utilize it? Would you use it to your benefit or your detriment? Know this fact: We have the Holy Spirit IN us. It's not something we catch like a virus or something that controls our body when the organ starts to play. It was the gift given to us collectively on the day of Pentecost. If we are notified of this fact by the true ministers of Yahweh and instructed according to the scriptures on HOW to use this gift properly in our everyday lives then the Holy Spirit can be to our benefit. If not, we have the Holy Spirit lying dormant within us unutilized and this can be to our detriment. ÂŠ 2013, Nicole Renee Boisseau. All rights reserved.

Lisa Thompson Named Professor of Homiletics Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Board of Directors has named the Rev. Lisa L. Thompson as assistant professor of homiletics. She will begin June 1, 2013. “Many believe that Lisa Thompson will be the leading African-American homiletician of the future,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Carl III, president and professor of homiletics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. “Deep pastoral wisdom and spiritual maturity mark Lisa Thompson’s mentoring both in the classroom and the church. We look forward to the excitement she will bring to our campus in the areas of preaching and worship. Joining Angela Hancock, Lisa Thompson and Roger Owens help create an outstanding homiletics team!” This summer Thompson will receive her doctorate from Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation is titled “The Caged Bird’s 21st Century Song: A Homiletic Practical Theology from the Preaching of African American Women.” She earned her master’s from Vanderbilt, master of divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary, and bachelor’s from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Thompson received the Lilly Faculty Fellowship in Theological Education and Program of Theology and Practice Fellowship from Vanderbilt and a Doctoral Fellowship from the Fund for Theological Education. Her teaching experience includes Association of Chicago Theological Schools Doctor of Ministry in Preaching, McCormick Theological Seminary, and Vanderbilt University. She also served as an instructor-coach at the Academy of Preachers in 2010. Her experience as a campus pastor at Asuza Pacific University prepared her well for interacting with and modeling for a wide variety of students. Thompson has offered numerous presentations in both the academic and church arenas. Her sermon “Yes God!” appeared in This Is What a Preacher Looks Like (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2010). Her review of Those Preaching Women: A Multicultural Collection was published in Homiletic. http://www.pts.edu

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Get Your Business Plugged on Plugology.com!!

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Above: Al Rem, Founder and CEO of Plugology.com.

Finally there is a site available where Black businesses can showcase their products and services at an reasonable price while building brand awareness at the same time. The site is called Plugology.com (“Plugology”). Plugology is the brain child of social media guru Al Rem. Al Rem is an Engineering graduate of the University of Illinois program with fifteen years of experience in corporate America and is currently the President and Founder of Plugology.com. He is also the Author of the book The Blackstone Project. Al Rem states the following Ten Compelling Reasons to Do Business with Plugology: 1. It’s Free to Start. 2. We build pages in hours not days or weeks…at very reasonable rates…of course Plugology is also designed to allow you to build and manage your own page if you have the ability or desire. 3. We have the best listings! Accurate information. Beautiful Banners, Interactive business pages that get results. 4. We put the word out…through Social Media, Blogging and Paid Celebrity Spokespersons. 5. Did We Mention…We get results! Our network represents over 100,000 Twitter and Facebook Members.

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6. We deliver Targeted Tweets. Not Random. We find people that are interested in your product or services and get the message in front of them. We are continuously talking and pitching your products and services. We call it Plugging and it is the very essence of Plugology. 7. We are professionals in Social Media so you don’t have to be. We allow you to focus on your business, while we focus on putting the word out about your products and services. 8. Plugology Business Listings are supported by a dynamic community devoted to your success. 9. Plugology Members are believers; they believe in supporting small business and typically represent some of your first customers. 10. We Drive Business to your page. We hire the best bloggers and entertainers to drive traffic to Plugology. When traffic arrives, they are greeted by professional ads, strategic product placements and our leader board (i.e. Hot Products, Most Liked Businesses and Blog of the Day to name a few). 11. Segine Engine Optimized. We get you on the first page of Google and Bing in a matter of days…multiple times. Plugology currently averages 10,000 page views per day or 300,000 per month. The largest number of page views per day was 23,000. The average time spent on the site is 10.6 minutes. Below is an interview of Al Rem conducted by V.M.: V.M.: So Mr. Rem tell us a little about yourself. Al Rem: Well first I would like to thank Voice Magazine for giving me this opportunity to introduce myself to your subscribers and fans. Let me start by saying, for those that don’t know me, my given name is Albert Rembert. I’m from Springfield IL. I graduated from Lanphier High School, but my friends and colleagues simply call me Al Rem. After High School I attended school for one year at the University of Houston on an Engineering Scholarship. Unfortunately, Houston had way too many women and alcoholic beverages for me to focus on my engineering studies, not to mention as I look back, high school may not have fully prepared me for such a rigorous curriculum.

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Above: Troy Johnson, Al Rem, and WHUR radio personality Mark Clark

So, I left school and enlisted in the Navy and took on the incredibly challenging Naval Nuclear Engineering Program. I survived the program and went on to serve on a Nuclear Submarine for five years or so. When my time was up, I got out and returned to school on a full veterans grant, which gave me the opportunity to attend the University of Illinois for free. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not sure if this program is still offered but I utilized it to complete Chemical Engineering school in one of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most prestigious programs and not owe any money at the end of the day. So to all the young people that may come across this article, the military has its pros and cons, but if you keep your eyes on the prize, you can use it to achieve anything. Anyway, I completed school went to corporate America, got a job at Kraft Foods (I would like to thank Pamela Anderson and John Gregg for that) and the rest is history. I have spent 16 years in Corporate America, swimming with the sharks, sometimes coming out on top and sometimes being eaten alive. But, everything was for a reason. I took all my learning and trials and tribulations and brought them to bear on my current project.

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V.M.: Ok, your life in corporate America sounds intriguing, but I get the feeling you would rather talk about Plugology. So why don’t we get right to it. What is Plugology and maybe you could start out by explaining where you got the name. Al Rem: Yes indeed! Plugology. Let’s start with Plug: It means to work at something with stubborn persistence (i.e . to keep plugging along) also “to plug” Meaning to Promote or publicize insistently or even relentlessly; and finally to connect or become connected as in “plugged in.” Now take “ology”: which mean the science, knowledge or study of and you get… Plugology: The Science and Knowledge of Promotion, Persistence and Connections V.M.: Wow. Ok I like it. Tells us how it works. And what gave you the idea for this. Al Rem: What gave me the idea for Plugology was the fact that I had been designing websites and pages for myself and other businesses for 10 years. In all most every case, more time was spent with upkeep and maintaining the different customer requirements. One customer might want it built with flash and another just basic HTML. A lot of time in effort went into designing and solving the technical challenges surrounding each customer. Plugology answered this question by building everything on the same technology. Pages use modular and tabbed technology to achieve the ultimate goal. GETTING THE INFORMATION 105

TO THE CUSTOMER. That’s the bottom line. All the flash in the world is not going to get you a customer if the information is poor or inaccurate. However, although each customer’s page is built on the same technology and has similar characteristics, Plugology achieves differentiation through graphic design and content…and yes “Content is King.” Ultimately, your site could be plain vanilla and still be incredibly successful because you write the best blogs, have the best program or sell the best product. So here’s how we do it . Plugology is a Social Media Platform for Small Businesses. It ranges from simple business listings like yellowpages.com to full websites. Business can build their own pages or have Plugology Business Services do it for them…and Plugology Business Services prides their self on the ability to create pages FAST, FAST, FAST. The beauty of Plugology is that businesses don’t have to be experts in Social media to be successful. Plugology promotes every business on the platform. We are the experts in Social media so you can focus on your business. Plugology also allows business to redirect their current URL to their Plugology Business Page. (for example www.yourbusiness.com is redirected to Plugology.com/yourbusiness). This allows you to maintain your brand image while at the same time take advantage of all the flexibility Plugology has to offer. This works great for some business owners who just don’t have the time. Plugology can build, maintain and promote your page on social media at a very low price.

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Finally, Plugology is built around a philosophy of interaction. The more you interact the more successful you business becomes. In order to promote you, you have to do something. Write a blog, post an article or photo, it doesn’t matter. You post it, we share it with thousands and thousands of potential customers or fans in our network and best thing is…our network gets bigger every day. V.M.: Plugology sounds incredibly exciting. I can think of a number of projects I’m working on that would be just perfect for your platform. Let’s get together to discuss. With that…Al Rem it has really been a pleasure speaking with you and I’ll ask is there anything else you would like to say to our audience. Al Rem: Yes, yes I would. Get Plugged on Plugology! Thank You. V.M.: We have been officially Plugged by none other than the Founder and President of Plugology Al Rem. Thank you for your time and please stop by again real soon. Al Currently lives in Chicago but is frequently in LA, NY and DC. You can follow Al Rem on Twitter @alrem2010 as well as @plugologist.

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Find Local Black Businesses with New iPhone App By Sajjad Musa, DFRAGG.com

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Around the Way is an app for your iPhone or Android device that helps its users locate black owned businesses. The app is important because it uses technology to combat social issues that often deter minority own businesses from thriving. Around the Way App Version 2.0 has a pretty intuitive interface, which mimics the native iPhone maps App. This makes it very simple to use and pick up right away to help you locate black owned businesses using your phone. When you open the App, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re greeted with a scroll bar at the top, which groups black businesses by good and services that range from beauty shops, barbers, banks and restaurants. There are also several tabs below, which allow you to view all of the black businesses in a certain area, search for specific stores or add a black business that you may have spotted.

One of the cool features of the app is the ability to favorite locations. This app is all about supporting black businesses so this feature makes it easy for you to become reoccurring customers once you book mark your favorites spots. Business owners and entrepreneurs have the ability to add their own business to the Around The Way App Directory directly from their phone. Our only gripe with the App is that once you locate a business, it would be convenient if the app provided a link to open the directions in the native iOS maps or Google maps app. Check out the link below and download the app and let us know what you think. Would you use this app to find black businesses? 109

Left: At the helm of Around the Way are (inset, l. to r.) CEO Janine Hausif, chief technology officer Sian Morson and chief marketing officer Eric Hamilton.

Features We Find You The app automatically finds your location and lists the nearest Black owned businesses. What better way to find Black businesses around your exact location? One push and you’re found. Get Directions to a Black Owned Business Get step-by-step directions to the Black owned businesses near you. With a little help from the phone’s mapping function, they’ll make sure you know exactly where you’re going. Save Your Favorite Black Business Create a customizabale favorites list. Find a place you like, LOCK IT IN for future visits. It takes the pain out of having to re-discover your new favorite. Black Business Categories Search for Black businesses via one of the 9 categories or simply “View All.” Whether you’re looking for something specific or casting a wide net, they’ve got you covered. Sharing Black Businesses Share each individual Black owned business via Facebook, Twitter or email. Most discoveries are worth sharing. Why not tell your chums about the Black-owned businesses you’ve found? Share the wealth. Got Ideas? Send feedback and/or rate them directly from the app. Sajjad Musa is a tech specialist and creative director at DFRAGG.com.

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Congress Won’t Move on Gun Control, Despite Series of Violent Incidents By Perry Bacon Jr.

Above: President Barack Obama (L) walks with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden before making a statement on gun violence in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 17, 2013 in Washington, DC. Earlier today the Senate defeated a bi-partisan measure to expand background checks for gun sales. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Over the last 28 months, a congresswoman was shot in the head and nearly died, a gunman killed and wounded more than 70 people in a movie theater, 20 first graders were gunned down in their elementary school, a 15-year-old girl came to Washington for President Obama’s inauguration and was shot and killed by a stray bullet when she returned home, more than 500 people died in homicides, most of which involved guns, in a single year in America’s third-largest city, the mayor of America’s largest city pumped millions of dollars into getting a gun control provision passed in Congress that polls show close to 90 percent of Americans support and families of shooting victims spent a week personally meeting with members of Congress to advocate for gun control.

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And yet, not a single major gun control provision has passed in Washington. A few months ago, politicians in both parties were declaring everything had changed involving gun policy in America after the Newtown shooting. They were wrong. An already slimmed-down proposal to expand background checks to more gun sales was rejected by a combination of nearly all Republicans and four Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday, after provisions to ban high-capacity magazines and assault weapons had already been largely abandoned. A complete victory by the NRA “Instead of supporting this compromise, the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about this bill,” a fiery President Barack Obama said in a speech after the vote. He called the failure of the bill a “shameful day for Washington,” and casts its opponents, including Democrats, as offering “no coherent arguments” against expanded background checks. The defeat of the background check proposal represents a complete victory by the National Rifle Association and other anti-gun control forces. Gun control legislation was always going to have trouble passing in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which is packed with ardent conservatives who worry most about primary challenges from the political right, but it failed even in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, who watered down a background check bill as much as possible and still couldn’t find the votes for it. The reasons the gun control push failed are long: the strongest gun control backers live in blue states, whose power is weaker in Congress than at the ballot box, conservative Democrats and even some Republicans are perhaps irrationally 112

concerned about the National Rifle Association, critics of gun control correctly argue it’s not clear if the mass shootings would be stopped by any of these provisions, perhaps Congress and President Obama should have pushed for gun control immediately after the Newtown shootings instead of waiting a few months for a vote. Conservative minority wields more power The failure suggests that gun control holds a singular place in American politics in which a conservative minority wields much more power than the majority of Americans, who support more background checks and other measures pushed by liberals to reduce gun violence. The views of President Obama and the coalition of voters who backed him are increasing ascendant on other issues: support for gay marriage is growing, tax hikes on the rich have been passed, many GOP governors are starting to implement “Obamacare,” Republicans seem willing to adapt changes in immigration laws that Hispanics in particular are seeking. But on gun control failed despite an aggressive, coordinated campaign behind it that included strong leadership from President Obama and Vice President Biden, a passionate and unusually political speech by Michelle Obama last week and repeated public appearances by the families of the Newtown children, Gabrielle Giffords and her husband and the parents of Hadiya Pendleton. The states have taken the lead Some liberal-leaning states such as Connecticut, Colorado and New York have already passed gun control legislation, leading some to argue that gun limits aren’t yet ripe for the national stage but will eventually be adopted by Congress. But such a claim ignores what has happened over the last three years; a series of shocking crimes have been committed with guns that affect every part of the population: blacks, whites, urbanities, people in the suburbs, children and members of Congress. And no legislation has been passed in the wake of any of these shootings. If not after Newtown, when? “Sooner or later, we are going to get this right,” Obama promised. http://thegrio.com

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Education Administrators Are Calling for More Black Men In the Classrooms By Maria Lloyd

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Education administrators are calling for more African-American male instructors. According to the U.S. Department of Education, black men make up only 2 percent of the nations 4.8 million teachers. Educators believe African-American men have the wisdom and strength to handle situations in the classroom that are more challenging for women and other races. “When you have a well-prepared African American man teaching black boys, the impact can be phenomenal,” said Brenda L. Townsend Walker, an attorney and a professor of special education at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “I have interviewed African American male students who had pretty much written school off, whose teachers had given up on them, but whose lives were turned around when they got into a class with African American men. Generally speaking, they just have a better ability to relate to the students and mediate situations that others couldn’t handle.” The idea of children having a better chance to succeed under the leadership of African-American male educators may be why Gemar Mills was able to bring his mathematics department from functioning at a mere 17 percent to 26 percent in just one year as Department Chairperson of Mathematics. Today, Mills is a 30year-old principal at Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark, NJ. Thirty-sixyear-old Bakari Ali Haynes is an assistant principal at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring, MD. His impact on the youth started seven years ago when he ran an after-school program named Gentlemen of Distinction for African-American and Hispanic boys. He found that the boys were eager to spend time with him, as he was the first black male authority figure many of them had ever met. “When they come into my office, two things get their attention right away — my academic certificates and photographs of my family,” Haynes said of his students. “They won’t come right out and ask how you get those things, but you know that’s what they want, and it’s my job to show them what it takes to get it.” Although it’s a struggle to work with youth who have no history of interacting with an African-American male, Haynes knows he’s making a positive impact on his students’ lives. “As much as they may curse you out or say they hate your guts, at the end of the day what they are looking for is someone who understands, someone who can say: ‘I’ve been where you are. This is how we’ll deal with it,’” Haynes said. “Sometimes they act out simply because they are hungry but don’t want to tell anyone.” http://www.blackbluedog.com/2013/02/news/education-administrators-are-calling-for-moreblack-men-in-the-classrooms/

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James Meredith On Black America: We’re ‘Failing Our Young People’ By Maria Lloyd Left: Dr. James Meredith

In recognition of Black History Month, Civil Rights activist Dr. James Meredith spoke to 300 majority African-American people at J.F. Drake State Technical College in Huntsville, AL. Dr. Meredith, famously known for being the first African-American to attend University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS, spoke to the audience about carrying out the work of God and raising children. Dr. Meredith said society today is turning its back on the Bible and children. “My present mission from God is to get the black people in Mississippi to do for themselves all they can do to improve their lives,” he said. ”The truth of the matter is we black people are failing our young people. Usually, we’re blaming somebody else in the past as being the reason.” Above: Meredith, dressed sharp in a suit and tie, sitting at a desk, waiting for class to start. A few frames later show some students at desks and a teacher at a blackboard. But as the sequence evolves, the classroom empties in protest. Even the person teaching the class exits. And then it's just Meredith, sitting among empty desks littered with books and bags left by students in a rush to flee a room he's in — because he's in it.

The 79-year-old author of 16 books also encouraged the audience to mentor a child. ”Why did the religious leaders pass their brother by and not help him?” Dr. Meredith asked. “It may be the same reason we old folks today fail to do our job. Those preachers probably asked the wrong question: What will happen to me if I help this man? Like the elders of today, when we see a child in need of guidance, we ask, What will happen to me if I help this child? The question should be, What will happen to this child if I don’t do my job?” The most popular point that Dr. Meredith made during his speech was when he addressed the need of providing children a structured upbringing, and with a 72 percent out-ofwedlock childbirth in the African-American community, a structured upbringing is becoming less and less popular. 116

Dr. Meredith added that children who have a potential to be a famous athlete get most of the attention. ”Every black boy 9 years old with extra athletic ability has got somebody following themdaily,” he said. “Any dumb person can tell if a child has extra special talent – whether they are smart, real smart, average or slow. Right now, we’re losing all our young people because nobody is monitoring them.” Dr. Meredith accepted questions from the audience and signed copies of his latest work titled, A Mission From God. Below: James Meredith escorted to the University of Mississippi campus in the fall of 1962. (AP) http://www.blackbluedog.com/2013/02/news/james-meredith-on-black-americawere-failing-our-young-people/

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NAACP Pres Ben Jealous Speaks on Joining Incarceration Coalition with Dr. Boyce Watkins and Russell Simmons By Benjamin Todd Jealous

The United States has five percent of the world’s people but twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. For the sake of our families and future we must do better. Our nation leads the world in the incarceration of our own citizens, both on a per capita basis and in terms of total prison population. The problem stems from the decades-old “tough on crime” policies from the Nixon/Reagan era. We are stuck in a failed “tough on crime” mind state that is characterized by converting lowlevel drug addicts into hardened criminals by repeatedly locking them up when they should be sent to rehab for drug treatment. More than 500,000 of the 2.3 million people behind bars in the U.S. are incarcerated for nothing more than a non-violent drug offense. And over 40% of them are people of color. Although rates of drug use and selling are comparable across racial and ethnic lines, blacks and Latinos are far more likely to be criminalized for drug law violations than whites. One in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 28 Latino children and one in 57 white children. This failed approach to criminal justice has both a direct and indirect impact on our children. Immediately, many children are faced with foster care as their parent is locked away for a non-violent drug offense. In our report, “Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate”, we found that situations like this lead to achievement gaps as early as grade school in communities that have high incarceration rates. The report also shows that mass incarceration siphons funds from our schools, leading to skyrocketing public education costs for students hoping to attend college. There is no question that violent criminals must be locked up. Unfortunately, the “tough on crime” strategy of the last four decades has become a dangerous distraction for law enforcement, diverting attention and resources away from violent offenders and onto non-violent acts that require counseling, not incarceration. 118

The fact is that so called “tough on crime” policies have failed our nation and its families. It is time to move to “smart on crime” policies that reduce sentences for drug offenses – most notably mandatory minimum sentences – and focus on rehabilitation and prevention rather than punishment. Encouragingly, this kind of reform is being sought on the state, local and national levels. In the United States Senate, Chairman of Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have introduced the “Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013″. The bill would allow federal judges to bypass federal mandatory minimum sentences when the sentence does not fit the crime. It is encouraging to see a bipartisan effort on criminal justice reform, based on the notion that mass incarceration is draining state budgets and national prison capacities. Meanwhile, President Obama released his budget proposal this week and called for the largest increase in drug treatment and prevention funding in at least a decade. This is a promising sign that key players in the White House are looking at drug addiction as a public health issue, instead of an issue of crime and punishment. Progress is also being made in statehouses, where rising prison costs are straining state budgets. In Georgia, South Carolina and Texas, the NAACP and progressive groups have teamed up Republican legislatures to reduce mandatory minimum sentences and increase options for parole. In Texas, the NAACP worked with Tea Party leaders and a coalition of activists to pass 12 “smart on crime” reforms that resulted in Texas scheduling its first prison closure in state history. Support for criminal justice reform is not just limited to civil rights activists. This month, the NAACP, hip-hop pioneer Russell Simmons, Dr. Boyce Watkins and coalition of over 175 artists, actors, athletes, elected officials and advocates brought national attention to this issue by presenting an open letter to President Obama, urging him to double down on his efforts to move to a criminal justice model based on prevention and rehabilitation. With signers like Will Smith, Scarlet Johansen and Richard Branson, the letter has expanded the movement to bring and end to the failed “”tough on crime” policies. If we allow the current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his life. The time has come for all of us to do all that we can. The future of our families, states, and nation demand it. If we are going to find our way back to first in education and job creation, we must first decide to stop leading the world in incarceration. 119

Communist Party, Socialist Not Sure â&#x20AC;&#x153;What the Big Deal Isâ&#x20AC;? Over Melissa Harris-Perry

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The Communist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America don’t see what the big deal is when it comes to MSNBC Host’s Melissa Harris-Perry’s latest 30-second spot advocating for society to move beyond its “private idea” of kids belonging to parents and families and to the notion that they belong to “whole communities.” “How is she saying that? She doesn’t say that at all,” said Libero della Piana, who is one of the Vice Chairs of the Communist Party USA, when asked if he thought Harris-Perry was advocating the idea of children belonging to the government. “She’s not saying children are the property of the community or anything else. She’s saying that they are our responsibility. I think that’s something most people would agree with. That’s why we have public education. I don’t think that’s a communist idea. Communists certainly support it,” he told Politic365. (On a historical note, the tenth plank of the Communist Manifesto reads: “Free education for all children in public schools.”) Della Piana, who also serves as the communications director for CPUSA, said that her quote didn’t seem “to deal with the Communist Party or Communism” at all.

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“I don’t quite see what people are getting at,” said CPUSA’s communications director. CPUSA does encourage its members to read Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engel’s Communist Manifesto. But the CPUSA official added “its also quite old and a lot of it doesn’t apply although the principles [do].” Chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto reads: “The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.” Still, della Piana didn’t see a connection when read this passage. “First of all, what Marx and Engels were talking about–what they were saying that its capitalism that dehumanizes and commodifies children and that they speak about the family but in fact children become another commodity and this was the era of child labor,” he said. “The era of arranged marriages and property rights being transacted that way.” He added that “in that framework children are reduced to nothing.” Rather, he believes that Harris-Perry was saying something most Americans could agree with. “It seems to me that she’s sort of reflected the basic idea that the vast majority of people would agree with that society has some collective responsibility for 122

children. That’s something everybody agrees with that’s why we have public education. That’s something the vast majority of people support.” His comrade agreed. “I don’t get what the big deal is,” said Roberta Wood, Secretary Treasurer of CPUSA, adding that she didn’t think Harris-Perry’s comments had anything to do with communism or socialism. “You know it seems like they’re talking about society taking responsibility for all the children and as far as I know that’s the way to look at people to see how human beings should be,” she told Politic365. Even the Democratic Socialists of America didn’t interpret the MSNBC host’s comments the way many conservatives did. “The idea that it takes a village to raise a child, essentially that a nurturing community cares about all of it’s children, is certainly not socialist (though we would agree with the sentiment),” wrote DSA National Director Maria Svart in an email to Politic365. “Democratic socialists do believe that socially created wealth (in other words, wealth created through the cooperative, collective endeavor of people working together) should be democratically invested, rather than largely going to the 1% and being used however the 1% sees fit,” she continued. “We believe that when people have a voice in how public resources are invested, they want many of those resources invested in education and other programs that help kids.” Conservatives, however, found Harris-Perry’s comments chilling–and didn’t interpret the MSNBC host’s words as those in the Communist Party of the United States and Democratic Socialists of America did. The most controversial quote in the 30-second spot was where Harris-Perry said “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.” 123

That statement to many conservative observers was tantamount to saying kids belong to the state. That is, to the government. Radio host Rush Limbaugh took on the ad on his show on Monday. “What she is saying, Melissa Harris-Perry, what she is saying here is as old as communist genocide,” said Limbaugh. “But, the fact that it is said in America on a cable news channel, and is considered fairly benign is what has changed.” Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin tweeted that the ad was “Unflippingbelieveable.” “Apparently, MSNBC doesn’t think your children belong to you,” she tweeted on Sunday. Harris-Perry “doubled-down” on her statements on Tuesday in a post on MSNBC. She said her e-mail inbox swelled with “hateful, personal attacks” the day prior, and that she agrees with pro-life advocates that “kids are not the property of their parents.” Additionally, she says that her message “was a call to see ourselves connected to a larger whole,” adding “I don’t want your kids.” According to a 2012 Gallup poll conducted between August 9-12, 39 percent of adults nationwide said the federal government should be more involved in education and 36 percent said it should become less involved. Only 24 percent said it’s involvement should stay the same. And a 2012 PDK/Gallup poll found that the most common challenge Americans thought faced public schools was their funding, a sentiment the annual poll found went back a few years. Historically, the United States federal government hasn’t always been so involved in public education. There is precedent in the United States where people were distrustful of parents and legislatively attempted to do something about it–historical facts that would resonate with conservatives. “As an 1851 article in The Massachusetts Teacher reported: “In too many instances the parents are unfit guardians of their own children … the children must be gathered up and forced into school,” writes the Clare Boothe Luce Policy

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Institute in a timeline called “A Brief History of Education in America.” Between 1865 and 1900, the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction wrote, “The child should be taught to consider his instructor, in many respects, superior to the parent in point of authority … [T]he vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous,” according to the same timeline. A transcript of Harris-Perry’s ad called “Collective Responsibility” is below. “We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had a private notion of children, your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility and not just the household’s we start making better investments.” www.politics365.com

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In New Orleans, Political Brawl Over Police, Jail By Kevin McGill

Above: In this photo combo of images, New Orleans Sheriff Marlin Gusman, left, speaks to reporters at a news conference outside the construction site of new jail facilities in New Orleans, on Thursday, April 4, 2013; while at right, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu speaks during a news conference at City Hall in New Orleans, on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013 .

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A political brawl has broken out between the mayor and a sheriff who runs the city jail, which has come under scrutiny for a video showing inmates using drugs, drinking beer and handling a gun. Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked a judge last Tuesday to take the extraordinary step of placing the jail under federal oversight, effectively wresting control of it away from Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman. Landrieu is upset over an agreement Gusman reached with the U.S. Justice Department to reform the jail, saying the city, which funds the jail, can’t afford the potential expense. “Stated simply, the person at the top is neither accountable, nor capable of exercising leadership skills,” the city said in court documents that cited the video and the recent guilty pleas of two jail officials in a bid-rigging bribery case. Landrieu is trying to reform the much-maligned police department and reached a widely heralded agreement with the Justice Department last year to clean up the agency. Now he’s trying to back out of it in light of Gusman’s separate agreement. Landrieu said the city was making changes but can’t afford all the requirements outlined in the jail and the police agreements. Gusman believes the city has consistently underfunded the jail and suggested race may be behind the attacks. The African-American sheriff recently told reporters that Landrieu, who is white, was employing “Archie Bunker rhetoric,” invoking the name of the fictional television bigot. “They have to be looking at something different than just the record,” Gusman told The New Orleans Tribune. “And maybe they’re looking at the person who’s there. Maybe they’re looking at — they don’t like the way that person looks.” 127

Landrieu, a Democrat who carried a majority of the black vote in his 2010 election, has not directly responded to the remarks on race. While the problems at the police department have been widely known, less publicized have been unsanitary, violent and dangerous jail conditions that have long been the subject of lawsuits and court orders. The extent of the dysfunction was driven home during a recent federal court hearing on the jail reform pact when videos, apparently made by inmates in 2009, were released. Shown to a stunned courtroom audience, one video showed inmates smoking, snorting and injecting drugs. Some drank beer, some had cellphones and one inmate ejected bullets from a handgun. In another video, an inmate was seen wandering Bourbon Street and boasting, “Y’all know I’m supposed to be in jail right now.” Gusman, a Democrat who was first elected sheriff in 2004, has said the dilapidated building where the drug party and escape happened has since been closed. Two inmates who escaped, including the one seen on Bourbon Street, were arrested and prosecuted. His sketchy memory of seeing the video in 2009, and his failure to involve state or federal authorities in the investigation, drew harsh criticism from jail consultants in court. 128

The agreement to make changes at the jail, known as a consent decree, would settle complaints the Southern Poverty Law Center filed on behalf of inmates. The agreement, which was signed by Gusman, is awaiting a judge’s approval. During the recent court hearing, though, Gusman downplayed problems at the jail. “I think we’re doing pretty good without the consent decree,” Gusman said, adding that a jail building now under construction with help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be a major step in improving conditions. How much the jail agreement will cost is in dispute and will be the subject of federal hearings in May. The Landrieu administration, citing one estimate in a court filing, says it could add $22 million annually to the $30.5 million the city already turns over to Gusman to house roughly 1,600 city inmates. The costs would cover medical services, higher pay for deputies and a larger jail staff. City officials questioned whether he really needs that much money. “The jail consent decree has undermined our ability to move forward with the costs associated with the police consent decree,” Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni said. The city budgeted about $7 million for this year to begin complying with terms of the changes in the police department, where decades of scandal include the shootings of unarmed civilians in the law-and-order meltdown after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

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The police reforms could cost in the neighborhood of $50 million over the coming years. The bigticket items so far include $1.4 million to begin equipping all patrol cars with cameras to better document police, $1.2 million for new computer equipment and $2 million for a monitor’s office that will make sure the police are toeing the following the pact. While the administration complained the sheriff has asked for excessive funding given a jail population that has been decreasing, Gusman has cited increasing medical costs and the need for more pay for overworked guards. “The only person who is holding out in moving forward and doing the things we need to do is Mayor Landrieu,” Gusman said in a news release after the city’s latest court filing. “It’s disappointing.” www.ap.com

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Charles War: A Young Up & Comer Charles Ware, son of Karen Davis and Eddie Mack Williams, is a native of Springfield, IL. His proven commitment to the community and family values brings a needed perspective to Springfieldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eastside. With more than ten years of being a barber in the community, Charles has made a strong connection with many of the mothers, fathers, and youths of cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eastside community. Charles is currently the Founder and President of the Springfield Community Development League, which is a nonprofit grassroots organization formed to be a voice for human rights and social justice. He was also appointed precinct committeeman for Capital #6 by Sangamon County Democrat Chairman Doris Turner. Charles was a part of the Lincoln Land Community College Model Illinois Government team, which won the Outstanding Small Delegation award at the 35th annual Model Illinois Government simulation Feb. 28 through March 3 at the Illinois State Capitol this year. Charles was also honored as the Outstanding Freshman Delegate, selected from more than 230 delegates from around the State. He was also elected as Majority Whip in the Senate. Charles is a young up and comer in the Sangamon County Democrat Party and has hopes and aspirations of perusing public office in the near future. He is married to Erika Smith-Ware and he is the proud father of three beautiful daughters Kaiden (8), Shyne (4), and Nia (2). Charles is perusing a degree in education and political science.

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Young, Urban and Culturally Savvy, Meet the Afropolitans By Mark Tutton

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Left: Brendah Nyakudya, Afropolitan Magazine

editor

Young, urban and culturally savvy, meet the Afropolitans -- a new generation of Africans and people of African descent with a very global outlook. Something of a buzzword in the diaspora, the term "Afropolitan" first appeared in a 2005 magazine article by Nigerian/Ghanaian writer Taiye Selasi. Selasi wrote about multilingual Africans with different ethnic mixes living around the globe -- as she put it "not citizens but Africans of the world." Now the term has spread, used not just by New York hipsters and in trendy European capitals but in Africa's own multicultural megacities. But just who are these Afropolitans? Brendah Nyakudya is the editor of Afropolitan magazine, produced in South Africa. A Zimbabwean based in Johannesburg, who has lived in London, she has the kind of international background that typifies an Afropolitan. "I have African roots but I've kind of been raised by the world, and that's helped form my identity," she says. An Afropolitan is someone who has roots in Africa, raised by the world, but still has an interest in the continent and is making an impact. Her magazine is aimed at successful urban 30-somethings -- intelligent, upwardly mobile and politically aware -- most of whom she says can be described as Afropolitans. "An Afropolitan is someone who has roots in Africa, raised by the world, but still has an interest in the continent and is making an impact, is feeding back into the continent and trying to better it," according to Nyakudya. She also believes the term can apply to non-Africans. "We like to think that it doesn't matter where you were born, if you find yourself on the continent and you love the continent, that makes you an Afropolitan," says Nyakudya. But for some people the term isn't so easy to define. 133

Above: Tolu Ogunlesi

Tolu Ogunlesi is a Nigerian journalist who is based in Lagos. He studied for his Masters degree in England and last year chaired a debate at London's V&A museum on what it means to be an Afropolitan. He says it's a problematic term and its meaning is hard to pin down. "It's one of those words that people invest with their own meanings, people interpret it as they want," he says. "Some people dismiss the concept entirely, saying there's nothing that people who are called Afropolitans share in common - what they have in common is superficial." He feels the term is too often applied only to those living in the diaspora. "It's a problematic term because it's supposed to combine (the words) African and cosmopolitan," says Ogunlesi. "What it should mean is an African person in an urban environment, with the outlook and mindset that comes with urbanization -- people who live Lagos, Nairobi, and have this world-facing outlook. "But people who consider themselves Afropolitan are not here in the continent, they are out there in the global capitals." See also: Sounds of the Sahara Minna Salami, who blogs as Msafropolitan, is a true global citizen. Born in Finland to a Nigerian father and a Finnish mother she has lived in Nigeria, Sweden, Spain and New York, and now lives in London. 134

She agrees that some people see Afropolitanism as existing only outside Africa, but says that, in reality, it applies just as much to people living in the continent. Left: Minna Salami - msafropolian

"Some people have interpreted it as a diaspora movement but it absolutely isn't," she says. "When you go back to the original term 'African and cosmopolitanism,' Africa has very many cosmopolitan cities ... and in those cities you have art scenes and music and all kinds of creativity that's influenced by cosmopolitanism." For her it's a movement that is politically aware and has an obligation to correct decades of Africa being misrepresented as a "dark, failing continent." "Afropolitans are a group of people who are either of African origin or influenced by African culture, who are emerging internationally using African cultures in creative ways to change perceptions about Africa," Salami says. Salami adds that social media has been key to the movement, creating global citizens who are in tune with the same cultural trends and political issues. Ogunlesi agrees. He says that while ordinary Nigerians don't define themselves as Afropolitans, the prevalence of the internet and satellite television means young Nigerians do have a global outlook and are exposed to much of the same pop culture as youngsters all over the world. And social media also means that the coolest in contemporary African culture is quick to travel around the world. African and Africa-influenced pop culture is a key part of the movement. Afropolitanism implies a certain type of cool, with an aesthetic influenced by African style magazine Arise and a soundtrack provided by anyone from Nigerian musician Femi Kuti to South African "township tech" producer Spoeke Mathambo. But Nyakudya insists that to be a true Afropolitan takes more than a multi-cultural background and the right record collection -- it means having a commitment to making the continent a better place. She says: "From philanthropic work to trying to lobby for political reform there's a lot that needs to be done in Africa and if you're going to call yourself an Afropolitan you need to show what you're doing to deserve to be called an Afropolitan." 135

13 Young African Business/Economic Leaders To Watch in 2013 By Oluwabusayo Sotunde It was American football coach, Vincent Lombardi that said, “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.” Today, there are many young Africans blazing trails across the continent and globally – new breed, cosmopolitan Africans, shaping Africa’s future. Their social/business activities in one way or the other illuminates the potential that will shape the business and economic future of Africa. Ventures Africa has identified 13 young Africans who have contributed to shaping the future of the continent and the world at large; through their activities and businesses, these global leaders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and intellectuals are young, talented and with proven genius in their distinctive fields. To cap it all, they are all under 35 years! In no respective order, here are 13 Young African Business/Economic Leaders to look out for in 2013. Ladi Delano, Founder & CEO, Bakrie Delano Africa (BDA) Nigerian serial entrepreneur, Ladi Delano made his first millions selling liquor while living in China. In 2004, at age 22, he founded Solidarnosc Asia, a Chinese alcoholic beverage company that made Solid XS, a premium brand of Vodka. The company later expanded with the launching of a dining and entertainment venue, The Collection.

$20 million.

Solid XS went on to achieve about 70 percent market share in China and was distributed across over 33 cities in China, with revenue of over $22 million annually. After some time, with the global economic downturn, Solid XS was sold to a rival liquor company for about

However before selling Solid XS, Delano had set up a real estate investment company focused on mainland China – called Delano Reid Group. The company went on to raise over $80 million for real estate investments in mainland China profiting from China’s real estate economic boom. Apart from the real estate 136

company, Delano is also a founding partner in DRG CIN Energy and Global DRG Capital, providers of global energy solutions. In December 2011, Delano shifted focus from the Asia economic boom to establish his latest venture, Bakrie Delano Africa (BDA), in Africa. This time, he partnered with Indonesia conglomerate, the Bakrie Group under a joint venture partnership. His company partnership with Bakrie Group was created to facilitate the expansion of the South East Asia’s conglomerate, in Africa. Through the joint venture, the Bakrie Group would invest about $1 billion over five years in Bakrie Delano Africa (BDA) in areas as diverse as mining, oil & gas and agriculture. An entrepreneur true to his origin, Ladi believes “Nigeria is attractive to the Bakrie Group as an investment destination for several reasons. Firstly, it is experiencing excellent rates of economic growth, approximately 8 percent per year, which is forecast by a wide cross-section of respected economic commentators to continue over the medium to long term.” The young businessman is definitely one to watch in 2013. Clare Akamanzi, Chief Operating Officer of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) Clare is the Chief Operating Officer of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), a Government institution in charge of accelerating economic growth and development in Rwanda. A foundation member of the board since its creation in 2008; 33 year-old Clare had worked as RDB’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer. Then, she was in charge of Business Operations and Services at RDB. Clare grew up in Uganda where her parents had been taken as refugees during the genocide-attack in her home country –Rwanda. Today, she is one of the young Rwandans actively involved in the economic reformation of her country. Her awareness to public service started at the age of 18 when she worked for Minister of Gender Inyumba at the Ingando- a solidarity camp. The Masters Degree holder in Trade and Investment Policy cum International Trade and Investment Lawyer has a passion for business promotion. Before her stint at RDB, Clare served as Rwanda’s commercial diplomat in London and a trade negotiator for the Government of Rwanda at the World Trade Organisation at the age of 25. She was also the Deputy Director-General of the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA) from 2006-2008. 137

The young business leader have also chaired the National Customer care campaign in her country and she is credited as the founder of Prosave, a 100 member savings cooperative that promotes a savings culture among Rwandans. In 2012, Clare was the only Rwandan among the 192 global young leaders from 59 countries honoured for their outstanding leadership, professional accomplishments and commitment to society by the World Economic Forum. Ashish Thakkar, Co-Founder and CEO, MaraGroup At the age of 29, the British-born Ugandan is the co-founder and CEO of Mara Group – a Ugandan conglomerate with tentacles in financial services, hotels, renewable energy, technology and manufacturing with active presence in 17 African countries. Under his leadership, the annual revenue of Mara Group has been able to clock approximately $100 million.Aside Mara, Thakkar founded his first company, Raps and later Riley, a manufacturing company that is lauded for producing the most modern corrugated packaging plants in East Africa and Central Africa. He also created Kensington, a real estate business in Dubai and Africa. Thakkar is a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist. Through his foundation, Mara Foundation –which is one of Africa’s largest non-profit social enterprises – Thakkar has been able to provide mentorship and seed funding to young East African entrepreneurs. He also funds Next Generation Schools, an independent charity focused on improving education quality in disadvantaged secondary schools in Uganda. This year, the Ugandan billionaire launched Mara.com, Africa’s first multi-lingual online portal for youth mentorship and entrepreneurship. The Mara.com platform will have three dimensions to it: Mentorship, Jobs and Dating. His venture – Mara Mentors, which started as an offline venture by Mara Foundation have been able to mentor about 120 companies.

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Achumile “Ace” Majija, Group Lead for the Risk & Capital MI at Prudential Momentum Plc. A University of Port Elizabeth (now the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) Economics and Finance graduate and MBA with Merit from the University of Leeds Business School in the UK amongst other qualifications; Ace is one of the few quiet African young leaders setting the standards for other African youth to follow. Sometimes referred to as “Ace” or the “Young Obama from Africa”; the Umthatha- South African born is an avid volunteer and youth ambassador before venturing into business professionally where he started off in Insurance operations. He has also represented his country at the World Youth Congress in Scotland, the World Business Dialogue in Germany, the G20 Youth Summit in Canada, and the World Youth Congress in Turkey. At 28, Ace is the first African on the prudential momentum programme (an international leadership development programme for the group) for Prudential Momentum Plc – an international financial services company, personal banking, insurance and pension products UK & Europe and the US. Ace is currently based at the Group Head Office, as a Group Lead for the Risk & Capital MI and the Use & Embedding for the Internal Model Application Process (IMAP). Ace also sits on various boards including UTHANDO SA, Inqubela Investment holdings, and AIESEC University of Cape Town and he is very much involved in socio-economic development projects in his home country. Eniola Mafe, Africa Partnership

Program

Manager

Vital Voices Global

Recently described as a “Convener” in the Diplomatic Courier’s Top 99 under 33 2012. Eniola Mafe is the Africa Program Manager at Vital Voices Global Partnership, a Washington, D.C.-based international non-profit that works with women leaders to advance women’s human rights, political participation, and economic empowerment. Her role as the Program Manager for Africa in Vital Voices Global Partnerships allows her to “bring people together in creative ways to address a pressing international issue or enhance the foreign policy community.” 139

With a special focus on organizational development, entrepreneurship, and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, Eniola manages the Africa Businesswomen’s Network (ABWN), a partnership among local African businesswomen’s organizations that enhances the management, business development, and leadership skills of businesswomen. Eniola also manages other programs focused on the growth of women-led small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). According to her “Empowering women isn’t just about the women’s issues. It is about enabling them to have a say in broader issues that have an impact on their world.” Prior to joining Vital Voices, Eniola worked with Women’s World Banking Ghana (WWBG), where she developed social impact methodology to quantify the social and community impact of the microfinance institutions on its clients, investors, and wider community. According to an article, ”Women like Eniola are the faces and voices of the future – young women who are international in their outlook, multi-dimensional, able to mix and move amongst diverse groups and different circles and can traverse boundaries with their sophisticated global worldview.” Lorna Rutto, Sustainable Living and Green Technology Entrepreneur, Ecopost Lorna is the CEO of Ecopost, a Nairobi-based recycling company. Born in Kaptembwa Slums in Kenya, Lorna turned her childhood hobby of melting plastic litters to make ornaments into a viable and eco-sensible business. After working in the financial industry with her commerce and accounting certificate, Lorna created Ecopost in 2009 – a business that utilizes waste plastic to manufacture plastic lumber and posts as an alternative to wood. The plastic lumbers are also used to create fencing posts, sign posts, building and construction. Lorna, 28, has sold over 20,000 posts which cumulated to saving over 250 Acres of forest and withdrawn over 1,000,000 kg of plastic waste from the environment. Her business today generates about $120,000 revenue in a year. Since inception, she has been able to create about 400 jobs in the Kenyan employment-competitive market. She has structured her business in such a way that it will create over 100,000 jobs in the next 15 years. Her business have not only been able to create jobs for youth and marginalised women in the slums; it has also come a long way in supporting Kenya’s eco-sensible ban of plastic bags. Among other awards, Lorna won the 2010 Bid Network Nature Challenge Award; 140

2010 SEED Award, the 2009 Enablis Business Award and the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Nature Award where she took home 1.3 million Shillings ($15, 095 ). Yetunde Odugbesan, Yetunde Global Consulting LLC. Yetunde is a young Nigerian blazing trails in Africa and the diaspora. A graduate of the United Nations Worldview Institute – an executive training program for global business professionals, Yetunde is currently working on her PhD in on political corruption and its effect on governmental performance and social services being delivered by local and state government at the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University in New Jersey. 25 year-old Yetunde is not new to leadership roles. In high school, she served as a student president, Student Ambassador, Captain of the Varsity Cheerleading team, Founder of the poetry club and most importantly – a consistent honor roll student. Today, she sits on various boards that are aimed at alleviating many of the social and economic issues in various African countries and with her managing consulting company, Yetunde Global Consulting, she offers valuable insight on how to develop and leverage strategic partnerships globally as well as provide branding techniques that can help business and organisation grow to reach its full potential. She also formed the Young Women’s Guide, a mentorship organisation that helps connect girls with women leaders and groups that can best help them pursue their quest for social change. Yetunde is a gifted public speaker and youth leader. Her messages are sometimes on key ways to building a better nation. She has been invited by Nigerian governments and the World Bank to speak at conferences and summits. One of such conference includes the U.N. World Conference on the Status of Women, advocating for programs that will empower girls in Africa to realize their potential, even in the midst of poverty and political strife. Fred Swaniker, Africa Leadership Academy (ALA) Ghanaian-born serial entrepreneur and business consultant, Fred Swaniker is the co-founder of African leadership Academy (ALA) – a prestigious business in Johannesburg, South Africa that trains and mentors Africa young leaders. Fred co-founded ALA alongside Chris Bradford, Peter Mombaur, and Acha Leke, in 141

2004 but the school became operational in 2008. With the vision of creating up to 6,000 new leaders for Africa through the ALA’s leadership program in the next 50 years; Fred is helping Africa to shape the path of Africa future business leader in act of leadership and Pan-Africanism. Fred, 35, is contributing to Africa’s leadership development through his academy by giving the youngsters a world-class academic education, training in entrepreneurship, exposure to mentors and role models, and framework that will enable them to work in an ethical environment. One of Fred’s first formal leadership roles was when he was appointed headmaster of a school in Botswana by his grandmother at just 17 years old, and on a gap year before beginning university. Aside ALA, Fred is also the founder of Global Leadership Adventures, a leadership development program for youth throughout the world which has about five campuses around the globe (Ghana, South Africa, India, Brazil, and Costa Rica). He also helped to launch Mount Pleasant English Medium School, one of the top-performing private elementary schools in Botswana where he served as a director. Fred had also worked as the founding Chief Operating Officer of Synexa Life Sciences, a biotechnology company in Cape Town that today employs 30 South African scientists. Before, ALA, he worked in McKinsey & Company, where he advised management teams of large companies across Africa. Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, Founder/Managing Director SoleRebels, Ethiopian-born entrepreneur Bethlehem Alemu, 32, launched her company in Zenabwork, a small village on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia in 2004 as a means of creating jobs for the people in her community by turning their unexploited artisan skill to a worldwide eco-sensible product. Today, the company she started out of necessity is the world’s first Fairtrade Certified footwear by the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) and she has since expanded her business to other continents. In 2012, the Ethiopia-base entrepreneur opened the company’s first stand-alone store in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second largest city. She has since opened three more with the goal of opening about 30 outlets all together.

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Bethlehem is globally recognized to have built a world-class brand from the scratch while empowering her community and country. She projects the company’s global retail roll-out will add $15-20 million in revenue by 2015. The accounting graduate was been honoured as a Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum, 2011 among other accolades. She received the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the 2012 World Economic Forum on Africa which this year took place in Ethiopia. James Mworia, Chief Executive Officer, Centum Investment Company In 2001, James started out in Centum as an intern helping to file documents – today, he is the CEO of the Nairobi and Uganda Securities Exchanges listed firm; Centum Investment Company Limited. Centum is the largest quoted investment firm in East Africa with substantial equity investments in blue chips companies like Coca-Cola, UAP Insurance, AON Minet, Nairobi Bottlers, Kenya Wine Agency, Kisii Bottlers, General Motors East Africa and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB). Before Centum, his first job was filing in a law firm during school holidays when he was in high school. He has also worked as a senior investment officer at Transcentury Ltd, Kenya. Mworia, at 34, is one of the youngest CEOs in Kenya and is also an advocate of the High Court, a Chartered Financial Analyst and a Certified Public Accountant all roll in one. He was honored in 2011 as the Africa Young Business Leader of the Year 2011 at the All Africa Business Leader Awards. June Arunga, Founder and Chief Executive of Open Quest Media LLC. June is a law degree holder from the University of Buckingham and founder/president of Open Quest Media LLC, a successful multimedia production company based in New York. She also co-founded Black Star Line SA with Herman Chinery-Hesse, a software engineer often referred to as “Bill Gates of Ghana”. The company is a technology-solution provider in the field of mobile phonebased payments and money transfer which particularly targets African entrepreneurs. June, 31, is a Member of the board of advisers for Global Envison, USA and a Senior Fellow at Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy. 143

The Nakuru, Kenya born Arunga has been named by Forbes Magazine as one of its 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa and one of Fast Company’s 100 most Creative People in Business. June is passionate about globalization and development changes in Africa. Her work over the years has reflected this. In 2003, she did a BBC-produced documentary on Africa tagged-The Devil’s Foothpath with Insight News TV – 5,000 mile journey from Cairo to Cape Town through six countries conflict inflicted countries. She also served as the writer/co-presenter on the a documentary, Africa: Who is to Blame?; Africa’s Ultimate Resource – a profile on African immigrant entrepreneurs, why they leave and what happens to their ventures when they move business from one continent to another; co-authored The Cell-Phone Revolution in Kenya. Jessica Shelver, Network Development with Democratic Alliance (DA) Abroad

and

Affiliations

Officer

Johannesburg-born Jessica Shelver was awarded the “Rising Star of the Year” 2012 at the annual South African Business Awards, hosted by the South African Chamber of Commerce at SA House in London. At only 29, Jessica has contributed immensely to shaping the future of politics and business in Africa’s biggest economy, South Africa. Jessica fell in love with Politics a few years back when she became aware of the power and the influence government and politics has throughout the democratic world. According to her, “Politics for me is the power to effect change, and to make a difference.” Having campaigned vigorously against the controversial Protection of State Information Bill, holding protests in London, Washington and Perth. She was also involved with a number of senior Democratic Alliance leaders, including Helen Zille and Dr Wilmot James, at events in London that have focused on investment and economic growth in our country. The DA Abroad have also partnered with the Ubunye-Unity Trust to raise funds to purchase desks and chairs for a school in the township of Diepsloot, Gauteng – these were delivered to the school at the end of November. Aside politics, Jessica is also passionate about educational development and community service. “Education is the tool for change and insight. Without it, our world and our nation will continue to descend into petty corruption and unenlightened decision-making.” she says. Surely, she’s one to watch come 2013. 144

Isis Nyongo, Vice President and Managing Director, InMobi Africa. At 35, Isis is one of the youngest and most vibrant technology female managers in Africa. She has always worked in media and tech space in Africa. As a young African leader in the tech industry, she has worked in with MyJobsEve, the first online job site in Kenya before moving on to work for MTV and then Google (Business Development Manager for Googleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s operation in Africa) where she helped develop mobile strategies for the brand in Africa. Now, the Stanford and Harvard Business school graduate works is the Vice-President and Managing Director for Africa of InMobi, an innovative global mobile advertising and one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest independent mobile advertising networks that help advertisers reach mobile internet users. Isis was selected as one of a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in January, 2012.

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‘Free Angela’ revels in Angela Davis’ political rise and liberation Opinion

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By Courtney Garcia Above: Activist Angela Davis attends Black Girls Rock! 2011 at the Paradise Theater on October 15, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by John W.

Many words describe Angela Davis – radical, intellectual, Communist, feminist, rebel, scholar, revolutionary– but the story of her life can be defined by one: justice. As a civil rights activist and prison abolitionist, Davis has spent decades fighting for a fair society, and in the process, circumventing the systematic prejudices she so fervently denounces. In the new documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, filmmaker Shola Lynch explores the moment 41 years ago that Davis became an international political icon, a woman both exalted and vilified as she fought for the right to assert her beliefs, her speech and consequently her liberty. “In the landscape of that period, when you think about political figures, when you think about mass media figures, there are very few examples, if any, of strong women,” Lynch tells theGrio. “Let alone strong black women.” The movie centers on Davis’ implication in a courthouse murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy effort on August 7, 1970 in Marin County, California, the trial that ensued thereafter and Davis’ eventual acquittal. Though only 26 years old at the time, it was the culmination of a riotous period in Davis’ life, where she had 147

already been labeled a terrorist by the government, and fired from her job as a professor at UCLA. “Angela Davis is associated with [the Black Panthers] and she stands up for her rights and her beliefs,” Lynch explains. “It starts with UCLA and standing up for her job. It went against the school policy and the law, I’m pretty sure, for the school to try and fire her for being a Communist…That’s what democracy is all about, that we have freedom of speech, and academic freedom, within the context of the university, to discuss ideas that may or may not be popular. So, the idea that she was standing up for her rights unequivocally is very attractive.” After receiving death threats for her socialist ties, Davis was linked to George Jackson, a Panther and member of the Soledad Brothers trio, when a gun she’d purchased for defense was used during his courthouse ambush. Several people were killed, and Davis was indicted for her connection to the crime. She went into hiding following the incident, becoming the third woman ever to appear on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, and was eventually captured and detained without bail as she went on trial. Lynch spent eight years researching Davis’ story and bringing the film project to fruition. It serves as a recounting of a significant moment in Davis’ life that would influence her future work, and inspire a faction of constituents backing her cause. “When I started [making the film], it was post 9-11, and there was all this talk about what was a terrorist, and who was a terrorist,” the filmmakers recalls. “What attracted me about this story was that this was a way of discussing it without having the raw emotion of discussing 9-11…It also resonates in the present with prisoners’ rights…In the 70’s, [Davis] was starting to articulate a prisoners’ rights kind of activism that was very new at the time. Talking about prisoners – young men, primarily black and Latino – that had been caught up in petty crimes and now been in prison for extended periods of time.” “She wanted to call them political prisoners,” Lynch continues. “There were a lot of people on the political side of protesting, and revolution and anti-war that had 148

real discomfort with that because it’s like, ‘Well these people are criminals.’ And so the whole George Jackson story really relates to the situation with prisoners’ rights today, and the increasing prisoner industrial complex.” As the film shows, Davis became aware of what she felt were discriminatory and inhumane practices infiltrating the criminal justice system during her own detainment. These experiences would provide a framework for her later theories on abolition democracy, camouflaged racism, penal servitude and the extension of slavery through incarceration. Furthermore, it was this period in Davis’ life that would inspire her organization, Critical Resistance, a crusade to replace prisons with social institutions that remedy conditions dooming many men and women to a life behind bars. “Her relationship with George Jackson and the Soledad brothers is what started it, and then her own incarceration – those two experiences are pivotal to the direction that her life takes after that,” Lynch observes. “She’s about justice issues, and for her they’re all intertwined. You can’t talk about one justice issue without another… Free Angela is a way to narrow that, and to give Angela a fair trial. That really was the point of the movement.” The film pulls together images, letters and video clips from Davis’ supporters around the world at the time of her trial, all of whom rallied together for her liberation. Those advocates included Nina Simone, who visited Davis in prison; Aretha Franklin, who offered to pay her bond; John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who wrote a song in her honor; and the countless men, women and children of all ages and races who organized a movement demanding her release. Lynch additionally interviews Davis and her family, her lawyers and old friends, as well as those countering her struggle to fill in details of the historical outline. Not surprisingly, Davis’ involvement took convincing.

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“Her attitude was skeptical,” Lynch remembers. “She doesn’t seem like the kind of person that revisits the past. She’s not living in the past, believe it or not. People have ideas of her from the past, but she lives in the present. She’s a retired professor now; she’s an activist speaking all over the world about, ironically, the same kinds of issues that ‘got her in trouble’ in the 70’s. So, it just took a moment to get her attention.” Lynch also points to the fact that, from Davis’ point of view, the story was limited. Thus, the documentary was a way for the activist to revisit her narrative from several vantages. Lynch adds, “There was all this stuff going on around her, whether it’s the government, whether it’s her old lawyers, whether it’s the protests and the Free Angela movement – she never experienced it. She was the beneficiary.” Free Angela and All Political Prisoners premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012 to critical praise, and opens at select theaters in the U.S. on April 5. It was executive-produced by Overbrook Entertainment partners Will Smith, James Lassiter, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Roc Nation, and is being distributed by Codeblack Films and Lionsgate. In addition to its focus on Davis’ exoneration, the production also touches on issues of American civil liberties, gun violence, and the dynamism of a cause célèbre. Though decades past, many of the concerns addressed in the movie still resonate in today’s sociopolitical climate, particularly relating to the national debate on gun control. “What I couldn’t have anticipated is the amount of gun violence that’s happened in the last few years with lone gun people walking into certain situations, either for political reasons or personal reasons, and initiating a similar kind of gun battle or massacre that happened on August 7,” Lynch admits. “I don’t think there’s any correlation in the sense that this was such a political period…People were motivated by the idea that the revolution was right around the corner, and so it’s not so individualistic. It’s not about crazy, deranged people, but there is a question of guns and how to control them, and how law enforcement responds.”Nevertheless, the movie, as Lynch notes, is not about the Second Amendment, but primarily the First, and Davis’ momentous, ongoing journey in defending it. “She doesn’t hesitate,” Lynch remarks. “Just seeing her set that example, seeing her make those choices – to stand up – they are really powerful.” http://thegrio.com 150

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Why I Support Marriage Equalityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY CHAIRMAN LINDA JOHNSON RICE PENS AN OP-ED FOR THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE IN SUPPORT OF SAME SEX MARRIAGE By Linda Johnson Rice, Chairman, Johnson Publishing Co. I have always drawn strength from my late mother's life. When Eunice Johnson set up the first major fashion show for African-American audiences more than 50 years ago, she did so at a time when black Americans, especially black women, were still fighting for a seat at the table, any table. At the same time that white-run shows would get the very latest samples from the biggest fashion houses for free, my mother would pay hand over fist to dress her models. She put up with it because she knew it was important for her charity shows. She always told me, "Linda, a person should be able to wear anything they want to wear. This is your plumage. This is how you feel about yourself." To my mother, even the worst kinds of unequal and unfair treatment shouldn't keep people from expressing their true colors. Her words are still with me today. They were running through my mind when JET, one of Johnson Publishing Company's, flagship magazines, first featured a same-sex couple in August 2011, then again in March and December of 2012. When the December magazine hit newsstands, I received dozens of calls wondering whether our readers or advertisers protested. You know what? Not one did. They celebrated right along with us because they were celebrating fairness and equality. Yet if the couples we featured walked into an Illinois courthouse and tried to get a marriage license, they'd be turned away. The same goes for couples in dozens of states. For millions of committed and loving same-sex couples, including AfricanAmerican couples, fair and equal access to marriage is still a dream. For these couples, they can't show their true colors in the way my mother believed was absolutely essential.

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It's time to change that. The General Assembly is considering a bill to treat all couples equally. I've studied the bill, and know what it says. The law includes strong religious protections, and it would ensure that no church would be required to perform a marriage it is uncomfortable performing. But the law does guarantee that every couple in Illinois has access to the same opportunities and responsibilities that marriage provides. My family has always made Chicago our home, and I care deeply about the values our company has espoused for decades. Fairness and equality means that what you are never limits who you can be. It means that a young AfricanAmerican man like my father can start a business with $500 and a dream. It means that a young African-American woman like my mother can walk into European fashion houses with her head held high and be treated with respect. And it means that African-American lesbian and gay couples should have access to the same hopes, dreams and aspirations as the straight couple down the street. Fairness and equality are Illinois values. We know in our hearts that none of us get ahead when some of us are stuck with second-class status. It's time for Illinois legislators to reaffirm those values and pass full marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. It's one simple vote, but it says something truly important about who we are. As my mother always said, in the end it comes down to how you feel about yourself. And nothing feels better than doing what's right. http://www.ebony.com

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Time is now: NAACP Supports National Rally By Teresa Haley On April 10, community, labor and immigrant rights supporters and immigrant families converged on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, urging Congress to pass common sense immigration reform in 2013 that includes a clear and direct path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous delivered the keynote address. Addressing a fiery crowd that seemed determined to outlast the heat and let their voices be heard, Jealous invigorated the activists with his speech. Speaking of the importance of the pledge of allegiance and the end of the poem reading “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”, he stated: “We say it because we want everyone to understand that in this nation, the greatest of all nations, there are no secondclass families. That is our great American conviction. That is our great American destiny, and we will not let anyone push our ship of state off course.” President Jealous then emphasized the fact that we are a nation of immigrants who had to fight off the tyranny of Great Britain. Then pulled on the history of the civil rights movement being in its 50th anniversary, he said they too rallied and marched on Washington. “Let us all have the courage of our national convictions and let us chart our course towards the day when America will truly be America and have no second class families!” Other civil rights organizations and activists Presidents and executives addressed the crowds including: SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, UAW President Bob King, Vice President of the National EducationAssociation Lily Eskelsen, CASA de Maryland Executive Director Gustavo Torres, SEIU 32BJ President Hector Figueroa, DC Mayor Vincent Gray, and more. The rally was hosted by local organizations CASA de Maryland an SEIU 32BJ and supported by prominent local and national organizations including the Alliance for Citizenship and the Center for Community Change, will close a week of action in which dozens of events were held in communities across the country to urge immediate action to address the nation’s immigration crisis. www.naacp.org 153

The Fine Line Between Entertainment & Exploitation By Demetria L. Lucas

I’ve always liked DMX’s persona. That, of course, comes with some qualifiers. I had to ignore the violent and misogynistic imagery in most of his lyrics, which I was much more willing to do in X’s heyday a decade ago, than now. I liked his music, like it still, for the growling voice over Swizz Beats lyrics, the passion X spits his lyrics, and the overall energy of his music, which unexpectedly, has held up over time. But I digress. Over a decade since his prime, the drum for DMX beats on. He’s as relevant as ever—but mostly for all the wrong reasons. Yes, he hopped on stage during the Alicia Keys’ concert at MSG and the crowd went wild. But these days, his name makes headlines usually for his latest arrests. The offenses include driving 154

without a license, drug possession, animal cruelty and perhaps most baffling of all, impersonating a FBI agent. Then there’s his alleged ten children, most of which were conceived outside of his marriage, which still hasn’t been dissolved. His estranged wife, Tashera has been on “Starter Wives Confidential” discussing their relationship, and written a book about it. Together, they have been featured on “Couples Therapy”, then most recently on “Iyanla’s Fix My Life.” In case his ongoing erratic behavior over the years didn’t clue you in that something is wrong with X, his appearance on the latter two shows, and specifically on Sunday’s Iyanla, Fix My Life should have. He was twitchy, nervous, switching seamlessly between shucking responsibility, martyrdom, rage, guilt tripping and rambling so much that Iyanla finally just asked DMX what everyone watching at home was thinking, “Are you high?” He said, “no.” In a post-show interview with Jet magazine, X insisted again that he was sober. In a separate interview, his son, Xavier was asked if his dad was high and said, “I don’t know.” That Vanzant, or anybody else, even had to ask said enough. There was a collective agreement—on Black Twitter, at least— that he was lying anyway. I don’t know exactly what is wrong with ol’ Earl “DMX” Simmons or what he needs. That’s over my head. But I know what he doesn’t need is cameras trained 155

on him for viewers to sit at home and gawk at him, feel pity for him, or worse, laugh at his disease. Whatever was going on during Sunday night’s show, whether X was, high and/or otherwise unwell, either from unresolved trauma or an undiagnosed disorder, he shouldn’t have been allowed on TV in that state of mind. Yes, I know X asked to participate, but someone with a level head should have turned him down to appear on camera, arranged a private consultation or at least delayed his appearance until he was clearly sober and tested to be sure. That’s asking a lot of a producer who’s getting paid to give good show and knows DMX unhinged will make for remarkably more interesting TV than if he appeared clean. But when we’re talking about a man in the throes of addiction. Choosing “good” TV— where DMX will showcased his downfall, twitches, denial, flip outs and all— over the “right” thing to do is habitually line-stepping between entertainment and exploitation, perhaps even crossing it.

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The Black Matrix: The Social and Psychological Warfare Against Black America By: Franklin Jones

Blacks are deliberately fed negative images of themselves by the white controlled media. Through its national media outlets the U.S. Government is using fraudulent propaganda to adversely manipulate and shape the minds and collective perceptions of its Black populations. The constant relentless bombardment with deplorably negative images of themselves that of which African Americans are so inundated with throughout the U.S. media is a deliberately designed psychological conditioning program.

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It is an insidious, yet very sophisticated method of control that conditions America’s Black population to accept White dominance over their lives by misleading them to believe that they are now themselves their own worst enemies. This is the same psychological warfare technology used by the U.S. Government against foreign adversaries. It was decided to secretly use it to domestically defend the White race’s position of power and dominance against its Black population. This psychosocial program uses propaganda to adversely manipulate and shapes the minds and collective perceptions of America’s Black population by subjecting them to seeing only the fraudulent worst in themselves. Its unrelenting daily assault on the Black psyche is designed to corrupts African Americans’ sense of racial unity and cohesion, mold the character of self-hatred, engender self-doubt, 158

self-loathing, and distrust among their group thus pulverizing Black unity and halting Black upward mobility. It also totally detaches African Americans from their sense of power and reality while insinuating that they admire, respect, and trust only Whites. Its anti-Black propaganda is disseminated unrelentingly everywhere; it is deliberately perpetuated through news releases in magazine articles, radio, television, press releases, documentaries, and false census reports perpetuating and framing the myth of Whitesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; racial, moral, and ethical superiority over its Black population. To the detriment of many Blacks, this psychological conditioning has been an extremely effective. It has successfully conditioned many African Americans to accept the dominance of Whites and White institutions over their lives by misleading them to believe that they are themselves, their own worst enemies. It also engenders an aberration of internalized self-contempt that pulverizes Black unity and halts Black upward mobility. Unlike the blatantly brutal racist systems used in the past, which Blacks were able to identify easily and therefore unify and form counter strategies against, this modern racist system provides a more socially acceptable method of continuing White racial dominance and control given that it is not as easily recognized. And although most are totally oblivious of its existence, it is the most proficient racist system ever deplored against African Americans. The basis of this concept of mind manipulation works by affecting the unconscious mind through deception. Its weapon is the message that it carries and the way that it adversely affects the targeted recipient group. Here is a simplified example of how this is being implemented against African Americans. Let us, for example, imagine that a crew of people was aboard their own massive ship and that this ship was being shadowed by another neighboring ship that was constantly broadcasting derogatory messages to the first group. Such messages as that their ship was lesser, smaller, not seaworthy, perhaps slowly sinking or that their crew was incompetent and was planning a mutiny. With time, the group receiving the negative messages, being unable to refute or to confirm these derogatory messages and deficiencies will grow weary and paranoid of the negative messages and will eventually comes to accept these negative assessments of themselves.

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The perception created by the taunting now unconsciously influences how the taunted group perceives themselves, subsequently causing them to become distrustful of themselves, doubting themselves, hating themselves and, eventually, fighting among themselves. The taunted group may even become so besieged by deep feelings of inadequacy that they may even jump into the sea and attempt to swim towards the taunting ship now believing it to be superior to their own boat even if their own ship was in fact better. Within a real life setting this mortifying psychological manipulation is precisely what is being done to African Americans through an immense campaign of false derogatory misinformation and false negative media reports, fake news, and statistics that are created by U.S. governmental agencies and then leaked to its collaborators in the news media, which either knowingly or unknowingly carry the stories as their own. Moreover, all African Americans have experienced the burden of this psychological warfare, some more severely than others have. It is experienced every time that a Black person read a newspaper, watch the evening news, enter a classroom, and read its racially biased textbooks. And while many Black Americans have successfully navigated through the psychology mortifying mine field and have gone on to lead successful, productive lives, however, for far too many this immense devaluation can seem inescapable. Tragically, over time, many Blacks begin to accept subconsciously and painfully the negative portrayals of themselves. The effects of this psychosocial program are very detrimental. No group can be preconditioned to see only the worst in themselves and not exhibit some degree of negative psychological impact. In fact this program is so proficient at damaging the Black self-perception that tragically it has become easier for many to accept the derogatory premises of themselves rather than recognizing that theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re being mass manipulated to hate and doubt themselves. Most Black victims of this social engineering program remain totally oblivious of it even though it adversely affects their lives. As a result of this massive program, today a great number of Black people favorably perceive the White race while negatively viewing their own. Despite possessing a history of unparalleled racism, subjugation of all other races, and crimes against humanity the White race is now perceived by many Blacks as 160

being the most ethical and moral racial group. In fact today it is not uncommon to hear many Blacks make verbal declarations lessoning the significance of White racism within their lives; while arguing that it is rather they themselves that are their own worst enemies. These self-contemptuous sentiments are also evident in how many now regards their own history of slavery. Many African Americans now blame more harshly their history of slavery on Africans rather than their White invaders. Some Blacks have even gone as far as to excuse Whites by saying that it wasn’t their fault for enslaving us, but rather the fault of our own people for not wanting us. [this gross exaggeration of facts was deliberately revamped by White historians and is sadly accepted by many Blacks] In addition, although the African Holocaust lasted four hundred years longer and resulted in millions of more deaths than that of the Jewish Holocaust, many Black people however often holds greater sympathy towards the Jewish Holocaust-over their own. This mass manipulation program also fosters a consensual national setting for the mistreatment of Blacks. Its constant negative portrayal of Black America is also being done to engender a shift of victimization that changes the root problem of racism in America to be due to Black’s behavior rather than White’s proclivity for racism. Therefore engendering increasingly prejudiced distorted perceptions and acrimonious beliefs about African Americans that are designed to makes the nation and the entire world insensitive to their plight, tranquilizes efforts on their behalf, lessens pressure for social change on their behalf and now makes any serious criticism of White racism almost impossible. This program also creates false justifications for the legal system’s mistreatment of African Americans. Wherein they are disproportionately incarcerated, given stiffer sentences, and are more likely than other racial groups to be treated brutally, beaten, and fired upon by police officers while they are unarmed. These

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injustices now goes ignored because the perception has become that it’s all now justified. When contempt of Blacks is made to appear to be justifiable, it is the fiercest and most effective type of racism because its witnesses, bystanders, and even world audiences will sit by idly allowing African Americans to be brutally mistreated under the belief that it is justified. It also affects attitudes that when enacted through governmental policies, laws, and other legislation actions, serve to ensure that African Americans will not advance. Since this program is classified, no one locally to Blacks will understand it or believe it is being used against them. Nor do its Black victims have any agency to report the unethical activity to. Governmental agents of this secret program operate above the law. In the eyes of federal, state, and local law enforcement, this technology doesn’t exist. It was this mass manipulation program that eroded the unprecedented degree of Black unity demonstrated during the 1960′s civil rights struggles; and that stripped African Americans of the global support acquired then. Even while now having a Black President, America’s White controlled government is still unrelenting in its commitment towards maintaining its White dominance and control, and clearly this covert psychosocial program meets this need. Because this method possesses both the ability to engender negative psychological feelings among African Americans and create a consensual national setting for their mistreatment and suppression. When the truth comes along, and you know within your soul that it’s the truth, and yet you still refuse to act upon it you then really begin to die. Now that the truth is known Black people must all do their parts to counter this program. This requires that we spread this truth. Please copy this disclosure and forward it to all of your friends and contacts. Also you can learn more and support these efforts by ordering a copy of the book or DVD entitled The Black Matrix; The Modern Social Suppression of Black people Under National Interest. http://www.africanglobe.net/ 162

Who You Calling A Nigga? By Meier Lathan Two men were walked up to two young people who were standing on the corner whispering to each other. “What are you doing you little nigger girl?” a man in a white hat said to a young girl who was talking to her friend. The girl stopped dead in her tracks and turned around. “They look like they are up to no good,” the other man said. “Who is your little friend? That lil nigga look like he up to something.” The young man came from around the corner and looked the two men straight in their eyes without blinking. Depending on what decade this conversation took place and also how the two young friends were raised would depend on how they would have reacted to being called a “Nigger.” The word nigger has become a very controversial word in the American English Language. If you Google the word nigger and the first page of searches would have picture of dark-skinned people, there are reference to racist jokes about President Obama, offensive language, and also white racist jokes and also the word “cracker.” According to Merriam-Webster dictionary the origin of the word came from word “neger” from the Middle French, also “negre” from Spanish and Portuguese word meaning “Black”. When the slave trade was becoming popular and the different countries begin to settle in North America the slave that were traded were either called “nigger”, “nigroe”, or as the southern colonist would say nigga. It was very common and socially acceptable to everyone to call a person who had dark-skin a nigger. A slave owner could say “He loves his Nigger boy.” and the slave would feel good about himself because he has pleased his master. The master would also feel good about the fact that the slave has accepted his role in society. Now let’s fast forward to several centuries later after President Lincoln abolished slavery and right after the Civil War also known as the Jim Crow Era. A free black man was shining a white man’s shoes. The white man tapped the shoe man on his head and said “This here shoe nigga is doing a good job shining my shoes.” The shoe man most likely would have kept his composure but would have been very upset being called a nigger. Even though the Caucasian man might have meant that statement as a compliment many dark-skin people realized that being called a nigger can also be used as an insult. During those times “colored” people 163

still didn’t have any rights and most likely would have been lynched if they responded the wrong way to that statement. A word which dates back from 1619 up to the time when black women, children, and men fought a long battle in order to not be called a nigger; the fire department used to hoes them down and the police use to beat them and chase them down with vicious dogs, because many still felt that black Americans were not citizens. Many people went to jail or were even killed in order to stop that term from being used. Even after the 14th Amendment passed on June 14, 1866 or even the Civil Rights Movement of 196os, the word was still used for either social or historical commentary.

Books written by famous writers such as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain have mentioned the word nigger to describe some of their characters. Other ethnic groups including Arab or Indian have been called “sand niggers.” Native Americans have also been called “timber niggers” or “prairie niggers.” Other countries have used the word to describe products such as “niggerhead oysters.” Brazil has called black nuts “nigger toes.” Chinese have used the word “niggerBrown” to describe colored furniture. Even white Americans used to help black Americans and have been called “nigger lovers”. 164

Sometime during the 1970’s black Americans accepted the word and started calling each other nigger. Grammy winner Richard Pryor won his award for his comedic art album That Nigger’s Crazy. After his trip to Africa he even vowed that he would not use that word onstage. Even though he said it had a rhythmic use when telling his jokes he thought is wasn’t right. In the dictionary of AfoAmerican slang which was produced in the 1970’s Clarence Major stated the word “used by black people among themselves, nigger is a racial term with undertones of warmth and goodwill- reflecting… a tragicomic sensibility that is aware of black history.” Media outlets such as magazines, newspapers and news media often used “family-friendly” censor which usually blocked out a couple of the letters or just say the N-word. Many people still believe words like the N-word, nigga, niggah, or even the word “Wigger” (which is used to describe a white American person who has adopted “street black behavior”) is still considered offensive if the wrong person says it to the wrong person. Today’s rap music is often under attack for its casual use of the word nigger. Some rappers argue that the use of the word is a term of empowerment or endearment, but the use the word is followed by lyrics about drugs, killings, and degrading women. Other rappers argue that the word could never be seen as a word of empowerment but contrasts confusion in our society. 165

Many blacks object, however, to using the term even in that context for fear that the use will be misunderstood and imitated by persons insufficiently which will cause it to be dangerous. The older generation usually born before the 1070â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s believe the word is inappropriate and the use of the word nigger or nigga defeats the history and struggle of dark-skinned people who heard the word used to stigmatize African-Americans. Younger people believe the term is acceptable amongst each other. They also believe if an outsider or a white American calls them a nigger it would be taken as a sign of disrespect.

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With the rise of the “Ghetto” trend thought-out all ethnic groups, it is not uncommon to hear the term being used by young white Americans. Still the term nigger and nigga seems to be two totally different definitions. The use of the word can be receive a positive, negative, or neutral reaction. In the 1990’s the word was used to describe a lazy person who is poor. Now the dictionary will describe it as “a member of a socially disadvantaged class of person which no color is intended.” The famous rapper Tupac Shakur used the word “Nigger as an acronym “Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished” as a way to try to legitimize the term by saying “Niggers was the ones hanging on the rope hanging off of things; niggas is the ones with the gold ropes, hanging out of clubs.” According to the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) the Lanham Act will not ever let someone register the word as a trademark because the word “Nigger” contains terms that may disparage persons or bring them into dispute and it is historically considered just that. In recent times since we finally have a black president it has also been used to degrade him. Some believe that by doing so it is a form of treason whether it’s used a joke or not. It doesn’t matter if you are a famous rapper or just a regular 9-5 average working person, if someone calls you a “Nigger” an eyebrow will be raised in concern. In a 1940 memoir The Big Sea Langston Hughes wrote: “The word “Nigger” to colored people is like a red rag to a bull. Used rightly or wrong, ironically or seriously, of necessity for the sake of realism, or impishly for the sake of comedy, it doesn’t matter. Negroes do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic in its treatment of the basic problems of the race. Even though the book or play is written by a Negro, they still do not like it. The word Nigger, you see, sums up for us who are colored all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America” Whether the word is use to cause pain or power, a person must know the history and context in order to properly understand the word. 167

Kevin Hart, Revolutionary By Damon Young

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Above: Kevin Hart dives into a California crowd. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment)

There are many people who do not think Kevin Hart is funny. This in itself is neither a surprise nor particularly noteworthy. There is no comedian who everyone thinks is funny, and, aside from Michael Strahan and a few four- and five-year-old boys, there is no person who thinks everyone is funny. Yet, it seems like many of the many people who don't think Hart is funny make it their duty to let you know exactly how much effort they've put into how unfunny he is. It's not enough to merely say, "Kevin Hart isn't my cup of tea" or "I just don't think he's that entertaining." Hart's mere existence pains them, and the fact that more people don't share this pain pains them even more. I thought of this while wondering how annoyed those who swear Hart is aggressively unfunny must have been if they were keeping up with the recent NBA All-Star Weekend in Houston. Hart was so ubiquitous that I just started seeing him everywhere, imagining him places where I knew he wasn't. "There's Kevin Hart, fighting a mascot and dunking on Swin Cash. Wait, there's Kevin Hart again, making rabbit ears behind David Stern. Who knew Chris Paul's son was so big? Wait â&#x20AC;Ś that's actually Kevin Hart! Oh sh-t! Kevin Hart's singing the Canadian National Anthem? I had no idea he could sing. Or was Canadian. Is that Kevin Hart hiding inside of Shaq's shoe?" Admittedly, it's not difficult to see why Hart's particular style of comedy may be off-putting and why his popularity may be puzzling. He's not a cerebral comic in the same way a Chris Rock or Louie CK might be. He's definitely not as intentionally iconoclastic as a Richard Pryor, George Carlin or even Paul Mooney. 169

Above: Kevin Hartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stand-up slash documentary Laugh At My Pain shown on Comedy Central January 15, 2013

He doesn't make you laugh at things you're kind of ashamed to be laughing at the way Patrice O'Neal did and Bill Burr currently does. And while Hart is a good storyteller and impressionist, Eddie Murphy was/is much better at both. Often, Hart seems to get his laughs in the cheapest way possible -- by being the loudest, shortest and most obnoxious person in the room. Basically, it's as if he's made a career out of being a professional court jester, a well-paid perpetual foil, and I can understand why people wouldn't be too happy about paying money to watch the guy who reminds you of the guy in sixth-grade French who never had a pencil (and would spend the entire class asking you and everyone else for one). Assessing Hart's career in this superficial manner, though, dismisses certain qualities that make Hart's humor quite a bit smarter than it initially appears. Although I don't know Hart personally, there's a level of self-awareness to his actpersona that allows his shtick to work. He knows exactly who he is, and much of his humor comes from him placing himself in situations or telling stories where both he and the audience know he's in over his head. More importantly -- and, for those who still don't get Hart's appeal, pay attention -- Hart's humor is, dare I say it, revolutionary. Not in the traditional sense -- his humor is too friendly and apolitical for that -- but in the sense that what he's doing is legitimately subversive.

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Hart is a black man. An American black man from Philadelphia, undoubtedly aware of and influenced by American culture in general and African-American culture in particular. Those who are subject to these influences know that within black culture is a certain hyper-heterosexual ideal that black men are "supposed to" embody. And, when one is supposed to be hyper-hetero, "self-deprecating" and "unfailingly uncool" are two of the traits he's not supposed to possess. He's not shy about the fact that he does, though, as he revolves entire sets around a few things to which it's still somewhat taboo for heterosexual black men to publicly admit and/or bring attention: 1. Being small/physically weak 2. Not being good at fighting/defending yourself 3. Not having much success with women Basically, not just being a "punk," but a self-aware punk strangely secure enough in his insecurity to invite others to laugh at him. There's no doubt much of Hart's act is hyperbolic. He is rich, very successful and extremely popular, and I have trouble believing he's as uncool in real life as the character he portrays both onstage and in shows such as BET's The Real Husbands of Hollywood. And, if he's been beaten up as many times as he says he has in his acts, I doubt he'd even be able to stand onstage without a cane. 171

But, although the exaggeration may seem unnecessary (and even dishonest), sometimes you may need to be over the top in order to drive home a point. Hart's act does this -- ultimately satirizing that hyper-hetero, super-cool ideal that all black men are supposed to live up to -- and his humor reminds the audience that while stereotypical black men are one way, neither he, nor many who relate to his humor, are that way at all. http://www.theroot.com/views/kevin-hart-revolutionary?page=0,1&wpisrc=root_lightbox

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Quencie Thomas a/k/a “Quencie” is a dynamic ball of energy that never meets a stranger. Her career as a Celebrity Interviewer began back in 1995 on the campus of Clark Atlanta University. She did her first TV interview with platinumselling So So Def Recording Artist, DA BRAT for a show called Premiere TV. After that interview, Quencie never looked back. She went on to create a 30-minute weekly music and entertainment TV show called, Studio Q. Celebrity guests included Grammy Award-Winning Gospel great Kirk Franklin, and Academy Award Nominated Actor Danny Glover. She also wrote a column for the Atlanta Voice newspaper entitled, "Q's Corner," and was a freelance writer for The State Journal Register in Springfield, IL. Each job provided Quencie with so many celebrities’ moments that she eventually penned them all in her first book, Celebrity Encounters. Quencie's most memorable celebrity encounter came a month before completing her Masters degree in Communications, from the University of Illinois. It was a dream-come-true interview with childhood idol, Whitney Houston, on an MTV show called "FANatic." According to Co-Creator and Executive Producer of FANatic, Ed Connelly Jr., the Whitney Houston interview was one of the highest rated shows. When asked specifically about Quencie's interview performance, his response was: "Honestly, I think she was one of the best interviewers, we've ever had." In order for Quencie to realize her dream of having her own syndicated one-onone celebrity interview style TV show, she moved to Hollywood. Quencie then utilized skills she developed on Premiere TV and Studio Q to produce for TV networks like NBC, CBS, FOX, MTV, BET, as well as for TV shows like TheTyra Banks Show and Divorce Court. Currently, Quencie hosts Studio Q TV and Studio Q Radio both of which are featured on Quencie.com. 174

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Pleading Our Own Cause By Joe Natalie, Associate Editor

Pete Reeves advocates for Black press

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Above: PLEADING OUR OWN CAUSE displayed at the Springfield Branch NAACP’s 92nd Annual Lincoln Douglas Banquet on February 10, 2013. Left: Banquet attendees viewing exhibit.

Peter Reeves looks to the past and future of the black press with an e-book and exhibit titled “Pleading Our Own Cause: The Black Press in Springfield, Ill. (18862013).” During that period African-American publishers established 20 newspapers in the community, and a dozen of those newspapers have been preserved, establishing a historical record. The book is written under the name of Afi Camara, a pen name Reeves adopted in 1998. He explained the name is West African for “spiritual individual.” 178

Above: Afi Camara At UIS Archives January 4, 2013 Left: Afi Camara at Sangamon Valley Collection, Lincoln Library, January 8, 2013

“This is a book that is a must read for anyone interested not only in African American history, but American history with all her injustices, liberties and drives towards a more perfect union,” Reeves said, who is a publisher of an online magazine. “I’ve always wanted to have my own newspaper,” said Reeves, who started a newspaper in 2010 called Illinois VOICE. He published two issues and then went online as VOICE Magazine (www.voicemagoonline.com).

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Considering the travails in the publishing industry, Reeves is confident he switched his business model from print to digital. The content of VOICE Magazine is free and subsidized by advertisers. “I made the decision to go online in May 2010,” Reeves said. “It was one of the best decisions I made. We have readers from all parts of the county,” Reeves said, with readers from Dallas, New York, Atlanta and “every major city.” “We have profiled over 140 individuals from different professions and different parts of the country,” he said. Reeves said the digital divide is not as bad as it used to be with smartphones, tablets and notepad computers, and traditional print media are moving exclusively to an online presence. “Newsweek has gone online. A lot of people like the feel and smell of a traditional newspaper,” Reeves said. “I’m one of them.” His interest in newspapers led him to seeking out historic black publications. “I started collecting old newspapers,” Reeves said. “I was looking for a subject to write a book about. I’ve studied black newspapers from the first to the latest.” Reeves delved into newspaper archives, including the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Brookens Library at the University of Illinois at Springfield, and the Sangamon Valley Collection at Lincoln Library. “Springfield has six major libraries,” Reeves said. “This place is a wealth of information.” Right: (L to R): Mike Williams, President One in a Million, Pete Reeves, Author’ Lorenzo Louden, CEO, Tower of Refuge in front of Pleading our Own Cause exhibit at the 5th Annual Black History Ball, February 23, 2013.

Reeves said “the black press has been an icon within the black community” since the first Black newspaper in America, Freedom Journal, was published by Peter Williams, Jr. and other freed men in 1827 in New York City. “Blacks have had to plead their own cause to advocate on their own behalf,” Reeves said. “Black newspapers were important in the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.” 180

Above: Pete Reeves discussing Pleading Our Own Cause Exhibit at the 4-H Scholastic Achievement Program, April 18, 2013 at University of Illinois.

Reeves explained that John Abbot, editor of the Chicago Defender, helped blacks move to a better life in the north. “Newspapers got to the southern states through the Pullman porters.” Reeves said another trailblazer was Iida B. Wells, who was co-owner and editor of Free Speech and Headlight, an anti-segregationist newspaper in Memphis, Tenn. It published articles about racial injustice as the 19th century was ending. The ebook and exhibit looks how local black publishers and editors covered events like pre-Civil War abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the 1908 Race Riot, Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, the World Wars, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers, the race riots, the Black Power Movement, the Kerner Commission, the Reagan Era, the September 11 terrorist attack and the Obama Era. In Springfield, he cited Bill Logan, current executive assistant to Mayor Michael Houston, as editor of The Spirit of Black Springfield that began its run in 1968. William Washington started the Springfield Voice in 1972, and Reeves said another important publication was Horace G. Livington’s The Voice of the Black 181

Above: Pete Reeves discussing Pleading Our Own Cause Exhibit at the 4-H Scholastic Achievement Program, April 18, 2013 at University of Illinois.

Community in Decatur. “These were very turbulent years,” said Reeves, as the newspapers dealt with issues like the Vietnam War, political assassinations and the emergence of the Black Power movement. Reeves said a black newspaper publisher is a community “griot,” an African term for “town crier,” who is an elder who provides information to the community. He said the tradition continues today with T.C. Christian’s Pure News and Michael Pittman’s Capital City Courier. “They are excellent editors,” Reeves said. “Everyone has their own aspects on how a black newspaper should be, but in the end, we provide the same service to the black community.” He said there are some overlapping of articles and information. “We have similar readers and the same readers, but we carry different information.” Reeves said the black community is often portrayed in the traditional media unfavorably, as news stories tend to focus on crime and violence on the city’s east side. “That’s media bias,” Reeves said. “That’s why black newspapers and magazines flourish in the black community. We tell our own story. We plead our cause. Who is better to advocate our own cause?” As for the issue that Reeves plans to focus on locally is the lack of capital for businesses. “We need more black businesses and more capital for black business to flourish.” Reeves’ exhibit about the Black press debuted at the 92nd Annual Lincoln Douglas Banquet on Feb. 10 at the Crowne Plaza; the One in a Million, Fifth Annual Black History Ball on Feb. 23 at the Northfield Inn and Suites; and the

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Left: Pleading Our Own Cause Author Afi Camara and Teresa Haley, President Springfield Branch NAACP at the 92nd Annual Lincoln Douglas Banquet, February 10, 2013.

Illinois State Historical Society’s (ISHS) annual symposium on February 28 through March 1 at the University of Illinois in Springfield. William Furry, ISHS executive director said “it is astonishing” that Reeves compiled the information is published his research in an e-book format and in an exhibit. “There is not enough information” being researched and published about the history of the black press. “This is something that is long overdue,” Furry said. Reeves has been involved in community and economic development in both the private and public sectors, including doing economic development work for the City of St. Louis, and he was an economic development coordinator in Arizona. His experience prompted him to write his first book, “Power to the People: The High Rise Method of Resident Based Community Re-Building” in 1998. Reeves said that the book advocates public-private partnerships to rebuild areas and make them economically viable. He said the concepts outlined in the book are similar to the Obama Administrations of “promise zones.” An entrepreneur, Reeves is involved in an alternative energy industry and is a major partner in Biofuels America, Inc. He is also CEO of VERVE Media Group, which uses the Internet to disseminate information to the African American community through VOICE Magazine and HOT217Radio (www.hot217.com) and VOICETV. With all his interests and projects, Reeves is obviously keeps himself occupied. “I try to stay busy,” Reeves said. “I have different interests.” http://www.springfieldbusinessjournal.com/

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Maya Angelou: How I Write By Noah Charney

Above: Maya Angelou attends the opening of the Forsyth Medical Center's Maya Angelou Center for Women & Health and Wellness on May 15, 2012. (PRNewsFoto/Forsyth Medical Center)

The poet, whose new memoir of her mother is Mom & Me & Mom, talks about why she wears head ties when she writes, and why she makes Hallmark greeting cards. (The Daily Beast Interview, April 10, 2013)

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Tell me about the dinner party at which the writer James Baldwin and the cartoonist Jules Feiffer first encouraged you to write your first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Well, I don’t know if it was a dinner party! Martin Luther King had been killed, on my birthday, and I had been planning a birthday party. I had planned to join him after my birthday. [His death] shocked me so that I stopped eating, I refused to answer the phone. Finally James Baldwin came to my apartment door and he made noises, and said he wouldn’t leave until the police came. He was cursing and shouting “Open this door! Open this door!” I finally opened the door and he came in. He said, “Go and have a bath. I’ll wait and I’ll have some clothes for you.” He went to my closet and got clothes, and he said, “I’m taking you someplace.” Now I had no idea where he was taking me, but he had a car outside the driveway. We went to another house, a brownstone not too far from where I lived. When we got into the house he introduced me to Jules Feiffer and Jules’ wife at the time, Judy, and their daughter. Jules said, “You need to laugh, and you need to have somebody watch you laugh and laugh with you.” In that sparkling company, I did come out of myself. I was impressed, of course, with Mr. Feiffer, and with their friendship. Jimmy [Baldwin] and Judy and Jules all acted as if they had grown up together. Very respectful and responsive friends to each other. That pleased me, because Jimmy was a brother to me, and these famous white people were so kind and good. You’ve led an astonishingly diverse life in terms of careers, from musician and songwriter to dancer and pimp. Is there any occupation you’ve never tried but always been curious to? No, everything that’s crossed my mind I’ve tried a little bit. I’ve read of some eccentric writing habits of yours, involving hotel rooms without pictures on the walls, sherry, and headgear. How did you first come upon that cocktail for writing success, and has the routine evolved over your career?

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And headgear! Ha! It was head ties, not headgear! Well, I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing. When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess. When my husband would come into the room, he’d accuse me, and say, “You’ve been writing!” As if it was a bad thing. He could tell because of my hair, so I learned to hide my hair with a turban of some sort. ‘Mom & Me & Mom’ by Maya Angelou. 224 pp. Random House. $22. I do still keep a hotel room in my hometown, and pay for it by the month. I go around 6:30 in the morning. I have a bedroom, with a bed, a table, and a bath. I have Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, and the Bible. Which edition of the Bible? Uh—that’s a good question, it’s slipped my mind. Name a famous edition. The King James? That’s the one! Anything else in the hotel room? Usually a deck of cards and some crossword puzzles. Something to occupy my little mind. I think my grandmother taught me that. She didn’t mean to, but she used to talk about her “little mind.” So when I was young, from the time I was about 3 until 13, I decided that there was a Big Mind and a Little Mind. And the Big Mind would allow you to consider deep thoughts, but the Little Mind would occupy you, so you could not be distracted. It would work crossword puzzles or play Solitaire, while the Big Mind would delve deep into the subjects I wanted to write about. So I keep the room. I have all the paintings and any decoration taken out of the room. I ask the management and house-keeping not to enter the room, just in case I’ve thrown a piece of paper on the floor, I don’t want it discarded. About every two months I get a note slipped under the door: “Dear Ms. Angelou, please let us change the linen. We think it may be moldy!” But I’ve never slept there, I’m usually out of there by 2. And then I go home and I read what I’ve written that morning, and I try to edit then. Clean it up. And that’s how I write books!

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When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess. When my husband would come into the room, he’d accuse me, and say, “You’ve been writing!” As if it was a bad thing. Do you still drink sherry when you write? Not so much anymore. I stopped about two years ago. How do you approach the distinction between straight autobiography and autobiographical fiction? Well, I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind. I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me. English is a beautiful language, don’t you think? I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English. What is your second-favorite language, of those you speak? I would say Spanish, because I speak it best, I guess. I used to think French, but when I’m doing a live promotion in France, and I look for a word, like “tablecloth,” if it does not come out right away, it will snap out of my mouth in Spanish. You have said that nothing frightens you as much as writing, but nothing satisfies you as much either. What frightens you about it? Will I write a sentence that will just float off the page? Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it’s right, it’s easy. It’s the other way round, too. If it’s slovenly written, then it’s hard to read. It doesn’t give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader. You are a renowned public speaker. The art of rhetoric, once a standard part of one’s education, is no longer taught. What makes for a great public speaker and public speech?

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It’s the same thing that makes for a good singer. The speaker must have a good ear, and a love for the language. Love and respect. And must be convinced that what she has to say is important. And don’t stay on the stage too long. Who was the best public speaker you’ve ever heard? Since you were friends with Dr. Martin Luther King, I think I can guess the answer… Dr. King. I don’t know who could stand up to that. Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it’s right, it’s easy. It’s the other way round, too. If it’s slovenly written, then it’s hard to read. You’ve written everything from poetry to your own line of Hallmark cards. I’m not sure how many great writers could also be as concise and universal as to write good Hallmark card greetings. What was the process like for you? That’s interesting. When Hallmark publicized the fact that I would be writing for them, someone in the Times asked the poet laureate of the time, What do you think about Maya Angelou writing for Hallmark? He said, I’m sorry that Ms. Angelou has reduced her art to writing mottos for greeting cards. That day I read that in the paper, and that afternoon I was in a bookstore in Miami called Books 188

on Books. It’s a wonderful store, you’d love it—jampacked with books. You’d want to live there. I walked down an aisle and came face to face with a woman who reminded me of me: my height, my age. But she was white. She says, You look just like Maya Angelou! And I said, I am! And the woman steadied herself on a bookshelf and the tears came down. She said to me, Ms. Angelou, I’ve been estranged from my daughter for five years. But this past Christmas she sent me a card which said “Mother love heals.” And she cried. I joined her. She said, My daughter and I are going to be re-established. She said, I take that card to my bed at night, I put it on the nightstand. In the morning I take it to the kitchen when I make coffee. I keep that card. My daughter and I are together again. I thank you. That’s beautiful, wow. It was wonderful, wonderful! [Writing the cards] was challenging. I would write down a paragraph that expressed what I wanted to say, and then try to reduce it to two sentences. That’s tough self-editing. [Laughs] Any one of those cards I’d send you. I loved it. I didn’t do it long, but I loved it. What is your favorite item of clothing? I guess my Uggs. What is guaranteed to make you laugh? When another person laughs at herself sincerely. I never laugh when someone is laughing at someone else. What is guaranteed to make you cry? A lonely child.

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Do you have any superstitions? If I did, I wouldn’t tell! What is something you always carry with you? I’m a child of God. I carry that with me. What would you like carved onto your tombstone? [Laughs] “I did my best, I hope you do the same.” Dr. Angelou, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Oh, I’m so glad you called. You have a beautiful name, by the way… This interview has been edited and condensed. http://www.thedailybeast.com

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DJ Captain: Improving Communities Through Entertainment and Service

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DJ Captain hails straight from St. Louis, Missouri. He’s succeeded in accomplishing a great deal in his music and DJ career between 2002 and present. He’s also been a great asset to the central Illinois community as he’s continuously fund raising and planning entertainment events, along with working in low income public schools, mentoring teenagers and working as a DJ. DJ Captain began his music career as a night club DJ, and then worked his way into mixing live on radio stations including Magic 1050 with his Afternoon House Party. Captain has also worked for the past ten years as a DJ on 99.7 KISSFM’s Bad Boy Hip Hop Show. In addition, DJ Captain is an entrepreneur. He is CEO of Captain Entertainment. Since the early 90’s , he has promoted and produced shows for artists , such as Murphy Lee, Run DMC, Chingy, Twista, Howard Hewett, Hoopz, Keith Washington, Jim Jones, as well as comedians such as Damon Wayans, Katt Williams, and Rickey Smiley. He’s also had the pleasure of being DJ on some of the biggest tours such as The Mike Epp and Friends Tour and The Royal Comedy Tour starring comedian Sommore, DL Hugley, Bruce Bruce and Don DC Curry. Early in his career, Captain kicked off some of the hottest tours with his mix style for the late Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., as well as, Run DMC, Lil Wayne, DJ Unk, Young Buck, Deelishish from the hit reality show Flavor of Love, Twista, Plies, Scarface, Doug E. Fresh, Pretty Ricky and Usher to name a few. Much of DJ Captain’s career has focused on bringing top named, high rated comedians and celebrities to local communities. Captain has endeavors in sports and has provided DJ service for the last Andre Iguodala Celebrity Weekends and keeps the street ball scene hot by bringing The A1 All Star Streetball Live to central Illinois. Captain is the founder of Peace in the Hood, a county project which speaks out against drugs, violence and gangs. Captain continually gives back to the community by raising money prior to the Christmas season for less fortunate children and donating to the Boys and Girls Club of America. He also sponsors Fifty Smiles, a fundraiser that brings holiday gifts to more than fifty students at 192

Washington Middle School which serves a population of over600 students, 85% of which are from poverty situations. For the past six years, Captain has hosted Hoopfest extravaganza at Washington middle School for purpose of giving back to inner city schools. Recently, Captain received a “shout out” from the Tom Joyner Morning Show, acknowledging his generous and diligent efforts to contribute to local communities. In addition, Captains resume includes writing and producing television commercials, launching his own Hip Hop magazine titled, Da Future. He is also currently co-writing a play called, Where’s My Baby Daddy? A DVD autobiography of his life was released in May, 2007 and he has a book set for release later this year. Captain continues to be an inspiration in the communities he serves by bringing fantastic events and fundraisers to improve the entertainment and recreational value of these areas.

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The Undeniable Jazz Garcelle

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Jasmine Garcelle Leonard, known by her stage name Jazz Garcelle, made her entrance into the world three months premature on August 4th, 1986 and literally has fought to survive and persevere against the odds. Since childhood, she has tackled challenges in everyday life with ten times as much effort as others while striving to be the best at what she does. Jasmine has been singing, dancing and acting since she was three years old. She has also done some amateur modeling. Music has always been a huge part of her life. Her parents always had music playing in the house, constantly inspiring and driving her to succeed. She started to performing solos in church at the tender age of eleven. She soon realized the talent that God had blessed her with and began to sing with intense passion in each and every note she hit. She was a lead vocalist in her church choir. She attended a Magnet school for the Performing Arts during high school where she grew as a vocalist. Today, R & B and gospel are truly what she loves to sing. Performing at any event, talent show or any other venue to showcase her vocals is what she has been doing. Relocating to Pittsburgh, from South Bend Indiana where she was a music Major at Bethel College, Jasmine has continued her path of achieving her goals in music. Determined to overcome obstacles that she is faced with in her life, she strives to be the best performer she can be. Driven by a burning passion for music she possesses an extremely diverse musical background to create her own unique sound. In order to grow stronger in her artistry she has taken voice lessons from a young age to learn the proper singing techniques. When she isn’t performing Jasmine is working hard enjoying her independence. Determined and driven to do what it takes to succeed, Jasmine is influenced by Christina Aguilera, Keyshia Cole and Beyonce. A unique young woman, she was with Emage Talent and Modeling agency for about a year and decided that her professional relationship with them had run it’s coarse. She is already negotiating with a National/local Management company in Pittsburgh, PA. Recently she has started to write her own songs. “ I’m not going to go knocking on doors, what I 198

present will have them calling me,â&#x20AC;? says Jasmine.

Jazz Garcelle is working

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diligently on her 1st EP which will be an eclectic blend of R/B Soul with a pinch of classical flare and hip-hop beats. Her credentials include st earning 1 place at a statewide ISSMA Regional competition, vocal/dance performances in school and community-based musical theater productions. “Jammin’ with Jazzy Jazzy” was the name of Jasmine’s daily drive-time radio show on WETL 91.7 FM in South Bend, IN during her senior year of high school where she played Hip-Hop and R&B music. She has also hosted her own radio show on WPPJ radio at Point Park University during her sophomore year. She has performed in the Motown Review at the August Wilson Center, where she sang “Aint No Mountain High Enough “by Diana Ross and "I heard it through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye. In August 2010 she performed her first mini concert of a 30 minute set of cover songs at the Umoja African Arts Fest. The lyrics in the songs on my upcoming EP are very personal. I take from experiences I’ve had in my own life that I know other women can relate to and identify with. I want my fans to throw on my music when their getting ready to go out on the town, DJs to bump in the clubs, for ladies when their feeling like their having a miserable day to get encouragement. “ says Jazz Garcelle. “When you want to vibe, feel empowered as a woman, I’ve got that track as well. A song entitled No regrets about a past relationship.” She continues. “I’m looking back on it and thankful I left and now I can enjoy my life without the stress he put on me!.” says Jazz Garcelle. “I’ve also got something for the lovers. A track I’m eager to record titled Undeniable which is a smooth ballad on how my love for my man is so strong; nothing can tear me away from him.” “I’m writing for the independent woman, in any situation. I hope to present the best music for my fans and supporters,: she says. This young lady faces challenges with an optimistic state of mind and believes that adversity are challenges waiting to be conquered.

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Super Hero Huff Returns !!!

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Yorli Huff was born on August 7, 1968, in Chicago, Illinois, to Jansilyne Berthania Huff and Samuel Huff. She has an older brother, Samuel Louis Huff III, and a younger sister, Amber Lizette Walker. Despite a difficult childhood, Huff was an excellent student, and that dedication helped land her a position in 1992 in Chicago with the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department as a Special Drug Agent at the tender age of twenty-four. One of the few African-American undercover agents in the task force, Huff excelled at her work, but her rise to the top brought with it racism and discrimination. In 1997, after trying unsuccessfully to deal with that discrimination on her own, Huff made history when she filed a lawsuit against the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department, a battle which took her eleven years to win. An entrepreneur at heart, Huff is the owner of Just For You Balloons, a balloon decorating company which she established in 1992, and the owner of Executive Dry Cleaners, Inc., which she established in 2008. Also in 2008, Yorli Huff became the Founder, President, and CEO of Engendering Strength, Inc., a company devoted to inspiring and empowering women. Yorli Huff’s first book, The Veil of Victory, an account of her life from childhood to her victory over the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department, was published in October 2010. She is currently at work on her second book, Testimony Time; a Superhero Huff comic book; a feature film based on The Veil of Victory; t-shirt lines; and a National motivational speaker. Yorli Huff has been featured on Allison Payne’s People to People segment, Monique Caradine show, Perspectives, the Cliff Kelly talk radio show on WVON, Lamont Brown Speaks and South Africa’s SABC radio. Ms. Huff has just returned from South Africa on a powerful speaking tour to empower, encourage and enlighten the people on matters of discrimination and abuse. She is also the recipient of the “Remarkable Women” award from America’s Time Out for Youth, Inc. She will be honored as a “ 2011 Women on Top of Her Game” by American’s Time Out for Youth, Inc. In her very lean spare time, Yorli Huff enjoys roller skating, working out, and traveling. She currently lives in Naperville, Illinois, with her nine-year-old son, Prince Judah Rashad Herring. Yorli Huff’s fascinating and captivating Comic Book, “Superhero Huff” second comic book is now available.

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“Superhero Huff” is a comic book series that is about a strong young black

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Super Her Huuf is female undercover police officer that has special powers from birth. She is a no non-science Foxy Brown/Christy Love type that is tech savvy. She understands from growing up in the hood that she needs to be more of a giver than a taker and she moves back to the hood to do just that. She moves back to the family building located on the West Side of Chicago in K-town to restore safety, hope and increase literacy. She is strong willed person with an overwhelming personality that changes the atmosphere. You can expect to go on a life journey with Special Agent Phaedra as she grows mentally, spiritually and physically. She is still discovering who she is and the power that she possess as she strives to be the best Under Cover Agent that she can be. She is maturing in her destiny and powers. Just when she thinks things are one way she comes to know that nothing ever really is what she think it is but she would never know that until she got into it. She comes to know that the forces of evil are strong and realistic. She turns urban legend into reality when she is able to be the support and hope for the neighborhood children. She knows that what she has been blessed with is not for her but for others. She advances in her journey to become aware of the 204

Secrete Society that has been waiting to receive her from birth. They have been protecting and watching over her until she comes into her own. She must first learn and master all of the powers that she possesses then she will be able to be received into the secret society. She must also prove herself to be worthy of her gifts by unselfishly giving of herself. Once she has accomplished these feats then the world that she will rule will be revealed to her like a piece of coal under pressure reveals the hidden diamond that lies within. Be prepared to pad your walls, shut off all communication, pop your popcorn and buckle up for the journey that’s ahead. Welcome to the movement!!! Super Hero Huff the movie is in the works and Yorli has pegged actress Shaamya L. Dishner to star as the super heroine. Sharma, a strong black women with a presence of warmth and love, hails from the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago. “My relationship with God and my family motivate me to constantly improve myself both inside and out and to walk in love towards all people,” says Shaayma. “Portraying Superhero Huff is a blessing. This role is an opportunity to be used by God to spread hope and strength,” she continued. Shaayma doesn't have any plans for her future but believes God does and she intends on following the path that He has planned out for her since before she was born.

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Antoine Fuqua: Man of Action By Davina Hamilton

Above: ALL SMILES: Antoine Fuqua with his cast members Angela Bassett and Gerard Butler

The US director on terrorism, casting black actors in his films, and balancing his career with his family life 206

WITH US security heightened to new extremes since 9/11, it’s hard to imagine any terrorist group successfully attacking the White House. But this is the very scenario painted in Antoine Fuqua’s latest film, Olympus Has Fallen. The new action thriller from the US director sees a group of heavily armed extremists from North Korea ambushing the White House and holding the president and his staff hostage in an impenetrable underground bunker. Did Fuqua have any reservations about creating such a tale, given the ongoing sensitivity around the 9/11 terrorist attacks? “I was sensitive to it, and that’s also why I wanted to do it,” explains the director, famed for the 2001 hit film Training Day starring Denzel Washington. “Unfortunately, terrorism is a part of our world, and I think it’s important for us to shine a light on it so if we’re not ready for something like this, we should prepare ourselves so that we are.” Having met with several secret service agents as part of his research, Fuqua is confident that US security is equipped to handle such an attack. “I met with some guys that know the ins and outs and I’m sure that [a terror attack] could never happen to that extent. I’m sure it could happen to some degree, but the guys I 207

Above: Fuqua gives directorial instruction to Morgan Freeman

met with are ready for this type of thing. In order for it to go as far as I took it [in the film], they’d need a lot of inside help.” Still, it’s not hard to be gripped by Fuqua’s action-packed tale, as the highly trained extremists begin executing hostages, leaving president Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and some of his key advisors fearing for their lives, while former presidential security officer Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) seeks to save the president. With the White House in disarray, Speaker of the House Allan Trumball (Morgan Freeman) is appointed as acting president and does his best to manage the situation with assistance from head of Secret Service Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett). It’s an impressive cast with Bassett and Butler in particular putting in strong performances. Eckhart also puts in a convincing performance as the endangered head of state, but one wonders if Fuqua considered casting a black actor in the role to reflect the current reality of America having a black president. “I always wanted to work with Aaron Eckhart and I also wanted to work with Morgan Freeman,” Fuqua explains. “Morgan’s done it before [played the president] and I really wasn’t thinking about colour when I was casting for the roles. I’m all about working with great actors. “You’ve got Angela Bassett playing a secret service agent and in actual fact, her role was originally written for a man. But I wanted to work with Angela – gender or race wasn’t an issue for me.” 208

Above: Aaron Eckhart stars as President Benjamin Asher

Fuqua explains why it has always been his ethos as a director to not make decisions based on race, but to work with the best man or woman for the job. “I grew up in an all-black neighbourhood in Pittsburgh, but I ended up going to a mixed high school. I ended up having a mixture of friends and when I played basketball, I played with a mixture of people. So when I got into the film business, I looked for the best players just like I did when I played ball. “I never thought, ‘he’s a black guy so I should hire him’ or ‘he’s a white guy, I should hire him.’ I just hired the best players.” But Fuqua admits that his colour blind approach has earned him criticism in the past from those who felt he should have been doing more to help ‘his own’. “There was a time when people came to me and said, ‘Antoine, you should hire more black people’ and I said ‘Yeah I will – if they’re the best person for the job. If they fit the role and they’re the best person for the job, then absolutely.’ “But I think when you hire someone strictly based on colour, if they’re not right for the job, you’re not really helping that person. If you hire your best friend or your brother for a job they’re not ready for, then the job suffers – and they’ll suffer too because word will soon spread that they don’t know what they’re doing!

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Left: Fuqua with his wife, actress Lela Rochon and three children

But I’ve given lots of opportunities to African-Americans in the film business and in other ways.”Refuting the accusation of racism that has been long been leveled at Hollywood, Fuqua says that very few of his breaks in the film business were given to him by black people. “I can’t sit back and say Hollywood is racist, as 99.9 per cent of the people that have given me my opportunities in this business were not African-American. Denzel [Washington] gave me a great opportunity when we did Training Day together, and I also became friends with Mr Sidney Poitier, who’s given me great counsel and advice. But in terms of people in the studio system, most of the people who have given me my jobs were not African-American.” But with Fuqua also acknowledging that “most of the [film industry] executives at the top level are not African-American,” are the lack of opportunities he has received from black people the result of there being no black people in positions to offer them – or do black folks in Hollywood just do not help each other? “It’s a bit of both. There aren’t many African-Americans in top positions, but those that are sometimes don’t help others. But I’ve got a different mindset. What I learned from playing sports is that when you get on the field, you’ve got to be able to hold your own – that’s what you’ll be judged on. If you can score, then you’re gonna play. If you can’t score, you’re not gonna play. “So when the opportunity comes for you to direct, if you can’t direct and make some money and get people to sit in the theatre, you won’t get hired! “Hollywood is a business and you have to look at it that way. I’m not saying it’s easy, but you have to find a way to show your talent.” Another job Fuqua admits isn’t easy is balancing his career with his family life “Yeah, it’s tough,” confirms the father-ofthree who is married to actress Lela Rochon (Waiting to Exhale, Boomerang). “I have a young daughter and son, and an older son in college, and it is hard at times. It’s so difficult to get a movie done these days so you have to take advantage of the opportunities when they come along – but your kids don’t wanna hear that! They want you to come swimming and play. So it is tough.” But surely his wife understands the business better than most. “Yeah, but she’s in front of the camera, while I’m behind the scenes, so our jobs are very different!” Reflecting on his hopes for the future, Fuqua says: “I want to develop more and more and make the best films possible. I’d also like an Academy Award. But ultimately, each film is an exercise to get better on the next one.” http://www.voice-online.co.uk 210

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Left: Lorean C. Mays as Miss Black Tennessee. 2005-2006

Chattanooga, TN. Native Lorean C. Mays has been competing, judging, and coaching in pageantry for past eight years. She is the first African American woman to hold three state titles as a born native of the state of Tennessee. She is the former "Miss Black Tennessee USA 2005-2006”, “Miss Tennessee National US 20082009”,“Miss Tennessee Essence 2009”, and the new Director of the Miss Black Tennessee USA Pageant (The official state preliminary for Miss Black USA, Inc.). Lorean has received numerous awards for her achievements in pageantry and her philanthropic aspirations. In May 2005, the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners honored her with a “Resolution” acknowledging her accomplishments as “Miss Black Tennessee USA 2005-2006.” On April 21, 2009, Lorean was honored with a “Day of Recognition” and Certificate from the governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredesen. Recently Lorean was honored at the 1st Annual “Gowns and Crowns” for her work with girls in the Chattanooga community and in Pageantry In her spare time she is an avid volunteer and partner with the Erlanger Breast Resource Center, Girl Scouts of the USA, American Cancer Society Relay for Life where she has served as a committee member seven years for the “Riverfront Relay”, and “Power to End Stroke Ambassador” with the American Heart Association and Erlanger Health System. She is a proud member of the Order of Eastern Star (Prince Hall Affiliated), Daughters of Isis (Hyksos Court #112), National Council of Negro Women, Alpha Angels Inc., Sigma Alpha Pi, and National Black Nurses Association. Lorean is an educational product of Red Bank High School graduating in 2002 and studied Nursing (RN)/ Public and Non-Profit Management at Southern Adventist University.

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Victoria Reed made her first shirt at the age of twelve while in her grandmother’s boutique. After school Victoria spent countless hours in her grandmother’s boutique waiting for her mother to return home from work. During that time she picked up a lot of sewing techniques. Growing up in a family of seamstress it seems she was destined to become a fashion designer. She picked up a sewing machine and started to make sense of it all. Shortly after, she begin to draft her own patterns which allowed her to truly unleash her creativity. She’s now capable of designing and constructing beautiful pieces of work. Driven to make her dreams reality Victoria works hard to continuously push herself to the next level. Her designs usually incorporate classic silhouettes and sharp lines with attention to contrast. 215

Victoria has an enormous love for the arts and strives to incorporate her artistic views in her designs. One of her greatest joys is bringing her sketches to life. She finds the creation process stimulating and satisfying. Victoria also enjoys drawing and painting. She believes that art is the bases of most things including fashion. Victoria Reed was recently a featured designer in Orlando Fashion Week and received raved reviews on her â&#x20AC;&#x153;ready-to-wearâ&#x20AC;? collection. She will also be a featured designer for upcoming fashion weeks which will also include a couture collection. She strives to make garments that are visually pleasing and catches the eyes of her viewers. Her goal is to enhance the beauty of every woman. She aims to make women feel confident and beautiful. She creates timeless pieces that can be worn year after year. Follow Victoria on twitter @byvictoriareed

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On Friday, February 15, 2013 Andy Dantzler and Tametria Conner were wed. The bride, TV reporter Tametria Conner has reporting and anchoring experience at three stations: WICS in Springfield, Illinois, WTOK in Meridian, Mississippi and the Raycom station WDAM in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In fact, she grew up in Hattiesburg, so she certainly is familiar with Alabama. Tametria holds a B.A. in Communication with an emphasis on Broadcasting from Berry College and has a Masters Degree in Public Affairs / Governmental Reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield. In addition to her two degrees, Tametria has earned seven top Mississippi Associated Press Broadcast awards including earning the "Best Investigative Report" in the state for 3 straight years. Her investigative series "Chaos in the Classroom" which exposed corruption within the Meridian Public School District, gained statewide and regional attention. Tametria is not afraid to ask the tough questions, and she enjoys reporting on issues that create change and have a great impact to the community. Within three months of being on the job at WSFA 12 News, Tametria covered the jailing of about a dozen Immigration Law protestors outside of the Alabama Statehouse. That live breaking news coverage earned her the top 2011 Alabama Associated Press Broadcast award for "Best Spot News."

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In June of 2011, Tametria served as one of 12 UNITY Journalists of Color, Inc. who reported on the United Nations Global HIV/AIDS Conference in New York City, in which Tametria interviewed Former President Bill Clinton and Grammy award-winning artist Alicia Keys. Tametria says being a journalist is a lifestyle for her and she's the same way on air as she in person. Tametria is the founder of Keeping it 100 Ministries : It's a Real Movement and Girls In Heels Etiquette Mentoring Program which she started at Washington Middle School in Springfield, IL. The groom Andy Dantzler is a native of Hattiesburg, MS. Mr. Dantzler currently works in the production industry in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. & Mrs. Dantzler attend Fresh Anointing House of Worship in Montgomery under the leadership of Kyle Searcy. Rev. Dr. Clarice Ford, officiated the private wedding ceremony which took place at My Place Catering and Events in Montgomery, AL. Dr, has been Tametria’s mentor and second mother since 2003 when they first met at Berry College when Dr. Ford was a school administrator. Dr. Ford is currently the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Services and the Executive Director of the Diversity Center at the University of Illinois at Springfield. In addition to exchanging vows during the wedding the bride’s father read the Marriage Prayer, which is a poem written by the bride’s 91 year old grandfather Wille Mose Conner. The prayer has been passed on to couples in their family for years. Tametria’s father read the poem in her grandfather’s absence. During the ceremony Andy read vows to his bride that he wrote himself. It was an emotional time for all in attendance. His words were very moving. At one point his best man Jason Akins touches his back as a sign of support during even an emotional time as he reads it. Tametria sang her vows to Andy in a remix of Jamie Foxx's Wedding Song. Her father danced with her off of the song Daddy by Beyonce. 222

Mr. & Mrs. Andy Dantzler danced off of the song Fortunate by Maxwell. It's also the song that Andy requested she walk down the aisle on. There was also a “memorial table” set up which was a surprise to Andy from Tametria during the reception. He had no idea that she gathered never before seen photos of him and his deceased mother as well as group photos of her with friends and family. He was touched. He also lighted a memorial candle in her honor during this time. The wedding party consisted of Tamirica Smith, the Matron of Honor and the bride’s best female friend Nina DeLoach, the groom’s best man Jason Akins, groomsman Antonio Davis, which is also the bride’s my best male friend.

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KATRINA GURL; NEW MEDIA RELATIONSHIP COACH

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Since becoming an author in 2009 with her first book of short stories, Katrina Gurl has been going strong ever since. The California resident has astonishingly avid readers and book lovers alike. “The Balcony View Introduction of the Lovers” was the stepping stone of her writing career. Katrina has taken the vital necessities that all relationships need to remain successful by compiling short, real, romantic stories that will shape any relationship onto a positive path. She incorporates all of her certified relationship coaching training and techniques to introduce new ways of dealing with everyday relationship issues. Katrina faces couples all the time in crisis, in risk of divorce and even separation, so she knows how to effectively implement ways of bringing a couple closer. Katrina is best known for her bodacious writing style. She is not afraid to remind couples that it is imperative to please one another mentally and physically. She teaches that it is okay to fulfill a reasonable fantasy that makes sex fun, spontaneous and pleasurable. Katrina’s number one goal is to guide couples towards a healthy and loving relationship that will last a lifetime. Through the many avenues she currently provides to get that point across she leaves very few excuses not to make a relationship succeed. “The Balcony View Books” are used as a tool to build broken relationships. She does personal consulting through Kit-Kat Relationship Coaching. In addition, her weekly radio shows and videos are offered with a host of training and confidence boosting skills that will assure success in any loving relationship. To find out more about Katrina Gurl’s books and websites visit www.katrinagurl.com and be sure to look for her upcoming book, “The Balcony View - Peeking through Innuendos.” Books Excerpt: The Balcony View by Katrina Gurl What erotically makes your heart pump, breathing change, desire swell and passion over flow with desire? Is it a smell, a smile, a 234

look, someone’s words or a touch? Whatever it is that turns you on to the point of no return, “The Balcony View Series” will stimulate your sensual side. Everyone needs a little escape from reality to enjoy that fantasy in each of The Balcony View couples as the stories within each series continue, you will enjoy learning what couple that identifies with YOU! Learn how love develops between the characters as you are introduced to their lives of conflict, sexuality and dilemma. Noreen and Trent:Two business workaholics that happen to meet during a much needed hiatus. Noreen dreams an unexpected romance after brushing off the man (Trent) that she may very well come to love for a lifetime. Sholondrah and Langston: Two high powered attorneys and friends who are having a new office battle that may lead them to catching a case of their own. (For each other that is). Who will win this round of passion? Skylar and Brandon: Skylar has an intimate fantasy to fulfill and leads Brandon on a sexual journey in search of the perfect antiques chair to accommodate her imaginations. Will her sensual position be quenched? Frenchie and Tyler: Frenchie Langston, wife of high powered attorney Terrell Langston, world renowned life coach and marriage counselor, is having trouble in her own marriage. Even though Frenchie has helped thousands to salvage marriages and relations all over the world, she has no real answers as to how to fix her own. All of her textbook training seems to work for everyone else, but her own marriage is in shambles. Will Tyler, her best friend and producer, make a move in her duress to admit his committed love for her? Adam and Trinity: How will Adam make right of what is all so wrong? A deacon in the church, married with kids and a steamy romance on the side that may cause him to lose everything. All the while, Trinity has no intentions of letting him go easily.

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THE DRAMA YOU WANT, IS THE DRAMA YOU WONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T GET! HOW TO HANDLE THE NEGATIVE REACTION NEGATIVE PEOPLE WANT TO GET OUT OF YOU By Liz Lampkin

Do men really desire a drama free relationship, even if the relationship is casual? Or, do men like drama from women on a certain level? A few years ago, I was blessed with one of the smallest and greatest gifts known to mankind by giving birth to my son. Not only was I blessed with this gift, but I was given a longawaited title of mom. While I was blessed with the gift of my son and the privileged title of mom, I also had the burden of encountering confusion, unnecessary drama and a lack of respect from the father of my child. From the 236

day my son was born, his father constantly did and said things that infuriated me, brought me to tears and damaged my self-esteem. He would always try his best to break me down, rather than lift me up. Oftentimes I wondered why he would do such a thing, especially now that I had given birth to our child (because of course everything was fine before our son was born). Then I finally realized that he wanted a drama filled reaction out of me so he could say that he had a typical “baby mamma” that came with the expected drama. Once I realized what he was doing, I stepped back and told myself that I would not react foolishly (not that I ever did) to any of his negative comments or actions towards me and our child because I realized that I could not waste my precious time reacting to him and wasting energy when I had a child to care for. I decided that I would be stern with him, but I would no longer be attitudinal or irate with him. I also realized that the more I responded to him negatively, the more mental power I gave him over me. So after consciously deciding to stop reacting negatively to his actions and feeding into him, my life became more peaceful; and to my surprise, he was more enraged and upset with my positive actions or non-reactions. He eventually figured out that I was not going to react out of pocket towards him anymore, so he stopped for a while. To this day, he still tries to get a rise out of me, but his antics don’t work. After I realized that my son’s father wanted a drama-filled relationship, I thought to myself…WHY? Why would any man want a relationship with a woman that is a 24/7 headache? Then I realized that unfortunately, this is what some men want because they get a rise out of it and they just like women with a little extra fire in their bones. I also came to the sad conclusion that some men are simply used to having relationships with women who like to perform dramatically because it is what they are used to. Now, some women may say that the men they are involved in relationships with make them behave in a certain manner. This may be true to some extent because oftentimes, when something doesn’t go the way it was anticipated, we allow our emotions to get the best of us, and we instantly react without thinking. However, it is always better to walk away from a person and a situation before you allow it to get the best of you.

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My relationship with my son’s father taught me some valuable lessons, but the most valuable lesson I learned is not to allow someone to take me out of my character as a woman. This lesson is a simple, commonsense one that is known,

but it is often overlooked and not applied. With learning this lesson, I also had to learn how to put aside my ego and control my emotions. Putting aside my ego and controlling my emotions allowed me to listen to the person and filter through what they were saying and how they were reacting, giving me the advantage when I responded because I gathered all information needed to render a calm, intelligent response…which in turn angered them, insulted their pride, or caused them to back down and apologize. How and why do I put aside my ego and control my emotions? I pray and ask God to show me how He wants me to handle situations, and every time I do He shows me. The drama my son’s father wanted out of me was something I refused to give him. In fact, the drama that anyone wants me to give them is something I refuse to give because a moment of drama is not worth me laying aside the woman I am. What would it prove? Nothing. How would I benefit from it? I wouldn’t. Is it worth it? Not at all. Maintaining your character is worth more than a moment of ego driven drama. Let it go and let God.

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Can a Mother fall out of love with her children? By Jezebel Noel This topic is a touchy one because it can be a strong yes and a strong no. Eighty to ninety percent of most mothers would be appalled by someone even asking this kind of a question, but here we go. When I first ran across this question my first thought was, “wow how could somebody even think like this?” As I thought and pondered on it the only answer I could come up with is “yes”. How taboo to even bring up such a subject that is so much a part of reality it is unreal. How everyone who lives in glass houses throw’s rocks and stone when someone confesses that they really fell out of love or never loved their children. When asking people and looking up this topic I found it quite disturbing how many people really didn’t want the kids they had given birth to. The list went on and on about parents feeling as though having children turned out to be the worst thing they had experienced. One mother said “she felt as if she had a jail sentence and couldn’t wait until her release date when her son left and went away to college. While other mothers stated that they wished they had chosen an abortion over motherhood. So my question is, who is to say that a mother is not allowed to Not love or fall out of love with her children? No one has the right to make you feel or tell you how you should feel. Only you and God can really know. To bring attention to people’s reality back in 2009 Nebraska introduced a law called the “Safe Haven” where people could drop off their children to firehouses and police stations without persecution. The glitch in the law was it was no age limit and the states had parents dropping off children from new borns up to 17 years of age. Not only were the numbers staggeringly high in the first few months 239

but citizens from neighboring states were utilizing this law for their benefits. Well not soon after this law was passed, Nebraska had to revise the law back to what its initial intentions were meant for. Infants! I could go on and on about this controversial topic and get everybody saying “No not me”, “Why have kids then?” “Give them away for adoption”, “How you could not love your own flesh and blood” What I am going to say is in my opinion yes you cannot love or fall out of love with your children. If you don’t know how to love like God has loved us, you have not been taught there is a way that it just won’t manifest its self-inside you. If a person can murder their parents, murder their kids, molest, abuse and so many more unloving acts. Then it can just as well be as real and true as the sun rises, for a mother to not love and or fall out of love with her children.

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Law Of Attraction 101 & The Vibrations I’m Sending Out By Sereda Aleta Dailey

The Law of Attraction is present in your daily life now; no matter if you comprehend it or not, no matter if you get it or not, and regardless of whether you’re fond of it or not. Until eventually you understand how to use the Law of Attraction in a purposeful way, most of the time you are not aware that you are attracting into your life-more of-whatever you are giving your focus, attention, and energy to. This is referred to as non-deliberate attraction. It can be described in a 4-step cycle:

Step 3: Step 4:

Step 1: I watch what I’m attracting in any area of my life. Step 2: Whilst watching what I’m attracting, I’m giving a affiliated vibration, whether negative or positive. The Law of Attraction is always checking in to see what my vibration is and matches it obediently, whether wanted or unwanted. As the Law of Attraction responds to my vibration, I receive or manifest into my life, more of what I was observing in the first place.

Then, the cycle begins at Step 1 and repeats itself over and over again. Here’s how the cycle may be working in your life right now. You may notice that you keep attracting negative people and events into your life. As you notice or observe this, you are emitting or offering a corresponding vibration. The Law of Attraction responds to your vibration by matching it and giving you more of the same. In this example, more of the same means that you experience more negative people and events in your life.

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Keep in mind, the Law of Attraction is a powerful and obedient universal law. It doesn’t know whether you want more of something or not; whether it is good for you or not or whether it is wanted by you or not-it simply gives you more of the same. If you are curious about what it is you are offering vibrationally in any area of your life, you need only look at the results you are getting in that area-it’s always a perfect match. When you observe what you are attracting and you like it, celebrate–and in your celebration, you’ll attract more of the same. The moment you observe that you are appealing to anything that you don’t like, you can use the Law of Attraction intentionally to put a stop to it and change it into something that you DO want. The easiest way to do this is to ask yourself, “So, what DO I want?” and then keep your mind focused on this new clarity of desire. Now you are becoming a deliberate offer-er about what you do want and the Law of Attraction will answer consequently. As you go on to apply this, you’ll rapidly be able to look into this area of your life and see the improved outcomes you are obtaining.

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How To Properly Rock A Pocket Square By Brett & Kate McKay Left: The iconic Nat King Cole.

For the past four decades, if American men regarded the breast pocket on their suit at all, it was as an extra place to store sunglasses or business cards. Some men don’t even undo the stitching in the pocket that comes with a new suit. However, men are once again rediscovering the art of sporting a pocket square. Peyton Manning rocks a pocket square with his suit, as well as George Clooney and Diddy. Hell, even Saddam Hussein rocked a pocket square when he was on trial–a man should never defend his war crimes without one. The pocket square is a small accessory that when added to an outfit, allows men to express themselves and vary their look without having to buy a whole bunch of different suits. It can add a bit of interest to your appearance without it looking like you’re trying to hard. The History of the Pocket Square The origin of the pocket square goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Wealthy Greeks carried around perfumed hankies as early as 500 B.C. English and French noblemen carried perfumed and embroidered hankies in order to cover their noses from the stench of the streets and other people. In the early 1900′s, a dapper gentleman would never leave the house without a pocket square tucked neatly into his suit’s breast pocket. Yet by the latter half of that century, the pocket square began to go the way of the hat. It’s high time we bring both back.

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Pocket Square Guidelines Don’t leave your suit naked. Trent Bridges, a friend of mine at law school, refers to suits without pocket squares as “naked suits.” He argues that a suit just doesn’t look complete without one. I agree. The addition of a pocket square adds some finishing panache to a good suit. So, the first guideline of pocket square usage is to always wear one when you wear a suit or sport coat. It just looks better. Color co-ordinating. A pocket square can be patterned or solid. The general guideline is that your pocket square color should compliment some color on your tie. So, if your tie has a bit of red, rock a solid red pocket square or a patterned pocket square with some red in it. However, avoid matching the colors exactly. It looks like you’re trying too hard (so never ever buy a tie/pocket square set at your local department store). A white pocket square can be worn with any color tie, making this color handkerchief an essential part of every man’s collection. How to fold a pocket square You have several options on how to fold your pocket square. Some are super simple and others are complex. It all comes down to personal taste. In this post, we’ll discuss three simple folds that every man should master. I’m proud to present the Art of Manliness’ very first video which features my ugly mug demonstrating how to fold them. The Straight Fold

The Straight Fold is the most simple of the pocket square folds. What you’ll end up with is a small rectangle peeking out of your suit pocket. Here’s one way how to fold it: 1. Lay your pocket square flat. 2. Bring the left side to right side 244

3. Bring the bottom towards the top, but don’t fold it all the way. 4. Fold the fabric in thirds horizontally so that it will fit your suit pocket. The One Corner Fold

With the one corner fold, you’ll have a small peak of fabric coming out your pocket. This one is probably my favorite of the three. Here’s how to fold it: 1. Lay your pocket square on a flat surface, with one corner facing up and one corner facing down so it looks like you have a baseball diamond in front of you. 2. Bring the bottom point to the top point so that you create a triangle. 3. Bring the left corner of the triangle to the right corner, and the right corner to the left corner. You should end up with a long rectangle with a point at the top. It looks sort of like a fence slat. 4. Fold the bottom towards the top, but not all the way. 5. Place it in your suit. Adjust until you get the desired amount of point coming out of the pocket. 6. The Puff Fold The Puff Fold is probably the simplest of the folds. The desired result is to have a small puff of fabric coming out your suit pocket. Here’s how to fold it.

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1. Lay the pocket square flat. 2. Pinch the middle of the fabric, allowing the folds to come in naturally. 3. With one hand firmly holding the pocket square, use your other hand to gently gather it together. 4. Now gracefully gather up the bottom of the pocket square. 5. Place it in your suit. Fiddle with it until you get the desired puffiness. (Visit www.voicemagonline.com) to see video) http://www.artofmanliness.com

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Shaniqua White Campbell known by her professional name “Shawna C.” has the potential to be an industry favorite. While only in the industry since 2009, her professionalism and work ethics have kept her progressing in her craft. With a portfolio most models will kill for, Shawna C. has yet to become content with her success. After appearing in numerous videos, fashion shows, TV series, print modeling and commercials, Shawna C. plans to tap into the big screen. She has appeared in sitcoms such as House of Payne (TBS), For Better or Worse (TBS), Single Ladies (VH1), Generation Wayans (BET). TV series such as My Momma Throws Down (TV1) & The Following (FOX). Movies include Scary Movie 5, Steel Magnolias & Ride Along these are just a few to name. Shawna C still continues to perfect her craft she attended acting classes at Indie acting were she studied Improv, Public speaking, Cold Reading & Combat fighting. In hopes of becoming the next Angela Bassett, Halle Berry or Jada Pinkett Smith. Shawna C says “To never give up on and your dream just take it and turn into your reality”. While most people judged her she took that energy to putting her best foot forward in everything she does. “Never sleep on your Reality”

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Shawna C Measurements- 36"-28"-39 Age- 27 Height- 5"4 Weight- 125 Eyes- Brown Hair- Dark Brown/Medium Current Location- Memphis,Tn Non-Union Links- www.ShawnaC.Com Below is an interview of Shawna C. conducted by VOICE Magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Afi Camara: V.M: How long have you been modeling and what inspired you to become a model? S.C.: I have been modeling now for 3 1/2 years it will be four years in Sept 2013. Modeling is something I always wanted to do but never had the courage to follow through with. As a child growing up I was short, very skinny and had a huge gap in between my teeth which caused me to be not as confident as I am today. I would always watch America's Next Top Model wishing that I was giving the chance to show my many talents. But in this industry today its sad to say sometimes its not that easy, its about who you know or what you look like. I'm only 5'3 so I knew I could never have a successful career in modeling, after several years of low self-esteem thinking I didn't have what it takes. As the years pasted I later saw a season of AMTM that showcased Eva Pigford a model who wasn't the regular 6"ft long legs, skinny build. Yet she fought hard, had a lot of drive & determination. That reminded me of the person crying out inside of me. So on my birthday 3 1/2 years ago I looked myself in the mirror and asked myself what is it you want out of life? What is it you desire? You have been giving your all to everyone else when are you going to chase your dream? That day I made the decision to pursue modeling. I did lots of research, i studied the craft, went on audition after audition, built a resume, built a name now I'm working to build my brand.

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V.M: What is the biggest challenge of your work as a model and spokesperson? S.C.: My biggest challenge as a model is knowing that i will never be accepted in this industry along with the "Greats"... Meaning no matter how long or how hard i study, practice, & work on my skills i will only be "Just" an urban model. Like urban mags, promo work, music videos, trade shows etc. Not speaking down on those jobs because they have gotten me where i am today. I m saying i will never be excepted as a real runway or "Model" due to my height or weight. You'll never see me on the runway in New York, Paris, Milan etc. I just don't have the look but i know if i were every giving the chance i would make jaws drop & hearts stop. Until then I'll keep polishing my craft in other areas. Until i make it one and I'm able to change things for my fellow models coming along behind me. V.M: What is your proudest achievement? S.C.: I have several accomplishments that have made me proud but the one that always stand out the most is working with Tyler Perry. I've had the opportunity of working with Mr. Perry on set 3 of 4 visits to the TPS. I've worked on Meet The Browns, two episodes of For Better Or Worse and his new sitcom Love Thy Neighbor. The feeling I get being on set with a person of his caliber, the knowledge, the wisdom he has is mind blowing. I go through this out of body experience every time I walk on the premises. Like this is a dream it canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be real. Yet I'm always so honored & remain humble because i know right now I'm hidden for a reason. One day my talents will be revealed to the world & you then will see all this hard work was never in vein. V.M: What leaders, thinkers or doers do you admire most? S.C.: There are a lot of leaders, thinkers & doers that inspire me, so its hard to name just one. You have of course President & First Lady Obama, Tyler Perry, Oprah, Tyrese, Tyra Banks and many more. A few things that always come to 251

mind when i think of these people are how they motivate & inspire people on so

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many levels. Here you have the first Black President & first Lady that just by there presence in office will give so many young African Americans coming up the hope. That one day I to can become President, because of the doors & paths our President are paving now for our children future. You also have Tyler Perry once homeless fighting for a dream. Now employing and keeping employed not only his fellow people but people all over the world. Tyra Banks she started the platform for young models who wanted to enter the industry. She has always been a positive role model to young women & women all over the world by inspiring us, always sharing her knowledge of the craft in this business. Something our children are lacking in today's era, great role models. V.M.: What is one thing youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve learned from your career that you would pass along to young people who want their careers and lives to have an impact? S.C.: One thing that i have learned over the last 3 years which has allowed me to keep progressing that will have a great impact on your career is to "never settle". If there is something you want never give up, never lose faith, never get discouraged & never settle. I never settled when people told me i could never be a model. I never settled when people told me I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; have the right look. I never settled for anything anyone else had to say if it wasn't in line with what i saw myself doing with my career. Take risk, don't be content, step outside of the box, don't be afraid of change nor rejection. Use everything that you are faced with negatively and use as a stepping stone to get you where you want to be. V.M.: You recently had an audition at Tyler Perry Studios. Can you tell us about it? S.C.: I never audition for Tyler Perry Studio. I saw different submissions for his projects so being a freelance model/actress i manage myself. So I'm always submitting & booking myself for numerous gigs. I've had the pleasure of being booked at Tyler Perry Studio on four different occasions. The experience in itself to me is life changing because its so much that i admire about him as a man/person. Being around him just makes you want to do better, be better, give it all you got. Every time i visit TPS i listen to this inspirational video by Mr. Perry called "Sometimes Your Meant To Be Hidden". I struggled with being hiding in some many ways, I love being seen, being noticed, applauded for my success & accomplishments. But in this video Mr. Perry talks about way sometimes its best to be under estimated. For people to not know who you are, to be overlooked until God reveals you to the world. On my last visit to TPS Feb 21, 2013 Mr,Perry acknowledge me briefly. Even though its was something so small i look at it as something that will one day be so great. Until then I'll remain hiding and enjoy every chance i get to visit & work at TPS.

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V.M: You are a very busy individual. Can you tell our readers what they can expect next from you? S.C.: Yes, I am very busy right now & wouldn't have it no other way. So what I will tell the readers is always expect the unexpected when it comes to Shawna C. I m not afraid of trying new thinks weather its modeling today, sitcom tomorrow, movie next week. Just know you haven't seen the last of me, I will continue to build my name and expand my brand... Stay Tuned V.M: What is/are you favorite pastimes? S.C.: The fact that I'm always traveling or working I have to say my favorite pastimes always include my family. Rather we spend time in our game room playing bowling, tennis, or super Mario Bros on the Wii. Or if its family night at Putt Putt sometimes as simple as movie night with the family. I enjoyed cooking so I love when i cook a huge meal and my mom, siblings, uncle & aunt comes over. All in all i guess being able to be with my family keeps me normalized which keeps me humble.

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Chef Ahki is one of the most profound, relevant, thought leaders in the modern era. She presents cutting edge information on natural health decorated with beautiful imagery, real-time content and what she calls "Delicious. Indigenous" cuisine or "The Creators Food" as a Colon Hygienist and Living Foods Activist, she has guided thousands towards lifestyle change through detox programs, colon therapy and nutritional Counseling. “As a healer, dancer, musician, writer and food prep artist, nothing makes me happier than to help others experience the ecstatic bliss of a healthy lifestyle. ”She is currently writing her Non-Hybrid recipe book titled” Delicious. Indigenous. As a vegetarian for 13 years and raw foods activist for 7 years, I have been blessed to experience the benefits of a whole foods lifestyle on my Over-all health and well being. Energetically, spiritually, physically and emotionally. I am currently working on a doctorate in Holistic Theology and Naturopathic Science in Hopes to extend my practice into all levels of wellbeing. I have taken on this work in honor of our current master teachers in the natural health field, Dr. Sebi, Gabrielle Cousins, Queen Afua and David Wolfe. Natural food is the yummiest food on earth. It is where all the other flavors come from. It is impossible to top! The basic flavors were given to us by the natural kingdom that also gave us the basic colors, musical tones, and amazing scents. All of these things have something divinely perfect in their essence. And they seem to me to have been provided as building blocks for us to work with, to be creative and fill the world with all kinds of beauty. We have done amazing things with colors and tones and scents. And I think that with the advent of the raw-vegan culinary arts we are coming into an age of sumptuous orchestrations and true masterpieces to please not just the palate, but to invigorate the whole being – palate, mind, body, and soul!

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Moringa is known by some as nature's energy Miracle Tree, a tree that is packed with so much nutrition that some call it one of the most powerful foods on the planet. The fruit is 100% natural. Moringa is a tree that is filled with antioxidants, amino acids and essential fatty acids. The antioxidants that are in Moringa can reverse the signs of aging because they have ten times more antioxidants than red grapes and 30 times more than red wine. Moringa also heals and restores cardiovascular and digestive health as it is full of monounsaturated (healthy) fats, dietary fiber and phytosterols. It is also responsible for offering the minerals and essential amino acids that are essential for proper muscle contraction and regeneration. Celebrities have even attested to the wonders of this versatile fruit. Moringa contains a fatty acid that is similar to the one in olive oil and is also rich in monounsaturated oleic acid. In case you are wondering why oleic acid is 257

important, let me tell you why. It helps omega-3 fish oils penetrate the cell membrane which helps to make cell membranes suppler. Moringa will boost energy levels naturally, improve digestive functions, induce healthy and sound sleep, provide all of the vital vitamins that are necessary, and improve vision clarity. Moringa is also a very powerful free radical fighter. It has high levels of fibers and cleanses infections within the body. It will regulate cholesterol levels, promote healthier and younger-looking skin, alleviate diabetes, fight cancerous cells, slow down the aging process, and will also enhance sexual desire and performance. You can buy it in a powder form and make smoothie drinks too. If they are freeze dried, the berries have a very long life while still maintaining full nutritive value. Moringa is definitely a healing food and should be added to any diet to maintain optimum health. Moringa is labeled as the antioxidant superfood, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s known for its substantially large amounts of antioxidants and nutritional value. Moringa has double the cancer-fighting power of blueberries, the formerly known antioxidant contest frontrunner. Consumption of the Moringa not only helps prevent and attack cancerous cells, but it is said to boost energy and overall immunity as well. Actually, the list of benefits is virtually endless from improved digestion to better circulation, and even better sleep. It is based on these extraordinary characteristics that Moringa has been referred to as the most healthful tree in the 258

world. Moringa has also shown promises of preventing heart disease, as it has 10-30 times the amount of cardiovascular-fighting phytochemical called anthocyanin found in red wine. You may have heard of these phytochemicals from the French Paradox that enumerates the oddity of heart diseaseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rare occurrence in France despite their high fat intake. The concept bears the phytochemicals in the red wine responsible for their continued health. How to enjoy Moringa I purchase my Moringa powder in bulk at my local health food store. But it has been packaged by many companies and very easy to find. The taste is mild, like a medium-bodied Lipton tea. Very pleasant unsweetened. 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2 tsp moringa 8 oz hot water Things you can add: sliced ginger, a bit of lime juice or peel or mint. Steep for 10 minutes or overnight. Strain the herb from the water and enjoy. If infusing overnight. Strain and warm before drinking. You can also enjoy Moringa room temperature or iced as well. Article information property of www.chefahki.com

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Life is beautiful, money is debt, good business has no ethic, we all ni##as and gods, elders can be wrong, everything is both, fight your fears, be the change, stay Woke! Magic is rea;! - Chef Ahki

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Robodocs’? ‘Tricorders’? How telemedicine will shape the future of health By Ki Mae Heussner

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News that the FDA has cleared iRobot’s medical robots for use in hospitals stoked interest across the web, but ‘robodocs’ are just one way telemedicine could keep healthcare costs down, improve care and increase access to patients. Telemedicine is an idea that has been talked up for decades, but it looks as if it’s finally coming into its own. Thursday’s news that iRobot’s medical robot, which would let doctors talk to and monitor patients remotely, stoked interest across the web. But ‘robodocs’ are just one way telemedicine could keep healthcare costs down, improve care and increase access to patients in remote communities. The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) estimates that 10 million Americans directly benefited from some sort of telemedicine service in the past year, with clinical applications, like those for radiology and emergency room services leading the pack. A report this month projected that telehealth would grow 53 percent in 2013 and six-fold by 2017. Aside from the rise of sensors, expanded broadband access and the ubiquity of connected and mobile devices among patients and doctors, several healthspecific trends are making remote care more of a reality. More patients are coming online, meaning that fewer doctors will be needed to serve more patients; payment models are shifting from fee-for-service to managed care approaches that emphasize patient outcomes; and hospitals are under more pressure to keep re-admission rates down. Remote monitoring and communication technology could play a critical role in addressing each of those issues. Some telehealth innovations, like the iRobot that lets doctors visit a patient’s bedside via an electronic avatar and 15-inch screen, seem like the stuff of science fiction. San Francisco-based Scanadu is developing handheld tools that have been likened to the StarTrek “Tricorder.” A recent product lets you check your temperature, blood oxygen levels, pulse and other vitals by holding the device close to your body. Then it sends the information to your smartphone, where it 262

can be sent on to your doctor. To encourage more innovation in sensor-based mobile technology, the X Prize Foundation even developed the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize competition (in which Scanadu is a participant). A “Magic Carpet” developed by researchers at GE and Intel, uses sensors in home carpets to monitor seniors’ activity and then predict and detect falls. Other telemedicine services aren’t as sexy but could still go a long way in getting improved care to people who need it. Corporate giants like GE, Intel and Cisco have, for years, provided videoconferencing and remote communication platforms to hospitals to enable, people in rural communities, seniors and the chronically ill to interact with doctors from home. But new applications and companies are bringing telehealth into more specialized areas and the everyday. Startups like Direct Dermatology and Iagnosis help patients seek skincare help from doctors via technology. iCouch and Breakthrough provide online counseling services, and Ringadoc targets consumers with a network of doctors available 24/7 to give advice and even write prescriptions from phone consultations. This week, the iExaminer App from Welch Allyn received FDA clearance to make iPhone-enabled remote eye exams more feasible. And a company called CampusMD this month announced a nationwide telehealth program to provide students with round-the-clock, remote access to doctors. Still, despite increasing innovation, legacy barriers still stand in telemedicine’s way – for example, licensing issues related to interstate telemedicine and Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements that are limited. And then there’s the expense and time commitment needed to implement new platforms and train providers, as well as the skeptics who raise confidentiality and ethical questions (and not without good reason). But more insurers, like Aetna and Cigna, and big employers, including GE and Delta, are backing the trend – earlier this month, WellPoint, one of the country’s biggest insurance companies, said it would support telehealth services for all employer and individual plans. And the ATA reports that other groups, including state legislator, patient groups and medical societies, are making new inroads in at least pushing for more favorable policies. Four or five years ago, there were virtually no telehealth services targeting consumers. But Jonathan Linkous, ATA’s CEO said 400,000 consumers used an online service in the past year to receive remote health care. “When a consumer realizes how much more benefit they’re going to be able to get [from a telehealth service], they’re going to wonder why [their doctor] doesn’t support it and go to another doctor,” he said. “We’re right at the tip of that now.” http://gigaom.com 263

The Surgeon General Wants AfricanAmerican Moms to Breastfeed

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin launched a campaign this week to convince African-American women that breast feeding is a totally natural aspect of motherhood. As part of the campaign, the Surgeon General released a video which seeks to dispel some of the myths about breastfeeding.

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Among the myths that the “It’s Only Natural, Mother’s Love, Mother’s Milk“ seeks to dispel is the idea that breastfeeding affects the shape and size of a woman’s breast. In truth, the shape and size of a woman’s breast is affected most by age and heredity, not breastfeeding. The video also makes it clear that breastfeeding your baby does not make the child overly attached, nor does it impact the mother’s diet. A breastfeeding mother can eat a normal diet while breastfeeding. According to the video, some women are reluctant to breastfeed because their husbands and boyfriends don’t want to share, due to the oversexualization of b*****s.

Here are a few statistics from a 2011 report:    

Three out of four mothers (75%) in the U.S. start out breastfeeding, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2010 Breastfeeding Report Card. At the end of six months, breastfeeding rates fall to 43%, and only 13% of babies are exclusively breastfed. Among African-American babies, the rates are significantly lower, 58% start out breastfeeding, and 28% breastfeed at six months, with 8% exclusively breastfed at six months. The Healthy People 2020 objectives for breastfeeding are: 82% ever breastfed, 61% at 6 months, and 34% at 1 year.

The goal of the program is to get 80% of African-American women breastfeeding. Currently, only 55 percent of African-American new moms breastfeed.

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A Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD By Lidia Zylowska

Psychiatrist Lidia Zylowska shares how people with ADHD can manage their restless minds.

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“My mind is always busy,” exclaimed Carolyn. “If you ask me about one thing, that makes me think of a million other things.” “I noticed,” I thought to myself. Carolyn was in my office for an evaluation of possibleADHD, and it was a struggle to keep her focused. Many of my questions were met with long descriptions and too many details. Other times, she veered to another topic. She seemed to be insightful, and her answers were often interesting or humorous—but they didn’t always address the question. Along with a restless body, a busy or restless mind is common with ADHD. This can be a curse and a blessing. Having a restless mind can make it difficult to focus and follow through on one’s tasks without getting sidetracked or lost in thought. On the other hand, having lots of thoughts and ideas can lead to making unusual and intriguing connections between things. Many adults with ADHD exhibit “out-ofthe box” thinking and creativity due to their incessantly curious mind. The ADHD Mind In ADHD, thought flow is often irregular. Ideas can frequently branch out or jump from place to place. On the other hand, there may also be a tendency to get stuck in one way of thinking or to obsess about something—a kind of inflexible flow. With frequent jumps in thinking, the content of ADHD mind may sometimes look like a disorganized closet and sometimes like a zigzaggy road that ultimately reaches a novel insight. Sometimes the content of the ADHD mind is out of balance or skewed. For example, the thinking may be overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. Self-Perception and ADHD Accurate self-perception seems to be difficult in ADHD. For example, positively biased self-perceptions—reporting higher competence than what the actual performance shows—are common in ADHD children. This kind of overestimation in children is found across the board in social, academic, and behavioral domains. It may be in part a result of certain cognitive deficits, and it may have a protective role in early years; however, its full impact is still unknown. (At the 267

same time, children with ADHD are typically accurate in their perceptions of othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; performance.) The problem with accurate self-perception is also shown in adults with ADHD. In a 2005 study adults with ADHD self-reported higher competence as drivers than their observed performance and their driving record showed.3 In contrast, a 2007 study among college-aged students, by contrast, suggested that ADHD students tended to underestimate their academic performance. In my clinical experience, many adults with ADHD, before even being introduced to mindfulness, are able to notice or joke about their mental process. Perhaps the repeated experience of living with an unruly, frustrating, and skewed mind makes it easier for them to see their thoughts as somewhat separate from themselves. However, despite this general knowledge, it can still be difficult for people with ADHD to notice the very moments when their mind jumps or gets stuck in unbalanced thinking.

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Mindfulness of Thinking The mindfulness-based approach to thinking is different from traditional psychotherapy in that it teaches us to experience a different relationship to our thoughts before attempting to focus on their content. Mindfulness first invites us to watch or witness the flow of thinking. Instead of being caught up in the narrative in our head, we are invited to observe our thinking as an everchanging stream, similar to watching clouds float across the sky. This shift in perspective weakens the grip of unhelpful thinking. A 2007 study by Norman Farb at the University of Toronto showed that mindfulness training can weaken the tendency to be caught in an inner story and analysis of yourself and promotes focus on direct experience. This is important since habitual self-analysis can make one more vulnerable to unhelpful rumination, anxiety, and depression. In contrast, focus on presentmoment experience, as in mindfulness, has been demonstrated to promote wellbeing. Exploration 5.1: Mind Like a Sky ď&#x201A;ˇ

Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Become grounded in the present moment by noticing your breathing 269

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When you feel settled, imagine a spacious blue sky with white clouds floating across it. Sense your awareness as being like the blue sky, vast and spacious, larger than the passing clouds. With such awareness, you can watch your thoughts and feelings asif they were clouds coming and going. As you watch them, label your thoughts and feelings without personalizing them—for example, “oh, there is worry,” “sadness,” “remembering.” Notice that, just like clouds, your thoughts may go by quickly or slowly. They may be linked with each other or floating separately. They may appear light and fluffy or dark and heavy.  As you watch your thoughts flow, see if you can sense the space between them. This space—the space of open awareness—is a place where you can observe your mind without being pulled by it. It is the space from which you can note thoughts and feelings but choose to not act on them.  As you do this exercise, it is easy to get lost in thinking—to go into the clouds and become enveloped by the content of your thoughts and feelings. Whenever that happens, become aware of your breath and reground yourself in the present moment. Then return to watching your mind. http://mindfulness-adhd.com

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Dr. Jerry M. Bobo and the Millionaire Mindset

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Dr. Bobo is multi-disciplined professional with more than fifteen years of counseling, consulting and business ownership experience and 10 years network marketing experience with top recruiting and top income earning accolades . He is the founding President and CEO of Fresh Start University Incorporated. Dr. Jerry Bobo is well sought after public speaker and motivator. He has received accolades from a local state and even federal level. He has been featured on radio programs and magazines. Dr. Bobo has been labeled an expert Self Help Self Development Law of Attraction Business Success Universal Laws Dear Reader, As you read this I know that gas prices are at record highs. I also know that your utility bill is outrageous. There are problems in your finances as well as your relationships. You may even be drug addicted or have a family member who is. Your heart may be broken. Depression may be taking a toll on your life. Do not feel ashamed or alone. Trust me; you are not the lone ranger. There are millions of people with circumstances just like yours. It is up to you to make a positive change. I have seen tragedies turned into triumphs in my own life and in the lives of others. It is possible to turn your situation around. However, it will take hard work and dedication. You will have to pursue your dreams with relentless fervor! Not only do you need motivation, you also need a plan and operating procedures. I know how hard it is to struggle and how it feels to struggle. I know how it feels to be lead astray and sold dreams. It is up to us to change the tide. We can not wait on the lottery or anyone else to help us, we have to help ourselves.

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Above: Dr. and Mrs. Bobo

As you read this book you may get the impression that I am angry. If you get that impression, let me assure you that you are absolutely correct! I am angry! I am angry about the conditions of my brothers and sisters. I am angry that our parents and grandparents have to work themselves to death just to survive. I am angry because a majority of churches are not living up to their responsibilities. Yes, it angers me to hear â&#x20AC;&#x153;happy go luckyâ&#x20AC;? sermons, when things are getting progressively worse. I am angry about family members who are in a position to help other family members, but refuse to do so. I am angry about family members who try to degrade and humiliate other family members who are trying to better themselves through hard work and education. I am angry at a government that has billions of dollars for wars and restoration of other countries, but our own lands lie in ruin. We can feed and support people abroad, but our own ghettos harvest poverty stricken, uneducated, sick and struggling individuals.

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Yes, I am angry! To my brothers and sisters I say hold on; together we can make it. You can not do the same things and expect different results. If you want better, then you have to do better.â&#x20AC;? Life Coaching Dr. Bobo is a successful investor, network marketer, trainer and life coach and TOP RECRUITER as well as a motivational speaker. He has been blessed to publish a book as well. He comes from a trouble and checkered past. Dr. Bobo has seen first hand the cruel and mean street life and justice system, along with being let down by various Religious organizations and Churches. Although faced with bankruptcy and divorce at a very early age, He has been able to find success, peace and spirituality. He has since then been sharing his hope strength and experiences with others from all walks of life. He has received numerous awards 274

and accommodations including volunteer of the year for several years in some Memphis City Schools. Fresh Start University Fresh Start University is a Personal Development & Business School. INCREASE YOUR CREDIT SCORE AND INCOME IN THE NEXT 30 - 60 DAYS! As it relates to Personal Development, they help individuals increase their Faith, Family, Finance, Fitness, & Focus. â&#x20AC;&#x153; As it relates to business, it does not matter whether you have a home based business, a traditional brick & mortar business, on line click and order, or simply want to start a business, we will help you reach your maximum potential. We offer a REAL world continuous education and we are the ONLY school that pays YOU to attend!,â&#x20AC;? says Dr. Bobo. http://www.drjerrybobo.com 275

Why African Americans May be Left Out of the 21st Century Job Market By Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd

Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd shares ways that African Americans can be more competitive in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers of the future

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Usually when we hear people say someone has a "good job," traditional jobs like lawyer or accountant come to mind. Indeed, these have been attractive and lucrative careers in the past, but are they the careers of the 21st Century? According to US News's "100 Best Jobs" of 2013 list, those careers don't even crack the top 30, coming in at #35 and #36, respectively. Analyzing "the number of openings, the chance to advance and be professionally fulfilled, and the ability to meet financial obligations," US News concluded that careers in science and technology are the "best jobs," with the top 15 being in one of those fields. As a professional in the atmospheric sciences, I see how extreme weather like Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Katrina and changing climate affect society. As a result, President Obama continues to tout a new “green” economy built on renewable energy, climate change solutions, and sustainability. This economy will require a new generation of professionals that understand changing weather patterns, climate science, wind and solar engineering, environmental sustainability, and mitigation-adaptation strategies, Unfortunately, many African Americans won’t be prepared for them due to woeful under-representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. According to TheNational Science Foundation, only 9.9% of master's degrees in STEM fields were awarded to Blacks as 277

compared to 63.2% of Whites. Surprisingly, this is an improvement. In 2001, Blacks made up only 8.6% of STEM-field master's degrees. While we are headed in the right direction, the number of Blacks in STEM fields is far too small. Fortunately, there are some things we as a community can do to improve the situation. Change Family Perceptions. Because I was a good student, my family always assumed that I'd be a lawyer, doctor or businessman. But now that we know that these aren't the careers of the future, we can encourage our youth to pursue STEM careers, instead. We can develop our children's interest in these fields at an early age by taking them to museums, doing fun, at-home experiments with them, taking them to the library and watching movies and documentaries that expose them to the possibilities of these careers. Connect Students with Funding Sources. Money is a major concern for Black students trying to make it to college, let alone for a STEM degree. But there are many federally-funded programs like the NSF-funded Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation or the Diversity Climate Network which offer funding to attract minority students to STEM fields. Find these resources and take advantage of them. Connect Students with Mentors. Sometimes getting into STEM fields is only half the battle. Due to under-representation and limited access, several minority and female colleagues told me that feeling isolated at work was a big hindrance to their advancement and development early in their careers. At times, you may be the â&#x20AC;&#x153;onlyâ&#x20AC;? one like you in a classroom or meeting. I understand this all too well. As the recently-elected president of the American Meteorological Society, I'm only the 2nd African American to hold this position and am still the only African American with a doctorate degree from the well-known Florida State University Department of Meteorology. But I've had help. When I was a young graduate student, my mentor, Dr. Warren Washington, an internationally noted atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, took the time to provide me with nuggets of advice that Dr. Washington imparted to me have shaped my career. He urged me 278

to establish myself as a science expert first before getting pulled in directions that young Black scientists often do. Now, like Dr. Warren, I'm a White House honoree for my work. When students connect with mentors and communities that can encourage them in school and throughout their careers, it can make all the difference. In 2013, it's a shame that we're still only celebrating the first and second African Americans to achieve leadership success in STEM fields and that we continue to lag so far behind our counterparts. Now is the time to do something about it. Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd is Professor at the University of Georgia (UGA) and Director of its Atmospheric Sciences Program. He is the President of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), only the 2nd African-American to hold this office. Follow him on Twitter: @DrShepherd2013.

www.ebony.com

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American Money: It's Time To Build Your Personal Economy By Dedrick Muhammad

Celebrate Aprilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Financial Literacy Month by securing a financial future.

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A recent report suggest that two-thirds of Hispanic households and 62 percent of African-American households do not earn enough to cover basic needs and saving requirements. These findings underscore the urgency in advancing policy that addresses structural barriers to economic opportunity and fairness. They also highlight the importance of empowering ourselves to make informed financial decisions and not be misled by financial schemes. Now that National Financial Literacy Month has arrived, it is as great a time as ever to begin taking steps to strengthening your personal economy. And along with the NAACP Economic Department, there are countless organizations available to assist you in your efforts to securing a financial future for you and your loved ones. I highlighted some great financial organizations/institutions to help you get started: Operation Hope Operation Hope provides economic resources and opportunity to lower income and middle income Americans. Their services include Banking on Our Future (teaches financial literacy to youth); HOPE Business In A Box (teaches youth about the assets of economic energy, small business and entrepreneurship), HOPE Financial Dignity Centers (which consist of financial resources, literacy and counseling to people in underserved neighborhoods) and much more.

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Hands on Banking Hands on Banking, sponsored by Wells Fargo, consists of interactive tools and programs that makes learning financial basics and smart money management fun. Resources are specially tailored for children, young adults and adults, and there is even a free financial curriculum for educators. Resilience Circles With economic security eroding for millions of people, particularly in communities of color, many people lack a safe place to vent frustrations and receive emotional support. So, Common Security Club created resilience circles which are small groups nationwide where people come together to increase their personal security through learning, mutual aid, social action and community support. BettterMoneyHabits.com Bank of America and Khan Academy recently announced the launch of a financial education effort that provides both bank customers and non-customers free, selfpaced, easy-to-understand resources to develop better money habits. Targeted to adults who want to improve their understanding of their finances, lessons on the essentials of money management range from creating a budget to understanding compound interest. This resource's unique visual narration of complex economic issues makes financial issues more understandable. Ask a Financial Planner The Financial Planning Association is a community of financial planning experts ready to help you. One of its resources called Ask a Financial Planner invites you to submit financial questions online and receive prompt responses from certified financial planners. NID Housing Counseling Agency The National Investment Division-Housing Counseling Agency (NID-HCA), founded by African-American real estate brokers, is a HUD approved non-profit organization with 25 years of experience in housing counseling (e.g., homeownership, foreclosure prevention, foreclosure recovery, etc.) and community building. All these resources can assist your journey in becoming more financially secure. And many of these resources are great for kids and seniors. So make celebrating National Financial Literacy Month a family activity and build your personal economy over generations. http://www.financialliteracymonth.com/ 282

The Nation's Top 10 Black-Owned Companies

The latest U.S. Census report on black-owned businesses shows a growth rate three times the national average. The 10 black-owned companies listed here are excellent models for those who aspire to economic independence.

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World Wide Technology Inc. In 2010, revenue rose 45 percent to $3.2 billion as demand from the public and private sectors soared for this Maryland Heights, Mo., firm's technology products and consulting services. David L. Steward, chairman of the board, founded World Wide Technology in 1990. Prior to working at WWT, Steward, who earned a bachelor's degree in business management from Central Missouri State University, was a senior-level manager at Federal Express, Wagner Electric and Missouri Pacific Railroad. Captions by Frank McCoy

CAMAC International Corp. Last September, President Obama enlisted a seasoned entrepreneur when he appointed Kase Lawal to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiation. In 1986 the Nigerian-born chairman and CEO of CAMAC founded his company, which has annual revenue of about $1.5 billion to explore, develop and operate oil properties. Lawal, who has a B.S. in chemical engineering and an MBA, worked as a chemist and a chemical engineer prior to starting CAMAC in Houston. 284

Bridgewater Interiors LLC

The Detroit company, a tier-one supplier of motor-vehicle parts and accessories, is in a tough industry. Its joint-venture partner, Johnson Controls, a technology and industrial company, owns 49 percent of the business. Ronald E. Hall Sr.has been CEO at Bridgewater since its 1998 launch. The company, which had revenue of $1.1 billion in 2009, is known for its high-quality work on popular Ford and General Motors vehicles.

ACT-1 Group Companies with staffing, human resources or business concerns turn to Janice Bryant Howroyd for her expertise, and she has built a firm with nearly $1 billion in annual revenue. The North Carolina A&T University graduate founded ACT-1, headquartered in Torrance, Calif., in 1978, and is CEO of what is now the nation's largest womanand minority-owned employment-services company. Howroyd is the authorof The Art of Work: How to Make Work, Work for You!

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ZeroChaos If you name your work-forcemanagement company ZeroChaos, you better deliver. Harold F. Mills is CEO of the Orlando, Fla., staffservices firm, with annual sales of $700 million. The company has customers in 14 countries. In 2010 the Orlando Business Journal hailed the former Ameritech executive as one of its 40 Under 40 leaders. Mills has a bachelor's degree from Purdue University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Follow him on Twitter.

MV Transportation Inc. When you have to get to work or somewhere else, MV Transportation can take you there. The Fairfield, Calif., company, founded in 1975 by husband-and-wife team Alex and Feysan Lodde, has nearly 13,000 employees and revenue of more than $700 million annually. Its 7,000 vehicles serve public and private passengers in 100 locations in 26 states plus Canada. It is the nation's "largest privately held passengertransportation contracting firm." 286

TAG Holdings LLC CEO Joseph B. Anderson leads the Troy, Mich., parent company of a variety of businesses. TAG Holdings controls a Korean and a Chinese plumbing ceramics maker, four automobile wheel-assembly suppliers, and a firm that offers consolidation and warehouse services. Revenue in 2010 was more than $700 million. Anderson is a former White House fellow and a decorated West Point graduate. From 1979 to 1992, he was a General Motors executive. He is a vice chair of the Obama administration's Manufacturing Council.

The RLJ Cos. Serial entrepreneur Robert L. Johnson is always busy. He is the founder and chairman of the RLJ Cos., based in Bethesda, Md. In 2010, RLJ Development, the hotel investment company that Johnson and Thomas J. Baltimore Jr. co-founded, acquired 22 properties worth more than $1 billion. They include two hotels in New York; five properties in the Washington, D.C., area; and hotels in Tampa, Fla., and Los Angeles. The firm's 2010 revenue was $578 million.

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Bridgeman Foods Inc. Ulysses "Junior" Bridgeman was an accomplished basketball player during 12 years in the NBA. He also anticipated retirement by exploring business opportunities and making contacts that turned him into an all-star in business. Bridgeman is owner and president of $500 million Manna Inc. and ERJ Inc., which manage more than 320 restaurants. Those include 163 Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburger restaurants, 120 Chili's, nine Perkin's Family Restaurant & Bakery restaurants and at least 28 Fazoli's. They're all slam dunks.

Barden Cos. Inc. During the 1980s, Don Barden made his first fortune operating Detroit-area cable television companies, which he later sold to Comcast. He has also owned a real estate development company and radio stations. Currently Barden is the nation's only black owner of gaming casinos. His $380 million business consists of the Fitzgerald casinos in Las Vegas, Mississippi and Colorado, as well as two Majestic Star floating casinos in Gary, Ind. Don Barden lost his long battle with cancer in May 2011. www.theroot.com

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Be a Network Star

How to Get More Out of Business Meet-Ups

I spend lots of time and money going to networking events to generate business vital for my struggling company, but I’m not getting anything out of them. Is there a better use of my time? Before you give up, look at how you’re approaching the events you attend. Networking done right can reap benefits, but just showing up and getting your name or business card out there doesn’t bring in customers. Examine your script and fine-tune it to the audience at each networking event. At one conference I met a golf instructor who told me her business was on the rocks. She was trying to reach new customers by attending speed-networking events. But when I asked her to give me her pitch, I learned it focused on her business—on what she did—and didn’t cater to the needs of prospective clients. Her pitch: “Hi, my name is Jan Smith, and I’m a golf instructor with more than 20 years of experience training some of the best pros in the world. I offer hourly 289

lessons, half-day programs and a special 18-hole package. I’d love to help you develop an interest in this terrific sport. Thanks!” Not awful, but she was pitching to women as though they were trying to find a new sport. She should have been pitching to businesswomen looking to boost their businesses. With that in mind, here’s how I suggested she tweak her pitch: “Hi, I’m Jan Smith. Did you know that business deals worth millions of dollars are made on the golf course? If you’re not out on the green, you’ll miss your share of that money. As a seasoned golf instructor, my specialty is getting women quickly up to par. Let’s talk about how golf can grow your bottom line.” Big difference, right? Both are short, but the first is all about her and the other is about them. Jan now alters her pitches to suit any demographic, from single women hoping to meet men (who cite golf as an interest on dating sites) to women who want to lose weight (touting how many calories you burn playing a round of golf). A few other tips: ★ Look at profitability: Unless you love attending mixers, stop attending events that don’t attract your target audience. ★ Networking events aren’t sell-a-thons: They’re expand-a-thons designed to make new connections. 290

★ Request more business cards than you give out. Sure, pass out your card if someone requests it. When you request someone else’s card, you’re in control of the follow-up. Once home, separate the cards you’ve collected into categories, giving priority to the contacts you feel you can convert to clients. You should send these contacts followup emails right away—even if it’s just a short note reminding the person about something specific from your chat—and connect via social media with all good prospects. It’ll widen your net. ★ Go alone. When I first started attending networking events, I often went with another person. After a while I noticed I wasn’t getting anything out of them. It occurred to me I was talking about everyone instead of talking to them. So I began to go alone and followed a firm ground rule: I could not leave until I introduced myself to three attendees. Sometimes nothing came of it: We’d exchange a mediocre handshake and barely anything else. But more times than not, I’d end up with a new nugget, resource or idea that I never would have gotten had I not put myself out there. Try it. It works. www.success.com

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Melo Time By Jason Gay

Photography by Terry Richardson

In his third season with the Knicks, Carmelo Anthony has stepped up his gameâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;on and off the courtâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;turning a sometimes hit-or-miss career into the stuff championships are made of.

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CRUSHING IT | 'We recognized that Melo had the opportunity to change how people referred to him,' says Asani Swann, director of operations for Melo Enterprises Inc.

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, a surreal moment occurs in the life of Carmelo Anthony. He will be out somewhere, maybe at a dinner or a business gathering, and he will be introduced to a person, perhaps a very capable person, who knows many things about many things, but does not know who Carmelo Anthony is. This seems improbable, given that the 28-year-old Anthony is one of the most public and scrutinized athletes in the media fun-house mirror of New York City, but it does happen. Sometimes the person has a vague idea. Sometimes they recognize just Anthony's first name—Carmelo, yes, it rings a bell—and nothing else. They don't know much about NBA basketball. They don't know much about the New York Knicks. This doesn't insult Anthony. Not at all. This is a relief. Anonymity makes him happy. "I love having those conversations," Anthony says on a January afternoon. He says this earnestly, as if he's describing a guilty pleasure he wishes he could enjoy more. "Because if there is a connection, it's a natural connection. It's not anything to do with basketball." These moments do not happen often. Chances are they will be happening less and less. Anthony is deep into his third season in New York, and the Knicks are playing some of their best basketball in more than a decade—the primary reason being Anthony. This is not insignificant news. For most of his 10-season career, Anthony has been regarded as an offensive dynamo—Charles Barkley, the explayer, TNT analyst and basketball's Simon Cowell, describes Anthony to me as "the best scorer in the NBA"—but there was the maddening suspicion that Anthony left potential on the table, that he lacked the crazy-eyed singlemindedness that separated the very good from the great. Melo was about Melo, too unengaged, perhaps ambivalent, the rap went.

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That suspicion is fading. When we meet just after the New year, the Knicks are in first place in their division, and Anthony has just been named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week. The long hype of Carmelo Anthony in New York City has coalesced into something real, and there's a lightness to his mood. "This is what I envisioned, coming to New York," he says. "This was on my vision board. I'd sit back and be like, damn, I am going to run out there and be hitting game winners in the Garden in front of fans, getting them riled up. When they're stomping on the floors, yelling 'New York Knicks'—that's a great feeling." We are sitting on plastic chairs in the empty Knicks practice facility in Tarrytown, New York. Practice is done. We look like a pair of ninth graders waiting out detention after gym class. Anthony is wearing an orange T-shirt and a pair of lightweight sweatpants cut at the calf—a version of basketball capris. He stretches his long legs across the floor. "I always told friends around me, my family, my teammates, guys in the organization, this process was going to take two and a half to three years," he says. "Just to get everything in order. Get your feet wet. Get used to it. A lot of things have become clearer to me about being in New York." It did not occur overnight. The Knicks traded half their roster when they brought Anthony from the Denver Nuggets in February 2011, after an exasperating saga that dragged on for months. He returned to the city where he was born, across the Brooklyn Bridge, in the brick apartment towers of Red Hook. Anthony hadn't spent his entire childhood in New York—when he was eight, his family moved to Baltimore, where he ascended into a high school star—but there was enough thread to spin a homecoming narrative. Anthony was introduced at a standing-room-only press conference with his wife, the former MTV personality Alani "La La" Vasquez, and the couple's son, Kiyan, now six. When Anthony walked onto the Madison Square Garden floor as a Knick for the first time, the team played a welcoming video accompanied by the schmaltzy lyrics of the Diddy–Skylar Grey song "Coming Home":

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I'm coming home / Tell the world I'm coming home / Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday / I know my kingdom awaits and they've forgiven my mistakes. That gooey homecoming feeling faded fast. The Knicks were swept out of the play-offs in Anthony's first half-season, and the lockout-shortened 2011â&#x20AC;&#x201C;12 season was messierâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;its peak was a winning streak piloted by the point guard Cinderella, Jeremy Lin, most of which Anthony missed with an injury. The team stumbled upon his return, leading to the resignation of head coach Mike D'Antoni, with whom Anthony had occasionally clashed. The team improved, but Miami drummed New York out of the play-offs in five games. A couple months later, the Knicks declined to sign the beloved Lin. The off-season criticism of the franchise was withering. But New York is crazy even when things are good. When today's Knicks practice ends, Anthony is swarmed by reporters, eager to hear his comments on the latest absurd distraction. A couple days before, Anthony had been involved in a strange episode in the underbelly of the Garden, where he was spotted by a television camera outside a bus chartered by the Boston Celtics. He was waiting to speak to the Celtic antagonist Kevin Garnett, and it's safe to assume he was not there to ask Garnett out for pomegranate mojitos. Anthony would later claim that during the game Garnett had said "certain things you just don't say to another man," and there was gleeful, junior-high-schoolish speculation about what exactly these "certain things" were. Today Anthony politely deflects the controversy ("me and Kevin, that's handled, that's settled, that's done and over with," he says), but the National Basketball Association overlords do not like Anthony's attempted bus confrontation. Hours later, the league suspends him for one game. But New York could not have cared less. Melo was becoming one of their own. They city had his back.

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THERE IS A PRESUMPTUOUS BELIEF that New York is nirvana for a professional athlete, but a number of highprofile free agents have blown off this nirvana in recent years. The Knicks made a pandering overture to LeBron James— going as far as to make a recruiting film with members of the Sopranos cast—but there's no evidence James took the offer seriously before joining the Miami Heat. Not everyone signs with the Yankees now. The Jets may have a quarterback opening soon, and the gig might be less preferable than putting your face inside a trash bag full of bees. But New York held an appeal to Anthony and his advisers. "New York City is the capital," says Anthony's manager, Robert "Bay" Frazier, who has known him since his teens. "You can get everything done." Anthony is not in the elite class of superstar endorsers like James or Kobe Bryant—he's more like 1-AA than 1-A— but since leaving Denver his visibility and business has grown. Anthony's current relationships include Nike's Jordan Brand, PowerCoco sports drink and the supplement Isotonix Champion Blend Plus. Frazier says that Anthony just agreed to terms on a deal with degree deodorant, and he recently became a stakeholder in Haute Time, a luxury publishing company covering timepieces. "I've been a watch guy as long as I can remember," Anthony says. A few nights before, I'd noticed a dazzling timepiece in the cubby above Anthony's Garden locker, its face as big as a baby's fist. Anthony says he is no longer interested in strict endorsement deals; he prefers partnerships that offer a percentage of ownership. "I've got to have a connection with that company," he says. "An endorsement deal—I just feel like it's a one-off thing. 'Oh pay him to go out there and do a commercial.' After that contract is up, you have no ties with that product. So I go into a deal and say, 'OK, forget the money. Let's be partners.' " Anthony says his wife is an ideal advisor. The Brooklyn-born Vasquez is the star of her own reality series La La's Full Court Life (Melo makes an occasional appearance), and not long ago started her own line of beauty products. Anthony says that he and Vasquez keep their individual businesses separate ("we have our own entities"), but adds that Vasquez encourages him to look 296

beyond the traditional borders of sports. "She doesn't look at me as an athlete at all," Anthony says. "She's always been the person I can bring something toâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that's a no-brainer." Meanwhile, Carmelo has refined Carmelo. Anthony is among the wave of NBA stars who have prioritized fashion down to idiosyncratic details, migrating away from blankety suits and garish ties to slimmer-fitting Ivy League looks: sweaters, tweeds, thick-rimmed eyeglasses. The Michael Jordan generation may have favored silk and wide lapels, but today's players have gravitated toward smaller boutique designers and oddball accessories: James has sat in the front row at Michael Bastian menswear shows; Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant popularized backpacks over dress shirts; Durant's teammate Russell Westbrook is fond of eyewear that makes him look like a lost member of Weezer. Anthony, who uses a personal stylist, Khalilah Williams-Webb, is part of this trend. "Athletes have become more in tune to the fashion world," he says. Marcus Wainwright of Rag & Bone, who worked with Anthony on a custom tuxedo for the 2012 Met Costume Institute Gala, says the player has a "real sense of personal style and the confidence that goes with that." Anthony's style upgrade was deliberate. Asani Swann, the director of operations for Anthony's management company, Melo Enterprises Inc., says that when Anthony was still with Denver, he began making a conscious effort to freshen his look. He cut his hair, began wearing suits, bow ties, better shoes and coats. Part of this was prompted by the dress code the NBA instituted in the middle of the last decade, but part of it was also growing upâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and trying to alter public perception. "We recognized that Melo had the opportunity as he was changing his look to change how people referred to him," Swann says. Anthony entered the league at 19, after just one season at Syracuse university, and there were the predictable reckless episodes, but there's now a new equilibrium. "He has definitely grown and matured," says Frazier. Anthony has also gotten better at handling New York. Many athletes who play in the city prefer to live across the river in New Jersey or secluded in leafy suburbs. But Anthony and Vasquez, who were married in 2010 at Cipriani restaurant on 42nd Street, chose to live in Manhattan, not far from the Garden, and they have thrown themselves into city life: There were Carmelo and La La at a Lincoln Center fundraiser for President Obama; at the U.S. Open to see Serena Williams; in the VIP section at a Jay-Z show in Brooklyn. "A lot of athletes are just known for being athletes," Anthony says. "You can come to a place like New York and diversify yourself."

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“"This was on my vision board. To run out there and be hitting game winners, getting the fans riled up. When they're stomping on the floor yelling 'New York Knicks'—that's a great feeling."”—Carmelo Anthony "This is where Melo started his life," says Swann. "I think it's just in his blood. It's for some and not for others. It is for him." Of course New York can also be an exhausting grind: the 24/7 media; the elevation of minor disputes into consuming dramas; the daily back-page judgments of the tabloid newspapers. Anthony endures that frenzy regularly. In January rumors surface that he and Vasquez had been living separately, but soon Vasquez is at Anthony's side when the Knicks play the Detroit Pistons in a regular-season game in London. Another fuss is stirred when Anthony reveals he has been on a two-week fast for "clarity in my life and spiritual reasons," a period that coincided with some lackluster performances. But Anthony deflects the concern with humor—he cracks that the fast may have contributed to his tangle with Garnett—and the news cycle pushes on. There's a sense that Anthony has gotten better at handling the city's volatile rhythms. When he says that last summer was the first time he actually got a chance "to sit back and reflect on the whole experience" of being traded and what it means to play in New York, it sounds like a delayed reaction, but it also appears to be true. The city is a place that will bury you one night, then whip around and defend you the next, and athletes who thrive here grasp this. Anthony is not just playing better for his team—he also understands his town. A CHAMPIONSHIP would change everything—those brief moments of social anonymity would surely vaporize. A title is Anthony's obvious goal, as it's flummoxed every would-be Knicks savior for the past 40 years. "If he's able to win a championship in New York," says Barkley, "it will take his legend to another level." Walt Frazier, the television analyst of the Knicks and a member of New York's last championship club, in 1972–73, agrees. "In order to authenticate your greatness, you got to have a ring," he says. "Ask Patrick Ewing."

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It's probably wise to cool the engine here. The Knicks are vastly improved, but they should at least win a play-off series before anyone starts stockpiling championship confetti in the Garden roof. There's little evidence that New York has the power to withstand a seven-game series with the brilliant James and Miami. These Knicks are old and fitful and still capable of lethargic lapses. But energy has returned to the Garden, and Anthony is being discussed as a contender for the NBA's most valuable player award. Knicks shooting guard J.R. Smith, who played with Anthony in Denver, notices new assertiveness in his teammate. "I think he's been more of a leader," he says. "He's just been more vocal." "Last year I was pretty much on a wild streak, going in and out of clubs and stuff like that, and this year he told me to buckle down," Smith admits. "I'm not so sure a year or two ago he would have told me that." Anthony has yet to conquer New York, and there's no assurance he will. But there's undeniable change. There's a fight, a commitment, a pronounced confidence. Anthony has been collecting wine, and when I ask him if there's a special bottle that's being held for a championship, he smiles. "There's a couple for those moments." (Yes: He said moments.) You might not find him in the NBA finals this season. But there's a new awareness of what Carmelo Anthony can do. If you ever meet up, you will know exactly who he is. www.online.wsj.com

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Herman Senor caps Southeast career as CS8 Player of Year By Ryan Mahan

Above: Photo, State Journal Register

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Left: Photo; State Journal Register

For the third time in coach Lawrence Thomas’ five-year tenure as Southeast High School boys basketball coach, the Central State Eight Conference’s Player of the Year is a Spartan. But senior Herman Senor is the first Thomas has been able to coach for his entire Southeast career. “He had a great body of work,” Thomas said. “The kid’s been a four-year starter for me (and) he scored over 1,200 points. He’s just been everything and more for our program.” Senor averaged 16.2 points per game this season and made nearly 38 percent of his 140 3-point attempts. And while Senor has seemingly come up with clutch basket after clutch basket in his career, he became someone who Thomas could rely on in nearly all facets of the game. “Herman’s won games for us when he’s hit 20 points and Herman’s won games for us when he’s hit one point,” Thomas said. “It didn’t matter because with Herman being out there for 32 minutes a game, it gave us as a coaching staff the calmness, knowing that he was going to do whatever it took to put our team in position to have a chance to win the game at the end. That’s all you can ask of kids — just to be in position to win.” Making strides Senor was a shooter when he got to high school. “When he came in (as a freshman) he wasn’t as good of an on-ball defender as he became,” Thomas said. “We ask a lot of our perimeter guys. They have to guard, they have to go to the boards and help rebound — he was the second-leading rebounder (4.6 per game) on our team this year.” Despite Senor being an all-conference selection as a sophomore, an honorable mention pick his junior year and a preseason candidate for Player of the Year, the recruiting process was at a standstill until the cold air blanketed Illinois. Then it thawed just enough. “I was basically getting recruited by D-III schools like area schools around here, and in December (Division II Quincy University) finally emailed back and said they wanted me to come up for a visit,” Senor said. “(After the) Collinsville (Holiday Tournament), they offered me. It was really quick.” 301

He said not having an offer motivated him at the start of the year, but he knew he had to be team-first. “I felt like I had something to play for because I had nothing on the table yet,” Senor said. “I knew I had to perform every night and try to sell myself. But, I knew I had to play hard for my team to reach those team goals in the process.” Leader of Spartans Senor and his backcourt mate Jagger Anderson, also a senior, were the leaders on the team. Both had similar styles and were the top two Southeast scorers. “Coach expects his people being ready to come off the bench and to know your role,” Senor said, adding that he feels he and Anderson were instrumental in helping the Spartans reclaim a share of the CS8 title it lost last season. “I’ll probably look back and know that Jag and I held our own and helped the program maintain its success in the conference. Nobody can really say (we) didn’t do our part to help this team. We tried to make it be as good as it could be.” Southeast had either won or tied for the CS8 title in Thomas’ first three seasons, but in 2011-12, Lanphier ran off a perfect 16-0 record to end the Spartans’ three-year run. “It was something we knew should be our main priority,” Senor said. “Last year, we didn’t really win anything, so this year we had to get that back.” Unfortunately for Senor, his final season ended sooner than he had hoped in a 60-58 loss to Chatham Glenwood in the Class 3A Jacksonville Regional semifinals. But the Spartans won the Decatur Team Soy Turkey Tournament to open the season and went 3-0 to win the City Tournament. Southeast tied for the CS8 title with Lincoln. Thomas said he would definitely miss Senor — who was an allconference academic selection for three years — next season. “He’s a coach’s dream,” Thomas said. “He took no days off in practice because he went hard in everything we did, every drill. “He was a leader from Day One. We couldn’t have done anything we were able to accomplish this year without his leadership. “He did everything the way it’s supposed to be done. There was no doubt to me that he was the Player of the Year. I couldn’t vote for my own player (for the AllCS8 team), but I’m glad the coaches recognized the outstanding year Herman had.” www.sj-r.com 302

Skylar Diggins star power to soar in WNBA By Todd Johnson

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Skylar Diggins shrugs when asked of the weighty expectations for her and fellow WNBA draftmates Brittney Griner and Elena Della Donne. “We haven’t even finished college yet,” Diggins told theGrio this week. “We’re still trying to figure it out too.” Lost in the epic nature of how many characterize Diggins’ future, is how it’s actually all going to play out. That’s why they play the game. Diggins, selected third overall by the Tulsa Shock in Monday night’s draft, has visions of WNBA success and possible endorsements down the road. But the Notre Dame starting point guard said she thinks it starts with one word. Connecting with fans “I think it starts with being available,” Diggins said. “As far as [being available] in the community — and really trying to promote the league and really, being available to the fans.” Connecting with fans, no matter where they are, is one of Diggens’ specialties. She boasts more than 360,000 Twitter followers and more than 160,000 followers on Instagram. Her name is definitely out there. Playing and leading her team to three Final Fours while at Notre Dame remains her “proudest” moment. Her competitive style of play and leadership was infectious, skills which prompted Fighting Irish coach Muffet McGraw to offer her a scholarship when she was in eighth grade. “I hadn’t played a lick of high school of basketball yet,” Diggins laughs. “I wasn’t that good. [McGraw] took a chance. But that’s when I was like ‘Wow, I can play at the next level.’”

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WNBA Ambassador Diggins has already taken her new role as WNBA ambassador seriously. To her credit, she actively worked to promote women’s college basketball — the unwritten rule and responsibility usually of the game’s greats. But the stakes are higher now as a professional. The South Bend native lists Tamika Catchings as someone she admires for her

work as both an athlete and supporter role model. “I think now it’s just our job,” Diggins said of her role extending beyond the court. “What people want to see is good basketball. So you can’t be so focused on peripheral events to where it takes away from your game, because ultimately that’s what’s going to sell. You have to have something to back up the talk with.” The last three seasons, the Shock haven’t backed up much of anything. But that could change very quickly. “I’m a very emotional player,” said Diggins, who adds her goal is to make the playoffs. “We’re going to play some good basketball and when you leave the game, you’re going to come back for another game.” The WNBA season begins on Friday, May 24. 305

Ginger Howard: Youngest Black Female Golfer to Turn Pro

Even before you notice the smooth, powerful swing that has helped propel her to the brink of stardom at only 17, you see something else that defines Ginger Howard and her precocious golf game…the smile. It lights up her face, as she talks about her life and dreams. Ginger has become a member of the LPGA at the right age of 17, the youngest ever! There’s a good chance you haven’t heard much if anything about Howard 306

Left: Ginger with her dad- Robert

yet, but all that could change very soon. If things go they way they’ve been heading, we may soon become well-acquainted with the million-dollar smile and formidable style that has been lighting up the ranks. And the story could ultimately entwine a Williams Sisters tennis twist, because waiting in the wings is 16year-old sister Robbi, a prodigy in her own right. Ginger follows other notable black golfers such as, tennis great Althea Gibson was the first black female to play on tour. Gibson broke through in 1963 and played in 171 tournaments until 1971. From 1967-80, Renee Powell also held an LPGA Tour card. More recently, LaRee Pearl Sugg played full-time in 1995, ’96, 2000 and ’01. Also, Andia Winslow missed the cut in her one event in 2006. (NFL Hall of Famer, Kellen Winslow, Sr., is her uncle.) I get a feeling we will be seeing and hearing a lot from these talented sisters. Go girls! http://naturallymoi.com

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On April 24, 1950, the United Negro College Fund was founded At a time when a college degree is what a high school diploma was to previous generations—the minimum entry-level requirement for almost every well-paying career—UNCF plays a critical role in enabling more than 60,000 students each year to attend college and get the education they need and that the nation needs them to have. To live up to the ideal expressed in UNCF’s universally-recognized motto, ”A mind is a terrible thing to waste,”® UNCF helps students go to and through college by: 

Awarding 10,000 students each year through 400 scholarship and internship programs so that students from low- and moderate-income families can afford college tuition, books and room and board;

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Providing operating funds for its 38 member colleges, all of them small, private institutions that offer a small-college experience at tuitions that average more than 30 percent less than those at comparable colleges and universities;

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Serving as a national advocate for the importance of education for all Americans by serving as the voice of students of color through its annual television program, UNCF An Evening of Stars®, a national public service announcement campaign built around “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”® and commentary in national media. 308

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