What do you do when you’re the founder of a travel tech startup whose mission is to connect blacks all around the world to the Continent when a global pandemic cancels flights, closes borders, and brings tourism to a complete halt?
If you’re Cherae Robinson, founder of Tastemakers Africa, you take a moment to breathe and then you get back to doing what you do best—bringing people together, even if that now means virtually.
Black Enterprise caught up with Robinson, whose company usually offers a marketplace of 200 travel experiences across three countries in Africa, about how she has pivoted to protect both her company’s mission and its bottom line.
Music icon Miles Davis remembered ahead of 94th birthday on SiriusXM’s ‘Real Jazz’
The Miles Davis Estate and the Jazz Foundation Of America will present “A Miles Davis Birthday Celebration,” on SiriusXM’s ‘Real Jazz’ (67) this Friday, May 22 at 7 p.m. CST. The three-hour music special, highlighting the music of Miles Davis as curated by SiriusXM’s Mark Ruffin and guest DJ’s Erin Davis, Vince Wilburn, Jr. (Miles Davis Estate) and Steve Jordan (JFA), will benefit and raise awareness of the Covid-19 Musician’s Emergency Fund from Jazz Foundation Of America.
Grammy and Emmy award winning producer Steve Jordan, who serves as Artistic Director for Jazz Foundation Of America, will discuss the organization’s mission and fundraising efforts.
From the 1930s to the 1970s, Charles “Teenie” Harris worked as a photojournalist for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most influential black newspapers of the 20th century, capturing the everyday experience of African American life in the Steel City.
His photographs depicted a black urban community that, despite the segregationist policies and racist attitudes of mid-century America, was innovative, thriving and proud. (His camera is in the collections of the Smithonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.)
The Photos That Lifted Up the Black Is Beautiful Movement
The intersection of West 125th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem was, for decades, a center of black nationalism. Street orators — that’s what they were called — climbed onto stepladders and made impassioned calls for African liberation.
When Kwame Brathwaite and his brother Elombe Brath were teenagers in the 1950s, they would walk there from their dad’s dry cleaning shop and listen, entranced, for hours. Mr. Brath once recounted the story of Carlos Cooks, a student of Marcus Garvey, bellowing to a black woman walking by: “Your hair has more intelligence than you. In two weeks, your hair is willing to go back to Africa and you’ll still be jivin’ on the corner.” (Two weeks was just about how long hot-combed styles kept a black woman’s hair straight.)
Nekesa Mumbi Moody Named Editorial Director at Hollywood Reporter
The editor joins from the Associated Press, where she oversaw a team of 40 journalists and directed multiformat entertainment coverage for the wire service.
Nekesa Mumbi Moody, who has served as global entertainment and lifestyles editor at the Associated Press since 2012, has been named to the top editorial role at The Hollywood Reporter. Moody will relocate from New York to Los Angeles and starts in the role on June 15.
“The Hollywood Reporter has consistently produced some of the most important, informative and revealing stories about the entertainment industry. I’m thrilled to join and look forward to building on the incredible work of its journalists as Hollywood finds itself facing new challenges amid historic change,” said Moody.
President George Washington Offers Reward for Capture of Black Woman Fleeing Enslavement
On May 23, 1796, a newspaper ad was placed seeking the return of Ona “Oney” Judge, an enslaved black woman who had “absconded from the household of the President of the United States,” George Washington. Ms. Judge had successfully escaped slavery two days earlier, fleeing Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and settling in freedom in New Hampshire.
Known to the Washingtons as “Oney,” Ms. Judge was given to Martha Washington by her father and had been held enslaved as part of the Washington estate since she was ten years old. As George Washington gained political clout, Ms. Judge traveled with the family to states with varying laws regarding slavery — including lengthy residence in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 declared that black people enslaved by non-residents of the state were legally freed after living in Pennsylvania for six continuous months. To avoid enforcement of the law and retain ownership of the men and women they enslaved, the Washingtons regularly sent Ms. Judge and others in the household out of state for brief periods, to restart the six-month residency requirement.
Source: kolumnmagazine.com
