Respect where it's due: BM/WW IR in History

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Great and really informational thread, BTwn the Micheal Jackson picture on the first page had me rolling on the ground with laughter...:mrgreen:

 

Robert Purvis

(August 4, 1810 – April 15, 1898) was an antebellumAfrican-American abolitionist in the United States. He was born in Charleston, educated at Amherst, and lived most of his life in Philadelphia. Since Purvis and his brothers were three-quarters white, they were light-skinned and could have lived as whites. They both chose instead to identify with the black community and use their education and wealth to support abolition and anti-slavery activities, as well as projects in education to help African Americans advance

His mother Harriet Judah was a free woman of color, the daughter of former slave Dido Badaraka. In his late age, Purvis told a reporter that his grandmother Badaraka had been kidnapped at age 12 from Morocco and sold as a slave in Charleston. He described her as a full-blooded Moor: dark-skinned with tightly curled hair. She was freed at age 19 by her owner's will.[1][2] Harriet's father was Baron Judah.[3] He was the third of ten children of Hillel Judah, a German Jewish immigrant, and his Sephardic Jewish wife Abigail Seixas from Charleston. Although Purvis told a reporter that Badaraka and Judah had married, his biographer thought that unlikely given the prominence of the Judah family in Charleston. She also discovered that the Judah family owned slaves. Badaraka and Judah did have Harriet and a son together. (In 1790 Judah broke off the relationship with Badaraka when he moved from Charleston to Savannah, and then in 1791 to Richmond. He married in Richmond and had four children with his wife.)[4]

His father’s death left the family well off financially and with shrewd business savvy; Purvis put his commerce sense to good use. Light-skinned and wealthy, he rejected suggestions that he relocate and “pass.” In 1831, he married Harriet Forten, the daughter of African- American businessman and abolitionist James Forten. Throwing himself into the antislavery struggle, he tirelessly worked with the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. They sheltered runaway slaves in Purvis’ “safe house.”

He was an active member with William Lloyd Garrisons American Anti-slavery Society in 1833. He traveled to Europe, meeting with British officials, in the name of stopping slavery. For two decades, Purvis lived in an elegant home in Philadelphia where he entertained abolitionists from America and Europe working politically to end slavery. It was here through his efforts with his father-in-law, that the career of his niece Charlotte Forten (educator) was influenced. He welcomed the outbreak of the Civil War, urging President Lincoln to make emancipation his goal. At the end of the war, Purvis was asked to head the Freedmen’s Bureau.

He refused, fearing this was a ploy by President Andrew Johnson, to keep black support while attempting to destroy the bureau. Initially a Republican, Purvis became disheartened as the party retreated from the principles it advocated during reconstruction. In the mid-1870s, he was criticized for his position on the Fifteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1870. A life-long supporter of women’s rights, Purvis argued that African- American men should not be enfranchised unless women received the vote. In the last two decades of his life, he became an elder statesman, tending to his personal possessions at home. Robert Purvis died in April 1898, in Philadelphia.

Info taken from wikipedia & African American Ancestry.com

 

Jan Ernst Matzeliger

September 15, 1852 – August 24, 1889) was an African-American inventor in the shoe industry. Matzeliger was born in Paramaribo (then Dutch Guyana, now Suriname).

When young, slim, rather handsome Jan Ernst Mazeliger arrived in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1876, he could barely speak a word of English. No one knew him; he was poor friendless, having been for two years a sailor. When he died thirteen years later, his name was not only known in Massachusetts, but wherever shoemakers gathered. During the years left to him, he laid the foundation of the shoe industry in the United States and made Lynn, Massachusetts the shoe capital of the world. Before Matzeliger, hundreds of inventors and thousands of dollars have been spent in an effort to make a complete shoe by machinery. Inventors such as Thompson, McKay and Copeland have developed crude shoe making machines but the final problem of shaping the upper leather over the last and attaching this leather to the bottom of the shoe stymied them. The "Hand-lasters," as they were called, performed this crucial and final step.

They were the aristocrats of the shoe industry and, in effect, had control of the shoe manufacturing industry. They were highly paid and tempermental but no matter how fast the other portions of the show were completed, they could turn out only forty to fifty pairs each per day.
Matzeliger heard of the problem. Already extremely competent with mechanical things, such a challenge suited him perfectly. As he worked in shoe factories around Lynn and Boston, he heard it said many times that it was impossible to last shoes by machines; the job simply could not be done. In secret he started experimenting, first with a crude wooden machine, then with a model made out of scrap iron. For ten years he worked, steadily and patiently, with no encouragement. Indeed, when the news of his tinkering finally reached the public, there were jeers of derision. Metzeliger only smiled and continued working.
Meanwhile, after being denied membership in several churches, he finally joined a young adult group which made his days less lonely. Little did he hear of his Dutch father or Surinamese mother in his native Dutch Guiana. There is no record of his courting or marrying. Yet when he was working on his invention, acquaintances and friends would drop in to chat and perhaps smile condescendingly.

Finally in 1882, Metzeliger felt he had perfected his machine to solve the impossible problem. When he applied for a patent and sent his diagrams to Washington, patent reviewers could not even understand them. They were so complicated that a man was dispatched from Washington to Lynn, Massachusetts to see the model itself. On March 20, 1883, patent number 274,207 was granted to Jan E. Matzeliger. Matzeliger's machine was able to turn out from 150 to 700 pairs of shoes a day versus an expert hand lasters fifty.
By 1889 the demand of the shoe lasting machine was overwhelming. A company was formed, The Consolidated Lasting

Machine Company, where Matzelinger was given huge blocks of stock for his invention. His machine had revolutionized the entire shoe industry in the U.S . and around the world.
Unfortunately, Jan Matzelinger didn't live to see the fruits of his labor. Because he had sacrificed his health working exhausting hours on his invention and not eating over long periods of time, he caught a cold which quickly developed into tuberculosis. He died at age 37 on August 24, 1887.
Jan Ernst Matzeliger's invention was perhaps "the most important invention for New England." His invention was "the greatest forward step in the shoe industry," according to the church bulletin of The First Church of Christ (the same church that took him as a member) as part of a commemoration held in 1967 in his honor. Yet, because of the color of his skin, he was not mentioned in the history books until recently.
Be sure to read about how other African-American inventors helped shape our history and make our world what it is today.


Info taken from wikipedia & Inventions.org

 

Sean Paul

Sean Paul was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and spent his early years "comfortably"[1] in Upper Saint Andrew Parish, a few miles north of his birthplace. His parents were both talented athletes, and his mother Frances is a well-known painter.[2] His father Garth is a Sephardic Jew[3] of Portuguese descent, and his mother is of Afro-Caribbean and Chinese Caribbean descent; both were born in Jamaica. Many members of Sean Paul's family are swimmers.[4] His grandfather was on the first Jamaican men's national water polo team.[5] His father also played water polo for the team in the 1960s, and competed in long-distance swimming, while Sean Paul's mother was a backstroke swimmer.[4][4] However, he gave up the sport in order to launch his musical career. He attended the Wolmers Trust High School for Boys, where he was trained as a classical flautist, Belair High School and the College of Arts, Science, and Technology (CAST) which is now known as the University of Technology (UTech).

Sean Paul played for the national water polo team from the age of thirteen to twenty-one.Dancehall music was Sean Paul's first love, and he became proficient at crafting rhythm tracks. He became a deejay after writing his own songs, basing his style largely on the works of Super Cat and Don Yute. The latter was later to become his idol and mentor. Sean Paul was closely connected to the reggae-pop band Third World. His brother, Jason "Jigzagula" Henriques, and his best friend Zameer Masjedee helped him open up business connections. In 1996, Sean Paul released his debut single "Baby Girl (Don't Cry)" with producer Jeremy Harding.It proved a significant success, and led to further Jamaican hits like "Nah Get No Bly (One More Try)", "Deport Them", "Excite Me", "Infiltrate", and "Strategy".


In 1999, Sean Paul started to attract audiences in the United States. He was commissioned to collaborate with fellow dancehall hitmaker Mr. Vegas on a production for rapper DMX, entitled "Top Shotter". The song went on to be included in the film Belly (directed by Hype Williams). Paul also recorded the Jamaican chart-topper "Ladies Man" with rapper Spanner Banner, through the latter's label, Sweet Angel Productions. The success of "Ladies Man" resulted in Sean Paul being approached by the then little-known Harding, who burst on the scene with his production of Beenie Man's crossover hit "Who Am I" and most famously recorded "Baby Girl (Don't Cry)" with Sean Paul. The following single, "Infiltrate", joined the singer's combination hit in the Jamaican top charts. Also that year, Paul scored a top ten hit on the Billboard Rap chart with "Hot Gal Today", which quickly became his signature tune. Sean Paul fell out very publicly with Mr. Vegas over the packaging of Vegas' remix of "Hot Gal Today", but this did not slow Sean Paul's career momentum.


In March 2000, Paul released his first album, Stage One, on VP Records, which included many of his previous hit singles and compilation cuts, plus several new tracks. He played the Summer Jam 2000 in New York City, where he was held in high acclaim. Sean Paul's fanbase grew tremendously with fans from all over the world. In 2001, Sean Paul appeared on Canadian rapper Kardinal Offishall's Quest for Fire: Firestarter, Vol. 1 on a single called "Money Jane", which was released in Canada the previous year and featured Jully Black. The video for "Money Jane" won Best Rap Video at the 2001 MuchMusic Video Awards, and the song was nominated for Best Rap Recording at the 2001 Juno Awards.


Info taken from wikipedia

 

That was a good read Malik

 

Malik, I designate you as the official historian of this site. Where do you get such outstanding research material?

 

A lot of places, I just decided to contribute, the person who started it had me fascinated with their contributions....


EDIT
Jan Ernst Matzeliger
Matzeliger was born in Paramaribo (then Dutch Guyana, now Suriname). His father was a Dutch engineer and his mother black Surinamese slave.



EDIT
Sean Paul

 

Shirley Bassey



Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey DBE (born 8 January 1937, Cardiff, Wales) is a British singer. She performed the theme songs to the James Bond films Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and Moonraker (1979). She is the only singer to have recorded more than one James Bond theme song.[1] Bassey is an international artist who has accumulated 20 silver discs for sales in Britain, Europe and the Middle East; fifty-plus gold discs for international record sales; and countless greatest hits compilation albums including one gold and two platinum.[citation needed]


Bassey was born on 8 January 1937 at 182 Bute Street, Tiger Bay, Cardiff, to an Efik Nigerian sailor father and a mother from Yorkshire, who divorced when she was three.[2] She grew up in the working-class dockside district of Tiger Bay as the youngest of seven children. After leaving Moorland School at the age of fifteen, Bassey first found employment packing at a local factory while singing in local pubs and clubs in the evenings and weekends. In 1953, she signed up for the revue Memories of Jolson, a musical based on the life of Al Jolson. She next took up a professional engagement in Hot from Harlem, which ran until 1954. By this time Bassey had become disenchanted with show business, and had become pregnant at 16 with her daughter Sharon, so she went back to waitressing in Cardiff.



However, in 1955, a chance recommendation of her to Michael Sullivan, a Streatham-born booking agent, put her firmly on course for her destined career. He saw talent in Bassey, and decided he would make her a star. She toured various theatres until she got an offer of the show that put her firmly on the road to stardom, Al Read's Such Is Life at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End. While she starred in this show, Philips A&R and record producer Johnny Franz spotted her on television, was impressed, and offered her a record deal. Bassey recorded her first single, entitled "Burn My Candle", and Philips released it in February 1956, when Bassey was just nineteen. Owing to the suggestive lyrics, the BBC banned it, but it sold well nonetheless, backed with her powerful rendition of "Stormy Weather". Further singles followed, and in February 1957, Bassey had her first hit with "Banana Boat Song", which reached number eight on the UK Singles Chart. During that year, she also recorded under the direction of U.S. producer Mitch Miller in America for the Columbia label, producing the single "If I Had a Needle and Thread" b/w "Tonight My Heart She Is Crying". In mid-1958, she recorded two singles that would become classics in the Bassey catalogue: "As I Love You" appeared as a B-side to another ballad, "Hands Across the Sea". It did not sell well at first, but after a chance appearance at the London Palladium things began to pick up. In February 1959, it reached number one and stayed there for four weeks. Bassey also recorded "Kiss Me, Honey Honey, Kiss Me" at this point, and while "As I Love You" raced up the charts, so too did this record, with both songs being in the top three at the same time. A few months later, Bassey signed to EMI Columbia, and the second phase in her recording career had begun.

Throughout the 1960s, Bassey had numerous hits on the UK charts. Her recording of "As Long As He Needs Me" from Lionel Bart's Oliver! reached number two, and had a chart run of 30 weeks. In 1962, Bassey's collaboration with Nelson Riddle and his orchestra produced the album Let's Face the Music (#12) and the single "What Now My Love" (#5). Other top ten hits of the period included the number one double A-side "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" / "Reach for the Stars" in 1961, "I'll Get By" (also 1961) and "I (Who Have Nothing)" in 1963. During this period, John F. Kennedy invited Bassey to sing at his Inauguration Ball.

In 1965, Bassey enjoyed her first U.S. Top 10 chart hit with the title song of the James Bond film, Goldfinger - from the number one original soundtrack in the U.S. of that year. Owing to the success of Goldfinger, she appeared frequently on many American television talk shows such as those hosted by Johnny Carson and by Mike Douglas. In the same year, she sang the title track for the spoof James Bond film The Liquidator. In 1968, Bassey performed her song "This Is My Life" at the San Remo Festival in Italy and a version of the song with chorus sung in Italian became a Top 10 hit on the Italian chart. Bassey lived as a tax exile for two years in Switzerland from 1968 to 1970. By this time, Bassey had seen a dip in popularity in the UK, with her last Top 10 hit being as far back as 1963 and her albums were failing to chart.

Info taken from Wiki...

 

Good read

 

I wonder how the song sounds like, maybe I heard it.

 

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback
a.k.a PBS Pinchback



Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was the first African American to become Governor of a U.S.state. He was also the first non-white Governor of Louisiana. Pinchback, a Republican, served as the Governor of Louisiana for thirty-five days, from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.
Nicholas Lemann, in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, described Pinchback as "an outsized figure: newspaper publisher, gambler, orator, speculator, dandy, mountebank – served for a few months as the state's Governor and claimed seats in both houses of Congress following disputed elections but could not persuade the members of either to seat him

Pinchback was born in Macon, Georgia (Bibb County), to a whitebiracial former slave, Eliza Stewart. He described himself as a "quadroon". At the time the family was on its way to begin a new life in Mississippi, where the senior Pinchback had purchased a new, much larger plantation. As a youngster, Pinchback lived in relatively affluent surroundings, and his parents even sent him north to Cincinnati to attend high school. In 1848 his father died, and to add to the grief of his wife and five children, the paternal relatives were vengeful.

They disinherited Pinchback's mother and her children. To evade the possibility that the northern Pinchbacks would legally appropriate the children as slave property, Pinchback's mother fled with all five to Cincinnati. P. B. S. Pinchback worked for many years on the boats that plied the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Some were notorious dens of gambling, and it was on such a vessel that Pinchback encountered a posse of white gamblers who took him on as their personal assistant. He soon became an experienced swindler himself in three-card monte and chuck-a-luck, but to avoid great repercussions, his victims were only his fellow African American coworkers on the boat.

In 1860, when Pinchback was 23, he married Nina Hawthorne, a 16-year-old from Memphis. When the Civil War broke out the following year, Pinchback hoped to fight on the side of the Union troops against the South. The main issue in the conflict between North and South was slavery, and Pinchback's heritage gave him an insight into the status of both blacks and whites in the country. In 1862 he furtively made his way into New Orleans, which was then under occupation by Northern troops. There he raised several companies of the Corps d'Afrique, part of the Louisiana National Guard, and was the military body's only officer of African American descent.

In 1863, passed over twice for promotion and tired of the prejudice he encountered at every turn, Pinchback resigned from the Guard. When the war ended and the slaves were emancipated, he and his wife moved to Alabama, eager to test out their new freedom as full citizens. However, racial tensions in their new surroundings were reaching shocking levels of viciousness. Occupying Union forces shared equally prejudiced views as those of their former Confederate enemies, and would sometimes don the Confederate uniform at night and terrorize the newly freed African Americans. The movements of African Americans were also restricted by the so-called "black codes" across the South, and it became obvious that white Southern politicians were going to do everything possible to prevent them from gaining any political power. Pinchback's political career was born out of this hostile climate. He began speaking out at public meetings and soon became a well-known orator who urged the former slaves to organize politically.

Pinchback eventually returned to New Orleans with his family. Now a committed Republican--the party of Abraham Lincoln originally established to oppose slavery--he was elected a delegate to the Republican State Convention and even spoke before the assembly. His orations helped win him election to the party's Central Executive Committee. During the Constitutional Convention of 1867-68, Pinchback accepted the candidacy for a state senator on the Republican ticket. He campaigned vigorously for both himself as well as his close political ally, Henry Clay Warmoth, another radical Republican and Pinchback's mentor. When Pinchback narrowly lost his bid for the state senate seat, he charged voting fraud. The newly convened legislature agreed and allowed him to take his oath of office.

Although he was not elected by popular vote, P. B. S. Pinchback advanced to the governor's office in Louisiana when political turmoil reached a crisis point. For much of his life Pinchback found himself in unique circumstances because he was of mixed heritage. On one hand, he was able to achieve some of the education, business opportunities, and material comforts normally available only to whites of the day. However, he was also the victim of discrimination as well. When asked once of which heritage he drew upon as a source of pride, Pinchback replied, "I don't think the question is a legitimate one, as I have no control over the matter. A man's pride I regard as born of his associations, and mine is, perhaps, no exception to the rule."

In 1885, nearing 50 years old, Pinchback took up the study of law at Straight University and was a member of its first graduating class. In the early 1890s Pinchback and his family moved to New York City, where he served as a U.S. marshal, but later they settled in Washington, D.C. Sadly, the achievements he had worked toward--mainly the political enfranchisement of African Americans--were by then legally and illegally reversed. With the reassertion of state legislative control by Southern Democrats and the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Plessy vs. Ferguson permitting "separate but equal" public facilities, white power was again firmly entrenched in the South. The number of registered black voters in Louisiana was one indication: it fell from 130,000 in 1896 to 1,300 in just eight years.

Pinchback died in December of 1921 and was buried in the Metairie Ridge cemetery of New Orleans. In an eightieth birthday party a few years earlier, the poet Bruce Grit had celebrated Pinchback's Reconstruction era achievements, when he and other African Americans obtained a fair measure of political power. "The equality we seek is not to come to us by gift, but by struggle, not physical but intellectual," declared Grit. "In this struggle we should be as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. The civic and political experiences of Governor Pinchback should serve as a guide to our young men in the future and help them to break down the barriers which were set up by designing white men of his own political faith.... He is one among the last of the old guard and he has fought a good fight."

Info taken from Africanamericans.com & Wiki

 

Marie Laveau


(Inspired photo of Marie Laveau)

The story of Marie Laveau concerns two women who extended one life.
The most famous voodoo queen in North America who were actually two persons—mother and daughter. They epitomized the sensational appeal of Vodounism New Orleans during the 19th and 20th centuries. They taught and used the religion’s magical powers to control one’s lovers, acquaintances, enemies, and sex.
Marie Laveau I, the mother, supposedly was born in New Orleans in 1794 and was considered a free woman of color. Being a mulatto, she was of mixed black, white and Indian blood. Sometimes she was described as a descendant of French aristocracy or a daughter of a wealthy white planter.



Her marriage to Jacques Paris, a free man of color from Saint Dominque (Haiti), is recorded as occurring on August 4, 1819; the records also indicates the Marie Laveau was an illegitimate daughter of Charles Laveau and Marguerite Darcantrel. Marie was described as tall and statuesque, with curly black hair, reddish skin and "good" features (then meaning more white than Negroid). She and Paris lived in a house, supposedly part of her dowry from Charles Laveau, in the 1900 block on North Rampart Street.


Paris, being a quadroon—three fourths white, disappeared soon after the marriage. Perhaps he returned to Saint Dominique, but his death certificate was filed five years later without any certificate of interment. Then Marie began addressing herself as the Widow Paris and took up employment as a hairdresser catering to the wealthy white and Creole women of New Orleans. This was the beginning of her later powers as Voodooienne. For the women confessed to Marie their most intimate secrets and fears about their husbands, their lovers, their estates, their husbands’ mistresses, their business affairs, and their fears of insanity and of anyone discovering a trace of Negro blood in their ancestry.


In about 1826, Marie took up with Louis Christopher Duminy de Clapion, another quadroon from Saint Dominique. They lived in the North Rampart Street house until his death in 1855 (some claim 1835). Although they never married, he and Marie had 15 children in rapid succession. She stopped her hairdressing career to devote all her energies to becoming the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.
Voodoo had been secretly practiced by blacks around New Orleans since the first boat load of slaves. New Orleans was more French-Spanish than English-American, and the slaves had came from the same parts of Africa that had sent blacks to work the French and Spanish plantations in the Caribbean.



fter the blacks had won their independence in Haiti in 1803-1804, the Creole planters brought their slaves with them to friendlier shores of southern Louisiana, from Saint Dominique and other West Indian islands. The slaves were avid practitioners of the ancient religion, and it grew rapidly.Quickly tales circulated of hidden and secret rituals being held deep in the bayous, complete with the worship of a snake called Zombi, and orgiastic dancing, drinking, and lovemaking. Almost a third of the worshippers were white, desirous of obtaining the "power" to regain a lost lover, to take a new lover, to eliminate a business partner, or to destroy an enemy. These frequent meetings frightened the white masters into fear the blacks were planning an uprising against them. In 1817 the New Orleans Municipal Council passed a resolution forbidding blacks to gather for dancing or any other purpose except on Sundays, and only in places designated by the mayor. "The accepted spot was Congo Square on North Rampart Street, now located in Armstrong Park, named after Louis Armstrong. Blacks, most of them voodooists, met danced and sang overtly worshipping their gods while seemingly entertaining the whites with their African "gibberish".


By the 1830s there were many voodoo queens in New Orleans, fighting over control of the Sunday Congo dances and the secret ceremonies out at Lake Pontchartrain. But when "Mamzelle" Marie Laveau decided to become queen, contemporaries reported the other queens faded before her, some by crumbling to her powerful gris-gris, and some being driven away by brute force. Marie was always a devote Catholic and added influences of Catholicism--holy water, incense, statues of the saints, and Christian prayers--to the already sensational ceremonies of voodooism.


Marie knew the sensation that the rituals at the lake were causing and used it to further the purposes of the voodoo movement in New Orleans. She invited the public, press, police, the New Orleans roués, and others thrill-seekers of the forbidden fun to attend. Charging admission made voodoo profitable for the first time. Her entrepreneurial efforts went even further by organizing secret orgies for wealthy white men seeking beautiful black, mulatto and quadroon women for mistresses. Marie presided over these meetings herself. These alleged secret meetings enviably became public. Marie also gained control of the Congo Square Dances by entering before the other dancers and entertaining the fascinated onlookers with her snake.


Eventually, Marie Laveau, with all of the secret knowledge which she had gained from the Creole boudoirs combined with her own considerable knowledge of spells along with her flair, became the most powerful woman in New Orleans. Whites of every class sought her help in their various affairs and amours while blacks saw her as their leader. Judges paid her as much as $1000 to win an election, other whites paid $10 for an insignificant love powder. She freely helped most blacks. To visit her for a reading became fashionable.


Almost every New Orleaniian had a story to tell about Marie Laveau by the beginning of World War II. Some of the stories concerned the mother while others concerned the daughter who strikingly resembled her mother and continued the dynasty. While most of the tales are exaggerated, some are more reliable, particularly those in Voodoo In New Orleans by Robert Tallant, and Mysterious Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen by Raymond J. Martinez.
At the age of 70, in 1869, Marie gave her last performance as a voodoo queen. She announced she was retiring. She went to her Saint Ann Street home, but she never completely retired. She continued her prison work until 1875, and died in 1891. Then a similar tall woman with flashing black eyes, with the ability to control lives, emerged as Marie Laveau II.Marie Laveau Clapion was born February 2, 1827, one of the 15 children crowding the Saint Ann Street cottage. It was never known whether her mother, Marie I, chose the role for her daughter, or whether



Marie II chose the role to follow in her mother’s footsteps for herself. By some accounts she shared her mother’s features. Others say the pupils of her eyes were half-moon shaped. Apparently she lack the warmth and compassion of her mother because she inspired more fear and subservience than her mother did. Likewise, she began as a hairdresser, eventually ran a bar and brothel on Bourbon Street between Toulouse and Saint Peter Streets.


(To be continued in the next post)

 

Marie Laveau



(Continued)

Marie continued operations at the "Maison Blanche" (White House), the house which her mother had built for secret voodoo meetings and liaisons between white men and black women. Marie II was proclaimed to be a talented procuress, able to fulfill any man’s desires for a price. Lavish parties were held at the Maison Blanche offered champagne, fine food, wine, music, and naked black girls dancing for white men, politicians, and high officials. They were never raided by the police who feared that if the crossed Marie she might "hoodoo" them.
June 23rd, the Eve of Saint John’s Day was one of the most important days in the New Orleans’ voodoo calendar. All the faithful celebrated out at Saint John Bayou. Saint John’s Day (for John the Baptist) corresponds to the summer solstice (see Sabbats) which has been celebrated since ancient times. But by the time Marie II arrived she had celebrated more than once.


The Saint John's Day celebration of 1872 began as a religious ceremony. Marie came with a crowd singing. Soon a cauldron was boiling with water from a beer barrel, into which went salt, black pepper, a black cat, a black rooster, a various powders, and a snake sliced in three pieces representing the Trinity. With all this boiling the practitioners ate, whether the contents of the cauldron or not is not known. Afterwards or during the feast was more singing, appropriately "Mamzelle Marie." Then it was cooling off time at which all stripped and swam in the lake. This was followed by a sermon by Marie, then a half hour of relaxation, or sexual intercourse. Then four naked girls put the contents of the cauldron back into the beer barrel. Marie gave another sermon, by this time it was becoming daylight and all headed for home.


On June 16, 1881, Marie I, as Widow Paris, died in her Saint Ann Street house. The reporters painted her in the most glorious terms, a saintly figure of 98 (actually 87), who nursed the sick, and prayed incessantly with the diseased and condemned. Reporters called her the recipient "in the fullest degree" of the "heredity gift of beauty" in the Laveau family, who gained the notice of Governor Claiborne, French General Humbert, Aaron Burr, and even the Marquis de Lafayette. Her obituaries claimed she lived a pious life surrounded by her Catholic religion, with no mention of her voodoo past. Even one of her surviving children, Madame Legendre, claimed her saintly mother never practiced voodoo and despised the cult.

Strangely, Marie II "died" in the public eye with Marie I seeming to pass into obscurity. Since the public had made no distinction between mother and daughter, the death of one ended the career of the other. Marie II still reigned over the voodoo ceremonies of the blacks and ran the Maison Blanche, but she never regained high notice in the press. Supposedly she drowned in a big storm in Lake Pontchartrain in the 1890s, but some people claimed to have seen her as late as 1918.
Death did not end the power of Marie Laveau, however. Though reportedly buried in a vault in the family crypt in St. Louis Cemetery, no. 1. The vault bears the name of Marie Philome Clapion, deceased June 11, 1897. But this vault still attracts faithful practitioners who still leave gifts of food, money, and flowers, and ask for Marie's help after turning around three times and making a cross with red brick on the stone. The cemetery is small but the tomb seems to come out of nowhere when walking among the other crypts.

In the St. Louis Cemetery, no 2, there is another vault bearing the name of Marie Laveau. This vault has red crosses on it and is called the "wishing vault." Young women often come to it to petition when seeking husbands. Stories have it Marie rests in various cemeteries in the city. Legend also tells she frequently visits the cemeteries, as well as the French Quarter, and her voodoo haunts...

Info taken from the mystica.com

 

Brooklyn Sudano



Brooklyn Sudano is an ingénue with the beauty, pedigree and versatility which makes her one of Hollywood’s emerging stars to be reckoned with. Born in Los Angeles, she’s the daughter of disco diva Donna Summer and singer/songwriter Bruce Sudano (Italian).

She and her two sisters were raised by her protective parents far from the public eye. While Brooklyn was in her early teens, the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where she began to blossom creatively singing in a gospel choir, writing songs and appearing in all of her high school’s theater productions.

During the summer, she and her sisters would tour with their mother, performing as backup singers, dancing in stage productions, even doing some duets, often in some of the world’s largest venues. Not one to worry about getting her hands dirty, Brooklyn willingly pitched in to help with the crew behind-the-scenes before and after shows.

But in the Fall, she always turned her attention back to academics, excelling to the point where she was valedictorian of her graduating class. Though she was accepted to Brown, Duke and Georgetown Universities, in the end she decided to stay close to home and attended nearby Vanderbilt University, for what turned out to be a short stay.

Her passion for performing led her to the famed Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in New York, to study a full curriculum of method acting, dance, musical production, movement, stage, film and television. While in that program, Brooklyn was spotted by a booker from Ford Modeling Agency, who signed her on the spot.

She immediately landed major print ad campaigns and TV commercials for Clairol, Burger King, K-Mart and Clean & Clear. And she later made her television debut as Vanessa on ABC-TV’s hit show My Wife and Kids.

 

Wentworth Miller



Wentworth Earl Miller III (born 2 June 1972) is a Golden Globe-nominated British-born American actor who rose to stardom following his role as Michael Scofield in the Fox Network television series Prison Break.

Early life

Miller was born in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England; the son of Roxann, a special education teacher, and Wentworth Earl Miller II, a lawyer and teacher. [1] Miller's father, a Rhodes Scholar, was studying at Oxford at the time of Miller's birth. Miller has stated that his father is of African-American, Jamaican, English, German, and Jewish descent; his mother is of Russian, Dutch, French, Syrian, and Lebanese ancestry.[2][3][4]
His family moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York, when he was one. He retains dual citizenship.[5] He has two sisters, Leigh and Gillian. Miller attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was a member of SING!, an annual musical production that was started by Midwood. He graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in English Literature. While at Princeton, he performed with the a cappella group the Princeton Tigertones.

Career

In 1995, he went to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.[6]
Miller's first starring role was as the sensitive and introverted David in ABC's mini-series Dinotopia. After appearing in a few minor television roles, he moved on to co-star in the 2003 film The Human Stain, playing the younger version of the Anthony Hopkins character, Coleman Silk. Miller's first TV appearance was as student-turned-sea monster Gage Petronzi on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.


In 2005, Miller was cast as Michael Scofield in Fox Network's televisionPrison Break. He plays the role of a caring brother who created an elaborate scheme to help his brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) escape death row after being found guilty of a crime he did not commit. His performance in the show earned him a 2005 Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series.[7] drama
Miller appeared in two Mariah Carey music videos, "It's Like That" and "We Belong Together" as a party guest. Director Brett Ratner, who directed the pilot episode of Prison Break, was signed on to also direct the two Carey videos. Ratner brought up the idea to Carey about using Miller in the videos. After showing her Miller's picture, she agreed to use him.



Since both the videos and the pilot episode of Prison Break were being filmed at the same time, a special set was constructed on the set of the videos, so that Miller would be able to work simultaneously on both projects. He says, "Mariah's an international icon. The two days I spent working on her video did more for my career, gave me more exposure, than anything I'd done before Prison Break. I'm grateful for the opportunity...

Taken from wiki

 

More proof that at some point in time (hell even maybe today), that America is behind other countries, with respect to IR acceptance.

This reminds me of that movie, where black sailors go to Ireland during WW2, and are treated just like everyone else, instead of being relegated to second class status based on color, like they would have been in Amerikkka.

 

cosign.

 

James Augustine Healy



James Augustine Healy (April 6, 1830 - August 5, 1900) was the first African-American Roman Catholic Bishop in the United States. Father Healy was the eldest of 10 siblings born near Macon, Georgia in 1839 [1] to an Irish immigrant plantation owner and his wife, an African American former slave.

James was educated in northern schools and later attended the newly established Holy Cross College. There he made his decision to enter the priesthood. He furthered his studies in Montreal and Paris where he was ordained in 1854 at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
After ordination Father Healy was assigned to Bishop John Fitzpatrick's Boston Diocese. He remained there serving first at the House of the Angel Guardian, then as Chancellor of the Diocese and finally as pastor of St. James Church. When his appointment came as the second Bishop of Portland, he was forty-five years old.


As a pastor in Massachusetts, Bishop Healy had already proved himself an accomplished civil rights advocate for those who were unable to speak for themselves. Now as the new spiritual leader of Maine and New Hampshire, he had special qualifications that made him an ideal choice. On a personal level, he was half-Irish which bonded him with parishioners on Munjoy Hill, many of whom were newly arrived from Ireland. He spoke fluent French; that endeared him to the Acadians of northern Maine.
During Bishop Healy's years in Portland, his Cathedral was still a new church, requiring little renovation. This left him time for not only social justice projects but many other endeavors. The building of the new St. Dominic's Church, the enlarging of Calvary Cemetery, the establishment of the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul for the care of the poor, the purchase of land on Little Diamond Island for the orphans' use in summer, the opening of St. Joseph's Chapel in Deering, and the establishment of Sacred Heart parish are only a few of Bishop Healy's accomplishments during his tenure.

For 25 years, he governed his large diocese, supervising also the founding of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, when it was cut off from Portland in 1885. During his time in Maine Healy oversaw the establishment 60 new churches, 68 missions, 18 convents and 18 schools. [7] Although acutely aware of racism Healy turned down several opportunities to condemn it on a public stage, he refused to participate in organizations that were specifically African-American. He declined to speak at the Congress of Colored Catholics in 1889, 1890, and 1892.

The Archdiocese of Boston, Office for Black Catholics awards the Bishop James Augustine Healy Award to dedicated Black parishioners. In 1975, a bronze plaque was dedicated in Jones County, Georgia, commemorating the Georgia-born Bishop. The plaque was a gift from Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan of Atlanta and Bishop Raymond Lessard of Savannah

On June 29, 1900, Bishop Healy celebrated his Silver Jubilee. Scarcely a month later, on August 5, 1900, Bishop James Healy died. His funeral took place at the Cathedral on August 9th. As he requested, burial was at Calvary Cemetery. A Celtic cross marks his grave.



Info Taken from Wiki & The Portland Roman Catholic Diocese

 

PJ I had mentioned that movie on a past thread.