Schools should use Black History all of the time!

Black History Month is a time for everyone to celebrate black people and black history.  There is plenty of it, if you do the right research or learn from the right people.  However, there are many complaints that the teachings during February are very shallow.  I agree with this complaint.  Schools should be celebrating more in-depth during the month of February.  I find it very insulting and intentional to have a lack of celebrating.  Now our calendar has many times, people and holidays that we celebrate.  We are fortunate enough to be handed an entire month, by all means we did fight for it like we have and do everything else and not by choice.  We need to continue to push the limits and get better celebrations  in each and every school and more black history teaching throughout the year.  I will not be satisfied until even the areas with "all white" schools are celebrating as if they are the black culture teaching black history on a regular basis.  How about you?  

Now why is it that the majority of the teachings are about slaves?  As if there isn't anymore to the black people than slavery.  Granted slavery is a huge part of black history but teach and celebrate all of the successful black people too.  Success comes in many forms and for many reasons and they should too be blown to proportion.  I encourage my children to ask tell the teacher that they would like to present to their classrooms no matter the grade their in.  Present a person or group of people that are not normally studied in school.  My children and I gather the information and at least a printed picture.  We may even include some sort of word puzzle or something fun to engage each child to learn.  It is our duty as much as the school's to represent black history properly and to the fullest.  It should be the school's pleasure to do so.  Another problem is we only do this during Black History Month because that is the only time allowed to do such a thing.  Some teachers say "we do not have time for that with all of the teachings already."  "Well make time", is what I tell the teachers. 

So do you think it is a problem that all schools do not get the proper time for black history?  What can schools and teachers do to implement more black history throughout the school year?  We have approximately     14,129,983 million  black households as of 2010 out of the approximate 89,754,352 million white households.  As of 2010 there were 98,817 public schools and  33,366 private schools across America.  How many days of the school year do you think each one of these schools studied black history.  My answer is not enough!   Black people may still be a minority but just as important as the white race.  The textbooks should hold more information to feed the black community.  The importance of the black community having history and people to identify with and relate to, examples to look up to, a representation that is strong and of intelligence. Do you agree that there is a lack of black history 365 in the schools?  Do you think the schools curriculum and textbooks should contain a healthier amount of black history?  

Celebrity Sisters: Sommore and Nia Long

Sommore and Nia Long

The queen of comedy!  The new host of Love and Hip Hop Sommore was born Lori Ann Rambogh.  Sommore was born 1966 in Trenton, New Jersey.  This woman was an attendee of Morris Brown College.  Sommore had many appearances in TV shows and movies.  Let's not forget about all of the stand ups.  To name a few, she has appeared in "Soul Plane," "The Queens of Comedy," "Friday After Next," and "Def Comedy Jam." I have spoke with her in person and we snapped a picture.  May I say I also enjoyed one of her stand ups.

Nia Long is the younger half sister of Sommore.  Born 1970 as Nitara Carlynn Long  in Brooklyn, New York.  Nia Long studied acting, ballet, jazz, gymnastics and guitar.  She is quite the actress.  If you have not already, check out her performances in these films:  "Boy'z in the Hood,"  "Friday,"  "Love Jones,"  "The Best Man,"  "Are We There Yet?,"  "The Singles Mom Club,"  and "Judging Amy."

This content contains explicit language.

 

 

I hope you all enjoyed.  Watch what these two ladies films!

 

Marvin Gaye and His Greatest Hits!

Marvin Gaye

Washington D.C spit out a songwriter and singer by the name of Marvin Pentz Gaye Jr. in 1939.  Born to Marvin Sr. and Alberta.  Marvin Gaye sang in his father's choir and played the organ.  If you remember the D.C. Tones, Marvin played the piano in that doo-wop group. Joining the United States Air Force after dropping out of school, Gaye was discharged in 1957.  Marvin Gaye began supporting himself by working as a dishwasher at a whites-only drug store.  Could you imagine what that was like in the late 50's, still dealing with white-only businesses?  All the while he formed a group called the Marquees and recorded "Hey, Little School Girl" and they were hired by Harvey Fuqua.  Then known as Harvey and the Moonglows and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1959 for the Chess Record label.  However, a year later Marvin Gaye and Harvey Fuqua moved to Detroit to potentially sing with Berry Gordy Jr. with Motown Records.  Marvin was performing as a drummer until 1961 when Gordy agreed to feature Marvin Gaye as a singer.  What do you know about the song "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" or "Hitch Hike?"  Anna Gordy became Marvin Gaye Juniors wife in 1963 and then adopted a son.  Marvin Pentz Gaye the third.

The 60's were a successful time for Marvin Gaye.  He had hits like "Ain't that Peculiar," It Takes Two," "ain't No Mountain High Enough," and "Your Precious Love."  How about the songs in the 70's such as "I Heard It Trough The Grapevine" or "What's Going On?"   Some of these songs fit the theme of those days, Urban poverty and Police brutality. In 1971, Marvin Gaye had been awarded for the songs "What's Going on," "Mercy Mercy Me," and "Inner City Blues."  After moving to Los Angeles, California in 1973 Gaye came out with "Let's Get It On."  Topping the charts and selling over five million copies!  Even to this day, his songs are popular.  Soon after, Marvin Gaye and his wife separated and divorced in 1977.  Janis Hunter was his new lady.  However, she was 16!  I do not know about you, but the age difference was unacceptable.  Before they married 1977, Janis birthed two of Marvin's kids. 

Marvin Gaye had gone on tours and opened a recording studio.  Most of his proceeds were going to his first wife.  Cocaine became a habit.  His debt became very large and he never recovered.  Forced to sell his house and many of his possessions in 1980 and lived in a van on a beach in Maui, Hawaii.  He and his son remained in London after his Europe tour.  Signing a contract with CBS Records gave him another hit, "Sexual Healing."  He was able to return to the United States but moved into his parents home in Crenshaw, California.  He won another award.  Although his cocaine addiction became worse.  In 1984, Marvin Gaye's father shot him.

     

Martin Luther King Jr.

Do you have a dream?  Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream.  A dream that took and takes each individual to do their part for his dream to be successful.  Do you have any activism in you?  In my opinion, we all should.  

Martin Luther King Jr.was born January 15th, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.  This son of Reverend Michael King and Alberta Williams was born a Baptist minister and civil rights leader.  Michael lived a block away from Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his grandfather, Reverend Adam Daniel Williams served as a pastor since 1894.  King was also introduced to leaders of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP as a child.  Living during the depression era made him more aware of the economic inequalities.  His father was a model for him as he was a leader in campaigns against racial discrimination.  

 

 Martin Luther King Jr attended Atlanta's Morehouse College from 1944-1948.  He had a response to the postwar wave of antiblack violence with a letter to the editor of the Atlanta Constitution that African Americans were "entitled to the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens." He also met every month at Atlanta's Emory University with the Intercollegiate Council, an interracial student discussion group.  In 1951 King started doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University's School of Theology.  There he met Coretta Scott King and married in 1953 in Marion, Alabama where Coretta's family lived.  In 1954 he became the Pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.  Martin was apart of the Montgomery Improvement Association leaders that protested the arrest of NAACP Rosa Parks.  The Supreme Court outlawed Alabama bus segregation laws in the late 1956.  Martin Luther King Jr expanded the nonviolent civil rights movement throughout the south.  King became a advocate of Mohandas Gandhi's percepts of nonviolence.  He moved his wife and two kids to Atlanta so he could be close to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Headquarters which he was apart of.   There was a new student-led lunch counter sit-in movement that spread in 1960.  Martin Luther sent Ella Baker to North Carolina to organize students that started a protest there.  This all began the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  Martin Luther King Jr had been arrested and put in jail many of times but for a good cause as far as I am concerned.  However, he did not always achieve a victory.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at age 28 in 1963 at the Million Man March in Washington D.C had more than 200,00 attendees.  Named Times magazine's man of the year in 1963 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.  The protests had expanded to the north.  Selma, Alabama in 1965  had a series of voting rights protests.  Martin Luther King had been stoned in the Chicago suburb  when he led a march.  1966 he launched a campaign against poverty and other urban problems, moving into an apartment in the ghetto of Chicago.  Black militants turned away from the Gandhian percepts and toward the black nationalism of Malcolm X.  Martin Luther King addressed these issues in his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? in 1967.  In Memphis, Tennessee he led thousands of sanitation workers in a strike in 1968.  Black youngeters threw rocks and looted the stores.  King went back a month later and was assassinated as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.  The day before he addressed the audience with "But it doesn't matter with me now," "because I've been to the mountaintop and I've seen the promise land," "I may not get there with you.  But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to that promised land."  Coretta Scott King continued to lead the successful effort to honor Martin Luther King Jr with a federal holiday on his birthday.  The first year of this celebration was in 1986.  

 

"The Negro will not be only truly free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive selfhood his own emancipation proclamation." 

"A riot is the language of the unheard."

"The time is always right to do what is right."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence in our friends."

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

 

Do You Know Who Rickey Smiley Is?

Rickey Smiley

This man is known for his designer glasses.  Check them out at  http://www.americasbest.com/rickey-smiley/ 

Oh and do not forget his morning show!  I listen to him every morning.  He has jokes, music and all of the tea!  http://www.americasbest.com/rickey-smiley/

Rickey Smiley also has a TV show.  

 http://tvone.tv/category/shows/the-rickey-smiley-show/

TV Dad Bill Cosby or more?

Bill Cosby

Watch this comedian/actor

The son of William Cosby Sr. and Anna Cosby was born in Germantown, Philadelphia July of 1937 as Bills Cosby.  Growing up in the projects inspired his comedy.  Bill Cosby dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Navy in 1956.  However he earned a high school diploma in the service and received a scholarship to Temple University in Philadelphia majoring in physical education.  During his college career Bill Cosby was a bartender.  While working he watched Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner then decided to try being a comedian.  

Bill Cosby appeared in coffeehouses and received a great review from the New York Times.  Roy Silver became his manager.  In 1962, Bill Cosby dropped out of college.  He made Camille Hanks Mrs. Cosby in 1964 and they parented Erika, Erinn, Ennis, Ensa and Evin.  The Jonny Carson Tonight Show featured Bill Cosby in 1965. Cosby earned eight Grammy awards.  The talented Bill Cosby appeared in I Spy in 1965.  This man became the first black actor to land a continuing role in a network series.  Winning three Emmy awards.  The Apollo Theater in Harlem had him for a week long.  Bill Cosby starred in Cos (1976), Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1973), The Electric Company, Captain Kangaroo, Pinwheel, Hickey and Boggs (1972), Mother Jugs and Speed (1976), California Suite (1978), The Devil and Max Devlin (1981), The Cosby Show in 1984, Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Ghost Dad (1990) and Meteor Man (1993).

Winning NAACP Image awards some of us still wonder was the black family and community correctly represented.  His career was during the Reagan era.  Bill Cosby earned his bachelor's degree in Sociology from Temple University and a master's and doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts.  During the 1980's Bill Cosby became a spokesperson for General Foods and Kodak.  The humanitarian in him made a donation to Spellman College of twenty million dollars, 1.3 million dollars divided among Fisk University, Florida A&M, Howard university and Shaw University.  Central State University received $325,000 from Bill Cosby as well.

Who is Kerry James Marshall?

Kerry James Marshall

Born a painter, photographer, print maker and installation artist in Birmingham, Alabama of October 17th 1955.  This family moved to Los Angeles, California.  The Nickelson Gardens public housing project in Watts was their home until they settles into South Central Los Angeles.  Marshall had an obsession with art.  Impressed with Kerry James Marshall some of his teachers encouraged him with special opportunities.  An art instructor at George Washington Carver Junior High introduced Marshall to to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a special summer drawing class taught by George De Groat at Otis art Institute.  The drawings of Charles White depicted realistic African American subjects with richness and highly charged emotions inspired Kerry Marshall to reflect his own experiences in art.  Marshall embarked on self-tutorial to develop his drawing-figure skills.  In 1973, Kerry Marshall worked as a dishwasher for two years and then a flooring company.  In his spare time he painted in his garage studio and audited Charles Whites and Sam Claybergers classes.  Kerry James Marshall was laid off of his flooring job in 1975 so he approached Otis about enrollment.  In 1980 Kerry Marshall created portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self.  Some of his work were displayed at the art gallery at Los Angeles Southwest College, James Turcotte Gallery in Los Angeles and Koplin Gallery in Los Angeles.

He packed his vehicle to move to New York permanently but he met his wife there. Cheryl Lynn Bruce. The two of them moved back to her home town Chicago and marrying in 1989.  In Chicago he began working as production designer.  He earned NEA (National Endowment for the Arts.  Gaining full professorship by teaching at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois.  Received the Alpert Award and the MacArthur Foundation's Fellowship Program Grant.  Kerry James Marshall had painting portraying Martin Luther King Jr.,   John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy as well as free standing sculptures of popular sayings "Black is Beautiful" and "We Shall Overcome."  None the less he worked on a comic Rythm Mastr.  In the 21st Century Kerry James Marshall's work represented tradition, personal expression, social awareness and historical narrative paintings.