There’s a video that has been circulating on the web discussing black men and their behavior post-prison. Throughout the short film called Earl’s Post-Prison Playdate, the director exploits the downlow lifestyle, breaks down the unstable black family dynamics and educates viewers on the risky behaviors men learn from being in jail.
Earl’s Post-Prison Playdate was written, directed, and produced by award-winning NYC filmmaker, Rod Gailes OBC. Richard S. Carroll Jr., Pernell Walker from the Sundance-Hit, Pariah, and Iris Wilson of Broadway’s FELA star in the short.
Most of the controversy from blogs and critics overshadow the real meaning of the film. The film was created as part of an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign addressing lifestyle issues affecting our community. HIV/AIDS is a huge epidemic in our community- no matter the sexuality. Even though I felt I was watching a script full of stereotypes, I know this is real life for many people in our community (or at least some variation). The message still remains the same: go get tested!
Please check out the video below and share with your friends:
THE ROAD WE'VE TRAVELED Remember how far we've come. From Academy Award®-winning director Davis Guggenheim: "The Road We've Traveled".
This film gives an inside look at some of the tough calls President Obama made to get our country back on track. Featuring interviews from President Bill Clinton, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Austan Goolsbee, and more. It's a film everyone should see.
A video featuring Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo made its debut Friday, becoming the second in a Web campaign that seeks to build support for same-sex marriage legislation in Maryland.
“I support marriage for gay and lesbian couples who want to make a lifetime commitment to each other,” Ayanbadejo says in the video sponsored by Marylanders for Marriage Equality. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who has pledged to sponsor the bill in the coming session, appeared in the campaign’s first video earlier this month. Organizers have vowed to produce a stream of videos until the bill is considered early next year. The videos are expected to include other athletes as well as clergy, law enforcement officers and other well-known politicians.
The Web campaign is loosely patterned after an effort in New York in advance of that state’s embrace of a same-sex marriage bill this year.
A same-sex marriage bill passed the Senate in the last legislative session but fell short in the House of Delegates. Advocates on both sides are gearing up for another intense round of lobbying.
Ayanbadejo spoke out in favor of the bill during last session as well, appearing in a video that was not as well-publicized.
“We are honored to have a three-time Pro-Bowler and a hometown hero join us in this historic campaign,” said Lisa Polyak of Equality Maryland, a member of the broader coalition pushing for the bill. “Brendon knows what it means to be a leader, both on and off the field.”
Pittsburgh School Denied her the Honor in 1936 Because of Race, Family Says
Fannetta Nelson Gordon was finally recognized yesterday as thevaledictorian ofWestinghouse High Schoolin Pittsburgh—an honor denied her in 1936 because of her race
Gordon died three years ago at age 88, but her sister, Sophia Phillips Nelson, 93, attended the ceremony sponsored by the Westinghouse Alumni Association.
"It was just so emotionally heartfelt to see the 93-year-old woman take the award for her sister," says lawyer Reggie Bridges, head of the alumni group. "The room was in tears."
"I wish Fannetta could have been there," said Phillips Nelson. "She was a brilliant girl and determined."
So determined, her family says, that Gordon overcame the wrong that was done to her when the school principal pressured music teacher Carl McVicker to change Gordon's grade from an A to a B so she wouldn't be first in her class—an honor that her older sister, Sophia, had achieved two years earlier. The principal didn't want two black valedictorians within two years, the family says.
Gordon—whose official transcript ranked her fourth in the 155-student class—went on to become the accompanist for the National Negro Opera Company and played at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Hall. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, she became a high school German and English teacher and later was named by the governor as a senior adviser for English and foreign languages in the state Education Department.
But she never got over being deprived of her rightful status as valedictorian, her family says. "It was one of the most painful episodes of her life," says her niece, Gloria Wofford. "He erased her A and gave her a B because she was black."
Phillips Nelson said she and other students were aware of what had happened at the time. "We knew. Unfortunately, they were principal and music teacher—we were just youngsters."
The reality at the time for African-Americans, she said, was to tolerate injustices: "Just take it."
The recognition ceremony Thursday came about when Bridges reviewed the transcript and other records. "As clear as day you can see where the grades were changed in music," he said. "You can see erasure marks. " Her earlier music grades were all As, he said.
The Pittsburgh School District has not officially recognized Gordon as valedictorian. "It does appear there were erasure marks on the transcript—we can't confirm the back story" because the principal and music teacher are dead, said spokeswoman Ebony Pugh. "What the district does recognize is that Fannetta Nelson Gordon was a high-achieving student."
In the 1930s when the sisters attended the school, Westinghouse High School was about 5 to 10 percent African-American, whereas today the school is 97 percent black. The school—whose famous alumni include supermodel Naomi Sims and jazz composer Billy Strayhorn, the soloist at Sophia's graduation—will become two single-sex academies next year.
"Our school is in trouble," says Bridges. "This is just the kind of thing to remind [today's students]—quit making excuses. If these sisters could do it in the 1930s, you can do it."
"We hope that they will take a lesson from this and not let anything stop them," says Gloria Wofford.
TriStar Pictures film JUMPING THE BROOM, which features an all-star cast of Angela Bassett, Paula Patton, Laz Alonso, Loretta Devine and so many more in theatres May 6, 2011.
Produced by T.D. Jakes and Tracey Edmonds, JUMPING THE BROOM is a romantic comedy depicting the love and laughs that result when two families from different socioeconomic backgrounds meet for a weekend wedding in Martha’s Vineyard.
In agreeing to buy The Huffington Post for $315 million, AOL is putting what appears to be a significant premium on the ability to attract and build a community of readers.
Yet as more and more advertising dollars flow to the Web and to mobile devices, demand for popular and prolific online content producers like The Huffington Post, is rising. The market for online advertising is expected to increase 14 percent, to $51.9 billion, this year, according to the research firm Borrell Associates.
With that kind of growth, the deal for The Huffington Post is expected to raise the bar for other independent online media companies whose audiences have surged with the help of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Speculation is now turning to what prices others could fetch should they ever go on the block.Among the biggest is Gawker Media, home to a collection of popular sites, such as its flagship property and technology blog, Gizmodo, which attracts about 19 million users a month, according to comScore. Glam Media, a group of beauty and fashion sites geared toward women, boasts 87.8 million visitors a month.
The three-year-old Business Insider, something akin to a business version of The Huffington Post, with its mix of breaking original content and aggregation, attracts 3.5 million visitors a month, comScore says.And companies like AOL and Yahoo have been on the prowl for content providers.
“Right now, the macroeconomic turnaround and the explosive growth in mobile, is causing Internet companies to accelerate their investments and there’s a question of what is content,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Securities. “Companies like AOL and Yahoo are in a battle to make themselves relevant.”
For that reason, analysts barely blinked at a valuation for The Huffington Post that by most measures was a lofty one. The price is 6.3 times The Huffington Post’s projected revenue of more than $50 million for this year. That’s more expensive than the $25 million AOL paid last September to acquire TechCrunch, which claims to generate about $10 million in annual revenues.
If one uses AOL’s projections for revenue growth and costs savings in 2012, the price for The Huffington Post comes to 10 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization or Ebitda, wrote Mark S. Mahaney, an analyst with Citigroup. “Not cheap, but not outrageous for a relatively high quality asset with strong top-line growth, current profitability and margin expansion potential,” he wrote.
Oprah Winfrey has discovered she has a half-sister. The queen of talk announced on her eponymous show on Monday that she has learned just in November that she has a half-sister named Patricia, who was secretly given up for adoption in 1963.
When the media mogul was just nine years old in 1963, she had no idea her mother was pregnant. And because Vermita Lee couldn’t afford to keep Patricia, Oprah’s sister was secretly put up for adoption.
Oprah told her audience how Patricia, whose last name was not mentioned, learned of their connection and how they finally made contact. Their first meeting was recorded on home video in Milwaukee. She thanked her newly found sister for not going to the media with this news.
She said on her talk show that the news “literally shook me to my core.”
Coincidentally, Oprah also had another half-sister named Patricia, who passed away in 2003.
The Huffington Post will team up with BET cofounder Sheila Johnson to launch HuffPost GlobalBlack, an online platform that will examine news, politics, culture, opinion, and video through an African-American perspective.
HuffPost GlobalBlack will also feature a group blog with “leading thinkers, newsmakers, personalities, and provocateurs.”
We couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with Sheila Johnson, a true media visionary, on creating what we hope will become a go-to destination for both the African-American community and everyone who cares about these deeply important issues — in America and across the world. HuffPost GlobalBlack will synthesize Sheila’s insights and perspectives on culture and media, and HuffPost’s unique blend of real-time social news and engagement. This a two-way partnership, with HuffPost GlobalBlack content and vision informing all of HuffPost’s coverage, and HuffPost’s editorial and reporting team covering stories shaping the black community.
Johnson added:
The Huffington Post is at the center of social news: the idea that people want to engage in the news and opinion of the day and not just consume them. The Huffington Post is the ideal partner for us to create a thriving online black community of scale, a forum for ideas and discussion meant to inform, engage, surprise, and entertain.
In January, Bascom Hill Publishing Group is thrilled to publish Cheryl Wills’ first book, DIE FREE: A Heroic Family History (Bascom Hill Publishing Group, January 3, 2011), a true-story of the television journalist’s remarkable family journey from slavery to freedom in America.
As the nation marks the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War in 2011, Cheryl is hopeful that her great-great-great grandfather Sandy Wills’ courageous stint in that Great will be remembered along with the other 200,000 members of the United States Colored Troops.In Civil War anniversaries past, black soldiers have been largely ignored.
DIE FREE is packed with powerful personal stories, many of which are obtained from the National Archives in Washington, D.C.Cheryl’s exhaustive research, with the help a genealogist and the popular website ancestry.com, unearths a history that defies common stereotypes about the antebellum and reconstruction periods in the United States. For example, Cheryl’s great-great-great grandparents, Sandy and Emma Wills, remained friendly with their former slave owners and even married in their house. In DIE FREE Cheryl also uncovers how the federal government routinely discriminated against black Civil War veterans and their widows when they applied for pensions.Documents reveal a disturbing pattern of injustice as veterans were required to answer humiliating questions about their skin color and forced to hire legal representation.
This fascinating thread of American history is set against a backdrop of Cheryl’s father, a courageous army paratrooper who served during the Vietnam era and later joined the ranks of the New York City Fire Department.As the first African-American who integrated the oldest firehouse in the city, Engine 1, the author digs deep and shares how her father died at the age of 38 – without ever knowing his family’s distinguished Civil War legacy.
DIE FREE is a call to action for all Americans to ‘uncover your past to empower your future.’Cheryl Wills demonstrates that you can be emboldened by the courage of your ancestors and walk confidently in the direction of your dreams. After reading the pages of this uplifting book, you’ll learn that the debt for your freedom and prosperity has already been paid.
“Die Free is a compelling American story. As Cheryl Wills traces the life of her forefathers and foremothers, she traces a critical part of American history that puts in perspective where we have come from to get to where we are.”
-Rev. Al Sharpton
“Ancestry.com is proud the Cheryl Wills used our comprehensive website to make such a fascinating discovery. Die Free is a perfect example of why we do what we do!”
-Loretto “Lou” Dennis Szucs, V.P., Ancestry.com
“The stories are so deeply engaging that readers will quickly realize that in telling her personal story, Cheryl Wills is also telling ours”
-Warrington Hudlin, Pres., Black Filmmaker Foundation
“Die Free is a significant contribution to the body of literature that traces the experiences and family heritage of Africans in the diaspora, a journey that is all too familiar.”
-Sidique Abou-Bakarr Wai, President and National
Spokesperson, United African Congress
“The discovery of Cheryl’s great-great-great grandfather has been a fortuitous and unexpected find---tracking down slavery ancestry is never easy as slaves were treated as property, brought and sold, and rarely referred to by name.”
-Craig Rice, Association of Professional Genealogists
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cheryl Wills, longtime news anchor for Time Warner Cable’s New York 1 News featured regularly on the Huffington Post, holds a degree in Broadcast Journalism from the renowned S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.She was awarded in 2005 with an honorary doctorate from New York College of Health Professions and honored in 2010 as a broadcast legend in a regional campaign for McDonalds.Wills has moderated events broadcast on C-SPAN, is a nationally known public speaker, and has played herself in several big-screen movies.
In 1976, after years of mysterious absence, Marcus (Anthony Mackie, “The Hurt Locker”) returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. While his arrival raises suspicion among his family and former neighbors, he finds acceptance from his old friend Patricia (Kerry Washington, “Ray,” “Lift”) and her daughter. However, Marcus quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced, whose members suspect he orchestrated the slaying of their former comrade-in-arms. In a startling sequence of events, Marcus must protect a secret that could shatter everyone's beliefs as he rediscovers his forbidden passion for Patricia.
Director: Tanya Hamilton
Cast: Anthony Mackie Kerry Washington Jamie Hector Wendell Pierce Amari Cheatom
Eyes Wide Open By: Rev. W. Jeffrey Campbell, Houston, TX
Yesterday, January 23, 2010, I was winding up my time at the 2010 National African American MSM Leadership Conference on HIV/AIDS and other Health Disparities in Atlanta, GA. As usual, it had been an awesome experience to be with my same and both gender loving brothers and our heterosexual allies dialoguing about this disease that continues to ravage our African American community and more specifically the men of our African American same-gender loving community.
On Thursday Rev. Edwin Sanders of Nashville, TN offered a prayer during our lunch plenary session. Prior to praying Rev. Sanders gave specific instructions on what he wanted willing participants to do during the prayer. These were his instructions:
1. Do not bow your head, instead, keep it up. 2. Do not close your eyes, instead, keep them open. 3. If you feel led, during the prayer look around the room and observe the other men in the room. As Rev. Sanders began to pray I listened to him eloquently address God as he celebrated life and as he petitioned God for necessary blessings. As his booming voice filled the air I began to look at my brothers with my eyes wide open. I gazed first at the brothers at my table and then across the room as the many others who had made the journey to Atlanta for this conference. With my eyes wide open I saw black same/both gender loving me as young as 18 and as old as 65. I saw men of all heights, weights and skin tones. There were bald brothers, brothers with locks and everything in between. In that room were individuals with GEDs, high school diplomas, college degrees and some who have Ph.D or MD behind their names.
With my eyes wide open I continued to explore the great similarities and differences of God’s creation, the Black same/both gender loving brother. The more I looked around the more I discovered. From the east coast to the west coast; men from north of the Mason Dixon Line and others who spoke with a southern drawl. There were men who are single and others who are in partnered relationships. These men came from varying belief backgrounds in regards to God and Jesus Christ. Some brothers live with HIV. Others are in the AIDS stages of the virus while still others live with an HIV negative status.
I kept on looking! Students, teachers, mentors and mentees! Suits, jeans, African garb, dress shoes and sneakers! In this room were brothers living out loud while others only experience the comfort of being out when they are away from their home city.
As Rev. Sanders drew his conversation with God to a close I whispered my own prayer to God. I asked God to bless every brother in the room and to allow my brothers to experience God like never before. I then thanked God for giving me the opportunity to see and experience what some have never seen and even more what some think does not exist I saw strong, wise, healthy African American same and both gender loving men and I felt blessed.
The next time you have an opportunity to experience our brothers whether it be in a small gathering or a large gathering, enter the room with your eyes wide open filled with love and compassion and not hatred or judgment. I hope that you will see what I saw and give thanks.
On last Saturday I was scheduled to lead Praise and Worship at my church’s annual Angel Tree event. This event is hosted by our Criminal Justice and Outreach Ministries and provides gifts to children of incarcerated parents. This year over 500 children were blessed by this outreach effort.
On Saturday morning I was in quite a funk as I headed to the church. There was no particular reason for my melancholy mood. I was just walking around with a cloud over my head. When I entered the lobby of our life center I wondered to myself and to God, “How in the world am I going to lead these people in songs of celebration feeling the way that I do?” Little did I know that an angel awaited me in the ballroom of the life center.
When I entered the ballroom there were a few of the church staff and volunteers putting the final touches on decorations and set-up. I grumbled on the inside. My pastor’s wife is the hostess of this event every year. She too was standing across the room dressed in a beautiful red pant suit. When she saw me she waved and greeted me with a big “Good Morning!” I walked toward her and we hugged. She said, “It’s so cold in here! Come on, let’s go get some coffee.”
As we walked out of the ballroom towards the area where the coffee and hot tea had been set-up we just chatted…about nothing in particular. The more we talked, the more I could feel the conversation and her presence shifting my mood. I felt somewhat like the snowman in the Campbell’s Soup commercial. In that commercial a snowman comes inside from the cold and takes a seat at the kitchen table and begins to eat a steaming hot bowl of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. While eating the hot bowl of soul the snow begins to melt away and a little freckled face boy appears, all warmed up by the soup. I was that little boy last Saturday and whatever I was experiencing had caused me to freeze up but, one gesture by Mrs. Doris Gardner Ratliff melted away all the snow and revealed who I truly am. I am a man with a desire and a gift to lead God’s people in worship and praise. It’s amazing how one small gesture from an angel can make all the difference in the world.
Sometimes in our foggy and dark places not only do we miss the angels who are sent to bless us but, we are often too bogged down to praise God and bless the people of God. I have never had coffee with Mrs. Ratliff before. As a matter of fact, I rarely drink coffee except for with an occasional dessert. I could have very well have said, “No thank you. I’m really not a big coffee drinker.” However, in that moment it was not the coffee I needed. It was a few minutes of good company that was important and I am so glad I didn’t miss the opportunity to be encouraged.
Don’t miss your Christmas angel this season or any angel in any season. Slow down enough to recognize when the gesture being extended is just what God has ordered for you. I am a witness to the fact that a warm cup of coffee with an angel can change your “bah-humbug” to a song of praise.
“O come let us adore Him; O come let us adore Him; O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
The title of the December 4, 2009 Metro News article read: "Black andGayis Beautiful."
This ad was supported by a few of NYC's Black Gay and Lesbian leaders, who are taking a stand for equality and respect in the pulpit, which is so often denounced in the black churches in America.
I want to thank Pastor Joseph Tolton of Rehoboth Temple Christ Conscious Church for organizing this movement, that I proudly admit, I was part of. This is one cause I felt I needed to support. It hits so close to home and after all the work I've been doing with FlagBoy and creating new artistic works that speak to the empowerment and progression of Black Gay Men, Black Men in general, and the Black family, I must continue to stand on my word.
Here's what appeared in last week's Metro News, December 4, 2009, pg. 17.
Black & Gay is Beautiful
LIVE!
God has promised us life, and life more abundantly. At this juncture in our global history, the tide is turning as God’s plan is unfolding for the inclusion of all people based on their divine design as gay, lesbian, straight, bi-sexual, or transgendered. God is by all means up to something, and the day of reckoning is here. The universe will not tolerate bigotry much longer as racism, sexism, homophobia, and ultimately patriarchy are being dismantled brick by brick. So God’s call for the non-straight oriented community is that we LIVE! LIVE truthfully! LIVE courageously! LIVE spiritually! LIVE emotionally! LIVE financially! LIVE romantically! LIVE fearlessly! So come out, come out wherever you are and LIVE. For God is great and life is grand. It’s our time.
We are FAMILY!
As gay black people - brothers and sisters alike - we are building strong families, strong churches, strong business and strong communities in ways that we never dreamed possible. Be encouraged and again we say LIVE! There is no need to be held hostage by fear. There is no need to live disconnected and in isolation. There is LIFE for us and it begins by US loving and supporting US.
Spiritual Violence
For those of us of faith who have always loved God and loved the black Church, the defining issues of our lives has been the church’s damning stance on homosexuality. As children, this condemnation shattered our spirit. As adolescents, this ridicule broke our hearts. As young adults, this disdain has attempted to drive us to the brink. Spiritual violence is wrong and it kills the spirit. The black Church must find new ways to talk about sex and sexuality. The noise around homosexuality in our community distracts us from confronting human sexuality in the context of the black experience in America. And black America is afraid to confront human sexuality because it means dealing with these issues:
·What is the emotional legacy we bear as a result of the rape of our women and untold rape of our men in slavery?
·Black men have been held captive to notions of manhood defined by hyper masculinity.
·The high proportion of gay men in the church and the prospect of marriage between them is frightening in the face of a record number of unwed black women in the Church.
·Fully functional (straight and gay I might add) brothers are hard to find when there are more brothers incarcerated than are in college.
·The experience black men have with other men in prison and how we negotiate the bandwidth of their sexual proclivity upon returning home.
·The silent grief we felt but publicly never discussed when our brother’s died in record numbers between 1988 – 1998.
Hypocrisy in the pulpit
Come on Bishops, Elders and Pastors, it is time to stop abusing your gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and trans-gendered daughters and sons and deal with the real issue that drives your homophobia. White folks hid behind the bible - Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord, Colossians 3:22 - and you were the ones who exposed them. Hypocrisy does not look good on you. Stop the spiritual violence NOW!
Pastor Donnie McClurkin
We love you brother and in ways the traditional church cannot because we understand your pain. You are not a man who loves men because of being molested as a child. That grave and despicable tragedy broke your spirit and damaged your mind; however, it did not have the capacity to change your DNA. There is so much love in our community for you. We want to see you healed and whole. Whenever you are ready, come home and we’ll love you until it doesn’t hurt anymore. That’s how we do!
Long Island, Rehoboth Temple, GayByGod.net, and our partners will be coming your way with an awesome crusade soon. Your sisters and brothers are concerned about you and we’re planning to bring a radically inclusive REVIVAL with a strategic plan for sustained support in your area. We love you. You are not alone!
