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The Face of Voter Suppression How can you be charged with illegally voting when you did not vote? Further, how can you be incarcerated for making a “mistake” casting a vote? What is a provisional ballot? Does a provisional ballot constitute a vote? How did the term “intentionally voted illegally” become the elephant-in-the -room in […]
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
By BlackPressUSA Dr. William Busa, founder of EQV Analytics, a ‘North Carolina-focused campaign consulting firm serving Democratic candidates with advanced campaign analytics, analyzed student voter turnout from ten North Carolina campuses, three of them HBCUs N.C. AT University, in Greensboro, Winston-Salem State University and North Carolina Central University in Durham. A GDN Student Continued
The post Voter suppression goes to college appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.
Wendell Oliver Scott was the first African American race car driver to win a race in what would now be considered part of the Sprint Cup Series. Scott was born August 29, 1921 in Danville, Virginia. His father worked for wealthy white families as a driver and auto-mechanic, and started teaching his son about cars at a very young age.
Scott, however, dropped out of school and was drafted into the army to fight in World War II. After he returned from the war, he opened an auto-repair shop, but also took up a profession that would lead him into car racing, running moonshine whiskey. To do this, Scott had to know how to build and drive fast cars so he could get away from the police (which he did on numerous occasions). The racecar business was struggling in Danville, so to attract more people, the owners decided to recruit an African American driver, and went to the police asking who was the best black driver in Danville. Because of his habits of escaping the police, all fingers pointed towards Scott. The next day on May 23, 1952, Scott became the first African American to drive in an official stock car race. His first race did not go well because his car broke down, but at that point he realized that he wanted to be a racecar driver.
Scott tried many times to get into some official National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) races, but because of his race he was turned down on several different occasions. Because of this discrimination, Scott decided he would stick to non-NASCAR speedways, like the Dixie Circuit. Scott raced in the smaller circuits for a while, winning his first race at Lynchburg, Virginia while still trying to break into NASCAR.
Eventually, Scott got into the NASCAR circuit by taking over the auto racing license from a white driver named Mike Poston. He worked his way up to what is now known as the Sprint Cup Division, the top division in NASCAR. On December 1, 1963, Scott became the first African American to win a race in the Sprint Cup Division after he came in first at Speedway Park
Kampala is the largest city and the capital of Uganda. In 2006 its population was approximately 1,189,000. The city was built over the old capital of the Buganda Kingdom located on Mengo Hill. Some buildings from the Kingdom still survive in the city such as the Buganda Parliament Building and the Buganda Court of Justice. Originally a city of seven hills, it is much larger today.
The city is 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) above sea level in the southern part of Uganda, eight kilometers (6 miles) north of Lake Victoria. Thus Kampala experiences a mild climate even with its close proximity to the equator. In the Kiganda language spoken by the Buganda people, Kampala’s name was derived from the phrase kasozi k’ mpala, which translates to “hill of impala,” since the area once had a large impala population.
In 1890, Frederick Lugard built a fort for the Imperial British East Africa Company near Mengo Hill and made it the capital of the Uganda Protectorate to help the British gain control of the Nile. After the British made formal claims to the land, the capital city was moved to the nearby city of Entebbe, about 30 miles away but Kampala remained the commercial and communications center and was a major industrial center of the protectorate. When Uganda became an independent country in 1962, the capital was returned from Entebbe to Kampala. In 1922 Makerere Technical Institute was founded. Today it is Makerere University, the oldest largest institution of higher education in East Africa.
Kampala experienced political unrest during the times of it first president, Milton Obote and his successor, Idi Amin. During those two decades the national government could not construct an infrastructure of roads, bridges, and highways quickly enough to accommodate the large number of rural migrants to the city.
Most of the many hills of Kampala are topped with religious institutions such as churches and mosques as well as hospitals and large hotels. The citys lowlands frequently have flood-prone shantytowns, where the
Other countries scheduled to hold elections are Egypt, Guinea, Seychelles and Tanzania.
For countries that do hold elections, there may be special voting arrangements that can allow polls to go ahead but reduce the risk of spreading the virus.
In South Korea's elections in mid-April, the electoral commission encouraged people to vote before election day at any of the 3,500 polling stations throughout the country.
This not only decongested polling stations on election day but contributed to the highest turnout in the country for nearly 30 years.
This means that countries planning to hold elections in 2020 or early-2021 need to start discussing these arrangements - across party lines and among multiple relevant agencies - as soon as possible.
The California Department of Public Health today announced the most recent statistics on COVID-19.
As testing capacity continues to increase across the state, the California Department of Public Health is working to expand access to COVID-19 testing.
Testing should be used for medical evaluation of persons with symptoms of COVID-19 as well as for efforts by public health agencies and essential employers to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19.
Individuals prioritized for testing include:
· Symptomatic and asymptomatic healthcare workers, first responders, and other social service employees
· Symptomatic individuals age 65 and older or symptomatic individuals of any age with chronic medical conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19 illness
· Individuals who are tested as part of disease control efforts in high-risk settings
· Asymptomatic residents and employees of congregate living facilities when needed to prevent disease transmission
· Symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals in essential occupations such as grocery store and food supply workers, utility workers and public employees
· Other individuals with symptoms consistent with COVID-19
As of May 24, 1,644,102 tests have been conducted in California and reported to the California Department of Public Health.
Racial Demographics – A More Complete Picture
The California Department of Public Health is committed to health equity and collecting more detailed racial and ethnic data that will provide additional understanding for determining future action.
Shani Davis became the first African American to win a gold medal an individual event in the Winter Olympics and the first African American male to win a gold when he competed in the men’s 1,000-meter speedskating championship in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turino, Italy.
Born August 13, 1982in Chicago, Illinois, Shani Davis learned to roller skate at the age of two, Davis switched to ice skating when he was six and soon afterwards started training as a speed skater. He eventually joined the Evanston Speedskating Club and entered competitions. At the age of 10, Davis and his mother moved from Hyde Park in the South Side of Chicago to Rogers Park on the north side to be closer to the training center in suburban Evanston. His mother, a legal secretary, paid for his equipment, training and travel to competitions.
Davis won national age group championships in 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2003 and won a North American Championship in 1999. For three years in a row, from 2000 to 2003, Davis qualified in short-track and long-track for the Junior World Teams. In 2002, Davis qualified for the Olympic games, the first African American Olympic speed skater for the United States.
During the 2004-2005 season, Davis was the first U.S. skater to make all three world teams – World Sprint, World Allround and World Short Track. He medaled at each event. In February 2005, he won gold at the World All-Around Long Track Championships in Moscow, becoming the first African American to win the event. He repeated the victory in March 2006 in Calgary.
On February 18, 2006, in Turino, Italy, Davis won a gold medal in the 1,000-meter speedskating race. Two days later, he won a silver medal in the 1,500-meter event. Davis holds world records in the 1,000-meter and 1,500-meter events.
Daviss career has not been without controversy. He signed an individual five-year sponsorship with DSB Bank of Holland, rather than wearing the logos requested by U.S. Speedskating of America, which led to his leaving the U.S. Speedskating Association.
New York Times bestselling author Everette “E” Lynn Harris was born June 20, 1955, in Flint, Michigan. Openly homosexual, Harris was best known for his depictions of gay African American men who were concealing or “closeting” their sexuality. Although he did not participate in gay rights activism, Harris introduced millions of readers to the “invisible life” of gay black men.
Harris grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, with his father, Ben Odis Harris, a sanitation truck driver; his mother, Etta Mae Williams, and three sisters. Harris endured a difficult childhood as his father taunted him for wanting to become a teacher while his mother suffered physical abuse. After his parents divorced in 1970, Harris discovered and was reunited with his biological father, James Jeter. The reunion, however, was short-lived, as Jeter died in an automobile accident a year later.
Harris found refuge and success in his educational pursuits. He attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and was the school’s first black yearbook editor, the first black male cheerleader and president of his fraternity. He graduated with honors in 1977 with a BA in journalism.
Harris spent the next 13 years as a salesman for IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and AT&T. In 1990, suffering from depression and alcoholism, he attempted suicide and the following year quit his highly successful sales career to pursue writing. His first novel, Invisible Life (1991), was self-published and was sold out of the trunk of his car. In 1994, the novel was discovered by Anchor Books and was published as a trade paperback.
After his first novel, Harris wrote ten consecutive books that made the New York Times bestseller list, making him among the most successful African American or gay authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His works include If This World Were Mine (1998), winner of the James Baldwin Award for Literary Excellence, and his autobiographical What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir (2004). Harris was also a member of the board of directors
Grace Bumbry is considered one of the foremost mezzo-sopranos of the opera world. She and several of her African American contemporaries, including Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett, and Reri Grist, are credited with following Marian Anderson, a pioneer in paving the way for African American women in opera. Born in St. Louis, Missouri to a railroad porter and a housewife, Bumbry won a local radio singing competition, the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts, in 1954, for which the prize was a scholarship to a local music conservatory. However, because she was black, the school would not accept her. Instead she went to study at Boston University (Massachusetts), Northwestern University (Illinois), and the Music Academy of the West (California) where she worked with famed German soprano Lotte Lehmann. The New York Post declared Bumbry to have “a glorious voice of creamy quality,” adding that “without a doubt, she is born to sing.”
During her career, Bumbry attempted to make the transition from mezzo-soprano to high soprano, with some success, but never gained widespread recognition and acceptance in these roles. She did, however, appear with a number of the prominent opera companies. She debuted in London, UK in 1959 at the age of 22. During the next two years she performed at Basel (Switzerland), Milan (Italy), Paris (France), and Bayreuth (Germany) where as the first black opera singer to perform, she angered a number of conservative opera patrons in the audience. The stellar performance she gave in Germany, however, earned her the Wagner Medal and worldwide recognition. In 1962 she was invited to sing at the White House by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Nineteen years later she performed at President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.
Bumbry has performed some of the most iconic opera roles during her career, including Lady Macbeth, and Princess Eboli of Don Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera House. Her long, successful career earned her a spot on the St. Louis Walk of Fame and in 2009 she was honored at
Diane Edith Watson was born November 12, 1933 in Los Angeles, California and has spent the majority of her life in the Los Angeles area. Her father was a Los Angeles policeman and her mother worked nights at a post office after her parents divorced when Watson was seven.
In 1950 Watson graduated from Dorsey High School and obtained a bachelor’s degree in education from UCLA in 1956. Here she became friends and sorority sisters with fellow congresswoman Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. Eleven years later, at California State University at Los Angeles, Watson received her master’s degree. Watson received a doctorate in education from Claremont Graduate University in 1986.
In 1956 Watson became a public school teacher in Los Angeles and worked up the ranks to assistant principal in 1969. During that time she held visiting teacher positions in France and Japan. By 1971 Watson worked as a Los Angeles Unified School District health education specialist where she focused on mental health issues among the district’s 500,000 students.
In 1975 Diane Watson became the first African American woman elected to a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board. Elected during the height of the city’s school busing controversy, Watson became the leading proponent of court ordered busing to end racial segregation in the sprawling district.
Watson relinquished her seat on the School Board in 1978 to run for the California State Senate. In a year when Republicans swept most of the offices in the state, and Watson’s friend Yvonne Braithwaite Burke lost her campaign to become the state’s first African American Attorney General, Watson was elected with 70% of the vote. Watson, a staunch liberal, often found herself at odds with the legislature’s Republicans and often with more moderate Democrats. However she was extremely popular in her South Central Los Angeles District and held her seat until 1998.
After serving for two years as United States Ambassador to the Federated States of
\"...These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen,\" the 45th U.S. President wrote.
Subsequently, Twitter added a marker to the tweet saying it \"violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence.\"
In a statement obtained by Blavity, Perez didn't hold back in criticizing the president for making the already volatile situation even worse with his tweet.
“The killing of George Floyd is another tragic case of the violence Black men face in America every single day,\" he wrote.
\"No person of character and common sense can watch the video footage of what police did to George Floyd without being horrified.\"
Cicely Tyson is a legendary African American actress. She is known for her remarkable performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and The Help, and has been nominated for a BAFTA Award and won two Emmy Awards. She was also nominated for highly prestigious Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award.
Cicely Tyson was born to Theodosia and William Tyson in Harlem. Her father worked as a carpenter and painter and did other odd jobs. Her parents migrated to United States from Nevis in the West Indies. Tyson began her career as a fashion model when an Ebony magazine photographer discovered her. In 1951, she was landed her first acting role on the NBC series Frontiers of Faith. She did a few television series, such as the soap opera The Guiding Light and East Side/West Side, before she took up her first film role. In 1956, she was casted in the film Carib Gold. She was an original cast member in the celebrated non-musical longest running Broadway play The Blacks written by Jean Genet’s. Other cast members included names like Godfrey Cambridge, James Earl Jones and Maya Angelou.
Moreover, she made an appearance alongside with Sammy Davis Jr. in the film A Man Called Adam and in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968). She also played a role in the adaptation of Graham Greene’s work of fiction, The Comedians (1967). Her astounding performance in the critically acclaimed film, Sounder, had her nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other highly acclaimed works include, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, When No One Would Listen and Roots; King, in which she played Coretta Scott King. For her roles in these series she won several Emmy Awards.
Tyson’s acting career also reflected on all the women and to appreciate her outstanding representation of women in the entertainment industry she received the Women in Film Crystal Award. Besides, she played strong characters such as her role as a civil rights activist and attorney named Carrie Grace Battle in Sweet Justice. In order to render her
By Cash Michaels and Peter Grear, Greater Diversity News If preliminary data estimates on the recent 2020 primaries in North Carolina are accurate, student voters on HBCU campuses must raise their turnout game come the general election this November. So says Dr. William Busa, founder of EQV Analytics, a ‘North Carolina-focused campaign consulting firm serving
All of this continues with barely any women’s sports classics, talk, or anything else as women’s sports remain a far distant second to men’s.
Sports and their Joe Rockhead media types refuse to see women athletes in particular and women’s sports in general through non-judgmental, non-sexist eyes.
Writing the chapter “really gave me insight on how toxic this male conditioning is when it comes to sports and the sports mentality,” explains Jackson, remembering a 2011 column he wrote for ESPN that opened a can full of criticism afterwards.
“We don’t ever take the time to digest something for what it says, but [rather go] the way we are taught and conditioned to think,” said Jackson.
“If after all these years this is the only way to judge [athletes] is by physicality, then we are stupid, especially in this day and age,” Jackson concluded.
Margaret Murray Washington, the third wife of Booker T. Washington was a well-known educator and womens activist in her own right before she married the founder of Tuskegee. She continued that activism during their marriage. The Washingtons gave twin lectures at Old Bethel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina on September 12, 1898. Booker T. Washington addressed audiences in the morning and evening. Margaret Washington spoke to African American women in the church that afternoon. She used the occasion to describe the disproportionate infant mortality, the problem of unwanted pregnancy and the high death rate among African Americans. She also called on the largely middle class women in her audience to engage in moral uplift and community service to address these problems. Her speech appears below.
I want to say in the beginning that I do not come before you to criticize or find fault especially, but you know that a great deal of harm has been done us as a race by those who have told us of our strong points, of our wonderful advancement, and have neglected to tell us at the same time of our weak points, of our lack of taking hold of the opportunities about us. Praise a child always and he soon gets to the point where he thinks it impossible for him to make mistakes. If we wish to help each other let us not only praise ourselves, but also criticize.
Plain talk will not hurt us. It will lead each woman to study her own condition, that of her own family and so that of her neighbors family. If I can do anything to hasten this study, I shall feel repaid for any effort I may put forth. In consenting to come before you women to day I am influenced by this thought more than anything else: We need, as a race, a good, strong public sentiment in favor of a sounder, healthier body, and a cleaner and highertoned morality. There is no use arguing; we do not think enough of these two conditions; we are too indifferent; too ready to say: O, well, I keep well, my girls and boys behave themselves, and I have
