. . . .AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: “THE LONG WALK HOME” (1990)

I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands. I do not weep at the world. I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

-Zora Neale Hurston

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Today, August 10, 2011, marks the release of the film The Help, based on the 2009 bestseller written by Kathryn Stockett. The synopsis of the book is as follows:

“Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women–mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends–view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.”

SOURCE

Here is the synopsis of the film:

“Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter (Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends’ lives — and a small Mississippi town — upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen (Davis), Skeeter’s best friend’s housekeeper, is the first to open up — to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community. Despite Skeeter’s life-long friendships hanging in the balance, she and Aibileen continue their collaboration and soon more women come forward to tell their stories — and as it turns out, they have a lot to say. Along the way, unlikely friendships are forged and a new sisterhood emerges, but not before everyone in town has a thing or two to say themselves when they become unwittingly — and unwillingly — caught up in the changing times.” Written by Walt Disney Pictures

I had a problem with the publication of this book when I first heard about it. A book, written by a White woman author, that purports to tell the story of Black women who worked as domestics during the era of Jane Crow segregation. Not to mention that Ms. Stockett is being sued by a former maid who worked for her family. I have not read the book yet. Since I would rather support the city library, I searched the local library branches, and most libraries have holds on their copies, with holds numbering over 100. Therefore, it will be a while before I can read The Help and give my review on it.

For another series of reviews on The Help read here here, and here. The author of this website has read the book and gives a differing view on it in comparison to the many reviews around the Internet that laud the novel, and the forthcoming movie.

That said, I would like to review a film I saw years ago that addresses how life for a Black maid was, and how she and her White employer confronted issues of racism in the American South.

That movie is The Long Walk Home, a movie released by Miramax Films on December 21, 1990, starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek.

The Long Walk Home is about a Black maid, Odessa Cotter (Whoopi Goldberg), and the employer, Miriam Thompson (Sissy Spacek), she does domestic work for. Set in Montgomery, Alabama during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., the story is told through the eyes of Miriam’s daughter. The movie does not address the fear of rape that hung over the lives of Black women domestics, but, during segregation that was an ever-present reality for Black women domestics. Not only did Black women face back-breaking labor that paid inhumane salaries, they also fought for the need of sexual autonomy, the need for sexual preservation, as well as the need for economic necessity to take care of their families. In the following excerpts from the book Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940, Elizabeth Clark-Lewis records interviews with eighty-one domestic workers who traveled from the Deep South to Washington, D.C. in the early part of the last century. They were quite frank of the hells that awaited them as working domestics in the homes of Whites:

“Nobody was sent out before you was told to be careful of the white man or his sons. They’d tell you stories of rape. . .hard too! No lies. You was to be told true, so you’d not get raped. Everyone warned you and told you ‘be careful’.”

“You couldn’t be out working,” said another woman, “til you knew how people was raped. You’d know how to run, or always not to be in the house with the white man or big sons. Just everyone told you something to keep you from being raped, ’cause it happened, and they told you.”

Another woman told how her family tried to prepare her and her sister to deal with this danger. “My mama told you first. Next was aunts and all. Now, then just before I was to leave with the family [I was to work for], my daddy just gave me a razor and he said it’s for any man who tries to force himself on you. It’s for the white man.”

SOURCE: A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America, by Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson, Broadway Books, New York, 1998, pg. 215.

The prevalence pf rape was strong, but, all daily life was affected by Jane Crow segregation, and no where was it more strong than in the city bus service:  White bus drivers who drove off and left Black passengers after they paid their fare and went to the rear door to board the bus; Black passengers, many of whom were domestics, who after a long day of work had to give up their seats to White passengers, even if the passenger was a White male; Black passengers who had to endure racist insults, slurs, and physical abuse from White drivers.

Fed up with this brutality, Black Montgomery citizens organized the 1955 bus boycott on December 1, 1955. Caught up in this were Odessa and Miriam. Odessa participates in the boycott and has a long walk to work, hence the movie’s title. This is hard on Odessa, as she develops painful injuries to her feet from the miles of walking she endures to make a better life for herself and her family, as she walks nine miles to her job in the morning, and nine miles back to her home in the evening. Needless to say, Odessa starts coming to work later and later.

Miriam becomes frustrated at this, but, since she needs Odessa, she decides to pick up Odessa and drive her to work. Miriam’s husband finds out that she has been driving Odessa to work. He forbids Miriam to do it, but, Miriam has an awakening of her own and tells her husband that she is in charge of the household and that she should have decisions over how Odessa gets to work.

Odessa and her family members are affected in diverse ways about the boycott. Her husband, played by Ving Rhames, is supportive and understanding. Her three children also are affected by the impact that the boycott has on their community and their family as well. Even when the daughter rides a bus to meet a boyfriend, her young brother risks bodily injury to come to her rescue from a gang of racist White toughs.

Meantime, the White Citizen’s Council has worked to destroy the boycott, when one fateful night Odessa and Miriam are caught in the wrath of White racists who storm an area where White women employers, in a carpool arrangement to pick up the Black women domestics, have gathered.

In the following scene, the fury and rage of racist hate, the resolve to change a repressive and vicious system, and the violent shouts of “Walk, nigger, walk! Walk, nigger, walk” make for a compelling urge to overthrow a system that sought to destroy the humanity of Black citizens:

Black churches raised money to support the boycott and bought shoes for the walkers. Black citizens walked, rode bicycles, and even traveled by horse and mule. Black citizens with cars organized taxi pools for each other, and when the City of Montgomery pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring vehicles used in the carpools, the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association) which oversaw the boycott, turned to Lloyd’s of London to insure their vehicles., a company which slave ships cargo ships.

What I like about The Long Walk Home is that unlike Mississippi Burning, the Black citizens are shown to have agency in challenging the racist Jane Crow system. Yes, the movie has the obligatory “White savior” person (in this case, Sissy Spacek), but, the Black people depicted are not waiting around to be saved–they took matters into their own hands. On the other hand, Spacek’s character was indecisive and unwilling in the beginning to buck the system and her husband, but, she later came around to work on the side with the Black citizens to end racial segregation on the city buses.

The boycott officially ended December 20, 1956, and lasted 381 days, just a little over a year. One of its major effects was the United States Supreme Court ruling with Browder vs. Gayle, (in particular, four women — Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith — who served as plaintiffs in the legal action challenging Montgomery’s segregated public transportation system), which declared segregation on public buses unconstitutional. Pressure increased around the nation and on June 4, 1956, the federal district court ruled that Alabama’s racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional (Browder v. Gayle). But, an appeal from racist segregationists kept the segregation intact and the boycott continued until, finally, on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling.

The Long Walk Home, is a beautiful film. But, even it fails miserably in truly giving an authentic narrative of the profound impact that Black Americans and the Civil Rights Movement had on all of America.

The movie that salutes the many Black people who struck a blow against racial segregation on city buses with the MIA boycott; the famous Black student sit-ins at lunch counters; the desegregation of city pools, parks, hotels, motels, movie theaters (via the Public Accommodations clause of the Civil Rights Act); the right to have access to a higher education ( with the desegregation of Ole Miss and all colleges across America); the U.S. Constitution right to vote under the 1965 Voting Rights Act; the right to fair housing and decent humane treatment under the 1964 Civil Rights Act; the unknown and unsung Black women who were the backbone of the CRM–these, and so many others—that civil rights movie that tells the truth has not been made.

 You see, it was not just the White men who raped defenseless Black women and girls; it was not just the White women who cried rape and caused the torture and death of so many Black men; it is not just the KKK cross burning on Black families property; it is not even the vile utterances of the word nigger.

It was the daily slights and humiliations in the interaction between Blacks and Whites that often get so lost when white Hollywood tries to make a so-called film about the CRM. The constant day-in and day-out assaults against the very humanity of Black citizens. The ordinariness of racist hate. The normalization of the unthinkable. The continuance of the banality of evil. The death by a thousand paper cuts.

The refusal of so many, many Whites to ask of themselves the one essential question:  “Can I live with myself in the upholding of white supremacy, white hegemony, and the possessiveness of whiteness at the expense of the lives, well-being and freedoms of my fellow Black citizens?”

Obviously, millions of Whites could. Sleepwalking through the valley of the shadow of death. On the other hand, there were the few Whites who did wake up and break free from the hells of racist hate.

Then again, Hollywood has had over 75 years to denigrate, castigate, vilify, defile and debase the image of Black Americans. It will take generations of Hollywood films to even break even on getting a true depiction of the CRM before the movie-going public. Hollywood in its scared and gutless attempt at the CRM not only shows disregard for the legacy of Black people’s struggle in this country, it also shows contempt for the White moviegoers. It is so afraid of offending their delicate sensitivities, that it refuses to show the real truth of Black citizen’s endurance, and faith to fight against the horrific oppression they have suffered in this nation. Hollywood would rather have a watered-down and whitewashed version of the CRM than the Real McCoy. In Hollywood’s decades-long approach at the CRM, they insult not only Blacks, but Whites and other ethnic groups.

Just once, I would like to see a Hollywood movie about the CRM where Black people are not sidekicks, supporting roles, and mere ciphers in their own historic struggle. Just once, I would like to see a CRM movie where no White people abound as if they and they alone can save Black people.

As Dr. King stated “No lie can live forever”, and the proud Black women who faced certain humiliation and callous disregard daily, the many Black citizens who drove each other to work so that the boycott would work, as well as the White women who drove them in the carpools, are to be remembered and praised for their strength, faith and dedication in one of America’s most momentous eras.

BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA: FREDI WASHINGTON

Fredericka Carolyn “Fredi” Washington (December 23, 1903 – June 28, 1994), was a dancer, writer, actress, vocalists, and civil rights activist. Born in Savannah, Georgia, she went to St. Elizabeth Convent in Pennsylvania, then attended the Egri School of Writing and the Christopher School of Languages before beginning a career as a dancer. She toured with Shuffle Along from 1922 to 1926 and made her debut in a leading role onstage opposite Paul Robeson in Black Boy (1926). She first appeared in the musical short Black and Tan (1929), in which Duke Ellington and His Cotton Club Orchestra debuted; Ms. Washington played a dancer who died bearing unrequited love for Ellington.

She preceded White actress Jeanne Crain in a stellar performance of Peola, a character who was the most “tragic” of all “tragic mulattoes” in film, in the 1934 box-office hit Imitation of Life, featuring Louise Beavers and Claudette Colbert.

Here, in the following video clip from Imitation of Life where Peola (played by Fredi Washington) pours her heart out begging her mother (played by Louise Beavers) to let her go, as Bea (played by Claudette Colbert), listens:

The pain and despondence that both Peola and her mother feel was brought on by the racist pigmentocracy of an anti-black America, as the above scene so vividly dramatizes.

A year earlier she had played opposite Paul Robeson in his film debut, The Emperor Jones (1933), based on Eugene O’Neill’s play of the same name. She also appeared in The Old Man and the Mountain (1933), Drums of the Jungle (19350, and One Mile From Heaven  (1937) with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.

Fredi Washington photographed on March 28, 1933.

Although Ms. Washington possessed the requisite Hollywood beauty and talent, roles were infrequent:

“A fair-skinned, green-eyed African-American actress, Fredi Washington was well-respected for her talent as a film and theater performer. Nevertheless, she consistently faced difficulties because of the conflict between her light complexion and her social identity as an African American. She was cast in very limited roles, playing stereotypical mulatto characters—tragically beautiful girls doomed because of their mixed race. As a result of Hollywood’s merciless typecasting, Washington was never able to achieve her full potential as an actress.

In Black Boy, one of her early theater successes, Washington starred with Paul Robeson, playing a black girl who passed for white. Audiences were interested in the play in large part because Washington was viewed as a curiosity, a black girl who looked white. Her part in Black Boy was Washington’s first in a long line of mulatto characters who suffered terribly as a result of their mixed racial heritage. In her most famous role of this type, Peola in Imitation of Life, Washington “emerged as the archetypal tragic mulatto for the Depression era.” Imitation of Life starred Claudette Colbert as a widow and Louise Beavers as her servant; the two become friends and business partners and share the challenges of raising their daughters alone. Washington’s character, Peola, the maid’s mulatto daughter, figures in a subplot that is so affecting it nearly eclipses the primary story. Peola leaves home, passes for white, and marries a white man. In spite of her outstanding performance, Washington received no offers for lead roles in other films. Of Hollywood’s typecasting of Washington and other African-American actresses, Donald Bogel suggests, “the movies were not ready for idealized tragic black heroines. Audiences preferred mammies and Jemimas who could be laughed at or enjoyed or pitied but who would not strike at their consciences.”

Hollywood’s discomfort with Washington was evident not only in the limited roles she was offered, but also in her treatment at the hands of the industry. When she appeared in The Emperor Jones with Paul Robeson, for example, Will Hays, the then powerful head of Hollywood’s censoring agency, insisted that Washington wear dark makeup to conceal her light complexion, insuring that the audience would not mistake her for a white woman in her love scenes with Robeson. Frustrated by the racist treatment she faced in Hollywood, Washington eventually gave up her film career.”
SOURCE

Like other Black actors, she toured Europe seeking places to pursue her ambition to perform. She also appeared in a substantial number of stage productions, including Mamba’s Daughters with Ethel Waters and Georgette Harvey (1939), and an all-Black production of Lysistrata on Broadway in 1946, in which she played the leading role. She used her considerable talents on radio, performing in  the Jewish immigrant comedy The Goldbergs and in specials for the National Urban League. She was an indefatigable civil rights activist, using her writing skills in regular columns called “Fredi Speaks” and “Headlines and Footlights” for The People’s Voice, a weekly paper founded by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in 1938. She was active in the “Interracial Film and Radio Guild”, co-founder and executive director of the Negro Actors Guild, and administrative secretary for the Joint Actors Equity-Theater League Committee on Hotel Accommodations for Negro Actors.

During the 1930s, she marched on picket lines and participated in boycott campaigns to force Harlem stores, utility companies, and bus lines to hire Blacks. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, she participated in the Cultural Division of the national Negro Congress and the Committee for the Negro in the Arts.

In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

On June 28, 1994, in Stamford, Connecticut, Ms. Fredi Washington died of stroke at the age of 90.

REFERENCES:

Black Women in America, by Darlene Clark Hine, et. al.

The People’s Voice, Research and Editorial Files (1865 – 1963)

IN REMEMBRANCE: 8-7-2011

DELOIS BARRETT CAMPBELL, GOSPEL SINGER

Paul Natkin/WireImage

The Barrett Sisters, a prominent Chicago gospel trio, at a performance in Dallas in 2003, from left, Rodessa Barrett Porter, Delois Barrett Campbell and Billie Barrett GreenBey.

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: August 4, 2011

 

Delois Barrett Campbell, whose subtle phrasing and silvery soprano helped define the sound of the Barrett Sisters, a prominent Chicago gospel trio featured in the 1982 documentary “Say Amen, Somebody,” died on Tuesday in Chicago. She was 85.

The cause was a pulmonary embolism, her daughter Mary Campbell said.

Ms. Campbell, the eldest of the Barrett Sisters, initially caught the attention of the gospel world in the 1940s when she became the first soprano to join the Roberta Martin Singers and sang lead on their 1947 recording of “Yield Not to Temptation.”

She and her sisters, Rodessa and Billie, formed a group in the early 1960s that recorded on the Savoy label. They enjoyed modest hits with “Jesus Loves Me” and “I’ll Fly Away,” but real fame came with “Say Amen, Somebody,” which exposed them to a new generation of listeners and an enthusiastic European audience.

“That film put them on the map, and, in a way, Lois became the symbol of Chicago gospel,” said Anthony Heilbut, author of “The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times.”

Delores Barrett was born on March 12, 1926, in Chicago, where she grew up on the South Side. She and her sisters sang at the Morning Star Baptist Church, where their father was a deacon and their mother sang in the choir, directed by their aunt, Mattie Dacus.

The sisters developed a high-pitched, close-harmony style influenced by the Andrews Sisters, with Delores’s light, ringing soprano, which had a semi-operatic quality, anchoring the group’s sound.

With their cousin Johnnie Mae Hudson, Delores and Billie began performing in the early 1940s as the Barrett and Hudson Singers. Rodessa replaced Ms. Hudson cousin in 1950.

While a senior at Englewood High School, Delores was recruited by the Roberta Martin Singers, a seminal group from the Pilgrim Baptist Church that was known for its stellar roster of lead male voices, notably Robert Anderson and Norsalus McKissick. She continued to perform with her sisters as well.

In 1950 she married the Rev. Frank Campbell, who changed the spelling of her first name to conform to her nickname, Lois. In addition to their daughter Mary, of Chicago, she is survived by another daughter, Sue Ladd, also of Chicago; her sisters, Rodessa Barrett Porter and Billie Barrett GreenBey, both of Chicago; four grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

In 1962, when the Roberta Martin Singers were on the verge of breaking up, Ms. Campbell re-formed the trio with her sisters, who had gone on to rear children and pursue their own careers.

The group became a fixture on the Chicago gospel scene, appearing often on “Jubilee Showcase,” a local television show that featured the nation’s top gospel groups in the 1960s and ’70s.

The trio often recorded pop ballads like “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and Dinah Washington once urged Ms. Campbell to follow in her footsteps and make a career as a crossover artist.

“She was rather modest, timid even, and I often thought that she could have achieved more than she did,” said Mr. Heilbut, who recorded Ms. Campbell as a solo artist on “Precious Lord: Recordings of the Great Gospel Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey” and other records.

The Barrett Sisters recorded their first album, “Jesus Loves Me,” in 1963. They later recorded “I’ll Fly Away” and “Carry Me Back” for Savoy and in the 1970s recorded “God So Loved the World” and “Coming Again So Soon” on the Creed label, for which Ms. Campbell recorded a solo album, “Through It All.”

The group’s stirring performances of “The Storm Is Passing Over,” “(I Don’t Feel) No Ways Tired” and “He Has Brought Us” in “Say Amen, Somebody” gave the sisters a second career. They appeared on “The Tonight Show” and began touring internationally to great acclaim.

SOURCE

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JUDGE MATTHEW J. PERRY JR., LEGAL PIONEER

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: August 5, 2011

 

Matthew J. Perry Jr., who as a young lawyer had to wait in the balcony of his segregated local courthouse before a judge would hear his case, then went on to win hundreds of civil rights legal battles and to become the first black federal judge from the Deep South, died on July 29 at his home in Columbia, S.C. He was 89.

August 5, 2011

Lou Krasky/Associated Press

Judge Matthew J. Perry Jr. at a dedication in his honor in 2004.

His family confirmed the death.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Judge Perry handled cases for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that resulted in the desegregation of schools, colleges, hospitals, parks, golf courses, restaurants and beaches. He won rulings by the United States Supreme Court that overturned the convictions of more than 7,000 people involved in sit-ins.

The Harvard Law School professor Randall L. Kennedy said Judge Perry “helped create federal law that enlarged our liberty.” The judge’s cases, he said, are taught “in every law school across the United States.”

Morris Rosen, who years earlier unsuccessfully defended the city of Charleston, S.C., in a lawsuit brought by Mr. Perry, put it more simply: “He beat the hell out of me.”

In 1976, Mr. Perry became the second black and the first from the Deep South to be appointed to the United States Military Court of Appeals, a three-member civilian body that hears appeals of courts-martial. He was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter named him to a new seat on the Federal District Court in South Carolina, making him that state’s first black federal judge.

The victories Mr. Perry won, often in collaboration with other N.A.A.C.P. lawyers, included desegregating Clemson University and the University of South Carolina; forcing South Carolina to reapportion its legislative districts to end discrimination against blacks; and winning the release of more than a dozen men from death row.

In 1955, Mr. Perry represented a woman who had been elbowed by a bus driver for trying to exit through the whites-only front door. She lost her suit against the bus company, but Mr. Perry won an appeal in a case that had echoes later that year when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala.

Mr. Perry’s success as a civil rights lawyer was owed in part to his conscious effort to avoid provoking confrontations. When shepherding the admission of Harvey Gantt to Clemson, he “carefully scripted” every step of the admission process with law enforcement officials, he said in an interview in January in The South Carolina Lawyers Weekly.

In the early 1960s, a judge cited Mr. Perry for contempt because of his aggressive defense of a black teacher who had been charged with trespassing after sitting in a hospital waiting room designated for whites. He was permitted to return to the courtroom after assuring the judge he meant no disrespect.

“The judge did a remarkable thing,” Judge Perry told The New York Times in 1976. “He apologized to me. He said he had observed that if he were of my race, he would represent the causes I did with even more vigor than I did, and that he hoped I would accept his apology.”

In the book “Matthew J. Perry: The Man, His Times, and His Legacy,” edited by William Lewis Burke and Belinda Gergel, Robert Carter, himself an important civil rights lawyer and later a federal judge, wrote of Judge Perry in an essay, “He is the only militant civil rights figure I know who seems to be loved by both racial groups while still engaged in the struggle.”

Matthew James Perry Jr. was born Aug. 3, 1921, in Columbia, where he grew up. His father, a tailor, died when he was 12, and his mother went to work in New York City as a seamstress. Matthew lived with a grandfather and helped support the family by digging ditches and doing odd jobs. He was drafted into the Army and served in an all-black unit during World War II.

“I accepted our plight as a fact of life,” he said of the segregation in an interview with The Spartanburg Herald-Journal in July, “and yet I knew it wasn’t right.”

A pivotal moment in his racial thinking occurred when he was home on furlough from the Army. He was forced to order his lunch from a restaurant window. Inside he could see Italian prisoners of war being served by waitresses.

He studied business administration at what is now South Carolina State University, a historically black institution. He then enrolled in its law school, which had been created after the University of South Carolina’s law school resisted pressure to admit blacks.

One of five members of his law school’s second graduating class, Mr. Perry went on to practice law in Spartanburg, S.C., where he was the only black lawyer. If he believed in a case, he might charge nothing, or accept fresh vegetables and home-baked pies as payment. In the mid-1950s, he became chief counsel of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the N.A.A.C.P.

Mr. Perry was sworn in as a federal judge by Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court. Three decades earlier, Mr. Perry had been inspired to pursue a legal career after watching Mr. Marshall argue two civil rights cases in Columbia.

Mr. Perry’s nomination to the military appeals court was pushed by Senator Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican, even though Mr. Perry was a member of the Democratic National Committee. Political analysts at the time suggested that Mr. Thurmond, a staunch segregationist, backed Mr. Perry to win votes from a growing black electorate.

On the military appeals court, Judge Perry gained a reputation as thoughtful and “unflappable,” said Eugene R. Fidell, a lawyer who argued before Judge Perry and now teaches at Yale.

In 1974, Mr. Perry was defeated as the Democratic candidate for a seat in the United States House of Representatives; Jimmy Carter, then governor of Georgia, visited South Carolina to campaign for him. When Mr. Carter became president, he appointed him to the lower federal district court.

Judge Perry never retired. He continued as a senior judge and was working on the day he died. He is survived by his wife, the former Hallie Bacote; and their son, Michael.

In his hardscrabble years as a young lawyer, Judge Perry was rejected by potential black clients because they feared he might irritate a white judge. On out-of-town cases, he was barred from motels and had to drive home to sleep, no matter the distance. And while awaiting his turn to appear before a judge in his hometown courthouse in Spartanburg, he, along with other blacks, was restricted to the balcony.

In 2004, the federal courthouse in Columbia was named after him.

SOURCE

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JAMES FORD SEALE, IMPRISONED KLANSMAN

By DENNIS HEVESI

Published: August 4, 2011

James Ford Seale, a former Ku Klux Klansman who was convicted on federal kidnapping charges more than 40 years after the abduction, torture and drowning of two black teenagers near the Mississippi-Louisiana border in 1964, died Tuesday at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. He was 76.

August 5, 2011

Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press

James Ford Seale leaves the federal courthouse in Jackson, Miss., in 2007.

Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, confirmed the death but said he could not give a cause. There was no information available on survivors.

Mr. Seale was serving three life sentences, two for kidnapping and one for conspiracy, in connection with the deaths of Charles E. Moore and Henry H. Dee.

The two friends — Mr. Moore, a sawmill worker, and Mr. Dee, a college student — were 19 when they disappeared on May 2, 1964, last seen hitchhiking on a highway near Meadville, Miss. Two months later, on July 12, a fisherman spotted Mr. Moore’s body in a Mississippi River backwater called the Old River. Mr. Dee was found the next day.

According to F.B.I. reports, the Klan believed that Mr. Moore and Mr. Dee were Black Muslims plotting an armed uprising. The two were taken deep into the nearby Homochitto National Forest, where they were tied to trees and whipped. They were then driven across the state line to Louisiana, where they were tied to an engine block and thrown into the river with tape over their mouths.

The case received little national attention because, at the time, the search was under way for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights workers — two of whom were white New Yorkers — who had disappeared in what became known as the “Mississippi Burning” case.

Mr. Seale and another Klansman were arrested on murder charges, but officials later dropped the case. There were suspicions that the officials themselves had ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

Thirty-six years later, The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., took a fresh look at the case and found documents indicating that the beatings had occurred in the national forest, giving the Justice Department reason to claim federal jurisdiction.

But Mr. Seale had dropped out of sight; newspapers even reported that he had died.

Then, in July 2004, Mr. Moore’s older brother, Thomas, went to Roxie, Miss., with a filmmaker to make a documentary about the killings.

When Mr. Moore said to a local gas station attendant that it was too bad Mr. Seale had died, the man replied: “He ain’t dead. I’ll show you where he lives.”

Mr. Moore and the filmmaker drove to a nearby mobile home, where they saw an old man lounging out front. “James Ford Seale!” Mr. Moore called from the road. “Why don’t you come out and talk to me?” The man ran inside.

That sighting was enough for the F.B.I., which had reopened the case in 2000, to determine that the best chance for a conviction was on kidnapping charges. Mr. Seale was arrested in January 2007, and he was convicted five months later.

With Mr. Seale’s lawyer contending that too much time had passed between the crime and his arrest, a statute of limitations appeal rose through the federal courts until the Supreme Court, in November 2009, said it would not review the case.

Last year, the families of the two murdered teenagers reached a settlement with Franklin County, Miss., for an undisclosed amount, after contending in a civil suit that the county sheriff and his deputy at the time of the killings had conspired with the Klan in the crime and refused to investigate.

On Wednesday, in an interview with The Associated Press, Thomas Moore said that he took no joy in the death of his brother’s killer.

“Rejoicing? That’s not in my nature,” he said. “All of that is behind me. I lived through the process. I hope he found peace with his God.”

SOURCE

**********************************************************************

BUBBA SMITH, N.F.L. STAR AND ACTOR

Warner Brothers, via Getty Images

Tim Kazurinsky with Bubba Smith, who starred as the mild-mannered Hightower in several “Police Academy” movies.

By MARGALIT FOX

Published: August 3, 2011

 

August 4, 2011

Associated Press

Bubba Smith spent five seasons with the Baltimore Colts and two seasons each with Oakland and Houston.

August 4, 2011

Diamond Images/Getty Images

Bubba Smith with the Baltimore Colts in the early 1970s. A defensive lineman, he was the team’s No. 1 draft pick in 1967.

When hearing tales of Bubba Smith, you wonder, is he man or myth?

— Ogden Nash

Bubba Smith, an outsize presence in the National Football League who went on to a prolific career in television and the movies, was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 66.

The cause was not yet known, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said, adding, “There is no indication of anything other than natural death.”

The 6-foot-7 (or possibly 6-foot-8), nearly 300-pound Smith, a defensive lineman, was the No. 1 draft pick for the Baltimore Colts in 1967. He spent nine seasons in the N.F.L., playing on two Pro Bowl teams, in 1970 and 1971. In 1971 he helped propel the Colts to a 16-13 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V.

Traded to the Oakland Raiders before the start of the 1972 season, Smith played two seasons with them before winding up his career with the Houston Oilers. He retired after the 1976 season.

Afterward, Smith made a career of playing rather large men on film and television. He was best known for his role as Moses Hightower, the mild-mannered florist-turned-lawman in the film comedy “Police Academy” (1984) and many of its sequels.

He starred in the short-lived TV crime series “Blue Thunder” (1984) and had roles on many other shows, including “Good Times,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Semi-Tough,” “Hart to Hart,” “Married With Children” and “Family Matters.”

He was also seen in a well-known series of Miller Lite commercials — “Tastes Great; Less Filling” — in the 1970s and ’80s.

Charles Aaron Smith, known since childhood as Bubba, was born in Beaumont, Tex., on Feb. 28, 1945. His father coached the high school football team on which he played; the elder man’s techniques, Bubba Smith told The New York Times in 1971, included whacking his son with a board he brought to the field for that purpose. What redeemed these episodes, the son said, was that “he didn’t holler.”

Smith played defensive end at Michigan State, where his size and prowess gave rise to the chant “Kill, Bubba, Kill,” which emanated frequently from the stands. He was named an all-American in 1965 and 1966.

As a senior, Smith took part in what came to be called the “game of the century” — one of several games so designated in the annals of college football — played at home against Notre Dame on Nov. 19, 1966. Smith sacked and knocked out Notre Dame quarterback Terry Hanratty in the first quarter, and the game ended in a 10-10 tie.

Smith was the author, with Hal DeWindt, of the book “Kill, Bubba, Kill!,” published by Simon & Schuster in 1983. In it, Smith intimated that Super Bowl III — in which his highly favored Colts lost to the upstart Jets under Joe Namath — was fixed, although he supplied no evidence. Smith’s assertion drew fire in the news media.

Information on Smith’s survivors was not available. (His brother Tody, who died in 1999, played for the Dallas Cowboys, the Oilers and the Buffalo Bills.)

Smith was named to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1988. Michigan State retired his number, 95, in 2006.

For all his acclaim, Smith, drawing on the teachings of his father, was philosophical about his abilities.

“He taught us to be humble off the field,” Smith told The Times in 1969. “Inside, I’ve got to feel I’m the best, but if I tell you I’m the best, then I’m a fool.”

Sarah Maslin Nir contributed reporting.

SOURCE

*************************************************************

EUGENE McDANIELS, SINGER-SONGWRITER OF SOUL AND BLUES HITS

By DENNIS HEVESI

Published: August 1, 2011

Eugene McDaniels, whose mellifluous voice brought him high onto the Billboard charts several times in the early 1960s, and who wrote “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” which Roberta Flack took to the top of the charts in 1974, died on Friday at his home in Kittery Point, Me. He was 76.

July 30, 2011

John Ewing/Portland Newspapers, via Associated Press

Eugene McDaniels in 1994.

 

He died after a brief illness, his wife, Karen, said.

With his four-octave range, Gene McDaniels, as he was first professionally known, hit No. 3 in the spring of 1961 with “A Hundred Pounds of Clay” and No. 5 later that year with “Tower of Strength.” He last hit the Top 40 with “Spanish Lace” in late 1962.

Mr. McDaniels’s songs, including those he wrote for other artists later in his career, jumped from jazz to blues to ballads to gospel and could be peppered with cultural criticism and political protest.

The lyrics of his bluesy up-tempo song “Compared to What,” recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969 by the pianist and singer Les McCann and the saxophonist Eddie Harris, include:

“The president, he’s got his war

Folks don’t know just what it’s for

Nobody gives us rhyme or reason

Have one doubt, they call it treason”

After hitting No. 1 in 1974, Ms. Flack’s rendition of Mr. McDaniels’s swooning “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (“Strollin’ in the park, watchin’ winter turn to spring/Walking in the dark, seein’ lovers do their thing”) was nominated for a Grammy. It has since been covered by numerous artists.

Eugene Booker McDaniels was born in Kansas City, Kan., on Feb. 12, 1935, to Booker and Louise McDaniels. The family later moved to Omaha, where his father was a minister.

Gene sang in the church choir, became enthralled by jazz, attended the Omaha Conservatory of Music and moved to Los Angeles when he was 19. There he began as a solo singer before meeting and performing with his jazz idol, Mr. McCann. That led to his signing with Liberty Records.

Later in his career Mr. McDaniels became a producer for, among others, the organist Jimmy Smith and the singers Nancy Wilson and Merry Clayton.

Mr. McDaniels’s first two marriages ended in divorce. Besides his wife, the former Karen Thompson, he is survived by five sons, London McDaniels, Christopher McDaniels, Django McDaniels, Mateo McDaniels and Dylan Patterson; a daughter, Dali McDaniels; a sister, Patricia Nichols; and nine grandchildren.

Although Mr. McDaniels was absent from the charts as a performer after the early 1960s, his writing continued to leave its mark. His songs “have substantial melodies and rich, useful harmonies,” Don Heckman wrote in The New York Times in 1970, adding that it was “difficult to think of any other composer since Bob Dylan who has managed so well to find musical expression for the swirling cultural currents that envelop us.”

SOURCE

Mr. Eugene McDaniels.

He is most well-known forwriting  Feel Like Makin’ Love, a song made famous by Ms. Roberta Flack. But, my all-time favourite is a little-known classic of a man thanking God for “rolling His big sleeves up” to create woman.

A Hundred Pounds of Clay.

Such a sweet and lovely song that was written and sung from the heart of the gift of woman given to man by God.

Mr. McDaniels was a talented and wonderful singer, songwriter, and musician.

He will be missed.

Rest in peace, Mr. McDaniels.

Rest in peace.

A Hundred Pounds of Clay

He took a hundred pounds of clay
And then He said “Hey, listen”
“I’m gonna fix this-a world today”
“Because I know what’s missin’ ”
Then He rolled his big sleeves up
And a brand-new world began
He created a woman and-a lots of lovin’ for a man
Whoa-oh-oh, yes he did

With just a hundred pounds of clay
He made my life worth livin’
And I will thank Him every day
For every kiss you’re givin’
And I’ll thank Him every night
For the arms that are holdin’ me tight
And He did it all with just a hundred pounds of clay
Yes he did, whoa-oh, yes He did

Now can’tcha just see Him a-walkin’ ’round and ’round
Pickin’ the clay uppa off the ground?
Doin’ just what He should do
To make a livin’ dream like you

He rolled His big sleeves up
And a brand-new world began
He created a woman and-a lots of lovin’ for a man
Whoa-oh-oh, yes he did
With just a hundred pounds of clay

FADE
People, let me tall ya what He did
With just a hundred pounds of clay

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of Telephone, Dies at 75

(Aug. 2, 1922)

Warren G. Harding, 29th President, Dies at 57

(Aug. 2, 1923)

Marilyn Monroe, Golden Girl of the Movies, Dies at 36

(Aug. 5, 1962)

Richard Burton, Rakish Star, Dies at 58

(Aug. 5, 1984)

Pope Paul VI, Leader in Era of Change, Dies at 80

(Aug. 6, 1978)

Edith Wharton, Pulitzer-Winning Author, Dies at 75

(Aug. 11, 1937)

William Shockley, Creator of Transistor, Dies at 79

(Aug. 12, 1989)

John Newton Cage, Prolific Composer, Dies at 79

(Aug. 12, 1992)

Florence Nightingale, Famous Nurse, Dies at 90

(Aug. 13, 1910)

Babe Ruth, Baseball Great, Dies at 53

(Aug. 16, 1948)

Margaret Mitchell, Author of ‘Gone With the Wind,’ Dies at 49

(Aug. 16, 1949)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Leader of Modern Architecture, Dies at 83

(Aug. 17, 1969)

Gregory Pincus, Developer of Birth-Control Pill, Dies at 64

(Aug. 22, 1967)

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Photographer of the Defining Moment, Dies at 96

(Aug. 23, 1995)

Truman Capote, Stylish Novelist, Dies at 59

(Aug. 25, 1984)

Charles A. Lindbergh, Who Made Historic Flight, Dies at 72

(Aug. 26, 1974)

Haile Selassie, Last Ethiopian Emperor, Dies at 83

(Aug. 26, 1975)

W.E.B. DuBois, Philosopher and Writer, Dies at 95

(Aug. 27, 1963)

SKYWATCH: WET MARS PHOTOGRAPHED? WEDNESDAY OCCULTATION, AND MORE

News Observing Photo Gallery Magazine Archive Shop at Sky

News

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona

Bulletin at a Glance News Observing This Week’s Sky at a Glance Community

Strongest Evidence Yet for Martian Water

August 4, 2011 | NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found perplexing dark streaks that form seasonally and strongly suggest that liquid water flows on the Martian surface. > read more

Big Splat Could Have Reshaped the Moon

August 4, 2011 | Recent research suggests that the thick, heavily cratered crust on the Moon’s far side could be the pasted-on remains of a second satellite that once orbited early Earth. > read more

Where No Spacecraft Has Gone Before

August 2, 2011 | Dawn sends stunning images from Vesta of an uncharted alien world. > read more

Amateur Search for White-Dwarf Planets

August 3, 2011 | Arizona amateur Bruce Gary is assembling a pro-am team to look for planets orbiting dead stars. > read more

Sky & Telescope September 2011

July 22, 2011 | Sky & Telescope‘s September 2011 issue is now available to digital subscribers. > read more

Observing

International Occultation Timing Association

Watch a Star Wink Out on August 10th

May 6, 2011 | On the evening of Wednesday, August 10th, the Moon will cover the 2.9-magnitude star Pi Sagittarii for the eastern half of North America. > read more

Great Sun This Week

August 3, 2011 | This week the Sun is putting on its best show in nearly a decade. > read more

Ceres and Vesta in 2011

May 20, 2011 | The two brightest asteroids are fairly close to each other in 2011. Click here for instructions and charts to find them. > read more

Tour August’s Sky by Eye and Ear!

July 29, 2011 | This is your last chance to spot Saturn before it sinks into the evening twilight. But there are many other celestial attractions to look for on August evenings. > read more

This Week’s Sky at a Glance

Akira Fujii

This Week’s Sky at a Glance

August 5, 2011 | The Moon lines up with Saturn and Spica at dusk, then waxes across the evening sky for the rest of the week. Jupiter blazes high in the wee hours. And the bright asteroid Vesta — accompanied by NASA’s DAWN spacecraft! — awaits viewing just past opposition. > read more

Community

Sky & Telescope Interactive Sky Chart

Interactive Sky Chart Restored

August 1, 2011 | The Interactive Sky Chart is now working again after a 2-month hiatus. > read more

Let the Star Parties Begin!

April 14, 2011 | Want to gaze at the Milky Way all night or peer into the eyepiece of a 12-foot-tall telescope? Then escape the city lights and head for the nearest “star party.” > read more

COLORLINES: NO DEBT CRISIS, JUST A VALUES CRISIS

August 4, 2011 Colorlines.com Direct | Published by the Applied Research Center The U.S. Doesn’t Have a Debt Problem. It Has a Crisis of Values. Imara Jones says the debt deal is an extension of the grand bargain Washington’s leaders made with Wall Street nearly four years ago: to save the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Also: Debt Deal Casualties May Include College Aid for Poor Students Dispatch From Angola: Faith-Based Slavery in a Louisiana Prison Liliana Segura visits the largest maximum-security prison in the country, where an evangelical warden has made sure prisoners lives look as much like “slavery times” as possible. Marvel Overcomes Its Fear of a Black Spider-Man. Will White Fans Follow? After all, as Channing Kennedy writes, Spidey is from New York City, a place where radioactive-spider roulette is, demographically speaking, likelier than not to result in a black or Latino protagonist-to-be. Justice Dept Sues Alabama Over Nation’s Harshest Anti-Immigrant Law Attorney General Eric Holder repeated the point the Justice Department has made in previous suits: states can’t usurp the feds’ right to control immigration. But federal policy encourages them to do just that. An Obama Victory: Co-Pay Free Birth Control Becomes a Reality For Women The Obama administration said yes to full insurance coverage for women’s contraceptives, STD screenings and other preventive measure. Fine print aside, they’ve done the right thing. Chicago CBS Affiliate Makes 4-yr.-old Sound Like a Thug, Says Sorry Turns out the kid who supposedly bragged about wanting to have a gun when he grows up really said he wants to be a police officer. The station acknowledges “mistakes were made.” Chicago Police Shooting Spree? 43 Shot Already in 2011; 16 Dead Chicago Chicago police have already shot nearly as many residents as all of last year—most recently a 13-year-old boy. Cops argue it’s because residents have “a total lack of respect and fear.” Residents say cops are “targeting black children.” Latina Moms Show Love for Their LGBT Kids Follow this series of three incredible women who show the true power of acceptance.   COLUMNS Dispatches Movement Notes Global Justice Gender Matters HOT TOPICS Wealth Gap Raquel Nelson ACTION CELEBRATE LOVE Colorlines.com on Facebook and Twitter Colorlines.com is published by the Applied Research Center

HATEWATCH: GELLER SCRUBS VIOLENT LINE FROM NORWEGIAN ISLAMOPHOBE’S 2007 E-MAIL

 

Geller Scrubs Violent Line From Norwegian Islamophobe’s 2007 E-mail

by Robert Steinback  on August 1, 2011

Pamela Geller, the reigning queen of anti-Muslim hysteria, has been feeling intensifying heat since Anders Breivik’s deadly rampage in Norway – and she’s not handling it well.

Geller was one of several prominent anti-Muslim activists cited by Breivik in the 1,500-word manifesto he posted on the Internet hours before his murderous bomb and shooting attack that left 77 Norwegians, mostly teenagers, dead. When news of the attack first broke, Geller published a post on her Atlas Shrugs website all but gloating that she had presaged Islamic violence in Scandinavia – only to discover, embarrassingly, that the attacker was not a jihadist Muslim but a Norwegian national who admired and studied her own rhetoric. Geller awkwardly backtracked, posting a rambling self-defense asserting that Breivik had only mentioned her by name once – while downplaying that he had cited her blog a dozen times, mentioned her co-founding partner of Stop Islamization of America, Robert Spencer, 64 times, and suggested that Spencer should win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, one of Geller’s most relentless irritants, blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (LGF), has determined that Geller has deleted the most damning passage from a June 24, 2007, E-mail she received, and posted, from an unidentified Norwegian correspondent bemoaning what he viewed as a surge in Islamic immigration.

The E-mailer begins by presenting the grossly inaccurate statistic that Oslo’s Muslim population in 2007 was 50% and growing. (Norway is estimated by the U.S. government to be 2% Muslim as of July 2011; even if every Norwegian Muslim lived in Oslo proper, the city would still be no more than about 18 percent Muslim). Adding in a medically unsustainable birth rate of 1.2 births per year per Muslim woman, the writer predicts the city would be almost two-thirds Muslim by 2010.

The writer then predicts that military conflict between Israel and Arab countries would “make the muslims [sic] worldwide go into a frenzy, attacking everyone around them.”

The alarming line that followed no longer appears on Geller’s 2007 post: “We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.”

“Pamela Geller’s guilty conscience is showing again,” Johnson surmised. “Obviously, Pamela Geller is going through her archives and scrubbing any violent rhetoric related to Norway, and equally obviously, she’s doing it to cover her tracks.”

Geller dismissed Johnson’s accusations, saying she deleted the line only because she thought it was “insensitive and inappropriate” in the wake of the massacre. Also, she stated flatly that Breivik was not the author of the E-mail. But, she also added one odd bit of interpretation. The E-mailer’s statement about “stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment,” she said, “refers to self-defense.” Johnson retorted, “It’s ‘self-defense’ to stockpile weapons and ammunition to fight against … a sick paranoid fantasy?”

But Geller wasn’t through. On Sunday, echoing the vicious comments posted last week by rabid anti-Muslim blogger Debbie Schlussel, Geller posted an essay denouncing the leftist political bent of the camp on Utøya Island where Breivik mowed down dozens of unarmed teenagers. The youths had called for the creation of a Palestinian state and a boycott of Israel toward that end.

Like Schlussel, but in terms only slightly less putrid, Geller coldly insinuated that “the little dearies and their handlers” who were expressing a political viewpoint – an act normally considered a right in free societies – had earned Breivik’s wrath. “Breivik was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole … all done without the consent of the Norwegians.”

Mass murder, thus justified.

SOURCE

*********************************************************************

“Like Schlussel, but in terms only slightly less putrid, Geller coldly insinuated that “the little dearies and their handlers” who were expressing a political viewpoint – an act normally considered a right in free societies – had earned Breivik’s wrath. “Breivik was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole … all done without the consent of the Norwegians.”

Yes, Geller, by all means, show what a lowlife of a human being that you are by championing the slaughter of innocent children.

Your hateful stance and your cowardly CYA behaviour with Brevik’s e-mail shows you up as the gutless and venomous monster that you are.

 

BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA: ESSIE MAE WASHINGTON-WILLIAMS

The sexual relations that White men have had with Black women throughout America’s racial history has often given many a view that much of the creation of mixed race children was a result of rape. But, that is only half of the story. There have been unions where White men have fathered children with black women during Reconstruction and during Jane Crow segregation. Very few of these children were acknowledged by their White fathers, with most discarded as if some refuse fit only to be thrown onto the trash heap.

Ms. Essie Mae Washington-Williams is one Black woman whose White father refused to acknowledge her existence publicly to the world. 

When Ms. Washington-Williams announced her plans to join the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), no one questioned the legitimacy of her claim to membership. She was undeniably the daughter of a so-called respected southern family that could trace its blood lines back to the Revolutionary War and beyond. However, although the family in question was White, Ms. Washington-Williams was Black–the illegitimate daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond and Carrie Butler.

Ms. Butler was a maid in the Thurmond household at the time, and was sixteen years old when she was impregnated by 21-year-old Thurmond, when she gave birth to his daughter, Essie Mae.

The question arises, of course, why Ms. Washington-Williams, who only revealed her lineage after the death of her father, would want to belong to an organization that, among other things, refused to allow Marian Anderson to sing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. What honor could lie in a Black woman joining the DAR? What is more, Ms. Washington-Williams also applied for membership in the Daughters of the Confederacy, a group with the proclaimed purpose of honoring those who fought to keep her Black ancestors enslaved.

It seems that knowledge and acknowledgement were more at issue than honor. Ms. Washington-Williams was inspired to apply for membership in the DAR by Ms. Lena Santos Ferguson. Ms. Ferguson was the grand-daughter of a Black woman from Virginia who had married a White man whose ancestor had fought in the Revolutionary War. Ms. Ferguson herself fought a legal battle in the 1980s to become a DAR member and won, but only after the government threatened to take away the organization’s tax exempt status. Ms. Ferguson’s settlement agreement also required that the DAR identify all Black soldiers who served in the Revolutionary War. Ms. Ferguson and her nephew, Maurice Barboza, founded The National Mall Liberty Fund DC.   H.R. 2181 was also submitted through Mr. Barboza’s efforts to obtain recognition of Blacks who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Ms. Washington-Williams wrote of her life as Thurmond’s daughter in her book Dear Senator:

1.

Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond by Essie Mae Washington-williams and William Stadiem (Paperback – Jan 24, 2006) – (41)

Ms. Washington-Williams stated she was joining the Daughters of the Confederacy in order to have access to resources that would let her further explore her lineage. Her actions have had another effect as well, almost certainly intended.

Ms. Washington-Williams, as well as Ms. Ferguson, have helped to bring light to a side of American history that has largely been hidden, ignored, and often denied:  America’s racial interconnectedness.

There are those who wished she had spoken out while Thurmond was still alive, but, in the end, the decision was her’s to make.

In the end, it was what she could live with.

In the end, she showed herself to have more integrity and wisdom than the man who fathered her, but all through life, had not the courage to say to the world:  “This is my daughter, of whom I am happy and proud to call my own”.

RELATED LINKS:

ESSIE MAE WASHINGTON-WILLIAMS HAS HER SAY

ESSIE MAE ON STROM THURMOND

REFERENCES:

Black Women in America, by Darlene Clark Hine, et. al.

IN REMEMBRANCE: 7-31-2011

FRANK BENDER, RECOMPOSER OF FACES OF THE DEAD

By MARGALIT FOX

Published: July 30, 2011

 

Frank Bender, a forensic sculptor whose work — haunting, three-dimensional faces in clay — helped identify the forgotten dead and apprehend the fugitive living, died on Thursday at his home in Philadelphia. He was 70.

July 31, 2011

Matt Rourke/Associated Press

Frank Bender, a forensic sculptor, with a bust he constructed in the 1980s of a homicide victim, Rosella Marie Atkinson.

Frank Bender

A photograph of Ms. Atkinson.

The cause was pleural mesothelioma, a rare cancer that attacks the outer lining of the lungs, his daughter Vanessa said.

An elfin man whose bald head, fierce gaze and Vandyke made him look like a pocket Mephistopheles, Mr. Bender was among the best known of the country’s handful of forensic sculptors — an unusual craft that stands at the nexus of art, crime, science and intuition.

Mr. Bender was almost entirely self-taught, for he never anticipated a career in forensic sculpture. Who, after all, envisions a life in which skulls, sent by hopeful law enforcement agencies, arrive periodically in the mail? (Usually the skulls had been denuded and cleaned, though not always, and luncheon visitors to Mr. Bender’s home-cum-studio occasionally arrived to find one bubbling away in a pot on the stove.)

A former professional photographer, Mr. Bender found his calling by chance in the late 1970s, on a trip to the Philadelphia morgue. After that he was consulted by police departments across the country and abroad, and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Of the 40 or so heads he sculptured over the years, most were designed to identify murder victims for whom DNA, dental records and fingerprints had come up empty.

In these cases, Mr. Bender endeavored to turn back time, using victims’ skulls to render their faces as they might have looked in life. A “recomposer of the decomposed” is what he called himself — quite cheerily — on his answering machine.

For fugitives, Mr. Bender coaxed time forward, using photographs and other information to sculpture malefactors as they might look 10 or 20 years on. It was in one such case that he scored his most spectacular success: a role in capturing one of the most notorious murderers in America.

A conjurer in clay, Mr. Bender was, he often said, as much psychologist as sculptor, divining — or so it seemed — features that skulls alone could not tell him: hair color, characteristic expressions or precise skin color, which he painted onto the finished sculpture.

His methods could yield striking likenesses. In the 1980s, for instance, the Philadelphia police asked him to help identify the remains of a woman found murdered in a down-at-the-heels area.

“She was wearing a Ship ’n Shore blouse — a nicely pleated blouse, not a blouse someone her age would wear in that neighborhood,” Mr. Bender told The Toronto Star in 2001. “To me, it told me she was looking for a way out, she was looking for a better life, so I had her looking up for hope.”

A few years later, a local woman identified the bust as her niece, Rosella Marie Atkinson, 18, who had disappeared in 1987. Rosella, she said, held her head up in just that way. In 2005, the killer confessed and was sent to prison.

It was not the money that spurred Mr. Bender: he charged about $1,700 for a sculptured head, and typically made only a few a year. Between assignments, he worked as a fine-art painter and sculptor and held various jobs, including working on a tugboat.

What drove him, those who knew him say, was a constitutional pugnacity.

“He’s a fighter for justice,” Ted Botha, the author of a book about Mr. Bender, said in an interview shortly before Mr. Bender’s death. “He’s almost like a little Captain America or something.”

Mr. Botha’s book, “The Girl With the Crooked Nose,” chronicles Mr. Bender’s work in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where he was asked to reconstruct the faces of women killed in a series of murders. Of the eight heads he made there, three led to identifications, Mr. Botha said.

It is impossible to gauge precisely Mr. Bender’s career success rate, where “success” means identifying a victim or catching a fugitive. Mr. Bender — who, as associates attest, was a larger-than-life character with no small awareness of his own news value — sometimes put the figure at 85 percent.

The correct figure, his associates say, is probably closer to 40 percent. “Not even he knows, because nobody actually tells him,” Mr. Botha said. “The police departments don’t always come back to him afterwards; that’s one of the kind of bittersweet things about what he does.”

Associated Press

A photograph of John List, a murder suspect;

John Bender

Mr. Bender’s bust of Mr. List.

Francis Augustus Bender Jr. was born in Philadelphia on June 16, 1941, and grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. After serving in the Navy, he embarked on a photography career.

In the 1970s, Mr. Bender took night classes in painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. The academy offered no anatomy classes at night, so in 1977 he took it upon himself to visit the morgue.

There, he saw the body of a woman, shot in the head and unrecognizable.

“I know what she looks like,” Mr. Bender was surprised to hear himself say.

“Do you know anything about forensics?” a medical examiner asked him.

“I don’t even know what the word means,” he said.

Galvanized, Mr. Bender set to work, producing a bust of a woman with a long nose and cleft chin. After a photograph of it appeared in newspapers, she was identified as Anna Duval, a Phoenix woman who had flown East to recoup money from a swindler and wound up dead. Her killer was later identified as a mob hit man, already imprisoned for other crimes.

Mr. Bender’s gift for waking the dead impressed the authorities, and more cases followed. At first he layered clay onto the skulls, consulting tissue-thickness charts to determine its depth at crucial points on the face.

Later on — for prosecutors were loath to see potential evidence trapped for eternity inside a sculpture — he used the skulls to make molds, from which he cast plaster heads.

His greatest triumph came in 1989, in the case of John Emil List. In 1971, Mr. List, a seemingly mild-mannered accountant, murdered his mother, wife and three children in their Westfield, N.J., home. Then he vanished.

Eighteen years later, the television show “America’s Most Wanted” commissioned a bust from Mr. Bender for a segment on Mr. List. Working from an old photograph, he created a balding, jowly figure.

In a stroke of inspiration — or perhaps luck — Mr. Bender added glasses with thick black rims, the kind he felt a strait-laced man like Mr. List would wear.

On May 21, 1989, a woman in Virginia watching the broadcast thought she recognized her neighbor, a balding, jowly accountant with thick black glasses named Robert Clark. On June 1, Mr. Clark was arrested. Fingerprints confirmed his identity as John List. Convicted and sentenced to five life terms, he died in 2008.

Mr. Bender’s wife, the former Janice Lynn Proctor, died of cancer last year. Besides his daughter Vanessa, he is survived by another daughter, Lisa Brawner; a sister, Sara Thurston; and three grandchildren.

With William Fleisher and Richard Walter, Mr. Bender founded the Vidocq Society in 1990. Based in Philadelphia, the group comprises forensic scientists, law enforcement officers and other professionals who convene to investigate unsolved murders.

Mr. Bender was also a subject of “The Murder Room,” a book about the society by Michael Capuzzo. A documentary film about Mr. Bender, “The Recomposer of the Decomposed,” is scheduled to be released next year.

Interviewers often asked Mr. Bender whether his life among the dead gave him nightmares. Yes, he replied, but not in the way you think. For years, he explained, his dreams had been peopled by the dead, and by sinister men.

The sinister men invariably attacked him, Mr. Bender said, and whenever they did, the unnamed dead rose up in his defense.

SOURCE

**********************************************************************

DAN PEEK, CO-FOUNDER OF THE ROCK BAND ‘AMERICA’

By MARGALIT FOX

Published: July 26, 2011

 

Dan Peek, an original member of the rock band America who later forsook the group for a life in Christian music, died on Sunday at his home in Farmington, Mo. He was 60.

July 27, 2011

Associated Press

America in 1976. From left, Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek and Gerry Beckley. Mr. Peek later turned to recording Christian music.

Mr. Peek died in his sleep, his wife, Catherine, said. The cause is not yet known.

Formed in the late 1960s, America was known for its lush, melodic folk-rock sound and the tight vocal harmonies supplied by its members, Mr. Peek, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell.

Mr. Peek, who sang lead and backup vocals, also played guitar, bass, keyboards and harmonica.

The band’s best-known songs during his tenure include its two biggest hits, “A Horse with No Name” and “Ventura Highway,” both written by Mr. Bunnell; “Sister Golden Hair,” by Mr. Beckley; and “Lonely People,” by Mr. Peek. Mr. Peek also wrote “Woman Tonight” and “Don’t Cross the River” for the band.

After leaving America in 1977, Mr. Peek recorded Christian pop, including the successful solo album “All Things Are Possible,” released in 1979. In recent years, he lived in somewhat reclusive semi-retirement while continuing to write songs.

Daniel Milton Peek was born in Panama City, Fla., on Nov. 1, 1950. His father was an Air Force officer, and Dan spent his childhood all over the United States, and in Greenland, Japan and Pakistan.

When he was a teenager, a new posting took the family to England. It was there, in a London high school, that he met the young Mr. Beckley and Mr. Bunnell, also children of American military fathers.

The three began singing together in various permutations, under various names. They dissolved briefly when Mr. Peek returned to the United States to attend Old Dominion University, but joined forces again when he came back to London a year later. They called themselves, nostalgically, America.

“We wanted to set ourselves apart and not be seen as English guys trying to do American music, but instead accentuate that we were an American band,” Mr. Peek told The Jerusalem Post last year.

The group’s self-titled debut album was released in Britain in 1971 and in the United States by Warner Brothers the next year.

The band won a Grammy Award in 1973 as best new artist. A string of successful albums followed, including “Homecoming,” “Holiday,” “Hearts” and “Hideaway.” Many were produced by George Martin, who produced many of the Beatles’ records.

As Mr. Peek later recalled, those early years passed in a blur of airplanes and limousines, wealth, drugs and alcohol.

“Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll; it was the whole cornucopia of fleshly material,” he said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network show “The 700 Club.” “I tried everything. I tasted every possible thing. I had a spiritual compass, but I abandoned it completely.”

In 1977, distraught at the turn his life had taken, Mr. Peek became a born-again Christian. He renounced drugs and alcohol and left the band. He signed with Lamb & Lion Records, a label founded by Pat Boone, for which he recorded “All Things Are Possible.” His other albums of religious music include “Electro Voice,” “Cross Over” and “Caribbean Christmas.” (Mr. Peek and his wife lived in the Cayman Islands for many years.)

Mr. Peek is survived by his wife, the former Catherine Maberry, whom he married in 1973 (he met her, too, during his high school days in London); his parents, Milton and Gerri; and five siblings, Tom, Deborah, Rebecca, David and Angela.

Since Mr. Peek’s departure America has been principally a duo comprising Mr. Beckley and Mr. Bunnell, and it continues to tour.

“We’ve had innumerable requests to re-form, but the ball’s in their court,” Mr. Peek said in The Jerusalem Post interview last year. “I would probably do it.”

SOURCE

Dan Peek and America.

I first heard the melodious and sublime sounds of America with the classic Horse With No Name, and my other favourite America song, Ventura Highway. The enigmatic and cryptic lyrics made me wonder who was this horse with no name? What did she represent? Why was she in the desert, and why after nine days, did the rider let her go?

America, the group, were very underrated and many people did not have the joy of knowing their music, but of the groups of the 1970s they stood out.

Mr. Dan Peek, he will be missed.

Rest in peace, Mr. Peek.

Rest in peace.

A Horse With No Name

On the first part of the journey,
I was looking at all the life.
There were plants and birds. and rocks and things,
There was sand and hills and rings.
The first thing I met, was a fly with a buzz,
And the sky, with no clouds.
The heat was hot, and the ground was dry,
But the air was full of sound.

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la

After two days, in the desert sun,
My skin began to turn red.
After three days, in the desert fun,
I was looking at a river bed.
And the story it told, of a river that flowed,
Made me sad to think it was dead.

You see I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
La la, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La la, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la

After nine days, I let the horse run free,
‘Cause the desert had turned to sea.
There were plants and birds, and rocks and things,
There was sand and hills and rings.
The ocean is a desert, with its life underground,
And a perfect disguise above.
Under the cities lies, a heart made of ground,
But the humans will give no love.

You see I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.

La la, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La la, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La la, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La la, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La la, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La la, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la

******************************************************************

BUTCH LEWS, FLASHY PROMOTOR FOR BOXING’S SPINKS BROTHERS

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Published: July 24, 2011

 

Butch Lewis, the flamboyant boxing promoter and manager best known for getting Michael Spinks a $13.5 million payday for what became 91 seconds in the ring with Mike Tyson, died Saturday at his home in Bethany Beach, Del. He was 65.

July 25, 2011

Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images

Butch Lewis

His death was announced by Terrie Williams, a representative of his family, who said it was from natural causes.

A shrewd and tenacious figure with a gift for showmanship, Lewis went from the life of a street hustler and used-car salesman in Philadelphia to the pinnacle of dealmaking in the boxing world of the late 1970s and the 1980s.

He made his reputation mostly for representing Leon Spinks and his brother, Michael, who had both won gold medals at the 1976 Olympics.

Lewis’s most lucrative moment came on the night of June 27, 1988, when Michael Spinks challenged Tyson for the undisputed heavyweight championship at Convention Hall in Atlantic City.

Spinks was a quiet sort. Lewis, his manager and promoter, was anything but. He preened on fight nights in a tuxedo, a bow tie and no shirt, and he favored showy rings and bracelets.

Michael Spinks had won the light-heavyweight championship and later defeated Larry Holmes for the International Boxing Federation heavyweight championship.

Through arcane maneuvering that got Spinks out of a proposed HBO heavyweight title unification series, Lewis negotiated Spinks his largest possible purse for facing Tyson. Spinks was knocked out at 1 minute 31 seconds of the first round and then retired.

A month after that fight, Spinks told of his gratitude to Lewis, saying that he had been reluctant to fight professionally after winning his Olympic championship but that Lewis “called me over and over.”

“He’d call and say, ‘You about ready to go pro?’ ” Spinks told The New York Times. “I’d say, ‘No, not yet.’ It took six months before I said, ‘Come on, I’m ready.’ ”

Ronald Everett Lewis was born in Woodbury, N.J., on June 26, 1946, and grew up in Philadelphia. When he got out of high school, he once told The Times, he hustled essentially worthless rings he bought from a friend who worked at a jewelry store. The friend would appraise the rings at $1,500 for skeptical would-be buyers, and they would be “happy to give me $50 for a ring that’s worth $1.25.”

Lewis’s father soon put him to work as a salesman at his used-car dealership. His father had been one of the original stockholders in a syndicate that backed Joe Frazier, an eventual heavyweight champion, and Butch soon began traveling with Frazier.

“I’d be in on meetings with he and Ali and the promoters,” Lewis said. “I got to see how the wheels turned in the fight business. And the more I saw of it, the more I liked it.”

Lewis met Muhammad Ali through Frazier and became a co-promoter of Ali’s heavyweight championship fight with Richard Dunn in Munich in 1976. That resulted in Lewis’s going to work for the promoter Bob Arum, who made him a vice president of his firm, Top Rank. Lewis signed Leon and Michael Spinks while with Arum.

Lewis guided Leon Spinks to his victory over Ali for the heavyweight title in 1978 and left Arum that year to promote on his own.

He later formed Butch Lewis Productions and branched out into entertainment. In June 2010, IMG Worldwide joined with Lewis’s firm in a management company primarily representing minority entertainers and celebrities.

Lewis is survived by his sons, Ronald Lewis, Brandon Lewis and Kevin Mosley; his daughter, Sita Lewis; his brother, John; his sisters, Gail Brison and Sheree Lewis; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

SOURCE

*******************************************************************

MICHAEL CACOYANNIS, DIRECTOR OF ‘ZORBA THE GREEK’

By PAUL VITELLO

Published: July 25, 2011

 

Michael Cacoyannis, a Greek filmmaker whose art-house films and adaptations of Euripides for stage and screen were critically acclaimed, but who was best known as the director of the 1964 Hollywood hit “Zorba the Greek,” died on Monday in Athens. He was 90.

July 26, 2011

International Pictures, via Photofest

Michael Cacoyannis, right, with Anthony Quinn on the set of “Zorba the Greek” (1964), which became an instant classic.

His death was confirmed by the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, an institution for the performing arts he founded in 2003.

Mr. Cacoyannis’s early work brought a new level of respect to Greek filmmaking in the 1950s, when postwar European cinema was dominated by the Italians and French. It also gave exposure to some of Greece’s finest performers. His 1955 film, “Stella,” which won the Golden Globe as best foreign film, featured Melina Mercouri in her first movie role. Irene Papas would appear in many of his productions.

But “Zorba,” his eighth film, created a cultural phenomenon that transcended filmmaking.

Anthony Quinn’s barefooted, dancing, woman-loving Zorba became a symbol of Greek vitality that boosted Greek tourism for decades. For better and worse, it also stamped the Greeks as people with a knack for living for the moment, a characterization that has haunted them during the country’s national debt crisis.

The film won three Academy Awards. But although nominated for best director and best film, Mr. Cacoyannis and “Zorba” lost out to George Cukor’s adaptation of “My Fair Lady.”

Mr. Cacoyannis discovered theater while he was a student in London, where his well-off family sent him to study law before the start of World War II. He received a law degree, but never practiced. Instead, he enrolled in acting classes and appeared in stage roles before going to Greece in 1953 to make films.

His first four films were well received on the international art-house circuit: “Windfall in Athens” (1954), “Stella” (1955), “A Girl in Black” (1956) and “A Matter of Dignity” (1958). “Electra” (1961), which made Ms. Papas a star, was called one of the 10 best films of the year by Bosley Crowther, the film critic of The New York Times.

A devotion to classical Greek drama prompted Mr. Cacoyannis to film and stage a number of plays by Euripides and Aristophanes, beginning in 1963 with a stage production in New York of “The Trojan Women,” Euripides’ antiwar play. During tryouts Mr. Cacoyannis was said to have despaired at some of the candidates as he tried to convey to them the depth of the tragedy.

“Imagine that your president has just been assassinated, and his son is being dragged off to be killed,” he suggested. The cast in place, rehearsals began on Nov. 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was shot. The production ran for 600 performances before closing in May 1965.

Mihalis Kakogiannis was born on June 11, 1922, in Limassol, Cyprus. (He later adopted a phonetically simpler spelling of his last name.) He was one four children. His father, Panayotis, a lawyer and member of the island’s legislative and executive councils, was knighted by the British government in 1936.

After his first stay in London, from 1939 to 1953, he returned there from 1967 to 1974, when Greece was under a military-backed dictatorship.

The popular success of “Zorba” was never repeated. Mr. Cacoyannis’s later filmmaking efforts received lukewarm reviews. A 1971 film version of “The Trojan Women,” with Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Ms. Papas, was widely panned. But he remained active as a director of plays and opera in New York and in Europe. Among his many operatic productions were Puccini’s “Bohème” in New York (1972), Mozart’s “Clemenza di Tito” at Aix-en-Provence, France (1988), and Cherubini’s “Medea” in Athens (1995).

Mr. Cacoyannis is survived by a sister, Giannoula.

He told interviewers late in his life that bringing classical Greek drama to the English-speaking stage and screen was among his most satisfying work, and always a source of inspiration.

“I believe all the Greek plays are very up to date,” he said. “They go straight to the roots.”

SOURCE

The lusty, life-loving, and robust Zorba was a character that to this day still stays with me. Thanks to director Michael Cacoyannis, I still have the image of Zorba at the end of the movie trying to instill a zest for life into the young Briton writer(played by Alan Bates) who came to stay at the Greek island of Crete. After all he had been through, Zorba could still put on a smile, laugh at life’s trials, tribulations, and absurdities, as well as revel in its gifts. The thanks for that goes not only to the late Anthony Quinn ‘s performance, but, especially to Mr. Cacoyannis in his direction of the movie.

Yes, Mr. Cacoyannis is primarily known for Zorba, and over the years it has irked him that Zorba is all that comes to mind when his name is mentioned. But, it is a wonderful movie, and still stands the test of time.

Thanks for the memories, Mr. Cacoyannis. To honor you, I will listen to my LP soundtrack of Zorba.

Rest in peace, Mr. Cacoyannis.

Rest in peace.

Dance!

 

SKYWATCH: EARTH’S COMPANION, AMATEUR DISCOVERIES, AND MORE

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News

Earth’s Traveling Companion

July 27, 2011 | Astronomers have identified a small body sharing Earth’s orbit in a gravitationally stable resonance that keeps it from hitting us or escaping. Finally, Earth has a Trojan asteroid to call its own. > read more

Amateur Discovers A Planetary Nebula

July 28, 2011 | Austrian amateur Matthias Kronberger has found a planetary nebula near the northern constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. His discovery might help scientists understand the role of stellar companions in the formation of these glowing gas clouds. > read more

From Stars to Stardust

July 29, 2011 | Astronomers have determined that a recent supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud created a half-Sun’s worth of dust — hinting that such stellar explosions might be an unexpectedly rich source of dust throughout the universe. > read more

Kepler’s Dilemma: Not Enough Time

July 27, 2011 | NASA’s planet-hunter has already identified more than 1,200 exoplanet candidates. But project managers now quietly acknowledge that the spacecraft will have serious difficulty spotting habitable, Earth-size worlds by the mission’s end next year. > read more

A Promising White-Dwarf Binary

July 26, 2011 | A team of scientists has found two white dwarfs locked in a close mutual orbit, providing an excellent chance to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity. > read more

Sky & Telescope September 2011

July 22, 2011 | Sky & Telescope‘s September 2011 issue is now available to digital subscribers. > read more

Observing

S&T: Lauren Darby

Tour August’s Sky by Eye and Ear!

July 29, 2011 | This is your last chance to spot Saturn before it sinks into the evening twilight. But there are many other celestial attractions to look for on August evenings. > read more

Ceres and Vesta in 2011

May 20, 2011 | The two brightest asteroids are fairly close to each other in 2011. Click here for instructions and charts to find them. > read more

Interactive Sky Chart is Unavailable

June 3, 2011 | Our popular Interactive Sky Chart will be unavailable for an indeterminate period. > read more

This Week’s Sky at a Glance

Sky & Telescope diagram

This Week’s Sky at a Glance

July 29, 2011 | Saturn and Spica sink to the sunset. Jupiter blazes high before dawn. And the bright asteroid Vesta — accompanied by NASA’s DAWN spacecraft! — comes to opposition. > read more

Community

Al Takeda / ATMoB

Light Pollution’s Medical Effects

July 20, 2011 | Watch an video interview with noted physician and dark-sky activist Mario Motta. > read more

The Battle to Control Light Pollution

July 21, 2011 | Listen to a podcast interview with Bob Parks, exceutive director of the International Dark-Sky Association. > read more

Let the Star Parties Begin!

April 14, 2011 | Want to gaze at the Milky Way all night or peer into the eyepiece of a 12-foot-tall telescope? Then escape the city lights and head for the nearest “star party.” > read more

COLORLINES: RACIAL WEALTH GAP HAS NEVER BEEN LARGER

 

July 28, 2011 Colorlines.com Direct | Published by the Applied Research Center The Racial Wealth Gap’s Larger Than Ever. Here’s How It Will Destroy Us The median wealth of a white family is now at least 20 times higher than that of a black family. Kai Wright says that’s a problem for the entire country. Muslim “Terrorists,” White “Lone Wolves,” and the Lessons of Oslo Michelle Chen: The key lesson from Oslo is that fear blinds, not just those who act on violent impulses but also those who bear witness to it. How Long Do Immigrant Families “Wait in Line”? Sometimes Decades Stokely Baksh illustrates who’s applying for family and work visas and how long they have to wait. Sometimes decades. Wisconsin Special Elections Preview 2012’s Voting Rights Showdown Millions of black and Latino voters may be turned away from polls in states weighing new rules. From Attica to Pelican Bay: A Brief History of Prison Rebellions With news that California’s prison hunger strike may have ended, we take a look back at seminal prison rebellions that have called for similar changes. New Film ‘No Look Pass’ Follows Gay Asian American Basketball Star The documentary follows former Harvard basketball star Emily Tay as she navigates hoops, love, and the expectations of her parents. SFPD Defense of Cop Shooting? Victim’s Fatal Wound Was ‘Self-Inflicted’ While community outrage continues to run high and video of the shooting spreads across the Web, residents want real police accountability. Top Arkansas Student Denied Sole Valedictorian Honors Because of Race The student contends that the administration has long made it harder for black students to be recognized for their academic achievements.     COLUMNS Dispatches Movement Notes Global Justice Gender Matters HOT TOPICS DSK Rape Case Drug War ACTION CELEBRATE LOVE Colorlines.com on Facebook and Twitter Colorlines.com is published by the Applied Research Center   SF Bay Area: Last call for this evening’s show “The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour”One part manifesto, one part diatribe, and several parts funny. Kamau Bell returns to San Francisco for two special performances of his comedy show and is offering Colorlines.com readers $10 tickets! Get your tickets online and use discount code: colorlines. Both shows feature Kamau in a post-show talkback and Q&A session with the audience hosted by Colorlines.com.