And see our Black History GAME CHANGERS for 2012 HERE!

See our Black History GAME CHANGERS for 2012 HERE!

When slavery was finally outlawed during the Civil War, few Americans took the removal of the slaves’ shackles to mean that the African should be accorded equal status with the white man. Yet, in 1903, just 40 years after the Emancipation, one man dared to envision such a future. W.E.B. Du Bois’s book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” made its author the foremost Black thinker, writer and sociologist of the early 20th Century. More importantly, Du Bois initiated the “great debate” -integration versus segregation, the insistence of equality versus the accommodation of racism – that set in motion a chain of events, ultimately leading to the election of first Black President of the United States. The very election of Barack Obama is a vindication of the convictions and tireless work of W.E.B. Du Bois.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, MA, on February 23rd, 1868. Du Bois attended Fisk University, and became the first Black American in history to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. His intellectual upbringing informed his philosophies, as later expressed in “The Souls of Black Folk.” Du Bois coined the term “double consciousness” to describe the way that Black Americans led their lives as human beings, yet second-class citizens, in an America that was born on the concept that all men are created equal. Du Bois believed that the path to liberty would lie in educating the top echelon, or “Talented Tenth,” of African-Americans to lead the rest.

Du Bois’s main adversaries were Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington. Garvey believed that the quest for parity with white Americans was foolish, and proposed to repatriate freed Blacks to Africa. Washington believed that Du Bois’s tactics would antagonize whites and lead to a disastrous race war. Du Bois called Washington “the Great Accomodator.” Not surprisingly, Washington was favored among the white leaders of his day.

Du Bois was one of the initial founders of the National Association For The Advancement of Colored People, and thus laid the groundwork not only for the Civil Rights movement, but the very idea of partnership with liberal whites to achieve socio-political results.

Du Bois became more radical towards the end of his life, joining the Communist Party in the 1961 at the age of 93, and expatriating to Ghana shortly thereafter. W.E.B. Du Bois died in 1963, just one day before the March on Washington.

Du Bois’s intellect, his insistence on equal rights for Black Americans, and his willingness to form a coalition with whites to achieve his ends formed the model by which Barack Obama ascended to the highest office in the land, and in so doing, liberating us all from the tyranny of racism.

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As a noted surgeon and scientist, Charles Drew was responsible for creating the technology to store blood for long periods of time. His lifelong concern for the necessary transport and storage of blood and plasma made him a pioneer in his field and a valued scientist in world history. Drew saved thousands of soldiers’ lives in World War Two, when he developed his technology and techniques during the Battle of Britain; and millions more since then. At the same time, Drew battled segregation and bigory at home. Dr. Charles Drew and Barack Obama are, of course, alike in that they both accomplished legendary African-American firsts in the face of prejudice. But President Barack Obama may indeed accomplish a similar lifesaving legacy if he ends the bloody wars begun by the previous administration.

Charles Richard Drew was born on June 3rd, 1904 in Washington D.C. Drew first discovered his passion for medicine at Amherst College, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1926. Drew saved money for medical school by taking instruction jobs and working hard labor before enrolling at McGill University Medical School in Montreal. He finished his residency at Montreal General Hospital and then moved to his hometown of Washington D.C. to serve as a professor at Howard University. But it was during his fellowship at Columbia Presbyterian where he endeavored his groundbreaking research about blood transfusions. His thesis project, “Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation,” earned Drew a Doctorate of Science in medicine from Columbia University in 1940, and then proceeded to change the world.

At the outset of World War II, Drew’s work with plasma was critical in helping the United States and their allied forces to save soldiers’ lives. Drew became an integral member of the American Red Cross in 1941, but later denounced his affiliation when the U.S. War Department declared that blood should be segregated by race. After making his commitment to soldiers of all colors, Drew was disheartened that his countrymen would not support his efforts. In 1946, he was elected to the International College of Surgeons after winning the NAACP’s Spingard Medal two years prior. On his way to a conference at Tuskegee in 1950, Drew fell asleep at the wheel, and his car wrecked. He died on April 1st of that year. Drew did not, as myth has it, die because he was refused a blood transfusion.

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Born Sarah Breedlove, Walker descended from slaves who died when she was still a child. While many young children would have been too traumatized to overcome the death of two parents, she and her sister took jobs laboring in kitchens, and on farms until they could sustain themselves. In 1910, after forming the Hair Culturists’ Union of America in Indianapolis, she made it a point to find allies in the Black political community. She moved to New York in 1916, building (with the help of the first registered black architect) a palatial home that rivaled any in the Hudson River Valley.

How she came into the hair business was no coincidence. Walker may have suffered from alopecia, a rare ailment that is characterized by little or no hair growth on the body. As a response to her own condition, Walker created a formula (that she claimed had been delivered to her in a dream) to restore hair growth. While many say she did invent a metal “hot comb” specifically for Black women to straighten out the curl in their roots, that is not accurate. The primary cause of her hair loss was the result of a common problem of the era i.e. infrequent washing and products that were not designed for the hair of black women.

With her ingenious marketing in every Black publication, and her constant travel to trade shows, Walker became a household name. She interrupted Booker T. Washington’s prestigious National Negro Business League Convention after Washington had apparently ignored her requests to speak. As a woman who had founded and developed one of the nation’s most formidable businesses, she would not be denied the right to correlate with her peers on the same level.

Not one to horde her riches, Walker moved to create philanthropic projects that would help Black communities. She funded the YMCA building in Indianapolis where her business was, donated to the NAACP, and traveled to Woodrow Wilson’s White House to present an anti-lynching petition after violent outbursts had killed Blacks in an Illinois riot. She passed on her legacy of philanthropy to daughter A’Lelia, who was responsible for creating “The Dark Tower,” a salon that hosted Black writers and artists who would display their work during the Harlem Renaissance. Walker died of kidney disease, and bequeathed her estate to her female heirs.

In 1911 Madam Walker pledged $1000 toward the building fund of the black YMCA in Indianapolis. She was one of many funders.

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In 1940, one Black novelist dared to show America what white supremacy did to one Black man. When “Native Son” appeared on America’s bookshelves, it became an instant bestseller, the first title by an African-American author selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. It also introduced the world to the complicated protagonist of “Native Son,” Chicago’s Bigger Thomas, who was driven to murder a white woman through his terror of white people, not because of hate. Wright, as an accomplished writer, a prophet, and a leftist, helped cut the path on which Barack Obama walked into Chicago’s South Side, onto the local and national political stage, and now, the White House.

Richard Wright, the grandson of slaves, was born on a plantation in Mississippi in 1908. Shuffled between Mississippi and Memphis for most of his childhood, Wright published his first short story, “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” when he was 15. In 1927, after graduating high school, Wright moved to Chicago, where he worked for the post office and wrote in his spare time. During the Great Depression, Wright affiliated with the Communist Party, and Wright penned many of his earliest works for leftist publications. Richard Wright’s career blossomed after he moved to New York in 1937. He mentored Ralph Ellison, published an acclaimed book of short stories called “Uncle Tom’s Children,” and with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship, wrote “Native Son,” published in 1940.

“Native Son” was criticized by many people for its violence. Black critics targeted Wright for writing a spectacle that seemed to confirm white America’s worst racist fantasies about Black men. But the book catapulted Wright to the top echelon of American letters. He published his autobiography, “Black Boy,” in 1945.

After World War II, Richard Wright expatriated to France, where he fell in with noted existentialist writer/philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. He traveled to Africa in the 1950s, where he contracted dysentery. The illness contributed to Wright’s failing health before his death in Paris in 1960 of a heart attack. Wright was only 52.

Richard Wright greatly influenced the mindset of white liberals in the 1940s and 50s, and his work inspired the Black activists of the 1960s. “Wright,” said Amiri Baraka, “was one of the people who made me conscious of the need to struggle.” Without a doubt, Wright inspired Barack Obama, too.

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Before the battle for Civil Rights was waged in the South, it was fought in the North. And foremost among those northern Black leaders who spearheaded the charge for equality was Adam Clayton Powell Jr. As a local leader in pre-World War Two Harlem, Powell fought successfully to end discrimination in hiring and in public facilities. As the first- ever African-American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York, Powell placed himself at the forefront of the passage of Civil Rights and anti-poverty legislation. In a way, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was the archetype for the modern Black politician in America. As such, he took those first steps in the long walk that eventually led to Barack Obama crossing the threshold of the White House.

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was born on November 29, 1908 in New Haven, Connecticut to Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Mattie Shaffer. After moving to Harlem, Powell, Jr. published a regular column called “The Soap Box” in the Amsterdam News, a well-reputed black newspaper for Harlemites, and was able to establish himself as a voice for the people. In 1937, he succeeded his father as the head pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. As a prominent leader of New York City’s Black community, Powell fought ceaselessly for the abolition of unfair, racist policies and practices. He led successful mass actions of all kinds: rent strikes, bus boycotts, and protests against the hiring practices of the 1939 World’s Fair and Harlem Hospital. Powell helped to create several organizations like the Harlem People’s Committee, who espoused his slogan “Don’t buy where you can’t work.” But Powell was not yet satisfied with the projects he saw to completion as a community leader, and ran for Congress in his district.

In 1944, he became the first African-American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York, and one of only two in the country at the time. Powell was a constant agitator in the House of Representatives and passed legislation to assure equal pay. He campaigned for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aligning himself with a class of New Deal Democrats who hoped to create jobs for the working poor. Powell also helped create a Minimum Wage Bill, the Manpower Development and Training Act and the National Defense Education Act of 1958. Powell also desegregated the “whites only” facilities of the U.S. Capitol.

While Powell’s critics often condemned his flamboyant style, it was the way he drew attention to social issues that may have been neglected otherwise that made him so successful. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. died in 1972 but has left a legacy with his sons and nephew of the same name who have gone on to lead their local political struggles. President Obama is surely an incarnation of the great Adam Clayton Powell, a community organizer who rose to become the first of his kind in high office, giving hope to legions of under-represented Americans.

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Despite the rough nature of his sport, Muhammad Ali was one of the smoothest persons ever to walk the Earth. His poetic verse and well-considered metaphors came out a time during the 1960s when boxers were
better known for punching than speaking. But Muhammad Ali did speak, and spoke intelligently – in a loud, boisterous and uncompromising voice. In this way, Ali was the public epitome of the Black man who
would not be denied and would not back down. Ali, in a way, made it okay to be that man. Barack Obama, and all Black men of his generation, inherited that legacy and that gift from Muhammad Ali.

Born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky in 1942, Muhammad Ali grewup as a Baptist. Clay took to the sport of amateur boxing at the age of 12, where he won two national Golden Gloves titles and eventually won the gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics. Ali won a staggering 100 matches with only 5 losses in his amateur career before turning pro in 1960. In his first title fight, Clay triumphed over Sonny Liston with a T.K.O., after having brazenly said he would “shock the world” by doing so. Ali would win many more professional fights in his pro career, 56 in all, in which his winning was no longer all that shocking.

Outside of the boxing ring, Clay was just as powerful. His conversion to Islam, which prompted his name change, made him extremely controversial. Muhammad Ali often publicly declared his allegiance to
Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad during a time when Elijah was regarded with a great deal of hostility by Americans. Ali also supported controversial Nation of Islam beliefs, such as separatism,
and he was also avidly against interracial marriage. Despite his contentious beliefs, Ali remained well regarded by the public.

Ali declared himself a conscientious objector during the height of the Vietnam War. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” Ali said. “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” In 1967, Ali was convicted of
draft evasion and stripped of his boxing license and titles. After a four-year legal battle, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971.

Ali was involved in two of the most prominent fights in the history of the sport. First in 1971, there was the “Fight of the Century” in which Ali and Joe Frazier faced each other in Madison Square Garden.
The fight was hyped by sportscasters, newspapers, and of course, Ali’s diatribes. Joe Frazier had become known for his backing of the Vietnam War, while Ali was, of course, vociferously against it. It was a match
of undefeated wills and opposing idealisms. Ultimately, Frazier would win, but in two rematches, Ali was the victor both times, accumulating wins that essentially cemented his legacy. Ali was also the winner of
the “Rumble in the Jungle”, where he knocked George Foreman out and was the impetus behind the term “Rope-A-Dope.”

Since his retirement in 1981, Ali has used his boxing as a pedestal. He has traveled the world many times over, lending both his name and his prestige to honorable causes, especially that of hunger.

Ali’s independent and brazen character during a time of great racial tension was a symbol for all those who admired him as a boxer and as a man. His endeavors helped him earn a Presidential Medal of Freedom and
helped blaze the path for a Black man to be himself in front of the entire nation, just as Barack Obama was throughout his run for the Presidency.

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American music has always been, at base, African-American music. Gospel, minstrelsy, vaudeville, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues and rock n’ roll — it’s all basically Black, no matter the color of the artist who performs it. But until the 1960s, Black people did not much control their culture, much less profit from it. That all changed with the emergence of Detroit’s Motown Records in 1960, and its legendary founder, Berry Gordy. Gordy’s Motown remained the largest Black-owned business in America for decades, until Reginald Lewis bought Beatrice Foods in 1987.

But Gordy did something even more significant. He was the first Black entertainment entrepreneur to cross his roster into the American mainstream, making Motown the sound of all young America. In creating this powerful crossover, in which both white and Black youth felt comfortable, Gordy set the cultural stage for the emergence of the multiracial society that elected a Black man, Barack Obama, as the 44th President of the United States.

Berry Gordy, Jr. was born November 29, 1929 in Detroit, Michigan. The seventh of eight children, Gordy became a high-school dropout with dreams of becoming a professional boxer. After serving in the Korean War, Gordy returned to Detroit to open a record shop, which failed. After working in the local Lincoln-Mercury auto plant, Gordy fell in with a local singer named Jackie Wilson. Gordy began writing songs for Wilson, and their partnership ultimately resulted in a Top 1-0 R&B single, “Lonely Teardrops.”

After discovering Smokey Robinson and The Miracles in the late 1950s, Gordy borrowed some money from his family and started his own record label, Tamla, in 1959. The next year, he incorporated it as Motown. The 1960s had begun.

With an acute ear for catchy tunes, and a spit-and-polish work ethic, Gordy transformed a small recording studio into “Hitsville U.S.A.,” and launched the careers of Diana Ross and The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, The Four Tops, and the Jackson 5, among many others. Gordy’s glossy production sound stood in stark counterpoint to the “gut-bucket” southern soul of Stax and Atlantic Records. But Gordy’s insistence on punctuality, rigorous stage training and even charm school for his performers created an aura around Motown artists of impeccable, Black royalty — a roster that inspired young Black Americans and seduced a generation of young white Americans. The artists and producers of Detroit’s Motown Records provided much of the soundtrack to the 1960s and beyond.

Motown’s influence waned somewhat in the 1970s, and dissipated altogether by the mid 1980s, with the aging of its roster and the emergence of the new sound of young America, hip-hop. But Motown’s influence is felt to this day in the election and inauguration of Barack Obama. When one looks back at how America’s racial attitudes changed in the 1960s, when one looks back at the birth of the modern Black business — both changes bringing us to this powerful climax in 2009 — one must see, and salute, Mr. Berry Gordy.

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Bill Cosby is a man of many “firsts.” Cosby was the first Black comedian to conquer white American audiences. He was the first African- American to take a starring role in a network television series in the 1960s, “I Spy”; and the first to star in and produce a #1 TV show in the 1980s, “The Cosby Show.” He became the first successful Black “pitchman” for American consumer products too, from Jell-O to Kodak to Coca-Cola. Bill Cosby both defined and defied what it meant to “cross over.” On the one hand, Cosby was undeniably the first Black celebrity to transcend race — he wasn’t America’s top Black TV star; he was America’s top TV star, period. On the other, Cosby’s mainstreaming was controversial. To some critics, Cosby’s refusal to “deal with racial issues” in his work was a dereliction of duty. But Cosby, even more than Oprah Winfrey, was the foremost archetype for the racially transcendent ascendance of Barack Obama, now the 44th President of the United States.

William Henry Cosby, Jr. was born in Philadelphia in 1937. As a student, Cosby was sub-par, but as a class cut-up, he was a star. Cosby became more serious about his studies after a sobering experience in the Navy, where he worked in the physical therapy wing of a hospital that treated servicemen injured during the Korean War. Cosby returned to Temple University to get a degree in physical education, supporting himself by tending bar at a Philadelphia club. It was here, at the Cellar, that Cosby’s offhand humor became a vocation.

In 1962, Cosby’s performances at the Gaslight Café in New York City attracted the attention of Carl Reiner, whose mentorship sent Cosby on a trajectory to the Holy Grail for American stand-up comedy, the “Tonight Show.” Cosby performed around the country and signed a contract with Warner Bros. Records. But his historic breakthrough came when he was tapped to co-star in “I Spy” with Robert Culp.

Even then, Cosby was dogged by suggestions that, perhaps, his on- screen character presented an opportunity to deal with issues of race. Cosby begged to differ, saying that his mere presence as a white man’s peer, without reference to race, had a transformative effect on the white American psyche.

In the 1970s, Cosby starred in successful films like “Uptown Saturday Night,” and forged his credentials as a children’s educator with his participation in PBS-show “The Electric Company” and his creation of the “Fat Albert” series. But Cosby truly became “America’s Dad” with the triumph of the “Cosby Show,” which ran for most of the 1980s. The fictional Huxtable family presented, again, the definition and defiance of crossover. The Huxtables never dealt with racism on their show. And yet, they were proudly Black, even Afrocenric at times. A reprise of the Cosby TV juggernaut in the 1990s was interrupted by the tragic murder of Cosby’s son, Ennis.

In the 21st Century, Cosby continues to be a controversial figure, especially among young Blacks of the hip-hop generation who take offense to his often pointed denouncements of today’s Black youth. But there can be no doubt that Cosby created a powerful American imprint with his work, and that before the Obamas could enter the White House, the Huxtables had to enter all of ours.

Click here to see video of Bill Cosby!

Click here to read about Black Fatherhood in the Age of Obama!

Explore the year 1988!

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Ralph Ellison was the first novelist to portray the Black experience as a critical part of the American experience. His seminal novel, “Invisible Man,” was his only major work, but his letters, articles and fiction work established him as one of the most important writers in history. “Invisible Man” encapsulated the feelings of Black men and women as second-class citizens during the heart of the 20th Century. The phenomenon of invisibility — the feeling that one’s very existence isn’t acknowledged — continues to this day for many, if not most Black Americans. Invisibility doubtlessly dogged the young Barack Obama as he grew to manhood. But Obama’s election and inauguration as America’s first Black president marked a turning point. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, is now very much the Visible Man.

Ralph Waldo Ellison, named for Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City. His father was a small business owner who died when Ellison was only three, but who secretly wished that his son would grow up to be a poet, like Emerson. When Ellison enrolled at the Tuskegee Institute, he studied music and already had a reputation as a trumpet player from his days in a high school orchestra. He segued into a relationship with writing and sculpture. Ellison left Tuskegee after his third year, hoping to earn money to pay for his final year by working in New York as an artist. The journey from the South to the North signified the shift in his life from promising rural artist to embattled author of the Black experience.

As Ellison made his way through New York’s circle of intellectuals, he met poet Langston Hughes, and artist Romare Bearden, but it was his acquaintance with author Richard Wright that influenced his later work. Ellison wrote reviews of Wright’s work in “New Challenge” and adopted some of Wright’s socialist attitudes; he also traveled the city searching for a circle of writers who could make sense of this new Black experience in the North. While writing book reviews for the journals of the day had earned Ellison income and public stature, Richard Wright suggested Ellison try his hand at fiction. In Ellison he saw the kind of rich Southern tradition that had made Richard Wright’s early work so palpable.

Ellison’s first attempt at short story writing “Hymie’s Bull” was indicative of his experimentation with the naturalist style, which combined elements of anger, double consciousness and lucidity for a truly unique work. Ellison received the Federal Writer’s Grant to fund his early career and worked consistently on “Invisible Man” from 1947 to 1952 with help from wife Fannie McConnell. “Invisible Man” was, in large part, Ellison’s nuanced response to the radical discourse coming from his social circle. In his novel, with its nameless protagonist, ambiguous racial allegiances, and subtle reference to Black culture seeping into American culture, Ellison encapsulated the parts of Black life that had been overlooked by both the radicals and the mainstream. It was an unapologetic tome that portrayed the sensitivity of Black men, while trumping some of the previously held notions of masculinity. “Invisible Man” won the National Book Award in 1953, beginning its long history into the annals of American literature as an essential work. Ellison reportedly finished 2000 pages of a second novel, but never finished. He did not allow that incomplete novel to end his range of works, preferring instead to join with other writers of his time to create more social commentary. Ellison served as a professor at Rutgers, Yale and New York University, and kept details of his second novel to himself. After Ellison’s death on April, 16th 1994, a long-time friend published Ellison’s anticipated second work as “Juneteenth.”

Ralph Ellison was among the first to assert that Black culture was an integral, inseparable part of American culture. Ellison aspired to show how connected the two cultures could be. The biracial Barack Obama wrote an autobiographical memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” that paralleled the Ellison’s vision of collective, united country, where all Men and Women are visible.

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Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of slaves, became an early 20th Century educator and civil rights leader, founding both Bethune-Cookman College and the National Council of Negro Women. But Bethune became even more influential as a friend and confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt, and as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Negro affairs. Bethune became a member of Roosevelt’s unofficial”Black Cabinet,” the first time Black Americans had that kind of access to the White House. As such, Bethune helped open the very doors that Barack Obama walked through as the first Black president of the United States.

Bethune was born in Mayesville, South Carolina, on July 3, 1875. She was the fifteenth of seventeen children born to former slaves on a plot of land called “Homestead.”

In 1904, Bethune founded a school for Black girls in Daytona, Florida in a time when segregation threatened to destroy the educational aspirations of countless African-Americans. With little money but plenty of time and attention, she lifted the Daytona school to impeccable standards to rival that of the local white public high school. By 1910, the school’s enrollment had increased from its original six students (one being her son, Albert) to 102 students at a four-year high school. Despite Ku Klux Klan efforts to repeatedly thwart her, she made every attempt to raise funds to keep the school growing. By allying with Booker T. Washington shortly after his visit to the Daytona school, Bethune was able to link her institution to wealthy philanthropists from the North. Of these elites, the Roosevelts and Rockefellers may have been the largest donors.

Bethune’s civic participation was not limited to education. She later founded the National Council of Negro Women, and served on the board for the National Association for Colored Women a vocal advocate for women’s rights. In 1936, Mary McLeod Bethune became the first woman to receive a major appointment from the federal government when she was named Director of the Negro Affairs of the National Youth
Administration.

By the time of her death in 1955, she had used her post at the NYA to travel the country surveying the greater social problems, making recommendations to resolve them, and raising money. Bethune was honored with the unveiling of a National Monument on the grounds of the Capitol in Washington, DC, in 1974. Mary McLeod Bethune was commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp in 1985.

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A master of storytelling, Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and legendary professor is known for the vivid black characters brought to life in her novels that recreate the Black experience. Morrison’s novels often illuminate themes of slavery, racism, and identity, but also shine with hope for the future. In her first-ever political endorsement, Morrison wrote of a “national evolution” in a letter that publicly endorsed Barack Obama. As an educator and author, Morrison used her authority and standing as a Black pioneer to lay the groundwork for the presidency of Barack Obama.

Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, in Lorain, Ohio, on February 18, 1931. An avid reader and learned storyteller, she graduated from high school with honors. In 1953 Morrison received her Bachelors in English from Howard University and then earned her Masters from Cornell.  Morrison soon became an English professor at Texas Southern University in Houston. She later returned to Howard to teach English.

In 1970 Morrison wrote her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” about a little Black girl that dreamed every night of waking up with blue eyes.  Seven years later, she gained national acclaim with her third novel, “Song of Solomon.” It was the first novel by a black writer to be selected for the Book-of-the-Month Club since Richard Wright’s Native Son in 1940.
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She wrote a play, “Dreaming Emmett,” based on the true story of Emmett Till, an African-American teenager brutally killed by racist whites after allegedly whistling at a white woman in the South. It premiered January 4, 1986. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel, “Beloved,”  which was adapted for film by Oprah Winfrey. In 2006, The New York Times Book Review named “Beloved” the best American novel published in the past 25 years.

Morrison taught within the State University of New York system and held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University from 1989 until 2006. Morrison authored nine novels, the most recent being “A Mercy.”  She continues to exemplify brilliance in creative writing and sets the bar with her multilayered narrative.

Perhaps the most interesting political moment in Morrison’s career came when she called Bill Clinton “our first Black president.” But in 2008, Morrison backpedaled from that assertion, saying that Clinton was “Black” only in the sense that he had been treated that way. If there was any question of Morrison’s true feelings, it was answered by Morrison’s spurning of Hillary Clinton in favor of Barack Obama.

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Professing to be “unbossed and unbought,” Shirley Chisholm was the first black female major-party candidate for President of the United States, and the first black woman to be elected to Congress. Chisholm wasn’t intent on winning the presidency, but was steadfast on challenging conventions and showing Black America that they could aim high. She set the bar, in many ways, over which President Barack Obama jumped.

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was born November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Brooklyn College, where she majored in sociology; she later earned a Masters from Columbia University.

In 1964, Chisholm ran for and was elected to the New York State Legislature. Four years later, she ran as the Democratic candidate for New York’s 12th District congressional seat and was elected to the House of Representatives. As the first woman in Congress she hired an all-female staff.

Serving seven terms, Chisholm was an outspoken advocate for women, minorities, and the poor: she worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She authored legislation that instituted a program called SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge), which provided college funding to disadvantaged youth.

The pinnacle of Chisholm’s ascent occurred in 1972, when she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States, and the first female candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chisholm won 152 votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, but lost.

Chisholm retired from Congress in 1982, but remained a public figure and voice. On January 1, 2005, Shirley Chisholm died. Chisholm, as politician, author, and educator, overcame her two largest “handicaps,” being a woman and being black. She fought for political change in the 20th century that allowed tangible change, which is exhibited in the current presidency of Barack Obama.

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dynamic theology student and pastor who entered the battle for civil rights somewhat reluctantly, thrust into the fray during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. But the young Dr. King’s moral courage, deep understanding and rhetorical abilities made his local and national leadership inevitable. In the face of white supremacist violence, King’s espousal non-violence struck many Black activists as dangerously naïve, King’s most notable critic being Malcolm X. But at the very least, King’s philosophies made his moral authority unquestionable, and irresistible to a generation of young whites who wanted to help the cause.

King’s “I Have A Dream” speech to the assembled protesters at the 1963 March on Washington galvanized a national movement, and his direct negotiations with President Lyndon Baines Johnson led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, enfranchising millions of Black voters. For his efforts, Dr, King was recognized the world over, and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. King spoke out forcefully against the Vietnam War, and was poised to organize a multi-racial “Poor People’s Campaign” when he was gunned down by a white assassin in Memphis in April, 1968.

If there ever was a “Black leader” — someone who held to respect of a large number of African-Americans and had the power to negotiate on their behalf — it was King. In the years after Dr. King’s murder, many African-Americans lamented the lack of a strong leader of King’s stature. It was a void occupied, at times, by figures like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan, but never quite filled. But King’s legacy turned out to be just as powerful as his Earthly presence. He left an America transformed: segregation declining, and Black political power increasing. His insistence on an America that lived up to its highest ideals of equality weighed heavily in the successful campaign to create a national holiday in his honor, the first African-American to achieve that near demigod-status.

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Born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. in 1947 in New York, New York, Jabbar was a born basketball player and leader. After his high school career, Jabbar went out West to play for the UCLA Bruins and legendary coach John Wooden. Despite not being able to play his freshman year due to NCAA rules, Jabbar is still well regarded as the greatest college basketball player ever. In three seasons, he won two Player of the Year Awards, three National Championships, three Most Outstanding Player in Tournament awards, and he averaged 26.4 points per game. Jabbar was picked first by the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1969 NBA Draft and went on to win the NBA Rookie of the Year title. Jabbar would later be traded to Los Angeles, where five more championships would ensue. It was in L.A .that Jabbar would also pursue what would turn out to be a respectable acting career.

Jabbar used his influence to enlighten the American population. He wrote several books with the intention of popularizing the contributions of African-Americans to American culture, including “Black Profiles in Courage: A Legacy of African-American Achievement,” and “On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance.”

In 2008, Jabbar was chosen as The Greatest Player in College Basketball History. His influence on college basketball was immeasurable. From causing the dunk to be banned because of his dominance and the creation of the skyhook, to beating the #1 ranked UCLA Bruins varsity team with his junior varsity classmates in an intrasquad match, Jabbar’s achievements in college are legendary.

Jabbar’s heights of achievement made him an example of excellence to everyone. But whether it was basketball, acting, writing, or speaking, Jabbar was and is always an excellent human being, a model citizen, and someone who many people turn to for guidance. Even though he was raised in a time of racial upheaval, Jabbar stayed above the fray and never let racial animosity affect him—something Barack Obama has done equally well in his quest for the Presidency.

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In his seminal work, Race Matters, Dr. Cornel West questions matters of economics and politics, as well as addressing the crisis in Black leadership. The book was written in 1993, but many of its themes are salient today. His scholarship has come to be recognized globally and West, himself, is known for his combination of political and moral insight and criticism. The bulk of his work focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society. As a contemporary of Barack Obama, and fellow Harvard student, West is among the few scholars to so eloquently articulate the modern Black experience of our generation. Both men are products of various influences including the civil rights movement and, like West, Barack Obama has made an art of maximizing his patchwork heritage to bring greater consciousness to the American public and elevate civic dialogue on race, politics and society.

Cornel West was born in 1953 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Shaped by his family, church, education and the black social movements of the 1960s, West admired the “sincere black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party… and the livid black theology of James Cone.” He enrolled at Harvard University and took classes taught by philosophers like Robert Nozick and Stanley Cavell. After earning his doctorate from Princeton in 1980, he went on to teach at several institutions including Yale and Harvard.

In 2000, after a public row with economist, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and then-president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, he left his post and returned to Princeton University, where he has been teaching ever since.

He has been involved in projects such as the Million Man March and Russell Simmons’ Hip-Hop Summit. West’s outreach and projects were focused on bringing youth into the political fold and helping them realize the power of their generation to change the status quo, a meem echoed by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, which resulted in an unprecedented amount of youth participation both, on the ground and in the voting booths.

West is probably best known for his views on race in America, a topic of immense relevance as we begin the term of the first black President, Barack Obama. West describes the United States as a “racist patriarchal” nation where “white supremacy” continues to define everyday life. In a somewhat controversial statement with regard to the September 11 attacks, West said the attack gave white Americans a glimpse of what it means to be black in America – feeling “unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated” for who they are.

Being, in many ways, a kindred spirit to President Barack Obama, it was no surprise when West so actively supported and campaigned for Obama during the presidential race. Both Dr. Cornel West and President Barack Obama were deeply influenced by the histories they came from and realized that the real power of a nation came from overturning stale paradigms and reinvigorating the youth toward positive change.

Watch our Video of Dr. West discussing his favorite “Way Black When” moment. Take a look:

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BP will survive the worst oil spill in U.S. history for several key reasons: it has little debt; its global businesses are forecast to generate $26 billion next year in cash flow from operations; the environmental impact of the spill isn’t as bad as feared; and the government seems unlikely to ban BP from Gulf drilling. To bolster its finances, BP has cut its dividend, issued debt and sold more than $21 billion in assets.

“It could have been a lot worse,” says Tyler Priest, a University of Houston petroleum historian who serves on President Obama’s oil spill investigation committee. “BP is going to come back from this.”

Read entire article at HuffingtonPost.com

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Yes! About you! About the American!

It won’t come as a surprise that this particular conversation tends to paint an unfavorable picture of the United States and thus you, as a member of broader American society.

In this conversation, you’ve become the axis of all evil, capitalism the new suppressor, and multinationals like Wal-Mart and McDonalds the symbolic figureheads of a sudden end to individual nations’ economic and social sovereignty.

Americans are puppets of the media and the political forces within. They are prisoners of fear, unaware of international affairs and unjustifiably patriotic.

Californians are cool, though, and it would fun to go to Miami or visit the big smoke of New York City.

People from the South are stuck in a time warp, racially divided and unwelcoming to outsiders. Northerners are fine but they’re still Americans so be cautious!

Black people are the coolest of all, especially the Denzel Washington-types or the eternal gangsters like Samuel L. Jackson. Most live in the Bronx and Brooklyn, and there are probably a few in L.A. too, because that’s where all the gangster action transpires.

On a political level Democrats are idealists, and Republicans are not to be trusted. The name Bush is accompanied by every curse and insult of every language and dialect, in every corner of every universe, and its gut-wrenchingly entertaining that all Americans think Obama is the antichrist.

Still it doesn’t matter who’s in power because Iraq is and will always be a mistake. Oil was the driving force beyond the invasion, the fuel to the fire of American greed and consumption.

But let’s not get started on the Cuban trade embargo, the CIA or, worse yet, Israel!

“Hold up! Wait!” someone tells the student in a McDonald’s cafeteria in Paris, the lady in Starbucks in Buenos Aires, the taxi driver whose cousin lives in Queens, and the member of the immigrant family living next door to you. “Aren’t you watching streamed episodes of ‘24’ right now on that iPad you got while vacationing in Manhattan?”

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A silence ensues and out pours an attempt at balance.

Of course, all of the above is said in general terms because so-and-so’s best friend happens to be American. What a fun, vivacious guy, that one! He can drink just about anyone under the table and he parties like no other.

That particular American friend is also an extremely generous person and is persistent in inviting so-and-so to stay with him, spend thanksgiving with his family, and make a cross-country road trip to see the beautiful, varied landscapes of some of the 50 states.

And what about that friend of a friend who has been living and working in the States for the past few years, pursuing her dreams and moving her way to the top slowly-but-surely?

She often talks about the American work ethic and the innovation, ambition and general passion that her colleagues employ in all aspects of life.

Her workmates come from all corners of the globe and the surface such a melting pot of cultures functions as best as is possible given the differences they share. She often wishes all this was the case back home.

The most striking situation of all, however, is that her friends and colleagues have different criticisms and perceptions of themselves than most of the foreign people she has met, leading her to believe many Americans are unaware of what is said of them abroad.

The underlying question is therefore: What do you, one of the world’s most talked about, dissected, researched, and passion-evoking people of modern times, think or know about the perceptions others have of you as an American?

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UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. delegation walked out of the U.N. speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday after he said some in the world have speculated that Americans were actually behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks, staged in an attempt to assure Israel’s survival.

He did not explain the logic of that statement that was made as he attacked the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ahmadinejad said there were three theories about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks:

_ That a “powerful and complex terrorist group” penetrated U.S. intelligence and defenses.

_ “That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.”

The Americans stood and walked out without listening to the third theory that the attack was the work of “a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation.”

Mark Kornblau, spokesman of the U.S. Mission to the world body, issued a statement within moments of Ahmadinejad’s attack.

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(AP) UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. delegation walked out of the U.N. speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday after he said some in the world have speculated that Americans were actually behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks, staged in an attempt to assure Israel’s survival. (Scroll down for video.)

He did not explain the logic of that statement that was made as he attacked the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ahmadinejad said there were three theories about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks:

_ That a “powerful and complex terrorist group” penetrated U.S. intelligence and defenses.

_ “That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.”

The Americans stood and walked out without listening to the third theory that the attack was the work of “a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation.”

Mark Kornblau, spokesman of the U.S. Mission to the world body, issued a statement within moments of Ahmadinejad’s attack.
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“Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people,” he said, “Mr. Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable.”

The Iranian leader spoke of threats to burn the Quran by a small American church in Florida to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Although that church backed down, several copycat burnings were posted on the Internet and broadcast in the Muslim world.

“Very recently the world witnessed the ugly and inhumane act of burning the holy Quran,” Ahmadinejad said.

He briefly touch on the four sets of sanctions imposed on his country by the United Nations over Tehran’s refusal stop enriching uranium and to prove Iran is not trying to build an atomic bomb.

Some members of the Security Council have “equated nuclear energy with nuclear bombs,” Ahmadinejad said.

He accused the United States of building up its nuclear arsenal instead of dismantling it and reiterated his call for a nuclear-free world.

“The nuclear bomb is the worst inhumane weapon and which must totally be eliminated. The NPT (Nonproliferation Treaty) prohibits its development and stockpiling and calls for nuclear disarmament,” the Iranian president said.

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A U.S. Air Force sergeant infected with HIV is under criminal suspicion for allegedly failed to inform a “multitude” of sexual partners about his medical status, The Smoking Gun reported Thursday.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations reportedly launched a criminal probe last month after receiving information that Sgt. David Gutierrez, 43, “engaged in numerous, unprotected sexual acts…over the course of three years.”

Gutierrez, stationed at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kan., was apprehended on Aug. 9 for allegedly violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the website reported. Investigators then reportedly searched his home to “identify potential witnesses and victims.”

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Gutierrez’s wife, Gina, reportedly told investigators that the 20-year military veteran contracted the virus in 2007 while he was stationed in Italy. She said Gutierrez notified his partners in Italy about possible exposure but failed to do so once he was reassigned to McConnell Air Force Base in 2008.

Read entire article at FoxNews.com

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Discouraged by the avalanche of foreclosures around them in Detroit, Mona Ramsey and her husband started looking at states where they would move.

They considered North Carolina, Florida, Texas — and finally tacked Tennessee to the end of their list. In 2007, they moved to Nashville.

Ramsey represents not only continuing strong black migration to the South but also the trend’s economic and cultural impact. Ramsey started an online business, Sole Sista Shoes, to appeal to a black clientele, and continued running the makeup company she launched in Michigan, Phenom Cosmetics.

Read more at Chicago Sun Times

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The military threw out hundreds of service members in 2009 for violating its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, including a disproportionate number of women and minorities and dozens of service members in “mission critical” positions, according to a new analysis of military data.

The Pentagon honorably discharged 428 service members for violating the gay ban in 2009, according to statistics reviewed by the Palm Center, a nonpartisan University of California think tank studying the impact of gays in the military. The figure is down from 619 discharged for violating the policy in 2008.

Read more at WashPost

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From TheRoot.com:

At last week’s immigration march on Washington, tens of thousands of immigrants and activists rallied around the Capitol Building, calling for legislation that would afford legal status to the millions of illegal immigrants living and working within the United States. While official crowd estimates for such events are notoriously unreliable, the New York Times noted that “the demonstrators filled five lengthy blocks of the Washington Mall.”

Many, if not most, of the rally attendees wielded protest signs–both homemade and professionally manufactured–or wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Change takes courage” and “Illegals are humans.” Still others carried flags–American, Mexican, Brazilian, French, and almost everything in between. And while it seemed as if practically everyone had a unique way of showing their support for reform, they also had one very notable similarity: The crowd was overwhelmingly Latino, with chants of “Libertad ahora!” filling the air as frequently as “Freedom now!”

Click here to view photos.

To be sure, knowing the statistics–76 percent of America’s illegal immigrants are Hispanic, according to the Pew Hispanic Center–a majority Latino presence was to be expected. And according to the Population Reference Bureau, in 2005, there were only 2,815,000 foreign-born blacks in America (compared to nearly 18 million foreign-born Hispanics). But in Washington, D.C., estimated to be the home of more than 150,000 Ethiopian immigrants and their descendants, the lack of black protesters was downright odd. Ultimately, it raised an important question to consider in the days leading up to the Obama administration’s grapple with America’s immigration problems: Why don’t black immigrants have an affinity for the reform movement?

Click here to read more.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – U.S. troops are withdrawing from the shattered capital, leaving many Haitians anxious that the most visible portion of international aid is ending even as the city is still mired in misery and vulnerable to unrest.

As troops packed their duffels and began to fly home this weekend, Haitians and some aid workers wondered whether U.N. peacekeepers and local police are up to the task of maintaining order. More than a half-million people still live in vast encampments that have grown more unpleasant in recent days with the early onset of the rainy season.

Some also fear the departure of the American troops is a sign of dwindling international interest in the plight of the Haitian people following the catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake.

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“I would like for them to stay in Haiti until they rebuild the country and everybody can go back to their house,” said Marjorie Louis, a 27-year-old mother of two, as she warmed a bowl of beans for her family over a charcoal fire on the fake grass of the national stadium.

U.S. officials say the long-anticipated draw down of troops is not a sign of waning commitment to Haiti, only a change in the nature of the operation. Security will now be the responsibility of the 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force and the Haitian police.

A smaller number of U.S. forces — the exact number has not yet been determined — will be needed as the U.N. and Haitian government reassert control, said Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command, which runs the Haiti operation.

“Our mission is largely accomplished,” Fraser said.

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American forces arrived in the immediate aftermath of the quake to treat the wounded, provide emergency water and rations and help prevent a feared outbreak of violence among desperate survivors. They also helped reopen the airport and seaport.

There has been no widespread violence but security is a real issue. A U.N. food convoy traveling from Gonaives to Dessalines on Friday was stopped and overrun by people, who looted two trucks before peacekeepers regained control, U.N. officials said.

They managed to escort the other two back to Gonaives. There were no reports of injuries.

The military operation was criticized by some Haitian senators and foreign leaders as heavy-handed and inappropriate in a country that had been occupied by American forces for nearly two decades in the early 20th century. But ordinary Haitians largely welcomed the troops, many out of disenchantment with their own government.

“They should stay because they have been doing a good job,” 35-year-old Lesly Pierre said as his family prepared dinner under a tarp at an encampment in Petionville. “If it was up to our government, we wouldn’t have gotten any help at all.”

U.S. soldiers said they had nothing but warm encounters with the Haitian people.

“They’re real good people. They just want help,” Army Private First Class Troy Sims, a 19-year-old fromFresno, California, said as he prepared to board a flight back to the U.S. “I feel that us being here helped a lot. If we weren’t here, things probably would have gotten out of control.”

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There are now about 11,000 troops, more than half of them on ships just off the coast, down from a peak of around 20,000 on Feb. 1. The total is expected to drop to about 8,000 in coming days as the withdrawal gathers steam. The military said more than 700 paratroopers left this weekend.

Soldiers are now gone from the General Hospital, where they once directed traffic and kept order amid the chaos of mass casualties. There are no more Haitian patients on board the USNS Comfort, which treated 8,600 people after the quake. At a country club in Petionville, where some 100,000 Haitians are living in rough shelters in a muddy ravine, only a few soldiers remain of the several hundred there after the disaster.

Alison Thompson said she was nervous about the smaller U.S. troop contingent.

“Soon we are not going to have any security,” said Thompson, medical coordinator of the Jenkins/Penn Relief Organization, which runs a field hospital at the edge of the ravine. “Everybody is just so worried that they are pulling out because it’s going to get dangerous.”

It was the same concern for Louis at the national stadium.

“If the troublemakers see that there is some kind of force here, they will think twice before they do anything,” she said. “They are already getting ready to stir up trouble.”

But Ted Constan, chief program officer for Partners in Health, said that the way to address security is to get adequate shelter and other aid to the hundreds of thousands of people who are now stranded in squalid encampments.

“The real solution is to deliver services … rather than turn Haiti into a military state,” he said.

Harriet Tubman freed more than 70 slaves over the course of 13 clandestine missions in her lifetime. That number is infinitesimal compared to the millions of Africans in bondage before the American Civil War. But Tubman’s legend had a psychological impact on the enslaved and the free, on Black and white, that far exceeded her armspan and lifespan. Tubman, the tenacious liberator of Black slaves, was called “Moses” because she led her people to “the promised land.” Some people have also called the election and inauguration of Barack Obama’s as the 44th president of the United States a substantial fulfillment of that American promise.

Tubman was born Araminta Ross in Dorchester County, Maryland. Araminta, called “Minty,” was a slave, as were her parents, brothers, sisters and extended family. Tubman was always rebellious, naturally enraged at the brutality of her bondage. But it was the repeated “sell-offs” of members of her family that first prompted her escape to free territory in Philadelphia, and then to boldly sneak back across the Mason-Dixon line to rescue her loved ones.

In the years before the Civil War, despite the passage of a tough fugitive slave law, Tubman braved capture and death to lead over a dozen missions to free scores of slaves, mostly from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. During journeys that went as far north as Canada, she used an already established network of houses and way-stations owned by freed Blacks and sympathetic whites, dubbed the “Underground Railroad.”

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In the north, Tubman befriended abolitionists and rebels like John Brown, for whom she raised money. At the dawn of the war, Tubman joined the Union forces as a nurse, an aid to refugees, and a scout. After the war and Emancipation, Tubman lent her efforts to another liberation movement: women’s suffrage. She died in 1913.

To say that Tubman was tough is an understatement. She set the bar very high indeed for the men and women who followed. It is that determination in the face of violence, death and failure that is Tubman’s greatest legacy.

From TheRoot.com:

The Defense Department has announced a plan to end discrimination against gay American service members. On the heels of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union pledge to repeal former President Bill Clinton’s policy of requiring gays to stay in the closet while on active duty, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and among Obama’s top military advisers, expressed their support for banning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year.

“The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it,” said Gates, at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. “We believe that we have a degree of latitude within the existing law to change our internal procedures in a manner that is more appropriate and fair to our men and women in uniform.”

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Click here to read more.

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Washington (CNN) — The United States will work with the Haitian government and with international and private aid groups to protect Haitian children who might be at risk because they were orphaned or separated from their parents by the earthquake, the State Department said Thursday.

“We have concerns about traffickers, we have concerns about pedophiles,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said at his midday briefing. “We’ve seen a couple of cases of those in recent days. So this is just something we are working collectively with those organizations that are actively trying to help children, people on the ground, be alert for this kind of danger.”

Asked whether any children had been brought illegally to the United States, he said, “Not to my knowledge.”

Click here to read more.

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When Booker T. Washington stepped to the podium at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895 to give a speech on race relations, two things happened.

First, many fellow Black Americans, including W.E.B. Du Bois, derided his speech as “The Atlanta Compromise,” because Washington called the agitation for social equality “the extremest folly,” advocating instead slow, steady, and segregated self-improvement for the American Negro.

Second, Booker T. Washington’s was acclaimed by the white power structure, and his less threatening approach to progress proclaimed in the press. Washington himself was elevated to the status of the pre-eminent “Negro leader,” at least in the eyes of white folks. Washington alone had access to the ears and pockets of millionaires like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Washington alone received an invitation to Teddy Roosevelt’s White House in 1901.

His debate with Du Bois — who called Washington “The Great Accommodator” — has been simplified to one of segregation versus integration. But Washington secretly contributed to anti-segregationist causes, all the while publically advocating an industrial education for Negroes, rather than the liberal arts education that Du Bois favored. Most notably, Booker T. Washington, who was born a slave, went on to found the Tuskeegee Institute, one of the first historically black colleges.

Washington was not a radical, and he caught hell from activists who wanted to move faster. In our time, Barack Obama’s moderate policies, his willingness to meet with his political adversaries, and his advocacy of Black self-reliance rankles many liberals and older Black leaders. As such, Obama and Booker T. Washington share a legacy of both personal achievement in the face of past adversity; and, in some ways, prudent accommodation with the larger power structure.

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WASHINGTON – Beginning Monday, air travelers flying into the United States from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Yemen and other “countries of interest” will be subjected to enhanced screening techniques, such as body scans, pat-downs and a thorough search of carry-on luggage.

Additionally, all passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will be subject to random screening, the Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday. Airports were also directed to increase “threat-based” screening of passengers who may be acting in a suspicious manner.

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The TSA said anyone traveling from or though nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism — as well as “other countries of interest” — will be required to undergo enhanced screening. The TSA said those techniques include full-body pat-downs, carry-on bag searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology.

“The new directive includes long-term, sustainable security measures developed in consultation with law enforcement officials and our domestic and international partners,” the TSA said in a statement posted on its Web site.

The new security measures come in response to the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb a jetliner as it approached Detroit after a flight from Amsterdam.

The State Department lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism. The other countries whose passengers will face enhanced screening include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

A spokesman for Pakistan International Airline said the company has instituted new security standards for U.S.-bound passengers.

Passengers are subjected to special screening, including full body searches, in a designated area of the departure lounge, said the spokesman, Sultan Hasan. The airline has run advertisements in newspapers to advise passengers of the stepped-up security.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Sunday that full body scanners would be introduced in British airports and officials in Amsterdam said last week they would begin using the scanners on passengers bound for the U.S.

In the Yemeni capital, security personnel at the San’a airport were ordered to apply strict measures, including careful baggage examinations and patting down travelers, especially those departing for the United States as the final destination, an official said.

The security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk about security measures to the media, said the airport was expecting to receive some new equipment to provide better security.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to set off an explosive device aboard a Northwest airliner on Christmas Day, has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

The TSA said the ability to enforce the new security measures is the “result of extraordinary cooperation from our global aviation partners.”

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The debate on health care rages on this week on Washington Watch. Here Roland talks about President Obama‘s uptick in support of a public option but Washington Times reporter Tara Wall doesn’t agree.

The issue of gay marriage is coming to a head in the nation’s capital and DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is ready to fight FOR gay marriage. Roland asks her how she thinks this controversial issue will play with strong voices on both sides speaking up and out.

Check Washington Watch with Roland Martin on TV One at 11am & 5pm EST

OSLO – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

Speculation had focused on Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman’s rights activist.

The Nobel committee praised Obama’s creation of “a new climate in international politics” and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage. The plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama’s predecessor for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

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Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said. “In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations.”

He added that the committee endorsed “Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.’”

President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919.

The committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a “kick in the leg” to the Bush administration‘s hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.

Five years later, the committee honored Bush’s adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year’s prize though it was not immediately apparent who nominated Obama.

“The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it’s given too someone … who has the power to contribute to peace,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

Nominators include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.

“We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty,” the foundation said.

WATCH LIVE: Obama Responds To Winning Nobel Prize

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Top 5 Reasons Obama Deserves Nobel Peace Prize

Top 3 Reasons Obama Does NOT Deserve Nobel

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel’s death.

The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel’s guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.

The Marley family has just released pictures of Bob Marley’s wife, Rita and his son, Ziggy’s visit to the White House. I wonder how Bob would feel to know that a Black man with the same bi-racial heritage as him is president of the United States, the heart of Babylon. I wonder how Marley would react to his song, “One Love,” being used to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Thirty years after Jamaican reggae artist Bob Marley united the world under the banner of peace, unity, and human rights, Barack Obama inspired the world with a similar message. Bob Marley chastised corrupt politicians and war while exhorting oppressed people to “get up, stand up.” Both Marley and Obama would not only win the love of the Black people, but also the admiration of young, idealistic whites who would further Marley’s cause. Bob Marley was born in Jamaica in 1946. His father, Captain Norval Marley, was an officer in the English Navy as well as a plantation overseer. His mother was an 18-year-old black woman by the name of Cedella Booker. Marley’s parents didn’t stay together. His father died when Marley was 10.

As a young man, Marley moved to Kingston, Jamaica’s capital, where a burgeoning music scene was developing. Marley joined up with local musicians such as Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. The trio formed the Wailers and recorded with some of Jamaica’s top producers. Marley composed several songs that represented the angst of the Jamaican underclass, and the tensions between the haves and have-nots in his native land.

It wasn’t until Bob Marley signed with Chris Blackwell’s Island Records that Marley would take his sound around the world. Bob Marley positioned himself the rebel, singing songs that people all over the world could relate to, songs like “I Shot The Sheriff,” “Get Up, Stand Up,” and “Concrete Jungle.” Marley was able to do what King and Ghandi did, and what Obama accomplished in 2008 — rally educated people of European backgrounds around the cause of multiculturalism and racial harmony. The same populist underdog voice Marley’s songs echoes in Obama’s speeches.

While Marley painted a dark picture, there was always an undying optimism in his voice, a sense that things would get better, that people could unite to end racism and classism.

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Both Marley and Obama have the ability to be militant without being threatening. Obama’s anti-war stance and criticism of America’s social system reflected the angst of the working and middle class in America. Still, he was able to sweeten up his strong desire for change with calls of unity, hope, and progress in an all-inclusive America. Similarly, Marley managed to remain pro-Black and a voice of the downtrodden while sweetening up his message with calls for love, peace and unity. The millions of white Americans who grew up on Marley’s music — from the frat boys, to the hippies, to the millions of Americans who’ve heard his songs on the radio and own his “Legend” CD — became the a crucial part of Obama’s “post-racial” America.

Obama and Marley made the same bi-partisan efforts to unite people. After Marley was shot, he united the heads of the warring Jamaican political parties at the historic “One Love” peace concert in Jamaica. Bob Marley was the voice of the Third World, but was still able to attract the attention of the European upper-class, royalty and celebrities. Time Magazine named “Exodus” the “Album of the Century,” and the BBC named “One Love” the song of the century.

Marley said: “I don’t have prejudice against meself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side nor the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.”

Click here to see video of Bob Marley!

Click here to read about Obama’s Top 5 Marley Songs!

Explore the year 1986!

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From Telegraph.co.uk:

Ahead of a visit to Ghana at the weekend, he said: “Ultimately, I’m a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africa.

“I think part of what’s hampered advancement in Africa is that for many years we’ve made excuses about corruption or poor governance, that this was somehow the consequence of neo-colonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racism – I’m not a big – I’m not a believer in excuses.”

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From RFERL.org:

The visit to Russia by Barack Obama, the first black man to be elected president of the United States, is significant for many Russians.

But for Russians of African descent, in particular, the new U.S. leader is a potent symbol of triumph over the same challenges they themselves face in a country where dark-skinned people remain rare and often unwelcome.

Yelena Khanga is one of Russia’s best-known black citizens. The popular host of a top-rated 1990s chat show about sex — “Pro Eto,” (About That) — she became one of the few black faces regularly seen on Russian television.

Khanga’s grandparents came to the Soviet Union in the 1920s to escape the racism they had endured in the United States as a mixed-race couple.

Today, Khanga says Obama’s election to the American presidency, and his current visit to Moscow, have special meaning for her.

“He did what my grandmother and grandfather dreamed about in their day,” Khanga says. “They couldn’t even have dreamed that, one day, America would have a black president. The only dreams that they had — my grandmother was white, and my grandfather was black — was that Americans would someday allow mixed couples to live in peace, have children, and let the children have decent lives. That is what they dreamed about.”

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From TheGuardian:

U.S. President Barack Obama has accepted an invitation to attend the opening ceremony of the soccer World Cup finals in South Africa next year, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on Monday.

“And the man who said, ‘Yes we can do it,’ will be there.

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Iran accused the United States on Wednesday of “intolerable” meddling in its internal affairs, alleging for the first time that Washington has fueled a bitter postelection dispute. Opposition supporters marched in Tehran’s streets for a third straight day to protest the outcome of the balloting.

The Iranian government summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Iran, to complain about American interference, state-run Press TV reported.

The English-language channel quoted the government as calling Western interference “intolerable.”

President Barack Obama has reacted cautiously to developments in Iran, saying he shared the world’s “deep concerns about the election” but adding that it was “not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling.”

The two countries broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A crackdown on dissent continued, with more arrests of opposition figures reported, and the country’s most powerful military force — the Revolutionary Guard — saying that Iranian Web sites and bloggers must remove any materials that “create tension” or face legal action.

Amateur video showed thousands of people marching on an overpass in Tehran in support of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. He has accused the government of rigging the election in favor of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Marchers flashed the victory sign or carried placards, and some were dressed in green — the color of Mousavi’s campaign.

It was the third day in a row that Mousavi supporters have taken to the streets, and he called for another demonstrations on Thursday — a direct challenge to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the cleric-led system.

Khamenei has told Mousavi to pursue his demands through the electoral system and called for Iranians to unite behind their Islamic government, an extraordinary appeal in response to tensions over the vote. But Mousavi appears unwilling to back down, issuing on his Web site a call for a mass demonstration Thursday.

“We want a peaceful rally to protest the unhealthy trend of the election and realize our goal of annulling the results,” Mousavi said.

He called for his followers to wear or carry black in mourning for the alleged election fraud and the deaths of protesters, and said there should be “a new presidential election that will not repeat the shameful fraud from the previous election.”

Mousavi and his supporters accuse the government of rigging the June 12 election to declare hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the overwhelming winner. Their street protests, paired with dissent from powerful clerical and political figures, have presented one of the gravest threats to Iran‘s complex blend of democracy and religious authority since the system emerged from the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In another high-profile display of apparent opposition support, several Iranian soccer players wore green wrist bands during a World Cup qualifying match in South Korea that was televised in Iran.

Mousavi’s Web site said seven Iranian players wore the green bands in the first half of the game, although most were forced to take them off before the second half. It said Mehdi Mehdavi-Kia kept his green band on throughout the game, which Iran and South Korea drew 1-1.

Fans from Iran unfurled a banner in the stands that read “Go To Hell Dictator,” and waved Iran’s national flags emblazoned with the plea “Free Iran.”

Blogs and Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been vital conduits for Iranians to inform the world about protests and violence.

The Web became more essential after the government barred foreign media Tuesday from leaving their offices to report on demonstrations on the streets of Tehran.

Mousavi condemned the government for blocking Web sites, saying the government did not tolerate the voice of the opposition.

The violence has left at least seven people dead, according to Iran’s state media, although videos and photos posted by people inside Iran show scenes of violence that have not been reported through official channels. The new media restrictions make it virtually impossible to independently verify much of the information, which includes dramatic images of street clashes and wounded demonstrators.

Much of the imagery has been posted anonymously. In other cases, those who have posted have declined to be identified due to fear of government retaliation, or cannot be reached due to government restrictions on the Internet and mobile phones.

The Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force answering to Khamenei, said through the state news service that its investigators have taken action against “deviant news sites” that encouraged public disturbances. The Guard is a separate military with enormous domestic influence and control of Iran’s most important defense programs. It is one of the key sources of power for the ruling establishment.

The statement alleged that dissident Web sites were backed by Canadian, U.S. and British interests, a frequent charge levied by hard-liners against the opposition.

“Legal action will be very strong and call on them to remove such materials,” it said.

Iran’s most senior dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, said widespread vote fraud had undermined the legitimacy of the ruling Islamic system and that “no sound mind” would accept the results.

“A government that is based on intervening in (people’s) vote has no political or religious legitimacy,” said Montazeri, who had once been set to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme leader until he was ousted because of criticisms of the revolution.

State media said Khamenei would deliver the sermon at Friday prayers, the most important religious address of the week. The supreme leader generally leads Friday prayers only two or three times a year.

Unlike past student-led demonstrations, Mousavi has the ability to press his case with Iran’s highest authorities and could gain powerful allies. Some influential clerics have expressed concern about possible election irregularities, and a fierce critic of Ahmadinejad, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, is part of the ruling establishment.

Iranian TV showed pictures of Faezeh Hashemi, Rafsanjani’s daughter, speaking to hundreds of Mousavi supporters, carrying pictures of Khomeini and others.

The U.S.-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said several dozen noted figures associated with the reform movement have been arrested, among them politicians, intellectuals, activists and journalists.

Analyst Saeed Leilaz, who is often quoted by Western media, was arrested Wednesday by plainclothes security officers at his home, said his wife, Sepehrnaz Panahi.

At least 10 Iranian journalists have been arrested since the election, Reporters Without Borders said, and a Web site run by former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi said the reformist had been arrested.

Prominent reformer Saeed Hajjarian has also been detained, Hajjarian’s wife, Vajiheh Masousi, told The Associated Press. Hajjarian is a close aide to former President Mohammad Khatami.

The main electoral authority has said it was prepared to conduct a limited recount of ballots at sites where candidates claim irregularities. The recount would be overseen by the Guardian Council, an unelected body of 12 clerics and Islamic law experts close to Khamenei.

But Mousavi alleges the Guardian Council is not neutral and has already indicated it supports Ahmadinejad. Mousavi and the two other candidates who ran against Ahmadinejad are calling for an independent investigation.

His representative, reformist cleric Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, said after a meeting with the council Tuesday the number of votes in counted in 70 districts was higher than the population in those districts. He also said many polling stations were closed sooner than scheduled on election night, while people were still lining up.

On Tuesday, the government organized a large rally in Tehran to show it too can bring supporters into the streets. Speakers urged Iranians to accept the results showing Ahmadinejad was re-elected in a landslide.

The appeal for unity failed to calm passions, and a large column of Mousavi supporters marched peacefully in north Tehran, according to amateur video.

Security forces did not interfere, a witness said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal.

Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the unrest as little more than “passions after a soccer match,” attended a summit Tuesday in Russia that was delayed a day by the unrest. He returned to Iran and held a cabinet meeting, saying on state television Wednesday that people had voted for his “policies of justice.”

From TheRoot.com:

When political leaders face urgent problems and a polarized public, a commission that honestly gathers facts and encourages a consensus is needed. Yet at a time when Americans are struggling to address torture, hate crimes, marriage inequality, police misconduct and racial profiling, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is either silent or on the wrong side of every major human rights issue.

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There is  a bitter irony in America’s first black president continuing to boycott the UN’s international conference on racism scheduled for this month.

President Barack Obama’s position on attending the conference translates roughly into: Do it our way or we won’t play. He has already gotten all references to Israel, to reparations for slavery, and to a proposed ban on speech defaming any religion dropped from the conference’s draft document. Yet, he is still unwilling to have the United States attend. Even if the administration bullies its way into getting its final points, it is not really a win for the United States.

Obama’s foot dragging and threat of a boycott will begin to deplete whatever goodwill he has created for himself and America in the nations of color. People in those countries, like many Americans, hoped he would head up the fight for racial justice, not become one of the obstacles to it.

The president’s decision to boycott will undercut his attempt in Turkey to reach out to the Muslim world. It has been reported that the boycott was urged by members of the Jewish community in both the United States and Israel. If he continues to cave to that pressure, it will be seen in the Muslim world as more proof that America cannot be counted on as an honest broker in any peace process.

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Tell Obama to Attend the Racism Conference

From The Miami Herald:

To offset the recent wave of factory closings and work suspensions at U.S. textile and manufacturing plants in Central America, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is asking the U.S. government for an economic bailout plan for Central America.

”We are part of the crisis and we are part of (CAFTA-DR), so it is their obligation to give resources to the region,” Ortega said.

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