Category: Racial Justice

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/05/833528769/roy-ayers-whose-everybody-loves-the-sunshine-charmed-generations-dies-at-84

Roy Ayers, the vibraphonist, composer and jazz-funk pioneer behind “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” has died at the age of 84.

He died Tuesday in New York City after a long illness, according to a statement shared on his Facebook page.

Ayers was born in Los Angeles on Sept. 10, 1940, to a musical family. Like a scene out of a movie, a 5-year-old Ayers boogie’d so hard at a Lionel Hampton concert that the vibraphonist handed Ayers his first pair of mallets.

“At the time, my mother and father told me he laid some spiritual vibes on me,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2011.

https://www.kathybullock.com/about-me

Dr. Kathy Bullock is an educator, scholar, singer, accompanist, arranger and choral conductor who specializes in gospel music, spirituals and classical works by composers from the African diaspora.  A Professor Emerita of Music from Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, she currently teaches, performs, and conducts workshops and other programs on African American music throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/07/nx-s1-5307290/on-becoming-a-guinea-fowl-movie-review

Filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s spellbinding melodrama On Becoming a Guinea Fowl begins with a woman named Shula (Susan Chardy) happening upon the dead body of her Uncle Fred on the side of an empty dirt road in Zambia one evening. Shula is eerily unmoved. She in fact appears more inconvenienced and annoyed than anything else — now she must wait with him until the authorities come, which takes hours.

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

Rungano Nyoni is a British, screenwriter and actress.^[1] She is known for the film I Am Not a Witch, which she wrote and directed. The film won Nyoni the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut in 2018 and has also garnered accolades from international film festivals. Her 2009 film, The List, won the Welsh BAFTA Award for Best Short Film.^[3]

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

Grace Wales Bonner MBE is an English fashion designer.^[1] Her designs blend sportswear and tailoring.^[2] In 2014, she founded the London-based label Wales Bonner, originally specializing in menswear.^[1][3]

Since founding her eponymous brand, Wales Bonner awards include Emerging Menswear Designer at the British Fashion Awards (2015), the LVMH Young Designer Prize (2016), Winner of the British Fashion Council/ Vogue Designer Fashion Fund (2019) and CFDA International Men’s Designer of the Year (2021). In June 2022, she was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to fashion. Wales Bonner is the head of the department of Fashion Design at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.^[1]

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

Adelaide Louise Hall (20 October 1901 – 7 November 1993) was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death. Early in her career, she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance; she became based in the UK after 1938.^[1][2][3] Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the world’s most enduring recording artist, having released material over eight consecutive decades.^[4] She performed with major artists such as Art Tatum,^[5] Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Cab Calloway, Fela Sowande,^[6] Rudy Vallee,^[7] and Jools Holland, and recorded as a jazz singer with Duke Ellington (with whom she made her most famous recording, “Creole Love Call” in 1927)^[8] and with Fats Waller.^{[9][10][11][12]}

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/09/g-s1-47457/sam-nujoma-namibia-first-president-dies

Sam Nujoma, Namibia’s fiery freedom fighter and first president, dies aged 95

WINDHOEK, Namibia — Sam Nujoma, the fiery freedom fighter who led Namibia to independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990 and served as its first president for 15 years, and was known as the father of the nation, has died. He was 95.

https://members.usagym.org/pages/athletes/women.html?id=277503

Frankie Price is an American gymnast:

How did you get involved in gymnastics: My parents were athletes. My dad was an all around athlete and even played for the KC Royals before he was killed tragically in a motorcycle accident in 2009. I was only 6 years old but have many fond memories of him. My mom was a cheerleader in college.

https://www.gym-style.com/frankieprice/about.htm

https://barnard.edu/profiles/monica-l-miller

Monica L. Miller, Professor of Africana Studies, joined the faculty of Barnard in 2001.

Professor Miller specializes in African-American and American literature and cultural studies. Her research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century African-American literature, film, and contemporary art; contemporary literature and cultural studies of the black diaspora; performance studies; and intersectional studies of race, gender, and sexuality.