1956 Shirley & Lee’s immortal “Let the Good Times Roll” was issued (#20 pop). The same day, the doo-wop standards “Can’t We Be Sweethearts” by the Cleftones ($40), “Your Way” by the Heartbeats’ ($200), and “Castle in the Sky” by the Bop Chords ($200) were released.
1958 The Shields’ “You Cheated” (#12 pop, #11 R&B) was issued.
1970 Chubby Checker was arrested when police found marijuana in his car in Niagara Falls, NY.
1979 Chic’s “Good Times” charted on its way to #1 R&B for six weeks and #1 pop for one week.
1983 Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and B.B. King, among others, performed at New York’s Kool Jazz Festival.
1991 Michael Jackson left home for a stay in Bermuda, where, among other things, he played with film star Macauley Culkin.
1997 Brandy appeared in the lead role of the ABC/Disney TV production of Cinderella. She also had a part in the hit teen-horror flick, I Know What You Did Last Summer.
1959 Jackie Wilson charted with “I’ll Be Satisfied,” reaching #6 R&B and #20 pop. It was his fourth Top 10 hit in a row. He would go on to have ten in a row through 1961 and eventually chart forty-seven times on the R&B hit list through 1975.
1963 Little Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips, Part 2” became the thirteen-year-old’s first of sixty-five pop-chart records through 2002.
1963 The Four Pennies charted en route to #67 pop with a Chiffons-styled takeoff of the Crystals’ “Uptown,” called “My Block.” One reason for the style similarity was because the Four Pennies were the Chiffons. With their current hit “One Fine Day” riding the charts, the group’s producers were so enamored of “My Block” that they didn’t want to wait months to release another Chiffons song, so they just renamed the group, at least for the one release.
1968 Sly & the Family Stone performed at the Fillmore West in San Francisco.
1969 The Impressions, Ike & Tina Turner, and Santana performed at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, a venue known for hosting mostly rock bands.
1978 Aretha Franklin performed in Las Vegas for the first time in eight years.
1990 Little Richard was proclaimed in Los Angeles as the rock icon was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. About this time he stated: “I believe my music is the healin’ music. I believe my music can make the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf and dumb hear and talk, because it inspires and uplifts people. It regenerates the heart, makes the liver quiver, the bladder splatter, and the knees freeze. I’m not conceited either.”
1997 Actor and rapper Will Smith debuted on the R&B charts as a solo with “Men in Black” (M.I.B.) from the film, which he starred in. The record reached #9 on the airplay charts. Smith was originally half of the duo D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince and starred in the TV show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (so you can surmise which half he was).
1997 2Pac (Tupac Shakur) attacked the R&B hit list with “Smile,” reaching #4 and #12 pop. The hard-core rapper had died almost a year earlier when he was shot to death in a drive-by attack in Las Vegas. Like many rappers, 2Pac had more chart success after his demise than before as he reached the R&B Top 100 thirty-four times through 2004, twenty of those after expiring.
1998 Bobby Brown was arrested at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, CA, on suspicion of misdemeanor sexual battery after a purported occurrence at his pool.
2001 Blues legend John Lee Hooker—one of the few remaining links to the classic R&B and blues style that developed into the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll—died of natural causes at his home in Los Altos, CA. He had performed on more than 100 albums in a career that covered more than half a century. He influenced artists including Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Bonnie Raitt, and Jimi Hendrix.
Over at Abagond’s he has put up a good post on how the liberation of France has been whitewashed.
Paris was freed from Nazi rule on August 25th 1944 by the 2nd Armoured Division of the Free French army, a few months after D-Day. The strange thing is that all the soldiers seemed to be white – even though the French army at the time was two-thirds black. As it turns out the British and Americans who ran D-Day would only let an all-white division across the Channel. Even the black American soldiers were left behind in Britain and joined the fighting only later. France in those days ruled much of Africa and had black soldiers in its army. In 1940 when Paris fell to Hitler 17,000 black soldiers had lost their lives defending France. In spite of that no black soldiers were allowed to take part in the liberation of Paris four years later. And to this day there is no monument in Paris to honour them. Read the rest of Abagond’s posthere.I have some thoughts of my own to add. My father served under Gen. George Patton. He spoke of some of the racism he experienced while fighting in WWII. Yes, Abagond, the liberation of not only France, but, Europe, has been white-washed to the max. Black soldiers showed themselves capable in their fight during WWII:
17. “Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, U.S. Third Army commander, pins the Silver Star on Private Ernest A. Jenkins of New York City for his conspicuous gallantry in the liberation of Chateaudun, France…” October 13, 1944. 208-FS-3489-2. (african_americans_wwii_017.jpg)
24. “Two smiling French soldiers fill the hands of American soldiers with candy, in Rouffach, France, after the closing of the Colmar pocket.” February 5, 1945. Todd. 111-SC-199861-S. (african_americans_wwii_024.jpg) Black American soldiers were not the only ones to help liberate France, but, not mentioned in WWII history is their hand in liberating one of the infamous concentration camps of Hitler’s Nazis: Of note is the undisputed record of the 761ST, a segregated unit of Black American men:
Fighting in 183 days of combat in 1944 and 1945, the 761ST Battalion, wearing the famous Black Panther patch they would become well known for, captured and liberated four airfields and over 30 major towns. Suffering a 50 percent casualty rate and having lost 71 tanks, the 761ST broke through the Siegfried Line into Germany and they fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And they did liberate at least one concentration camp: they were the first unit to arrive at and participate in the liberation of the Gunskirchen camp in Austria, on May 5, 1945. (“It is also generally accepted by historians that the all-black 761st Tank Battalion had taken part in the liberation of a satellite of Mauthausen concentration camp, Gunskirchen, on May 5, 1945.” LA Times, by Elliot Perlman)
Floyd Dade was a soldier in the 761ST Tank Battalion. His unit was present at the liberation of Gunskirchen, a subcamp of Mauthausen, and he witnessed the aftermath of its operations. Mr. Dade spoke to students in the San Francisco Bay Area of California for many years, sharing his experiences and the things he had seen.
Another never discussed historical fact of WWII is the fighting of Black troops in the Pacific Rim—Japan, China, Burma, Iwo Jima— (known in WWII parlance as the “Pacific Theater”). Black American troops fought there as well:
16. “Cautiously advancing through the jungle, while on patrol in Japanese territory off the Numa-Numa Trail, this member of the 93rd Infantry Division is among the first Negro foot soldiers to go into action in the South Pacific theater.” May 1, 1944. 111-SC-189381-S (african_americans_wwii_016.jpg) 14. “Negro troops of the 24th Infantry, attached to the Americal Division, wait to advance behind a tank assault on the Jap[anese], along Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville.” 1944. 111-SC-202491 (african_americans_wwii_014.jpg)
13. “Seeking to rescue a Marine who was drowning in the surf at Iwo Jima, this sextet of Negro soldiers narrowly missed death themselves when their amphibian truck was swamped by heavy seas. From left to right, back row, they are T/5 L. C. Carter, Jr., Private John Bonner, Jr., Staff Sergeant Charles R. Johnson. Standing, from left to right, are T/5 A. B. Randle, T/5 Homer H. Gaines, and Private Willie Tellie.” March 11, 1945. S/Sgt. W. H. Feen. 127-N-114329 (african_americans_wwii_013.jpg)
10. “A U.S. Army soldier and a Chinese soldier place the flag of their ally on the front of their jeep just before the first truck convoy in almost three years crossed the China border en route from Ledo, India, to Kunming, China, over the Stilwell road.” February 6, 1945. Sgt. John Gutman. 208-AA-338A-1 (african_americans_wwii_010.jpg) Abagond, also lost in this whitewashing of WWII history, are other battles as well: -The Battle of the Bulge The Black units that faced the heaviest fighting during WWII were the following: -761ST -Tuskegee Airmen -92nd and 93rd, which fought in the Po Valley in Italy:
40. “Negro `doughfoots’ of the 92nd Infantry (`Buffalo’) Division pursue the retreating Germans through the Po Valley. German forces in Italy have since capitulated unconditionally.” Ca. May 1945. 208-AA-49E-1-13. (african_americans_wwii_040.jpg)
Early in the 20th century, the Buffalo Soldiers found themselves being used more as laborers and service troops rather than as active combat units. During World War II the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments were disbanded, and the soldiers were moved into service-oriented units, along with the entire 2nd Cavalry Division. One of the infantry regiments, the 24th Infantry Regiment, served in combat in the Pacific theater. Another was the 92nd Infantry Division, AKA the “Buffalo Soldiers Division”, which served in combat during the Italian Campaign in the Mediterranean theater. Another was the 93rd Infantry Division—including the 25th Infantry Regiment—which served in the Pacific theater. (SOURCE)
At the start of World War II, the 24th IR was stationed at Fort Benning as School Troops for the Infantry School. They participated in the Carolina Maneuvers of October – December 1941. During World War II, the 24th Infantry fought in the South Pacific Theater as a separate regiment. Deploying on April 4, 1942 from the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, the Regiment arrived in the New Hebrides Islands on May 4, 1942. The 24th moved to Guadalcanal on August 28, 1943, and was assigned to the US XVI Corps. 1st Battalion deployed to Bougainville, attached to the 37th Infantry Division, from March to May, 1944 for Perimeter Defense Duty. The Regiment departed Guadalcanal on December 8, 1944, and landed on Saipan and Tinian on December 19, 1944 for Garrison Duty that included mopping up the remaining Japanese forces that had yet to surrender. The Regiment was assigned to the Pacific Ocean Area Command on March 15, 1945, and then to the Central Pacific Base Command on May 15, 1945, and to the Western pacific Base Command on June 22, 1945. The Regiment departed Saipan and Tinian on July 9, 1945, and arrived on the Kerama Islands off Okinawa on July 29, 1945. At the end of the war, the 24th took the surrender of forces on Aka Shima Island, the first formal surrender of a Japanese Imperial Army Garrison. The Regiment remained on Okinawa through 1946. (SOURCE)
Has anyone ever heard of the Red Ball Express? This transportation unit of truck drivers, which was predominantly Black, was set up to supply the rapidly advancing US forces. The RBE suffered heavy casualties. They drove many times behind German line to get the needed supplies to Patton’s army to continue the war effort: http://www.skylighters.org/redball/
Not mentioned at all in the history of WWII are the Black women who served in the military. Yes, they did not fight on the battle lines as the men did, but, they still made a major impact in their dedicated service in WWI II. Black American women also fought to serve in the war effort as nurses. Despite early protests that black nurses treating white soldiers would not be appropriate, the War Department relented, and the first group of Black American nurses in the Army Nurse Corps arrived in England in 1944. Not well known is the important efforts of the famous 6888TH Central Postal Battalion: -6888TH (aka the “Six Triple Eight”) Central Postal Battalion: https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/the-6888th-central-postal-battalion-finally-honored-by-the-united-states-government/
148. “The first Negro WACs to arrive [on] the continent of Europe were 800 girls of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Bn, who had also been the first to arrive in England. After the battalion had set up its facilities at Rouen, France, it held an `open house’, which was attended by hundreds of Negro soldiers. Pvt. Ruth L. James,…of the battalion area is on duty at the gate.” May 26, 1945.Pfc. Stedman. 111-SC-23707. (african_americans_wwii_148.jpg)
147. “Capt. Della H. Raney, Army Nurse Corps, who now heads the nursing staff at the station hospital at Camp Beale, CA, has the distinction of being the first Negro nurse to report to yuty in the present war…” April 11, 1945. 208-PU-161K-1. (african_americans_wwii_147.jpg)
145. “Auxiliaries Ruth Wade and Lucille Mayo (left to right) further demonstrate their ability to service trucks as taught them during the processing period at Fort Des Moines and put into practice at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.” December 8, 1942. Oster. 111-SC-16246. (african_americans_wwii_145.jpg)
152. “Lt. Florie E. Gant…tends a patient at a prisoner-of war hospital somewhere in England.” October 7, 1944. 112-SGA-Nurses-44-1676. (african_americans_wwii_152.jpg)
158. “Cmdr. Thomas A. Gaylord, USN (Ret’d), administers oath to five new Navy nurses commissioned in New York…” Phyllis Mae Dailey, the Navy’s first African-American nurse, is second from the right. March 8, 1945. 80-G-4836. (african_americans_wwii_158.jpg)
There were also Black women pilots as well. Many of you may know of the valiant courage under fire that was exemplified by the Black men of the Tuskegee Airmen fame, but, how many of you know of Ms. Janet Harmon Waterford Bragg? She was one of the few Black women pilots who became a pilot through the Tuskegee Airmen pilot program. In addition to being denied entrance into the WASPS, where one White woman (Vice President of the Ninety-Nines) stated that she “did not know what to do with a Black woman”, Ms. Bragg was also denied her licence by the first examiner because as he put it, he had never given a Black woman a licence to fly, and he was not going to start doing it then. Ms. Bragg later went on to receive her licence from another instructor.
Janet Harmon Waterford Bragg
(1907-1993)
I’m not afraid of tomorrow because I’ve seen yesterday, and today is beautiful.” – Janet Bragg (1991) In 1939, when the National Airmen’s Association of America was formed, two women were among the founding members, both determined young African- Americans eager to learn and enter the still evolving world of aviation. One was Willa Brown, the other Janet Bragg. Born Janet Harmon in Griffin, Georgia on March 24, 1907, she gained her interest in aviation while still in her formative years. “As a child I always wanted to fly . . . I used to watch the birds – – how they would take off and land,” she said in an interview with the Arizona Historical Society in 1989. One day in 1933 in Chicago, she saw a billboard across the street with a drawing of a bird building a nest with chicks inside. The caption on the billboard read: “Birds learn to fly. Why can’t you” That day she knew where her future lay. A registered nurse who received her degree and training from Spellman College and MacBicar Hospital, both Black institutions respectively, Bragg enrolled at Curtis Wright School of Aeronautics in 1933. Despite constant harassment by fellow students, she completed her course work and helped build an airport and hangar in Robbins, Illinois. She bought the hangar’s first plane.
Like many African Americans during a time of rigid segregation, Bragg continued to meet opposition in her pursuit of a career in commercial and military aviation. She was denied entry into the Women’s Auxiliary Service Pilots (WASPs), being told by Ethel Sheehy, then vice president of the ’99s and Women’s Flying Training Detachment executive officer, that she didn’t know what to do with a Black woman. Undaunted, she flew to Tuskegee, .Alabama to train with Charles Alfred “Chief” Anderson and his instructors in the civilian program so that she could be given an exam for her commercial pilot’s license. However, the white examiner denied her this right after she landed from her trial flight. He exclaimed to Anderson that, “Well, I tell you Chief, she gave me a ride I’ll put up with any of your flight instructors. I’ve never given a colored girl a commercial pilot’s license, I don’t intend to now-.” The same year (1942), however, she was awarded her license by another examiner after 30-40 minutes of flight.
Bragg continued to fly as a hobby and encouraged others to pursue careers in aviation, even after being denied entry into the military nurse corps because the quota for Black nurses was filled. She wrote a weekly column ( 1930s), for the Chicago Defender entitled “Negro in Aviation”, reporting on the exploits of Col. John Robinson, a Black American aviator in charge of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Forces in Addis Ababa under Emperor Haile Selassie. Bragg was a founding and charter member of the Challenger Air Pilots’ Association (1931), a national organization of Black American aviators, inspired by the legacy of Bessie Coleman. Bragg, along with Willa Brown, Cornelius Coffey and Dale White, established an annual memorial flight over Bessie Coleman’s grave in 1935, a tradition that continued for many years.
Janet Harmon Waterford Bragg retired from flying in 1965 and retired as a nurse seven years later. A resident of Tucson, Arizona for several years, she died in Chicago in April of 1993. Aviation buffs, students and historians may want to visit the Pima Air Museum for a visual display of her life or read a copy of an interview conducted by the Arizona Historical Society, both located in Phoenix, Arizona. In addition, an autobiography on her life is being written through the Smithsonian Institute Press.
Even more left out of the picture, are the thousands of Black women “Rosie the Riveter” workers back home in America doing their part to help the war effort along. The White face of Rosie the Riveter is well-known, but, as seen here, the Rosies came in many racial groups. But, there were many Black women who helped in the production of armaments for the war. Many Black women left the menial life of domestic servitude to earn better salaries, provide for their families, and help the men fighting overseas in Europe, North Africa and Asia.
A real-life “Rosie the Riveter” operating a hand drill at Vultee-Nashville, TN, working on an A-31 Vengeance dive bomber, February, 1943. (Author: Alfred T. Palmer, U.S. Office of War Information).
Women workers at quartermaster depot. The tradition of Betsy Ross is being kept alive in this quatermaster corps depot where this young woman worker assists in the creation of American flags for military activitities. Philadelphia Quartermaster Corps. (SOURCE)
New Britain, Connecticut. Women welders at the Landers, Frary, and Clark plant. (SOURCE)
D-Day. V-E Day. V-J Day. Battle of the Bulge. Pacific Theater. So many battles that still wear a whiteface.
The dedication that many Black men and women showed during WWII is exemplary. That they fought two enemies—–overseas, and back in America—-is a true testament to their courage and bravery. Patriotism has no color.
Bill Dixon, the maverick trumpeter, composer, educator and major force in the jazz avant-garde movement of the 1960s, died on Wednesday at his home in North Bennington, Vt. He was 84.
June 20, 2010
Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos
Bill Dixon performing at the Vision Festival in 2007.
His death was announced by Scott Menhinick, a representative of his estate. No cause was given.
In the early 1960s, when rock was swallowing popular culture and jazz clubs were taking few chances on the “new thing” — as the developing avant-garde was then known — Mr. Dixon, who was known for the deep and almost liquid texture of his sound, fought to raise the profile of free improvisation and put more control into musicians’ hands. In 1964 he organized “The October Revolution in Jazz,” four days of music and discussions at the Cellar Café on West 91st Street in Manhattan, with a cast including the pianist-composers Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor, among others. It was the first free-jazz festival and the model for present-day musician-run events including the Vision Festival.
Soon after that, he established the Jazz Composers Guild, a cooperative organization intended to create bargaining power with club owners and build greater media visibility. Mr. Dixon played hardball: he argued for a collective strike on playing in jazz clubs and hoped for the support of John Coltrane, the wave floating most boats of the “new thing.” The strike never happened, and the Guild fractured within a year.
William Robert Dixon was born in Nantucket, Mass., on Oct. 5, 1925. His family moved to Harlem when he was about 7; he first aspired to be a visual artist and studied commercial art in high school. (He continued to paint throughout his life.) In 1944 he enlisted in the Army, eventually serving in Germany during the last few months of war in Europe.
After his return he attended the Hartnett Conservatory in Manhattan and then started performing around town — alongside, among others, Mr. Taylor, whom he met in 1951; the bassist Wilbur Ware; and eventually the saxophonist Archie Shepp, with whom he formed a quartet.
On records including “Intents and Purposes” (1967) and the two-volume “Vade Mecum,” recorded in 1993, Mr. Dixon displayed a fascination with whispered notes and the lowest, darkest ends of a band’s sound. He used delay and reverb on his trumpet, in long, floating tones and scrabbling figures; his music got closer to the ideal of pure abstraction than that of many of his colleagues.
In the late 1950s, he was raising a family and working during the day as a secretary at the United Nations. By 1959 he was booking the new music into West Village cafes, including the Phase 2 and Le Figaro. Thus began a long-running role as bootstrap activist and outspoken critic of nearly all the systems of jazz: how it is presented, taught, promoted, recorded and written about.
Mr. Dixon is survived by his daughter, Claudia Dixon of Phoenix; his son, William R. Dixon II of New York; and two grandchildren, as well as his longtime partner, Sharon Vogel.
In 1968 he began a career in academia at Bennington College in Vermont. Hired simultaneously with the dancer Judith Dunn, with whom he collaborated in all his work for a six-year stretch, he worked first in the dance department and eventually in music. In 1973 he established the Black Music Division, a performance-and-theory curriculum of his own devising.
During the 1980s his recording career picked up: small-group music, orchestra pieces and a sideline of solo trumpet works, eventually released as a self-produced six-disc set, “Odyssey.”
In experimental jazz, where the most successful tend to be the most prolific, Mr. Dixon’s output looks comparatively scant. But most of his albums, even up to last year’s “Tapestries for Small Orchestra,” have a profound and eerie center, and his influence among contemporary trumpeters is clear.
“When I play,” he told the journalist Graham Lock in 2001, “whether you like it or not, I mean it.”
Manute Bol, a towering Dinka tribesman who left southern Sudan to become one of the best shot blockers in the history of American basketball, then returned to his homeland to try to heal the wounds of a long, bloody civil war, died Saturday at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, according to Sally Jones, a spokeswoman for the hospital. He was 47 and lived in Olathe, Kan.
June 20, 2010
Bill Polo/Boston Herald, via Associated Press
Manute Bol, shown playing for the University of Bridgeport in 1985, was a 7-foot-6 center from Sudan.
June 20, 2010
Bill Smith/Associated Press
Bol, center, with the Washington Bullets in 1986.
Ed Zurga/Associated Press
After his N.B.A. career, Bol worked as an advisory board member of the Sudan Sunrise foundation.
The cause was severe kidney trouble and complications of a rare skin disorder known as Stevens-Johnson syndrome, said Tom Prichard, who runs Sudan Sunrise, a foundation that is building a school near Bol’s birthplace in Turalei. Bol had been hospitalized since late May when he fell ill during a layover on a trip home from Sudan, Mr. Prichard said.
Though he wore size 16 ½ sneakers and had a pair of the spindliest legs ever to protrude from a pair of nylon shorts, Bol, at 7 feet 6 inches, was an athletic marvel. He arrived in the National Basketball Association in 1985 and promptly set a rookie record by blocking an average of five shots per game — a total of 397 for the season. He is 14th on the N.B.A.’s career list with 2,086.
Fans flocked to see him and roundly urged him to shoot whenever he touched the ball. Despite being able to reach above the 10-foot rims flat-footed, Bol was not a scorer. He averaged fewer than 4 points a game in every season he played.
It was his defensive prowess, swatting shots away from the basket and discouraging opponents from trying to drive the ball past him, that kept Bol in the league for 10 seasons. The Washington Bullets drafted him three years after he immigrated to the United States in 1982, and he eventually played for three other teams: the Golden State Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Miami Heat.
For most of his career, Bol held the distinction of being the tallest player ever to compete in the N.B.A. But in 1993, the Bullets drafted Gheorghe Muresan, a Romanian who at 7-7 was a few centimeters taller than Bol. The Bullets brought Bol back to Washington to help teach Muresan how to play the professional game, but it took Muresan four seasons to compile as many blocks as Bol had as a rookie.
Bol eventually came to terms with the fascination Americans had with his height. When he was a young man in Sudan, he told The New York Times in a 1985 interview, his size was not so remarkable.
“My mother was 6 feet 10, my father 6 feet 8 and my sister is 6 feet 8,” he said. “And my great-grandfather was even taller — 7 feet 10.”
As a boy, Bol had tended his family’s cattle. According to a tale he was often asked to repeat in interviews, he once killed a lion with a spear while he was working as a cowherd.
In a 2001 interview with The Times in Khartoum, Bol said he dreamed of going back to Turalei and his roots. “I would have a big, big farm,” he said. “Then we have no worries about money. If you have the cows, you have the money.”
Bol returned to Sudan regularly during his playing days, and once he retired, he became more politically active there. He went there late last year to check on the school construction. Then he stayed to campaign for a candidate in the region’s presidential election, which was held in late April, said Mr. Prichard, who traveled there with Bol in November. During his extended visit, Bol became ill and was briefly hospitalized in Nairobi, Kenya, Mr. Prichard said.
“He really felt that his country needed him,” Mr. Prichard said. “He really died for his country. He wanted to do everything he could to see southern Sudan make it through this election in the best possible way.”
Bol is survived by 10 children, including four with his second wife, Ajok, of Olathe, Kan., his nephew Mayom Majok said.
Robert B. Radnitz, a producer of family moviesincluding “Sounder” and “Where the Lilies Bloom” and who was praised for not playing down to his audience or filling the screen with violence, died on June 6 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 85.
June 18, 2010
Universal Pictures, via Photofest
Robert B. Radnitz on the set of the 1983 film “Cross Creek.”
The cause was complications from a stroke, his wife, Pearl, said.
Most of Mr. Radnitz’s dozen or so films, set in exotic landscapes to scores laced with indigenous music, told tales of youngsters facing adversity and struggling to find their true selves.
His best-known movie, “Sounder,” based on the novel by William Armstrong, is the story of the son of a black Louisiana sharecropper and of the boy’s dog, Sounder, during the Depression. His kindly father is caught stealing food for his hungry family and is sentenced to a year of hard labor. During that year, the boy comes to terms with himself and learns to not accept his lot.
Released in 1972, “Sounder” was nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. Charles Champlin, a critic for The Los Angeles Times, called it “beautifully acted, honest, angering and inspiring.”
Two years later, “Where the Lilies Bloom” received similar reviews. “Without one false, hayseed note or drop of sugar, it depicts the struggle of a brave, stubborn Appalachian teenager to hold together her orphaned family,” Howard Thompson wrote in The New York Times.
Saying that Mr. Radnitz had “done it again,” Mr. Thompson continued, “Arriving now on a screen splattered with violence and sex, this beautiful little movie is like a cool, clear dip of mountain spring water.”
Among Mr. Radnitz’s other films are: “A Dog of Flanders” (1960), about a farm boy (and his dog) in Belgium who yearns to be an artist; “Misty” (1961), a tale of a pony and the children who love her, on an island off the Virginia coast; “Island of the Blue Dolphins” (1964), about an orphaned young Indian girl who finds a primitive home on an island off the California coast; and “My Side of the Mountain” (1969), in which a 12-year-old boy wanders away from Manhattan to live alone in the Catskill Mountains.
One of his last films, “Cross Creek” (1983), was based on the memoirs of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the author of “The Yearling.” It tells how, after leaving her husband, she found her literary voice while living among the people and tropical terrain of central Florida. It was nominated for four Academy Awards.
Robert Bonoff Radnitz was born in Great Neck, N.Y., on Aug. 9, 1924, the only child of Fred and Lilyan Radnitz. His parents owned a laundry in Brooklyn. His wife, the former Pearl Turner, is his only survivor.
Mr. Radnitz graduated from the University of Virginia in 1947 with a degree in English and drama, then taught at the university for a year. He later became an apprentice to the theater director Harold Clurman and went on to produce two Broadway plays in the mid-’50s, “The Frogs of Spring” and “The Young and the Beautiful.” Soon after, he went to Hollywood as a script consultant at 20th Century Fox.
In 1969, long before he had stopped producing films, Mr. Radnitz was honored with a week-long retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. In a tribute, the museum said that his movies showed more understanding of humanity, “compassion and sophistication than many so-called adult films.”
His approach to making movies for children was simple, Mr. Radnitz told The Los Angeles Times in 1991: “If you don’t talk down to them, you’d be surprised how high they can reach.”
Tom Stith, a two-time all-American forward and center who brought St. Bonaventure University to national basketball prominence in the early 1960s, then overcame tuberculosis and went on to play for the Knicks for a season, died Sunday at a hospice in Melville, on Long Island. He was 71 and lived nearby in Farmingville, N.Y.
Associated Press
Tom Stith in 1960. He played for the Knicks in 1962-63.
The cause was cancer, said his daughter Karin Stith.
Displaying an outstanding left-handed hook shot and a proficiency to hit from outside as well, the 6-foot-5 Stith twice led St. Bonaventure to the National Invitation Tournament. As a senior in 1961, he took St. Bonaventure, in western New York State, to its first berth in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
Stith averaged 27 points a game for his three college seasons, and St. Bonaventure was ranked No. 3 nationally in his senior season.
“He had a quick first step and he was a smooth player, just fluid,” his older brother, Sam, a guard who teamed with him for two seasons at St. Bonaventure, recalled Wednesday in an interview.
In March 1961, the Knicks selected Stith with the second pick of the N.B.A. draft and gave him a two-year contract.
But five weeks after he was drafted, Stith had a physical examination to determine why he had lost 15 pounds during his senior season. He was found to have pulmonary tuberculosis.
Stith recuperated in a sanitarium for several months, but “he didn’t say, Why me?” Sam Stith remembered. After his hospitalization, he began working out with Sam, who was in his rookie season with the Knicks.
Tom Stith made the Knicks’ 1962-63 team, coached by Eddie Donovan, who had coached him at St. Bonaventure. The crowd at Madison Square Garden gave Stith an ovation when he made his Knicks debut against the Boston Celtics in mid-November, but he played in only 25 games that season and averaged 3.1 points a game. The Knicks released him at the beginning of the next season.
Thomas Alvin Stith, born in Emporia, Va., grew up in Harlem. The Stith brothers received scholarships to St. Francis Prep of Brooklyn, where Tom Stith became one of New York City’s greatest schoolboy players.
Sam Stith was the first black player at St. Bonaventure. Tom Stith was the university’s first all-American and its highest-profile player until the arrival of center Bob Lanier, who took the Bonnies to the N.C.A.A. tournament’s Final Four in 1970.
After his basketball career, Stith was a sales executive for Shell Oil and Cablevision.
In addition to his daughter Karin, of Farmingville, and Sam Stith, of Buckeye, Ariz., who played one season for the Knicks, Tom Stith is survived by his wife, Gladys; another daughter, Lisa Stith, of Rockland County, N.Y.; a sister, Virginia Stith, of Manhattan; and two grandchildren.
For all the good times at St. Bonaventure, there was a disturbing moment for Tom Stith and several black teammates at the 1961 N.C.A.A. East Regional in North Carolina.
When it came time for a team meal, “the four of us were told that we had to go and eat in the back room,” Stith told the St. Bonaventure student newspaper The Bona Venture in 1998.
When the black players did that, their white teammates and coaches accompanied them. “We couldn’t eat in the main room, so no one did,” Stith recalled. “We were a team.”
Jimmy Dean, a country singer and television-show host whose good looks, folksy integrity and aw-shucks Texas charm served him especially well when he went into the sausage business and became his own pitchman, died Sunday at his home in Varina, Va., outside Richmond. He was 81.
June 15, 2010
Associated Press
Jimmy Dean had his own TV variety show from 1963 to 1966.
His wife, Donna Meade Dean, told The Associated Press that he died suddenly while watching television.
Mr. Dean followed two separate paths to celebrity. For the generations that came to television consciousness after 1970, Mr. Dean, who grew up on a farm in West Texas, was the face and the voice of an eponymous brand of breakfast sausage, a product of the Jimmy Dean Meat Company, which he started in 1969.
In dozens of commercials that were broadcast for more than 30 years — Sara Lee bought the company in 1984 but kept Mr. Dean as a spokesman until 2003 — he represented the product as a wholesome family food, nutritious and delicious, as homey as a needlepoint epigram.
“Sausage is a great deal like life,” he said in one ad, in which he touted the quality of the ingredients. “You get out of it about what you put into it.”
The honest, homespun quality of Mr. Dean’s public personality was already well established, however, by the time he began selling sausages. He was a popular country singer who recorded his first song, “Bumming Around,” in 1953, and whose 1961 novelty number, “Big Bad John,” spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
It was a resonantly melodramatic ballad whose lyrics were largely spoken rather than sung, telling the story of a self-sacrificing hero who dies saving his fellow workers in a mine collapse. Mr. Dean said he wrote it in an hour and a half on his way to a Nashville recording session because he had only three songs ready to record and he needed a fourth. (Some sources credit Roy Acuff as a co-writer.)
From 1963 to 1966, Mr. Dean had his own television variety series, “The Jimmy Dean Show,” which featured country music, dancing and comic banter. Among his regular guests was Rowlf, a dog puppet created and performed by a young Jim Henson. Rowlf later joined the menagerie on “The Muppet Show” — he was the group pianist — but on “The Jimmy Dean Show” he was the first Muppet to become a national television star.
Jimmy Ray Dean was born in Seth Ward, just outside Plainview, at the base of the Texas panhandle, on Aug. 10, 1928.
His mother, Ruth, became a barber to support her two sons — Jimmy was the elder — after their father deserted them, and she taught him the piano. He taught himself to play the harmonica, the guitar and the accordion. He worked the farm, which dissuaded him from ever becoming a farmer.
“I was a hard-workin’ little boy,” he said in an interview with TV Guide in 1964. “Oh, I worked. Pullin’ cotton, shockin’ grain, cuttin’ wheat, loadin’ wheat, choppin’ cotton, cleanin’ chicken houses, milkin’ cows, plowin’.”
He dropped out of school at 16, spent two years in the merchant marine, then joined the Air Force and was sent to Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. He began his career as a musician at a bar near the base when he sat in with his accordion for a fiddler who had called in sick.
His first band was called the Tennessee Haymakers; by 1952 he was the frontman for a group known as the Texas Wildcats, playing on the radio and at county and state fairs.
In 1957 Jimmy Dean and the Texas Wildcats were hired by CBS to appear on national television from 7 to 7:45 each morning, opposite the opening hour of “Today” on NBC. The CBS show eventually appeared in other time slots until it was dropped in 1959.
In addition to “Big Bad John,” Mr. Dean had several other songs that were minor hits, including “P.T. 109,” a ballad lionizing the young John Fitzgerald Kennedy, as well as “Little Black Book,” “Sam Hill,” and “I.O.U.,” a spoken-word song, dedicated to his mother.
In the late 1960s he had a recurring role in the television series “Daniel Boone,” starring Fess Parker, and he appeared as an enigmatic Las Vegas millionaire in the 1971 James Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever.” In 1987 and 1988 he had a recurring role in the series “J.J. Starbuck.”
Mr. Dean’s first marriage, to the former Sue Wittauer, ended in divorce; they had three children. Information about his survivors, aside from his wife, Donna, was not available.
Mr. Dean’s persona was always one of straightforwardness and sincerity, and when his career turned from performing to sausage-making, he remained true to his roots. They slaughtered hogs on the family farm in Plainview.
“We’d buy a hog, fatten it out and butcher it,” he said in a 1961 interview with The New York World Telegram and Sun. “One of us would have to knock that hog on the head, and we’d have fights over who was going to do it. Then Mom would stick it.”
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – Garry Shider, the longtime musical director of Parliament-Funkadelic whose funky guitar work, songwriting skills and musical arrangements thrilled fans around the globe and earned him a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has died. He was 56.
Shider, who died Wednesday at his home in Upper Marlboro, Md., was known to millions of fans as “Starchild” or “Diaperman,” the latter because of the loincloth he often wore onstage.
Shider’s son, Garrett, said Thursday that his father had been diagnosed with brain and lung cancer in late March. He then briefly went out on tour one last time but had to stop because of his failing health.
“He was a beautiful man who had a beautiful heart, who loved his fans just as much as they loved him,” Garrett Shider said. “I’m sure if he had the choice, he would have passed on a tour bus, because he loved playing music, playing for the fans.”
A New Jersey native, Shider started his mus ical career as a young boy, performing mostly gospel music in churches in a group that included his brother and was overseen by their father. The band also played backup for many prominent gospel artists when they performed concerts in the area, but Shider’s musical taste soon grew more diverse.
The teenager first met P-Funk mastermind George Clinton in the late 1960s at a Plainfield barbershop Clinton owned, where future P-Funk members would sing doo-wop for customers and counsel local youths. Then, when he was around 16, Shider and a friend went to Canada, where they formed a funk/rock band called United Soul, or “U.S.” Clinton, who was living in Toronto at the time, heard about the band from people in the local music business, and took the band under his wing upon learning that Shider was a member. He helped produce some of their songs and eventually invited Shider to join P-Funk, a combination of two bands, Parliament and Funkadelic.
Shider soon became a mainstay of Clinton’s wide-ranging musical family, eventually serving as its musical director and co-writing some of Parliament-Funkadelic’s biggest hits. “Thank you, Garry for all you have done. Forever funkin’ on!” Clinton noted in a message posted on his website.
Shider first appeared on Funkadelic’s 1971 album “Maggot Brain” and Parliament’s second album “Up for the Down Stroke,” and joined P-Funk for good in 1972. He became one of Clinton’s most trusted lieutenants, co-writing and providing vocals on some of the band’s biggest hits – including “Atomic Dog,” ”Cosmic Slop,” ”Can You Get to That” and “One Nation Under the Groove.”
He also toured with P-Funk for many years and was still considered an active member of the group.
“My dad left home when he was about 16 years old, and wouldn’t come back until he had a hit. He obviously accomplished that goal and did so much more,” said Garrett Shider, who recently formed an entertainment company and ho pes to produce a movie on his father’s life. “People know about his talent, but I want them to know about the great man he was.”
Barbara Thomas, part of a group that is raising money to help Shider’s family cover his medical bills, said she was “truly heartbroken” over his death. She said upcoming benefit concerts in New York and New Jersey would go on as planned.
“Over the past forty years, Garry put his stamp and signature of everything he did musically,” stated a message posted on the group’s website, http://www.garryshidermedicalfund.com. “His talent was and always will be unmatched.”
LONDON (AP) — Jack Harrison, who survived the Great Escape plot by Allied prisoners in a German prison in World War II, has died at age 97, his family said.
Harrison died Friday at Erskine veterans’ home in Bishopton, Scotland.
As a camp gardener, Harrison helped dispose of the dirt excavated from three escape tunnels. He was 98th on the list of some 200 inmates designated to make the escape on March 24, 1944, but only 76 got away before guards detected the breakout and raised the alarm.
The breakout was celebrated in the 1963 film “The Great Escape.”
Only three men managed to reach safety. Adolf Hitler ordered the execution of 50 recaptured escapers, and 23 others were returned to custody.
British news reports said Harrison was believed to be the last survivor of the plot, but this could not be confirmed. In addition to the 200 men who won places in the escape queue through a drawing, others were also involved in preparations.
“I guess it was a blessing in disguise I never made it through, as most were shot,” Harrison said in an interview last year with the Scottish Sun newspaper. “But the main purpose wasn’t just to escape. It was to outfox the Germans. It was a huge moral victory. It humiliated Hitler and gave the Nazis a bloody nose.”
Of the three tunnels dug by prisoners, two had been found by guards and closed before the escape attempt.
When the escape was detected, Harrison said he had to quickly burn his disguise as a Siemens engineer and get back into his prison uniform.
“I was to be a Hungarian electrician so I became Aleksander Regenyi, who was employed by a German firm,” he recalled.
Harrison was a Royal Air Force pilot who was shot down and captured in November 1942 on his first mission, a raid on the Dutch port of Den Helder. He was taken to Stalag Luft III prison near Sagan in eastern Germany — now Zagan, Poland.
After the war, Harrison resumed his teaching career. He retired in 1975 as director of education for the isle of Bute.
“To others he was considered a war hero, but to us he was much more than that. He was a family man first and foremost as well as a church elder, Rotarian, scholar, traveler and athlete,” his son Chris and daughter Jane said in a statement.
They said Harrison took up marathon running in his seventies to raise money for charity.
1953 Beautiful R&B ballads were the norm in the early ’50s. Too bad so many went unnoticed, though they are now sought-after collector’s items like the Five Willows’ “My Dear Dearest darling” ($300), which was released today. Billboard “Buys of the Week” included “I I Can’t Have You,” the Flamingos’ debut 45 ($2,000), and the Crickets’ “For You I Have Eyes” ($200).
1964 James Brown, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, and Garnett Mimms performed at the Summer Shower of Stars tour at the Donnelly Theater, Boston, MA.
1973 Though bedridden at the time, Little richard chose to perform on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand TV show.
1979 The Blues Brothers film opened throughout America. some the movie’s highlights included Aretha Franklin’s portrayal of a crusty waitress, singing her 1968 hit, “Think”; James Brown’s performance as a hypnotic dancing and singing preacher; Ray Charles and the Blues Brothers’ rockin’ “Shake A Tail Feather”; and John Lee Hooker’s rough and raw version of “Boom Boom.”
1986 Tina Turner performed in the Prince’s Trust concert in London along with Elton John and Eric Clapton.
1991 Bell Biv Devoe performed on James Brown’s Living in America live cable special.
1994 Aretha Franklin performed at the White House in Washington, DC, for President and Mrs. Clinton.
1997 Lawrence Payton of the Four Tops died today of liver cancer at his Southfield, MI, home. It was the first time in forty-four years that the Tops would be without an original member, as the same four men stayed together until Payton’s death. Payton was fifty-nine. The three remaining original members went on at that time performing as the Tops, before Theo Peoples (of the Temptations) was recruited as the fourth member. Peoples eventually took over the role of lead singer when Stubbs suffered a stroke in 2000 with his position assumed by Ronnie McNeir. On July 1, 2005, Renaldo “Obie” Benson died of lung cancer with Payton’s son Roquel Payton replacing him. As of 2006, Fakir, McNeir, Roquel Payton, and Peoples were still performing together as the Four Tops. On October 17, 2008, Levi Stubbs of the Tops, died at his home in Detroit. Abdul “Duke” Fakir is now the only surviving founding member of the original group.
Juneteenth, A Freedom Celebration 2010Richmond, VA Saturday June 19INDEPENDENCE! Freedom Stories in Ghana & Virginia@ The Manchester Dock, South Bank of the James River& Along the Trail of Enslaved Africans, 3 – 11pm June & July INDEPENDENCE! Ghanaian Traditional & Contemporary ArtA Companion Exhibition in our Cultural CenterBegin a Collection or Add to One!Another Program by Elegba Folklore SocietyRichmond’s Cultural AmbassadorEmbrace the Spirit!
Exit at #73, Maury Street. At the bottom of the ramp turn right. This is an industrial area. Continue just a few blocks up and over the big railroad tracks. Drive through the opening in the floodwall. When you come to the fork in the road, bear left. The road will curve and be intersected by a smaller railroad crossing. As you enter the parking area, bear left and park.
From I-95 North:
Exit at #73, Maury Street. Follow the directions above.
From I-64 West:
Exit at #190, I-95 South and 5th Street. Follow I-95 South. Exit at #73, Maury Street. Follow the directions above.
From I-64 East:
I-64 merges with I-95 South. Follow it and exit at #73, Maury Street. Follow the directions above.
Local:
Access Southside via the Manchester Bridge; turn left on Maury Street. From the 14th Street (Mayo) Bridge, turn left on E. 3rd Street, cross several blocks and turn left again on Maury Street. Follow the directions above.
The continued worship of whiteness—where modeling scouts scour small villages like Rio Grand do Sul, Venancio Aires, and Paraiso do Sul of Brazil in search of potential models—never ceases to amaze me.
Not to mention, that Brazil is okay with sending white-looking women out into the modeling world to respresent a country that is vastly Black/Mixed/Non-White is just mind-boggling and stomach-churning. Talk about self-hate on a massive scale.
White-looking models, even from a country like Brazil.
As for these white-looking models-to-be, am I to believe that there is no nigger-in-the-woodpile?
Then again, that the modeling scouts, like Allison Chornak, would rather kowtow to the likes of the Ford Agency, Elite Model Management, The Lyons Group, and others, show how little backbone he has. There is more to life than a paycheck, a lack of conscious, and a pink SUV.
Oh, and doesn’t scouting schoolgrounds/areas where minors congregate constitute stalking and child abuse?
RESTINGA SÊCA, Brazil — Before setting out in a pink S.U.V. to comb the schoolyards and shopping malls of southern Brazil, Alisson Chornak studies books, maps and Web sites to understand how the towns were colonized and how European their residents might look today.
Alisson Chornak, right, a model scout, and Michele Meurer, 16. Ms Meurer was discovered by a female scout as she rode her bicycle to school. More Photos »
Associated Press
Taís Araújo just finished a run as the first black female lead in the coveted 8 p.m. soap opera slot. Ms. Araujo, left, poses with Victor Wagner on the set of an earlier Brazilian soap opera, ‘Xica Da Silva.’ More Photos »
The New York Times
Scouts say over 70 percent of models are from three states. More Photos »
The goal, he and other model scouts say, is to find the right genetic cocktail of German and Italian ancestry, perhaps with some Russian or other Slavic blood thrown in. Such a mix, they say, helps produce the tall, thin girls with straight hair, fair skin and light eyes that Brazil exports to the runways of New York, Milan and Paris with stunning success.
Yet Brazil is not the same country it was in 1994, when Gisele Bündchen, the world’s top earning model, was discovered in a tiny town not far from here. Darker-skinned women have become more prominent in Brazilian society, challenging the notions of Brazilian beauty and success that Ms. Bündchen has come to represent here and abroad.
Taís Araújo just finished a run as the first black female lead in the coveted 8 p.m. soap opera slot. Marina Silva, a former government minister born in the Amazon, is running for president. And over the past decade, the income of black Brazilians rose by about 40 percent, more than double the rate of whites, as Brazil’s booming economy helped trim the inequality gap and create a more powerful black consumer class, said Marcelo Neri, an economist in Rio de Janeiro.
Even prosecutors have waded into the debate over what Brazilian society looks like — and how it should be represented. São Paulo Fashion Week, the nation’s most important fashion event, has been forced by local prosecutors to ensure that at least 10 percent of its models are of African or indigenous descent.
Despite those shifts, more than half of Brazil’s models continue to be found here among the tiny farms of Rio Grande do Sul, a state that has only one-twentieth of the nation’s population and was colonized predominantly by Germans and Italians.
Indeed, scouts say that more than 70 percent of the country’s models come from three southern states that hardly reflect the multiethnic melting pot that is Brazil, where more than half the population is nonwhite.
On the pages of its magazines, Brazil’s beauty spectrum is clearer. Nonwhite women, including celebrities of varying body types, are interspersed with white models. But on the runways, the proving ground for models hoping to go abroad, the diversity drops off precipitously. Prosecutors investigating discrimination complaints against São Paulo Fashion Week found that only 28 of the event’s 1,128 models were black in early 2008.
The pattern creates a disconnect between what many Brazilians consider beautiful and the beauty they export overseas. While darker-skinned actresses like Juliana Paes and Camila Pitanga are considered among Brazil’s sexiest, it is Ms. Bündchen and her fellow southerners who win fame abroad.
“I was always perplexed that Brazil was never able to export a Naomi Campbell, and it is definitely not because of a lack of pretty women,” said Erika Palomino, a fashion consultant in São Paulo. “It is embarrassing.”
Some scouts have begun tepid forays to less-white parts of Brazil. One Brazilian designer, Walter Rodrigues, recently opened Rio Fashion Week with 25 models, all of them black.
But here in the south scouts still spend most of their time hunting for the next Gisele, and offer few apologies for what they say sells.
Clóvis Pessoa studies facial traits that are successful on international runways and looks for towns in the south that mirror those genes.
“If a famous top model looks German with a Russian nose, I will do a scientific study and look for cities that were colonized by Germans and Russians in the south of Brazil in order to get a similar face down here,” Mr. Pessoa said.
Dilson Stein, who discovered Ms. Bündchen when she was 13, called Rio Grande do Sul a treasure trove of model-worthy girls. A year before discovering Ms. Bündchen, whose parents are of German ancestry, he found 12-year-old Alessandra Ambrosio, now famous for her Victoria’s Secret shoots.
Today, younger scouts like Mr. Chornak have taken up the mantle. With catlike quickness, he jumped from his chair and strode up behind a tall girl with a hooded sweatshirt. “Have you ever thought of being a model?” he asked a 13-year-old with light blue eyes and pimples.
The girl smiled, her metal braces glimmering.
Later, Mr. Chornak pulled up at a school where the director, Liliane Abrão Silva, showed off albums from school beauty contests. She allows scouts to visit during class breaks.
“Since I got to this school, five have left for São Paulo to become models,” she said. “The girls who do not have money to go to university will have to stay here and work in the fields.”
The next morning, Mr. Chornak studied the girls returning with red lollipops from recess. “There is nothing special here,” he declared.
At another stop, Mr. Chornak staked out a school in Paraíso do Sul (population 8,000) with the tools of his trade: business cards, camera, measuring tape and a notebook.
The bell rang and students streamed out. Mr. Chornak stopped a tall, skinny blond girl. Within seconds he was fluffing her hair and taking her measurements, directing her to pose against the wall.
Mr. Chornak also drove to Venâncio Aires, where a billboard heralded “the land of the Fantastic Girl,” alluding to a television show that featured a local girl.
At a small tobacco farm he visited Michele Meurer, a blue-eyed 16-year-old discovered while riding her bicycle to school. Timid and shy, she cried profusely the first time she went to São Paulo. The next time, she lasted six days before Mr. Chornak sent her home.
Her mother, who grew up speaking German, had never left the town until the São Paulo trip. They live in a four-room house with chickens and dogs. Michele keeps the freezer in her room for lack of space.
Mr. Chornak counsels Michele to use sunscreen while working in the fields and to watch her diet. Bursting with pride, her father enrolled her in English classes in case she went abroad.
“I want to give them a better life,” Michele said tearfully of her parents.
Recently, she went to São Paulo again, where Mr. Chornak put her in a three-bedroom apartment with 11 other girls. Two weeks before São Paulo Fashion Week, Michele packed up and left.
“I am very disappointed that Michele gave up,” Mr. Chornak said. “I invested a lot in her.”
Myrna Domit contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 16, 2010
A picture caption on June 8 with an article about Brazilian models misspelled, in some copies, the given name of a Brazilian model scout shown photographing Eduarda Waholtz, 15, at her school in Paraíso do Sul, Brazil. He is Alisson Chornak, not Allison.SOURCE
14. “Negro troops of the 24th Infantry, attached to the Americal Division, wait to advance behind a tank assault on the Jap[anese], along Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville.” 1944. 111-SC-202491 (african_americans_wwii_014.jpg) 
BITTER FRUIT: AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN WORLD WAR II
(
Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes
Slide Show 
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 