How The Pied Piper Planked America's Youth.....again

Many can recall The Pied Piper of Hamelin , a children's fairytale about a piper dressed in pied a(multicolored) clothing, leading the children away from the town never to return. .
In the story. the town's children are led astray by a Piper whose melodic melodies causes them to fall under a hypnotic "spell" which leads to their death.











Planking is one the "Pied Pipers" of 2011. Planking refers to the act of lying face down with arms to the sides in unusual public spaces and photographing it to share online. To me,planking is a very painful reminder of a very painful past


According to many, it's just a fun game to play while some call it dangerous. Players of this crazy trend go far and beyond to see who can find the most bizarre place to Plank. The few rules include: The location should also be as public as possible, and as many people as possible should be involved. Some call it dangerous because of the length that people will go to in order to get that "perfect shot" which of course, is worth money.

a>According to news sources, the game was uncovered in September of 2009, when seven doctors and nurses working at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon, England were suspended for playing the lying down game while on duty. Sadly, this was not the first time Plankin had made its way to North America. The last time was on slave ships. My ancestors were packed light sardines on wooden planks. I am really not concerned about the controversy that the "media" has ignited. I just think that planking is a bad idea that brings back haunting memories. If that's not good enough reason to throw this silly game out to sea then perhaps the rising number of deaths and injuries that are taking place as a result of Planking will be sufficient. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43036847/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/australia-man-plunges-planking-death/

soul food staples

In my opinion, there is really no difference between "Soul Food" and "Southern Food". The only difference is the way it is prepared. Southern cuisine has been reportedly developed from soul food. African Americans have played a pivotal role in the development in southern cuisine. Many famous southern cuisine chefs have been African Americans.
Here's a quick history lesson...
The first group of Africans landed in America in Jamestown, Virginia. They brought food over to America including seeds of native crops. African American slaves were farmers, cattle raisers, and fishermen and introduced several plants such as black-eyed peas, okra, sweet sorghum, and watermelons as part of American’s crops and foods.
African American slaves were indentured servants and had to pay their due by giving up several years of their life. This made up the slave population in Southern America and was the beginning of soul food history
A traditional Southern meal is deep fried chicken, field peas, mashed potatoes, cornbread, sweet tea and a dessert that could be a pie (sweet potato, pecan and peach are traditional southern pies), or a cobbler (peach, blackberry or mixed berry are traditional cobblers).
The slaves had to create their own dishes from the leftovers that their masters did not eat. They often exchanged recipes verbally with each other which led to the development of African American cuisine. This was how many of their foods were gathered for their meals.
Cooking was mostly done on open pits or fireplaces with large swing black pots and big iron cast skillets and was prepared by black cooks. Using open pits or fireplaces are now used as grills for cooking. At most of our family gatherings we still cook with the large swing black pots.
In the 1960‘s , Southern-style cooking of Black Americans, now labeled as “Soul Food” was due to its roots in American slavery. It was also a reminder that African American slaves paved the way in the development of African American style cooking.
Many years ago, black cooks verbally exchanged recipes as they remembered them and today many Southerners still cook without a recipe, just by simply remembering main ingredients and adding seasonings to their taste. This way of cooking has produced many great cooks. This is what soul food cooking is all about

A few semesters back I took an African American Literature course. The text that we used was called, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature Vol.2. The editor? Henry Louis Gates Jr. I had become very familiar with Gates way before the course or even recent events. I remember as a teenager reading about him....oh yes, he was....one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" in 1997. Holder of 50 honorary degrees, acclaimed historian, Harvard professor and PBS documentarian.Many may recall in 2006-2007 many African American celebrities such as: Oprah Winfrey,Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Tina Turner, Don Cheadle, Tom Joyner and Maya Angelou and many more traced their roots by DNA. Well, Gates was the host and mastermind.
(now fast forward to July 2009) My friend called me and told me to turn to CNN. To my disbelief I see photos of a handcuffed Gates. According to the NPR, On July 16, Cambridge police responded to a call that two black males with backpacks were breaking in to a two-story home near the Harvard campus. By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside his home. He refused to step outside to speak with the police. Eventually, Gates showed some identification and, according to the police report, began yelling at an officer. Gates was handcuffed and led away.
When one of America's most prominent black intellectuals winds up in handcuffs, it's not just another episode of profiling — something is terribly wrong. We are not where we used to be, but we have a long bumpy road to travel.If this man can be taken away by police officers from the porch of his own home, what does it say about the treatment that average blacks can expect in 2009?

Black in America 2

Last year, on July 23 and July 24, 2008 CNN aired a documentary titled, "Black In America," hosted by correspondent Soledad O'Brien. The first night focused on "The Black Woman & Family," and the second "The Black Man." The 2.3 million viewers that watched the special made it not only one of the most watched cable specials but a success in its own right. This year Soledad O’Brien is doing another part to the campaign called Black in America 2. On July 22 & 23 at 8 pm est CNN continues its investigation of the most challenging issues facing African-Americans with "Black in America 2." What issues some may ask? There are many issues within our race.
Although this is not one of the big problems-the name “Black” itself is deemed as unfitting to many. Personally, I prefer to be called an African American. Why? Quite simply I have never been able to locate this so-called place called black land where “Black” people come from. I only know of Mother Africa, the land of my ancestors. First step, let's agree on our identity?
Black America has made valuable contributions in all the social sciences, everything from mathematics to music. You’d probaly be surprised of all the contributions that we have made to this country. Many of these accomplishments were achieved through many years of hard struggles. Our ancestors overcame the whip, blistered hands, and countless beatings under the scorching sun. (well, you know the rest)
So, what’s the problem now? We aren’t physically shackled but some of us have mental chains that prevent us from excelling. …and would someone please tell me WHY we are still wallowing in self pity and still blaming the “White Man” for everything that goes wrong within our communities? Second, let's stop playing the blame game. Please don’t misquote me, I am NOT saying that no one is trying. But, I am saying that we have got to do better!
The strange-and sad- paradox though, is that for most African Americans, social conditions are just about the same as ever, in fact evidence shows it is getting worse, not better. The ever-rising rate of young black men between 18 to 35 being incarcerated-now being competed by a rapidly-growing number of black women who are now joining them; the breakdown of the Black Community, the proportionate number of dysfunctional black families, fatherless households (an estimated 80% of Black families in America are fatherless); chronic poverty, joblessness, homelessness, drug addiction, drug trafficking, street gangs, violence, underage teenage motherhood-if you could call it that-high disease rate, a high dropout rate from high school and colleges, and the list could go on and on. Most importantly, let's face the facts and confront the issues.
Soledad O'Brien will report on people who are using ground-breaking solutions to transform the black experience.

the traditional American family is gone!

Today if you ask many Americans to give you their definition of the traditional family in America you will receive many different responses. Most likely, the answers that you will receive are as colorful and diverse as the multitude of populace that currently lives within the United States. Just as there is not one single example of the “so-called typical American”, there is not one single example of the “so-called typical American family”. America, the “melting pot” has a vast number of people from different nationalities, cultures, and values as a result her families come in a variety of assortment. The traditional American family, as defined some fifty a year ago is becoming a thing of the past.
According to the US Census, half a century ago, the description of the typical American family included two married parents: a father, a mother and 2.3 children. Most American families of the past were clearly a male husband, a female wife, and their biological children. More often than not, these families shared the same ethnicity, culture and shared the same religious affiliations and beliefs. Today’s American family is quite the opposite.
Today more couples are choosing to cohabitate rather than enter matrimony. The choice to co-habitation is a common thing in today’s times. It seems that everyone is doing it!
Research now finds that cohabitation can no longer be seen as a single social phenomenon where hormones drive lustful young adults to shack-up. Instead, widely diverse populations, from teenagers to seniors, live together, as an experiment in building an intimate relationship. Even many celebrities have opted out of marriage and into co-habitation. Oprah, Brad, Angelina and LeBron are just a few of the high profile celebrities that cohabitate.
Like families headed by heterosexual parents, lesbian and gay parents and their children are diverse groups. Currently, there is a great divide amongst Americans concerning the idea of same sex marriage.
There are families headed by single parents. Families that include grandparents raising their grandchildren because the parents are absent. There are transcultural, transracial, biracial, interracial families. Families without children, families that adopt children. The list goes on & on because the spectrum is so broad.
In the middle of the same sex argument unfolds another voice. Yet, many Americans will agree that a family is defined as a unit of people who care about each other regardless of race, gender, culture or biological ties. The fading traditional American family has been replaced by the blended family.Stepfamilies, also known as blended families, are more of a norm now than ever.
At least one-third of all children in the U.S. will be part of a stepfamily before they reach age 18. Research defines blended families as a family in which one or both partners have been married before. A vast number of American families are blended in some form or another form. American citizens come from different backgrounds, colors, genders, cultures and beliefs as a result her families are just as dissimilar. The traditional American family has become a thing of the past. Would someone please tell me if there is a such thing as a traditonal family?
What's the family structure like where you live?

Notable names. . .just a few

Benjamin Banneker
(1731-1806) Born into a family of free blacks in Maryland, Banneker learned the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic from his grandmother and a Quaker schoolmaster. Later he taught himself advanced mathematics and astronomy. He is best known for publishing an almanac based on his astronomical calculations.

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams
(1856-1931) Williams was born in Pennsylvania and attended medical school in Chicago, where he received his M.D. in 1883. He founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago in 1891, and he performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1893.

George Washington Carver
(1865?-1943) Born into slavery in Missouri, Carver later earned degrees from Iowa Agricultural College. The director of agricultural research at the Tuskegee Institute from 1896 until his death, Carver developed hundreds of applications for farm products important to the economy of the South, including the peanut, sweet potato, soybean, and pecan.

Percy L. Julian
(1899-1975) Alabama-born Julian held a bachelor's degree from DePauw University, a master's degree from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. His most famous achievement is his synthesis of cortisone, which is used to treat arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.


Dr. Charles Richard Drew
(1904-1950) Born in Washington, D.C., Drew earned advanced degrees in medicine and surgery from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, in 1933 and from Columbia University in 1940. He is particularly noted for his research in blood plasma and for setting up the first blood bank.

Thomas L. Jennings
(1791-1859) A tailor in New York City, Jennings is credited with being the first African American to hold a U.S. patent. The patent, which was issued in 1821, was for a dry-cleaning process.

Elijah McCoy
(1844-1929) The son of escaped slaves from Kentucky, McCoy was born in Canada and educated in Scotland. Settling in Detroit, Michigan, he invented a lubricator for steam engines (patented 1872) and established his own manufacturing company. During his lifetime he acquired 57 patents

Lewis Howard Latimer
(1848-1929) Born in Chelsea, Mass., Latimer learned mechanical drawing while working for a Boston patent attorney. He later invented an electric lamp and a carbon filament for light bulbs (patented 1881, 1882). Latimer was the only African-American member of Thomas Edison's engineering laboratory.

Granville T. Woods
(1856-1910) Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio, and later settled in Cincinnati. Largely self-educated, he was awarded more than 60 patents. One of his most important inventions was a telegraph that allowed moving trains to communicate with other trains and train stations, thus improving railway efficiency and safety.

Garrett Augustus Morgan
(1877-1963) Born in Kentucky, Morgan invented a gas mask (patented 1914) that was used to protect soldiers from chlorine fumes during World War I. Morgan also received a patent (1923) for a traffic signal that featured automated STOP and GO signs. Morgan's invention was later replaced by traffic lights

Frederick McKinley Jones
(1892-1961) Jones was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. An experienced mechanic, he invented a self-starting gas engine and a series of devices for movie projectors. More importantly, he invented the first automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks (1935). Jones was awarded more than 40 patents in the field of refrigeration.

David Crosthwait, Jr.
(1898-1976) Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Crosthwait earned a B.S. (1913) and M.S. (1920) from Purdue University. An expert on heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, he designed the heating system for Radio City Music Hall in New York. During his lifetime he received some 40 U.S. patents relating to HVAC systems.

Patricia Bath
(1942-) Born in Harlem, New York, Bath holds a bachelor's degree from Hunter College and an M.D. from Howard University. She is a co-founder of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness. Bath is best known for her invention of the Laserphaco Probe for the treatment of cataracts.

February is Black History Month. Better known as a time to commemorate African-Americans who have changed the world. I’d much rather it be known as African American History Month, but that’s my preference. We can discuss my views about that later. For now, lets just celebrate!
Black History month was started by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. Dr. Carter G. Woodson is known as the Father of Black History. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), the son of former slaves James and Eliza (Riddle) Woodson, was born on a small farm in New Canton, Virginia. From an early age he possessed an unquenchable thirst for learning. When he could, he attended the local school, and eventually went to Berea
College in Kentucky. Ultimately, he obtained a B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1907. In 1908 he attended Sorbonne University in Paris where he became fluent in French. He received a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1912, becoming only the second African-American to earn such a degree.
Woodson taught briefly and held educational administrative posts in the Philippines, at Howard University (where he was Dean of the School of Liberal Arts), and West Virginia State College. Carter Godwin Woodson was the founder of Associated publishers, founder and editor of the Negro History Bulletin, and the author of more than thirty books. Probably Woodson's best known book is The Mis-Education of the Negro, originally published in 1933 and still relevant today. In the Mis-Education of the Negro Dr. Woodson stated that:

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."

In 1926 Woodson initiated the first annual February observance of Negro History Week. He chose February for the observance because February twelfth was Abraham Lincoln's birthday and February fourteenth was the accepted birthday of Frederick Douglass. In 1976, the Bicentennial (200th birthday) of the U.S.A., the week-long observance was extended to the entire month of February in order to have enough time for celebratory programs and activities

MLK National Day of Service

Happy MLK Day! Today is a federal holiday! State and county offices are closed, schools, banks, postal services, libraries are all closed! In America, we love holidays! To me, holidays normally mean a day of relaxing, catching up on quiet reading, perhaps even the opportunity to “sleep in” a little later than usual but not this day! King holiday is a day a service! Millions of Americans honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and answered President-elect Obama’s call to service by volunteering on the January 19 King Holiday. Americans made it “a day on, not a day off” by delivering meals, refurbishing schools, reading to children, signing up mentors, and much, much more. Initiated by Congress in 1994, King Day of Service builds on that that legacy by transforming the federal holiday honoring Dr. King into a national day of community service grounded in his teachings of nonviolence and social justice.
To many this day is bitter sweet. While we celebrate his life and many accomplishments, we can’t help but still mourn his untimely death. In fact, some of us still shed a few tears. Today I shed a tear because I know that we have come a long way as a people but we have an even longer way to go. In Sunday school one of the children asked a question: If Dr. King were alive would he be happy with the way things are going in our communities? (she was referring to the African American community) This was a good question that made many of us pause and think about what this ten year old had really just asked. Her question made me ponder another question: Would things be different within our community if Dr. King were alive today? I believe that one person has the power to mold and shape its surroundings. Dr. King showed us how powerful one voice could be when he decided to cry out against the injustices that were plaguing just about every corner of America with its infectious seeds of hate and racism. Would Dr. King be happy with our current condition and state of mind? (…most likely not) According to studies, criminologist report that murders among black youth have risen in recent years. While the school drop out rates and pregnancies for black teens have declined other numbers have risen. For example: high unemployment rates, domestic violence, number of households run by single mothers and so on. So, no I don’t believe that he would be completely happy with some of the challenges that we are facing our community... but I do think he would us this:
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

“If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.”

---Dr.Martin Luther King Jr

40 acres and a mule? Keep it!

Reconstruction began before the American Civil War ended. A few weeks after Union General William T. Sherman concluded his march to the sea in Savannah, he met with twenty black men, including the Reverend Garrison Frazier, to discuss how to deal with tens of thousands of freed blacks who had left inland plantations and followed Sherman's forces to the coast. Frazier was asked, "What should we do with all these refugees?" He replied that the "best way we can take care of ourselves is to have land." Sherman responded with Special Field Order 15 to deliver "forty acres and a mule" to each freed slave.

That was over 100 hundred years ago. Today many African Americans have wondered what ever became of the “40 acres and a mule Promise” to our ancestors. With the assassination of Lincoln at the end of the war, Andrew Johnson, ordered the confiscated lands returned to their former owners. According to many historians, African Americans had to go back to work and be landless . . . and rightless . . . plantation laborers.

Now fast-forward to November 4, 2008. As many African Americans watched and listened to the latest poll results, our hearts raced with anticipation. We wondered if it were all possible for what we were seeing and hearing to be really true. Yes, we had followed the campaign with all of its turbulent flights. We watched the accusations fly. We watched and listened to the insults and yet we still wondered…is this a dream or reality? Could the 44th President of the United States be a black man?

Trust me this is not about just color. Its about acceptance. Its about being part of the United States of America. Finally, this marks our acceptance. After the Civil War, millions of formerly enslaved African Americans hoped to join the larger society as full and equal citizens. Although some white Americans welcomed them, others used people’s ignorance, racism, and self-interest to sustain and spread racial divisions. By 1900, new laws and old customs in the North and the South had created a segregated society that condemned Americans of color to second-class citizenship.

The world marveled at this achievement. Many people rejoiced with laughter. Some even did the “happy dance” for hours into the morning. Then there were those of us who could only shed tears. I am one of them. Although, I have never experienced being watered down with a fire hose, or participated in any “sit ins”. Honestly, I have only read about Black Codes and Jim Crowe. As a child, I can recall the fear that would overtake my body as I listened to the elders in my family reminiscence about the many times they witnessed the Klu Klux Klan march. Its very astonishing that my family is only four generations away from slavery. So, as the broadcasters announced the new President Elect my mind went back to the “40acres and a mule promise.” “You know what? I thought…they can keep the 40acres and a mule…we just took 50 states and the Whitehouse!