Category: Black Excellence

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

Vanessa James (born 27 September 1987) is a Canadian competitive pair skater. With her former skating partner, Morgan Ciprès, she is the 2019 European Champion, the 2018 World bronze medallist, the 2017 European bronze medallist, the 2018 Grand Prix Final champion, and a six-time French national champion. They have also won medals in Grand Prix and Challenger Series competitions. James and Ciprès represented France at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics.

With her previous partner Yannick Bonheur, James represented France at the 2010 Winter Olympics, placing fourteenth. She is also the 2006 British national champion in single skating.

In April 2021, James announced the formation of a new partnership with Eric Radford, representing Canada.^[1] They represented Canada at the 2022 Winter Olympics and were the bronze medalists at the 2022 World Championships.^[2]

Personal life

Vanessa James was born in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.^[3] She lived in Bermuda until age 10 when her family moved to Virginia in the United States.^[4] She lived in the U.S. through 2007, holding an American permanent residence card, and then moved to Paris, France.^[5] Her father is from Bermuda, which enabled James to hold British citizenship. She became a French citizen in December 2009.^[6] Her twin sister, Melyssa James, has also competed in figure skating.^[4] James’ hobbies include tennis, dancing, and reading.

Career

Early years

Vanessa James began skating with her sister after watching the 1998 Winter Olympics.^[4] She originally competed domestically in the United States and represented the Washington Figure Skating Club.

In 2005, James began representing the United Kingdom internationally. She won gold at the 2006 British Championships and silver in 2007, becoming Britain’s first black figure skating champion.^[7] She competed for Britain on the 2006 ISU Junior Grand Prix and at the 2007 World Junior Championships. Her last event as a singles skater was the 2007 International Cup of Nice, where she won the bronze medal.

In late 2007, James switched to pair skating, partnering briefly with British skater Hamish Gaman.^[7] She teamed up with French skater Yannick Bonheur in December 2007, after a three-day tryout in Paris.^[5]

2008–2009 season: Debut of James/Bonheur

Making their international debut, James/Bonheur placed seventh in November at their Grand Prix assignment, the 2008 Trophée Eric Bompard. They ranked tenth at the 2009 European Championships, which took place in January in Helsinki, Finland.

In March, James/Bonheur finished twelfth at the 2009 World Championships in Los Angeles, California, United States. Due to their result, France qualified a spot in the pairs’ event at the next Olympics. In April, they competed at the 2009 World Team Trophy in Tokyo, Japan.

2009–2010 season: Vancouver Olympics

James/Bonheur opened their season at the 2009 Nebelhorn Trophy, where they placed 6th. They were invited to two Grand Prix events, the 2009 Cup of China and 2009 Trophée Eric Bompard, and finished eighth at both. At the 2010 French Championships, they ranked second in the short program and first in the free skate. They won the title, outscoring the silver medalists Adeline Canac / Maximin Coia by 3.69 points.

In January, James/Bonheur placed seventh at the 2010 European Championships in Tallinn, Estonia. In February, they represented France at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; they placed fifteenth in the short program, fourteenth in the free skate, and fourteenth overall. James/Bonheur were the first black pair to compete at the Olympics.^[8] Their final competition together was the 2010 World Championships, held in March in Turin, Italy. They placed tenth in the short, thirteenth in the free, and twelfth overall. They ended their partnership in spring 2010.^[9] James later recalled that they “weren’t progressing, and we weren’t able to work well together anymore.”^[10]

2010–2011 season

In May 2010, James had a successful tryout with Maximin Coia and the two agreed to train in Germany with Ingo Steuer, but several weeks later Coia decided to end his amateur career.^[11]

In September 2010, James began a partnership with Morgan Ciprès, until then a singles skater.^[9][12] They made no competitive appearances in their first season as Ciprès learned pairs elements.^[13] Eight years later, James recalled the beginning of her partnership: “I remember our 3-day trial and it was so fun. He was so funny, because he had never done pairs before, so he was really nervous and saying ‘oh my gosh, oh my gosh’ every time he threw me. I knew that we were going to be good friends.”^[14]

2011–2012 season: Debut of James/Ciprès

James/Ciprès made their competitive debut in late September 2011, finishing fifth at the 2011 Ondrej Nepela Memorial. After placing fifth at the 2011 Coupe de Nice, the pair finished eighth at their first Grand Prix together, the 2011 Trophee Eric Bompard. At the 2012 French Championships, they ranked first in the short program and second in the free skate. With a total score 8.92 points lower than Daria Popova / Bruno Massot, James/Ciprès received the silver medal.

Finishing sixth overall, James/Ciprès were the best French pair (outscoring Popova/Massot by almost 12 points) at the 2012 European Championships in Sheffield, England. They were granted France’s lone spot in pairs at the 2012 World Championships in Nice, France. In Nice, the two qualified to the final segment and finished sixteenth overall.

2012–2013 season

James/Ciprès won the bronze medal at the 2012 Nebelhorn Trophy—it was their first international medal as a pair.^[15] Their 2012 Grand Prix assignments were Skate America, where they placed fourth, and the Trophee Eric Bompard, where they came in sixth. James/Ciprès won another international medal at the 2012 NRW Trophy and followed that with their first national title, in December.

In January, James/Ciprès came in fourth at the 2013 European Championships in Zagreb, Croatia. After taking gold at the 2013 International Challenge Cup, they placed eighth at the 2013 World Championships in London, Ontario. Due to their result in Canada, they qualified a spot for France in the pairs’ event at the Sochi Olympics.

2013–2014 season: Sochi Olympics

James/Ciprès were again assigned to Skate America and the Trophee Eric Bompard. Ciprès, however, underwent surgery after a wrist injury and had to avoid lifts for a period, causing the pair to withdraw from Skate America.^[16][17] They were able to compete at the Trophee Eric Bompard and placed fifth. The pair then successfully defended their national title.

At the 2014 Europeans, James/Ciprès set personal best scores in both segments of the competition and came in fifth. They were named in the French team to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, where they placed tenth in the pairs event and sixth in the team event. They repeated their results at the 2014 World Championships.

2014–2015 season

James/Ciprès finished fourth at the 2014 CS Nebelhorn Trophy and fifth at both of their Grand Prix assignments, the 2014 Skate Canada International and 2014 Trophée Éric Bompard.

They placed third in the short program, earning a small medal, their first, and fifth overall at the 2015 European Championships in Stockholm. They placed ninth at the 2015 World Championships in Shanghai. The two later competed at the 2015 World Team Trophy in Tokyo where they placed fifth individually and sixth as a team.

2015–2016 season: First Grand Prix medal

James/Ciprès began their season with a bronze medal at the 2015 CS Nebelhorn Trophy. They placed second in the short program at the 2015 Trophée Éric Bompard before the event’s cancellation due to the November 2015 Paris attacks. The ISU deemed those placements to be the final results, awarding James/Ciprès their first Grand Prix medal, silver.

The pair finished fourth at the 2016 European Championships in Bratislava, and tenth at the 2016 World Championships in Boston. At the end of the season, they concluded that they needed a major change if they were to continue competing.^[18] James said “either we improve, or we stop. There was no point in anything else.”^[10]

2016–2017 season: European bronze medal

In June 2016, James/Ciprès relocated to Coral Springs, Florida, to be coached by John Zimmerman and Jeremy Barrett.^[19][20][21] After taking silver at the 2016 CS Autumn Classic International, the pair competed at two Grand Prix events; they finished fourth at the 2016 Skate America and won the bronze medal at the 2016 Trophée de France.

In January 2017, James/Ciprès won the bronze medal at the European Championships in Ostrava, Czech Republic,^[22][23] becoming the first French pair in fourteen years to medal at the event^[24] (since 2003, when Sarah Abitbol / Stéphane Bernadis took silver).

In March, James/Ciprès placed tenth in the short program, sixth in the free skate, and eighth overall at the 2017 World Championships in Helsinki, Finland. The following month, they competed as part of Team France at the 2017 World Team Trophy in Tokyo, Japan; although their team finished sixth overall, the pair scored personal bests and placed first in both segments of the pairs’ event, ahead of Russia’s Evgenia Tarasova / Vladimir Morozov.

Reflecting on their progress as a team, James said, “Our main problem [before] was that we were two different people on the ice. We needed to change that and to increase the connection between the two of us.”^[25]

2017–2018 season: PyeongChang Olympics and World bronze medal

James/Ciprès began their season with gold at the 2017 CS Autumn Classic International. They then won medals at both of their Grand Prix assignments, taking bronze at the 2017 Skate Canada International and silver at the 2017 Internationaux de France. They finished as the first alternates for the Grand Prix Final. At the 2018 European Championships in Moscow, the pair placed first in the short program, fourth in the free skate, and fourth overall—0.01 shy of the podium. They received a small gold medal for their short program.

James/Ciprès were named to France’s delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics, which took place in February in Pyeongchang, South Korea.^[26] During the team event, they placed sixth in their segment and Team France finished tenth. In the regular pairs event, they placed sixth in the short, fifth in the free, and fifth overall. In March, they became the first French pair in 18 years to stand on the World podium (since 2000), winning the bronze medal at the 2018 World Championships in Milan, Italy. James, reflecting on the start of her partnership, remarked “I’m so glad I made that choice because we’re a really good team today. It’s been bumpy, but amazing with Morgan.”^[14]

2018–2019 season: Grand Prix Final and European Champions

James/Ciprès’s programs were both choreographed by ice dancers, with fellow French Olympian Guillaume Cizeron developing the short program and 2014 Olympic gold medalist Charlie White developing the free skate.^[10]

James/Ciprès won the gold medal at their first event of the season, the 2018 CS Autumn Classic International and obtained their first victory at a Grand Prix event, at 2018 Skate Canada International, setting a new world record in the free skate. James said that they “gave so much emotion, and at the end, it was just magic for us.”^[27] In mid-November they competed at the 2018 Internationaux de France where they won their second Grand Prix gold medal of the season, albeit with a somewhat rockier performance in the short program that left them in third place before placing first in the free skate. These results qualified them for the 2018–19 Grand Prix Final, their first appearance at the event.^[28] In fourth after the short program at the Final, they again set a world record to place first in the free skate and win the gold medal. James expressed the hope that “having this long program so solid and strong will just help when we have a good short program. I know we have to fight every time after our short program to make up the points, but feeling more free and not having to try and try to make a comeback, I think will just liberate us a little bit more, I am hoping.”^[29]

After winning another national title, their sixth, James/Ciprès went to the 2019 European Championships in Minsk. They got a first-place finish in the short program, ahead of Tarasova/Morozov.^[30] They won the free skate as well, taking the European pairs title, only the second French team to do so, and the first since Andrée Joly and Pierre Brunet in 1932. She called the result “a dream come true”, while Ciprès called it “a dream when we were children to be here one day.”^[31]

In March at the 2019 World Championships in Saitama, during the short program warm-up, James had a collision with Italy’s Matteo Guarise, in which both skaters fell onto the ice.^[32] James/Ciprès placed a very unexpected seventh in the short program after unusual mishaps, James had an uncharacteristic fall on her throw triple flip, while Ciprès doubled his planned triple toe loop. In the free program they placed third, and fifth overall. They finished off the top of podium for the first time of the season, but took a small bronze medal for the free program. At the end of their free program, James/Ciprès announced that they would continue to keep skating until they won the World title.^[33] To finish off the season, they competed at the 2019 World Team Trophy in Fukuoka, Japan, where they earned a new personal best in the free skate to earn first in the pairs event and fourth overall as a team.^[34]

Hiatus and Ciprès scandal

Following the 2018–19 season, James/Ciprès were initially given two assignments on the 2019–20 Grand Prix circuit, the 2019 NHK Trophy and 2019 Internationaux de France. At the same time, it was announced that James would be appearing on the revival of the Canadian CBC skating competition program Battle of the Blades in the fall of 2019, partnered with retired NHL player Brian McGrattan. James/Ciprès subsequently withdrew from their Grand Prix assignments, concluding it was unfeasible to do both. James and McGrattan were the second team eliminated from the program.^[35]

On 10 December 2019, USA Today journalist Christine Brennan reported that Ciprès was under investigation for having sent a picture of his penis to a 13-year-old girl who was a student at their training center; and further, that coaches Zimmerman, Silvia Fontana, and Vinny Dispenza were accused of having known about this and attempted to cover it up in the runup to the 2018 Olympics.^[36] James/Ciprès would not compete again during the remainder of the season, and the allegations against Ciprès would subsequently factor into the scandals that forced the resignation of controversial FFSG chief Didier Gailhaguet in the spring of 2020.^[37][36]

On 25 September 2020, it was announced that James would be returning to Battle of the Blades for its sixth season, this time partnered with Akim Aliu.^[38] Four days later, the FFSG announced that James and Ciprès would both be retiring from competition.^[39] Ciprès was subsequently charged with a third-degree felony.^[40][41]

2021–2022 season: Debut of James/Radford

In April 2021, rumours began to circulate that James was training with Canadian pairs skater Eric Radford, who was also a contestant on Battle of the Blades. It was reported on April 20 that James had been released by the FFSG.^[42] The following day, Skate Canada announced that James and Radford would compete as a pair in the upcoming season, coached by Julie Marcotte and Ian Connolly. James said that following the end of her former partnership she “still felt I had something to give to skating, like unfinished business.”^[1]

James/Radford made their competitive debut at the 2021 CS Autumn Classic International, where they won the silver medal. James struggled on her jumping elements at the event.^[43] At the 2021 CS Finlandia Trophy, they were third in the short program, but a seventh-place free skate dropped them to fifth overall. Radford called it “a disappointment because we’ve been skating better than that in practice.”^[44]

James/Radford competed on the Grand Prix at the 2021 Skate Canada International, where they placed fourth. James said afterwards “we are definitely getting stronger each time we go out there. We are trying not to have expectations, but just goals. There is a lot of pressure on the outside, but we are trying to stay in our bubble.”^[45] At their second Grand Prix event, the 2021 Internationaux de France, the pair skated a clean short program to clear 70 points in that segment for the first time. In the free skate they landed all of their jumps and throws for the first time competitively with just a small two-foot landing on one throw, but aborted one of their lifts and lost their pair spin, as a result of which they dropped to fourth place.^[46] Despite this, James said it was “the most confident we have felt since we started skating together. We lost about 13 points on easy elements today, that we usually never miss, but we are proud that we got the hard ones done.”^[47]

James and Radford both tested positive for COVID-19 and quarantined for a period before the 2022 Canadian Championships. They opted to compete initially, placing fourth in the short program, and then withdrew, citing a need to “continue their training and preparation for the remainder of the competitive season.”^[48] Despite the withdrawal, they were named to the Canadian Olympic team over national silver medalists Walsh/Michaud.^[49] This was controversial, with many arguing Walsh/Michaud had earned the spot.^[50]

Competing at the 2022 Winter Olympics, James/Radford were the Canadian entries in the pairs free skate segment of the Olympic team event. A day prior to competing, the two had had a collision in practice with Italy’s Matteo Guarise, but were still able to perform.^[51] They placed fourth in the segment, while the Canadian team finished in fourth overall.^[52] In the pairs event, James doubled her attempt at a triple toe loop, and they had movement on the side-by-side spins, resulting in them placing twelfth in the segment.^[53] In the free skate James fell on their throw triple flip. They placed twelfth in that segment as well, finishing twelfth overall. She said “the flip didn’t go, but we’re still a very new couple. To go out there and skate our hearts out is a huge accomplishment. And to have enjoyed it and trust our training, ourselves and each other is huge within 11 months.”^[54]

Days after the Olympics concluded, Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine, as a result of which the International Skating Union banned all Russian and Belarusian skaters from competing at the 2022 World Championships. As well, the Chinese Skating Association opted not to send athletes to compete in Montpellier. As those countries’ athletes comprised the entirety of the top five pairs at the Olympics, this had a huge impact on the field.^[55] James/Radford placed fifth in the short program, with James putting her free foot down on their throw and Radford putting a hand down on his triple toe jump.^[56] In the free skate they delivered a strong performance, but for Radford underrotating a double toe loop, and unexpectedly placed second in the segment, rising to the bronze medal position overall. This was the first World medal for Canada in pairs since Duhamel/Radford’s title defence six years before. Radford called the season “one of the best years of my life.” Both said they were undecided about competing further.^[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_James

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

These Students Grew Up Around Gun Violence. They Decided It Was Time To Talk About It.

When Makiyah Hicks was young, her uncle, Jamal Hazel, was killed in her District Heights neighborhood in southwest Maryland. Her father lost a brother and her grandmother, Darlene Hazel, lost her youngest son.

Every year since, on her uncle’s birthday, Makiyah and her family visit his grave.

Despite the traumatic loss, she says her family and community members mostly avoid conversations about gun violence.

“It was always something we were around, but not something that was talked about,” says Hicks, who graduated this year from Washington’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts. “Especially with regards to my grandmother. That was her youngest son. It’s a bit of a touchy subject.”

So Hicks, along with her classmates Jonetta Harrison and Quin Wells, decided to talk about it. The students, all recent graduates of the Duke Ellington School, made a podcast about gun violence in D.C., and how families of victims are shaped by the loss. Their teacher, Thom Woodward, entered it in NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge, and their story is one of 10 high school finalists, chosen by our judges from more than 2,200 entries.

As part of the podcast, Hicks interviewed her grandmother, and they talked about the death of Jamal Hazel for the first time. “It’s all for a cause when things occur in life that you don’t anticipate or expect to happen to you,” her grandmother tells her.

The conversation, Hicks says, was a breakthrough after so much silence: “It’s hard to find a light at the end of the tunnel,” she says of her grief. But when she spoke about it with her grandmother, “for a second, it was there. It was something.”

D.C. has long struggled with one of the highest rates of gun violence in the country. The district saw 198 homicides in 2020, a 16-year-high, and the 2021 homicide rate is already outpacing 2020.

Harrison, Hicks and Wells wanted their podcast to show that it’s not just about the numbers. Real people are impacted by every life lost to gun violence, so the students talked to three of them: first, Darlene Hazel, Hicks’ grandmother. Then one of Harrison’s friends, Jayla Faust, who lost her stepfather to gun violence.

Through the podcast, Harrison explains she wanted to give families a chance to speak.

“It’s important for the people who are affected by it to be able to speak because I feel like a lot of times the government is speaking for them,” Harrison says. “These are the people that actually have to go through this.”

The final interview in the podcast is with RuQuan Brown. Now a football player at Harvard University, but in the podcast, he says he didn’t always know if he would make it to college.

“I would walk down Florida Ave on my way back home and I would cry some nights because I was afraid I wouldn’t make it to college because I’d be killed,” he tells Harrison.

His fear of whether he would survive in D.C. is a very real fear among his peers.

Harrison thinks about 18-year-old Richard Bangura often these days as she starts her first semester at Temple University. Bangura was shot and killed in northeast DC last summer, days before he was supposed to move into the same university.

Losing a loved one to gun violence is painful, but Harrison says the podcast is about what community members take away from that pain, too. “You have a loss, but because of this loss, you have transformed to a better person or have a better view of life.”

Brown, for example, dealt with the grief by creating art.

He owns a clothing brand, Love1, which donates to communities affected by gun violence. Brown is currently looking to fund therapy for students in D.C.’s public schools. He has also donated thousands of dollars to the One Gun Gone project, which repurposes guns into artwork to raise awareness about gun violence.

“I created this brand because I wanted to live,” he says.

Harrison, Hicks and Wells are starting college this fall and hope the lessons they learned from the people in their podcast will help them handle loss, and challenges, in their own lives.

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1017878815/these-students-grew-up-around-gun-violence-they-decided-it-was-time-to-talk-abou

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

St. Louis, Missouri native Wendell Oliver Pruitt, a pioneering pilot of the 15th Air Force, was born to Elijah and Melanie Pruitt on June 20, 1920. Pruitt graduated from Sumner High School, briefly attended Stowe Teachers College (now Harris-Stowe State University), and later transferred to the historically black Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. At the time, Lincoln University was one of the three Negro colleges that conducted civil pilot training and is the institution that laid the foundation for Pruitt’s short-lived career.

While a student at Lincoln, Pruitt obtained his private pilot license from Jefferson City Airport. He graduated from Lincoln in 1941 and was accepted into the U.S. Army Air Corps Flying School at Tuskegee, Alabama. Upon completion of pre-flight training and gunnery school as well as primary, basic, and advanced flying, Pruitt was commissioned second lieutenant in December 1942. He was assigned to the 302nd squadron, which was designated as the 332nd Fighter Group. He teamed up with Lt. Col. Lee A. Archer Jr., a member of the Tuskegee Airmen who piloted aircraft during WWII, to form the “Gruesome Twosome” in the 332nd Fighter Group.

During his brief years as a Tuskegee Airman, Pruitt flew 70 combat missions overseas. He is credited with permanently disabling a German destroyer, shooting down three enemy planes in the air, and destroying several others on the ground. His air victories earned him the rank of captain as well as several awards and honors, including the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters. Because of his exploits, his hometown of St. Louis proclaimed December 12, 1944 as Captain Wendell O. Pruitt Day. In April of 1945, just five months after celebrating his day of honor in his hometown and returning to Tuskegee rather than Europe, Pruitt and a student were killed in a plane crash while in training.

Though Pruitt is not well remembered today, his legacy continued for decades after his death. In 1952 the city of St. Louis named the federally subsidized, high-rise Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project after him. Pruitt-Igoe was originally segregated with the Wendell O. Pruitt apartments reserved for African American residents, and the William L. Igoe apartments reserved for white residents. Endless problems, including crime, drugs and rodent infestations, led to the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe complex beginning in 1972. In 1984, the Pruitt Military Academy was established in St. Louis.  American Veteran posts in Michigan and Missouri honor Pruitt’s name today.

Wendell Oliver Pruitt (1920-1945)

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

Gabourey Sidibe (/ˈɡæbəˌreɪ ˈsɪdɪˌbeɪ/ GAB-ə-ray SID-i-bay; born May 6, 1983)^[1] is an American actress. She made her acting debut in the 2009 film Precious, a role that earned her the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, in addition to nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other film roles include Tower Heist (2011), White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), Grimsby (2016) and Antebellum (2020).

From 2010 to 2013, she was a main cast member of the Showtime series The Big C. Sidibe co-starred in the television series American Horror Story: Coven (2013–2014) as Queenie and American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014–2015) as Regina Ross, and later reprised her role as Queenie in American Horror Story: Hotel (2015–2016) and American Horror Story: Apocalypse (2018). From 2015 to 2020, she starred in the Fox musical drama series Empire as Becky Williams.

Early life

Sidibe was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York City, and was raised in Harlem.^[2] Her mother, Alice Tan Ridley, is an American R&B and gospel singer who appeared on the fifth season of America’s Got Talent, on June 15, 2010. Her father, Ibnou Sidibe, is from Senegal and is a cab driver.^{[citation needed]} Growing up, Sidibe lived with her aunt, feminist activist Dorothy Pitman Hughes.^[3] She holds an associate degree from Borough of Manhattan Community College and attended but did not graduate from City College of New York and Mercy College.^[4] She worked at The Fresh Air Fund‘s office as a receptionist before pursuing an acting career.^[5]

Career

In Precious, Sidibe played the main character, Claireece “Precious” Jones, a 16-year-old mother of two (the result of Precious being raped by her father) who tries to escape abuse at the hands of her mother. The film won numerous awards, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Award.^[6] On December 15, 2009, she was nominated for a Golden Globe in the category of Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her performance in Precious. The next month she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Her next film, Yelling to the Sky, was a Sundance Lab project directed by Victoria Mahoney and starring Zoe Kravitz, in which she played Latonya Williams, a bully.^[7] In 2011, Sidibe was in the film Tower Heist and voiced a “party girl“^[vague] character in “Hot Water”, the first episode of season 7 of American Dad! She appeared in the season 8 American Dad! episode “Stanny Tendergrass” early in 2013, and starred in the music video for “Don’t Stop (Color on the Walls)” by the indie pop band Foster the People. Sidibe also appeared in the Showtime network series The Big C as Andrea Jackson.

Sidibe said in 2012 that before she was hired for the 2009 film Precious, she was advised by Joan Cusack not to pursue the entertainment industry, advising Sidibe to quit the business since “it’s so image-conscious.”^[8]

By April 2013, Sidibe had joined the cast of American Horror Story season 3, portraying Queenie, a young witch.^[9] She returned to the series for its fourth season, American Horror Story: Freak Show as a secretarial school student, Regina Ross.^[10] From 2015, she stars in Lee Daniels‘ Fox musical series Empire as Becky Williams alongside Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson. Sidibe portrays the head of A&R in the Empire company.^[11] As of April 2015, Sidibe was promoted to a series regular in season 2.^[12] She also starred in the Hulu series Difficult People as Denise.^[13]

In 2015, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced Sidibe would be writing a memoir set to be published in 2017.^[14] On January 6, 2016, Sidibe appeared in the penultimate episode of American Horror Story: Hotel, reprising her Coven role as Queenie, marking her third season in the series. After sitting out subsequent seasons Roanoke and Cult, Sidibe returned to American Horror Story in 2018, appearing once again as her character Queenie in its eighth season, Apocalypse.

Personal life

In March 2017, Sidibe revealed that she had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and that as a consequence she underwent laparoscopic bariatric surgery in an effort to manage her weight.^[15]

In November 2020, Sidibe announced her engagement to Brandon Frankel, a talent manager with Cameo.^[16][17][18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabourey_Sidibe

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

Part author – Illustrator – filmmaker Vashti Harrison is an artist originally from Onley, Virginia. She has a background in cinematography and screenwriting and a love for storytelling. She earned her BA from the University of Virginia with a double major in Media Studies and Studio Art with concentrations in Film and Cinematography. She received her MFA in Film and Video from CalArts where she rekindled a love for drawing and painting. Now, utilizing both skill sets, she is passionate about crafting beautiful stories in both the film and kidlit worlds.

​

Her Experimental films and videos focus on her Caribbean Heritage and folklore. They have shown around the world at film festivals and venues including the New York Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival. Find out more 

https://www.vashtiharrison.com/about

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

Biography

Dread Scott is a visual artist whose works is exhibited across the US and internationally. In 1989, his art became the center of national controversy over its transgressive use of the American flag, while he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. President G.H.W. Bush called his art “disgraceful” and the entire US Senate denounced and outlawed this work. Dread became part of a landmark Supreme Court case when he and others defied the federal law outlawing his art by burning flags on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He has presented at TED talk on this.

His work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, Cristin Tierney Gallery, and Gallery MOMO in Cape Town, South Africa, and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. He is a 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and has also received fellowships from Open Society Foundations and United States Artists as well as a Creative Capital grant.

In 2019 he presented Slave Rebellion Reenactment, a community-engaged project that reenacted the largest rebellion of enslaved people in US history. The project was featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Christiane Amanpour on CNN and highlighted by artnet.com as one of the most important artworks of the decade.

Artists Statement

I make revolutionary art to propel history forward. I look towards an era without exploitation or oppression. I don’t accept the political structures, economic foundation, social relations and governing ideas of America. This perspective has empowered me to make artworks that view leaders of slave revolts as heroes, challenge American patriotism as a unifying value, burn the US Constitution (an outmoded impediment to freedom), and position the police as successors to lynch mob terror.

In 1989, my artwork What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?, a conceptual artwork for audience participation, became the subject of national conversation over its transgressive use of the American flag. President G.H.W Bush called it “disgraceful” and the Senate denounced and outlawed it. This public conversation confirmed my belief that art, including fine art, could be part of changing the world.

I work in a range of media: performance, installation, video, photography, printmaking and painting. Two threads that connect them are: an engagement with significant social questions and a desire to push formal and conceptual boundaries as part of contributing to artistic development. My projects are presented in venues ranging from museum galleries to street corners. I bring contemporary art to a broad public and the audience is often an active element of the art.

Dread Scott: Decision is a performance that reflects on America, a country whose democracy is rooted in slavery. These roots are woven into the fabric of the country and its founding documents. During the performance I read from the text of 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott Decision while a group of 4 nude Black performers was guarded and controlled two live German Shepherd dogs, which dogs barked continually. The audience was part of the work and had to pass through the men to go into a “voting booth” one at a time and respond to a moral question. Money to Burn is a performance that was enacted on Wall Street in 2010. Starting with $250, I burned singles, fives, tens and twenties, one bill at a time, while encouraging others to join me with their own money. The transgressive act of burning my own money alluded to the absurdity of a system that treats life necessities as commodities and is based on profit—it’s crazy to burn money but it is the height of rationality to have a market where billions can vanish.

About

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Elliot C. van Zandt had a major impact on the development of Italian sports from 1947 to 1959. Born in Arkansas in 1915, van Zandt lost his father at a very early age. Census records indicate that Elliot’s widowed mother, a seamstress, probably left him with relatives in the South when she moved to Memphis, Tennessee and then to Chicago, Illinois. During the early 1930s, van Zandt was employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps as director of summer youth sports. He then attended Tuskegee Institute where he obtained a physical education degree in 1943. During his stay at Tuskegee he was a star basketball player, as well as assistant coach for the basketball team. In January of 1943 van Zandt was a referee at the Southwestern Invitational Basketball Tournament quarterfinals held in Marshall, Texas.

In late 1943 van Zandt was drafted into military service and sent to northern Italy, where he fought with the 5th Army. He ended the war with the rank of infantry captain. In 1945 van Zandt was stationed near Florence, Italy, where he was a sports instructor; during this period, he also participated in both the softball and badminton championships of the 5th Army.

In February 1947 van Zandt was hired by the president of the fledgling Italian Basketball Federation to train all the national basketball teams. From 1947 to 1951 van Zandt was head coach of the Italian men’s basketball team. During this period he also traveled around Italy, teaching the fundamentals of basketball to players and coaches. As the coach of the Italian basketball team, van Zandt constantly stressed physical preparation and what he called “the fundamentals” of basketball. While van Zandt was not allowed to attend the 1947 European Basketball Championship in Czechoslovakia because of Cold War political rivalry, he did take the Italian national team to the 1948 London (UK) Olympics and the 1951 European Championship in Paris, France. His stint as a head coach ended in 1951; van Zandt was then hired as the head coach of the Turkish national basketball team. He took this team to the 1952 Helsinki (Finland) Olympics.

In 1953 van Zandt returned to Italy, where he was head coach for the C.U.S. Milano baseball team from 1955 to 1958. He had his greatest success however with the Milan soccer team from 1956 to 1959. Here, working closely with head coach Luigi “Cina” Bonizzoni, van Zandt broke new ground in the world of soccer. He was the first athletic trainer in Italian soccer. His innovative training methods helped the Milan team win the top flight Serie A professional soccer championship in 1958-59. Tragically, van Zandt was not able to continue his work with A.C. Milan. He died of a kidney disease while on a plane flight back to Chicago, where he was hoping to have a kidney transplant.

Elliot C. Van Zandt (1915-1959)

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‘Abbott Elementary’ creator and star Quinta Brunson on the teacher advice she still follows

Quinta Brunson knows all too well that success doesn’t happen overnight.

The Abbott Elementary creator is celebrating after having a successful Season 1 of her mockumentary-style sitcom, which documents the lives of five Philadelphia-based teachers. In its first season, the show received a 100% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of the highest-rated television shows on the site.

“The popularity of Abbott, that was surprising and I was excited that people liked the show that much. Sometimes, with sitcoms, you’re kind of waiting for a while for people to catch on to your show, but it really felt like people came to Abbott right away,” Brunson tells Yahoo Life.

While the show’s instant success shocked the actress, her meteoric rise from viral social media comedian to executive producer did not.

“This was always what I was working toward,” she says.

For years, Brunson built a comedic fanbase on Instagram, where she would post humorous skits, namely her ​​”Girl Who Has Never Been on a Nice Date”series. She also freelanced for Buzzfeed before joining the team as a video producer, focusing on humorous sketches illustrating the ups and downs faced by many 20-somethings. In 2019, she starred in the first season of Robin Thede’s comedy series, A Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO.

Now at 32, Quinta has her own show. Abbott Elementary premiered in 2021 and focuses on the lives, careers and hijinks of the teachers of Abbott Elementary, one of the worst schools in Philadelphia. With a name inspired by Brunson’s own sixth grade teacher, Joyce Abbott, the show also illustrates the often thankless work that teachers do and was inspired by and

While plenty has changed for the actress since sixth grade, many of the lessons and practices she learned in school still play a role in her life to this day.

“I had this one teacher, Mr. Connor, who told a student who was calling another student a liar … [that] ‘when you call someone a liar, you’re making a comment about their whole character. If someone tells a lie, then that’s the thing that they did. But if you call someone a liar, then you’re naming them as a character; you’re kind of changing who they are as a person.’ That just always stuck with me, like the power of words in how we define others and how we judge others; how we can be quick to define the character of other people. It’s something I think about all the time, kind of not judging a person by a minor wrongdoing that they did, but trying to see them as a full person. I think about that a lot.”

Brunson has always been vocal about teachers’ instrumental role in students’ lives. That is why she chose to partner up with Box Tops for Education during Teacher Appreciation Month. Together they’ll be donating $20,000 to her old elementary school, Andrew Hamilton in Philadelphia, in support of real teachers making a difference every day. Shoppers can also download the Box Tops for Education app and enter code “TEACHERSMAKEUSBETTER” during registration to earn $5 for their school of choice when they scan a receipt.

“There wasn’t a part of me that felt like I shouldn’t be involved, or the show shouldn’t be involved with giving back in some way, and Box Tops has been such an important part of my education for a very long time,” she says. “For the last 25 years, they’ve really been instrumental in believing that a child’s education is the foundation to achieving their fullest potential. Teachers play such an instrumental role in that development. That’s part of why Abbott was made. So advocating for education is like a core Box Tops mission. And that’s kind of a core mission of my own, as you can tell by my show, and so it made sense to partner with them during this TeachersAppreciation Month to shine a spotlight on these teachers who changed lives.”

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/abbott-elementary-quinta-brunson-teacher-appreciation-152902532.html

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

Tiffany Joseph is a multi talented and multifaceted holistic health, wellness, and movement coach. She is a certified Yoga and Zumba instructor, teaching dance throughout Western Massachusetts. She teaches a combination of Hatha, Restorative, and Yin Yoga and has been doing bodywork for three years as a Shiatsu and Reiki practitioner. In addition to being an an excellent gardener and herbalist, Tiffany received her Master’s in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as a Bachelors in Communications and a Certificate in Native American studies. She continues to do activism work around the community, providing educational workshops surrounding various social justice issues. Tiffany is also interested in earning a trauma therapy PhD in the near future.

Tiffany Joseph

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

He Made Yiddish Go Viral

Frankie Light is one of the new breed of “YouTube polyglots.” He taught himself Mandarin, but can he earn a living making small talk with strangers?

By Saki KnafoApril 28, 2022

One blustery afternoon this past winter, a Volkswagen Tiguan sped through Brooklyn, headed for 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Judaism. Frankie Light sat in the back seat, anxiously looking over some notes that he’d prepared the night before. At the top of the page was the working title of the video he was about to shoot: “Black Man SHOCKS Orthodox Jews by Speaking FLUENT Yiddish.”

Frankie Light is what’s known on social media as a YouTube polyglot. He studies various languages and practices them on the streets of New York, enlisting strangers as impromptu conversational partners. The often-charming results are then posted online. His most popular videos have gotten more than seven million views.

Other YouTubers have a similar shtick. Some can converse in dozens of languages — or at least that’s what their videos would lead you to believe. On YouTube and Reddit, skeptics have accused them of feigning fluency. “They’re people who learn just a tiny bit of a lot of different languages,” a teacher of Japanese charges in a video titled “Exposing YouTube’s FAKE POLYGLOTS and Their Lies.”

Mr. Light speaks several languages well, but Yiddish doesn’t happen to be one of them. He’d uttered his first Yiddish phrase (“Shalom aleichem”) only a couple of weeks earlier. Now he was about to hit the streets in the heart of one of Brooklyn’s Hasidic communities. “I feel the adrenaline,” he said.

He had hired two camera guys to document whatever was about to happen. One, a 19-year-old from Georgia (the country), was driving. Mr. Light, who has a magnetic presence, with high cheekbones and a scruff of hair on his chin, wore a black shearling coat over a silver-gray sweater with a shawl collar and had a curving side part carved into his fade. It was the afternoon of the fifth day of Hanukkah, and the streets of Crown Heights were bustling. Outside the synagogue, scores of bearded men in black fedoras were milling about. “This video is about to go viral,” he said. “Super viral.”

The most popular of the YouTube polyglots is probably Mr. Light’s friend and occasional collaborator Arieh Smith, a white New Yorker known to his millions of followers as Xiaoma (Mandarin for “Little Horse”). Mr. Smith didn’t speak any language other than English until he was 18. In college, he studied abroad in Beijing, where he learned Mandarin. Since then, he has dipped into Cantonese, Fuzhounese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Tibetan, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Arabic, Amharic, Yoruba, Igbo, Wolof, and Mayan. He recently spent a week with a family in the Arizona desert, learning some Navajo.

As unconventional as that career path may sound, Mr. Light, who is 27, has followed an even less conventional track. He dropped out of community college after two semesters and had never traveled outside of the United States until a monthlong trip to Dubai four months ago. He became a YouTube polyglot without leaving New York City.

He grew up as Frankie Smith in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, among people who spoke Haitian Creole and Jamaican Patois. At home he used American Sign Language. His parents are deaf, which he says made him something of an outcast on the block and at school. “Kids bullied me,” he said. “I was different because my parents are different.”

Over time, he developed a knack for disarming people who saw him as odd. “I realized that I could find common ground with all kinds of different people,” he said. “I could hang out with the geeks, and I could hang out with the street dudes. I always had that sense of trying to fit in.”

About seven years ago, he discovered the work of Moses McCormick, better known in the polyglot community as Laoshu (“Mouse” in Mandarin), a Black YouTuber from Ohio who made a career out of finding common ground with all kinds of people. Mr. McCormick, who died last year of heart complications at the age of 39, claimed to have taught himself some 20 languages and could manage rudimentary exchanges in perhaps 30 more. He made videos of himself chatting with surprised immigrants in supermarkets and shopping malls, developing the style that Xiaoma, Mr. Light and others would eventually adopt.

When Mr. Light first encountered these videos, he was amazed. By then, he had left college and was working in a barbershop. Although he loved learning, he had always struggled in school. “I believe that I have ADHD,” he said. “If things are not interesting enough, it takes a lot of mental fortitude and strength to focus.” Laoshu’s videos expanded Mr. Light’s sense of what was possible. “If that guy can learn 50 languages, I can learn one,” he thought.

Inspired, he decided to try to learn Mandarin, mostly because he had read that it was one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to master. “I wanted to prove that I could do something challenging if I put my mind to it,” he said.https://www.youtube.com/embed/eAxDGcSbrnE

He used a few language-learning apps, with disappointing results. He knew he had to immerse himself in the language, but how? He didn’t have the means to go to China, so he took the 7 train to Flushing, Queens, and its Chinatown, and started asking random people on the street if they could point him toward their favorite hair salon.Sign up for the New York Today Newsletter  Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Get it sent to your inbox.

He eventually arrived at an outpost of MG Hair Artistic Salon, a chain with branches in Queens and Boston, and he begged the owner, Wang Qin Bin, for a job. Mr. Wang turned him down, but Mr. Light persisted, saying he’d accept any position, no matter how little it paid. After a day or two, Mr. Wang relented. “We were impressed by his courage,” he recently recalled, through an interpreter.

Mr. Light was tasked with sweeping the floors; later, he effectively assumed the role of marketing director, creating videos in English that helped the business expand its clientele beyond Chinese speakers. By the time he left, a year after arriving, he was so adept at Mandarin that, as one of the salon’s employees recently noted, he took to sprinkling the sayings of ancient philosophers into everyday conversation.

After leaving the salon, Mr. Light reached out to Mr. Smith, whose videos were going viral. “He sent me a cold email out of the blue,” Mr. Smith recalled. “He’s like, ‘Hey, I’m a Black guy and I speak really good Mandarin, and I learned it by working in a hairdresser’s in Flushing.’ And I’m like: ‘What? That’s crazy!’” They filmed themselves walking around Flushing together, ordering spicy duck neck and skewers of lamb on the street. At a hair salon (not MG Hair Artistic), Mr. Light, speaking English, asked the barber for a fade. As the buzzer grazed his head, he switched to Mandarin. “So,” he said, “you ever cut a Black guy’s hair before?”

That video — “Black & White Guys Shock Chinese Hair Salon With Perfect Mandarin” — got 4.2 million views, launching Mr. Light’s YouTube career. Within a few months, 100,000 people had subscribed to his channel. Six months later, that number had doubled. Some viewers quibbled with his pronunciation of certain words, or accused him of trafficking in clickbait.

But the response was overwhelmingly admiring. Commenters have praised him for “breaking down barriers” and for his “universal message of inclusiveness and positivity.” A fan who identified herself as a teacher in Cleveland wrote that she’d been showing his videos to her students. “The fact that they get to see other POC thriving, speaking other languages has been really cool,” she remarked.

An estimated 600,000 people speak Yiddish. About a quarter of them live in the metropolitan area, according to Kriszta Eszter Szendroi, a professor in linguistics at University College London. Still, finding a willing Yiddish speaker on the streets of Hasidic Crown Heights, even during Hanukkah, wasn’t easy. A guy throwing a yo-yo outside a kosher grocery store looked promising to Mr. Light, but he turned out to be French. A man handing out religious pamphlets spoke Russian.

Several members of the neighborhood’s Hasidic community suggested that Mr. Light might have more success in Williamsburg, home of the Satmar, a group of Hasidim who famously avoid unnecessary contact with outsiders. The Chabad-Lubavitch of Crown Heights, by contrast, believe they can hasten the coming of the Messiah by bringing secular Jews into the fold. One consequence is that many members come from non-Hasidic backgrounds, and therefore don’t generally speak Yiddish.

Another consequence, though, is that they welcome opportunities to engage in religious discussion. On the way to Crown Heights, Mr. Light had worried that they might take offense to his presence; if anything, the opposite seemed true. Here was a telegenic young person expressing interest in their culture, potentially in front of thousands, even millions, of viewers. One particularly exuberant man insisted on giving him a tour of the Mitzvah Tank, a truck used to spread the teachings of their late leader, the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. An Israeli yeshiva student lectured him on the Seven Laws of Noah.

Mr. Light said he had always been curious about Hasidic culture. He had grown up not far from Crown Heights but admitted he had never even shaken a Hasidic person’s hand. “I was always on the outside looking in,” he said.

There is a long history of tensions between Black and Hasidic people in Brooklyn that goes back even beyond the Crown Heights riot of 1991. But Mr. Light, ever diplomatic, steered clear of such topics. He tried to keep things light. “I’m here to make friends,” he explained.

He ultimately did get to speak some Yiddish that day. As he lingered on the sidewalk, trying to work up enough courage to dive into the crowd outside the Chabad headquarters, an outgoing yeshiva student in his late 20s approached him and asked in English if he played football. It turned out that the student, Moshe Muss, regarded himself as a talented athlete and had sized up Mr. Light as a potential practice partner.

Mr. Light is fit, but you wouldn’t necessarily peg him as an athlete. Still, he agreed to give it a try. As they exchanged numbers, Mr. Light revealed his reason for visiting the neighborhood that day, prompting Mr. Muss to look up from his phone with a smile. “How come you didn’t speak to me in Yiddish?” he asked.

It was Mr. Light’s turn to be surprised. “You speak Yiddish?” he asked, in Yiddish.

Stumbling ahead in the language, Mr. Light explained that he’d been using Duolingo, the popular language-learning app.

“Glahtig, glahtig,” Mr. Muss said. Rough translation: “Cool, cool.”

Their exchange went on for only another minute or so before Mr. Light exhausted his supply of phrases. No matter. A week later, Mr. Light posted the video. In the end, he had thought better of including the word “fluent” in the title. The revised version: “Black Man SHOCKS Orthodox Jews by Speaking Russian Yiddish.” Several Orthodox websites picked it up, helping it go viral (it has had more than two million views).

Mr. Light stayed in touch with Mr. Muss and did end up throwing around a football with him one day. (He made a video about it.) But his Yiddish studies haven’t progressed much further. To succeed as a YouTube polyglot, you have to constantly expand your repertoire of languages, which makes it hard to spend enough time on any one language to become truly proficient. Mr. Light was beginning to share some of the frustrations voiced by critics of the genre. “Sometimes I feel like I rely too much on short-term memory,” he said. “You’re focusing on entertainment.”

In the meantime, he had glimpsed another opportunity. Somewhere on the internet, he had learned that there is a growing demand for gold traders who understand the intricacies of finance in the Islamic world. He is now learning Arabic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/nyregion