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MICHAELA ANGELA DAVIS on MSNBC'S SCARSBOROUGH REPORTS ON DON IMUS CONTROVERSY
BLACK WOMEN on THE SCREEN, THE STAGE and THE PAGE
DOROTHY DANDRIDGE was the first African-American to be nominated for the Academy Award in the Best Actress category in 1954 for CARMEN JONES.
In 1999, HALLE BERRY portrayed Dandridge in the HBO biopic INTRODUCING DOROTHY DANDRIDGE. Berry's performance was recognized with several awards, including an Emmy and Golden Globe. She also served as one of the producers of the project.
LENA HORNE (born June 30, 1917 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York) is a popular African American singer. She has recorded and performed extensively with jazz musicians (notably Artie Shaw, Teddy Wilson), Billy Strayhorn, and Duke Ellington. She might be best-known for her version of the song "Stormy Weather", which was a hit in the 1940s.
Horne became the first African American performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio, namely Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She made her debut with MGM in 1942's PANAMA HATTIE and became famous in 1943 for her rendition of STORMY WEATHER in the movie of the same name. She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, but was never featured in a leading role due to her race and the fact that films featuring her had to be re-edited for showing in southern states where theatres could not show films with African American performers. As a result, most of Horne's film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline; a notable exception was the all-black musical CABIN IN THE SKY (also 1943).
FOXY BROWN (1974) is one of the most influential blaxploitation films. PAM GRIER's character is considered the female archetype of the genre. It is often noted by film historians as one of the first films to provide a portrayal of a strong and independent woman; until Pam Grier, women often existed exclusively to support their men for a small part of the film.
DREAMGIRLS (1981) is a Broadway musical that won six Tony Awards.
The musical was loosely based upon the history and evolution of American R&B music over the years and contained several allusions to the lives and careers of Motown Records act THE SUPREMES.
In 2006, DREAMGIRLS was adapted into a movie with a predominantly African-American cast starring BEYONCE, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy. JENNIFER HUDSON, an American Idol alumnus who made her film debut in Dreamgirls, won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Effie White.
In 1972, CICELY TYSON was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the critically acclaimed SOUNDER.
JULIA (1968-1971), established DIAHANN CARROLL as the first African-American actress to star in her own television series where she did not play a domestic worker.
THE COSBY SHOW, starring Bill Cosby and PHYLICIA RASHAD focused on the everyday adventures of an upper-middle-class black family. The series revived a television genre (situation comedy), saved a beleaguered network (NBC), and sparked controversy about race and class in America. This family was unlike other black families previously seen on television in that it was solidly upper-middle-class--the Huxtables lived in a fashionable Flatbush brownstone, the father was a respected gynecologist, and the mother a successful attorney.
The Cosby Show, unlike many situation comedies, avoided one-liners, buffoonery and other standard tactics designed to win laughs. Instead, series writers remained true to Cosby's vision of finding humor in realistic family situations, in the minutiae of human behavior. Thus episodes generally shunned typical sitcom formulas by featuring, instead, a rather loose story structure and unpredictable pacing. Moreover, the Huxtable home was sweetened with jazz, and prominently featured contemporary African-American art.
In many respects, The Cosby Show and its "classy" aura were designed to address a long history of black negative portrayals on television. Indeed, Alvin Poussaint, a prominent black psychiatrist, was hired by producers as a consultant to help "recode blackness" in the minds of audience members. In contrast to the families in other popular black situation comedies--for example, those in Sanford and Son, Good Times, and The Jeffersons--the Huxtables were given a particular mix of qualities that its creators thought would challenge common black stereotypes. These qualities included: a strong father figure; a strong nuclear family; parents who were professionals; affluence and fiscal responsibility; a strong emphasis on education; a multigenerational family; multiracial friends; appreciation for the arts.
A DIFFERENT WORLD is an American television sitcom which aired for six seasons on NBC (1987-1993). It is a spin-off series from The Cosby Show, originally centered around Denise Huxtable (portrayed by LISA BONET) and the life of students at Hillman College, a fictional historically Black college in Virginia. Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and Whitley Gilbert (JASMINE GUY) became the leads in the second season after Bonet left the series. JADA PINKETT made her acting debut towards the end of the series' run.
While it was a spin-off from the Cosby Show, A Different World typically addressed issues that were avoided by the Cosby Show writers (race & class relations; sexism/sexual harassment; rape; pregnancy/safe sex; voting; etc.) One episode that aired in 1990 was one of the first American network television episodes to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It was also one of the only television series to address the issue of the Persian Gulf War and did so days leading up to the war.
The success and popularity of A Different World is credited with an increase in enrollment at historically Black colleges and universities during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
SCHOOL DAZE (1988), a musical/drama directed by Spike Lee and starring Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, TISHA CAMPBELL, JASMINE GUY and Kadeem Harrison, among many others. Based in part on Spike Lee's experiences at Atlanta's Morehouse College, it is a story about fraternity and sorority members clashing with other students at a historically black college during homecoming weekend. School Daze was the second feature film directed by Spike Lee. Spike Lee was asked to stop production on the campuses of Morehouse, Spelman, and Clark Atlanta University during filming because the colleges' Boards of Directors had concerns on how historically black colleges were being portrayed in the film. Lee had to finish filming at the neighboring Morris Brown College.
DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is a 1991 independent film written and directed by Julie Dash. It tells the story of three generations of Gullah women at the turn of the 20th Century and focuses on the family's migration from the Sea Islands to the American mainland. Featuring an unusual narrative device, the film is told by an unborn child. The movie gained critical praise, for both its rich language and use of song, and for its use of imagery. Another unusual feature of the film is that the much of the dialogue is spoken in the Gullah language. In 2004, Daughters of the Dust was added to the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress, recognizing the cultural, historical and aesthetic significance of the movie.
SISTER ACT II (1993), sequel to the successful 1992 movie Sister Act, stars Oscar winner WHOOPI GOLDBERG and was directed by Bill Duke. It has historical significance as the first Hollywood blockbuster headed by an African-American film director. It was also a breakout role for singer/actress LAURYN HILL.
SOUL FOOD (1997), produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and TRACEY EDMONDS and starring VANESSA L. WILLIAMS, VIVICA FOX and NIA LONG, centers on the trials of an extended African-American family, held together by longstanding family traditions set forth by the family matriarch. Serious problems take center stage when the matriarch passes away. Soul Food was widely acclaimed for presenting a more positive image of African-Americans than is typically seen in Hollywood films. Soul Food spawned a follow-up cable television show on the Showtime network.
SOUL FOOD: THE SERIES (2000-2004), starring NICOLE ARI PARKER, VANESSA A. WILLIAMS and MALINDA WILLIAMS, originally aired on Showtime and is currently shown in syndication on BET. Soul Food: The Series was ground-breaking for its time. It was the first long-running and successful dramatic series on television to feature a predominantly African-American cast.
LIVING SINGLE (1993-1998) centered on the lives of six African-American twenty-somethings (later thirty-somethings) consisting of four women and two men living in a brownstone in the heart of Brooklyn, New York. It starred QUEEN LATIFAH, KIM FIELDS, ERIKA ALEXANDER and KIM COLES. The series was also referred to as a Black version of "The Golden Girls" where members of each cast were similar: Khadijah/Dorothy as the responsible one; Synclaire/Rose as the odd, funny one; Blanche/Regine as the self-obsessed man chaser; Max/Sophia as the sarcastic one.
GIRLFRIENDS (2000-present) is a popular American sitcom centered on the lives of successful African American women living in Los Angeles, California. It stars TRACEE ELLIS ROSS, GOLDEN BROOKS and PERSIA WHITE. Kelsey Grammer, television's Frasier, is the executive producer of the show. Think ‘Living Single’ meets ‘Sex and the City’ in LA.
4 LITTLE GIRLS, a 1997 documentary about the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, was directed by Spike Lee and nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Documentary".
The three-story 16th Street Baptist Church was a rallying point for civil-rights activities. In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, the church's Youth Day, Ku Klux Klan members Bobby Frank Cherry and Robert Edward Chambliss (also called “Dynamite Bobâ€) planted 19 sticks of dynamite in the basement of the church.
At about 10:25 A.M., when 26 children were walking into the basement assembly room for closing prayers after a sermon entitled "The Love That Forgives", the bombs exploded. Four girls—ADDIE MAE COLLINS (aged 14), DENISE McNAIR (12), CAROLE ROBERTSON (14), and CYNTHIA WESLEY (14)—were killed in the blast, while the other 22 children were injured.
The attack was intended to instill fear in those supporting equal civil rights. Instead, it caused public outrage and it was a turning point in the U.S. civil-rights movement and spurred the movement to further success.
CAROLE SIMPSON
GWEN IFILL
STORM is one of the first black superheroes. Storm has the mutant power to control the weather and can fly at high speeds. She is a member of the X-MEN battalion and often served as the team’s leader. The character of Storm is one of a few black characters that have been featured in three forms of media: COMICS, TELEVISION and FILMS. Halle Berry portrays Storm in the X-Men films.
QUEEN LATIFAH gained mainstream success after being cast as Matron "Mama" Morton in the musical CHICAGO, the recipient of the Best Picture Oscar. Latifah received an Academy Award nomination for "Best Supporting Actress" for her role.
In 2004, PHYLICIA RASHAD (best known for her role as Claire Huxtable in the 1980s television series, The Cosby Show) became the first African-American actress to win the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, winning for her role in the play A RAISIN IN THE SUN.
JADA PINKETT SMITH, author of GIRLS HOLD UP THIS WORLD, a children's book that celebrates the inner strength of women and girls in short photo-essays with a rhyming text:
"We girls hold up this world with a strength that's all our own.
We'll see the different ways one day when we are grown."
Donyell Kennedy-McCullough's full-page, glossy color photographs of girls and women engaged in a variety of activities are excellent. The attractive layout with lots of pastel backgrounds is easy on the eye and will appeal to youngsters.
From The Publisher: "We are sisters of this Earth, members of one powerful tribe. Every color, shape, and size, we're united by beauty inside." Artistic photographs enhance the positive message of Jada Pinkett Smith's inspiring poem. A renowned actress and loving mother, Smith brings warmth and heart to this celebration of young women. While so many girls today struggle with self-doubt, this poem focuses on the power all girls have within them, regardless of color or creed. This is the perfect book for mothers, daughters, sisters and friends to give and to share again and again.
AKEELAH AND THE BEE is a 2006 film written and directed by Doug Atchison. It tells the story of Akeelah Anderson, portrayed by Keke Palmer, an 11-year-old girl who participates in the Scripps National Spelling Bee; it also explores issues of education in the black community. It also reunited ANGELA BASSETT and LAURENCE FISHBURNE, who previously co-starred together in 1991's Boyz N The Hood and 1993's What's Love Got To Do With It.
A RAISIN IN THE SUN is a play by LORRAINE HANSBERRY that debuted on Broadway in 1959. It starred Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee. The story is based upon Hansberry's own experiences growing up in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. A Raisin In The Sun was the first drama written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway as well as the first play with a black director (Lloyd Richards) on Broadway.
The play was revived for a limited run of fifteen weeks on Broadway in 2004 at the Royale Theatre. The revival featured Tony Award-winning performances from Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald, a Tony Award-nominated performance from Sanaa Lathan and a well publicized Broadway acting debut of Sean "Diddy" Combs as Walter Younger.
In a television landscape populated almost exclusively by prosperous white characters living in idealized settings, and where black families were always presented as somehow broken or fractured, GOOD TIMES (1974-1979) was the first prime-time series that featured a strong black man at the head of a close-knit lower-middle-class black family. It was also the first series to be headed by a married black couple. The show took an honest look at the reality of life in the urban Projects and tackled social and political issues around race, poverty, unemployment, inflation, crime and addiction--hot button issues that cut across 1970s America. The concept was daring as these topics were previously unexplored on television. Even the most serious storylines were handled with great comic skill, and Good Times managed to portray the strength and devotion of the Evans family without ever becoming maudlin.
THE COLOR PURPLE is a 1982 novel by ALICE WALKER which received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book addresses many issues which are important to understanding African-American life during the early to mid 20th century. Its main theme is the position of the black woman in society as the lowest of the low, put upon because of both her gender and her color. The book was adapted into a film in 1985, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring WHOOPI GOLDBERG and OPRAH WINFREY.
On December 1, 2005, a musical adaptation of the book opened at the Broadway Theater in New York City. The show was produced by Oprah Winfrey and actress LaCHANZE was the second black actress to win the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress (2006) for her portrayal of Celie.
FANTASIA, joined the Broadway cast of The Color Purple in 2007.
BEVERLY JOHNSON
IMAN
NAOMI CAMPBELL
TYRA BANKS
WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT is a 1993 biographical film which tells the life story of TINA TURNER. Starring ANGELA BASSETT and Laurence Fishburne as Tina and Ike Turner, both were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
WAITING TO EXHALE, starring ANGELA BASSETT and WHITNEY HOUSTON, is a 1995 movie directed by Forest Whitaker that centers on four successful African-American women and their relationships with men and one another.
POETIC JUSTICE (1993), starring JANET JACKSON & Tupac Shakur and directed by John Singleton, is film where we see the world through the eyes of main character Justice, a young African-American poet. The poetry that Justice writes during the course of the film was actually written by MAYA ANGELOU.
SET IT OFF (1996), directed by F. Gary Gray, stars JADA PINKETT SMITH, QUEEN LATIFAH, VIVICA A. FOX and KIMBERLY ELISE as four close friends from Los Angeles who decide to plan and execute a bank robbery. They decide to do so for different reasons, although all four want better for themselves and their families than the opportunities available to them than in the racist and post-industrial Los Angeles.
Think ‘Waiting To Exhale’ meets ‘Thelma & Louise’ meets ‘Boyz N The Hood’.
BELOVED (1998), starred OPRAH WINFREY, KIMBERLY ELISE, THANDIE NEWTON and Danny Glover. It was directed by Jonathan Demme and produced by Oprah Winfrey's HARPO PRODUCTIONS. It was adapted from TONI MORRISON's Pulitzer-Prize-winning 1987 novel of the same name.
EVE’S BAYOU (1997) starred JURNEE SMOLLETT, LYNN WHITFIELD, DEBBI MORGAN, MEAGAN GOOD, DIAHANN CARROLL and Samuel L. Jackson. The film, written and directed by KASI LEMMONS who made a most impressive directorial debut with this poetic Southern Gothic feature, was critically acclaimed with Roger Ebert naming it the top film of 1997.
Beautiful, sensuous, complex, haunting, tragic and enchanted…with exquisite and crisp cinematography from Amy Vincent matched with an elegant and gripping score from Terrence Blanchard…and with such an exceptional cast, with particular mention to Smollett, Morgan and Jackson who turn in Oscar-caliber performances…EVE’S BAYOU is a modern day film masterpiece. This movie lives in my Top 5!
I LIKE IT LIKE THAT (1994) is a film about trials and tribulations of a young Puerto Rican couple living in the poverty-stricken New York City neighborhood of the South Bronx. It was directed by DARNELL MARTIN, the first African-American woman to direct a movie produced by a major studio, Columbia Pictures.
LOVE AND BASKETBALL is a 2000 romantic drama film, written and directed by GINA PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD. This film stars SANAA LATHAN and Omar Epps.
HALLE BERRY was awarded the Best Actress Academy Award in 2002 for her performance in MONSTER'S BALL and is the only African-American woman to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
The OPRAH WINFREY LEADERSHIP ACADEMY is a girls-only boarding school that officially opened in January 2007 at Henley-on-Klip in Meyerton, south of Johannesburg, South Africa. Inspired by her own humble beginnings and disadvantaged background, OPRAH WINFREY founded the Leadership Academy to provide educational and leadership opportunities for academically gifted girls from impoverished backgrounds in South Africa who exhibited leadership qualities for making a difference in the world.