“You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” Wiiliam Wilberforce
Roland Hayes, the brilliant tenor became the first African-American man to earn international fame as a concert vocalist. In 1942, Mr. Hayes’s wife, Helen and daughter, Afrika, sat in a whites-only area of a shoe store and were thrown out. When Mr. Hayes defended his family, he was beaten and he and his wife were arrested. The incident inspired Langston Hughes to compose the poem, Roland Hayes Beaten.
The Beulah Show, the first sitcom to star an African American actress, moved from radio to ABC TV on October 3, 1950, starring Ethel Waters for the first season. Hattie McDaniel, star of radio’s Beulah, joined the cast around September of 1951 but only filmed six episodes of the second season before falling ill. She was quickly replaced by Louise Beavers who stayed with the show until its cancellation in 1952.
“I’m not black, I’m O.J.,” a reference to an alleged quote from O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Simpson was saying, as the story goes, that through fame and fortune he had managed to distance himself from the issues plaguing black men in America: poverty, police brutality, incarceration. I guess he was wrong. Continue reading “Looking The Other Way”
Almost 50 years ago John Carlos and Tommie Smith stood up for respect and change. On an Olympic podium, their gloved hands declared, while they were champions and represented American freedom, they were concerned family, friends and folks they would never meet lived in a world of second class citizenship and hate. Instead of becoming American darlings, they were stripped of their medals, their record stricken and never rewarded for the true strength and courage of their actions. Carlos and Smith suffered for us. Colin Kaepernick took a knee and suffers to remind us not enough has changed since 1968 in America.
Fried Chicken & Philosophy 