President Obama eventually intervened to defuse the tension by inviting both the professor and the arresting officer to the White House for a glass of beer by Rose Garden. Prior to the media circus surrounding that "Beer Summit," Dr. Gates was already well known as a tenured Professor at Harvard University, as well as director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research.
The dramatic vision and delicate balance of composition found in Adona's photographic works were developed while working with painter Rozzell Sykes. Her vision was literally changed. The awareness of light, shadows, colors, textures, tones and balance had changed. Soon she began creating with paint, stark images with the feel of Japanese simplicity. [Alisa Adona]'s paintings showed a freshly textured view and an exciting new eye in the Los Angeles art world. Over time, she was compelled to capture what she saw through the lens of a camera, ultimately making photography her new love.
Ms. [Adona] is a photographer utilizing the visual medium to tell stories of cultures from around the world, with the hope of creating a better understanding of diverse people through the visual arts. Last summer Ms. Adona introduced "CUBA, Reflections of Life" during a speech at the United Nations in Geneve, Switzerland, where she spoke on the necessity utilizing a single, powerful image to tell the story of a nation.
Randall Robinson, founder and president of TransAfrica will speak at 12:30 p.m. at the Black Business and Professional Association's (BBPA) 4th Annual African American Economic Summit to be held Saturday, May 20 at the Renaissance Long Beach Hotel from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Robinson is a noted activist and author of Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America. He is best known for his leadership in spearheading the movement to influence United States policies toward Africa and the Caribbean. Robinson played a significant role in the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and the restoration of Democracy in Haiti.
Storyteller, poet, and culinary anthropologist Vertamae Grosvenor displays the pleasures of African-Atlantic cooking in "Vertamae Cooks in The Americas' Family Kitchen," and in her new series debuting on PBS in October, In both the book and the series, Vertamae shows how African tastes and traditions have influenced the various cuisines of America, acquiring new flavors and ingredients along the way in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. With humor, insight, and gusto, Vertamae shares anecdotes and history as she prepares more than a hundred mouth-watering, down-home recipes. The recipes range from the deliciously unique to the comfortingly familiar, from the spiciness of Bahian Shrimp Creole to the pleasure of sweet potato pie.
Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Harlem in 1918. By 1924 there were over 700 branches in 38 states and over 200 branches throughout the world as far away as South Africa at a time when there was no e-mail, television, or even radio to advertise. Those who could not hear Garvey directly received his views through his newspaper called the Negro World, which boasted a circulation as high as 200,000 by 1924. In 1919, the UNIA and Negro World were blamed for the numerous violent colonial uprisings in Jamaica, Grenada, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago. British and French authorities deported all UNIA organizers and banned the Negro World from all their colonies, but seamen continued to smuggle the paper throughout the world.
Escaped slaves became Spanish Florida's first settlers. They joined refugees from the Creek Nation and called themselves Seminoles which means runaways. Intermixing became so common that they were soon called Black Seminoles. The black Seminoles struck frequently against slave plantations and runaway slaves swelled their ranks. The U.S. government launched three massive war campaigns against the Seminole nation over a period of 40 years. The second war alone cost the U.S. government over 40 million dollars and 1500 soldiers. The Seminoles eventually signed a peace treaty with President Polk which was violated in 1849 when the U.S. Attorney General ruled that black Seminoles were still slaves under U.S. law.
