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

Found the site: http://www.proudthemovie.com

 

Alicia Keys



The Alicia Keys born Alicia Augello Cookthat we love and adore today was born Alicia J. Augello-Cook on January 25, 1981 in New York City, New York. Keys’ mother Teresa Augello who is of Irish and Italian heritage worked as a paralegal and an actress. While, Keys’ father Craig Cook, who is of Jamaican descent, was a flight attendant. Keys’ parents separated when she was just two years old.


Teresa Augello raised Alicia on her own in New York City’s infamous Hell’s Kitchen; an area of New York City with a rough and gritty reputation. Keys would pick up the piano at a young age. She started her classical training at the age of seven studying the works of Chopin, Mozart, and Beethoven.


After only 3 years of high school, Keys graduated from the Professional Performing Arts School at the age of 16. Keys was nominated as Valedictorian of her graduating class.


Following high school, Keys made the decision to drop out of Columbia University to pursue her dream of a career in music. Initially, Alicia originally chose “Wild” as her stage name, but changed it to “Keys” at the suggestion of her manager Jeff Robinson.


Things looked bright for Keys when she landed a demo deal with Columbia Records. Working under Columbia Records, Keys made an appearance on the Men in Black soundtrack in 1997 with the single “Dah Dee Dah (Sexy Thing).” At Columbia, creative differences with label executives left Alicia feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. As a result, Keys ended up leaving the company with the aid of Clive Davis who, at the time, was the front man for Arista Records. Davis had bought Keys out of her contract with Columbia.


Creative differences with label execs would continue to follow Keys at Arista Records. The Arista heads wanted Keys to follow in the footsteps of fellow Arista label mates Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey while Keys desired to be her own self. Fortunately, for Keys she would get her way after jumping ship to Clive Davis’ very own label J Records. Davis started J Records after leaving Arista Records over a disagreement with his former employer. With Keys in the driver seat and with complete creative control over her own music at J Records, Alicia would release two singles – 2000’s “Rock Wit U” on the Shaft soundtrack and “Rear View Mirror” on the Dr Dolittle 2 soundtrack in 2001 – before catapulting herself into the spotlight.

 

Samuel Coleridge Taylor



Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) was an English composer who achieved such success he was called the "African Mahler

Coleridge-Taylor was born in Holborn, London, to a Sierra Leonean Creole father, Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, and an English mother, Alice Hare Martin. They were not married. The father returned to Africa by February 1875. He was appointed coroner for the British Empire in the Gambia in the late 1890s but was unaware of his son's existence.
Coleridge-Taylor was brought up in Croydon by Martin and her father Benjamin Holmans, whose other son was a professional musician. He studied the violin at the Royal College of Music then composition under Charles Villiers Stanford who conducted the first performance of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, and he also taught and conducted the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire. In 1899 he married Jessie Walmisley, a fellow student of his at the RCM who left there in 1893, despite her parents' objection to his mixed race parentage. By her he had a son, Hiawatha (1900-1980) and a daughter, Avril, born Gwendolyn (1903-1998).

By 1896, Coleridge-Taylor had earned a reputation as a composer, later helped by Edward Elgar who recommended him to the Three Choirs Festival which premiered his Ballade in A Minor. His early work was also guided by the influential music editor and critic August Jaeger of music publisher Novello, who told Elgar that Coleridge (as his family called him) was "a genius." His successes brought him a tour of the United States in 1904, which in turn increased his interest in his racial heritage. He sought to do for African music what Johannes Brahms did for Hungarian music and Antonín Dvo?ák for Bohemian music. He had met the American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in London and set some of his poems to music, and was also encouraged by Dunbar and other black people to consider his ancestry and the music of the African continent.

Coleridge-Taylor was sometimes seen as shy, but effective in communicating when conducting. He was very kind. Composers were not handsomely paid for their efforts and often sold the rights to works outright, thereby missing out on royalties (a scheme which became widespread only in 1911) which went to publishers who always risked their investments. He was much sought after for adjudicating at festivals.Coleridge-Taylor was 37 when he died of pneumonia. His widow gave the impression that she was almost penniless but King George V granted her a pension of GB£100, evidence of the composer's high regard. A memorial concert was held later in 1912 at the Royal Albert Hall and gathered £300. His estate was thus worth approximately the price of three houses, and there were royalties from compositions (not Hiawatha which he had sold)

Coleridge-Taylor's work was later championed by Sir Malcolm Sargent who conducted ten seasons of a costumed ballet version of Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall between 1928 and 1939 with the Royal Choral Society (600 to 800 singers) and 200 dancers.Coleridge-Taylor's greatest success was perhaps his cantata Hiawatha's Wedding-feast, which was widely performed by choral groups in England during Coleridge-Taylor's lifetime and into the present day, with a popularity rivalled only by chorus standards George Frideric Handel's Messiah and Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah. He followed this with several other pieces about Hiawatha: The Death of Minnehaha, Overture to The Song of Hiawatha and Hiawatha's Departure. The Hiawatha seasons at the Royal Albert Hall were conducted by Sargent and were tremendously popular, involving hundreds of choristers and scenery covering the organ loft. The concerts ended in 1939.He also completed an array of chamber music, anthems, and African Dances for violin, among other works. The Petite Suite de Concert is still regularly played. As well, he set to music one poem by his near-namesake, The Legend of Kubla Khan.

Coleridge-Taylor was greatly admired by African-Americans; in 1901, a 200-voice African-American chorus was founded in Washington, D.C., named the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society. He visited the USA three times receiving great acclaim and earned the title the African Mahler from the white orchestral musicians in New York in 1910.
Coleridge-Taylor composed a violin concerto for the American violinist Maud Powell, the American performance of which was subject to rewriting because the parts were lost - the legend says the RMS Titanic but they went on another ship. It has been recorded by Philippe Graffin and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Anthony Marwood and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins (on Hyperion Records) and Lorraine McAslan and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite (on Lyrita). The concerto was also performed at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre in the fall of 1998 by John McLaughlin Williams and William Thomas as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of the composition of Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast.

Info taken from Wiki

 

Steve and Christine Pan James

Steve James

February 19, 1952 - December 19, 1993

Introduction

Since the beginning of film, Black actors were often cast as sidekicks, buffoons, comic relief, the stooge and other negative stereotype that came along with it. Now, there has always been an exception to the rule, but for the most part, Black actors mainly had no choice but to play subservient and demeaning roles. Starting in the 1970s, there was a film movement in Hollywierd that gave Black actors a chance to play roles other than the buffoon or the mammy.

Black actors had the chance to be the hero. They had the chance to save the day, beat the bad guys, get the girls and be the last one standing. This was revolutionary because it was new and given the history of Blacks in America, it was a refreshing change to see one of us on the screen giving us a sense of pride. Now to be fair, many of those films were shoddily made hack jobs, but we were finally represented on film in a somewhat positive way (at that time).

Unfortunately, there were Black politicians and civil rights groups who classified these films as "Blaxploitation". Groups like the NAACP, CORE and PUSH complained about the negative stereotypes that some of these films heavily relied on. Thus the films stopped and Hollywierd went on its merry way. Because of these so-called Black leaders had made complaints and took action without offering any kind of alternative options, many Black actors were out of work. This greatly affected the image of the Black Action Hero...

Now on to Mr. James

In the Reagan 80s post-Blaxploitation, there was somewhat of a void in where there were few Blacks on the big screen. All there was were Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg and Lou Gossett Jr. Other than the few films of Fred Williamson, there was basically no one else to keep the image of the Black action hero alive...except for Steve James.

As a youngster, Steve loved watching The Green Hornet on television and Bruce Lee became an idol of his. This would lead him to study Taekwondo and Southern Tiger Claw kung fu, which would also lead to him being an avid fan of Asian (and Jackie Chan) appreciating them as an art form.

He was often cast in action movies as the hero's sidekick, despite usually being a better actor and fighter than the star. James was raised in New York City, attended C.W. Post College as an Arts and Film major, and upon graduating, became involved in stage work and TV commercials. He started in film as a stuntman, working in such New York productions as The Wiz, The Warriors, and The Wanderers. His first major film role was as Robert Ginty's sidekick in The Exterminator; he later played sidekick to such stars as Michael Dudikoff (3 times), David Carradine, and Chuck Norris. He also portrayed Kung Fu Joe in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.
When it came to fight choreography, many stuntmen and cinematic opponents couldn't keep up with him because he tried to get them to understand Asian-style choreography.

Although, he was usually cast as the sidekick, he gave good performances in Street Hunter and Riverbend. He also had an impressive body of work in non-action films as well. As his career progressed, so would his roles as he would establish himself as a solid performer.

His last film was the pilot for the TV series "Mantis". It aired on the Fox network just a few weeks after his death at age 41 of pancreatic cancer.
Eulogies at James' funeral service were delivered by Sidney Poitier and director-writer S.C. Dacy.His death was made more tragic as he was often cast in inferior films, but was about to show the world what Steve James was all about. He never got to fully demonstrate his acting or martial arts skills.

 

Vincent Ogé




Jacques Vincent Ogé (c.1755 - 1791) was a wealthy free man of color and the instigator of a revolt against white colonial authority in French Saint-Domingue that lasted from October to December 1790 in the area outside Cap-Français, the colony's main city. The Ogé revolt of 1790 foretold the massive slave uprising of August 1791 that began the Haïtian Revolution.


Ogé was a wealthy and educated free man of colour born in Saint-Domingue, probably of one-quarter African descent and three-quarters French ancestry. He was the son of a wealthy white man, a butcher, and a mother who owned a coffee plantation. Ogé owned valuable urban property in the major colonial city of Cap Français (today's Cap Haitien), where he traded coffee and imported French products to the colony.


In 1789 he was in Paris on business when the French Revolution broke out. By August of that year he had approached a group of colonial planters living in Paris to propose changing racial laws in the colony that discriminated against light-skinned men regardless of their wealth and education. Independently Julien Raimond, from a similar background in Saint-Domingue, spoke to the group of planters about the same time. When the planters (called grands blancs) rebuffed their ideas, Ogé and Raimond began to attend meetings in Paris of a group of headed by Étienne Dejoly, a white lawyer. He was a member of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks (Société des Amis des Noirs), an anti-slavery society founded in 1788 in Paris by Jacques Pierre Brissot.


Together with Dejoly, Raimond and Ogé quickly became the leaders of this group. They began to pressure the French National Assembly to give them representation and to force the colonists to allow voting rights for wealthy free men of color. Like others of their class, both men owned slaves in Saint-Domingue, and they claimed they did not intend to weaken slavery. Instead, they said, making free men of color equal to whites in political rights would strengthen their devotion to France and make the system of slavery more secure.


In October 1790 Ogé returned to Saint-Domingue determined to obtain voting privileges for free men of color, whether by persuasion or for force. He believed that an amendment passed by the General Assembly of France in March of that year asserted the equality of free men of property. It read "all the proprietors... ought to be active citizens." Ogé believed this gave him the right to vote in upcoming colonial elections. He put pressure on the colonial governor and other authorities to guarantee the voting rights of wealthy free men of color; the colonial governor Count de Blanchelande refused. While free men of color had become educated and some were wealthy property owners, colonial laws excluded them from voting and holding office, and limited them in other ways.

With money Ogé obtained from the British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in London, he purchased firearms on a trip to New Orleans in the United States. On 23 October 1790, he returned to Saint-Domingue, landing with a force of 250 men. They landed near Le Cap to attempt a mulatto uprising. His men successfully defeated or frightened away several detachments of colonial militia sent out from Cap Français.


Ogé and his rebels were flushed out by a larger force of professional soldiers and forced across the border into the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. On 20 November 1790, Ogé and 23 of his associates, including Jean-Baptiste Chavannes, were captured in Hinche, then part of the Spanish controlled part of Hispaniola. They surrendered after receiving guarantees of safety, but the Spanish authorities nevertheless returned Ogé and his men to the colonial government of de Blanchelande in Le Cap.


Vincent Ogé was brutally tortured and killed on the rack in the public square in Le Cap on 6 February 1971. Dozens more of his men were severely punished in February 1791. Their treatment served only to heat up the already boiling cauldron of dissatisfaction among free men of color and slaves in the colony. Ogé became an important symbol of the injustices of a colonial slave society that wanted to restrict the benefits of the French Revolution to whites only.

Taken from Wiki

 

epic thread.

keep up the good work, guys.

 

Adrian Fenty



Adrian Malik Fenty (born December 6, 1970) is the sixth and current mayor of the District of Columbia, having begun his term of office on January 2, 2007.
Fenty is the youngest person ever to hold the office of District of Columbia Mayor, winning election at age 35 and entering office at 36.


Fenty was raised in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Mount Pleasant. He graduated from Woodrow Wilson Senior High School. As a teen he worked at Swensen's Ice Cream next to the Uptown Theatre.


Fenty's father Philip is of black Panamanian background and his mother Jan is of white Italian heriage. His older brother Shawn is a bicycle expert; Jess is his younger brother. Fenty's parents are both runners and they own Fleet Feet, an athletic shoe store in the D.C. neighborhood of Adams Morgan.Fenty stands 6'0" tallin size 11 1/2 shoes.
Fenty was educated at Oberlin College, earning a B.A. in English and Economics, and earned a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.
In 1997 Fenty and lawyer Michelle Cross eloped. Michelle is a global technology lawyer for the Perkins Firm. They have twin sons, Matthew and Andrew. The couple's third child, Aerin Alexandra Fenty, was born November 24, 2008.

Upon his inauguration as Mayor of Washington, Fenty surprised the city by announcing his plans to overhaul the city's ailing school system by bringing its administration directly under mayoral control — a policy that he had not mentioned during his mayoral campaign. However, the D.C. Council granted Fenty's request and he received new powers over the school system in June 2007. His selection of education reformer Michelle Rhee to manage District schools surprised the education establishment, and underscored his determination to set D.C.'s long-troubled system on a new path..


In-school education is not the only priority with Fenty, an advocate of Marion Barry's famous DC Summer Youth Job Program, which helps teens with part-time summer employment, often in agencies of the District Government. These jobs, according to Fenty, will inspire children in secondary education to seek higher goals, and to continue further their education, be it trade schools and/or major universities.
In March 2007, Fenty suffered a significant defeat by pro-gun groups in the D.C. case for gun control. The case was reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2008, and the D.C. gun ban was struck down as a violation of the Second Amendment...

Info taken from Wikipedia

 

Fantastic thread! Best one I've found on this awesome site. Keep it up, I'm simply fascinated by the stories here.

 

William Wells Brown



William Wells Brown (November 6, 1816 – November 6, 1884) was a prominent abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer. Brown was a pioneer in several different literary genres, including travel writing, fiction, and drama, and wrote what is considered to be the first novel by an African American.


William Wells Brown was born into slavery near Lexington, Kentucky. His mother, Elizabeth, was owned by Dr. Young and had seven children, all with different fathers (In addition to Brown, her children were Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Milford, and Elizabeth). Brown's father was George Higgins, a white plantation owner and cousin of the owner of the plantation where Brown was born. Even though Young promised Higgins never to sell the boy,[1] he was sold multiple times before he was twenty years old. Brown spent the majority of his youth in St. Louis. There his masters hired him out to work on the Missouri River, then a major thoroughfare for the slave trade. He made several attempts to escape, and on New Year's Day in 1834, he successfully slipped away from a steamboat at a dock in Cincinnati, Ohio. He adopted the name of a Quaker friend of his, who had helped him after his escape by providing him with food, clothes and some money. Shortly after gaining his freedom, he met and married Elizabeth Schooner, a free African-American woman. Together they had three daughters. From 1836 to about 1845, Brown made his home in Buffalo, New York, where he served as a conductor for the Underground Railroad and as a steam boatman on Lake Erie, a position he used to ferry escaped slaves to freedom in Canada.[2] There Brown became active in the abolitionist movement by joining several anti-slavery societies and the Negro Convention Movement.


Brown became further engaged in the abolitionist movement by delivering lectures in New York and Massachusetts. While his initial cause was prohibition, he soon focused on anti-slavery efforts. His speeches reveal his belief in the power of moral suasion and in the importance of nonviolence. He often attacked the supposed American ideal of democracy and the use of religion to promote submissiveness among slaves. Brown also constantly refuted the idea of black inferiority. Reaching beyond America’s borders, he traveled to Britain in the early 1850s and recruited supporters for the American abolitionist cause. An article in the Scotch Independent reported the following:

His involvement with abolitionism was not limited to lectures. In 1847, Brown published the Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, which became a bestseller second only to Frederick Douglass' narrative. In it, he critiques his master’s lack of Christian values and the brutal use of violence in master-slave relations. When Brown lived in Britain, he wrote more publications, including travel accounts and plays.
His first novel, entitled Clotel, or, The President’s Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, is credited as being the first novel written by an African American.[4] However, because the novel was published in England, the book was not the first African-American novel published in the United States. This credit goes to one of two disputed books: Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859), brought to light by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 1982; or Julia C. Collins' The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride (1865), brought to light by William L. Andrews, an English literature professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Mitch Kachun, a history professor at Western Michigan University, in 2006. Andrews and Kachun document Our Nig as a novelized autobiography, and argue that The Curse of Caste is the first fully fictional novel by an African-American to be published in the U.S.[5]
However, most scholars agree that Brown is the first published African-American playwright. Brown wrote two plays, The Experience; or, How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone (1856, unpublished and no longer extant) and The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (published 1856), which he read aloud at abolitionist meetings in lieu of the typical lecture.
Brown also wrote several historical works, including The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (1863), The Negro in the American Revolution (1867), The Rising Son (1873), and another volume of autobiography, My Southern Home (1880).


Brown stayed abroad until 1854. This was due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which meant that he wasn't free from being captured even in the free states. Only after British friends purchased his freedom in 1854, Brown returned to the United States and continued to deliver lectures.In a shift likely inspired by the increasingly dangerous environment for blacks in the 1850s,he became a proponent of African American Emigration to Haiti.
Like some other abolitionists,he also decided that more militant acts were necessary to gain progress in their cause. During the Civil War and in the decades that followed, Brown continued to publish fiction and non-fiction books, thereby securing his reputation as one of the most prolific African American writers of his time. He also played a more active role in Civil War. It was Wells who introduced Bermudian soldier Robert John Simmons to the abolitionist Frances George Shaw, father of Col.Robert Gould Shaw,the commanding officer of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
William Wells Brown died in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1884.


Info taken from Wiki

 

John James Audubon



John James Audubon (April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, hunter, and painter. He painted, catalogued, and described the birds of North America in a form far superior to what had gone before. In his outsize personality and achievements, he seemed to represent the new American nation of the United States.

Audubon was born in Les Cayes, Haiti (then the colony of Saint-Domingue)[1] on his father's sugar plantation. He was the illegitimate son of Lieutenant Jean Audubon, a French naval officer (and privateer), and his mistress Jeanne Rabin, a French/Spanish Creole from Louisiana. Audubon's mother died when the boy was just a toddler, perhaps in illness related to the birth of her daughter. During the American Revolution, his father Jean Audubon was imprisoned by the British. After his release, he helped the American cause.[2] A slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue in 1788 convinced Jean Audubon to sell his holdings and return to France with his three-year-old son and infant daughter.[3] Audubon was raised by his father and stepmother Anne Moynet Audubon in Nantes, France. His father had been married to Moynet before going to Saint-Domingue, but had acquired a mistress in the colony. Jean Audubon formally adopted the boy in March 1789, naming him Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon. When Audubon at age 18 boarded ship for immigration to the United States in 1803, he changed his name to an anglicized form: John James Audubon.[4]
From his earliest days, Audubon had an affinity for birds. "I felt an intimacy with them…bordering on frenzy must accompany my steps through life."[5] His father encouraged his interest in nature; "he would point out the elegant movement of the birds, and the beauty and softness of their plumage. He called my attention to their show of pleasure or sense of danger, their perfect forms and splendid attire. He would speak of their departure and return with the seasons."[6] In France during the chaotic years of the French Revolution and its aftermath, Audubon grew up to be a handsome and gregarious young man. He played flute and violin, and learned to ride, fence, and dance.[7] He was hearty and a great walker, and loved roaming in the woods, often returning with natural curiosities, including birds' eggs and nests, of which he made crude drawings.[8] His father planned to make a seaman of his son. At twelve, Audubon went to military school and became a cabin boy. He quickly found out that he was susceptible to seasickness and not fond of mathematics or navigation. After failing the officer's qualification test, Audubon ended his incipient naval career. He was cheerfully back on solid ground and exploring the fields again, focusing on birds.[9]

In 1803, his father obtained a false passport so that Audubon could go to the United States to avoid conscription in the Napoleonic Wars. Audubon caught yellow fever upon arrival in New York City. The ship's captain placed him in a boarding house run by Quaker women. They nursed Audubon to recovery and taught him English, including the Quaker form of using "thee" and "thou", otherwise then anachronistic. He traveled with the family's Quaker lawyer to the Audubon family farm Mill Grove, near Philadelphia.[10] The 284-acre (1.15 km2) homestead, bought with proceeds from the sale of his father's sugar plantation, is located on the Perkiomen Creek, just a few miles from Valley Forge. Audubon lived with the tenants in what he considered a paradise. "Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment; cares I knew not, and cared naught about them."[11] Studying his surroundings, Audubon quickly learned the ornithologist's rule, which he wrote, "The nature of the place—whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs—generally gives hint as to its inhabitants."[12] His father hoped that lead mines on the property could be commercially developed, as lead was an essential component of bullets. This could provide his son with a profitable occupation.[13] Audubon met his neighbor William Bakewell, the owner of the nearby estate "Fatland Ford", whose daughter Lucy he married five years later. The two young people shared many common interests, and early on began to spend time together, exploring the natural world around them.
Audubon set about to study American birds with the goal of illustrating his findings in a more realistic manner than most artists did then.[14] He began conducting the first known bird-banding on the continent: he tied yarn to the legs of Eastern Phoebes and determined that they returned to the same nesting spots year after year.[15] He also began drawing and painting birds, and recording their behavior. After an accidental fall into a creek, Audubon contracted a severe fever. He was nursed and recovered at Fatland Ford, with Lucy at his side. Risking conscription, Audubon returned to France in 1805 to see his father to ask permission to marry. He also needed to discuss family business plans. While there, he met naturalist and physician Charles-Marie D'Orbigny, who improved Audubon's taxidermy skills and taught him scientific methods of research.[16] Although on return, Audubon's ship was overtaken by an English privateer, Audubon and his hidden gold coins survived the encounter.[17]
Audubon resumed his bird studies and created his own nature museum, perhaps inspired by the great museum of natural history created by Charles Willson Peale in Philadelphia. Peale's bird exhibits were considered scientifically advanced. Audubon's room was brimming with birds' eggs, stuffed raccoons and opossums, fish, snakes, and other creatures. He had become proficient at specimen preparation and taxidermy.

The War of 1812 upset Audubon's plans to move his business to New Orleans. He formed a partnership with his brother-in-law and built up their trade in Henderson. Between 1812 and the Panic of 1819, times were good. Audubon bought land and slaves, founded a flour mill, and enjoyed his growing family. After 1819, Audubon went bankrupt and was thrown into jail for debt. The little money he did earn was from drawing portraits, particularly death-bed sketches, greatly esteemed by country folk before photography.[29] He wrote, "my heart was sorely heavy, for scarcely had I enough to keep my dear ones alive; and yet through these dark days I was being led to the development of the talents I loved.

Taken from Wiki

 

Faith Evans



aith Renée Evans (pronounced /fe?? ?v?ns/, born June 10, 1973) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, actress and author. Born in Coral Gables, Florida and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Evans moved to Los Angeles in 1993 for a career in music business. After working as a backing vocalist for Al B. Sure, she became the first female artist to be signed to Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs' Bad Boy Entertainment label in 1994, on which she released three platinum-certified studio albums between the years of 1995 and 2001.[1] In 2003, she left the label to sign with Capitol Records.[2] Next to her recording career, Evans is widely known as the widow of New York rapper Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace, whom she married in 1994 nine days after meeting at a photoshoot.[3] The turbulent marriage led to Evans' involvement in the East Coast-West Coast hip hop feud, dominating the rap scene at the time, and ended with Wallace's murder in a yet-unsolved drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in March 1997.[3] A 1997 tribute single featuring Puff Daddy and 112, entitled "I'll Be Missing You," became Evan's biggest-selling hit to date and won her a Grammy Award in 1998.[2]
Also an avocational actress and writer, Evans made her big screen debut in the 2000 musical drama Turn It Up by Robert Adetuyi. In 2003, she had a supporting role in the gospel comedy The Fighting Temptations alongside Cuba Gooding, Jr., in which she portrayed a struggling singer.[2] Her self-written autobiography Keep the Faith: A Memoir was released by Grand Central Publishing in 2008.


Evans was born in Coral Gables, Florida in June 1973 to an African-American mother, Helene Evans, a professional singer.[2] Her father, Richard Swain, was a musician of Italian-American heritage, who left the family before Evans was born.[4] A half year later, 19-year-old Helene returned to Newark, New Jersey and left Faith with her cousin Johnnie Mae and husband Orvelt Kennedy, the foster parents of more than 100 children they raised in the time that Faith lived with them.[3][2] It was not until a couple of years later, Helene's career floundered and she tried to take Evans back home. Faith, however, was scared to leave what she'd "been used to," and instead, Helene moved in next door.[2]
Raised in a Christian home, Evans began singing at church at age two, and at age four, she caught the attention of the congregation of the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newark when she sang The Fifth Dimension's song "Let the Sunshine In."[5] While attending University High School in Newark, she sang with several jazz bands and, encouraged by Helene, entered outside pageants, festivals and contests, where her voice would be noticed and praised. "I was raised in a very, very Christian home", Evans told i-D magazine in a 1998 interview. "It was church, school, church, school. I could hardly go to the corner of my block. It was strict."
After graduating from High School in 1991, Evans attended Fordham University in New York City to study marketing but dropped out a year later to have daughter Chyna with music producer Kiyamma Griffin.[1] A couple of months later she moved to Los Angeles, where she worked as a backup vocalist for singer Al B. Sure, when she caught the ear of musician Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs. Impressed with her persona, Combs signed her as the label's first female artist to his Bad Boy Entertainment in 1994.[1]

Prior to Faith Evans meeting and having a relationship with The Notorious B.I.G. she was involved in a relationship with Kiyamma Griffin. She and Griffin had a daughter named Chyna, who was born in 1993. Evans then married The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) on August 4, 1994 nine days after meeting at a photoshoot.[12] The marriage was turbulent as B.I.G. reportedly had affairs with Lil Kim and Charli Baltimore. But the two did reunite and their son Christopher Wallace, Jr., (who plays his father ages 10-13 in the 2009 biopic Notorious), was born on October 29, 1996; five months later, Wallace was murdered in a California drive-by shooting. The case, as of 2009, still remains unsolved. In summer 1997 the Bad Boy Records tribute to Wallace "I'll Be Missing You" dominated charts worldwide. In February 1998 Evans, Combs, and 112 won a Grammy award for their work on the recording.
In late 1997 Evans became pregnant by Todd Russaw. Her son Joshua by husband Todd Russaw was born in 1998. In the summer of 1998 Faith and Todd married.[13] In 2008 they had their second son Ryder Evan Russaw.


[youtube]TfPJgTGlTCA[/youtube]

 

Rashida is soooo Hot and i love this history, being a historian by education IR history is one of my passions too, but this is some great stuff, keep up the good work--lots of black folks and white would be amazed by this

 

I 100 percent agree.

 

This is the best thread on the site and i deserves it's own section seriously

I cant wait to post movies of IR Couples that are blackmen whitewomen

but this thread is incredible

 

Jamila Wideman



Wideman's father, John Edgar Wideman, an African-American author and professor, is the first 2-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and a professor at Brown University.A Rhodes Scholar he grew up in the working class community of Homewood in Pittsburgh. He also played 4 years of basketball for the University of Pennsylvania, where he was All-Ivy League. Her mother, Judith Ann Goldman, grew up in a Jewish family in Great Neck, NY, and studied for her law degree in midlife, graduating at age 52. She has two older brothers: Jacob, a poet and short story writer currently living in Arizona; and Daniel, a technical writer and poet based in North Carolina.


It was around that time (birth) that I first began bouncing a basketball. Since that time the game has taken me around the country and around the world.
Some of the highlights along the way include: starting on the Amherst High School Varsity team for six straight years beginning in seventh grade; winning the High School State Championship my senior year; being named a High School All-American; attending Stanford University on a full athletic scholarship from 1993-1997; leading the Stanford team as a four year starter and captain to three Final Four appearances in the NCAA tournament; being selected as the third overall draft pick by the Los Angeles Sparks in the inaugural WNBA draft in the summer of 1997; enjoying a four year career in the WNBA while playing for the Los Angeles Sparks, Cleveland Rockers, and Portland Fire; and spending the 1999-2000 winter season in Ramle, Israel playing in the women’s professional league there, where my team won the national championship.



While at Stanford University I completed a double major, earning a B.A. in political science, and African-American studies. At Stanford I was able to pursue multiple passions that have always seemed to intersect in my life. These include my passions for basketball, writing, and my commitment to social justice, in particular to eliminating the race, gender, and economic based inequities in our criminal justice system. I have constantly tried to pursue opportunities to integrate these interests and I have been fortunate enough to do so in various ways.
Upon graduation from Stanford, and during the offseasons of the WNBA, I founded and directed the Stanford Athletic Alliance. This bi-weekly program paired young women from East Palo Alto with players from the Stanford Women’s Basketball team for individual mentoring sessions as well as organized group sessions that allowed the young women to explore various academic areas through hands on experience. The second half of each session was organized around a different sport each week and members of Stanford teams would lead the girls in a clinic and play session. The program continues to run each year on the Stanford campus.



In 1997 I founded and implemented another youth program called, ‘hoopin’ with jamila’. This program combined basketball skills clinics with a reading and writing program targeted at young women of color incarcerated in the juvenile justice system in Los Angeles. The program was funded by Nike, an outgrowth of my partnership with that company beginning in 1997 as an athletic endorser. The vision of this program was, “To arm young women with the freedom to imagine possibility and the courage to redefine themselves through self-expression.” USA Today honored this program in 1998 when I was named “Most Caring Athlete” of the year in large part because of the success of this program.



It also earned the National Council on Crime and Delinquency “Community Award” given each year to programs that attempt to provide creative alternatives to juvenile incarceration.
I recently collaborated with Juniper Lesnik, a photographer friend and classmate of mine, to publish an article on playground basketball in the Sunday New York Times. The article is an excerpt of our ongoing project chronicling playground ball throughout the country.
I am currently in my second year of law school at New York University where I am studying criminal defense, capital litigation, juvenile rights, and public interest law. I continue to try to balance school and basketball, playing as often as I can, and anxiously waiting for my cable TV. Subscription to begin along with the college basketball season. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York.



I am grateful and lucky to be surrounded by a wonderfully supportive, strong and remarkable extended family. I am thankful to my father John for teaching me the game I love and that it is possible to engage many dreams in one life; and to my mother Judy for having shown what it means to live with integrity; to my brother Danny for years of looking out for his little sis’ and for sharing his creative vision and mind with me; and to my brother Jake for the example of his resilient spirit and his keepin’ on.

Info taken from Wiki & Connecticut Forum.org

 

Alexandre Pétion



Alexandre Sabès Pétion (April 2, 1770 – March 29, 1818) was President of the southern Republic of Haiti from 1806 until his death. He is considered as one of Haiti's founding fathers, together with Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and his rival Henri Christophe.

Pétion was born in Port-au-Prince to a Haitian mother and a wealthy French white father. Like other gens de couleur libre with wealthy fathers, Pétion was sent to France in 1788 to be educated and study at the Military Academy in Paris. In Saint-Domingue, many gens de couleur, often freed by their fathers, constituted a third caste between the whites and enslaved Africans. While restricted in political rights, many became educated and wealthy landowners, resented by the petits blancs, who were minor tradesmen. Before the slave uprising of 1791, they led a rebellion to gain voting and political rights they believed due them as French citizens after the French Revolution. At that time most did not support freedom or political rights for enslaved Africans and blacks.

Pétion returned to Saint-Domingue as a young man to take part in the Créole expulsion of the British from Saint-Domingue (1798–99). There had long been racial and class tensions between gens de couleur and enslaved Africans and free blacks in Saint-Domingue, where slaves outnumbered whites and gens de couleur by ten to one. During the years of warfare against planters or grand blancs, Spanish, English and French, racial tensions were exacerbated in competition for power and political alliances.When tensions arose between blacks and mulattoes, Pétion often supported the mulatto faction. He allied with General André Rigaud and Jean Pierre Boyer against Toussaint L'Ouverture in a failed rebellion, the so-called "War of Knives", in the South of Saint-Domingue, which began in June 1799. By November the rebels were pushed back to the strategic southern port of Jacmel; the defence was commanded by Pétion. The town fell in March 1800 and the rebellion was effectively over. Pétion and other mulatto leaders went into exile in France.

In February 1802, General Charles Leclerc arrived with tens of warships and 12,000 French troops to bring Saint-Domingue under more control. Gens de couleur Petion, Boyer and Rigaud returned with him in the hope of securing power in the colony. Following the French deportation of Toussaint Louverture and the renewed struggle, Pétion joined the nationalist force in October 1802. This followed a secret conference at Arcahaie, where Pétion supported Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the general who had captured Jacmel. The rebels took the capital of Port-au-Prince on October 17, 1803. Dessalines proclaimed independence on January 1, 1804, naming the nation Haiti. On October 6, 1804, Dessalines declared himself ruler for life and was crowned emperor.

Following the assassination of Dessalines on October 17, 1806, Pétion championed the ideals of democracy and clashed with Henri Christophe who wanted absolute reign. Christophe was elected president, but he did not believe the position had sufficient power, as Petion kept powers for himself. Christophe went to the north with his followers and established an autocracy. The loyalties of the country divided between them, and the tensions between the blacks and mulattoes were reignited once again.

After the inconclusive struggle dragged on until 1810, a peace treaty was agreed and the country was split in two. While Christophe made himself king of the northern Kingdom of Haiti, Pétion was elected President of the southern part of Haiti in 1806.
Initially a supporter of democracy, Pétion found the constraints imposed on him by the senate onerous and suspended the legislature in 1818. Fearing a lack of political power, he turned his post into President for Life in 1816, going against his former beliefs.

Pétion seized commercial plantations from the rich gentry. The land was redistributed to his supporters and the peasantry, earning him the nickname Papa Bon-Cœur ("good-hearted father"). The land seizures and changes in agriculture unfortunately dealt a serious blow to the economy. Most of the population did little more than subsistence farming and exports declined sharply, reducing money available for investment in education and infrastructure.
Believing in the importance of education, Pétion started the Lycée Pétion in Port-au-Prince. Petion's virtues and ideals of freedom and democracy for the world (and especially slaves) were strong and he often showed support for the oppressed. He gave sanctuary to independence leader Simón Bolívar in 1815 and provided him with material and infantry support. This was vital aid played a defining role in Bolivar's success in liberating the countries of what would make up Gran Colombia.

Boyer was named successor to Pétion and took control following the death of Pétion from yellow fever in 1818.

Info taken from Wiki

 

Did anyone mention Seretse Khama (Botswana) and his wife Ruth Williams?
They were loved by the people and the union inspired their flag.

----
Seretse Khama was born in 1921 in Serowe, in what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate. He was the son of Sekgoma Khama II, the paramount chief of the Bamangwato people, and the grandson of Khama III, their king. The name "Seretse" means “the clay that binds together,” and was given to him to celebrate the recent reconciliation of his father and grandfather; this reconciliation assured Seretse’s own ascension to the throne with his aged father’s death in 1925. At the age of four, Seretse became kgosi (king), with his uncle Tshekedi Khama as his regent and guardian.
In June 1947, Khama met Ruth Williams, an English clerk at Lloyd's of London, and after a year of courtship, married her. The interracial marriage sparked a furore among both the apartheid government of South Africa and the tribal elders of the Bamangwato. On being informed of the marriage, Khama's uncle Tshekedi Khama demanded his return to Bechuanaland and the annulment of the marriage. Khama did return to Serowe but after a series of kgotlas (public meetings), was re-affirmed by the elders in his role as the kgosi in 1949. Ruth Williams Khama, traveling with her new husband, proved similarly popular. Admitting defeat, Tshekedi Khama left Bechuanaland, while Khama returned to London to complete his studies.

However, the international ramifications of his marriage would not be so easily resolved. Having banned interracial marriage under the apartheid system, South Africa could not afford to have an interracial couple ruling just across their northern border. As Bechuanaland was then a British protectorate (not a colony), the South African government immediately exerted pressure to have Khama removed from his chieftainship. Britain’s Labour government, then heavily in debt from World War II, could not afford to lose cheap South African gold and uranium supplies. There was also a fear that South Africa might take more direct action against Bechuanaland, through economic sanctions or a military incursion.[1][2] The British government therefore launched a parliamentary enquiry into Khama’s fitness for the chieftainship. Though the investigation reported that he was in fact eminently fit for the rule of Bechuanaland, "but for his unfortunate marriage",[3] the government ordered the report suppressed (it would remain so for thirty years), and exiled Khama and his wife from Bechuanaland in 1951. In 1952, a new Conservative government declared the exile permanent.

Khama continued to push for Botswana's independence, from the newly-established capital of Gaborone. A 1965 constitution delineated a new Botswana government, and on 30 September 1966, Botswana gained its independence, with Khama acting as its first President. In 1966 Queen Elizabeth appointed Khama Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

 

She's doing it.....

Elizabeth Atkins Bowman

You can get to her website and more info if you like by clicking here.

[youtube]PA6BkMAjwK4[/youtube]

[youtube]rK6bkEJczlw&feature=related[/youtube]

 

Seretse Khama and his wife Ruth Williams

 

Thanks Malik!

I took a quick look, but would like to read more! Thx for the link!