March 3, 2019

Harlem scenes from Meropolis 1939. Restored outtakes.

From National Archives Youtube Channel. Restored outtakes from METROPOLIS 1939. This rare footage shows Harlem street scenes, residents of the Harlem River Houses, and construction of the Queensbridge Houses, circa 1939. Assumed to be in the public domain.

This is the whole documentry, only 18 minutes and well worth the viewing.

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-metropolis-1939-online

March 3, 2019

A View of Historic Harlem That's Not on the Walking Tour

A View of Historic Harlem That’s Not on the Walking Tour

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/nyregion/harlem-renaissance-james-van-der-zee.html

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Soldiers march in the Marcus Garvey Parade, 1924CreditCreditJames Van Der Zee/Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

By Rebecca Carroll

Feb. 28, 2019

It’s easy to think that you know Harlem — a place with an iconic history, where movements were born, parades were protested, and that black Americans called mecca. Even if there weren’t countless movies, poems, art, spoken lore and books about Harlem, you could visit it today and still feel a lingering sense of that history, despite the gentrification tsunami that has washed over all of New York City.

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The Lincoln Grill, 1926.CreditJames Van Der Zee/Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

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Travelers Restaurant, circa 1935.CreditJames Van Der Zee/Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

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James Van Der Zee was deft at capturing a kind of marriage between the place and the person.CreditJames Van Der Zee/Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

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Seventh Avenue, now known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, circa 1941.CreditJames Van Der Zee/Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

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Members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks participate in a parade in 1931.CreditJames Van Der Zee/Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York



I get the impression that white hatred for A/A wasn't about A/A not becoming a part of American culture but that A/A had embraced the culture too well. A/A were not living down to racist stereotyplification.

February 28, 2019

In honor of the talks in Hanoi ...

http://theweeklychallenger.com/faces-of-courage-the-courageous-12/

February 28, 2019

Black History day 28 - Faces of courage: The Courageous 12

Faces of courage: The Courageous 12

http://theweeklychallenger.com/faces-of-courage-the-courageous-12/



BY FRANK DROUZAS, Staff Writer

ST. PETERSBURG –One Sunday morning while on patrol, Officer Leon Jackson of the St. Petersburg Police Department (SPPD) spotted a car barreling its way across Central Avenue, haphazardly swerving over the centerline, running red lights and even slamming against the curb.


Jackson flipped on his patrol car’s flashing lights and gave chase. The driver refused to stop, making Jackson pursue him all the way to the corner of Central and 66th Street, where the chase ended outside a strip mall.

As he stepped out of his cruiser and approached with caution, Jackson was aware that there wasn’t a soul stirring anywhere on the street—he was completely alone. So as to keep an advantage over whatever he was about to face from the driver’s side of the unknown car, Jackson stayed back and to the side, taking care not to walk up level to the window.

When Jackson came close enough to get a look inside, he observed a shiny object in the front seat by the driver. Shining his flashlight into the window, he saw it was a .357 magnum.
He kept his cool. He simply took his own gun out of the holster and instructed the man: “Don’t move. If you move, I’m going to shoot you.”


To reach Frank Drouzas, email fdrouzas@theweeklychallenger.com

February 28, 2019

Black History day 27 - The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male[a] was an infamous and unethical clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service.[1][2] The purpose of this study was to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis; the African-American men in the study were told they were receiving free health care from the United States government.[3]

The Public Health Service started working on this study in 1932 in collaboration with Tuskegee University, a historically black college in Alabama. Investigators enrolled in the study a total of 600 impoverished, African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the disease.[2] The men were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance for participating in the study. The men were told that the study was only going to last six months, but it actually lasted 40 years.[2] After funding for treatment was lost, the study was continued without informing the men that they would never be treated. None of the men were told that they had the disease, and none were treated with penicillin even after the antibiotic was proven to successfully treat syphilis. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told that they were being treated for "bad blood", a colloquialism that described various conditions such as syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. "Bad blood"—specifically the collection of illnesses the term included—was a leading cause of death within the southern African-American community.[2]

The 40-year study was controversial for reasons related to ethical standards. Researchers knowingly failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin was found as an effective cure for the disease that they were studying. The revelation in 1972 of study failures by a whistleblower, Peter Buxtun, led to major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies. Now studies require informed consent,[4] communication of diagnosis, and accurate reporting of test results.[5]

By 1947, penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Choices available to the doctors involved in the study might have included treating all syphilitic subjects and closing the study, or splitting off a control group for testing with penicillin. Instead, the Tuskegee scientists continued the study without treating any participants; they withheld penicillin and information about it from the patients. In addition, scientists prevented participants from accessing syphilis treatment programs available to other residents in the area.[6] The study continued, under numerous US Public Health Service supervisors, until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination on November 16 of that year.[7] The victims of the study, all African American, included numerous men who died of syphilis, 40 wives who contracted the disease, and 19 children born with congenital syphilis.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, cited as "arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history",[8] led to the 1979 Belmont Report and to the establishment of the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP).[9] It also led to federal laws and regulations requiring Institutional Review Boards for the protection of human subjects in studies involving them. The OHRP manages this responsibility within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).[10]

On May 16, 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized on behalf of the United States to victims of the experiment.

February 27, 2019

Black History day 26 - Amelia Boynton: taking a stand, risking her life

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103-year-old activist: I was almost killed fighting for freedom

https://nypost.com/2014/12/01/103-year-old-activist-i-was-almost-killed-fighting-for-freedom/

It was the sickening image that woke up the world to the brutality that gave birth to the civil rights struggle: a God-fearing, middle-aged woman lying helpless and unconscious on the side of the road. She had been savagely beaten with clubs. Then, a helmeted law enforcement officer pumped tear gas into her throat before leaving her for dead. Or, as the racist sheriff callously put it, “for the buzzards to eat.”

Newswires flashed the shocking March 7, 1965, pictures of Mrs. Amelia Boynton across the globe. Every major newspaper and TV network carried them. And the message was loud and clear: This is what America does to blacks who dare make a stand.

<snip>


“I wasn’t looking for notoriety [when we marched],” recalls Boynton Robinson, during an interview with The Post at her home. “But if that’s what it took [to get attention], I didn’t care how many licks I got. It just made me even more determined to fight for our cause.”



She might not have been well enough to attend the Atlanta preview of the film, but she’s confident it will accurately portray the tense period when the civil rights battle concentrated on her former town of Selma. At the time, even though they made up half of the population, only 1 percent of blacks were entitled to vote, because of literacy tests, the preposterous bureaucracy it took wading through to register, plus the payment of a poll tax well beyond their means. They also lived in fear of the murderous Ku Klux Klan, which ruled the surrounding area, victimizing anyone it believed was disrupting the status quo of white rule.

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February 26, 2019

Just saw Peter Frampton play the elevator version of this song and now I need the real doctor ...

February 26, 2019

Watch out where the Russkies go, don't you eat no greenish snow ...

What Russia's green snow reveals about the rise of pollution

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/shortcuts/2019/feb/25/what-russias-green-snow-reveals-about-the-rise-of-pollution

Incidents of snow turning green and black are causing increasing alarm. So just how worried should we be about the world’s increasingly colourful snow?

Fiona Harvey

Mon 25 Feb 2019 11.26 EST
Last modified on Mon 25 Feb 2019 12.40 EST



Don’t eat yellow snow has always been good advice. To that we can now add warnings against green, pink, orange and black snow, as new evidence of our trashing of the planet is now being etched out on the most pristine of environments – our dwindling snow caps.

A spate of incidents in Russia has grabbed internet attention. Residents of Siberian towns watched with dismay as the snow around them turned green and black, with toxic emissions forcing some to wear masks. These seem to be connected to local factories, with a chrome plant in particular behind the green snow, and, as protests gather pace, the Putin government has come under pressure.

Snow pollution is not new. Campaigners have been warning for years of the dangers of dark snow, – black, brown and grey streaks across the ice that can be clearly seen from the air above Arctic regions – because of its effects on climate change. Dark snow is stained by black carbon, AKA soot – unburnt particles released by the combustion of fossil fuels in coal-fired power plants, factories and other sources, and carried to the ice caps on the wind. When soot falls on white snow, it is not only an aesthetic disaster: reflective snow and ice enhance the earth’s albedo ((the ability of a surface to reflect sunlight), bouncing light and heat back into space, but dark snow absorbs heat instead, accelerating global warming. Eliminating soot could slow climate change, helping to reduce temperatures by up to 0.5C.


Snow is sometimes stained by natural phenomena. Chlamydomonas nivalis algae can make it appear pink or red, an effect documented by scientists since the 19th century. Orange snow spreading across eastern Europe last year may have been from particles of dust and sand from the Sahara, though pollution was a more likely cause of orange snowfalls in Siberia a decade earlier.

February 25, 2019

Black History day 25 - The Apollo Theater

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Theater

The Apollo Theater is a music hall located at 253 West 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (formerly Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (formerly Eighth Avenue) in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.[3] It is a noted venue for African-American performers, and is the home of Showtime at the Apollo, a nationally syndicated television variety show which showcased new talent, from 1987 to 2008, encompassing 1,093 episodes; the show was rebooted in 2018.

The theater, which has a capacity of 1,506, opened in 1914 as Hurtig & Seamon's New Burlesque Theater, and was designed by George Keister in the neo-Classical style.[2] It became the Apollo in 1934, when it was opened to black patrons – previously it had been a whites-only venue.[3] In 1983, both the interior and exterior of the building were designated as New York City Landmarks,[2] and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It is estimated that 1.3 million people visit the Apollo every year.[4]


Creation and rise

The building which later became the Apollo Theater was built in 1913-14[2] and was designed by architect George Keister,[5] who also designed the First Baptist Church in the City of New York. It was originally Hurtig and Seamon's New (Burlesque) Theater, which enforced a strict "Whites Only" policy.[6] The theatre was operated by noted burlesque producers Jules Hurtig and Harry Seamon, who obtained a 30-year lease.[5] It remained in operation until 1928, when Billy Minsky took over.[citation needed] The song "I May Be Wrong (But I Think You're Wonderful)" by Harry Sullivan and Harry Ruskin, written in 1929, became the theme song of the theater.[citation needed].
Adelaide Hall 1929

During the early 1930s, the theatre fell into disrepair and closed once more. In 1933, it was purchased by Sidney Cohen, who owned other theaters in the area,[4] and after lavish renovations it re-opened as the "Apollo Theater" on January 16, 1934,[6] catering to the black community of Harlem.[3] On February 14, 1934, the first major star to appear at the Apollo was jazz singer and Broadway star Adelaide Hall in Clarence Robinson's production Chocolate Soldiers, which featured Sam Wooding's Orchestra. The show ran for a limited engagement and was highly praised by the press, which helped establish the Apollo's reputation.[6]

Managed by Morris Sussman, Cohen's Apollo Theatre had vigorous competition from other venues, such as the Lafayette, managed by Frank Schiffman, which presented acts such as Louis Armstrong, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Bessie Smith and Eddie Green. Leo Brecher's Harlem Opera House was another competing venue. To improve the shows at the Apollo, Cohen hired noted talent scout John Hammond to book his shows. However, the deal fell through when Cohen died, and the end result was the merger of the Apollo with the Harlem Opera House. The Opera House became a movie theater, but the Apollo, under the ownership of Brecher and Schiffman, continued to present stage shows.[4] Schiffman hired Clarence Robinson as in-house producer,[6]
(2015)

Originally, a typical show presented at the Apollo was akin to a vaudeville show, including a chorus line of beautiful girls. As the years progressed, such variety shows were presented less often.[4]

During the swing era, along with bands such as Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Webb, Count Basie, and Andy Kirk, the Apollo also presented dance acts such as Bill Robinson, the Nicholas Brothers, Carmen De Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, the Berry Brothers, and Buck and Bubbles.[4] Comic acts also appeared on the Apollo stage, such as Butterbeans and Susie, including some who performed in blackface, much to the horror of the NAACP and the elite of Harlem.[4]

The Apollo also featured the performances of old-time vaudeville favorites like Tim Moore, Stepin Fetchit, Moms Mabley, Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham, Clinton "Dusty" Fletcher, John "Spider Bruce" Mason, and Johnny Lee, as well as younger comics like Bill Cosby, Godfrey Cambridge, LaWanda Page, Richard Pryor, Rudy Ray Moore, and Redd Foxx.

Gospel acts which played the Apollo include the Staple Singers, Mahalia Jackson, The Clark Sisters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Clara Ward and Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers.[4] Performers of soul music on the Apollo stage included Ray Charles, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, and jazz was represented as well, by acts such as Art Blakey and Horace Silver.[4]

Although the theatre concentrated on showcasing African American acts, it also presented white acts such as swing bandleaders Harry James, Woody Herman and Charlie Barnet during the swing era, and, later, jazz greats Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz and Buddy Rich, who was a particular favorite of the Apollo crowd. During the 1950s, several white rock and roll performers whose musical backgrounds were more country music oriented, such as Buddy Holly and Duane Eddy played the Apollo but scored with their audiences by playing blues-styled material. The theater's audience was often mixed: in the 1940s it was estimated that during the week about 40% of the audience was white, which would go up to 75% for weekend shows.[4] Jazz singer Anita O'Day headlined for the week of September 21, 1950, billed as "the Jezebel of Jazz".[7]
Amateur Nights

Schiffman had first introduced an amateur night at the Lafayette Theater, where it was known as "Harlem Amateur Hour", and was hosted by Ralph Cooper. At the Apollo, it was originally called "Audition Night", but later became "Amateur Night in Harlem", held every Monday evening and broadcast on the radio over WMCA and eleven affiliate stations.[4]

One unique feature of the Apollo during Amateur Nights was "the executioner", a man with a broom who would sweep performers off the stage if the highly vocal and opinionated audiences began to call for their removal.[8] Vaudeville tap dancer "Sandman" Sims played the role from the 1950s to 2000; stagehand Norman Miller, known as "Porto Rico" (later played by Bob Collins) might also chase the unfortunate performer offstage with a cap pistol, accompanied by the sound of a siren.[4]

The Apollo grew to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance of the pre-World War II years. Billing itself as a place "where stars are born and legends are made," the Apollo became famous for launching the careers of artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, who made her singing debut at 17 at the Apollo, on November 21, 1934. Fitzgerald's performances pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and she won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its "Amateur Nights". She had originally intended to go on stage and dance, but intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead, in the style of Connee Boswell. She sang Hoagy Carmichael's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection", a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of $25.00.[9]

Vocalist Thelma Carpenter won the amateur night in 1938, returning several times later as a headliner and also for the 1993 NBC-TV special "Apollo Theater Hall of Fame," an all-star tribute hosted by Bill Cosby.[10]

Jimi Hendrix won the first place prize in an amateur musician contest at the Apollo in 1964. Amateur Night had its first tie on October 27, 2010, with guitarist Nathan Foley, 16, of Rockville, Maryland, and cellist and singer Ayanna Witter-Johnson, 25, a student at the Manhattan School of Music from London, sharing the $10,000 prize.[11]

Other performers whose careers started at the Apollo include Billie Holiday, Pearl Bailey, Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown & The Famous Flames, King Curtis, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Parliament-Funkadelic, Wilson Pickett, The Miracles, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Rush Brown, Stephanie Mills, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Short, The Jackson 5, Patti Austin, Patti LaBelle, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Ben E. King, Mariah Carey, The Isley Brothers, Lauryn Hill, Sarah Vaughan, Jazmine Sullivan, Ne-Yo, and Machine Gun Kelly.
Recordings
The inside of the theater as seen from the stage

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

In 1962, James Brown, who had first played the Apollo three years earlier with his vocal group The Famous Flames, recorded his show at the theater. The resulting album, Live at the Apollo, was a groundbreaking success, spending 66 weeks on the Billboard pop albums chart and peaking at #2. Brown went on to record three more albums (Live at the Apollo, Volume II, Revolution of the Mind, Live at the Apollo 1995) and a television special, James Brown: Man to Man, at the theater, and helped popularize it as a venue for live recordings. Other performers who recorded albums at the Apollo include Patti LaBelle, Clyde McPhatter, Marva Whitney, The Mighty Clouds of Joy, Robert Palmer, and B.B. King.

In 2007, gospel recording artist Byron Cage played at the Apollo for his album Live at the Apollo: The Proclamation. Guns N' Roses visited the venue on July 20, 2017 for their "Not in This Lifetime" tour as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the bands debut album "Appetite for Destruction". The show was recorded and was broadcast in its entirety on SiriusXM satellite radio. The concert was an invite-only event where subscribers to the satellite radio service were eligible to win tickets.In 2017, Bruno Mars recorded his first TV exclusive concert titled Bruno Mars: 24K Magic Live at the Apollo.[12]
Decline and restoration

Although the 1960s was the venue's most successful decade, in the following decade, the drug problem in Harlem, with its attendant robberies and thefts, was the cause of its closing in 1976, after an 18-year-old was shot to death.[4] On April 1 and 2, 1976, Fred and Felicidad Dukes along with Rafee Kamaal produced two 90-minute television specials with Group W Productions as a way to help restore life to the theater, which re-opened in that year, featuring acts such as James Brown, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.[4] From 1975 to 1982, the theater was owned by Guy Fisher. In 1983, it was bought by Inner City Broadcasting, a firm owned by former Manhattan borough president Percy E. Sutton.[4] It obtained federal and city landmark status in that same year. In 1991, the Apollo was purchased by the State of New York, which created the non-profit Apollo Theater Foundation to run it.[4]

In 2001, the architecture firms Beyer Blinder Belle, which specializes in restorations of historic buildings, and Davis Brody Bond began a restoration of the theater's interior.[3] In 2005, restoration of the exterior, and the installation of a new light-emitting diode (LED) marquee began. In 2009–10, in celebration of the theater's 75th anniversary, the theater put together an archive of historical material, including documents and photographs and, with Columbia University, began an oral history project.[4]

The Apollo Theater draws an estimated 1.3 million visitors annually.[4]
Hall of Fame

The Apollo Theater Legends Hall of Fame has inducted such renowned performers and music-industry figures as Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Michael Jackson, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Elton John, Mymoena Davids, Little Richard, Hall & Oates, Ella Fitzgerald, Smokey Robinson, Billy Eckstine, Gladys Knight, The Pips, The Jacksons, Quincy Jones, Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, D'Angelo and Prince.[13][14]
See also

February 24, 2019

Black History: day 24 - America's Forgotten Mass Lynching, 237 A/A Murdered In Arkansas

237 Black People Were Murdered In Arkansas:America’s Forgotten Mass Lynching

https://sungod64.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/237-black-people-were-murdered-in-arkansasamericas-forgotten-mass-lynching/





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In 1919, in the wake of World War I, black sharecroppers unionized in Arkansas, unleashing a wave of white vigilantism and mass murder that left 237 people dead.

DAVID KRUGLER

The visits began in the fall of 1918, just as World War I ended. At his office in Little Rock, Arkansas, attorney Ulysses S. Bratton listened as African American sharecroppers from the Delta told stories of theft, exploitation, and endless debt. A man named Carter had tended 90 acres of cotton, only to have his landlord seize the entire crop and his possessions. From the town of Ratio, in Phillips County, Arkansas, a black farmer reported that a plantation manager refused to give sharecroppers an itemized account for their crop. Another sharecropper told of a landlord trying “to starve the people into selling the cotton at his own price. They ain’t allowing us down there room to move our feet except to go to the field.”

No one could know it at the time, but within a year these inauspicious meetings would lead to one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history. Initiated by whites, the violence—by any measure, a massacre—claimed the lives of 237 African Americans, according to a just released report from the Equal Justice Initiative. The death toll was unusually high, but the use of racial violence to subjugate blacks during this time was not uncommon. As the Equal Justice Initiative observes, “Racial terror lynching was a tool used to enforce Jim Crow laws and racial segregation—a tactic for maintaining racial control by victimizing the entire African American community, not merely punishment of an alleged perpetrator for a crime.” This was certainly true of the massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas.

Bratton agreed to represent the cheated sharecroppers, who also joined a new union, the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. Its founder, a black Delta native named Robert Hill, had no prior organizing experience but plenty of ambition. “The union wants to know why it is that the laborers cannot control their just earnings which they work for,” Hill announced as he urged black sharecroppers to each recruit 25 prospective members to form a lodge. Hill was especially successful in Phillips County, where seven lodges were established in 1919.

It took a lot of courage to defy the Arkansas Delta’s white elite. Men such as E.M. “Mort” Allen controlled the local economy, government, law enforcement, and courts. Allen was a latter-day carpetbagger, a Northerner who had come to Arkansas in 1906 to make his fortune. He married well and formed a partnership with a wealthy businessman. Together they developed the town of Elaine, a hub for the thriving lumber industry. Allen and the county’s white landowners understood that their continued prosperity depended on the exploitation of black sharecroppers and laborers. In a county where more than 75 percent of the population was African American, this wasn’t a task to be taken lightly. In February 1919, the planters agreed to reduce the acreage of cotton in cultivation in anticipation of a postwar drop in demand. If they gave their tenants a fair settlement, their profits would shrink further. Allen spoke for the planters when he declared that “the old Southern methods are much the best,” and that the “Southern men can handle the negroes all right and peaceably.”