I Shall Wear A Crown.avi

KWANZAA -- Habari Gani!

                                                Kwanzaa

Is an African American and Pan-African holiday celebrated by millions throughout the world African community, Kwanzaa brings a cultural message which speaks to the best of what it means to be African and human in the fullest sense.
The celebration honors African heritage in African-American culture and is observed from December 26 to January 1, culminating in a feast and gift-giving.

Kwanzaa has seven core principles, the Nguzo Saba. It was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga and was first celebrated in 1966–67.
The term “Kwanzaa” comes from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza,” which translates to “first fruits.” Kwanzaa recognizes the significance of African heritage, family and community.

The Nguzo Saba:
Umoja: Unity. To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
Kujichagulia: Self-Determination: ...
Ujima: Collective Work and Responsibility. ...
Ujamaa: Cooperative Economics. ...
Nia: Purpose. ...
Kuumba: Creativity. ...
Imani: Faith.

The Black Candle [HD] (Official Kwanzaa Film) Narrated by Maya Angelou


“For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.” - Maya Angelou

“We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.” - Maya Angelou

The [Kwanzaa] holiday, then will of necessity, be engaged as an ancient and living cultural tradition which reflects the best of African thought and practice in its reaffirmation of the dignity of the human person in community and culture, the well-being of family and community, the integrity of the environment and our kinship with it, and the rich resource and meaning of a people’s culture.” -  Dr.Maulana Karenga

“Our children need the sense of specialness that comes from participating in a known and loved ritual. They need the mastery of self-discipline that comes from order. They need the self-awareness that comes from a knowledge of their past. They need Kwanzaa as a tool for building their future and our own.” -
  Jessica Harris

      The Story Of Kwanzaa: From Civil Rights To Corporate America


          Quaver Music's "Kwanzaa Celebration"


              Happy Happy Kwanzaa



https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/kwanzaa-2018-begins-wednesday-december-26-january-1/
http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/index.shtml
https://pasadenajournal.com/kwanzaa-fact-sheet/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa

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NANCY WILSON – The Very Thought Of You (1964, HD)

Farewell to one of my very favorite singers and the first jazz artisit I came to love and learn from her vocalizations in my early adult life. I believed -- and still do -- that no one can actually "touch" her in her artistry with graceful enumciations and vocalized swirls along the sound spectrum. Her enunciation is effortless, and her tonal quality remains precious and sterling in comparison to other jazz singers both male and female. May her glorious renditions be revered for their spectacularity (?) (ness?) over time. Rest gloriously in Jazz Heaven, Nancy Wilson. May we all hear and listen to you "in the Morning . . . ."

STACEY ABRAMS: LEADING FROM THE MINORITY

I AM A CHRISTIAN

I AM A CHRISTIAN By Maya Angelou


When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin."
I'm whispering "I was lost,"
Now I'm found and forgiven.

When I say..."I am a Christian"
I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble
and need CHRIST to be my guide.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak
and need HIS strength to carry on.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed
and need God to clean my mess.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not claiming to be perfect,
My flaws are far too visible
but, God believes I am worth it.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I still feel the sting of pain,
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon His name.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not holier than thou,
I'm just a simple sinner
who received God's good grace, somehow

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Sinbad On Mo'Nique, His Distaste For Justin Timberlake + More

   You have to listen to this to the end because Sinbad covers such a variety of cogent topics that you would be proud and enlightened just to listen to his wisdom and in a humorous manner.   This is a great find.  Enjoy fully!

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Features

A Musical FeastThe Gateways Music Festival, with an orchestra composed entirely of professional classical musicians of African descent, deepens its partnership with the Eastman School of Music.By Kathleen McGarvey

IN PERFORMANCE: Anthony McGill, the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic, took center stage at the 2015 Gateways Music Festival, playing a concerto with the festival’s orchestra. (Photo: Keith Bullis for University Communications)

When Alexander Laing was 14, his teacher showed him a magazine article about Robert Lee Watt, the first African-American French horn player to be hired by a major US symphony. Watt joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1970.

“I remember being excited and inspired that there was someone who looked like me, who identified as I did,” says Laing. He was then an aspiring musician, growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland. He’d begun playing the clarinet at age 11, motivated in part by his grandmother’s love of Benny Goodman.

And so he wrote Watt a letter. “I didn’t really know what to say except, ‘I’m trying to be you when I grow up,’ ” Laing says. Watt wrote back to him, a gesture that still moves him. “It was a big deal,” he says.

Today, Laing is the principal clarinetist of the Phoenix Symphony. And this summer, as he has in summers past, he’ll experience again the inspiration he felt as a teen. Reaching out to fellow African-American musicians is at the heart of the Gateways Music Festival, a celebration of professional classical musicians of African descent.

ATTUNED: “Orchestras across the country should play this music,” says Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra trumpeter Herb Smith ’91E of the pieces by composers of African descent that are part of the Gateways repertoire; classical pianist Armenta Adams Hummings Dumisani (below, left) developed the festival more than two decades ago. Paul Burgett ’68E, ’76E (PhD), chair of the festival’s board, calls her a “musical activist.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)

(Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

For young musicians, Gateways “can play an important role in just demonstrating what’s possible,” Laing says. “And how powerful an image it is. In my case, I saw one guy. I can only imagine how even more inspiring it is to see a stage full.”

The festival and the Eastman School of Music have partnered since the third festival, in 1995, with Eastman providing Gateways with rehearsal and performance spaces, along with financial backing. “Eastman has been there, quietly supporting when asked and where we could,” says Jamal Rossi, the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean of the Eastman School of Music.

But last year, Gateways and Eastman formalized and deepened their alliance. Although the festival remains an independent nonprofit organization, an intensified partnership allows the festival to raise its ambitions. Organizers are developing plans to expand the festival’s reach and increase its national and international profile, bolstering efforts to promote and increase diversity in classical music.

Paul Burgett ’68E, ’76E (PhD), the chair of Gateways’ board of directors, predicts that the effort “will have implications for American music for generations to come.”

American classical orchestras, like their audiences and administrative staffs, are still largely white. While gender disparities have narrowed among orchestral musicians over the last 40 years, for African-American and Latino players, the numbers are stagnant. Auditioning for orchestral positions is now a “blind” process—musicians, at least in the preliminary phases, perform behind a screen and even on carpeted floors, to mask the shoe sounds that distinguish a penny loafer from a high heel. But the number of musicians of African descent in orchestras, according to the League of American Orchestras, has barely budged in the last decade, and is now just 1.8 percent.

But every second summer, Gateways assembles a complete orchestra and nearly 40 chamber music ensembles from about 125 professional players of African descent. The musicians fill Eastman’s stages and fan out into the community, as soloists and chamber groups, taking their music to venues such as churches, synagogues, and mosques, private homes, community centers, youth clubs, and retirement communities. During the six-day festival, there are more than 50 performances, and the musicians play for a combined audience of about 10,000 people. And no event carries an admission fee.

STANDING OVATIONS: Concert master Kelly Hall-Tompkins ’93E (above, left), conductor Michael Morgan, and members of the Gateways Festival Orchestra rise to applause after the final performance of the 2015 festival in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. (Photo: Keith Bullis for University Communications)

With its focus wholly on professional musicians of African descent, the festival is unlike any other. “Gateways is really unique,” says Toni-Marie Montgomery, dean of the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University and a new member of the festival’s increasingly national board.

The festival’s mission is threefold: to raise the visibility of classical musicians of African descent and heighten public awareness of their contributions to classical music; to bring musicians of African descent together, to perform together, exchange ideas, and revitalize their musical energy; and to establish role models for young musicians.

With the new alliance came the appointment of Lee Koonce ’96E (MM) as the inaugural president and artistic director of the festival. “His energy and vision will, I suspect, really move people,” says President and CEO Joel Seligman, an enthusiastic supporter of the festival who played a key role in securing Koonce and the alliance.

Koonce is the first paid staff member in the festival’s almost quarter-century history. In all that time, it has been fueled entirely by the passion of volunteers.

“It’s an extraordinary phenomenon in the not-for-profit field. I’ve never seen anything like it, quite frankly,” says William Terry, a consultant for arts and culture organizations. He’s working with the festival on its plans for the next two decades.

Armenta Adams Hummings Dumisani, a Juilliard-trained, African-American classical pianist, created the festival in 1993 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she then lived. When Eastman hired her in 1994, she brought the festival with her.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dumisani as a child moved with her mother and brother to Boston, while her father stayed in Cleveland to support the family. The three lived near the New England Conservatory and Symphony Hall.

“Instead of trying to just give us lessons, they also transplanted us into an atmosphere where, every time we walked out the door, we would see people going by with violins and cellos, and we were surrounded. They just changed our surroundings,” Dumisani explained to host George Shirley—the first African-American tenor to sing leading roles with the Metropolitan Opera—in a 1975 interview on Classical Music and the African American, a show on WQXR, New York City’s classical radio station. “But at the same time, my father had a burning desire to see the race in general bettered. He wanted to see us reach great heights.”

“And so, although we were trying to advance ourselves, it had a social connotation,” she said. “There was a use for it. And I guess I’ve been trying to put those things together.”

When Dumisani arrived in Rochester, she took her efforts directly to the city’s black community. “Her studio was Rochester,” says Burgett, University vice president and senior advisor to the president. “She’d put instruments in a little grocery cart and go over to the YMCA across from Eastman—and to churches, and to schools—and say, ‘I want to give music lessons to any kids who want to take lessons.’ ”

“She created Gateways to bring together musicians of African descent because, in their training and in their professional careers, they frequently felt isolated,” says Koonce. At the same time, “her role at Eastman really was as a community advocate. So much of her work in building Gateways happened through her efforts in the community.”

Dumisani retired from Eastman in 2009 and returned to North Carolina. But the festival is deeply rooted in the Rochester community. “It’s important to me that Gateways continue to be what it is and who it is,” even as it moves to a new level of visibility, says Rossi. “It’s been built up by volunteers who, over 20 years, have been so committed to it.”

Burgett calls Dumisani a “musical activist.” Her goal, he says, was “to rely on the inner strength, motivation, and hard work of people to make this festival for themselves. If she said it to me once, she said it a thousand times: we have to do this for ourselves. The music is our music, too.”

MUSICAL HISTORY: Concert baritone William Warfield ’42E (center) performed at the festival in the 1990s. Other noted past performers include violinist Sanford Allen, harpist Ann Hobson Pilot, horn player Jerome Ashby, and pianists Paul Badura-Skoda and Awadagin Pratt. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

That Gateways needed to be “something that we identify within ourselves, produce within ourselves, and support, not just musically but financially, ourselves—it took me more than a minute to get that,” Burgett says, “because her point of view flew in the face of the accepted wisdom about this sort of thing.”

The operative model for community-based classical music education and appreciation was the settlement movement. It emerged in late 19th-century England and arrived in the United States with the help of social reformer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams, the founder of Chicago’s Hull House. Settlement houses were a response to growing urban poverty in the wake of industrialization and immigration—they began as organizations intended to aid and acculturate the poor through social services and education. One of their activities was teaching music. New York City’s famed Third Street Music School Settlement, founded in 1894, was the country’s first settlement house wholly focused on music. Also a product of the movement is Rochester’s Hochstein School of Music & Dance, which received its New York State charter in 1920 as the David Hochstein Music School Settlement.

“There are settlement schools all over the United States,” Burgett says. “But Armenta was looking at making it happen in a different way. She wasn’t looking for those outside, looking in, but instead trying to get those inside to look out.”

Laing says community involvement is “part of the aesthetic of Gateways. Armenta Dumisani grew the festival by joining hands with the community from the start.”

Koonce—a classical pianist who has also been the executive director of Ballet Hispanico and Third Street Music School Settlement, the executive director of Sherwood Conservatory of Music in Chicago, and the director of community relations for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—calls his nearly 20-year involvement with Gateways “the most consistent association of my career, because, like Armenta, like the volunteers, and like the musicians who participate, Gateways resonates with me—because it was my experience, too, of being an isolated classical musician of African descent. Throughout my training and my professional life, I lived in a world where I was the only one, or one of the few.”

The festival is an antidote to that isolation. Trumpeter Herb Smith ’91E—the only African-American member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra—says the gathering is “like a reunion, a family get-together,” while Laing likens the festival to a balm.

The musicians come mostly from the United States, but also from Europe, South America, Canada, and the Caribbean. They’re members of major symphony orchestras, faculty members at college and university schools of music, and freelance artists. And they’re selected according to their level of professional activity and achievement. “That has served us well,” says Koonce. “But it’s still challenging, and we’re working to find ways to accommodate more musicians.”

Interest in participating has been growing rapidly. In 2013, more musicians applied to take part than the orchestra could contain. The number of applicants outstripped orchestra seats by 70 for the 2015 festival. And this year, about 240 musicians applied for 120 spots.

Finding a way to satisfy that demand is one of the questions Koonce and fellow festival leaders are considering in their planning process. Not under discussion, however, is the bedrock purpose of the festival. Sometimes the spirit of Gateways is misperceived as a diversity initiative, says Koonce. “And it wasn’t founded for that purpose. While we surely want to see more people of African descent involved in classical music, Gateways is about classical musicians, who happen to be of African descent, loving and enjoying this music. The music is first.”

“The primary strength of Gateways is that it embodies the commitment of a group of musicians—in this case, musicians of African descent—to classical music, first and foremost. And their commitment to each other in their work as classical musicians,” says Terry. “The artistic quality is absolutely a strength. Gateways is always concerned about quality and will not compromise. Quality is first and foremost.”

But while the musicians in the Gateways orchestra have reached top levels of professional success, the festival exists in a world in which access to classical music isn’t equal. Children of color, as a group, don’t have the same opportunities for classical music instruction that their white counterparts do.

“I think it’s very common for black children in this country never to see a black classical player. Ever,” says Koonce. “And so we see Gateways as an institution that can offer role models and encourage children to pursue musical instruction.”

The professional classical music community is also looking for ways to intervene directly. “The field is recognizing that there’s a need to address this issue on multiple levels—and that the results could take a while to come about,” Koonce says. “In urban environments—mostly black and Latino communities, and in public schools in particular—music programs have been in decline for several generations now.”

Rossi agrees that there’s a problem in the pipeline. And to attain professional levels of success requires aspiring musicians to begin study at a very young age. “If you look at major music schools across the country, the participation rate of young people of color is very low—it’s in the single digits, 4 percent, 5 percent. And there are even fewer at the graduate level,” he says. “And if we’re not educating students of color at top programs, who do we expect to hire as faculty members?”

Part of the answer lies in casting a net wide enough to capture everyone, says Koonce. “In order to significantly increase the number of musicians of African descent in classical music, we have to have vast numbers of children of African descent learning to play musical instruments. Millions, in fact.” That kind of broad-based musical education is already happening in countries like China and Japan, and the participation of musicians of Asian descent in classical music has risen exponentially. “It’s become a part of the culture and what the culture says is important,” he says.

Years ago, music education in the United States was different. When Koonce was growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s, “every child in the third grade got an instrument,” he says. And Rochester’s public city schools were once among the finest in the nation for music, thanks to efforts by George Eastman, Eastman School director Howard Hanson, and violinist and conductor Karl van Hoesen, who taught both at Eastman and in the Rochester public schools.

Opportunity is key—on the stage and in the hall. “If we don’t provide opportunities for black and Latino kids to learn to play at a young age, we can’t expect vast numbers to go to conservatories or become professional musicians—or even become audience members. The most important factor in what influences someone to attend a classical music concert is experience playing a musical instrument as a child,” Koonce says.

Eastman is intervening locally, through a project called the ROCmusic Collaborative. Created in 2012, it provides tuition-free classical music instruction to city residents in grades 1 to 12. The program is offered in community centers in two quadrants of the city, and Rossi hopes to expand it to all four. Each student receives instruction in singing and reading music, lessons on instruments, classes, rehearsals, concert participation, needed materials, snacks and meals, and field trips.

ROCmusic was inspired by Venezuela’s El Sistema program, which harnesses music as a social force for children who have great desire and few resources. Rochester’s program was jointly developed by an array of the city’s civic and cultural institutions: Eastman, the Eastman Community Music School, the Hochstein School of Music & Dance, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rochester City School District, and the City of Rochester. Gateways has signed on as a seventh partner, and ROCmusic is aligning its summer session with the festival’s schedule, to take advantage of the partnership.More than 100 students participate in ROCmusic, and the retention rate has held at 85 percent since its founding. Twelve participants are now students at Rochester’s School of the Arts, and others are enrolled in Eastman’s Pathways program, which provides scholarships for more advanced study.

“We’re starting to feed the pipeline,” says Rossi. “But this is a 30-year commitment.”

James Norman is the vice chairman of the Gateways board and the president and CEO of Action for a Better Community, a Rochester-based community action agency, one of a network of such agencies established by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 to fight poverty. He’s also the brother of renowned opera singer Jessye Norman.

When traveling with her for performances in the United States and abroad, he’d look at the orchestras that accompanied her. “You may spot one or two people obviously of African descent. And it raises the question, why?”

The Gateways stage, he says, offers a different vision. “In order for people to aspire to things, it’s good if they can see themselves in that thing. And Gateways is a way for African-American youth, and youth of color, to see themselves. To see the possibility.”

“You have to know there is a route for you,” says Rossi.

In past years, Gateways gave young musicians an opportunity to participate, with their own concert at Rochester’s City Hall. This year, the festival is offering a pilot program called Young Musicians Institute. Young people from music programs in Rochester will spend a day and a half with Gateways musicians, attending an open rehearsal and then joining them onstage at Kodak Hall to play along with them. Later, groups of Gateways musicians will “adopt” Rochester community-based music organizations to establish year-round relationships.

The musicians are meeting the plan with enthusiasm. “We all know how important it was for us to see someone who looked like us playing this music and these instruments,” Koonce says. “That’s why our activities with young musicians are so essential to us.”

In its performances, Gateways blends standard repertoire for orchestral and chamber group performance with pieces by composers of African descent: composers like Florence Beatrice Price, who became the first African-American woman to have a composition performed by a major symphony orchestra when her Symphony in E Minor was performed in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, whose work brings together classical music and jazz. He was the cofounder, in 1964, of the Symphony of the New World, the country’s first racially integrated orchestra, and a Gateways participant before his death in 2004.

LOOKING AHEAD: Pianist Lee Koonce ’96E (MM) is the first president and artistic director of Gateways. He says his experience as a classical musician of African descent was one of isolation. “There’s such an intense conversation right now about diversity in classical music,” he says. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Audiences clearly value the inspirational nature of the festival, according to surveys and other feedback. Barbara Jones, cochair of the festival planning committee and a retired vice president at JPMorgan Chase, says that while the Rochester community is strong in arts and culture, it hasn’t always been very welcoming to people of African descent, particularly in classical music. “Gateways has changed the face of classical music in Rochester—our audiences see that, and they understand and appreciate that people of African descent have been involved in classical music for centuries,” she says. “It’s just something that hasn’t been celebrated or noted.”

For the musicians, taking to the stage with other musicians of African descent can be deeply moving. “I’ve been the only African American in the Rochester Philharmonic for so long, it doesn’t even faze me,” says trumpeter Smith. “I’m used to it. But when you’re in the Gateways orchestra with all people who look like you, it’s an amazing thing. It really is.”

The experience, says Laing, “strengthens, it enlivens, it prompts inquiry.”

Ultimately, the inclusivity of professional classical music turns on choices that lie beyond the reach of any single performer. And the field of music can do more to change things than wait for young children to reach the age of professionalism, says Laing. He draws a contrast between the music world and that of athletics.

“In professional sports, they’ll scour the Earth to find the players that they need. Is there more that the music field could be doing? Absolutely, if it wanted to. Sports will find the athletes they want and recruit them to their sport because they see in them the potential for what they could be. They see the potential for that person or persons to help them succeed toward their goals. They don’t necessarily just wait for them to come to tryouts. The question is, what are our goals?”

Smith sees changing the demographics of orchestras in similar terms. “It’s not just a quick thing,” he says. “It’s more a commentary on society and what people deem important.”

With consultant Terry’s help, the directors and volunteers of Gateways are looking ahead 20 years, giving careful thought to how the festival can contribute to answering those questions.

“Gateways has a very focused founding purpose, but Gateways is embracing of large communities,” Terry says. The organizers want people “to hear this music, to engage with these musicians. Gateways started with a narrow focus that in time will be able to expand wider and wider.”

Central to that aspiration is making the festival an annual event. As a biennial festival, says Terry, “it’s as though the organization is reborn every two years.” The process will be gradual because of the challenges of raising the needed funds, but all agree that a yearly festival will give Gateways greater visibility and momentum. And it will help organizers to meet the demand from musicians who want to participate.

The hunger for community isn’t exclusive to musicians of African descent, says Burgett. Professional classical musicians devote their lives to an endlessly demanding program of training and practice. It’s common to feel some isolation.

But for classical musicians of African descent, “there is the added burden of race, so even when you go out into the performing world, especially if you’re an orchestral player, that isolation and loneliness persist,” he says. “When these musicians come to Rochester, there’s a deep sigh of relief.”

Dumisani pushed her cart full of instruments through Rochester streets in response to that loneliness—to draw more performers of African descent to classical music, to help them discover what the music could add to their lives and how they could contribute to changing the musical world.

“When we wish upon a star, someday this won’t be necessary,” says Burgett. “We will have perfected our efforts at creating a better world for all people, and the hunger—and that’s what it is, it’s a hunger—that the musicians bring to the festival will be satisfied.”

---

The 2017 Gateways Festival will be held August 8 to 13, with a final concert under conductor Michael Morgan. The program includes Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, performed by Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear, and a performance of Rochester native Adolphus Hailstork’s An American Port of Call. For details, visit Gatewaysmusicfestival.org.

Rochester Review
July–August 2017
Vol. 79, No. 6

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Poor People’s Campaign

A crowd at the Midwest segment of the Poor People’s Campaign in Columbus, Ohio, on May 13, 1968. (AP Photo)

       10 Reasons to Revive the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign
By Sarah Anderson

Inspired by an initiative cut short by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., moral leaders are planning a wave of civil disobedience.

When profit motives “are considered more important than people,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once declared, it’s time for the nation to “undergo a radical revolution of values.”

To bring about that revolution, King and other leaders announced plans in December 1967 for a Poor People’s Campaign that would mobilize disadvantaged people across racial and geographic lines. Four months later, an assassin’s bullet prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential.

Today, 50 years later, we have a chance for a do-over. And do we ever need it.

At a press event today in Washington, DC, two prominent faith leaders—the Rev. Liz Theoharis and the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II—announced plans for a new multi-issue, multiracial Poor People’s Campaign to recapture the revolutionary spirit of 1968. As the campaign’s co-chairs, they’ve been traveling the country for months, holding mass meetings and strategy sessions in 15 cities to lay the groundwork for mobilizations in the spring of 2018.

For those who may doubt the need for such a campaign, a new Institute for Policy Studies report provides more than ample evidence. By many measures, what King called the “evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism” are worse today than they were five decades ago. Toss in climate change and other environmental threats, and the picture is even more grim.

Here are just 10 of the numerical lowlights of the past 50 years:

1. Since 1968, the number of Americans below the official poverty line has increased by 60 percent to 40.6 million. While poverty rates are highest among African Americans and Latinos, white people make up the largest number of the country’s poor (17.3 million).

2. The top 1 percent’s share of national income has nearly doubled since 1968 while the official poverty rate for all US families has merely inched up and down. A key driver of this growing economic divide is the steep drop in unionization, from 24.9 percent of workers in 1968 to 10.7 percent in 2016. Income concentration at the top has siphoned resources from those at the bottom and distorted our democracy.

3. After some gains under President Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” the social safety net has taken a beating, with particularly devastating impacts on single mothers and children. In the richest country in the world, 30.6 million children (43 percent) live at or below 200 percent of the poverty line, considered the minimum for meeting basic family needs. Female-headed families are 5.4 times more likely to be living in poverty than families headed by married couples.

4. More than 50 years after the Voting Rights Act, people of color still face a broad range of barriers to democracy, including racist gerrymandering and redistricting, felony disenfranchisement, and laws designed to make it harder to vote. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 23 states have adopted various forms of voter-suppression laws since 2010, with more restrictive voter-ID laws being the most common.

5. Since 1976, the criminalization of poverty has driven up federal spending on prisons tenfold to $7.5 billion this year. The number of state and federal prison inmates of all races grew from 188,000 in 1968 to 1.5 million in 2015. Racial profiling and biased sentencing and policing practices have expanded the share of inmates who are people of color from less than half in 1978 (the first year for which race data are available) to 66 percent in 2015.

6. Increased scapegoating of immigrants is also reflected in government spending trends. Between 1976 and 2015, federal expenditures on border control and immigration enforcement rose eightfold while the number of deportees grew tenfold to 333,000.

7. Since the height of the Vietnam War, the gap between Uncle Sam’s military and anti-poverty spending has gone even more out of whack. Back then, federal spending on the military amounted to twice the level of discretionary spending to fight poverty. Today this spending gap is nearly four-to-one. In the meantime, millions of lives have been lost in wars that have made us no safer, while “real security” in the form of good jobs, health care, and quality education remains beyond the reach of millions of Americans.


8. Disadvantaged communities here and abroad continue to pay the highest price for American militarism. The poorest 30 percent of US communities suffered 36 percent of the casualties in the Vietnam War and 38 percent in the Iraq War. And while the legal draft of the Vietnam era is no more, it has been replaced with an economic draft. Pentagon data on US casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan reveal that 23 percent came from job-scarce small towns and rural areas that represent only 17 percent of the US population.

9. Since 1968, the environment has become less polluted, but race and income disparities persist in access to clean air and water and exposure to environmental hazards. According to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 4 million families with children are being exposed to high levels of lead from drinking water and other sources. The risks fall heaviest on low-income, African-American, and Latino children, in part because they’re more likely to live in aging, poorly maintained housing.

10. Those who’ve contributed the least to climate change are suffering the most from the related severe weather effects. Low-income families and people of color tend to be more likely to have living conditions and jobs that increase the health risks of extreme heat. They also get hit hardest by natural disasters because of barriers to obtaining property insurance.

The point here, as campaign co-chair Theoharis puts it, is that “even before the election of Donald Trump, the evils of poverty, racism, militarism, and environmental destruction were tearing apart the social fabric in America.” (Theoharis is also co-director of the New York–based Kairos Center.)

And yet with Trump’s racist immigrant bashing and Republican tax and budget plans that would do more to accelerate inequality than any legislation in decades, the need for a modern-day Poor People’s Campaign is even more urgent.

In fact, the GOP tax plan is such a moral abomination that, if adopted, it will likely boost support for the 40 days of coordinated civil disobedience the campaign is planning to kick off on Mother’s Day 2018. Organizers are already expecting tens of thousands of poor and disenfranchised people, clergy, and other leaders to risk arrest in local actions that will feed into a major demonstration at the US Capitol on June 23.

These 50th-anniversary events will not be a commemoration, says Barber, who rose to national prominence as a driving force behind the Moral Mondays Movement. Rather, Barber says, the goal of the new Poor People’s Campaign is to “consecrate a new movement to transform the political, economic, and moral structures of society.”


https://www.thenation.com/article/10-reasons-to-revive-the-1968-poor-peoples-campaign/

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

                           Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Sister Rosetta Tharpe March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973, a pioneering gospel singer and guitar player from Arkansas, among the 2018 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She was born in the Woodruff County town of Cotton Plant and achieved fame in the 1930s.

Rock 'n' roll was bred between the church and the nightclubs in the soul of a black woman in the 1940s named Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was there before Elvis, Little Richard and Johnny Cash swiveled their hips and strummed their guitars. It was Tharpe, the godmother of rock 'n' roll, who turned this burgeoning musical style into an international sensation.

Tharpe was always surrounded by music growing up. Born Rosetta Nubin in Arkansas to Willis Atkins and Katie Bell, Tharpe came from a family of religious singers, cotton pickers and traditional evangelists.Encouraged by her mother, Tharpe began singing and playing the guitar as Little Rosetta Nubin at the age of four and was cited as a musical prodigy.

In the mid-1920s, Tharpe and her mother settled in Chicago, Illinois, where they performed religious concerts at the COGIC church on 40th Street, occasionally traveling to perform at church conventions throughout the country. Tharpe developed considerable fame as a musical prodigy, standing out in an era when prominent black female guitarists were rare. In 1934, at age 19, she married Thomas Thorpe, a COGIC preacher, who accompanied her and her mother on many of their tours. The marriage lasted only a few years, but she decided to adopt a version of her husband's surname as her stage name, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

         Sister Rosetta Tharpe-Documentary 


In 1938, she left her husband and moved with her mother to New York City. Although she married several times, she performed as Rosetta Tharpe for the rest of her life. As Tharpe grew up, she began fusing Delta blues, New Orleans jazz and gospel music into what would become her signature style.

On October 31, 1938, aged 23, Tharpe recorded for the first time – four sides for Decca Records, backed by Lucky Millinder's jazz orchestra. The first gospel songs ever recorded by Decca, "Rock Me," "That's All," "My Man and I" and "The Lonesome Road" were instant hits, establishing Tharpe as an overnight sensation and one of the first commercially successful gospel recording artists. "Rock Me" influenced many rock-and-roll singers, such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis. She had signed a seven-year contract with Reminder and was managed by Mo Galye. Her records caused an immediate furor: many churchgoers were shocked by the mixture of gospel-based lyrics and secular-sounding music, but secular audiences loved them. She played on several occasions with the white singing group the Jordanaires.

She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Her guitar playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s; in particular a European tour with Muddy Waters in 1963 with a stop in Manchester is cited by prominent British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording "Rock Me" and with her 1939 hit "This Train". Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists such as Ira Tucker, Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While she offended some conservative churchgoers with her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel music.

Information sources:
www.allmusic.com/artist/sister-rosetta-tharpe-mn0000013511
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Rosetta_Tharpe
www.pbs.org/black-culture/shows/list/rock-and-roll-rosetta-tharpe/
www.npr.org/2017/08/24/544226085/forebears-sister-rosetta-tharpe-the-godmother-of-rock-n-roll

   Lucky Millinder--Shout Sister Shout with Sister Rosetta Sharpe.wmv


          Sister Rosetta Tharpe - This Train


      Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Up Above My Head


                          
        
 
 
 

Stacey Abrams for governor of Georgia

Stacey Yvonne Abrams born December 9, 1973 is an American politician, lawyer, author and businesswoman who was the House Minority Leader for the Georgia General Assembly and State Representative for the 89th House District.She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams is a rising star in the Democratic Party, and it’s not hard to see why. Her vision of expanding the Democratic electorate by mobilizing the state’s considerable population of nonvoters and minority voters is an appealing road map for a national party eager to turn Georgia blue.

Abrams believes her success registering voters with the nonprofit New Georgia Project and her experience limiting conservative overreach as a Democratic leader equip her to go toe-to-toe with the GOP-dominated legislature as governor. And she hopes to bring Georgians the employment, education and health care opportunities available to working families in other, bluer states.
           
                       Speech to Pave it Blue


I want to follow up on the note Congressman John Lewis sent about how together, one week from today, we can shatter a glass ceiling.

Stacey Abrams is running for governor of Georgia. And when she wins, she'll be the first Black woman ever elected governor of any state. Her leadership will move the South, and in turn, the nation, forward.

I know Stacey, and she inspires me and gives me hope for the future—from her efforts on criminal-justice reform and voting rights to blocking Republican attempts to undermine the economic security of working families.

That's why I'm joining with MoveOn, Rep. Lewis, and many others today for a moneyblast for Stacey Abrams. We're counting on thousands of people across the country chipping in $3—or whatever they can afford—and MoveOn has set an ambitious goal of raising $100,000 in one day to power her campaign to victory in the primary next Tuesday. Will you join us?

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Roland Martin: Be A Part Of The Poor People’s Campaign

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GLADYS WEST- BEHIND THE CREATION OF THE GPS SYSTEM

     GLADYS WEST, ONE OF THE 'HIDDEN FIGURES' BEHIND THE CREATION OF THE GPS SYSTEM

You may not know Gladys West, but her calculations revolutionized navigation.
She is one of the mathematicians responsible for developing the global positioning system, better known as GPS.

Like many of the black women responsible for American achievements in math and science, West isn't exactly a household name. West was one of only four black employees at the Naval Proving Ground in 1956. She accepted a position at the Dahlgren, Virginia, facility doing calculations, with her early work focusing on satellites. West also programmed early compute d in the development of GPS.

Gladys Mae Brown,born 1931 in Dinwiddie, VA. As a girl growing up in Dinwiddie County south of Richmond, all Gladys Mae Brown knew was that she didn’t want to work in the fields, picking tobacco, corn and cotton, or in a nearby factory, beating tobacco leaves into pieces small enough for cigarettes and pipes, as her parents did.

“I realized I had to get an education to get out,” she said. When she learned that the valedictorian and salutatorian from her high school would earn a scholarship to Virginia State College (now University), she studied hard and graduated at the top of her class. She studied mathematics at Virginia State College. In 1956 she began to work at Naval Surface Warfare Centerwas Dahlgren Division, where she was the second black woman ever to be employed. She met her husband Ira West at the naval base a mathematician named Ira West.The two dated for 18 months before they married in 1957.
While he spent most of his career developing computer programs for ballistic missiles launched from submarines, her calculations eventually led to satellites.

Gladys West collect data from satellites, eventually leading to the development of the Global Positioning System. Her supervisor recommended her as project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, the first satellite that could remotely sense oceans. In 1979, Gladys West was recommended for commendation. Mrs.West was a programmer in the Dahlgren Division for large-scale computers and a Project Manager for data processing systems used in the analysis of satellite data.

In 1986, Mrs West published "Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter", a 60-page illustrated guide. The Naval Surface Weapons Center (NSWC) guide was published to explain how to increase the accuracy of the estimation of "geoid heights and vertical deflection", topics of satellite geodesy. This was achieved by processing the data created from the radio altimeter on the Geosat satellite which went into orbit on 12 March 1984. She worked at Dahlgren for 42 years.

Today, West lives in King George County, Virginia.  Her contributions to GPS were only uncovered when a member of West's sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, read a short biography West had submitted for an alumni function.  West is completing a PhD via a distance learning program with Virginia Tech.

                           Calculating the Future


                           Honoring Gladys West

     
  Information sources:
 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 www.becauseofthemwecan.com/blogs/
 www.fredericksburg.com/features/gladys-west
 www.upworthy.com/you-may-not-know-gladys-west

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Rev. Dr. William Barber: ‘Nothing Would Be More Tragic

Rev. Dr. William Barber: ‘Nothing Would Be More Tragic Than For Us To Turn Back Now’


Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, President of Repairers of the Breach and a recipient of the 2018 North Star Award delivered a rousing acceptance speech during this year’s National CARES Mentoring Movement Gala.

During his remarks, Rev. Barber told Black America, “My brothers and sisters we are a people that have come from worst than what we see now and nothing would be more tragic than for us to turn back now.”

“Don’t you ever let it come out of your mouth that we’ve never seen anything this bad; that we’ve never seen racism in the White House.” Barber continued, “Don’t you even dare let your children hear you utter that because we came through 250 years of slavery and 100 years of legalized Jim Crow — nothing would be more tragic than for us to turn back now.”

Rev. Barber diagnosed what the world is witnessing in the White House and Congress a s a “moral malady.”

“We’re going backwards rather than forwards,” Rev. Barber said. “The Voting Rights Act has been gutted. 52 years later we have less voting rights than we had August 6th 1965." 

In addressing poverty in America, the President of the Repairers of the Breach said, “There are over 140 million people [that are] poor and working poor in this country. The majority of them are white, not Black. The majority of them are women and children.”

In closing, Barber announced a 40-day build up to an initiative called the "Souls of Poor Folks" that will confront lawmakers and "reset the moral narrative."

Reverend Dr. William Barber Delivers Masterful History Lesson

Reverend Dr. William Barber  -  Delivers Masterful History Lesson, Declares 'It's Movement Time Again'


Roland S. Martin
Published on Feb 8, 2018

Rev. William Barber delivered the benediction at the close of #RolandMartinUnfiltered Presents: The State Of Our Union.

During his closing remarks, Rev. Barber addressed our current political climate, the lack of morality in it, the existence racial animus and the browning of America.

Barber offered a masterful history lesson dissecting the reconstruction period, civil rights era and our not so distant past.

The President of Repairers of the Breach chastised those in America whose intent is to reverse the progress African Americans, women and progressives have made over the course of the last 100 years.

Barber began his commentary reading a passage from Ezekiel 22, out of what he called the “Millennial version” of the Bible.

Barber began with the premise that God was angry because priests were “desecrating” his holy things. He continued, “Your politicians have become like wolves — prowling and killing and taking whatever they want.”

“And your preachers are covering up for the politicians by pretending to have received visions and revelations; they say this is what God says and I God have not said a thing.”

“And because your politicians are like wolves, and your preachers are covering up for your politicians; extortion is rife; robbery is epidemic; the poor and the needy are being abused; and the immigrants and the strangers are being kicked around at will with no access to justice.”

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