February 23, 2015

Remembering the First Pair of African-American Sisters to Take Tennis by Storm

As Serena and Venus Williams play out the end of their careers, debates have risen about their place in tennis and American history.

Some call Serena Williams the greatest female tennis player of all time. Journalist Ian Crouch recently wrote a story for the New Yorker proclaiming Serena as America's greatest athlete. Few dispute that the sisters are one of the most dynamic sibling duos in sports history.

Yet perhaps even fewer know that the Williams sisters weren't the first African-American siblings to take tennis by storm.

That distinction belongs to Margaret and Matilda Roumania Peters, sisters from Washington D.C. who wowed crowds with their spectacular doubles play in the 1930s, '40s and '50s.

Nicknamed "Pete" and "Re-Pete," respectively, the Peters sisters played in the American Tennis Association, a league formed to give African-Americans a chance to play competitive tennis at a national level.

Established in 1916 and still alive today, the ATA is the oldest black sports organization in the U.S. Similar to the Negro Leagues in baseball, the ATA offered top black tennis players—who were denied access to all-white professional leagues—a stage to showcase their talents.

The ATA sponsored tournaments throughout the country. Although top players didn't make a living from these tournaments, they were indeed stars. The Peters sisters were often asked to pose for publicity shots and sign autographs. Crowds of blacks and whites traveled to watch them play.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2353528-remembering-the-first-pair-of-african-american-sisters-to-take-tennis-by-storm

February 23, 2015

Stage Set for Showdowns Over Potential Contraction of HBCUs

Around the same time lawmakers in the North Carolina State Senate recently floated the idea of closing historically Black Elizabeth City State University, the United Negro College Fund reported that the Koch brothers, who routinely support Republican candidates and right-wing causes, had made a $25 million donation to the UNCF to help struggling HBCUs.

Although financially ailing Elizabeth City State won’t benefit from the Koch money because the UNCF only supports private HBCUs, both situations focused attention on the plight of numerous Black institutions, especially smaller schools facing dwindling financial resources and enrollment declines.

Last September, the University of North Carolina System reported that Elizabeth City State faced a shortfall of $5 million, and UNC President Tom Ross warned that “hard decisions” were ahead.

At the time, ECSU’s enrollment for the fall 2013 semester was just over 2,400 students, a decline from about 3,300 in 2010.

Then, in May, a provision in the State Senate draft budget proposal called for possibly eliminating “small, unprofitable” institutions, specifically citing ECSU. Within hours, the blowback from Black legislators, alumni and community leaders was so strong that the Senate voted unanimously to drop the provision.

It was just the latest jab in what has become a perennial joust by lawmakers in various states, typically Republicans, recommending closing an HBCU or merging it with another institution. In 2010 then-Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi brought up merging that state’s HBCUs. Swift reaction, involving marches and demonstrations, ensued. When the president of one of the institutions, Jackson State’s Ronald Mason Jr., also proposed a “unification” of the campuses, he quickly became persona non grata and soon thereafter announced his departure.

Despite the uproar in Mississippi, Mason crossed the state line and within months was named president of Louisiana’s historically Black, five-campus Southern University System, where Gov. Bobby Jindal has also made known his preference for mergers and consolidation.

Looking to consolidate

In recent years, lawmakers in several states have raised the subject of closure or mergers or involving HBCUs, only to be drowned out by various constituents of the institutions.

However, consolidation has become acceptable among non-HBCUs. For example, the University System of Georgia has merged eight college campuses into four to save money. But suggestions that Georgia’s historically Black Albany State be merged with predominantly White Darton State have been vehemently opposed by students, faculty and alumni from both campuses.

Yet some Black institutions continue to slide downward, making the loss of accreditation a reality, which in itself could trigger closure. South Carolina State was placed on probation in June by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which cited numerous issues, including financial instability and conflicts of interest on the governing board.

The probation only exacerbated the school’s plight. In April, a state Inspector General’s report had concluded that SCSU diverted $6.5 million in targeted program funds for operating expenses. A few weeks later, SCSU President Thomas Elzey sought $13.6 million from the state legislature to pay its bills. The Budget and Control Board approved a $6 million bailout.

Like Elizabeth City State, South Carolina State’s enrollment has steadily declined in recent years, to approximately 3,100 in spring 2014.

One legislator who voted against the bailout, Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, said, “We’ve got an institution that’s bleeding to death, and a Band-Aid is not going to solve the problem.”

Although he voted against the aid, saying it didn’t solve anything, Leatherman put together a group of current and former presidents of South Carolina’s public colleges to come up with a plan to help the school become solvent.

Johnny C. Taylor, president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), says state legislators are taking a new approach to handling troubled HBCUs. “They’re saying, ‘We’re not going to talk about closing HBCUs, and having people call us racists. We’re going to give you so much money, and that’s all you’re going to get.’ … You asked for $14 million and we’ll give you $6 million. Best of luck to you.’”

He says it’s time for HBCU leaders to have their own discussion about closing or merging flagging institutions “before others make the decisions for us. Yes, it’s controversial, but we need to do it.”

Despite the unpopularity of his unification plan in Mississippi four years ago, Mason still says he believes such proposals have a place in the discourse about the future of HBCUs. “There is a new reality in higher education,” he says.

Mason notes that “HBCUs used to have 100 percent of the Black market, (and) now we have around 10 percent.

“Higher education in general has to rethink its business model, but the need to change is especially acute at HBCUs.” He contends that “consortia or system approaches” are models that should be considered. “Numbers don’t lie, and the numbers say that we have to adapt to survive and ultimately thrive.”

But TMCF’s Taylor says adapting to the times won’t be easy. “People have become almost maniacal about it,” he says. “You can’t even bring up these topics. As someone who supports HBCUs, I think some of these conversations need to begin happening.”

Taylor uses examples of shuttered schools such as Virginia’s St. Paul’s College, which closed last year after losing its accreditation. Leaders of St. Paul’s and North Carolina’s St. Augustine’s University — both affiliated with the Episcopal Church — discussed a merger in the final days of St. Paul’s existence, but it was too late to save the school and St. Augustine’s was having its own financial problems at the time.

Taylor also cites the private Wilberforce and the public Central State universities, which he noted were once the same school, in Wilberforce, Ohio. “Could these institutions be stronger as one than they are as two? That’s a conversation worth having,” Taylor said.

http://diverseeducation.com/article/65709/

February 23, 2015

African-American History Museums Fight to Preserve Their Legacy

This ought to be a festive year for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, the largest museum of its kind in the country. Fifty years ago, Dr. Charles H. Wright, a Detroit physician and civil rights volunteer, opened what was then known as the International Afro-American Museum. It was a small but beloved project that grew steadily.

In 1985, the museum moved into a larger facility. ­Then, in 1997, with the city pouring in significant funding, the museum relocated again to a state-of-the art, 120,000-square-foot facility in the city’s cultural center. Billed as the world’s largest Black museum, its gala opening attracted reporters and dignitaries from all over the world.

But within a few years, the Wright Museum, which still receives a sizable portion of its budget from the City of Detroit, encountered financial turbulence.

Its problems were exacerbated in recent years by the financial woes of the Detroit automakers, its biggest corporate benefactors, and the city’s bankruptcy filling. As funding fell sharply, it was forced to cut back on programs and lay off half its staff. Just as the city went through bankruptcy proceedings, serious doubts about the museum’s future arose.

Staying afloat

Like the Wright Museum, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, in Greensboro, North Carolina, opened its new location with great fanfare in 2010. The museum is located in the old Woolworth building, where in 1960 four freshmen from nearby North Carolina A&T State University staged a sit-in at the lunch counter where they were refused service, kicking off one of the most important moments in the civil rights movement.

Now, five years after the museum opened its doors, it is mired in $26 million of debt and struggling to stay open. According to news reports, the museum has had a difficult time meeting its monthly operating expenses. Last November, the museum board fired its executive director just weeks after he told some past and potential donors that the museum had no money in its operating reserve. The City of Greensboro has offered to take over the management of the museum.

It is estimated that there are more than 300 African-American museums around the country. They span the spectrum—from history to art, music to sports, mom-and-pop operations to larger organizations with dozens of workers.

Samuel Black, president of the Association of African American Museums, estimates that about 40 percent of these museums are financially distressed. In addition to funding issues, he says, many struggle with attracting and retaining quality professional museum staff as well as dealing with board members.

Some also fail to plan well.

“Many of the museums are little museums and the bigger ones are associated with the state or county,” says Terrie Rouse, a veteran museum executive and former head of the California Afro-American Museum. “Many are aspirational instead of realistic. People are emotionally involved and they should be,” but that often doesn’t translate into good numbers, she says.

The economic downturn of the last decade has also been hard on nonprofits in general, particularly small ones with little or no endowments.

“Within the last five or six years, there has been a tremendous amount of stress on all museums because of the recession,” says Martha Morris, assistant director of museum studies at George Washington University and a former deputy director of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. “Most museums are small, with operating budgets under $500,000 a year. It’s a tough field to be in.”

Adds Black, “It’s no different than other nonprofit organizations.”

But he says one of the key differences between Black museums and other mainstream museums lies in access to funding and constraints in appealing to broader audiences. He also notes that many mainstream museums have been around for decades longer than Black museums, many of which began to emerge in the ’50s and ’60s and were essentially church-run operations.

Black points out that, when the City of Detroit was going through bankruptcy proceedings, the fate of the Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the nation’s largest art museums, was the subject of much concern. National news outlets reported on it and some business and community leaders in the Detroit metropolitan area, as well as city and state officials, immediately began exploring alternatives to save the museum.

In contrast, the problems of the Wright Museum received much less attention. Most of that attention, too, came from the African-American community.

http://diverseeducation.com/article/69956/

February 23, 2015

A Salute to the African American Playwright August Wilson

Last week, we were invited to preview a new documentary about the life of Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright August Wilson -- August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand, produced by the award-winning filmmaker Sam Pollard.

The documentary will debut on PBS stations nationally this week. This film is a beautiful legacy. It sheds light on a very gifted man who, like many creative people, was raised under difficult circumstances in an underserved area of Pittsburgh. All of his plays were "doors" into the black experience, and from many eras of the American story. In the film, several award-winning actors, who loved the man and the plays he created, shared his life through first-hand stories.

The documentary really touched me as I've been influenced by theater and the arts my entire life. A friend of my mom was the personal assistant to Mary Martin, the great "grand dame" of musicals. Each time Ms. Martin performed in Los Angeles, we were there. A highlight of the experience for a skinny eight-year-old, was the opportunity to visit her dressing room and see the mysteries of the stage first-hand. It was all so very exciting.

My father, Rex Stewart, was a jazz musician with Duke Ellington for over 15 years, and thus introduced my siblings and I to the world of entertainment at a very early age. Being raised in the 50s, it was really clear that seeing a play written by a black playwright was pretty rare, let alone attending a black theater, especially in Los Angeles where I grew up. New York City had a more robust black theater scene and better-established outlets for creative black people.

The Ebony Showcase Theater in Los Angeles was one of the few locally owned and operated black theaters in Los Angeles when it opened its doors in the '50s. Nick and Edna Stewart (Nick played "Lightening" in Amos 'n Andy), were determined to bring theater to the black community, and they wanted to make available a place where up-and-coming black actors and playwrights could practice their craft. Since the Stewarts were friends of my family, it was quite natural for me to visit the theater to see some of their shows and watch the whole practice of stagecraft.

To be honest, it wasn't until much later that I became aware of the importance of this theater and how many black playwrights and actors walked the boards there. I knew of the most famous plays written by black Americans, Raisin in the Sun, For Colored Girls, The Dutchman etc., were performed in this theater, but the theater was also the training ground for many who later became very well known -- John Amos and Isabel Stanford were examples.

February is Black History Month, and it is usually celebrated by the media and others by trotting out some of the older, well-known black heroes. I hold nothing against this practice, but to me, it's the "easy way out." Just dust off George Washington Carver and Martin Luther King (both great role models), and not take the time to delve into black history or culture to find other important icons. A playwright like August Wilson is someone to be publicly honored on a grand scale. His concepts, words and content, are clear insights into the ups and downs of the black experience. All of his plays received acclaim and nods from the beat critics and the general public.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/regina-fraser-and-pat-johnson/a-salute-to-the-african-a_b_6710470.html

February 23, 2015

50 Essential African-American Independent Films

While there are still too few African-American voices being recognized in Hollywood, recent films like Ava DuVernay’s Selma and Spike Lee’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus speak to a vital tradition of black independent filmmakers. Even controversial creators like Tyler Perry hail from a long line of filmmakers that includes the directors and stars of the “race films” of the 1920s and 1930s. Many pioneering African-American directors, like Melvin Van Peebles and Julie Dash, were trailblazers who found money for their fiercely idiosyncratic visions. They defied expectations and proved that there was an audience for films about black characters as told by black artists.

From now until February 19th, New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center hosts Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968 – 1986, an exhaustive survey of unsung movies about African Americans. In celebration of the retrospective and Black History Month, Flavorwire has compiled a list of 50 essential African-American independent films:

http://flavorwire.com/504549/50-essential-african-american-independent-films/view-all

February 23, 2015

Today in African American history: Birthday of W.E.B. DuBois

One of the greatest scholars, thinkers and activists for African American liberation was born on this date in 1868 in Great Barrington, Mass. "The cost of liberty," he wrote in 1909, "is less than the price of repression."

William Edward Burghardt DuBois received two B.A. degrees - from Fisk University in 1888 and from Harvard in 1890 - and he was the first African American, in 1895, to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. He was a professor of economics and history at Atlanta University, 1896-1910. From 1910-32 he edited The Crisis, magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he helped to found in 1909. After 1932 he returned to Atlanta as professor of sociology. He served as editor of the Atlanta University "Studies of the Negro Problem" from 1897-1911.

DuBois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. DuBois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute, which provided that Southern blacks would submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic educational and economic opportunities. Instead, DuBois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, and believed that African Americans needed access to advanced education to develop the community's leadership.

Racism was the main target of DuBois's work. He strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for independence of the African colonies from European powers.

Anti-capitalist, peace activist, communist

DuBois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, and he sympathized with socialist causes throughout his life. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament. In 1950 he became chair of the newly created Peace Information Center (PIC), which worked to publicize the Stockholm Peace Appeal in the U.S. The appeal set out to gather signatures on a petition to governments around the world to ban all nuclear weapons. The U.S. Justice Department alleged that the PIC was acting as a foreign agent, and thus required the PIC to register with the government. Du Bois and other PIC leaders refused, and were indicted for failure to register. Some of Du Bois's associates, notably in the NAACP, refused to support him, although many labor figures and leftists, including Langston Hughes, did. After a trial in 1951, with defense attorney Vito Marcantonio arguing the case, the case was dismissed. Nevertheless, the government confiscated Du Bois's passport and withheld it for eight years, until the Supreme Court decided that it was unconstitutional for the State Department to deny a passport to a U.S. citizen for political reasons. DuBois was unable to attend the 1955 Bandung conference in Indonesia, a meeting of 29 nations from Africa and Asia, many recently independent, representing most of the world's people of color.

In 1958, Du Bois regained his passport, and with his second wife, Shirley Graham DuBois, he traveled around the world, visiting both Russia and China, where, at the age of 90, he was celebrated with great honor.

In 1961 the Supreme Court upheld the 1950 McCarran Act, a key piece of McCarthyism legislation which required communists to register with the government. To demonstrate his outrage, DuBois, now 93, joined the Communist Party USA in October 1961. He wrote: "I believe in communism. I mean by communism, a planned way of life in the production of wealth and work designed for building a state whose object is the highest welfare of its people and not merely the profit of a part.

Death in Africa

While visiting Ghana in 1960, DuBois entertained the idea of creating a new encyclopedia of the African diaspora, the Encyclopedia Africana. In early 1961, Ghana notified him that they had appropriated funds to support the project, and invited him to come to Ghana and manage the project. In October of that year, DuBois and his wife moved there to commence work. When in early 1963 the U.S. refused to renew his passport, he made the symbolic gesture of becoming a citizen of Ghana.

His health declined during his two years in Ghana, and he died on August 27, 1963, in the capital of Accra, at age 95. He was buried in Accra near his home, which is now the DuBois Memorial Centre. A day after his death, at the March on Washington, speaker Roy Wilkins asked the hundreds of thousands of marchers to honor DuBois with a moment of silence.

http://www.peoplesworld.org/today-in-african-american-history-birthday-of-w-e-b-dubois/

February 23, 2015

Five African-American Geeks Who Made History

Comedian Chris Rock famously joked that in many schools, African-American history is often limited to the study of Martin Luther King. Although his statement was part of a stand-up comedy act, a 2014 episode of Jeopardy added a hint of truth to that idea when contestants attempted every question in every other category before attempting a single question in the “African-American History” category. With African-American History Month coming to an end, GeekDad wants to highlight five slightly lesser-known African-American geeks that have made enormous contributions to society. One amazing thing to keep in mind is that most of these men and women were geeks at a time when most Blacks in the US didn’t even have access to education.

Benjamin Banneker, Astronomy Geek (1731-1806). Benjamin Banneker was born a free Black man in Maryland. His father was a freed slave from Guinea, and his mother was the daughter of a former slave and an English dairy maid who was an indentured servant. Banneker became slightly obsessed with math and mechanics at an early age, building a working clock almost entirely out of wood at the age of 22. In 1791, he was hired by Major Andrew Ellicot to assist in the survey of the land that would eventually become the District of Columbia. Banneker is probably most famous for the six almanacs he published (in 28 editions) from 1792 to 1797.



Lewis Latimer, Engineering Geek (1848-1928). Lewis Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts to two escaped slaves from Virginia. His father was actually captured in Boston, and was legally defended by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. Lying about his age, Lewis Latimer enlisted in the US Navy at the age of 16 during the Civil War. After the war, he taught himself mechanical drawing and drafting, and he helped Alexander Graham Bell draft the patent for his design of the telephone. And while Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb, he had a lot of help from Latimer. Latimer holds the patents for the electric lamp and the process of manufacturing carbon filaments used in incandescent bulbs. Those patents were issued in 1881 and 1882. Edison was trying to use paper filaments that quickly burned out. Edison hired Latimer in 1884 and took advantage of his expertise. Some argue that Latimer had much more to do with the invention of the light bulb than he actually gets credit for.

George Washington Carver, Peanut Geek (c. 1864-1943). George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri during the Civil War. After the end of the war and after the abolition of slavery, he remained at the house of his owners, as most of the rest of his family had been kidnapped by slave raiders and sold in Kentucky. He was considered too frail for field work, so his owner, Susan Carver, actually did something almost unthinkable at the time–she taught him to read and write. He ultimately left the Carver home and attended a school for Black children. He conducted biological experiments on plants and studied art on his own until he found a university that would admit a Black student. Carver began his post-secondary studies at Simpson College in Iowa, but ultimately ended up studying botany at Iowa State, where he became the university’s first Black student. After graduation, he was hired to lead the Tuskegee Institute’s agricultural department. While there, he engaged in research and teaching that greatly helped struggling sharecroppers in the American South. He even created a mobile classroom, known as the Jessup wagon, to train farmers around the country. And while Carver pioneered research on new uses for soybean, pecan, and sweet potato crops, he is most famous for his work with the peanut. He used these crops to invent everything from plastics to gasoline. Carver gained international fame, becoming a member of the British Royal Society of Arts. He even advised President Theodore Roosevelt on issues related to agriculture in the US.

Bessie Coleman, Aviator Geek (1892-1926). Bessie Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, near the Arkansas and Louisiana borders. At the age of 23, she left the poverty and racism of East Texas and moved north to Chicago, where she still encountered racism, but was at least able to find work and accumulate a modest savings. Coleman decided that she wanted to learn how to fly when she heard stories from pilots who returned from World War I. When she was unable to find a flight school in the US that would admit a Black woman, she decided to go learn to fly in Europe. With the financial help of two prominent African-American entrepreneurs, Coleman was able to travel to France where she learned to fly in seven months. When she returned to the US in 1921, she was treated as a celebrity. At that time, very few women of any race had a pilot’s license, let alone an African-American woman. Over the next five years, she performed in numerous air shows, doing amazing stunts. Tragically, Coleman died while practicing for an air show in 1926.

Dr. Mae Jemison, Space Geek (1956-). Mae C. Jemison was born in Decatur, Georgia, but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. Jemison is an all-around, super-bad, class A geek. She has undergraduate degrees in chemical engineering and African/Afro-American studies from Stanford, as well as an MD from Cornell. As if that wasn’t enough, she is an accomplished dancer, and she has studied Russian, Swahili, and Japanese. She also served as a Peace Corps Medical Officer in Liberia and Sierra Leone from 1983 to 1985. In 1987, Jemison was selected for the NASA astronaut program. In September of 1992, Jemison became the first African-American female in space, when she served as the science mission specialist on STS-47 Spacelab-J, a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan. After leaving NASA in 1993, Jemison continued teaching at the university level. She continues to promote the advancement of science and technology, and she is a strong advocate for science education.

http://geekdad.com/2015/02/african-american-geeks/

February 23, 2015

$20 billion racial discrimination lawsuit filed against Comcast, Al Sharpton

In the midst of a coming FCC decision about the proposed merger between telco giants Comcast and Time Warner Cable, a group has filed a $20 billion lawsuit alleging that the two companies discriminate against black-owned media companies by simply not carrying them.

The National Association of African-American Owned Media filed the suit in California last week, echoing their actions against DirectTV and AT&T from late last year. Comcast, however, is not the only defendant targeted — MSNBC show host Al Sharpton and various advocacy groups were named in the suit as well.

The suit alleges that TWC and Comcast intentionally avoid picking up networks that are fully owned by African Americans, and that allowing the two to merge would only compound the problem. Via the Hollywood Reporter:

According to the lawsuit, Comcast and TWC "collectively spend approximately $25 billion annually for the licensing of pay-television channels and advertising of their products and services, yet 100% African American-owned media receives less than $3 million per year."


At the time of Comcast's 2010 acquisition of NBCUniversal, Comcast entered into memoranda of understanding with the NAACP, the National Urban League and the National Action Network, but the lawsuit says the voluntary diversity agreements are "a sham, undertaken to whitewash Comcast’s discriminatory business practices."

The suit goes on the allege that the only “fully owned black-channel” Comcast has is the Africa Channel, which former NBCU/Comcast exec Paula Madison owns. Madsion, the suit says, was involved directly in “obtaining government approval for the Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal, thus creating a serious conflict of interest.” And, what’s more, the suit claims that Al Sharpton accepted $3.8 million through his National Action Network to help put a good face on the NBC Universal acquisition.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/trending/20-billion-racial-discrimination-lawsuit-filed-against-Comcast-Al-Sharpton.html#DlfBs30QBeGSCdTq.99

February 23, 2015

PBS Documentary Shows America in Denial About Racism

*A provocative PBS documentary, “American Denial,” examines racism partly through the prism of Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 groundbreaking research of Jim Crow racism in the Deep South to show that despite electing Barack Obama as the first African American president we are far from having a post-racial society in the U.S.

“We are still haunted by our own biases,” Lou Smith the Producer and Director of the documentary said.

Myrdal and African American political scientist Ralph Bunche began in 1938 traveling extensively throughout the South and released in 1944 a 1,483-page study on race called “An American Dilemma” that sought to explain what they called the “Negro Problem.” The two who would later become Nobel Peace Prize winners concluded in their research that it was not the Negro causing the problem of racial problems. They discovered many white people in America had their head in the sand about being responsible for racial bias. This film shows a similarity in America exists today.

“He was shocked to his very bones by what he saw,” documentary producer Christine Herbes-Sommers maintained.

Herbes-Sommers, President of Vital Pictures, says that Myrdal raised the question about how can a country so devoted to the American creed of opportunity and liberty for all tolerate such a system of injustice for African Americans?

“That is what we explore in the film. We explore that question,” Herbes-Sommers said.

Smith and Herbes-Sommers collaborated on the documentary for four years, assisted by several scholars and experts who discuss their research and in some instances their own experiences to bring home the point “that we are living largely with denial and denying the existence as it effects our outlooks, our institutions and that we do that at our own peril,” Smith, co-founder and project director at Blue Spark Collaborative, said.

You can take the Implicit Association Test (IAT) by going to http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/implicit-test. This test taken by more than two million people revealed that even the most consciously tolerant may hold prejudices.

American Denial premieres on PBS’ Independent Lens on Monday, February 23, at 10 p.m. ET.

Hear more of Tené Croom’s exclusive interview with Christine Herbes-Sommers and Lou Smith

Read more at http://www.eurweb.com/2015/02/pbs-documentary-shows-america-in-denial-about-racism-listen/#oouZSBWvcoQtcTwh.99

February 23, 2015

Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges

If you've got fond memories of blowing into video game cartridges, you've got Gerald "Jerry" Lawson to thank. As the head of engineering and marketing for Fairchild Semiconductor's gaming outfit in the mid-'70s, Lawson developed the first home gaming console that utilized interchangeable cartridges, the Fairchild Channel F. That system never saw the heights of popularity of consoles from Atari, Nintendo and Sega, but it was a significant step forward for the entire gaming industry. Prior to the Channel F, games like Pong were built directly into their hardware -- there was no swapping them out to play something else -- and few believed that you could even give a console a microprocessor of its own. Lawson, who passed away at 70 from diabetes complications in 2011, was the first major African-American figure in the game industry. And, just like the tech world today, it still isn't as diverse as it should be.

Only 2 percent of game developers in 2005 were African-American, according to a study by the International Game Developer Association (who also honored Lawson as a game pioneer a month before his death). But things were even worse during Lawson's time: For his first five years at Fairchild, the company and its executives actually thought he was Indian. He was also one of two black members of the Homebrew Computing Club, a group that famously included Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and other Silicon Valley pioneers.


Born on December 1, 1940, Lawson grew up in a Queens, New York, housing project, where his predilection for engineering was on display early on. His father, a longshoreman with a fondness for science, gave him unique gifts like an Irish mail, a handcar typically used by railroad workers. More often than not, Lawson ended up being the only kid that knew how to use them. His mother arranged it so that he could attend a well-regarded elementary school in another part of the city (i.e., one that was predominantly white), and she stayed actively involved in his education throughout his childhood (so much so that she became the president of the PTA). Lawson also credits his first grade teacher as a major inspiration.

"I had a picture of George Washington Carver [a black inventor who was born into slavery] on the wall next to my desk," he told Vintage Computing in an interview. "And she said, 'This could be you.' I mean, I can still remember that picture, still remember where it was."

It's hard to deny Lawson's geek cred: He ran an amateur radio station out of his housing project after building a ham radio on his own (complete with an antenna hanging out of his window and a radio license). He also spent his teenage years repairing electronics all over the city. Most impressively, he taught himself most of what he knew about engineering. Lawson attended Queens College and the City College of New York before working at several firms, including Grumman Electric and Federal Aircraft. After scoring a job with Kaiser Electronics, which focused on military technology, Lawson moved to Silicon Valley.


http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/20/jerry-lawson-game-pioneer/