black - Blog - The Oracle Mag2024-03-29T10:18:38Zhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/blackKings Forward Harrison Barnes, Eagles DT Malik Jackson Paying for Funeral of Atatiana Jefferson, Texas Woman Killed in Her Own Home by Police Officerhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/kings-forward-harrison-barnes-eagles-dt-malik-jackson-paying-for-2019-10-19T14:30:00.000Z2019-10-19T14:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><p><a href="https://media-beta.wsbtv.com/photo/2019/10/18/CAPTURED%20_OP_44_CP__1571444061353.jpg_16612214_ver1.0_640_360.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://media-beta.wsbtv.com/photo/2019/10/18/CAPTURED%20_OP_44_CP__1571444061353.jpg_16612214_ver1.0_640_360.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="CAPTURED%20_OP_44_CP__1571444061353.jpg_16612214_ver1.0_640_360.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
<p>Sacramento Kings forward Harrison Barnes and his wife and Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Malik Jackson have offered to pay for the funeral of a Fort Worth, Texas, woman who was killed in her home by a police officer last week.</p>
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<p>Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was taking care of her 8-year-old nephew Saturday when a police officer making a wellness check fired through the window of her home and killed her. The officer was responding to a call about an open door at the residence.</p>
<p>“My wife and I wanted to do something for that family,” Barnes told reporters Thursday. “It was a tragic situation that happened. No one should be killed during a wellness check. But the biggest thing is anytime someone has to go through that, the last thing you want to have to worry about is trying to come up with the money for a funeral.”</p>
<p>Barnes played for the Dallas Mavericks for two-plus seasons before being traded to the Kings in February.</p>
<p>“Anytime you come into a community, you always have a piece of that community with you and you want to give back,” he said.</p>
<p>Barnes and his wife, Brittany, are covering more than half of the cost of the service, and Jackson is paying for the remainder, Lee Merritt, an attorney representing Jefferson’s family, told the Dallas Morning News.</p>
<p>“It’s about the family,” Barnes, 27, said of the gesture. “It’s about everything they’re going through. Our prayers obviously are with them. It was a gesture my wife and I wanted to do for them.”</p>
<p>Jefferson, who was black, was a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana and was working in pharmaceutical equipment sales. Aaron Dean, the officer who killed Jefferson, is white.</p>
<p>Dean has resigned from the department and has been charged with murder.</p>
<p>“It was unfortunate. It should never have happened. You think of wellness check not being something that’s going to be fatal,” Barnes said. “So you want justice for the family. But at the same time, your heart goes out to the family that has to deal with that.”</p>
<p>Barnes said his thoughts also went to Andre Emmett, a former NBA player who was killed in Dallas in September. Police are still searching for his killer.</p>
<p>“Just in general gun violence in Dallas recently. Andre Emmett, a guy that I played pickup basketball with for 2½ straight summers, another unfortunate incident. When you see these types of situations continue to occur, you know that change has to happen,” Barnes said.</p>
<p>Barnes said he had not talked to Jefferson’s family.</p>
<p>“We’re just giving them space respectfully,” he said.</p>
<p><em>SOURCE: ESPN</em></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>How Black Quarterbacks Defied the NFL’s Stereotypes and Racist Past to Become the Future of Footballhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-1736002019-10-12T14:00:00.000Z2019-10-12T14:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d99ad4c1d82532eb5d86ea1e4f415340fed6059b/0_0_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?width=1300&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=a34a97eb20b6f0ca1d4ddb8b4e11d3a1" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d99ad4c1d82532eb5d86ea1e4f415340fed6059b/0_0_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=3b5a282f011c5a2f5eea80e549a0b251" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/951ec3347f77cb01106f72ca8752e08667ce02eb/0_0_3000_2303/master/3000.jpg?width=700&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=b088fdb69c5090fa516d5b530fb89523" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://theundefeated.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/gettyimages-56624511.jpg?w=3000" target="_blank"><img src="https://theundefeated.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/gettyimages-56624511.jpg?w=3000&profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="gettyimages-56624511.jpg?w=3000&profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
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<p><em>As the NFL celebrates its centennial season, a rising vanguard of African American quarterbacks is shattering stereotypes at a position once considered off-limits to black players</em></p>
<p>From his seat at M&T Bank Stadium during last weekend’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/nfl" target="_blank">NFL</a> game between the Baltimore Ravens and Arizona Cardinals, Cyrus Mehri knew he was witnessing something special.</p>
<p>In a matchup of the youngest African American starting quarterbacks in the Super Bowl era, 22-year-old Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, the top pick in this year’s draft, threw for 349 yards in only his second professional contest.</p>
<p>Not to be outdone, second-year Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, also 22, became the only player in regular-season league history to throw for at least 270 yards and rush for at least 120 yards, leading Baltimore to a 23-17 victory.</p>
<p>As a fan, Mehri was thrilled. And as the civil rights attorney who helped establish the Rooney Rule – which requires NFL teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operations jobs – he understood the deeper significance of the moment for a league that long has excluded African Americans from its most important and celebrated on-field position.</p>
<p>“Kyler Murray showed maturity beyond his years,” Mehri said. “They had no running game. The stadium is so loud. It was 100% on him. And he carved up the defense.</p>
<p>“Then you look at Lamar Jackson. His field awareness was so impressive. He can sense the pass rush and escape. He places the ball with nice touch. He’s showing the complete game.</p>
<p>“We’re trying to overcome 100 years – literally 100 years! – of stereotyping of black quarterbacks. And they demolished all of them in that one game.”</p>
<p>As the NFL celebrates its centennial season, the league is experiencing a changing of its quarterback guard. Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/24/andrew-luck-retires-indianapolis-colts-quarterback" target="_blank">retired</a>. Eli Manning has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/sep/17/eli-manning-benched-new-york-giants" target="_blank">benched</a>. Ben Roethlisberger is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/sep/17/drew-brees-ben-roethlisberger-injuries-nfl-playoffs" target="_blank">out for the season</a>, and faces an uncertain future.</p>
<p>Health permitting, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Phillip Rivers continue to truck along – but each is far closer to the end of their careers than the beginning.</p>
<p>All of those players are white. Meanwhile, the NFL’s most promising and accomplished young signal-callers are predominantly black: not just Jackson and Murray, but also Dallas’ Dak Prescott (26 years old), Houston’s Deshaun Watson (24), and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes (24).</p>
<p>And that’s not all. As Jason Reid of <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/a-look-at-black-quarterbacks-dominating-the-nfl/" target="_blank">The Undefeated has noted</a>, 2019 marks the first year in which the league’s reigning MVP (Mahomes), No 1 overall pick (Murray), highest-paid player (Seattle’s Russell Wilson), and a former MVP (Carolina’s Cam Newton) are all African American quarterbacks.</p>
<p>Small wonder, then, that Reid’s website has declared this <a href="https://theundefeated.com/tag/year-of-the-black-qb/" target="_blank">“the year of the black QB”</a>. Yet that same excellence raises a question: given that <a href="https://qz.com/1287915/the-nfls-racial-makeup-explains-much-of-its-national-anthem-problems/" target="_blank">roughly 70%</a> of NFL players are African American, why has it taken so long for the league’s marquee position to begin to follow suit?</p>
<p>The answer lies in a lengthy history of overt discrimination and subtle bias – and a determined, multi-generational effort by black athletes to overcome both.</p>
<p>“How do you get from there to here?” Mehri says. “You build a wall of integration. Bit by bit. Brick by brick.”</p>
<h2><strong>Separate and unequal</strong></h2>
<p>The NFL’s story began with a standout African American quarterback: Fritz Pollard, a chemistry major and All-American at Brown University, led the Akron Pros to the league’s inaugural championship in 1920.</p>
<p>In 1933, however, the NFL secretly decided to ban black players – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/a-history-of-segregation-in-the-nfl/248625/" target="_blank">reportedly at the behest</a> of former Washington owner George Preston Marshall, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/sports/football/50-years-ago-redskins-were-last-nfl-team-to-integrate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">committed segregationist</a> who in a 1942 interview argued that if African Americans were allowed to play, “white players, especially those from the South, would go to extremes to physically disable them”.</p>
<p>The ban mirrored the status of black Americans at the time: separate, unequal and living in a de facto apartheid state via Jim Crow in the South and a patchwork of exclusionary laws and customs everywhere else.</p>
<p>The ban also was rooted in the widespread, racist beliefs about black inferiority that underpinned segregation. In the early part of the 20th century, said Jay Coakley, an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and sports sociologist, whites assumed that African-Americans lacked the physical stamina and emotional courage to excel at contact sports like boxing and football.</p>
<p>After Jack Johnson became the first African American heavyweight champion in 1908 – and then defeated “great white hope” James J Jeffries in a 1910 bout that triggered white race riots across the country – that assumption morphed.</p>
<p>“You had the Negro Leagues in baseball, and similar kinds of [segregated black] teams in football and basketball,” Coakley said. “So what happened over time is that the racial ideology changed.</p>
<p>“Whites accepted that blacks were physically evolved, but decided that they were intellectually un-evolved – that they were actually lower on the ladder of evolution than white people, and somehow closer to our animal ancestors. And that’s the ideology, the cultural context, that prevailed when the major sports in the US were desegregated.”</p>
<p>Though the NFL lifted the ban in 1946, opportunities for African American quarterbacks were almost nonexistent. George Taliaferro became the league’s second ever black quarterback in 1950, and even made three Pro Bowls – but only as a rusher and receiver who never completed more than 16 passes in a season.</p>
<p>The league’s third black quarterback, Willie Thrower, was given even less of a chance to make a mark. In 1953, the Chicago Bears inserted him for a single drive against the San Francisco 49ers – and after Thrower completed three of eight passes to put his team in the red zone, replaced him with white starter George Blanda.</p>
<p>In sportswriter William C Rhoden’s book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Third-Mile-Vick-Triumphs-Quarterback/dp/1933060115" target="_blank">Third and a Mile: The Trials and Triumph of the Black Quarterback</a><em>, </em>Thrower’s son, Melvin, recalled that his parents owned a bar called “The Touchdown Lounge”, with a picture of his father on the wall.</p>
<p>“On the bottom, it said: THE FIRST BLACK QUARTERBACK IN THE NFL, 1953,” Melvin said. “People told him to take it down. ‘You’re lying,’ they said. ‘You’re lying. That ain’t you. Take it down.’”</p>
<h2><strong>Stacked deck</strong></h2>
<p>As football and American society continued to desegregate in the 1960s and 70s, the sport was rife with what sociologists call “racial stacking” – a sorting process in which individuals are funneled into certain positions based on stereotypes.</p>
<p>From Pop Warner to the NFL, the down-the-middle positions of center, inside linebacker and quarterback were considered to be “thinking” spots. As such, they were seen as too cerebral for African American athletes, who additionally were thought to lack the leadership and grit to lead other players and perform under duress.</p>
<p>Of course, this was balderdash. Sandy Stephens quarterbacked the University of Minnesota to a national championship in 1960, and many other black signal-callers at the game’s lower levels proved perfectly capable when called upon; meanwhile, plenty of white quarterbacks tossed interceptions, made boneheaded mistakes and otherwise labored in utter mediocrity.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, stacking had a pernicious, two-pronged effect: drastically reducing the pool of African American college quarterbacks who conceivably could be signed by a NFL team, and making it almost impossible for one of them to get a fair shake in the league.</p>
<p>Ken Shropshire, who competed with and against African American quarterbacks in a predominantly black high school league in Los Angeles, experienced stacking for the first time while playing for Stanford University in the 1970s. Black teammates James Lofton and Tony Hill both had been prep signal-callers. Both were converted to wide receivers in college.</p>
<p><strong>Click<span> </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/sep/20/black-quarterbacks-history-stereotypes" target="_blank">here</a><span> </span>to read more.</strong></p>
<p><em>SOURCE: The Guardian, Patrick Hruby</em></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Hail To The Queen! Voila Davis Is The New Face Of L’Oréal Paris. Share Your Thoughts Below!https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/hail-to-the-queen-voila-davis-is-the-new-face-of-l-oreal-paris-sh2019-09-11T01:30:00.000Z2019-09-11T01:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="entryHeader"><div class="fx metadata"></div>
<img src="https://ionehellobeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/15681405879016.jpg?quality=85&strip=all" id="image1" title="Viola Davis" class="pinable" name="image1" alt="15681405879016.jpg?quality=85&strip=all" /></div>
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<p>Oscar-winning actress<span> </span><a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/playlist/10-times-viola-davis-was-the-queen-of-colors/" target="_blank"><strong>Viola Davis</strong></a><span> </span>is adding another achievement to her already impeccable resume: L’Oréal Paris spokesperson.</p>
<p>On Tuesday (September 10), it was announced that the 54-year-old<span> </span><a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/playlist/say-it-aint-so-abc-confirms-that-htgawm-will-end-next-season/" target="_blank"><em>How to Get Away With Murder</em><span> </span></a>star will be the face of the company’s L’Oréal Paris’ Age Perfect line.</p>
<p><a href="https://people.com/style/viola-davis-new-loreal-paris-ambassador/" target="_blank">In an interview with PEOPLE</a>, Viola admitted that this all feels “surreal,” especially since she has never felt linked to the concepts of<span> </span><a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/2994572/viola-davis-shines-women-in-the-world-summit-joy-reid-tina-brown/" target="_blank">“beauty and femininity.”</a></p>
<p>“It feels surreal,” the<span> </span><a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/2816555/viola-davis-soap-star-response/" target="_blank">Emmy and Golden Globe winner</a><span> </span>recently told PEOPLE.</p>
<p>“First of all, and you can take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt, I never thought that I could be an international spokesperson for L’Oréal. The fact that I am, it feels like my life has come full circle.”</p>
<p>Adding, “When I thought of beauty and femininity when I was a young scrappy girl growing up in Central Falls, Rhode Island, I didn’t associate it with myself. I didn’t think that I had all those attributes that women who are seen like that should have.”</p>
<p><a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/3057520/hail-to-the-queen-voila-davis-is-the-new-face-of-loreal/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>The Best Pitch Oprah Ever Heard — The Story Behind ‘David Makes Man’https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-1526612019-08-15T02:46:18.000Z2019-08-15T02:46:18.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="headerInfo sliderContainer"><div class="sliderWidth sliderCenter"><div class="headerInfo-links left"><div class="fx tag-button"></div>
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<div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><h1>Premiering August 14th on OWN is the coming-of-age story<span> </span><em>David Makes Man</em><span> </span>from Oscar-winner Tarell Alvin McCraney and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey and Michael B. Jordan.</h1>
<p>Best known for his work in<em><span> </span>Moonlight</em>,<span> </span><a href="https://blackgirlnerds.com/david-makes-man-has-a-powerful-impact-at-sundance/" target="_blank"><em>David Makes Man<span> </span></em></a>is Tarell Alvin McCraney’s debut in television. He serves as series creator and is alongside an impressive team of executive producers that include Oprah Winfrey and Michael B. Jordan. This is the first of a series of projects that Jordan has launched under his Outlier Society production company. Dee Harris-Lawrence (<em>Shots Fired</em>) is the showrunner for the episodic lyrical drama, and Mike Kelley and Melissa Loy (<em>Revenge</em>) are producers under their Page Fright production banner.</p>
<p>The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) is telling rich nuanced stories from the Black diaspora and the media mogul says, “I’m not looking for Pollyanna stories, I’m looking for stories that say this is what life is.”</p>
<p>Tarell Alvin McCraney and Oprah Winfrey sat down with a small group of press to chat about the impending series and how this story was brought from a breathtaking pitch to the small screen. On the day of Toni Morrison’s passing, both share some sentiments about her legacy and how important this new series will be for viewers. A nuanced episodic narrative about the life of a 15-year-old Black boy is still an anomaly in primetime TV and the Oprah Winfrey Network is up to the task of changing that.</p>
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Oprah Winfrey, BGN Founder Jamie Broadnax, and Tarell McCraney<br />
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<p>David (Akili McDowell) is an inquisitive teen filled with unbridled passion and tackles the dichotomy of his surroundings between living in a drug-riddled neighborhood and attending a privileged magnet school.</p>
<p>Tarell Alvin McCraney states that he’s been fortunate to have the legacy of Black interiority handed down to him. “It really is about trying, being able to finally see myself and get that validation of self and seeing characters, reading characters”, says McCraney. One of Toni Morrison’s literary works,<span> </span><em>Tar Baby</em>, was a story McCraney connected with. “When I read<span> </span><em>Tar Baby</em>, it was one of those moments where I was like, I know this Southern boy oh, I know him so bad. I know wanting after a person so wonderfully, and then to sort of turn around and see Florida life in that way that I hadn’t seen since Zora Neale Hurston, I thought to myself, that’s what I’ll do, I will engage, I will reach into my pocket in my corner of the world and show it as best I can. And so I’m grateful for that legacy.”</p>
<p>Oprah recalls one of her first conversations with Toni Morrison to which the illustrious author told Oprah that she always knew she was gallant. “I think what she represented for me, is this idea that where we’ve come from, and everything that came before us lives in each of us in such a way that we have a responsibility to carry it forward”.</p>
<p>Oprah adds that Toni’s ability to use language is what affected her and Tarell’s words impacted her in the same way. The first time Oprah heard his pitch she closed her eyes and did everything she could not to cry. “I knew that if he was able to do just a portion of what the pitch represented, that we would have something that was<br /> would be in its own way a phenomenon”, says Oprah.</p>
<p>While sitting in the room during the pitch with Tarell, it dawned on Oprah that her literary world was filled with stories about little Black girls like the Pecola Breedloves of the world, but not many stories about little Black boys. Oprah adds, “I thought that the series in the way he pitched and presented it would offer the rest of the world an opportunity to see inside a world that we rarely get to see. I believe that what he and the team have done to create is this series that validates the Black boy.”</p>
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Akili McDowell as David<br />
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<p>Tarell’s pitch for Oprah was the best pitch she’s ever heard and the stars aligned in that room the moment she heard the story about David Makes Man. When God is speaking to you, He’s speaking to you all the time, and it is no coincidence that the elements of this story were something she was preparing to show on television for some time.</p>
<p>“I had done this piece for<span> </span><em>60 Minutes</em><span> </span>on trauma. And everything that Tarell was talking about in the pitch about the series, felt to me that people could hear it, feel it, experience it in a way that you couldn’t hear in a news story or in a way that you couldn’t hear in a documentary. You could only feel by experiencing it through people’s lives. And I thought that David would be a perfect representative of showing people that what happened to you is more important of a question then ‘what’s wrong with you’? One of the things I learned during the research about this trauma story, is all these kids who sit in classrooms dysregulated and they can’t control themselves, because they’re disassociated. All people raised in challenging poverty environments are traumatized to some degree. And the question is not what’s wrong with you — the question is ‘what happened to you’? So we get to see that week after week unfold in ways that remind us of ourselves.”</p>
<p>Oprah mentioned again while explaining the process of listening to the pitch in the meeting with her, Tarell, Michael B. Jordan and TV executives how it was difficult for her not to cry. If there’s ever a lesson in how to execute an award-winning pitch Tarell Alvin McCraney could teach a course. Oprah elaborates on what he did:</p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Harriet Tubman Breaks Free In Thrilling First Trailer About Her Untold Storyhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/harriet-tubman-breaks-free-in-thrilling-first-trailer-about-her-u2019-07-24T16:22:17.000Z2019-07-24T16:22:17.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="article-header-container"><div class="title"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/ui_NX28B0Yy-gw9MEzNhsOa1hjVJhHJ2N9HSFHgVKtxrk9tLxeuaE53Cgmah3i7hgfWiBSKzW2FrOjHO06U8S9H2fMEDgnkasKvfwuj6SAGwmIqzfdr6GAngRC-05rZdhwVYOM9UCmUAiNfWnmlFMYXgeWCm=-w600-h400-p" target="_blank"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/ui_NX28B0Yy-gw9MEzNhsOa1hjVJhHJ2N9HSFHgVKtxrk9tLxeuaE53Cgmah3i7hgfWiBSKzW2FrOjHO06U8S9H2fMEDgnkasKvfwuj6SAGwmIqzfdr6GAngRC-05rZdhwVYOM9UCmUAiNfWnmlFMYXgeWCm=-w600-h400-p?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="ui_NX28B0Yy-gw9MEzNhsOa1hjVJhHJ2N9HSFHgVKtxrk9tLxeuaE53Cgmah3i7hgfWiBSKzW2FrOjHO06U8S9H2fMEDgnkasKvfwuj6SAGwmIqzfdr6GAngRC-05rZdhwVYOM9UCmUAiNfWnmlFMYXgeWCm=-w600-h400-p?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></div>
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<p>The trailer for the much-anticipated Harriet Tubman biopic has finally arrived.</p>
<p>Focus Features released the trailer for “Harriet,” which stars Cynthia Erivo in the title role, on Tuesday morning. “Eve’s Bayou” director Kasi Lemmons leads the film that tells the incredible true story of how Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 and later helped free hundreds of slaves through the Underground Railroad. Janelle Monáe and Leslie Odom Jr. also star in the film.</p>
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<p><em>Watch the full trailer above. “Harriet” hits theaters November 2019.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/harriet-tubman-trailer-cynthia-erivo-janelle-monae_n_5d37195ee4b0419fd33362d9" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7936074053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7936074053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7936074053?profile=original" /></a></em></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Ava DuVernay's 'When They See Us' Scores The Most 2019 Emmy Nominations For Netflixhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/ava-duvernay-s-when-they-see-us-scores-the-most-2019-emmy-nominat2019-07-17T04:30:36.000Z2019-07-17T04:30:36.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="entryHeader"><div class="fx metadata"></div>
<img src="https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5d2e15b02400009d17935b1e.jpeg?cache=lzzhpt0fyq&ops=1910_1000" class="pinable" alt="5d2e15b02400009d17935b1e.jpeg?cache=lzzhpt0fyq&ops=1910_1000" /></div>
<div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content">"Thank you @Netflix for believing in this story and letting me tell it the exact way I wanted,” the director wrote on Twitter.</div>
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<div><div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text"><p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/topic/ava-duvernay" target="_blank">Ava DuVernay’s</a> series “When They See Us,” which told the stories of five black and Latino men who were wrongly convicted of a brutal crime as teenagers, earned the most <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/emmy-award-nominations-2019-television_n_5d2cd5c4e4b0bca60363daa8" target="_blank">Emmy nominations</a> for <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entertainment/topic/netflix">Netflix</a> this year, The Hollywood Reporter <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/emmy-nominations-2019-by-numbers-hbo-dominates-netflix-led-by-game-thrones-1224554?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social" target="_blank">reported</a>. </p>
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<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text"><p>The limited series scored 16 noms on Tuesday, which topped the list for the streaming service platform, which saw a total of 117 nominations across its series. Netflix came second to HBO, which had the highest number of nominations with 137. </p>
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<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text"><p>“When They See Us” was met with critical acclaim after it debuted on the streaming platform on May 31.</p>
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<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text"><p>The scripted series put the spotlight on Antron McCray, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam, who were all wrongly convicted of crimes related to the brutal rape of a white 28-year-old female jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. </p>
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<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text"><p>“When They See Us” gave a voice to the five men, who for decades were widely referred to as the so-called Central Park Five. It also reignited widespread backlash against the media’s and the prosecution’s handling of the case. They each served time behind bars until their convictions were vacated in 2002. </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ava-duvernay-when-they-see-us-nominations-netflix_n_5d2e1295e4b085eda5a2e4a1" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>17 Black Owned Clothing And Accessories Brands You Need To Be Following. Inspiration and empowerment through fashion.https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/17-black-owned-clothing-and-accessories-brands-you-need-to-be-fol2019-02-27T22:52:44.000Z2019-02-27T22:52:44.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div id="js-post-container" class="page-buzz col xs-col-12 md-col-8 clearfix xs-py3"><div class="js-dynamic-height-sidebar"><div class="js-buzz buzz">
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><p><i>See more of this cool collection at <a href="https://www.hgcapparel.com/" target="_blank">hgcapparel.com</a> .</i></p>
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<div class="clearfix js-ad-placement ad-inline ad-inline--asis"><div id="BF_WIDGET_210" class="xs-relative ad-ex ad-promo-inline ad-ex--inline js-ad js-ad-210 ad-flexible ad--loaded ad-flexible--programmatic ad-content-ready"><div id="bf-item-210-1"></div>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-2"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">2.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="http://pioclothing.com/" target="_blank">Power in one's</a><span> </span>mission is<span> </span><i>"to EMPOWER LIFESTYLES by igniting the fire within each one of us through fashion and an idea."</i></span></h3>
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><div class="subbuzz__description"><p>TCheck out Power in One over at<span> </span><a href="http://pioclothing.com/" target="_blank">pioclothing.com</a>.</p>
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<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-3"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">3.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text">Sneaker and culture vloggers<span> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/bull1trc" target="_blank">Bull1trc</a><span> </span>&<span> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/tonyd2wild" target="_blank">Tonyd2wild</a>created<span> </span><a href="https://www.sampleind.com/" target="_blank">SMPL Industries</a><span> </span>a few years ago and its been an underground hit ever since.</span></h3>
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><p><a class="bfa-share-btn xs-text-center xs-relative xs-block sharing-btn sharing-btn--c-pinterest analyt-share--pinterest js-sharing-btn" href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/adambutler/black-owned-clothing-and-accessories-brands" title="Share On Pinterest"></a></p>
<div class="subbuzz__description"><p><i>Go see what all the fuss is about over at<span> </span><a href="https://www.sampleind.com/" target="_blank">sampleind.com</a>.</i></p>
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<div class="clearfix js-ad-placement ad-inline ad-inline--asis"><div id="BF_WIDGET_211" class="xs-relative ad-ex ad-promo-inline ad-ex--inline js-ad js-ad-211 ad-flexible ad--loaded ad-flexible--programmatic ad-content-ready"><div id="bf-item-211-1"></div>
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><div class="subbuzz__description"><p><i>Show off your HBCU pride<span> </span><a href="http://www.sweetknowledgeclothing.com/" target="_blank">sweetknowledgeclothing.com</a>.</i></p>
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<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-6"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span>5. </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="https://www.8and9.com/collections/new-releases" target="_blank">8and9</a><span> </span>"<i>combines an aggressive anti-establishment attitude with quality design, classic sneaker color ways and re-appropriated pop culture references"</i></span></h3>
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><span class="subbuzz__attribution js-subbuzz__attribution xs-text-6 xs-block">Cristina Pimienta</span><div class="subbuzz__description"><p><i>Sneaker heads should definitely go over to<span> </span><a href="https://www.8and9.com/collections/new-releases" target="_blank">.8and9.com</a><span> </span>to check out the collection.</i></p>
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<div class="clearfix js-ad-placement ad-inline ad-inline--asis"><div id="BF_WIDGET_212" class="xs-relative ad-ex ad-promo-inline ad-ex--inline js-ad js-ad-212 ad-flexible ad--loaded ad-flexible--programmatic ad-content-ready"><div id="bf-item-212-1"><div class="ad-awareness-wrapper js-awareness-wrapper"><div class="ad-awareness__inner js-awareness-inner"><div class="ad-awareness__media js-awareness-media"><div id="div-gpt-ad-212" class="ad-slot js-ad-slot js-ad-slot-212"><div></div>
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<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-24014-1484331552-1.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-24014-1484331552-1.jpg?crop=960%3A960%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-29520-1484331557-13.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-29520-1484331557-13.jpg?crop=960%3A960%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><div class="subbuzz__description"><p><i><a href="http://www.theartistcierralynn.com/cierralynncollection" target="_blank"></a></i></p>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz-anchor"></div>
<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-8"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">7.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text">Created by legendary hip-hop artist Nas,<span> </span><a href="https://www.hstryclothing.com/" target="_blank">HSTRY</a><span> </span><i>"is a culmination of his life experiences, knowledge and inspiration."</i></span></h3>
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<div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-8">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-21889-1484331768-3.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-21889-1484331768-3.jpg?crop=927%3A927%3B0%2C0&downsize=500:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-24484-1484331834-14.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-24484-1484331834-14.jpg?crop=768%3A1024%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-9">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-21708-1484331938-12.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-21708-1484331938-12.jpg?crop=570%3A606%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-29453-1484331968-7.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-29453-1484331968-7.jpg?crop=570%3A545%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="action-bar--hover-container js-unsupported" id="mod-action-bar-subbuzz-10"></div>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz-anchor"></div>
<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-10"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">8.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="http://simplycecily.com/" target="_blank">Simply Cecily</a><span> </span>blends a<span> </span><i>"contemporary women’s clothing line that fuses the traditionally stylish nature of West African women with the contemporary flair of American design."</i></span></h3>
</div>
<div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-10">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-29574-1484332076-4.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-29574-1484332076-4.jpg?crop=320%3A480%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-22349-1484332093-1.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-22349-1484332093-1.jpg?crop=319%3A480%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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</div>
</div>
<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><div class="subbuzz__description"><p><i>Head over to<span> </span><a href="http://simplycecily.com/" target="_blank">simplycecily.com</a><span> </span>to view more of this beautiful brand.</i></p>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz-anchor"></div>
<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-11"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">9.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="https://buriednkulture.com/" target="_blank">Buried N Kulture</a><span> </span>wants<span> </span><i>"everyone who sees themselves as a Kultured being to feel at home with us."</i></span></h3>
</div>
<div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-11">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-29619-1484332176-13.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-29619-1484332176-13.jpg?crop=600%3A400%3B0%2C0&downsize=600:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-22349-1484332179-13.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-22349-1484332179-13.jpg?crop=404%3A600%3B0%2C0&downsize=300:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-12">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-22788-1484332593-1.jpg"></a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="clearfix js-ad-placement ad-inline ad-inline--asis"><div id="BF_WIDGET_214" class="xs-relative ad-ex ad-promo-inline ad-ex--inline js-ad js-ad-214 ad-flexible ad--loaded ad-flexible--programmatic ad-content-ready"><div id="bf-item-214-1"><h6 class="xs-mb1 xs-text-6 xs-text-center text-gray-lightest caps ad__disclosure--ex"></h6>
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</div>
<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-14"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">10.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="http://www.beautifulineveryshade.com/" target="_blank">Beautiful In Every Shade</a><span> </span>seeks to "<i>transform the way everyday people from around the world look at themselves and others.</i>"</span></h3>
</div>
<div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-14">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27264-1484332905-11.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27264-1484332905-11.jpg?crop=600%3A724%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27276-1484332909-3.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27276-1484332909-3.jpg?crop=646%3A646%3B0%2C0&downsize=500:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
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</div>
</div>
<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz-anchor"></div>
<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-15"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">11.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="https://kingdomnative.com/" target="_blank">Kingdom Native</a><span> </span>says they're a<span> </span><i>"Clothing Brand dedicated to creating apparel with a purpose. We strive to be more than nice designs and colors on cloth."</i></span></h3>
</div>
<div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-15">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27258-1484333052-3.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27258-1484333052-3.jpg?crop=345%3A345%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27258-1484333057-5.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27258-1484333057-5.jpg?crop=1024%3A1024%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="action-bar--hover-container js-unsupported" id="mod-action-bar-subbuzz-16"></div>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz-anchor"></div>
<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-16"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">12.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="http://www.kashmirviii.bigcartel.com/" target="_blank">Kashmir VIII</a><span> </span>is brand created by Cleveland native Kashmir Thompson. She says<span> </span><i>"I've been drawing for as long as I can remember, but decided to take my talents seriously in 2014"</i></span></h3>
</div>
<div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-16">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-2349-1484333150-3.png"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-2349-1484333150-3.png?crop=483%3A483%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-2389-1484333154-3.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-2389-1484333154-3.jpg?crop=750%3A750%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="action-bar--hover-container js-unsupported" id="mod-action-bar-subbuzz-17"></div>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz-anchor"></div>
<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-17"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">13.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="https://www.sacredapparel.net/" target="_blank">Sacred Apparel</a><span> </span>creates<span> </span><i>"<span>Clothing designed to glorify God"</span></i></span></h3>
</div>
<div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-17">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-27264-1484333233-13.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1150/9042/products/TSLS_White_4fcae8fe-8c30-49a1-ae62-9ffd5a20b092_1024x1024.jpg?v=1546309314&profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="TSLS_White_4fcae8fe-8c30-49a1-ae62-9ffd5a20b092_1024x1024.jpg?v=1546309314&profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"></div>
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1150/9042/products/Red_and_Black_Plaid_Sacred_Apparel_1024x1024.jpg?v=1520258668" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1150/9042/products/Red_and_Black_Plaid_Sacred_Apparel_1024x1024.jpg?v=1520258668&profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="Red_and_Black_Plaid_Sacred_Apparel_1024x1024.jpg?v=1520258668&profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></div>
</div>
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<div class="subbuzz subbuzz-photoset xs-mb4 xs-relative"><div class="subbuzz-anchor"></div>
<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-18"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">14.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="http://www.theculturedsavage.com/blank-c1661" target="_blank">The Cultured Savage</a><span> </span>describes their brand as<span> </span><i>"clothing for individuals regarded as primitive or uncivilized, However truly intellectual, conscious, and artistic."</i></span></h3>
</div>
<div class="subbuzz photo-set xs-mx-auto" id="mod-subbuzz-photoset-18">
<div class="photo-set--two-photos subbuzz__media-container--small-margin-bottom xs-relative"><div class="photo-set__group photo-set__group--large"><div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29045-1484333504-1.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29045-1484333504-1.jpg?crop=640%3A640%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="photo-set__item xs-relative">
<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-4224-1484333635-1.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-4224-1484333635-1.jpg?crop=150%3A150%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="clearfix js-ad-placement ad-inline ad-inline--asis"><div id="BF_WIDGET_2100-2" class="xs-relative ad-ex ad-promo-inline ad-ex--inline js-ad js-ad-2100-2 ad-flexible ad--loaded ad-flexible--programmatic ad-content-ready"><div id="bf-item-2100-2-1"><h6 class="xs-mb1 xs-text-6 xs-text-center text-gray-lightest caps ad__disclosure--ex"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span class="subbuzz__number">15.</span> <span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="http://mimidre.com/" target="_blank">Fly Nerd</a> <i>is a brand that celebrates "the weirdness and quirks that make us nerds fly."</i></span></span></h6>
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<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-31493-1484333721-5.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-31493-1484333721-5.jpg?crop=400%3A480%3B0%2C0&downsize=200:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29053-1484333803-1.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29053-1484333803-1.jpg?crop=1092%3A400%3B0%2C0&downsize=600:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><div class="subbuzz__description"><p><i>Are you a Fly Nerd? Check out more over at<span> </span><a href="http://mimidre.com/" target="_blank">mimidre.com</a>.</i></p>
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<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-20"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">16.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="http://www.glossrags.com/" target="_blank">GLOSSRAGS</a><span> </span>is known for the<span> </span><a href="http://www.glossrags.com/andcounting" target="_blank">"And Counting collection"</a><span> </span>Which Honors African Americans lost to Police Brutality and gun violence.</span></h3>
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<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29039-1484333960-18.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29039-1484333960-18.jpg?crop=750%3A1125%3B0%2C0&downsize=300:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/14/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29766-1484334776-5.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/14/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29766-1484334776-5.jpg?crop=750%3A500%3B0%2C0&downsize=600:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><span class="subbuzz__attribution js-subbuzz__attribution xs-text-6 xs-block">Graham_hann</span><div class="subbuzz__description"><p><i>To check out the Counting Collection and more go over to<span> </span><a href="http://www.glossrags.com/" target="_blank">glossrags.com</a></i></p>
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<div id="mod-subbuzz-photoset__title-21"><h3 class="subbuzz__title xs-mb1 bold"><span class="subbuzz__number">17.</span><span> </span><span class="js-subbuzz__title-text"><a href="http://www.onustees.com/" target="_blank">On.Us.Tees</a><span> </span>prides itself in being a<span> </span><i>"clothing brand that aims to promote Honest Propaganda through walking billboards of positivity."</i></span></h3>
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<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/14/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-4231-1484334224-9.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/14/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/sub-buzz-4231-1484334224-9.jpg?crop=1500%3A994%3B0%2C0&downsize=500:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="js-unsupported-fallback js-progressive-image-container photo-set__media-container"><a class="subbuzz__media-link" href="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/14/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29129-1484334245-5.jpg"><img class="subbuzz__media-image js-subbuzz__media js-progressive-image js-pinnable xs-col-12 xs-block img--loaded" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/13/14/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-29129-1484334245-5.jpg?crop=1000%3A757%3B0%2C0&downsize=400:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto" alt="" /></a></div>
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<div class="flex xs-flex-column"><div class="subbuzz__description"><p><i>Go over to<span> </span><a href="http://onustees.com/" target="_blank">onustees.com</a><span> </span>and spread some love.</i></p>
<p><i><a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/adambutler/black-owned-clothing-and-accessories-brands" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></i></p>
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<p><i><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7936074053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7936074053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7936074053?profile=original" /></a></i></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Miss Black America Pageant Reclaims Activist Roots in ‘Rebirth’ at 50https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/miss-black-america-pageant-reclaims-activist-roots-in-rebirth-at2018-08-19T09:22:18.000Z2018-08-19T09:22:18.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="fx annotationsHolder decoration-holder"></div>
<div class="noiseMetadata"><a href="https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/d886fef7379f328057b70c90af99baaa8f4001c8/c=0-10-594-457/local/-/media/2018/02/15/USATODAY/USATODAY/636543176142687190-MissBlackAmerica-pageant.jpg?width=534&height=401&fit=crop" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/d886fef7379f328057b70c90af99baaa8f4001c8/c=0-10-594-457/local/-/media/2018/02/15/USATODAY/USATODAY/636543176142687190-MissBlackAmerica-pageant.jpg?width=534&height=401&fit=crop" class="align-center" alt="636543176142687190-MissBlackAmerica-pageant.jpg?width=534&height=401&fit=crop" /></a></div>
<div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><br />
Contestants for the Miss Black America pageant line up on stage in front of a panel of judges during the evening gown competition in the early 1970s.<br />
(Photo: Leo Vals, Getty Images)
<p>The <a href="http://missblackamerica2017.com/" target="_blank">Miss Black America</a> pageant is not to be regarded as a black Miss America pageant.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Since its founding in 1968, the organization has forged its own path – with its own syndicated television network – to proudly celebrate the beauty, talent and intelligence of black women, long excluded from mainstream pageants.</p>
<p>In recent years, the pageant’s “rebirth” aims to rekindle its protest roots to address ongoing disparities in perceptions and treatment of minorities, said founder J. Morris Anderson.</p>
<p>“We are really concentrating on some of these problems that existed for black people in the 1960s and still exist today,” Anderson said. “We are aware that there’s an absolute need for this pageant to continue.”</p>
<p>This weekend’s Miss Black America pageant at the Gem Theatre in Kansas City will mark 50 years since the inaugural production, held in Atlantic City hours after the Miss America pageant — and its protests — ended nearby.</p>
<p>“The truth is that, in staging the pageant on the same night and down the street from Miss America, we thought we would get a lot of leftover press,” said Anderson.</p>
<p>Anderson’s two young daughters dreamed of becoming Miss America, he said, but didn’t understand the reality of the time. The Miss America pageant required all women be “of good health and of the white race” until 1940, when rules changed to allow women of color to compete. Even so, by the late 1960s there had never been a black contestant. So at age 32, Anderson organized the first Miss Black America pageant with them in mind.</p>
<p><span><strong>More: </strong><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/02/15/1968-miss-black-america-pageant/1000949001/" target="_blank">Groundbreaking 1968 pageant proved black is beautiful</a></span></p>
<p>The first Miss Black America was Philadelphia college student Saundra Williams, who performed a traditional African dance and stated her belief that men should contribute more to their households.</p>
<p>She also used the platform to call out historical exclusion of black women from Miss America.</p>
<p>“Miss America does not represent us because there has never been a black girl in the pageant,” Williams <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/09/09/archives/theres-now-miss-black-america.html" target="_blank">told The New York Times</a> after she was crowned. (Cheryl Browne became the first black Miss America contestant two years later, in 1970. Vanessa Williams became the first black woman to win the Miss America crown in 1983.)</p>
<p>The Miss Black America pageant quickly gained popularity and was televised nationally starting in 1969, the same year Curtis Mayfield wrote and sang its theme song.</p>
<p>Williams, the 1968 winner, will not be at the pageant Saturday. More than 50 women will compete for the title of Miss Black America. Previous winners include media mogul Oprah Winfrey, singer Toni Braxton, actress Bern Nadette Stanis, and gymnast Nicole Hibbert.</p>
<p>This year’s contestants attended receptions and rehearsals this week in Kansas City in preparation for Saturday’s show. The women will be judged in swimsuit, talent and projection categories.</p>
<p>Miss America ended its swimsuit portion in June following what former Fox News anchor (and 1989 Miss America winner) Gretchen Carlson called part of a greater <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/business/miss-america-swimsuit.html" target="_blank">“cultural revolution.”</a></p>
<p>Shortly after, the Kansas City Star <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article214457069.html" target="_blank">published an editorial</a> calling for Miss Black America to follow suit.</p>
<p>“Simply forsaking the swimsuit competition could bring the event in line with the times and propel the organization to its next half-century celebrating smart, strong women of color,” the editorial board wrote.</p>
<p>Aleta Anderson, the pageant’s executive director, disagrees.</p>
<p>“This is not the Black Miss America pageant,” Anderson, who is the founder’s daughter, told the newspaper in July. “We are not looking at the model of the Miss America pageant to determine our programming.”</p>
<p>New programming does include a heightened focus on discussing issues facing African Americans, such as mass incarceration, said the pageant founder, who is now 82.</p>
<p>“It has been a struggle, and always was a struggle, but sunlight is shining on it,” Anderson said. “We’re here in the heartland and we’re doing what we can.”</p>
<p><em>SOURCE: Des Moines Register – Shelby Fleig</em></p>
<p><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7936068257,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7936068257,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="124" class="align-center" alt="7936068257?profile=original" /></a></em></p>
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</div></div>Miss Black America Pageant Reclaims Activist Roots in ‘Rebirth’ at 50https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/miss-black-america-pageant-reclaims-activist-roots-in-rebirth-at-2018-08-19T09:20:33.000Z2018-08-19T09:20:33.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="fx annotationsHolder decoration-holder"></div>
<div class="noiseMetadata"><a href="https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/d886fef7379f328057b70c90af99baaa8f4001c8/c=0-10-594-457/local/-/media/2018/02/15/USATODAY/USATODAY/636543176142687190-MissBlackAmerica-pageant.jpg?width=534&height=401&fit=crop" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/d886fef7379f328057b70c90af99baaa8f4001c8/c=0-10-594-457/local/-/media/2018/02/15/USATODAY/USATODAY/636543176142687190-MissBlackAmerica-pageant.jpg?width=534&height=401&fit=crop" class="align-center" alt="636543176142687190-MissBlackAmerica-pageant.jpg?width=534&height=401&fit=crop" /></a></div>
<div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><br />
Contestants for the Miss Black America pageant line up on stage in front of a panel of judges during the evening gown competition in the early 1970s.<br />
(Photo: Leo Vals, Getty Images)
<p>The <a href="http://missblackamerica2017.com/" target="_blank">Miss Black America</a> pageant is not to be regarded as a black Miss America pageant.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Since its founding in 1968, the organization has forged its own path – with its own syndicated television network – to proudly celebrate the beauty, talent and intelligence of black women, long excluded from mainstream pageants.</p>
<p>In recent years, the pageant’s “rebirth” aims to rekindle its protest roots to address ongoing disparities in perceptions and treatment of minorities, said founder J. Morris Anderson.</p>
<p>“We are really concentrating on some of these problems that existed for black people in the 1960s and still exist today,” Anderson said. “We are aware that there’s an absolute need for this pageant to continue.”</p>
<p>This weekend’s Miss Black America pageant at the Gem Theatre in Kansas City will mark 50 years since the inaugural production, held in Atlantic City hours after the Miss America pageant — and its protests — ended nearby.</p>
<p>“The truth is that, in staging the pageant on the same night and down the street from Miss America, we thought we would get a lot of leftover press,” said Anderson.</p>
<p>Anderson’s two young daughters dreamed of becoming Miss America, he said, but didn’t understand the reality of the time. The Miss America pageant required all women be “of good health and of the white race” until 1940, when rules changed to allow women of color to compete. Even so, by the late 1960s there had never been a black contestant. So at age 32, Anderson organized the first Miss Black America pageant with them in mind.</p>
<p><span><strong>More: </strong><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/02/15/1968-miss-black-america-pageant/1000949001/" target="_blank">Groundbreaking 1968 pageant proved black is beautiful</a></span></p>
<p>The first Miss Black America was Philadelphia college student Saundra Williams, who performed a traditional African dance and stated her belief that men should contribute more to their households.</p>
<p>She also used the platform to call out historical exclusion of black women from Miss America.</p>
<p>“Miss America does not represent us because there has never been a black girl in the pageant,” Williams <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/09/09/archives/theres-now-miss-black-america.html" target="_blank">told The New York Times</a> after she was crowned. (Cheryl Browne became the first black Miss America contestant two years later, in 1970. Vanessa Williams became the first black woman to win the Miss America crown in 1983.)</p>
<p>The Miss Black America pageant quickly gained popularity and was televised nationally starting in 1969, the same year Curtis Mayfield wrote and sang its theme song.</p>
<p>Williams, the 1968 winner, will not be at the pageant Saturday. More than 50 women will compete for the title of Miss Black America. Previous winners include media mogul Oprah Winfrey, singer Toni Braxton, actress Bern Nadette Stanis, and gymnast Nicole Hibbert.</p>
<p>This year’s contestants attended receptions and rehearsals this week in Kansas City in preparation for Saturday’s show. The women will be judged in swimsuit, talent and projection categories.</p>
<p>Miss America ended its swimsuit portion in June following what former Fox News anchor (and 1989 Miss America winner) Gretchen Carlson called part of a greater <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/business/miss-america-swimsuit.html" target="_blank">“cultural revolution.”</a></p>
<p>Shortly after, the Kansas City Star <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article214457069.html" target="_blank">published an editorial</a> calling for Miss Black America to follow suit.</p>
<p>“Simply forsaking the swimsuit competition could bring the event in line with the times and propel the organization to its next half-century celebrating smart, strong women of color,” the editorial board wrote.</p>
<p>Aleta Anderson, the pageant’s executive director, disagrees.</p>
<p>“This is not the Black Miss America pageant,” Anderson, who is the founder’s daughter, told the newspaper in July. “We are not looking at the model of the Miss America pageant to determine our programming.”</p>
<p>New programming does include a heightened focus on discussing issues facing African Americans, such as mass incarceration, said the pageant founder, who is now 82.</p>
<p>“It has been a struggle, and always was a struggle, but sunlight is shining on it,” Anderson said. “We’re here in the heartland and we’re doing what we can.”</p>
<p><em>SOURCE: Des Moines Register – Shelby Fleig</em></p>
<p><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7936068257,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7936068257,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="124" class="align-center" alt="7936068257?profile=original" /></a></em></p>
</div>
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</div></div>Southern Baptist Seminary Apologizes for Racially Insensitive Photo of Professors Dressed Up as Gangster Rappershttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-821782017-04-29T18:05:17.000Z2017-04-29T18:05:17.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-title"><h1 class="entry-title"></h1>
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<div class="post_content entry-content"><div id="attachment_39722" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-39722" src="http://i2.wp.com/urbanchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/notorious-SOP.jpg?resize=600%2C312" alt="(Photo/Twitter)" width="600" height="312" /><p class="wp-caption-text">(Photo/Twitter)</p>
</div>
<p>The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth apologized this week after a photo showing white faculty posing as rappers sparked backlash on social media.<span id="more-39721"></span></p>
<p>Five seminary professors, including the dean of the School of Preaching, put on bandannas, hoodies and gold chains and used their hands to flash signs for the camera. One held what appeared to be a handgun close to his chest. Written above them graffiti-style are the words “Notorious S.O.P” — a reference to the seminary’s School of Preaching and to the iconic black rapper Notorious B.I.G.</p>
<p>The professors meant to tease a departing Native American colleague who likes to rap as part of his preaching, according to a statement from the seminary.</p>
<p>But the joke fell flat on Twitter, where the professors shared the photo in posts that have since been deleted. People called the image tone-deaf, offensive and racist.</p>
<div class="SandboxRoot is-touch env-bp-350"><div class="EmbeddedTweet EmbeddedTweet--mediaForward media-forward js-clickToOpenTarget js-tweetIdInfo tweet-InformationCircle-widgetParent" id="twitter-widget-0" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<div class="MediaCard-media"><a class="MediaCard-borderOverlay" href="https://twitter.com/JonathanMerritt/status/856976043407589376/photo/1" title="View image on Twitter"><span class="u-hiddenVisually">View image on Twitter</span></a><div class="MediaCard-widthConstraint js-cspForcedStyle"><div class="MediaCard-mediaContainer js-cspForcedStyle"><a class="MediaCard-mediaAsset NaturalImage" href="https://twitter.com/JonathanMerritt/status/856976043407589376/photo/1"><img class="NaturalImage-image" width="675" height="1200" title="View image on Twitter" alt="View image on Twitter" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-SXKCOVwAAY6TI.jpg" /></a></div>
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<div class="EmbeddedTweet-tweet"><blockquote class="Tweet h-entry js-tweetIdInfo subject expanded is-deciderHtmlWhitespace" cite="https://twitter.com/JonathanMerritt/status/856976043407589376"><div class="Tweet-header u-cf"><div class="Tweet-brand u-floatRight"><div class="Icon Icon--twitter" title=""></div>
<span class="u-hiddenInNarrowEnv"><a class="FollowButton follow-button profile" href="https://twitter.com/JonathanMerritt" title="Follow Jonathan Merritt on Twitter"> Follow</a></span></div>
<div class="TweetAuthor"><a class="TweetAuthor-link Identity u-linkBlend" href="https://twitter.com/JonathanMerritt"><span class="TweetAuthor-avatar Identity-avatar"><img class="Avatar" alt="" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/783807454945677316/BQioTT8U_normal.jpg" /></span><span class="TweetAuthor-name Identity-name customisable-highlight" title="Jonathan Merritt">Jonathan Merritt</span> </a><div class="Icon Icon--verified" title="Verified Account"></div>
<a class="TweetAuthor-link Identity u-linkBlend" href="https://twitter.com/JonathanMerritt"><span class="TweetAuthor-verifiedBadge"><span class="u-hiddenVisually">✔</span></span><span class="TweetAuthor-screenName Identity-screenName" title="@JonathanMerritt" dir="ltr">@JonathanMerritt</span></a></div>
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<div class="Tweet-body e-entry-content"><p class="Tweet-text e-entry-title" lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">Grateful that <a href="https://twitter.com/barrymccarty" class="PrettyLink profile customisable h-card" dir="ltr"><span class="PrettyLink-prefix">@</span><span class="PrettyLink-value">barrymccarty</span></a> deleted this offensive tweet. Southern Baptist can do better.</p>
<div class="Tweet-metadata dateline"><a class="u-linkBlend u-url customisable-highlight long-permalink" href="https://twitter.com/JonathanMerritt/status/856976043407589376">1:59 PM - 25 Apr 2017</a></div>
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<p>A writer for <i><a href="http://faithfullymagazine.com/white-christian-dean-faculty-pose-gangsters-controversial-photo/" target="_blank">Faithfully Magazine</a> </i>captured the tweets before they were deleted and reported on them Tuesday.</p>
<p>At first, School of Preaching dean David Allen and professor Barry McCarty tweeted that the photo was for Vern Charette, a professor who raps and was leaving for a job elsewhere.</p>
<p>Charette appears in a YouTube video dedicating his rhymes to “all my pimps, players, thugs and hustlers, all my boys that are in lockdown.”</p>
<p>“I want you know there is an answer,” he sing-talks. “His name is Jesus Christ. And that’s why I’m here tonight.”</p>
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<p>The explanation did little to pacify critics, and Allen sent out another tweet.</p>
<p>“I apologize for a recent image I posted which was offensive,” he wrote. “Context is immaterial.”</p>
<p>McCarty acknowledged on Twitter that he had deleted the photo and said, “Dr. Allen speaks for all of us.”</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-error"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Celebrating with Dr. Vern Charette as he goes to Trinity Baptist in Yukon, OK, as Pastor! Proud of him. Committed expositor!</p>
<p>— David L. Allen (@DrDavidLAllen) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrDavidLAllen/status/856912409587572736">April 25, 2017</a></p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-error"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">.<a href="https://twitter.com/swbts">@swbts</a> This is a going-away picture we gave to one of our faculty members today at lunch, Dr. Charette, who is himself an excellent rapper.</p>
<p>— David L. Allen (@DrDavidLAllen) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrDavidLAllen/status/856953427049492481">April 25, 2017</a></p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-error"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">I apologize for a recent image I posted which was offensive. Context is immaterial. <a href="https://twitter.com/swbts">@swbts</a> stance on race is clear as is mine.</p>
<p>— David L. Allen (@DrDavidLAllen) <a href="https://twitter.com/DrDavidLAllen/status/856977368442974214">April 25, 2017</a></p>
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<p>Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, also apologized for the photo in <a href="https://swbts.edu/news/releases/racism-tragic-sin-statement-president-southwestern-baptist-theological-seminary/" target="_blank">a lengthy statement</a> posted to the seminary website. He doesn’t appear in the image.</p>
<p>“The president encourages our people to laugh at each other rather than to risk taking ourselves too seriously,” he wrote. “But, as all members of the preaching faculty have acknowledged, this was a mistake, and one for which we deeply apologize. Sometimes, Anglo Americans do not recognize the degree that racism has crept into our lives.”</p>
<p>The Rev. Byron J. Day, a pastor in Maryland who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s National African American Fellowship, said the image is offensive because it plays into the stereotype of blacks as gangsters. Still, he said he was satisfied with the seminary president’s apology.</p>
<p>“I believe there was no intent by this faculty to be racist, just bad judgment,” Day said.</p>
<p><strong>Click <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/life/faith/2017/04/28/southern-baptist-seminary-apologizes-photo-shows-fort-worth-faculty-dressed-rappers">here</a> to read more.</strong></p>
<p><em>SOURCE: <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/">Dallas News</a></em><br /><em><a class="art-author__name art-author__link / p-name u-url" href="https://www.dallasnews.com/author/julieta-chiquillo">Julieta Chiquillo, The Dallas Morning News</a></em></p>
</div></div>Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ Proves the Need for Diversity in Hollywoodhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-817722017-03-22T20:00:00.000Z2017-03-22T20:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><h1 class="entry-title"><img class="wp-image-562343 size-full" src="http://cdn.blackenterprise.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/03/C6MkBqFUoAAenYg.jpg" alt="Get Out" width="620" height="975" style="font-size:13px;" /><span style="font-size:13px;">(Image: Wikimedia)</span></h1>
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<p class="deck">Diversity is profitable, but when will Hollywood get the picture?</p>
<div class="post-meta">by <a href="http://www.blackenterprise.com/author/hills/"></a><a href="http://www.blackenterprise.com/author/hills/" title="Posts by Selena Hill" class="author url fn">Selena Hill</a></div>
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<p>Jordan Peele’s <em>Get Out</em> will make you cringe, scream, and feel incredibly uncomfortable—and apparently, people can’t get enough of it.</p>
<p>Since it’s release on February 24, the socially conscious horror flick has raked in over <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=blumhouse2.htm">$117 million, as of March 15</a>. This makes Peele the first African American writer and director to earn over $100 million at the box office with a debut feature film. To top it off, Peele reached this benchmark in <a href="http://deadline.com/2017/03/get-out-jordan-peele-blumhouse-universal-1202041635/">just 16 days</a>.</p>
<p>I had a chance to see <em>Get Out</em> earlier this week, and I must say, the film lives up to the hype. The movie puts a dark, satirical twist on racism and makes a number of historical references like, for an example, a 21st century slave auction. <em>Get Out</em> also adds a dose of humor and originality, all while operating on an impressively meager $4.5 million budget.</p>
<p>Peele’s high grossing breakout film is just one example of a movie with a leading black actor(s) that has been widely received and praised. <a href="http://www.blackenterprise.com/education/hidden-figures-movie-read-book/"><em>Hidden Figures</em></a>—a movie about three black female mathematicians working at NASA—earned a whopping $163.1 million. In comparison, <em>La La Land</em> racked up $148.6 million, while <em>Jason Bourne</em> brought in $162.4 million.</p>
<p>In an interview with<em> <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/get-out-hidden-figures-make-box-office-history-n733786">NBC News</a></em>, Stephane Dunn, associate professor and director of the Cinema of Television & Emerging Media Studies program at Morehouse College, said, “<em>Hidden Figures</em> is yet another movie that is exposing the lie that black oriented stories do not resonate. It is a movie that has added additional evidence to the contrary. It’s a strongly cemented ideal that black stories are not universal, but it is proving further how universal the black experience is.”</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.blackenterprise.com/lifestyle/entertaining-lifestyle/jordan-peeles-get-out-need-diversity-hollywood/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
</div></div>White Supremacy Posters Are Popping Up on College Campuseshttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-818692017-03-22T06:34:57.000Z2017-03-22T06:34:57.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-title"><h1 class="entry-title"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-323896" src="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/58caf81f140000200006fe9c.jpeg" alt="" width="530" height="298" style="font-size:13px;" /></h1>
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<div class="post_content entry-content"><p>Colleges across the U.S. continue to be plagued with fliers promoting racism.<span id="more-323895"></span></p>
<p>On Monday, multiple fliers posted by members of Vanguard America ― a white supremacy group ― were found on the University of Maryland Campus.</p>
<p>“A notice to all white Americans,” one flier read. “It is your civic duty to report any and all illegal aliens. …They are criminals. America is a white nation.”</p>
<p>“Carry the torch of your people,” another said. It was the third time in three months that fliers were found on the campus, according to The Washington Post.</p>
<p>Similar fliers were found the same day at George Washington University in D.C.</p>
<p>“I cannot believe this is taking place today in the U.S., let alone on a college campus in a liberal city like D.C.,” Corey Garlick, a law student, told The Washington Post.</p>
<p>“America is, by right and history, a White nation,” Vanguard America says on its website. “It deserves to stay that way, and it deserves a political system that realizes and preserves the essence of its unique people in all forms.”</p>
<p>In a statement to The Post, Vanguard America said they were hoping to “raise awareness” of white supremacy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/racist-posters-college-campuses_us_58caee3ee4b0ec9d29da21ef?section=us_black-voices">Click here to read more</a></p>
<p>Source: Black Voices | Sebastian Murdock</p>
</div></div>Little Caesars Founder Paid Rosa Parks’ Rent For Over A Decadehttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-817462017-03-14T03:30:00.000Z2017-03-14T03:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-meta"><h1 class="post-meta__title"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/19/c7/89/19c7899508c9db533916f8e841577425.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/19/c7/89/19c7899508c9db533916f8e841577425.jpg" class="align-center" alt="19c7899508c9db533916f8e841577425.jpg" /></a> </h1>
<h2 class="post-meta__lead">T<span style="font-size:13px;">he February 10 death of Little</span> Caesars <span style="font-size:13px;">founder Mike Ilitch prompted his hometown of Detroit to reflect on the important philanthropic efforts he made to the community, </span><a href="http://www.wxyz.com/news/mike-ilitch-paid-for-rosa-parks-housing-for-more-than-a-decade" target="_blank" style="font-size:13px;">WXYZ</a><span style="font-size:13px;"> reports.</span></h2>
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<div class="post-wrapper-content"><div class="post-content"><div class="embed-twitter"><div class="SandboxRoot is-touch env-bp-350"><div class="EmbeddedTweet js-clickToOpenTarget" id="twitter-widget-0" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="EmbeddedTweet-tweet"><blockquote class="Tweet h-entry js-tweetIdInfo subject expanded is-deciderHtmlWhitespace" cite="https://twitter.com/wxyzdetroit/status/830481656167485440"><div class="Tweet-header u-cf"><div class="Tweet-brand u-floatRight"><div class="Icon Icon--twitter" title=""><img class="u-block" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/840619982199349249/aOyVbYDF?format=jpg&name=600x314" alt="Photo published for Mike Ilitch paid for Rosa Parks' housing for more than a decade" /></div>
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<div class="Tweet-body e-entry-content"><div class="Tweet-card"><div class="PrerenderedCard is-loaded is-constrainedByMaxWidth"><div class="TwitterCardsGrid TwitterCard"><div class="TwitterCardsGrid-col--12 TwitterCardsGrid-col--spacerBottom CardContent"><div class="SummaryCard-contentContainer TwitterCardsGrid-col--12"><div class="SummaryCard-content"><h2 class="TwitterCard-title js-cardClick tcu-textEllipse--multiline">Mike Ilitch paid for Rosa Parks' housing for more than a decade</h2>
<p class="tcu-resetMargin u-block TwitterCardsGrid-col--spacerTop tcu-textEllipse--multiline">Mike Ilitch was known for the charitable work he did throughout the city of Detroit, but some people may not know how he helped a civil rights leader.</p>
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<p>For over ten years, the Detroit businessman paid the rent of civil rights icon <a href="https://newsone.com/tag/rosa-parks"><span>Rosa Parks</span></a>, according to a 2014 news article from <span><a href="http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2014/02/24/Champions/Ilitch-Rosa-Parks.aspx" target="_blank">Sports Business Daily</a></span>. Though locally reported, the information was not widely known.</p>
<p>Ilitch stepped in after a 1994 burglary in Park’s apartment raised concerns over her safety.</p>
<p>The outlet spoke with former federal appeals judge <span>Damon Keith</span><span>,</span> who produced a check for $2,000 from Little Caesars Enterprises, which was written out to Riverfront Apartments. Keith was made the executor of Parks’ estate after her death in 2005.</p>
<p><a href="https://newsone.com/3668239/little-caesars-founder-mike-ilitch-paid-rosa-parks-rent-for-over-a-decade/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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</div></div>10 Mind Boggling Facts About African Education Before Europeans Arrivedhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-818302017-03-10T04:30:00.000Z2017-03-10T04:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><img class="wp-image-1854 size-full" src="http://ontheblacklist.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ancient-African-Texts.jpg?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss" alt="Ancient-African-Texts" width="600" height="360" /></p>
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<h3><b>AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE WAS NOT ONLY PASSED DOWN ORALLY.</b></h3>
<p>The notion that ancient African education was oral and not written is only a myth. In his book, “Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora,” Dr. Michael Gomez, an author and professor of history and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, declares that, from 300 B.C. to A.D. 350, the Meroë civilization had developed a writing system of its own.</p>
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<h3><b>AFRICANS WERE LITERATE FAR BEFORE EUROPEANS.</b></h3>
<p>Gomez states that while the Western perspective dates intellect and education back to the era of Socrates and Plato, the individuals of Egypt and Nubia developed “literate, urban-based, technologically advanced civilizations” centuries before the mere establishment of Rome, let alone Athens. In fact, in his book “Echoes of Ancient African Values,” Dr. Joseph Bailey, a retired orthopedic surgeon who has become an expert in the subjects of Ancient African history and African-American experiences, states that “modifications of Egyptian writing served as the basis for the ‘new’ writings developed for many Western Semitic languages — Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc.”</p>
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<h3><b>AFRICA WAS HOME TO ONE OF THE OLDEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD.</b></h3>
<p>Founded in A.D. 989 by the erudite chief judge of Timbuktu, Al-Qadi Aqib ibn Mahmud ibn Umar, the The Sankore Mosque, or Sankore University, is one of the oldest schools of higher learning in the world. A wealthy Mandika woman financed Sankore, making it a leading center of education, according to Muslimheritage.com. K.C. MacDonald, a lecturer of African Archaeology at the University College of London’s Institute of Archaeology, writes that the school “had no central administration, student registers, or prescribed courses of study; rather, it was composed of several entirely independent schools or colleges, each run by a single master or imam.” This university reportedly produced over 700,000 manuscripts.</p>
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<h3><b>INDIVIDUALS TRAVELED FROM ALL OVER TO BE TAUGHT BY AFRICANS.</b></h3>
<p>According to Gomez, in the 1100s, the Africans of al-Andalus, a medieval Muslim state, significantly contributed to the “intense period of intellectual and cultural production” that lasted for 800 years. The African intellect of Iberia served as the foundation for the European Renaissance that began in the 1500s and lasted until the 1800s. Also, individuals traveled from all around the globe to study at the universities at Timbuktu in both the<i> </i>Mali and Songhai empires. In fact, revered European scholars, such as Herodotus, journeyed to Africa to obtain knowledge and information.</p>
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<p class="wp-caption-text">via hazelband.com</p>
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<h3><b>TRADITIONALLY, EVERYONE WAS INVOLVED IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS.</b></h3>
<p>It takes a village to raise a child. In regards to African education prior to the arrival of Europeans, every generation was involved. In his book, “History and Development of Education in Tanzania,” Professor Philemon A.K. Mushi, the first and founding principal of the Mkwawa University College of Education, confirms that indigenous education in Africa was characterized by the “process of passing among the tribal members and from one generation to another the inherited knowledge, skills, cultural traditions, norms and values of the tribe.”</p>
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<h3> <b>AFRICAN EDUCATION WAS NEVER-ENDING.</b></h3>
<p>Indigenous African education was a process that lasted a lifetime. In his article, “History of Education in East Africa,” Sam Witerson, a teacher of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, expresses that “African indigenous education was a lifelong process of learning whereby a person progressed through predetermined stages of life of graduation from cradle to grave.” Education was a journey, as opposed to a stepping stone toward monetary-inspired success.</p>
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<h3><b>ANCIENT KEMET DEVELOPED A HIGHLY COMPLEX AND IMPRESSIVE SYSTEM OF SCHOOLING.</b></h3>
<p>The late George Granville Monah James was an author and historian of South America. In his book, “Stolen Legacy,” he expounds upon the educational Egyptian Mystery System of Ancient Egypt. At the universities of Egypt, grammar, rhetoric and logic eliminated irrationality. Geometry and arithmetic harbored the theories and techniques in which individuals eliminated problems, both internally and physically. And, astronomy gave individuals the ability to obtain knowledge and examine destiny. Lastly, music served as the “living practice of philosophy.”</p>
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<h3><b>THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERY SCHOOLS INSPIRED GREEK PHILOSOPHY.</b></h3>
<p>In “Stolen Legacy,” James uncovers the five primary elements that link Greek philosophy to the aspects of the Egyptian Mystery Schools. First, many Greek philosophers found studying the sciences to be pivotal; this action was a requirement for membership into the Egyptian Mystery System. Second, the four cardinal virtues of Plato heavily resemble the 10 virtues of the Egyptian Mystery System. Third, the religious institutions of Greece bear a striking resemblance to the temples of Egypt; just as the religious palaces and temple of Egypt, the religious institutions of the West are often constructed of stone and characterized by entrances lined by statues, large courts and ceilings that favor the sky with paintings of clouds or stars. Fourth, the temple of Delphi, which is often mentioned throughout the legends of Greek mythology, was solely of Egypt. And, fifth, while the later rulers of Greece opposed Egyptian influences, many philosophers of ancient Greece imitated Egyptian worship.</p>
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<p><a href="http://yourblackworld.net/2017/03/09/10-mind-boggling-facts-about-african-education-before-europeans-arrived/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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</div></div>Stephanie Johnson Becomes Delta Airlines First Black Female Pilothttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-816962017-03-03T05:00:00.000Z2017-03-03T05:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="http://yourblackworld.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Unknown.jpeg" target="_blank"><img src="http://yourblackworld.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Unknown.jpeg" class="align-left" alt="Unknown.jpeg" /></a></p>
<p>The month of February is over and those within the United States have officially stopped celebrating Black History Month. Even though Black History Month is over for many people, the truth of the matter is that people of color are always making historical strides. Let’s face it – we are living in a world that refuses to honor and celebrate those who break the glass ceiling.</p>
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<p align="justify">Because March is designated as Women’s History Month, it’s important to celebrate Stephanie Johnson, Delta Airlines First Black Female Captain.</p>
<p align="justify">According to an article in theGrio, Johnson has always had a love for flying. She says, “As long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with airplanes and would think, ‘What a great thing it would be to know how to fly.’”</p>
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<p align="justify">While attending Kent State University, Johnson was a flight instructor and Director of the Cleveland Aviation Career Education Academy. After college, she taught high school students about aviation through the Detroit Aviation Career Education Academy.</p>
<p align="justify">Just in case you didn’t know this – Johnson broke the glass ceiling in 1987 by becoming the first Black female pilot at Northwest Airlines.</p>
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<p align="justify"><a href="http://yourblackworld.net/2017/03/02/stephanie-johnson-becomes-delta-airlines-first-black-female-pilot/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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</div></div>THE BLACK YOUTH IDENTITY CRISIShttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-817132017-03-01T21:38:48.000Z2017-03-01T21:38:48.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p></p>
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<p><em>At first glance on such a topic, one would wonder, can black youth really suffer from something as common as an identity crisis?</em></p>
<p>The answer is not as clear as most people may think or expect. See, the average African American can relate to the many past years of struggle to be identified as equals and to reach the far that the African American have reached. In this sense, therefore, a shadow is cast on a very fundamental question, where do the African Americans stand as a people? What culture, norms and traditions can they call unique to them in general that is independent of tarnish by other cultures.</p>
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<p>We also understand that the youth are the most impressionable of all people. How do they fare in this issue?</p>
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<p>The people who struggle most to find the answer to these questions are the African American youth. They have been born and brought up in an era of technology, diversity, equality and social pressures to live appropriately. As they find themselves lost in a battle of finding their identities. A battle they did not wage…</p>
<p><strong>The label African-American</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong>The term African American was coined as a better identity for people of African heritage, living in America. In extension, black people from Australia, Europe, and other places, found themselves under this banner.</p>
<p>There are people who might argue that the use of the name African-American better describes the black people in America, as compared to Negro or other like terminologies. By the simple fact that the term is generalized and not as degrading, it has become more acceptable in the recent past.</p>
<p>When the US Census bureau decided to scrap off the word ‘Negro’ as a definitive term for people of color in 2014, there were those that strongly supported the idea. There were also, those that were indifferent and there were a number who felt cheated somewhat. And why is this case?</p>
<p>One influential writer, Terry Collier of the Washington Post once argued that the term“American of African descent” is a more accurate description of the community of color. At one time, he proposed that the US census bureau would have a better standing while using it instead of the term “African American.” He went on to further say,</p>
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<blockquote><p><em>Americans of African descent </em><em>puts the focus on our American nationality, whereas ‘African American’ implies two nationalities, a dualism and a naturalized citizenship. Those of us who are native-born ‘African Americans’ have only one nationality. </em><em>Second, ‘American of African descent’ also allows for an ethnic identification, which remains important in the United States for social and official purposes. This change would have implications for the terms for other Americans.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Identifying with the African American label</strong></p>
<p>The majority of the African American youth find it hard to identify with the accepted norms and customs that have been accepted as part of the black culture. Why is this? A vast majority of black young men, women, and children have come to learn the history of the black people from second sources and third parties. They have a very shallow understanding of the African American peoples’ struggles and that is majorly from the history books, not through actual experiences.</p>
<p>Their identity crisis therefore, stems from a wide range of reasons. Chief among them is the history of black people in America which they cannot ideally relate to. Can the African American youth relate to that which they have had no interaction with at personal level?</p>
<p>Think about it.</p>
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<p><a href="http://yourblackworld.net/2017/03/01/black-youth-identity-crisis/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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</div></div>On This Day in History: Free Blacks Were Banned from Living in Arkansashttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-817072017-02-28T22:00:00.000Z2017-02-28T22:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><img width="800" height="579" src="http://yourblackworld.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cover_story1-1-23690b6b02d21f33.jpg" class="attachment- size- wp-post-image" alt="" style="font-size:2em;" /></p>
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<div id="content-area" class="post-153585 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-black-history-2"><div class="post-cont-out"><div class="post-cont-in"><div id="content-main" class="left relative"><p><strong>By: James Swift, Jr.</strong></p>
<p>While you’ve probably read a lot of modern Arkansas news here, this day in Black history in 1859, Arkansas enacted a law that called for the exile and ban of free Black and mixed people from living within the state. The bill passed on February 12 and needed for Conway—who was all too happy to be rid of Black people in Arkansas—to sign off on it.</p>
<p>The main conditions of the bill gave free Black people until January 1, 1860, to leave Arkansas or they would be sold into slavery for a year. The money gained from their labor would be used to finance their removal from Arkansas. This is a law that other states considered, but didn’t act on.</p>
<p>In Arkansas’ case, it was the governor’s pro-removal attitude to resulted in the state moving on it after ten years. Another thing that allowed for the state to put this law into action was <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/llst.022/?st=gallery">the decision of the Dred Scott case</a> two years earlier which established that Black people weren’t citizens. This cleared them from any challenges from the U.S. Supreme Court.</p>
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<p>It’s important to point out that at this time there was just around 700 free Black people living in the state, but that was a sizable enough population to fan fears. Add to this that some counties made it legal for Black people to own firearms and move about the state with permission and the appeal of the removal act raised significantly.</p>
<p>The fear of slavery was enough to see the bulk of the free Black population leave the state with just under 150 people staying with white families. Those who left Arkansas were leaving behind their property, established homes, and in some cases full communities.</p>
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<p><a href="http://yourblackworld.net/2017/02/28/day-history-free-blacks-banned-living-arkansas/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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</div></div>Catholic School Apologizes After Their Student Pens A Racist Essay About Black History Monthhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/catholic-school-apologizes-after-their-student-pens-a-controversi2017-02-28T11:30:00.000Z2017-02-28T11:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p></p>
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<div id="content-area" class="post-153975 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-black-news"><div class="post-cont-out"><div class="post-cont-in"><div id="content-main" class="left relative"><p dir="ltr">By Victor Ochieng</p>
<p>February is Black History Month, a month set aside in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom for the celebration of events and important people in the African American history.</p>
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<p>Because it’s Black History Month, a teacher in a Baton Rouge Catholic School saw fit to ask students to write an essay about the month. It’s a topic that could’ve been quite interesting to write about, especially for someone with a little knowledge of history. One of the students wrote an extremely racist essay, and unfortunately made its way to the internet. Instead of writing about important things that have been done by different African American figures, the student took the opportunity to spread their own ignorance, first making it clear she wasn’t happy having to write about the month saying she doesn’t believe we’re all equal.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Following the backlash generated by the essay, St. Michael the Archangel High School, the institution whose student wrote the piece, was forced to <a href="http://theoldblackchurch.blogspot.co.ke/2017/02/baton-rouge-catholic-school-apologizes.html" target="_blank">issue an apology</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Many people who weren’t happy with the essay brought it to the attention of WBRZ, sharing excerpts of it.</p>
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<blockquote><p dir="ltr">“In my opinion I am very [unpleased] about how I have to write a topic about black people. I am not fully racist but I hate almost every black person. They think they run everything but in reality are an embarrassment to this country. Just I strongly feel like this because I had a bad experience with black people,” she said, adding, “Maybe if they acted right than I would look at [them] differently but I do not and I never will. I get back than they had a terrible life style because we (whites/Americans) treated them wrongly. Meaning we did not let them have freedom we did back then and used them wrongly.”</p>
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<p dir="ltr">The girl then referred to the “bible,” not sure which one, to try to show that not everyone is equal. She said, “Think about it though…none of the apostles were different ethnic. They were all white. There was no black nor Hispanic mentioned really back when Jesus time was. All the stories we hear in the Bible are about like mainly white people. So since God knows everything that is going to happen [then] he would have done something about that. Than later than we start to hear about blacks. And how they did not have freedom like whites did. So than for example Martin Luther King stood up in front of millions to present a speech about how “we are all equal”. As much as I want to believe and support that statement about everybody is equal…well are not.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Some of the girl’s critics started by deriding her poor grammar before pointing out the questionable Bible teachings she used to justify her belief, especially about Jesus and apostles having been whites and that white was the only race then. What an embarrassment to her Bible teachers!</p>
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<p dir="ltr">In their apology, St. Michael the Archangel High School termed the incident a “teachable moment.”</p>
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</div></div>13 Inspiring Details About First Black Woman Dean to a Medical School ‘Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee’https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-814022017-02-28T07:59:41.000Z2017-02-28T07:59:41.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><h1 class="post-title left"><a href="http://ontheblacklist.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ecd3c9843cab73834e7a3ecf6f6b5857.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://ontheblacklist.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ecd3c9843cab73834e7a3ecf6f6b5857.jpg" class="align-center" alt="ecd3c9843cab73834e7a3ecf6f6b5857.jpg" /></a></h1>
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<div id="content-area" class="post-153939 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-black-entertainment"><div class="post-cont-out"><div class="post-cont-in"><div id="content-main" class="left relative"><div>Barbara Ross-Lee, has worked in private practice, for the U.S. Public Health Service, and on numerous committees, and in 1993 was the first African-American woman to be appointed dean of a United States medical school.</div>
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<div>1. Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1942, and raised in a housing project, Barbara Ross-Lee faced discrimination as a young African American woman.</div>
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<div>2. Growing up in inner city Detroit, she and her sister, Diana Ross, shared a fondness for show business, performing with their brothers and sisters in the church choir.</div>
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<div>3. Began her pre-medical studies at Detroit’s Wayne State University in 1960, during the growth of the Civil Rights movement.</div>
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<div>4. Graduated with a bachelor of science degree in biology and chemistry in 1965 and, abandoning her original goal of practicing medicine went on to train as a teacher.</div>
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<div>5. Joined the National Teacher Corps, a federal program, in which she could earn a degree while teaching simultaneously in the Detroit public school system.</div>
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<div>6. Applied and was accepted to Michigan State University in osteopathic medicine in Pontiac.</div>
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<div>7. Needed help with childcare to be able to focus on her studies, so she sold her house and moved in with her own mother.</div>
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<div><a href="http://yourblackworld.net/2017/02/27/13-inspiring-details-about-first-black-woman-dean-to-a-medical-school-dr-barbara-ross-lee/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></div>
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<div><a href="https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_279.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss">https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_279.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss</a></div>
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<div><a href="http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/dr-barbara-ross-lee-41?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss">http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/dr-barbara-ross-lee-41?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss</a></div>
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</div></div>Don’t forget Dorothy Hoover, another hidden treasure once lost to black history She was a pure math whiz who also helped bring NASA into the aeronautics age as shown in the movie ‘Hidden Figures’https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-815832017-02-24T17:58:59.000Z2017-02-24T17:58:59.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><h1 class="heading entry-title heading-long"></h1>
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<div class="meta pull-out"><div class="byline-timestamp-mod"><div class="author-block author-block--custom-byline"><div class="meta-author vcard">It would have been so easy for Dorothy E. Hoover to have remained hidden.</div>
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<div class="story-content entry-content" id="story-content"><p>When the 81-year-old woman died in a Maryland suburb just outside the nation’s capital 17 years ago, she was living alone. Neither her few acquaintances nor her neighbors had any idea whether she had any family. But to ensure Hoover received a proper burial, a few good folks managed to piece together an incomplete portrait of a life they barely knew.</p>
<p>Now, all these years later, the blockbuster book and movie <em>Hidden Figures</em> have filled in some of the remaining gaps.</p>
<p>Those few good folks who knew Hoover at the time of her death were stunned to learn she was one of the first African-American women hired to work as a human “computer” for the nation’s space program, just like the women in the movie. Even more, Hoover was a pioneer among those pioneers.</p>
<p>“Every time I think about it now I get chills,” said Jennifer West, of Bowie, Maryland, who went to check on Hoover one frigid February day in 2000, found her near death, and unexpectedly became her surrogate family. “I feel this beaming happiness. I think it’s because she’s released now … I knew deep down there was more to her story.”</p>
<h4><strong>A HIDDEN TREASURE</strong></h4>
<p>Hoover isn’t mentioned in the movie, which shot to No. 1 one at the box office with its January release and is now nominated for an Academy Award. But her accomplishments are highlighted in the <em>New York Times </em>No. 1 best-selling book, <em>Hidden Figures</em>, that first told the story last year. Author Margot Shetterly said that while researching NASA’s archives for her book, she uncovered clues that led her to Hoover.</p>
<p>The first clue was a 1951 report about the federal space program’s fair employment practices, particularly at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia. The report pointed out that one of the women in the West Area Computing Group, the segregated unit where Hoover and the other African-American female mathematicians worked, had even attained a GS-9 on the federal government’s 15-tier pay scale — very rare for an African-American woman in government at the time.</p>
<p>“That is absolutely insane!” Shetterly said. “I wondered who that could be in 1950. It was like a total mystery.”</p>
<h4>OUR SHEROES</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/misty-copeland-in-cuba-en-pointe/">Misty Copeland: In Cuba, En Pointe</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/betty-lou-blackwell-and-the-october-1959-tan/">Cover Stories: Betty Lou Blackwell</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/the-difficulty-of-being-simone-biles/">The difficulty of being Simone Biles</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/issa-rae-insecure-millenial-black-women-nicole-byer-hbo-mtv/">On screen, in books: pop culture’s new relatable, unlikable women protagonists</a></li>
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<p>Shetterly soon identified that trailblazer as Hoover, who was hired at Langley in 1943 as a professional (P-1) mathematician. She then became the first of the West Area “computers” to leave her group and work directly with a white male scientist — a privilege that generally occurred only at the request of the scientist. By 1946, Hoover was doing calculations for Robert T. Jones, “one of the biggest deals in aeronautics history,” Shetterly said.</p>
<p>Hoover was promoted to shift supervisor, one of three in the West Computing Group, along with Dorothy Vaughan, whose struggle to become a supervisor is chronicled in the movie. By 1951, Hoover had earned the title of aeronautical research scientist and co-authored some technical reports, another thought to be impossible and hard-fought accomplishment.</p>
<p>Then, in 1952, at what seemed to be the pinnacle of her career, Hoover resigned from Langley and returned to Arkansas, her home state, to go back to school.</p>
<p>“Of all the women, she was a pure mathematician,” Shetterly said, surmising why Hoover left Langley. “She was just not into the engineering but really more into theoretical math.”</p>
<p>Hoover earned a master’s degree in physics from Arkansas A&M (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff) in 1954 and spent a year working on her doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1955, before moving in 1956 to the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C. She stayed three years and then returned to the space program as a mathematician at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.</p>
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<p><a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/dorothy-hoover-black-history-hidden-figures/" target="_blank">Read More ...</a></p>
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</div></div>5 Black People Who Triumphed Over Slavery and Made it to Freedomhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/5-black-people-who-triumphed-over-slavery-and-made-it-to-freedom2017-02-13T06:30:00.000Z2017-02-13T06:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div id="feedlyPageHeader">There are many stories of how slaves escaped to freedom. Some of these stories just goes to show that Black people have always been a highly intelligent group. Here are five stories of how some slaves made it to freedom.</div>
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<p><strong>1. William Craft</strong></p>
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<p><strong>2. Ellen Craft</strong></p>
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<p>William and Ellen Craft escaped their master’s plantation and made a run for freedom, and the two did it in plain sight. Ellen, was the daughter of a white plantation owner. William was also a half-white slave who was often mistaken for being a white family member of his master. Ellen cut her hair and traveled as a man, and William traveled as her slave. Since Ellen could not read or write she put her harm in a sling to use as an excuse for not being able to sign her name. Their travel was not easy; the two never revealed their identity until they were far up north. Even after reaching north they had to move to England because they were being pursued by slave hunters.</p>
<p><a href="http://ontheblacklist.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/TomPiano2.jpg?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-5183" src="http://ontheblacklist.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/TomPiano2-200x300.jpg?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss" alt="TomPiano2" width="334" height="502" /></a></p>
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<p><strong>3. Blind Tom Wiggins Used His Musical Talent for Freedom</strong></p>
<p>Blind Tom Wiggins was born on a Georgia plantation, his owner thought of him as being useless and not worth having around. His masters quickly sold him and his family. His new family soon found out that Tom had musical talent, and they thought of him as a gold mine. The family began sending him on tours throughout the North and South. The money made off Tom’s performances went to the Confederate army to help the injured. It’s believed that Tom taught himself over 7000 pieces of music, from classical to popular songs, from hymns to whatever got people dancing. One thing about Tom is that his musical talent kept him off the plantation and from being beat.</p>
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<a href="http://yourblackworld.net/2017/02/12/5-black-people-who-triumphed-over-slavery-and-made-it-to-freedom/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a><br />
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</div></div>10 Ways President Trump Can Help Black America; 10 Ways Black America Can Help President Trumphttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/10-ways-president-trump-can-help-black-america-10-ways-black-amer2017-02-03T17:00:00.000Z2017-02-03T17:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/trump-trade-strategy-stop-tpp-499x350.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/trump-trade-strategy-stop-tpp-499x350.jpg" class="align-center" alt="trump-trade-strategy-stop-tpp-499x350.jpg" /></a></p>
<div class="floatingEntryScroller"><div class="floatingEntryContentSlide sliderWidth"><div class="slideEntryContent"><div><div class="entryholder"><div class="u100Entry"><div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><p>As President Trump begins his time in office, I am sharing some practical and biblically-based ways in which he can help black America as well as some practical and biblically based ways black America can be of help to him.</p>
<p>So far, we have named the following ways President Trump can help black America:</p>
<p>1. President Trump Can Help Black America by Setting a Godly Example<br /> 2. President Trump Can Help Black America by Not Circumventing the Legitimate Leadership of the Black Community; Rather he Should Reach Out to Them Respectfully and Individually<br /> 3. President Trump Can Help Black America by Hiring a Trusted African-American to be One of his Senior Advisers Along with Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Jared Kushner<br /> 4. President Trump Should Take Some Time to Learn How to Communicate Well With Black People</p>
<p>We have also named the following ways black America can help President Trump:</p>
<p>1. Black Americans Can Help President Trump by Praying for him<br /> 2. Black Americans Can Help President Trump by being Open-minded and Giving him a Chance<br /> 3. Black Americans Can Help President Trump by Respecting the Office Even if They Can’t Respect the Man Occupying the Office<br /> 4. Black Americans Should Not Do to President Trump What Some Whites, Including Trump, Did to President Obama</p>
<p>Allow me to share with you another way President Trump can help black America and another way black America can help President Trump.</p>
<p>— Mr. Trump Needs to Cease Assuming that All Black People Live in “Hell”</p>
<p>Matthew 7:1 says, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”</p>
<p>These words of Jesus are often quoted among both Christians and non-Christians. Some seem to think that this command constitutes a Christian’s acceptance of any lifestyle or belief system. But that is not what Jesus is saying here. Rather this command has to do with the spirit in which we judge, scrutinize, or criticize the behavior of others. We ought not to judge in a spirit of hypocrisy or arrogance as though we are glad to catch and expose someone else’s wrong, but in a spirit of love and compassion, one that is eager to help the guilty party see the error of their ways and correct their behavior. One commentary lists the following ways in which we judge others in the wrong spirit:</p>
<p>1. When we think the worst of others.<br /> 2. When we only speak to others of their faults.<br /> 3. When we judge an entire life only by its worst moments.<br /> 4. When we judge the hidden motives of others.<br /> 5. When we judge others without considering ourselves in their same circumstances.<br /> 6. When we judge others without being mindful that we ourselves will be judged.</p>
<p>Skye Jethani writes that Jesus is drawing a line between judgment (righteous discernment) and condemnation (declaring someone irretreviably sinful). He says, “Jesus is warning us about excluding anyone, or seeing ourselves or our group as inherently better than any other. He is calling us to not condemn people, to not pass final judgment and declare them irretrievably guilty. We may disagree and discern another person or group to be wrong — but when that discernment causes us to value another person or group less, then we’ve crossed the line into judgment, condemnation, and exclusion.”</p>
<p>This principle can be applied to the political climate present in America. Too often, one group condemns another group and refuses to work with them simply because they disagree on a certain issue. We all should refrain from this type of behavior in all walks of life.</p>
<p>The new president must not have a spirit of condemnation toward black people. He must not subscribe to stereotypes about black America. All black people do not live in the “hood” or in a “ghetto.” All black people are not living on food stamps and refusing to look for jobs. By the grace of God, my family and I have never been on food stamps in our lives. Now, food stamps are good for people who really, really, really need them. But as a Christian, I believe in the principle of praying for my daily bread and God has provided my daily bread all of these years.</p>
<p>Most black people are trying to live better. Some have the means to do so; others just need a little help. If President Trump wants to avoid continuously insulting black people and keeping the black community upset over his characterizations of us, he must cease making these assumptions.</p>
<p>— Now, here is the fifth thing black people can do to help the new president: Black Americans Can Help the Trump Presidency by Working Hard and Striving to be Successful</p>
<p>Ecclesiastes 5:19 says, “Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.”</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with hard work and striving to be successful in whatever endeavour you set your mind and hands to. In fact, the Bible extols such behavior as long as one does not make such behavior the center of his life. God wants us to enjoy Him most of all, but also to enjoy the fruit of honest labor on this earth as well as the level of wealth and blessings that God chooses to give us from that labour.</p>
<p>Ray Stedman said, “When people discover the blessings of life that God has provided, they become richly involved with the savor of life right now. How good it is to know the living God, to know that He controls what comes into your life. He expects you to make choices; Scripture always encourages that. But rejoice in the wisdom of a Father’s heart and richly enjoy what is handed you day-by-day; that is the secret of life.”</p>
<p>Many today have an attitude of loathing toward those who are counted as super wealthy. Concerns about income inequality and global poverty are understandable, however, they do not negate the fact that many of those who are wealthy, like Trump, are wealthy because they worked hard and smart for a long time. Instead of getting upset at Mr. Trump for his wealth, black Americans should be inspired to work hard and make a better life for themselves and their families and to make the nation better. Hard work is always rewarded.</p>
<p>More importantly, we all should be ‘content with such things as we have.’ This does not mean that we cannot work for more, but that we should be happy with what God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen to grant us at the time. Simultaneously, we should not begrudge others who God has blessed to be wealthy.</p>
<p>Trump has promised that one of his main goals will be to create jobs for all Americans. When those jobs come, we encourage black Americans to take advantage of them. Start looking for work now and let God lead you to the employment situation that He wants you to have.</p>
<p>If you are on food stamps or other government aid programs, don’t be content to stay there. There is a myth perpetrated among conservatives that all black people are lazy, want the government to take care of them, and always vote for Democrats because they promise “free stuff.” Don’t let this be true about you.</p>
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</div></div>10 Ways President Trump Can Help Black America; 10 Ways Black America Can Help President Trumphttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-813092017-02-03T09:00:00.000Z2017-02-03T09:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-title"><a href="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/trump-trade-strategy-stop-tpp-499x350.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/trump-trade-strategy-stop-tpp-499x350.jpg" class="align-center" alt="trump-trade-strategy-stop-tpp-499x350.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="post_content entry-content"><p>As President Trump begins his time in office, I am sharing some practical and biblically-based ways in which he can help black America as well as some practical and biblically based ways black America can be of help to him.</p>
<p>So far, we have named the following ways President Trump can help black America:</p>
<p>1. President Trump Can Help Black America by Setting a Godly Example<br />2. President Trump Can Help Black America by Not Circumventing the Legitimate Leadership of the Black Community; Rather he Should Reach Out to Them Respectfully and Individually<br />3. President Trump Can Help Black America by Hiring a Trusted African-American to be One of his Senior Advisers Along with Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Jared Kushner<br />4. President Trump Should Take Some Time to Learn How to Communicate Well With Black People</p>
<p>We have also named the following ways black America can help President Trump:</p>
<p>1. Black Americans Can Help President Trump by Praying for him<br />2. Black Americans Can Help President Trump by being Open-minded and Giving him a Chance<br />3. Black Americans Can Help President Trump by Respecting the Office Even if They Can’t Respect the Man Occupying the Office<br />4. Black Americans Should Not Do to President Trump What Some Whites, Including Trump, Did to President Obama</p>
<p>Allow me to share with you another way President Trump can help black America and another way black America can help President Trump.</p>
<p>— Mr. Trump Needs to Cease Assuming that All Black People Live in “Hell”</p>
<p>Matthew 7:1 says, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”</p>
<p>These words of Jesus are often quoted among both Christians and non-Christians. Some seem to think that this command constitutes a Christian’s acceptance of any lifestyle or belief system. But that is not what Jesus is saying here. Rather this command has to do with the spirit in which we judge, scrutinize, or criticize the behavior of others. We ought not to judge in a spirit of hypocrisy or arrogance as though we are glad to catch and expose someone else’s wrong, but in a spirit of love and compassion, one that is eager to help the guilty party see the error of their ways and correct their behavior. One commentary lists the following ways in which we judge others in the wrong spirit:</p>
<p>1. When we think the worst of others.<br />2. When we only speak to others of their faults.<br />3. When we judge an entire life only by its worst moments.<br />4. When we judge the hidden motives of others.<br />5. When we judge others without considering ourselves in their same circumstances.<br />6. When we judge others without being mindful that we ourselves will be judged.</p>
<p>Skye Jethani writes that Jesus is drawing a line between judgment (righteous discernment) and condemnation (declaring someone irretreviably sinful). He says, “Jesus is warning us about excluding anyone, or seeing ourselves or our group as inherently better than any other. He is calling us to not condemn people, to not pass final judgment and declare them irretrievably guilty. We may disagree and discern another person or group to be wrong — but when that discernment causes us to value another person or group less, then we’ve crossed the line into judgment, condemnation, and exclusion.”</p>
<p>This principle can be applied to the political climate present in America. Too often, one group condemns another group and refuses to work with them simply because they disagree on a certain issue. We all should refrain from this type of behavior in all walks of life.</p>
<p>The new president must not have a spirit of condemnation toward black people. He must not subscribe to stereotypes about black America. All black people do not live in the “hood” or in a “ghetto.” All black people are not living on food stamps and refusing to look for jobs. By the grace of God, my family and I have never been on food stamps in our lives. Now, food stamps are good for people who really, really, really need them. But as a Christian, I believe in the principle of praying for my daily bread and God has provided my daily bread all of these years.</p>
<p>Most black people are trying to live better. Some have the means to do so; others just need a little help. If President Trump wants to avoid continuously insulting black people and keeping the black community upset over his characterizations of us, he must cease making these assumptions.</p>
<p>— Now, here is the fifth thing black people can do to help the new president: Black Americans Can Help the Trump Presidency by Working Hard and Striving to be Successful</p>
<p>Ecclesiastes 5:19 says, “Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.”</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with hard work and striving to be successful in whatever endeavour you set your mind and hands to. In fact, the Bible extols such behavior as long as one does not make such behavior the center of his life. God wants us to enjoy Him most of all, but also to enjoy the fruit of honest labor on this earth as well as the level of wealth and blessings that God chooses to give us from that labour.</p>
<p>Ray Stedman said, “When people discover the blessings of life that God has provided, they become richly involved with the savor of life right now. How good it is to know the living God, to know that He controls what comes into your life. He expects you to make choices; Scripture always encourages that. But rejoice in the wisdom of a Father’s heart and richly enjoy what is handed you day-by-day; that is the secret of life.”</p>
<p>Many today have an attitude of loathing toward those who are counted as super wealthy. Concerns about income inequality and global poverty are understandable, however, they do not negate the fact that many of those who are wealthy, like Trump, are wealthy because they worked hard and smart for a long time. Instead of getting upset at Mr. Trump for his wealth, black Americans should be inspired to work hard and make a better life for themselves and their families and to make the nation better. Hard work is always rewarded.</p>
<p>More importantly, we all should be ‘content with such things as we have.’ This does not mean that we cannot work for more, but that we should be happy with what God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen to grant us at the time. Simultaneously, we should not begrudge others who God has blessed to be wealthy.</p>
<p>Trump has promised that one of his main goals will be to create jobs for all Americans. When those jobs come, we encourage black Americans to take advantage of them. Start looking for work now and let God lead you to the employment situation that He wants you to have.</p>
<p>If you are on food stamps or other government aid programs, don’t be content to stay there. There is a myth perpetrated among conservatives that all black people are lazy, want the government to take care of them, and always vote for Democrats because they promise “free stuff.” Don’t let this be true about you.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://blackchristiannews.com/2017/02/listen-10-ways-president-trump-can-help-black-america-10-ways-black-america-can-help-president-trump-part-5-revive-the-family-revive-the-church-awaken-the-nation-o-lord-297-with-daniel-whyte-i/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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</div></div>Here Is Why Cops Are Rarely Convicted On Charges Of Killing Blackshttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-802842016-12-20T05:25:48.000Z2016-12-20T05:25:48.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-meta"><h1 class="post-meta__title"><a href="http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/584ebf0c1800002d00e4224a.jpeg?cache=grfyr39sxt" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/584ebf0c1800002d00e4224a.jpeg?cache=grfyr39sxt" class="align-center" alt="584ebf0c1800002d00e4224a.jpeg?cache=grfyr39sxt" /></a></h1>
<h2 class="post-meta__lead">"Whites are overrepresented on juries in recent police shooting cases," a report says.</h2>
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<div class="post-wrapper-content"><div class="post-author simplified-article-author-block"><span class="dropcap">I</span>t was no surprise to some legal experts that, despite shocking video evidence, a nearly <a href="https://newsone.com/3608382/judge-declares-mistrial-in-michael-slager-trial-after-jury-declines-unanimous-decision/">all-White jury deadlocked</a> on charges against the White former North Charleston police officer <a href="https://newsone.com/tag/michael-slager/">Michael Slager</a> who fatally shot <a href="https://newsone.com/tag/walter-scott/">Walter Scott</a>, a Black man who was unarmed.</div>
<div class="post-content"><p>The <span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-shooting-juries-race_us_584ebcdbe4b0e05aded4a110" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a> </span>analyzed the 13 police shooting trials since August 2014 that juries decided. Majority-White juries decided all but two of those cases, which The Post suggests many have influenced the results.</p>
<div class="embed-twitter"><div class="SandboxRoot is-touch env-bp-350"><div class="EmbeddedTweet EmbeddedTweet--mediaForward media-forward js-clickToOpenTarget js-tweetIdInfo" id="twitter-widget-0" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
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<div class="TweetAuthor"><a class="TweetAuthor-link Identity u-linkBlend" href="https://twitter.com/MarshallProj"><span class="TweetAuthor-avatar Identity-avatar"><img class="Avatar" alt="" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/525373377561653248/mElJJYpq_normal.png" /></span><span class="TweetAuthor-name Identity-name customisable-highlight" title="The Marshall Project">The Marshall Project</span> <span class="TweetAuthor-screenName Identity-screenName" title="@MarshallProj" dir="ltr">@MarshallProj</span></a></div>
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<div class="Tweet-body e-entry-content"><p class="Tweet-text e-entry-title" lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">White people are over-represented on juries in recent police shooting cases, <a href="https://twitter.com/HuffingtonPost" class="PrettyLink profile customisable h-card" dir="ltr"><span class="PrettyLink-prefix">@</span><span class="PrettyLink-value">HuffingtonPost</span></a> finds: <a href="https://t.co/4bOuZjooXC" dir="ltr" class="link customisable" target="_blank" title="http://huff.to/2hG9wqg"><span class="u-hiddenVisually">http://</span>huff.to/2hG9wqg<span class="u-hiddenVisually"> </span></a></p>
<div class="Tweet-metadata dateline"><a class="u-linkBlend u-url customisable-highlight long-permalink" href="https://twitter.com/MarshallProj/status/809814029791297536">9:34 AM - 16 Dec 2016</a></div>
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<p>Few police officers involved in fatal shootings ever face criminal charges. And of those who face a jury, seldom is there a guilty verdict. Why are White-dominated juries unlikely to convict police officers? They are more willing to give officers the benefit of any doubt.</p>
<p>The news outlet pointed to a <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/policing-america-understanding-public-attitudes-toward-police-results" target="_blank">Cato Institute survey </a>that found 68 percent of Whites held favorable views of their local police department, compared to 40 percent of Blacks who shared that view. There’s a similar disparity on the question of whether law enforcement teats all races equally.</p>
<p>In the 13 cases The Post reviewed, eight involved a police killing of a person of color, 12 of the officers were White, and at least two-thirds of the jurors were White in nine of the trials.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://newsone.com/3619834/majority-white-juries-decide-police-fatal-shooting-cases/" target="_blank">Read More ...</a></p>
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</div></div>Here Is Why Cops Are Rarely Convicted On Charges Of Killing Blackshttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-801922016-12-20T02:59:49.000Z2016-12-20T02:59:49.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-meta"><h1 class="post-meta__title"><a href="http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/584ebf0c1800002d00e4224a.jpeg?cache=grfyr39sxt" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/584ebf0c1800002d00e4224a.jpeg?cache=grfyr39sxt" class="align-center" alt="584ebf0c1800002d00e4224a.jpeg?cache=grfyr39sxt" /></a></h1>
<h2 class="post-meta__lead">"Whites are overrepresented on juries in recent police shooting cases," a report says.</h2>
</div>
<div class="post-wrapper-content"><div class="post-author simplified-article-author-block"><span class="dropcap">I</span>t was no surprise to some legal experts that, despite shocking video evidence, a nearly <a href="https://newsone.com/3608382/judge-declares-mistrial-in-michael-slager-trial-after-jury-declines-unanimous-decision/">all-White jury deadlocked</a> on charges against the White former North Charleston police officer <a href="https://newsone.com/tag/michael-slager/">Michael Slager</a> who fatally shot <a href="https://newsone.com/tag/walter-scott/">Walter Scott</a>, a Black man who was unarmed.</div>
<div class="post-content"><p>The <span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-shooting-juries-race_us_584ebcdbe4b0e05aded4a110" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a> </span>analyzed the 13 police shooting trials since August 2014 that juries decided. Majority-White juries decided all but two of those cases, which The Post suggests many have influenced the results.</p>
<div class="embed-twitter"><div class="SandboxRoot is-touch env-bp-350"><div class="EmbeddedTweet EmbeddedTweet--mediaForward media-forward js-clickToOpenTarget js-tweetIdInfo" id="twitter-widget-0" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
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<div class="EmbeddedTweet-tweet"><blockquote class="Tweet h-entry js-tweetIdInfo subject expanded is-deciderHtmlWhitespace" cite="https://twitter.com/MarshallProj/status/809814029791297536"><div class="Tweet-header u-cf"><div class="Tweet-brand u-floatRight"><div class="Icon Icon--twitter" title=""></div>
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<div class="TweetAuthor"><a class="TweetAuthor-link Identity u-linkBlend" href="https://twitter.com/MarshallProj"><span class="TweetAuthor-avatar Identity-avatar"><img class="Avatar" alt="" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/525373377561653248/mElJJYpq_normal.png" /></span><span class="TweetAuthor-name Identity-name customisable-highlight" title="The Marshall Project">The Marshall Project</span> <span class="TweetAuthor-screenName Identity-screenName" title="@MarshallProj" dir="ltr">@MarshallProj</span></a></div>
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<div class="Tweet-body e-entry-content"><p class="Tweet-text e-entry-title" lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">White people are over-represented on juries in recent police shooting cases, <a href="https://twitter.com/HuffingtonPost" class="PrettyLink profile customisable h-card" dir="ltr"><span class="PrettyLink-prefix">@</span><span class="PrettyLink-value">HuffingtonPost</span></a> finds: <a href="https://t.co/4bOuZjooXC" dir="ltr" class="link customisable" target="_blank" title="http://huff.to/2hG9wqg"><span class="u-hiddenVisually">http://</span>huff.to/2hG9wqg<span class="u-hiddenVisually"> </span></a></p>
<div class="Tweet-metadata dateline"><a class="u-linkBlend u-url customisable-highlight long-permalink" href="https://twitter.com/MarshallProj/status/809814029791297536">9:34 AM - 16 Dec 2016</a></div>
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<p>Few police officers involved in fatal shootings ever face criminal charges. And of those who face a jury, seldom is there a guilty verdict. Why are White-dominated juries unlikely to convict police officers? They are more willing to give officers the benefit of any doubt.</p>
<p>The news outlet pointed to a <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/policing-america-understanding-public-attitudes-toward-police-results" target="_blank">Cato Institute survey </a>that found 68 percent of Whites held favorable views of their local police department, compared to 40 percent of Blacks who shared that view. There’s a similar disparity on the question of whether law enforcement teats all races equally.</p>
<p>In the 13 cases The Post reviewed, eight involved a police killing of a person of color, 12 of the officers were White, and at least two-thirds of the jurors were White in nine of the trials.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://newsone.com/3619834/majority-white-juries-decide-police-fatal-shooting-cases/" target="_blank">Read More ...</a></p>
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</div></div>West Virginia Official Who Wrote Racist Facebook Post About Michelle Obama to Return to Jobhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-804242016-12-13T12:00:00.000Z2016-12-13T12:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-title"><h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/pam-taylor-returns-to-job.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/pam-taylor-returns-to-job.jpg?width=550" width="550" class="align-center" alt="pam-taylor-returns-to-job.jpg?width=550" /></a></h1>
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<div class="post_content entry-content"><p>The director of a West Virginia nonprofit group who was placed on leave after making a racist comment about first lady Michelle Obama on Facebook plans to return to her job this month.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Clay County Development director Pamela Ramsey Taylor made the post following Trump’s election, saying: “It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I’m tired of seeing a Ape in heels.”</p>
<p>The <em>Charleston-Gazette</em> reports a letter from the agency’s acting director Leslie McGlothin to the West Virginia Bureau of Senior Services says Taylor is on suspension and scheduled to return to work Dec. 23.</p>
<p>The nonprofit provides services to elderly and low-income residents in Clay County. It is funded through state and federal grants and local fees.</p>
<p><em>SOURCE: The Associated Press</em></p>
</div></div>Clashes, Protests at Texas A&M After White Supremacy Proponent Richard Spencer is Allowed to Speakhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/clashes-protests-at-texas-a-m-after-white-supremacy-proponent-ric2016-12-07T09:30:00.000Z2016-12-07T09:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-title"><h1 class="entry-title"><img class="size-medium wp-image-291678" src="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/texas-am-protest-550x324.jpg" alt="One student from the university tweeted out several videos of the scene. In one video several people were heard yelling, 'Let them go!' as police (pictured) tried to 'push protesters' out the door. 'No Nazi's, no KKK, no fascist USA!' protesters chanted." width="550" height="324" /></h1>
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<div class="post_content entry-content"><div id="attachment_291678" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><p class="wp-caption-text">One student from the university tweeted out several videos of the scene. In one video several people were heard yelling, ‘Let them go!’ as police (pictured) tried to ‘push protesters’ out the door. ‘No Nazi’s, no KKK, no fascist USA!’ protesters chanted.</p>
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<p>Hundreds of people protested a white nationalist’s speaking engagement at the Texas A&M University campus Tuesday night.<span id="more-291677"></span></p>
<p>Several groups protested outside of the student center during and before the appearance by Richard Spencer, who leads a white nationalist organization.</p>
<p>‘At the end of the day, America belongs to white men,’ Spencer said to an audience.</p>
<p>About 400 people filled a student center ballroom — some listening to Spencer, others jeering him.</p>
<p>Videos and images on social media showed riot police moving protesters from the Memorial Student Center as Spencer spoke in the building.</p>
<p>Spencer, who is known for spreading white supremacist views, was disowned by his elite Texas prep school last month when he was caught on camera saying ‘hail Trump’ as the crowd flashed him a Nazi salute.</p>
<div>Ahead of Tuesday’s speech, Spencer spoke with <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/06/politics/richard-spencer-texas-am/" target="_blank">CNN</a> and claimed that he is not a white supremacist, despite speaking of a Western civilization that, he said, ‘only white people can support’.</div>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">He told the network that the university’s reaction to his speaking ‘shows the power of the alt-right and the power of our ideas’.</p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B1FFDE400000578-4007940-image-a-155_1481090099892.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FFDE400000578-4007940-image-a-155_1481090099892.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B1FBEDC00000578-4007940-Several_groups_clashed_with_riot_police_outside_the_student_cent-a-158_1481090122376.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FBEDC00000578-4007940-Several_groups_clashed_with_riot_police_outside_the_student_cent-a-158_1481090122376.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B20268400000578-4007940-image-a-159_1481090122591.jpg" width="600" alt="3B20268400000578-4007940-image-a-159_1481090122591.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B1FB22E00000578-4007940-image-m-129_1481086822820.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FB22E00000578-4007940-image-m-129_1481086822820.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/06/3B1FD97F00000578-4007940-image-a-165_1481090496663.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FD97F00000578-4007940-image-a-165_1481090496663.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/04/3B1FDEDA00000578-4007940-image-a-122_1481086728549.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FDEDA00000578-4007940-image-a-122_1481086728549.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B1FBED800000578-4007940-image-a-135_1481086939040.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FBED800000578-4007940-image-a-135_1481086939040.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B201FB700000578-4007940-image-a-161_1481090337046.jpg" width="600" alt="3B201FB700000578-4007940-image-a-161_1481090337046.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B2028A100000578-4007940-image-a-163_1481090347699.jpg" width="600" alt="3B2028A100000578-4007940-image-a-163_1481090347699.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/06/3B201BCD00000578-4007940-image-a-168_1481090596613.jpg" width="600" alt="3B201BCD00000578-4007940-image-a-168_1481090596613.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/04/3B1FB39500000578-4007940-image-a-106_1481085157585.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FB39500000578-4007940-image-a-106_1481085157585.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B1FD78700000578-4007940-image-a-153_1481089455341.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FD78700000578-4007940-image-a-153_1481089455341.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B1FD60700000578-4007940-image-a-150_1481088784536.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FD60700000578-4007940-image-a-150_1481088784536.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B1FBF8600000578-4007940-image-a-134_1481086933527.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FBF8600000578-4007940-image-a-134_1481086933527.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/05/3B1FDA2F00000578-4007940-image-a-144_1481088737653.jpg" width="600" alt="3B1FDA2F00000578-4007940-image-a-144_1481088737653.jpg" /></p>
<p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/07/03/4mvLtwqWjede6b84ce3182265175-0-Texas_A_M_student_Harsimran_Singh_from_India_signs_a_message_boa-a-83_1481081461946.jpg" width="600" alt="4mvLtwqWjede6b84ce3182265175-0-Texas_A_M_student_Harsimran_Singh_from_India_signs_a_message_boa-a-83_1481081461946.jpg" /></p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">A group of officers were even barricading a stairway, while protesters chanted ‘The whole world is watching.’</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">One student from the university tweeted out several videos of the scene. One video several people were heard yelling, ‘Let them go!’ as police tried to ‘push protesters’ out the door.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">In one video, a woman was dragged from the crowd and onto the floor by police, who tied her hands behind her back with a plastic tie.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">‘No Nazi’s, no KKK, no fascist USA!’ protesters chanted.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">At one point during Spencer’s speech, a woman dressed in a clown outfit walked in front of the stage holding a sign that said: ‘He’s the real bozo.’</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">Those attending the speech had to walk a gantlet of chanting protesters while leaving the hall.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">Hundreds more gathered at nearby Kyle Field to hear music and speeches highlighting diversity and unity as a counter to Spencer.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">Earlier on Tuesday, some protesters silently held placards while others loudly chanted slogans.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">A&M officials say they didn’t schedule the speech by Spencer. Instead, he was invited to speak by a former student who reserved campus space available to the public.</p>
<p>Texas A&M Senior Vice President Amy Smith told CNN in a statement: ‘To be clear, Texas A&M University, including faculty, staff, students and/or student groups, did not invite this speaker to our campus nor do we endorse his rhetoric in any way.’</p>
<p>The university is located in College Station, a town where Aggie alum Preston Wiginton, who invited Spencer to the campus, lives.</p>
<p>Because the school is a public university, permission for the event could not be denied, officials told CNN.</p>
<p>In a Monday interview on CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360,’ Wiginton said: ‘I think the reaction to Trump being elected, and the reaction with the alt-right being popular, is a reaction to it (US) declining as a white nation.’</p>
<p>Wiginton said he wanted to bring Spencer to campus because he wanted to spread the message that white people face marginalization.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">‘Why would I want to see America become less white?’ Wiginton asked rhetorically in the interview. ‘Why would I want to be displaced and marginalized?’</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">In his interview with CNN, he also addressed the speech he gave last month when members of the alt-right movement gathered to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">‘Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!’ Spencer shouted during the speech in November, as the crowd gave him a Nazi salute.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">Shortly after the controversial speech, his prep school, St Marks, said that the values honored by friends and alumni of the school were ‘under attack’ by their white supremacist classmate.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">‘Spencer’s views are un-American and a threat to civil society,’ they said in a statement. ‘We reject them and urge everyone to join us in condemning him and his agenda.’</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">He made the speech at a gathering by the National Policy Institute, a think-tank that is part of the alt-right movement that includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites, on Saturday, November 21.</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font">The headmaster of St Mark’s School, in Texas, David W Dini, told <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/white-nationalist-assailed-ex-classmates-elite-texas-prep-school-n688866" target="_blank">NBC News</a> that Spencer’s comments brought ‘even greater attention to these hateful, divisive, racist, and anti-Semitic views.’</p>
<p class="mol-para-with-font"><em>SOURCE: Daily Mail / AP</em></p>
</div></div>The Future Of Black Lives Matter Under President Trumphttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/the-future-of-black-lives-matter-under-president-trump2016-11-28T06:00:00.000Z2016-11-28T06:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://www.wpr.org/sites/default/files/styles/resp_orig_custom_user_narrow_1x/public/wpr/segments/2016/11/BLMsign.jpg?itok=TFALkg28&timestamp=1479404255" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.wpr.org/sites/default/files/styles/resp_orig_custom_user_narrow_1x/public/wpr/segments/2016/11/BLMsign.jpg?itok=TFALkg28&timestamp=1479404255" class="align-center" alt="BLMsign.jpg?itok=TFALkg28&timestamp=1479404255" /></a></h1>
<h1 class="entry-title">Since its earliest days, the Black Lives Matter movement has been a lightning rod throughout the country and in the media.</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="entry-content"><p>It was born out of the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the 2012 killing of the unarmed, African-American teenager, Trayvon Martin, in Florida and grew in response to high-profile deaths of black men and women at the hands of police. It has been a rallying cry for its supporters from all ethnic backgrounds who’d like to see police and others held accountable for the treatment of the black community in the United States.</p>
<p>But Black Lives Matter has also had a fair amount of criticism leveled at it by its detractors who see the organization as divisive and anti-law enforcement.</p>
<p>Throughout the 2016 presidential election, the movement persisted in the face of the racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, anti-Immigrant and anti-LQBT language that became widespread throughout the presidential campaign. And fairly or not, much of the finger-pointing has been at then-candidate and now President-elect Donald Trump, who, throughout his campaign, was known for making inflammatory statements.</p>
<p>Now, questions are being asked about what the group plans to do with Trump heading to the White House in January. (Wisconsin Public Radio)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wpr.org/future-black-lives-matter-under-president-trump">Click here for more…</a></p>
</div></div>The Distinction Between Slavery And Race In U.S. Historyhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-799002016-11-28T03:39:41.000Z2016-11-28T03:39:41.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p></p>
<h1 class="entry-title"></h1>
<p></p>
<div class="entry-content"><div id="attachment_13863" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-13863 size-full" src="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nypl.digitalcollections.510d47db-c929-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.001.w-e1480026216903.jpg" alt="nypl-digitalcollections-510d47db-c929-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99-001-w" width="737" height="579" /><a href="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nypl.digitalcollections.510d47db-c929-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.001.w-e1480026216903-300x236.jpg">http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nypl.digitalcollections.510d47db-c929-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.001.w-e1480026216903-300x236.jpg</a> 300w" sizes="(max-width: 737px) 100vw, 737px" /><p class="wp-caption-text"><span>“Slaves in front of a cabin” (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library)</span></p>
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<p>The history of the <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/slavery-democracy-and-the-racialized-roots-of-the-electoral-college/" target="_blank">Electoral College</a> is receiving a lot of attention. Pieces like <a href="http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/stephen-henderson/2016/11/19/electoral-college-race-problem/94079504/" target="_blank">this one,</a>which explores “the electoral college and its racist roots,” remind us how deeply race is woven into the very fabric of our government. A deeper examination, however, reveals an important distinction between the political interests of slaveholders and the broader category of the thing we call “<a href="http://www.aaihs.org/on-michelle-wrights-physics-of-blackness/" target="_blank">race</a>.”</p>
<p>“Race” was indeed a critical factor in the establishment of <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/4212-2/" target="_blank">the Constitution</a>. At the time of the founding, slavery was legal in every state in the Union. People of African descent were as important in <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/dark-work-a-new-book-on-the-business-of-slavery-in-rhode-island/" target="_blank">building northern cities</a> such as New York as they were in producing the cash crops on which the southern economy depended. So we should make no mistake about the pervasive role of race in the conflicts and compromises that went into the drafting of the Constitution.</p>
<p>Yet, the political conflicts surrounding race at the time of the founding had little to do with debating African-descended peoples’ claim to humanity, let alone equality. It is true that many of the Founders worried about the <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/how-the-alliance/" target="_blank">persistence of slavery</a> in a nation supposedly dedicated to universal human liberty. After all, it was difficult to argue that natural rights justified treason against a king without acknowledging slaves’ even stronger claim to freedom. Thomas Jefferson himself famously worried that in the event of <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/?s=slave+rebellion" target="_blank">slave rebellion</a>, a just deity would side with the enslaved.</p>
<div id="attachment_13864" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img class="wp-image-13864" src="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2-300x300.jpg" alt="James Madison" width="180" height="180" /><a href="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2-150x150.jpg">http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2-150x150.jpg</a> 150w, <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2-768x768.jpg">http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2-768x768.jpg</a> 768w, <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2-1024x1024.jpg">http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2-1024x1024.jpg</a> 1024w, <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2.jpg">http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MTE4MDAzNDEwNjEwMzI1MDA2.jpg</a> 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px" /><p class="wp-caption-text"><span>James Madison</span></p>
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<p>But the Framers never got to the point of debating black freedom and equality in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. They were too busy arguing over how much extra power slaveholders would have in the new form of government. As <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/slavery-democracy-and-the-racialized-roots-of-the-electoral-college/" target="_blank">James Madison</a> noted, of all the divides between the states, the one that came to drive debates most was that between slave states and those becoming free. But these debates were over slavery–<em>not</em> race. They were about the political power of slaveholders, not the rights of those enslaved or degraded by the racial identity ascribed to them.</p>
<p><em>Slavery divided the nation; race, not so much.</em> At the Founding, the argument over slavery was an argument between powerful elites, some of whom depended completely on slavery for their profits and some who did not. While the issue of slaveholder power eventually came to dominate the national political agenda, the question of race — and particularly the racial equality of non-Europeans — did not. Widespread consensus consigned nearly all blacks to sub-citizen status, even when they were not legal property.</p>
<p>Northern emancipation demonstrated how race could thrive even in slavery’s absence. Ending slavery was never easy, but it was easier where slavery was less central to the economy. It was no surprise that New Hampshire, home to around one hundred slaves in the 1770s, ended the institution in 1777, while New Jersey, home to some ten thousand at the Founding, still listed eighteen “apprentices for life” on its 1860 census.</p>
<p>Wherever and whenever slavery ended in the North, freedom generated whole new waves of racial hostility. Slavery, it turned out, rested atop the deeper foundation of a vicious racial caste order. Labor competition between white and black workers unleashed new furies of racial violence. It became possible for European immigrants to leverage their whiteness into a form of symbolic capital that proved quite precious when the real article was scarce. <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/black-protest-white-backlash-and-the-history-of-scientific-racism/" target="_blank">Racial science</a> elicited fears of “amalgamation” while blackface minstrel shows wove denigrating stereotypes into the nation’s burgeoning popular culture.</p>
<p>As a consequence, people of African descent were largely written out of the civic body. In the so-called Jacksonian “age of the common man,” free states dropped property requirements to vote only to add the word “white” to their constitutions for the first time. This removed blacks from the electorate where some had once held the franchise. All new free states entering the union before the Civil War did so without property qualifications for voting, but with explicit constitutional denials of black suffrage: Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Iowa (1846), Wisconsin (1848), California (1850), and Oregon (1859). It was as if whites regardless of class could be welcome in the new America, but only with the sacrifice of blacks’ claim on citizenship. Freedom was a great idea; it was just going to be reserved for white people.</p>
<p></p>
<div id="attachment_13865" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-13865 size-full" src="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nypl.digitalcollections.510d47df-7965-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.001.w.jpg" alt="Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. "Anti-Slavery Meeting on the [Boston] Common." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. <a href=" /><a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-7965-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-7965-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99</a>" width="760" height="572" srcset="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nypl.digitalcollections.510d47df-7965-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.001.w.jpg 760w, <a href="http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nypl.digitalcollections.510d47df-7965-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.001.w-300x226.jpg">http://www.aaihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nypl.digitalcollections.510d47df-7965-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.001.w-300x226.jpg</a> 300w" sizes="(max-width: 760px) 100vw, 760px" /><p class="wp-caption-text"><span>“Anti-Slavery Meeting on the [Boston] Common” (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division)</span></p>
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All was not completely bleak. In the 1830s, new alliances with radical abolitionists offered welcome friends and needed resources. Few white people, regardless of how marginal, could escape the imaginative bounds of a pervasive race culture. But as limited as they could be, moneyed white abolitionists propelled the slavery issue onto the national stage. From there, they ventured into the very political system that maintained the accursed institution.
<p></p>
<p>It was a move critical to ending slavery, but difficult to pull off. Slaveholding states’ artificial advantages in the House of Representatives and Electoral College combined with a two-party system that wanted to discuss any issue other than the one that threatened to split their coalitions cleanly in half. Antislavery activists made headway, but the pervasive racism around them made building a movement challenging. Experimenting through several iterations over several election cycles, they eventually hit upon a two-fronted rhetorical attack.</p>
<p>First, they argued that the Slave Power was bent on undermining freedom. Just as masters coveted power over slaves, so too the “slaveocrats” sought to trample upon the civil liberties of free white northerners in their desire for mastery over government. As evidence, they pointed to the South’s unprecedented use of the federal government to protect and expand the institution. Second, they argued that the western territories should be kept free from slavery in order to keep it free from slave laborers who would degrade their free white counterparts.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.aaihs.org/the-distinction-between-slavery-and-race-in-u-s-history/" target="_blank">Read More ...</a></p>
</div></div>Protesters Hijack Black Friday to March Against Everything from Police Brutality to Retail Workers’ Rights to Donald Trumphttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/protesters-hijack-black-friday-to-march-against-everything-from-p2016-11-26T15:30:00.000Z2016-11-26T15:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-title"><h1 class="entry-title"><a href="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/3AC1CD0F00000578-3972628-image-a-13_1480109194083-533x350.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://blackchristiannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/3AC1CD0F00000578-3972628-image-a-13_1480109194083-533x350.jpg?width=533" width="533" class="align-center" alt="3AC1CD0F00000578-3972628-image-a-13_1480109194083-533x350.jpg?width=533" /></a></h1>
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<div class="post_content entry-content"><p>As shoppers were busy making purchases on one of the most crucial shopping days of the year, hundreds of people took to the streets in cities across the country on Friday to protest various issues, including police mistreatment of minorities and retail workers to the fur trade industry.<span id="more-288393"></span></p>
<p>In Illinois, activists have called for a shopping boycott in Chicago’s downtown on Black Friday as around 400 people gathered in the city’s Magnificent Mile shopping district to demand an elected civilian police review board.</p>
<p>They have pressed for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council since a video was released last year showing a white police officer fatally shooting black teen Laquan McDonald.</p>
<p>City officials have said they plan to create a non-elected citizen oversight board next year.</p>
<p>An engaged crowd listened to speakers on Friday morning near the city’s historic Old Water Tower.</p>
<p>One speaker criticized Republican President-elect Donald Trump in the same breath as Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.</p>
<p>Others expressed shock over two fatal shootings by Chicago police that occurred Wednesday night and Friday morning.</p>
<p>A Chicago police officer shot and killed a gunman who had killed one person and injured another early Friday, in the second fatal shooting involving the city’s police in just over 24 hours.</p>
<p>The incident followed an unrelated shooting late Wednesday in which a sergeant responding to a call of a battery in progress on the city’s South Side shot and killed a 19-year-old man during a foot chase.</p>
<p>A search failed to uncover a weapon the sergeant told investigators the man was carrying and relatives of the dead teenager are disputing police statements that he was armed.</p>
<p>A probe of Chicago police practices by the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is expected to wrap up in the first months of next year.</p>
<p>Organizers of the protest in Chicago included the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Black Lives Matter, according to The Chicago Tribune.</p>
<p>Organizers said they aimed to bring attention to issues including police mistreatment of minorities and economic inequalities that have continued to keep Chicago’s west and south sides suffering from poverty and gun violence.</p>
<p>‘For some, it’s about the police, some it’s about immigration,’ activist Barbara Lyons, 79, of Jewish Voice for Peace told the Tribune.</p>
<p>‘It’s just all the people who are not (Trump supporters), and they’re afraid,’ Lyons said.</p>
<p>In New York, protesters were stopped outside major retailers located on Seventh Avenue including Lord & Taylor, Urban Outfitters and J.C. Penney in a bid to bring attention to the mistreatment of retail workers.</p>
<p>The protesters also expressed solidarity with those against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, according to RT.</p>
<p>Members of Caring Activists Against Fur were outside a Macy’s during in New York on Friday as they held signs and protested the fur trade industry.</p>
<p>In Seattle, Black Lives Matters protesters were reportedly planning on gathering in downtown Seattle on Friday during the annual tree lighting ceremony for the third year in a row.</p>
<p>They were set to gather at Westlake Center at 1pm to disrupt holiday shopping and the protest is planned to last until 8pm, according to KIRO7.</p>
<p>Amid the protests, at least four people have been shot in the US, two of them killed, as people clashed across the country over bargain items on a record-breaking Black Friday.</p>
<p>Shoppers appear to have largely stayed away from the madness in retail stores this year, instead opting to venture online for the best post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas deals.</p>
<p>But the opening of stores late on Thursday evening invited chaos and trouble early on, with several shootings in mall parking lots. Footage inside stores such as Walmart and Target also captured tense shopping scenes.</p>
<p>In New Jersey, the shooting outside a Macy’s department store that left one man dead occurred around 1am on Friday at the Hamilton Mall in Mays Landing as people lined up outside the mall for door-buster deals.</p>
<p>Demond Cottman, 21, of Atlantic City was shot multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene.<br />His 26-year-old brother Shadi Cottman from Clayton, was shot in the leg and listed in stable condition at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center.</p>
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<p>Officials did not immediately say what sparked the shooting or if they had any suspects.</p>
<p>Demond, who was married, was also a new father, a college student and a standout athlete, his family told the Press of Atlantic City.</p>
<p>He had previously graduated from basic training from the U.S. Air National Guard in 2014, his family said.</p>
<p>One shopper who was at the scene and has been coming out for Black Friday shopping for the last ten years said the shooting was sad, adding that Black Friday is ‘getting scary now,’ according to CBS Philly.</p>
<p>More than 15 evidence markers were laid down in the parking lot and an SUV with bullet holes was towed away around 7am on Friday.</p>
<p>The Macy’s store had opened at 5pm on Thursday before the mall closed at midnight and reopened to shoppers at 6am.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in Nevada on Thursday, a person was shot dead in a road rage incident in a Walmart parking lot in Reno, police said.</p>
<p>The shooting occurred around 6pm at the Walmart on East Second Street after there was apparently a dispute over a parking spot, according to KOLO.</p>
<p>Police and the FBI are investigating the Thanksgiving shooting as authorities search for a dark-colored Toyota Camry or Corolla that was driven by a driver described as a light-skinned black male.</p>
<p>In Tennessee, a man suffered a gunshot wound after shots were fired at Wolfchase Galleria Mall in Memphis on Thursday around 11.15pm as shoppers were looking to score Black Friday deals at the mall.</p>
<p>The incident occurred in the parking lot outside the food court area after witnesses said a suspect fired several shots and then fled in a Ford Mustang, according to WREG.</p>
<p>Initial reports indicated no one was injured but a man showed up at Baptist Memorial Hospital with a gunshot wound.</p>
<p>Three suspects are now in custody and officers have since collected shell casings from the scene.</p>
<p>Between 2006 and 2014, there have reportedly been seven deaths and 98 injuries during Black Friday shopping.</p>
<p>The shootings in New Jersey and Nevada occurred as shoppers eager to bag a bargain began their spending sprees as some stores across the U.S. kicked off their sales on Thursday afternoon.</p>
<p>Cellphone footage from various stores showed shoppers fighting over items in a bid to score shopping deals.</p>
<p>In video apparently recorded inside a Walmart in Bainbridge, Georgia, showed shoppers fighting over towels that were on sale for $1.60 during the Black Friday rush on Thursday.</p>
<p>At one point, one woman so eager to get her hands on a towels that she fell into the box.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, shoppers at a Walmart in Houston broke into an all-out melee on Black Friday, as customers battled it out for some $99 kiddie convertibles.</p>
<p>On Friday, most stores opened their doors around 6am for what is still one of the busiest days of the year, even as the start of the holiday season edges ever earlier.</p>
<p>Some stores, including Sears, Bass Bro Shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bealls opened as early as 5am while stores such as Hobby Lobby and some Nordstrom locations had a later start at 8am.</p>
<p>Many stores are offering the same deals as in previous years, like $19.99 boots that remain a big attraction, cashmere sweaters, and sheets. For some shoppers, big discounts on electronics are the draw.</p>
<p>Stores like Macy’s, Walmart, Target and more were open on Thursday evening in what they hope will be a new holiday tradition and closed for the night before reopening on Friday.</p>
<p>Several shoppers were out looking for bargains on TVs. Other items that drew crowds were cellphones and Hatchimals — eggs with a small, animated animal inside that hatch when given attention.</p>
<p>Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, vies with the Saturday before Christmas as the biggest sales day.</p>
<p>On Friday, online sales are forecast to top $3billion for the first time ever, hitting $3.05billion in online revenue, up 11.3 per cent from the last year, according Adobe Digital Insights.</p>
<p>Preliminary data from Adobe shows Black Friday online sales on US retailers’ websites have raked in an estimated $490 million between midnight and 8.30am ET, according to USA Today.</p>
<p>Black Friday is also forecast to be the first day in retail history to top $1billion in mobile revenue as a result of mores shoppers using their smartphones and tablets.</p>
<p>As shoppers snagged deals online, Macy’s wrestled with some technical issues on its website leaving some customers frustrated.</p>
<p>Though early afternoon, many visitors to the site saw ‘Temporary shopping jam.’</p>
<p>Macy’s had a 10-second countdown to get to the site, though the delay often ran longet than that.</p>
<p>‘We are still taking a high volume of online orders, and we are working quickly to alleviate the delay issue which we hope to have resolved shortly,’ the company said.</p>
<p>Shopper Dana Sari finished all of her holiday shopping online on Friday morning, but she and her mother kept to their decades-old tradition of spending Black Friday together.</p>
<p>They arrived at the relatively quiet MacArthur Center mall in downtown Norfolk, Virginia, shortly after 8am where each bought a coffee and sat near a Nordstrom.</p>
<p>Sari, 43, a neuropsychologist who lives in Norfolk, says it’s not so much about the consumerism as it is the quality time with her mother during the holiday season.</p>
<p>She prefers buying gifts from online catalogues and boutique retailers rather than larger corporations, which she says value her less as a customer, she said.</p>
<p>Also on Friday, Wall Street extended its gains in thin trading, with the three main indexes hitting record intraday highs, helped by gains in consumer staples and technology stocks.</p>
<p>The stock markets closed early for Black Friday, while trading volumes were thin.</p>
<p>The three major indexes closed higher for the third week in a row, extending their rally since the U.S. election – the S&P 500 marked its seventh record close since November 8.</p>
<p>However, the defensive consumer staples and utilities sectors have been the worst performers in that period.</p>
<p>The consumer staples sector gave the S&P 500 the biggest boost on Friday, closing up 0.79 per cent, led by gains in Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola.</p>
<p>On Black Friday morning, crowds were thin at U.S. malls and stores.</p>
<p>In the New York and Chicago areas, shoppers said stores were less busy than previous years on the day after the Thanksgiving holiday.</p>
<p>‘Nobody was busting down the doors at 6am,’ said Tracy Watkins, a Bed, Bath and Beyond store manager at the Chicago Ridge Mall, as temperatures outside lurked below freezing.</p>
<p>‘I’ve been here on other Black Fridays and it was bad, but I guess this year because of the hours it’s not bad. Really calm,’ said shopper Lauren Green, who was in line outside a Zara clothing store in the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island east of New York at 5.20am.</p>
<p>Shopper Julie Singewald’s Black Friday started at 4am at a Twin Cities outlet mall.</p>
<p>By 6am, she and her two teenage daughters made it to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.</p>
<p>Singewald said she was merely the vehicle — ‘and sometimes the credit card’ — as her daughters hunted for deals and worked on their shopping lists. Increasingly, the 44-year-old is doing more of her shopping online.</p>
<p>‘I’m a point-and-click person,’ she said. ‘If it were up to me, I would be in my pajamas and on my computer at home.’</p>
<p>After what appeared to be a strong turnout for Thanksgiving sales, some early morning reports indicate that traffic to malls may be slower on Black Friday than last year as retailers spread the deals out throughout the week.</p>
<p>‘It was a really good start. But I have never seen Black Friday morning so calm,’ said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group, a market research firm, who visited malls on Long Island on Friday.</p>
<p>He still believes the weekend’s sales will likely be up over last year because shoppers did lots of buying, including pricey flat-screen TVs.</p>
<p>But long before people got through the doors in stores on Thursday, more than one-billion had already been spent online.</p>
<p>By Thanksgiving evening, online spending by U.S shoppers had climbed to $1.13 billion, according to Adobe Digital Index, surging almost 14 per cent from a year ago.</p>
<p>Target Corp said on Thursday it had seen one of its ‘strongest days ever’ online, while Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the largest bricks-and-morter retailer in the United States, said Thanksgiving Day was ‘one of the of the top online shopping days of the year.’</p>
<p>The deepest average discounts for Black Friday came from leading online retailer Amazon.com Inc, with an average of 42 per cent off, compared with 33 per cent off on Walmart, 35 per cent on Target and 36 per cent on Best Buy, according to e-commerce analytics firm Clavis Insight.</p>
<p>President-elect Donald Trump also stepped into the online sales excitement.</p>
<p>On Friday morning, Trump’s online store announced it was offering a 30 per cent-off deal on all campaign products, including a $149 Christmas ornament.</p>
<p>‘President-elect Trump loves a great deal,’ a promotional email said.</p>
<p>For years, Black Friday has started the holiday shopping season in the United States with retailers offering steep discounts.</p>
<p>But its popularity has been on the wane with the emergence of online shopping and cheap deals through the year from retailers.</p>
<p>‘There will be continuing dominance in online sales today as consumers increasingly realize they will get the same deals in-store and online,’ said Brent Schoenbaum, a partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP. Schoenbaum, who was out visiting stores in Glendale, California, said customer traffic in-store remained subdued.</p>
<p>Schoenbaum, who was out visiting stores in Glendale, California, said customer traffic in-store remained subdued.</p>
<p>‘It used to be very busy, but for the past two years the mornings are not very crazy,’ said Gina Reynolds, a 39-year-old housewife who was shopping at a Macy’s store in the Water Tower Place Mall in Chicago.</p>
<p>Crowds were also relatively thin at other retailers in the mall, including department store J.C. Penney and apparel seller Abercrombie & Fitch.</p>
<p>During the Thanksgiving weekend, 151 million Americans reportedly do their holiday shopping in store or online, spending an average of $299.60 each.</p>
<p>In Rhode Island, shoppers who arrived after sunrise at the Garden City outdoor shopping mall in Cranston said they were glad their state — along with Massachusetts and Maine — doesn’t let retailers open on Thanksgiving Day.</p>
<p>‘I don’t like the idea of it,’ said Lauren Glynn. ‘I feel bad for the people who have to work.’</p>
<p>She and her husband, who are restaurateurs, came to the Cranston mall for fun, to soak up the experience and maybe find a few deals, but they said they plan to do most of their gift shopping online and at locally owned shops where they live in Bristol, Rhode Island.</p>
<p>Sam Glynn said it’s at local shops where they will look for ‘cool knives and glassware, things that have meaning.’</p>
<p>Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which started its Black Friday sales on Thursday at 6pm, said shoppers were embracing technology products.</p>
<p>Steve Bratspies, chief merchandising officer at Walmart’s U.S. division, said in addition to Black Friday favorites like televisions and toys, they were looking for drones, virtual reality products and hoverboards.</p>
<p>Walmart started its online sale just after midnight on Thanksgiving, three hours earlier than last year. It reported on Friday that 70 per cent of the traffic to its website came from mobile devices.</p>
<p>Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren told The Associated Press that store traffic has been encouraging on Black Friday, adding that shopper numbers have been strong at its flagship store on Friday morning.</p>
<p>Lundgren said clothing sales have been good, with sportswear, dresses and even social occasion fashions doing well.</p>
<p>However, he’s hoping for some cold weather to help fuel more sales of winter items.</p>
<p>Lundgren believes that the rising stock market will help shoppers’ mood.</p>
<p>Jeff Gennette, president of Macy’s who will become CEO early next year, believes there was pent-up demand after the contentious presidential election was over. He says consumers can now focus on other things.</p>
<p>Leah Olson was at Mall of America Friday morning, following some Thanksgiving night trips to Target and a local mall.</p>
<p>Olsen said she had done some online shopping, but preferred making in-person stops.</p>
<p>‘I always like to walk, go to the mall,’ said the Chanhassen, Minnesota resident. ‘I just like shopping.’</p>
<p>Meanwhile in Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker declared Friday as Green Friday as his administration is encouraging people across the state to buy their Christmas trees, holiday plants and wreaths at local farms.</p>
<p>Massachusetts’ nursery industry helps drive the economy and residents can make a difference by shopping for garland and other seasonal decorations at farms, farmers’ markets, roadside stands and nurseries instead of big box stores, Baker said.</p>
<p>The holidays create hundreds of seasonal jobs at the state’s nearly 400 Christmas tree farms, the state Department of Agriculture said, adding the sector generates $1.4 million each year.</p>
<p>People had camped out in tents outside some Best Buy stores on the Thursday, including one in Utah where the temperatures plummeted to below-zero, while others raced through the doors at J.C. Penney.</p>
<p>The department store kicked off its sales at 3pm on Thursday – hours before some people sat down around the table for Thanksgiving dinner.</p>
<p>The National Retailers Foundation says online spending over the three-day bonanza will reach an eye-watering $8.4billion.</p>
<p>The NRF’s annual holiday shopping forecast expects $3.05billion on Black Friday and $3.36billion on Cyber Monday – which would mean it is the biggest shopping day of all time.</p>
<p>Other forecasters project overall holiday spending will rise by 3.6 per cent – which would be a bigger jump that the average seen over the past seven years.</p>
<p>If spending does increase by the predicted amount, 690,000 new seasonal jobs will be created, according to the NRF.</p>
<p>It comes after it was revealed retailers have braced for a massive holiday rush this year.</p>
<p>This weekend is crucial to set the tone for the holiday season.</p>
<p>Around 137 million people plan to or are considering doing their shopping during the Thanksgiving weekend, according to a survey conducted for the National Retail Federation.</p>
<p>That includes online and store shopping. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, vies with the Saturday before Christmas as the busiest shopping day of the year.</p>
<p>The NRF, the nation’s largest retail group, expects holiday sales to rise 3.6 per cent to about $656 billion for November and December mainly due to rise in online shopping, better than the 3 per cent growth seen for those months last year.</p>
<p>That excludes car sales, gas and restaurant receipts but includes online spending and other non-store sales such as catalog spending.</p>
<p>Consumer confidence rose by 8.4 points from October to 85.2 in November – the biggest gain within a month since December 2011, according to the University of Michigan’s final reading of consumer sentiment for November.</p>
<p>‘The upsurge in favorable economic prospects is not surprising given Trump’s populist policy views, and it was perhaps exaggerated by what most considered a surprising victory as well as by a widespread sense of relief that the election had finally ended,’ Richard Curtin, University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers chief economist told Bloomberg.</p>
<p>With increased confidence in job security, wage growth and soaring markets, shoppers are planning to spend, spend, spend over the holidays.</p>
<p>They also estimate that holiday sales will grow 3.6 percent on last year – bringing a $630.05 billion boon to the economy.</p>
<p>‘You will see a bump in spending this year because this election was so close, so highly contested, and so dramatic no matter which candidate you supported,’ Marshal Cohen, retail analyst with NPD Group, told Business Insider.</p>
<p>The predictions are in line with results of a recent survey by ForeSee revealed most Americans are planning to spend the same or more during the holiday season than in the run up to the election.</p>
<p>While it could be expected that Trump supporters would be driving the spending frenzy on a wave of optimism after their candidate won, the survey reveals that 20 per cent of Democrats plan to spend more in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>That is double the percentage of Republicans who plan to up their spending.</p>
<p>Cohen added: ‘Half the country is going to be happy, so they are going to go out and spend, and half is going to be very distraught and disturbed – and one way to get out of that slump is to distract themselves by going to stores.’</p>
<p>With so much air time dedicated to the election over the past year, retailers will also get the chance to air their holiday advertising.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, shoppers who had been holding back over concerns about what the results could mean to the economy have been pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>Big department stores, such as Macy’s and Kohl’s are expecting a strong holiday spending period.</p>
<p>‘Things that are distracting like the election, once there’s an outcome, certainty is a good thing,’ Kohl CEO, Kevin Mansell said. ‘So from a positive perspective, having certainty on that is probably a good thing looking into the holiday.’</p>
<p>That is double the percentage of Republicans who plan to up their spending.</p>
<p>Cohen added: ‘Half the country is going to be happy, so they are going to go out and spend, and half is going to be very distraught and disturbed – and one way to get out of that slump is to distract themselves by going to stores.’</p>
<p>With so much air time dedicated to the election over the past year, retailers will also get the chance to air their holiday advertising.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, shoppers who had been holding back over concerns about what the results could mean to the economy have been pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>Big department stores, such as Macy’s and Kohl’s are expecting a strong holiday spending period.</p>
<p>‘Things that are distracting like the election, once there’s an outcome, certainty is a good thing,’ Kohl CEO, Kevin Mansell said. ‘So from a positive perspective, having certainty on that is probably a good thing looking into the holiday.’</p>
<p>Source: Daily Mail UK</p>
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