QUOTE]Originally posted by Dove:

Guianese born Blacks in Science and Medicine

Notice biographical data of the following Guianese born medical professionals; James Augustus Trotman, Moses Alfred Haynes, Aubre deL Maynard, Thomas Adolphus Jones, Clifton Orin Dummett, Robert Isaac Greenidge in the book, "Blacks in Science and Medicine", written by Vivian Ovelton Sammons, Science Librarian at the Library of Congress, 1962-1987, and published by Hemisphere Publishing Corporation in 1990.

I am thinking you would love to request permission from Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, on the behalf of the GGBS to use the copyright material on the web site.


James Augustus Trotman 1876-19??
Physician, Surgeon, Gynecologist, and Obstetrician
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), March 11, 1876.
University of Vermont, 1904-07;
M.D., Temple University, 1908;
Post Graduate Work, 1920-22;
Fellowship Courses in Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons, Royal Pathological Museum, Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, Scotland;
Post Graduate Courses, Faculte de Med., Universite de Paris, Surgery (Gynecology, Urology) and Obstetrics.

Memberships and Awards:
Philadelphia County Medical Society; American Medical Association; National Medical Association; Kappa Alpha Psi.

Ref:
Who's who in Colored American, 1928-29 p 370 (p) opp. p370.
Who's who in Colored American, 1933-37 p 526 (p) opp. P527.
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 234.

Moses Alfred Haynes 1921
Physician
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), November 11, 1921.
US Citizen, 1955.
B.S., Columbia University, 1951;
M.D., State University of New York, 1954;
M.P.H., Harvard University, 1963;
Physician , US Public Health Service Indian Hospital, Cheyenne Agy, SD, 1955-59;
Assistant Professor, Community Medicine, University of Vermont, 1959-64;
Associate Professor, School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins, 1966-69;
Professor, Preventive and Social Medicine and Public Health, UCLA, 1969-77;
Associate Dean, Drew Post Graduate Medical School, Los Angles, 1969-77;
Chairman, Department of Community Medicine,1969-74; Acting Dean, 1975-76; Dean, 1979 -

Memberships and Awards:
Cancer Review Committee, National Cancer Institute; President's Commission on Health Education, 1972; Executive Director, National Association Foundation, 1968-69; Member, Advisory Committee, National Center for Health statistics, 1974-76; Fellow, American College of Preventive Medicine, President, 1983-85; AAAS; Alpha Omega Alpha; Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine.

Ref:
Who's Who in American, 1986-87 p 1229.
Living Legends in Black, p 25.
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 115.

Thomas Adolphus Jones 1873-19??
Physician, Surgeon
Born in British Guiana (now Guyana),SA, May 6, 1873.
Howard University Medical School, 1900;
M.D., Boston College of Physicians and Surgeon, Boston, MA, 1903;
MD., CM., McGill University, 1913;
Professor of Bacteriology and Chemistry, Flint Medical College, 1903-04;
Medical Examiner, Bergen Lodge no. 43, K. of P. and St. Marks Lodge, Odd Fellows;
Founded and was Medical Director of an Obstetrical School for colored students, Gonzales, TX, 1904; the school graduated the first four females and two males to pass the Texas State Board of Obstetricians.

Memberships and Awards:
President, Hudson County Physicians Association.

Ref:
Who's Who in Colored American, 1928-29 p 219.
Who's Who in Colored American, 1930-32 p 250.
Who's Who in Colored American, 1933-37 p 302.
Who's Who in Colored American, 1938-40 p 302.
Who's Who in Colored American, 1941-44 p 299.
Who's Who of the Colored Race, 1915 p 164.

Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 234.

Robert Isaac Greenidge (1888-19??)
Physician
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), October 27, 1888.
B.S., Battle Creek College, MI, 1910;
M.D., College of Medicine, Detroit, 1915;
Further Study Cook County Hospital, Chicago; Illinois Post Graduate Hospital, Superintendent, Fairview Sanatorium, Detroit, 1930;
Director, East Side Medical Laboratory, 1927-;
Medical Directory, Vice-President, Great Lakes Mutual Life Insurance, 1928-

Memberships and Awards:
Alpha Phi Alpha; Wayne County Medical Society; Michigan State Medical Society; American College of Radiology; American Medical Association; National Medical Association;

Ref:
The National Register, 1952 p575
Ebony Oct., 1950 p 41 (p)
Who's Who in Colored American, 1941-44 pp 217-218..
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 106.

Clifton Orin Dummett (1919)
Dentist
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), May 20, 1919.
B.S., Roosevelt University, 1941;
D.D.S., Northwestern University, 1941;
M.S.D., 1942;
M.P.H., 1947;
One of the first three Dentists to get a PhD in Dentistry.
Chief Dental Services, VA Hospital, Tuskegee, 1949-1965;
VA Research Hospital Chicago, 1965-66;
Dean and Director, Dental Education, Meharry Medical College, 1942-47;

Memberships and Awards:
Julius Rosenwald Fellow; American Public Health Association; American College of Dentists; International College of Dentists; Honorary Member, American Dental Association; International Association for Dental Research; National Dental Association; American Academy of Dental Medicine; Sigma X1; Delta Omega; Sigma Pi Phi; Alpha Phi Alpha.

Pub:
The Growth and Development of the Negro in Dentistry in the United States. Chicago, National Dental Association, 1952.

Ref:
Chicago Black Dental Professional, p 100.
Medico-Chirurgical Society of the District of Columbia, Inc., Bulletin, April 1949 p1, (p)
Who's Who among Black Americans, 1985 p 239.
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine pp.79-80.

Aubre deL Maynard 1901-19??
Physician, Surgeon (Thoracic)
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), 1901.
B.S., College City of New York, 1922;
M.D., New York University Medical College, 1926;
Surgical Director, Harlem Hospital New York, 1952-;
Surgeon in Charge of the removal of the knife from the chest of Dr. Martin Luther King, jr., Harlem Hospital, 1958.

Memberships and Awards:
New York Academy of Medicine; New York Thoracic Surgical; New York Surgical Society; Diplomate, American Board of Surgery.

Ref:
Crisis, June/July 1954 pp 354-356 (p)
Crisis, June/July 1956 pp 337 (p)
A Century of Black Surgeons p 171-179 (p).
Living Legends in Black, p 25.
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 165.[/QUOTE]

Shirley Chisholm's 1972 Presidential Campaign
by Jo Freeman
February 2005



In July of 1971 Shirley Chisholm, Member of Congress from New York's Twelfth District, began to explore the possibility of running for President. When she formally announced her candidacy the following January 25, she became the first woman and the first African-American to seek the nomination of the Democratic Party for the nation's highest office. A few other women and other blacks had run on minor party tickets, and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R. Me) had campaigned for the Republican Party's nomination in 1964, but Chisholm's candidacy was a double first for the Democrats.

As soon as I heard that she might run, I knew that I had found my candidate. I quickly learned that Chisholm was running a grass roots campaign, in which it was up to the grass roots to figure out what needed to be done and to do it. What was needed in Illinois, where I lived while attending grad school at the University of Chicago, was to get her name on the ballot for the March primary.

That was easier said than done. Not liking the Daley machine which ran the Democratic Party in Chicago, I had not been active in the local Democratic Party. I soon found out that Illinois would not have a Presidential preference primary in 1972; individuals would run for delegate to the Democratic Convention from each Congressional District, committed to a specific candidate or uncommitted. Only those Presidential candidates who had delegates running in a specific District committed to that candidate would appear on a District ballot. The Daley machine would run a complete slate of 59 in all of Chicago's Congressional Districts that was officially uncommitted. Unofficially, the Daley delegates would vote the way Mayor Daley wanted them to; controlling a bloc of votes gave him a lot of power at Democratic Conventions.

Shirley Chisholm had been breaking barriers and challenging conventions for many years. Born in Brooklyn, NY of West Indian parents, she was the first black woman to sit in Congress. Prior to her election in 1968 she had served in the New York Assembly for four years, following a professional career in child care and early childhood education. To be elected from her mostly black Brooklyn district, she had defied what was left of the Brooklyn Democratic machine. "Unbossed and unbought" was her slogan. On entering the House she had refused a place on the Forestry Subcommittee of the Agriculture Committee because she thought it was irrelevant to someone with her background from a poor, urban district. She was reassigned to Veterans Affairs; eventually she added a seat on her Committee of choice, Education and Labor. She deliberately hired a staff of young women, half of whom were black, for all of her office positions, not just the lower level ones usually occupied by women. Her first term she sponsored a bill to finance day care facilities; it passed Congress only to be vetoed by President Nixon.

It's unusual for any Member of the House to run for President, especially after serving only three years, but Chisholm was used to doing the unusual. Of course, she didn't run with the expectation of being nominated, or to increase her clout in Congress. She ran "to give a voice to the people the major candidates were ignoring."

Although Chisholm made a point of saying that she was not the women's candidate, she had always been a strong supporter of women's rights. One of the four founders of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971, she often said that during her twenty years in local politics "I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black." Indeed Shirley Chisholm was so outspoken in favor of women's rights that she was often criticized for not paying enough attention to black issues.

I encountered this negative attitude toward Chisholm by black leaders when I went to Operation PUSH, headed by Rev. Jesse Jackson, for help getting on the ballot. Its headquarters was in the First Congressional District, on the other side of the University of Chicago from where I lived. I found no support, just mild disdain.

Relying largely on my fellow grad students for help in petitioning, I was one of four people in the state of Illinois to get enough signatures to appear on the primary ballot committed to Shirley Chisholm, and the only one from a majority black district. When our campaign wrote her that she would be on the ballot in the First District of Illinois, she sent us 100 buttons, 20 bumper stickers and nine position papers on foreign affairs. Everything else we created ourselves. We used an initial $200 in contributions to buy 1,000 buttons, and the money from selling those to pay for ads and to print literature.

Florida was the first state where Chisholm actively campaigned, largely because it had "blacks, youth and a strong women's movement" and there were a lot of people in Florida eager to organize for her. However, she didn't have enough money to hire professionals and the volunteers often competed against each other rather than working together. Since she also had to attend to Congressional duties in Washington, Chisholm could only make two campaign tours in Florida before the March 14 primary. A Southern state, the big issue was busing "to correct racial imbalance" in the schools, an issue about which the candidate was ambivalent. Despite large and enthusiastic crowds wherever Chisholm spoke, she got only four percent of the vote.

Chisholm continued her campaign wherever she could get on the ballot and had enough volunteers to set up speaking events. She campaigned in New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan and North Carolina. There were some states in which Chisholm was on the ballot but never had time to visit (e.g. Wisconsin). And others in which she won delegates despite a single appearance (Minnesota). And still more in which she received write-in votes, or votes via delegate candidates (e.g. Illinois). Overall, people in fourteen states voted for Shirley Chisholm for President, in some fashion or other. After six months of campaigning in eleven primaries she had twenty-eight delegates committed to vote for her at the Democratic Convention.

California was a special case, because state law gave all of the delegates to the winner, despite national Democratic Party rules requiring that they be apportioned. McGovern won California; Chisholm came in third with a tenth of his votes"” enough to entitle her to twelve of California's 271 delegates under the national rules. The primacy of state law would be challenged at the convention.


Chisholm made only one appearance in Chicago, where she spoke at Malcolm X Junior College on the west side of the city on March 6. Her two Chicago delegate candidates were running in districts on the north and south sides of the city, but no free venue could be found in either place. Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH, which owned its own building (a former synagogue) on the South Side, had declined to invite her to speak there, even though it regularly had some of the best speakers of a liberal persuasion (black and white) in the country.

The Illinois primary was one week after Florida's. Of course I didn't win; the Daley machine's uncommitted candidates won all eight delegate slots in the First District. But in a field of 24 I came in ninth, beating people committed to Sens. George McGovern and Edward M. Kennedy. The next day I read about a challenge to the Daley delegation, which had made no attempt to comply with new Party guidelines requiring that delegations reflect the composition of their districts by race, sex and age. I immediately joined in.

Meeting in June, the Credentials Committee voted that national rules trumped state law in both California and Illinois; the challenge delegations would be seated. However, when the Committee report and recommendations went before the full convention on Monday night in July, the recommendation on California was reversed and all of the McGovern delegates were seated. That decision gave McGovern a lock on the nomination. All the candidate nominations and speeches after that were just window dressing.


I was not a delegate at this convention, but an alternate. Since the election could not be held over again, the decision about who the Chicago challenge delegates should be was made at meetings of the people who had run for delegate in each District. When I arrived prepared to argue that Chisholm was entitled to at least one delegate because she had received more votes in the First District than anyone else, I found that a pre-meeting had been had been held and the delegates already agreed upon. Under the affirmative action rules only one of the eight First District delegates could be white, and that slot had been given to the head of the McGovern slate. Six of the seven blacks chosen had run committed to different candidates. One, Jesse Jackson, had not run at all. However, the three alternates had not been pre-selected, so I became the first alternate from the First District.

At the convention I lobbied the eight First District delegates to give one vote to Chisholm, but without success. All eight wanted to feel like they were part of the winning team, and a token vote for a losing candidate was not the way to do that. When the role call was held on Wednesday, Shirley Chisholm received 151.95 votes, including 4.5 from Illinois. None came from Illinois' First District, even though she had received more votes in the primary from those voters than had McGovern, who got all eight delegate votes. Many of Chisholm's 151.95 votes came from people who had come to the Democratic convention committed to other candidates, and become disenchanted when the race for the nomination ended on Monday. Ohio delegates gave her 23 votes, even though the Ohio voters hadn't given her any.


In the primaries and at the convention Chisholm received stronger support from grassroots feminists and blacks than she did from those identified as leaders. Reps. Ron Dellums (CA) and Parren Mitchell (MD) supported her. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem ran as Chisholm delegates in New York, but lost. Other Members of Congress and prominent people, both blacks and feminists, ignored her candidacy or opposed it. When Chisholm spoke at a National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana in March, she felt like she was treated like an intruder. However, at the Democratic Convention in July, the Chisholm meetings were full of feminists and the final meeting of the caucus of black delegates voted to support her. Most of those attending and voting were not delegates; those who were, were not bound by a caucus decision.

After it was over Chisholm said that if she had to do it over again, she would, but not the same way. Her campaign was under-organized, under-financed and unprepared. She calculated that she raised and spent only $300,000 between July 1971 when she first floated the idea of running, and July of 1972, when the last vote was counted at the Democratic Convention. That did not include the $2,000 that my campaign raised and spent on her behalf, and a lot more by other local campaigns.

By the next Presidential election Congress had passed the campaign finance acts, which required careful record keeping, certification and reporting, among other things. This effectively ended grass roots Presidential campaigns like those in 1972.

Chisholm quotes from her book on the campaign The Good Fight, Harper and Row, 1973

source



In 1968, Shirley Chisholm becomes the first black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, she becomes the first black woman to run for president. Shunned by the political establishment, she's supported by a motley crew of blacks, feminists, and young voters. Their campaign-trail adventures are frenzied, fierce, and fundamentally right on!

Saul Stacey Williams

Official Website



Born February 29, 1972, in Newburgh, New York, Saul Stacey Williams is considered a powerful voice of the hip hop generation as a poet, preacher, actor, rapper, singer and musician. Best known for his blend of spoken word poetry and hip-hop, and for his leading role in the independent film Slam, he received notable recognition while supporting Nine Inch Nails for parts of their 2005-2006 tour, despite the questionable appeal of his music for that demographic. Saul's third album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust, was produced by Trent Reznor, and released via the internet on November 1, 2007. In the days leading up to its release, several tracks featuring a combination of industrial and hip hop production were "leaked" to the internet.

Williams has published four books of poetry: "The Seventh Octave", "S/he", ",said the shotgun to the head." and "The Dead Emcee Scrolls"; and released three albums: Amethyst Rock Star, the self titled Saul Williams, and most recently, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!.

we need to see some of the successful celebrities as well..there are lots of them

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson

(Father) Rocky and Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson

Dwayne Douglas Johnson was born in Hayward, California on May 2nd 1972 to Rocky Johnson and Ata Johnson. While growing up, Dwayne traveled around a lot with his parents and watched his father perform in the ring. During his high school years, Dwayne began playing football and he soon received a full scholarship from the University of Miami where he had tremendous success as a football player. In 1995, Dwayne suffered a back injury which cost him a place in the NFL. He then signed a 3 year deal with the Canadian League but left after a year to pursue a career in wrestling. He made his wrestling debut in the USWA under the name Flex Kavanah where he won the tag team championship with Brett Sawyer. In 1996, Dwayne joined the WWE and became Rocky Maivia where he joined a group known as "The Nation of Domination" and turned heel. Rocky eventually took over leadership of the "Nation" and began taking the persona of The Rock. After the "Nation" split, The Rock joined another elite group of wrestlers known as the "Corporation" and began a memorable feud with Steve Austin. Soon the Rock was kicked out of the "Corporation". He turned face and became known as "The Peoples Champion". In 2000, the Rock took time off from WWE to film his appearance in The Mummy Returns (2001). He returned in 2001 during the WCW/ECW invasion where he joined a team of WWE wrestlers at The Scorpion King (2002), a prequel to The Mummy Returns (2001). He is currently married to Dany Johnson (Garcia) and they have a daughter named Simone Alexandra, born in 2001.

Trivia
First ever 7 time WWE World Champion.

In real life, is good friends with the Dudley Boyz and his on-screen enemy, Shane McMahon.

Was the first person to ever kick out of the "Stone Cold Stunner" while fighting Stone Cold Steve Austin (Steve Austin) at Wrestlemania XV.

His favorite eyebrow trademark (not including his own) is Groucho Marx's.

Former World Wrestling Federation Tag Team Champion (with Mankind (Mick Foley) in "The Rock 'n Sock Connection").

Was a member of Miami's NCAA national championship football team in 1991. Later in his career he played as Warren Sapp's backup at defensive tackle.

Received guidance and training from Bret Hart (aka "The Hitman") when he first came to the WWF.

Grandson of Peter Fanene Maivia.

Daughter with his wife, Dany Johnson, Simone Alexandra Johnson, was born in Davie, Florida. [14 August 2001]

A member of the elite group of wrestlers, such as Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair to hold the WWF and WCW world titles on several different occasions.

Named one of E!'s "top 20 entertainers of 2001."

He once appeared on "Martha Stewart Living" (1991) to cook one of his favorite family recipes.

Attended Freedom High School, Bethlehem, PA.

Has a wax figure likeness of himself at Madame Tussaud's museum

Wife, Dany Johnson, was 22 when they met.

Decided to attend the University of Miami because they didn't openly express interest in him

After years of dating Dany Johnson, he did not meet her parents until shortly before their wedding.

Married Dany Johnson the day after his 25th birthday.

His $5.5-million paycheck for The Scorpion King (2002) earned him a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records, as his salary was the highest for any actor receiving top billing for the first time.

No athlete who ever hosted "Saturday Night Live" (1975) has ever repeated for a second time, until The Rock did so in 2002. Technically, he was promoting a film for his second sting (The Scorpion King (2002)) but his college football, CFL and pro wrestling background makes him the show's first two-time athlete-host.

He owns the rights to name "The Rock" (including logos, phrases, etc). The rights to the name "The Rock" were previously owned by WWE, Inc. (which is the main reason why Vince McMahon has received executive producer credits in some of the Rock's films).

Once, while putting on a show for WWF road agent Pat Patterson, sold his opponent's moves so well, his then-girlfriend Dany Johnson thought he was actually hurt.

Growing up, considered what his father did, "wrestling"; he once tried amateur wrestling, and found he didn't like it.

In a 2000 episode of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" (1975), proved his acting and singing abilities by performing in various skits throughout the show.

He was offered a promotional deal with "Dunkin' Donuts", which would have seen the company name a donut after him. Thinking it would make him appear big-headed, he graciously turned the offer down.

His last match in the WWE before leaving to film The Rundown (2003) was against Bill Goldberg at the 2003 Backlash Pay-Per-View.

WWF Royal Rumble (2000) (V) winner.

Former WCW World Heavyweight Champion (during the wCw/ECW Alliance storyline)

Accidentally smashed the tail-light of a Porsche while filming the movie Walking Tall (2004).

Is of African-Canadian and Samoan descent.

Was a team mate of Doug Flutie with the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL).

In his first semester at the University of Miami, earned a .7 grade point average. He was majoring in criminology.

His wedding anniversary falls on the same day as Stu Hart's birthday. Stu's son, Bret Hart, would often give him tips on how to improve in his matches.

Played his own father in an episode of "That '70s Show" (1998).

Tonga Fifita, the wrestler known as Haku, was Best Man at Dwayne and Dany Johnson's wedding.

In The Rundown (2003), he tells one of the rebels that Muhammad Ali would win a match against Mike Tyson. To intimidate his opponents, his father, Rocky Johnson, would often perform the "Ali shuffle" during his wrestling matches.

While filming The Scorpion King (2002), accidentally hit Michael Clarke Duncan during a fight sequence. Duncan leaned in too far for a hit, and his chin connected with The Rock's elbow.

Though not under contract with the WWE, the Rock makes every attempt to be on their RAW television show whenever the WWE are in either Los Angeles or his hometown of Miami.

Is the third youngest superstar to hold the IC Championship. Jeff Hardy is the youngest at 23, and Randy Orton is the second youngest, also at 23, only a few months older than Hardy.

He weighed 290 pounds during his college football career, but reduced his weight to about 265 pounds late in his wrestling career. He has lost an addition 30 pounds recently for his part in Southland Tales (2006), some of which he since regained.

Dwayne is a skilled light tackle salt water fisherman.

Notable Title Wins Include: USWA Tag Team Titles w/Bret Sawyer; WWF Intercontinental Title; WWF/WWE Heavyweight Title (7); WWF Tag Team Titles w/Mick Foley; WWF Royal Rumble Winner; WWE Tag Team Titles w/Chris Jericho; WCW Heavyweight Title.

Son of Ata Johnson and Rocky Johnson.

Ranked #61 on VH1's 100 Hottest Hotties

WWE named their Thursday night show after one of The Rock's catchphrases, "Layeth the Smack Down" (Smackdown, in case you were wondering)

Officially proclaimed himself "The Rock" during a promo where he attacked Ron Simmons (Faarooq) in a "WWF Raw Is War" (1997) telecast.

Sparred with, and gave guidance to, current Smackdown superstar Orlando Jordan.

He originally chose "Flex Kavana" as his stage name, because he didn't want to seem like he was trading off his family's legacy (Rocky Johnson, his father, and High Chief Peter Fanene Maivia his grandfather). Ironically, WWE officials came up with "Rocky Maivia" after they felt "Flex Kavana" wasn't exactly a great name.

When Rocky Maivia was first considering going by the name The Rock for short, he resisted because he felt it would be stealing the former nickname of WWE Hall-of-Famer Don Muraco. He was talked into it by Vince Russo.

Is good friends with actor Michael Clarke Duncan.

His cousin, Tanoai Reed, is his stunt double for many of his movies.

During a visit to Samoa in July 2004, he was anointed by Head of State Susuga Malietoa Tanumafili II with the chiefly title of 'Seiuli, Son of Malietoa'.

Was listed as a potential nominee on both the 2003 and 2005 Razzie Award nominating ballots. He was suggested in the Worst Actor category on the 2003 ballot for his role in the film The Scorpion King (2002). And he was suggested again two years later in the Worst Actor category of the 2005 Razzie nominating ballot for his performance in the film _Walking Tall (2004)_. He failed to receive either nomination. The following year though, he finally got a Worst Actor Razzie Nomination for his role in the film Doom (2005).

Attended the Republican National Convention in 2004

Cousin of Solofa Fatu Jr. (Rikishi) and Rodney Anoai (Yokozuna).

As of 2008, Doom (2005) and Southland Tales (2006) are the two only R-rated films he has starred in. All of his other films have received PG-13, at the most.

While filming Be Cool (2005), he was "Punk'd" (2003) by Ashton Kutcher's crew. They set his trailer on fire, which didn't seem to faze him. It was only after Vince, one of the "Punk'd" (2003) crew, blamed the fire on him that things got really heated and they revealed the gag.

Was Tim Burton's second choice for the role of Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).

Daughter: Simone Alexander Johnson (born August 14th 2001)

With his wife, donated $2 million to the University of Miami for the new Robert and Judi Prokop Newman Alumni Center's living room, to be named "The Dany and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Living Room". The donation was announced at the Miami premiere of Gridiron Gang (2006).

Made his WWF television debut at the Survivor Series (1996) (V).

[October 2006] In an interview with "Entertainment Magazine", he no longer wants to be known as "The Rock". Because of his retirement from the wrestling business, he now considers himself an actor: "I no longer am a wrestler, I am now pursuing a future as an actor and someday as a director. I am not the Rock. I am Dwayne Johnson".

Former World Tag Team Champion.

Not only was his father, Rocky Johnson, a wrestler, but his grandfather, three uncles, and six cousins (one adopted) have been in wrestling too.

Ex-brother-in-law of Hiram Garcia.

Has a fear of spiders.

In 2006, he donated $2 million for University of Miami to name new Alumni Center living room.

Has a stepbrother, Jared.

Remains close friends with WWE Writer Brian Gewirtz.

Personal Quotes
Finally...The Rock...has come back to [whatever city he's in at the time]

You will go one on one with the Great One!

Who in the blue hell are you?

[Referring to his 0.7 grade point average in college] "It's pretty hard to get a point seven. You have to do close to nothing."

Can you smell what The Rock is cooking!

The Rock will take you down Know Your Role Boulevard which is on the corner of Jabroni Drive and check you directly into the Smackdown Hotel!

It doesn't matter what you think.

"I have so much love and respect for the fans. I'll never forget where I came from. I love the business. I grew up in the business. And everyone always asks me, from Letterman [David Letterman] to Stone Phillips, what I miss about wrestling. Hands down, I miss the interaction with the fans. Outside of the ring I loved it, too. I mean, how hard is it to sign an autograph? Don't be an a**hole to your fans. And there's many [in WWE] that won't, which is bulls**t. But inside the ring, just that energy and feeding off that energy is great. There's something so special about it. And every night I would just have a blueprint of what I would say and rely so much on ad-libbing and waiting to see what happens when I get out there and let it materialize organically and see what happens. Every night was a different crowd and they gave me so much energy, and I'll always love that and always miss that for sure." [Interview with WWE.com in October 2005]

Mark Sinclair Vincent is 6' and he and his fraternal twin brother Paul were born July 18, 1967, in New York, New York.



The multi-racial Diesel has made a career out of keeping his specific origins a secret. Other than revealing that Vincent is his real last name, he won't talk about much of the rest of his early life; his first attempt at filmmaking was a short called Multi-Facial a film about (say what?) a multi-racial struggling actor. The 1994 flick debuted at Cannes in 1995 and grabbed director Steven Spielberg's attention. Spielberg then cast him in Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Vin's career was launched. Big bad tough-guy roles in Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious and xXx made him a bankable (and bank-rollin') star.

Never knowing his biological father. His first break in acting happened by chance, when at the age of seven he and his friends broke into a theatre to vandalize it. A woman stopped them and offered them each a script and $20, on the condition that they would attend everyday after school. From there, Vin's fledgling career progressed from the New York repertory company run by his father, to the Off-Off-Broadway circuit. At 17 and already sporting a well-honed physique, he became a bouncer at some of New York's hippest clubs to earn himself some extra cash. It was at this time that he changed his name to Vin Diesel.

Following high school, Vin enrolled as an English major at Hunter College, but dropped out after three years to go to Hollywood to further his acting career. Being an experienced theatre actor did not make any impression in Hollywood and after a year of struggling to make his mark, he returned to New York. His mother then gave him a book called "Feature Films at used Car Prices" by Rick Schmidt. The book showed him that he could take control of his career and make his own movies. He wrote a short film based on his own experiences as an actor, called Multi-Facial (1999), which was shot in less than three days at a cost of $3,000. Multi-Facial (1999) was eventually accepted for the 1995 Cannes Film Festival where it got a tumultuous reception.

Afterwards, Vin returned to Los Angeles and raised almost $50,000 through telemarketing to fund the making of his first feature, Strays (1997). Six months after shooting, the film was accepted for the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, and although it received a good reception, it didn't sell as well as hoped. Yet again Vin returned disappointed to New York only to receive a dream phone call. Steven Spielberg was impressed by Multi-Facial (1999) and wanted to meet Vin, leading him to be cast in Saving Private Ryan (1998). Multi-Facial (1999) earned Vin more work, when the director of The Iron Giant (1999) saw it and decided to cast Vin in the title role. From there, Vin's career has steadily grown, with him securing his first lead role as 'Richard B Riddick' in the sci-fi film Pitch Black (2000). That role has earned him a legion of devoted fans and the public recognition he deserves.

5 Things:

1. Yea, he's ecclectic: Diesel was raised by his astrologer/psychologist mother and adoptive father in an artist's housing project in New York's Greenwich Village.
2. Vin adopted the moniker "Vin Diesel" while working as a bouncer at New York City nightclubs.
3. He's not bald, Vin shaves his head.
4. He has a fraternal twin brother, who's a film editor.
5. Geek alert: Vin is a devoted Dungeons and Dragons player.

Trade Mark
Shaves his head.

Muscular physique



Trivia
He worked as a bouncer in New York at the famous nightclubs Tunnel (which has since closed) and Mars.

Has a fraternal twin brother, Paul Vincent, who is a film editor.

Has an Italian Mastiff named "Roman".

Has a younger sister, Samantha and a younger brother in addition to his fraternal twin, Paul.

Ranked #46 in Premiere's 2003 annual Power 100 List. Had ranked #95 in 2002.

He's an admitted fan of Dungeons and Dragons, and, according to an interview on _"Late Night with Conan O'Brian" (1993)_, he played for 24 years.

Was offered the role of Matt Murdock/Daredevil in Daredevil (2003) that eventually went to Ben Affleck.

He is bi-racial, being half African-American and half Italian American

Producing partner with George Zakk. Their company is called One Race Productions.

Wrote an original screenplay titled "Doormen" (based on his experiences as a bouncer) as a follow-up to Strays (1997), his directorial debut. However, his acting career exploded and his plans to direct the film have fallen by the wayside.

During his teens, he performed breakdancing in an instructional video on the subject.

Credits the book "Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices" by Rick Schmidt as the one resource above all upon which he built his career. This book, according to Diesel, gave him the tools, knowledge, and most importantly, the inspiration to develop his short film _Multi-Facial (1994)_, which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in.

He was cast opposite Ben Affleck in Reindeer Games (2000), but left the production shortly after filming began over concerns with the quality of Ehren Kruger's screenplay and creative differences with director John Frankenheimer.

Revolution Studios wanted him for the title role in Hellboy (2004), but director Guillermo del Toro thought that Ron Perlman was the perfect choice for the role, and wouldn't direct the movie if he wasn't cast.

Was listed as a potential nominee on both the 2003 and 2004 Razzie Award nominating ballots. He was listed as a suggestion for the Worst Actor category on the 2003 ballot for his performances in the films Knockaround Guys (2001) and xXx (2002). And was listed as a suggestion again on the nominating ballot in the Worst Actor category the next year for his role in A Man Apart (2003). He did not receive either nomination. The following year though, he finally received his first Razzie nomination for Worst Actor in the film The Chronicles of Riddick (2004). However he didn't "win".

Is the cousin of rapper/producer Kwame "The Boy Genius". Kwame says if you watch his old videos, you'll see Vin in a few of them.

Once worked as a telemarketer, selling light bulbs.

In addition to being considered for the role of Hellboy in 2004, he was also considered for the part of Abe Sapien.

Credits the book "Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices" by Rick Schmidt as the one resource above all upon which he built his career. This book, according to Diesel, gave him the tools, knowledge, and most importantly, the inspiration to develop his short film Multi-Facial (1994), which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in.

He gained 35 pounds so he could portray 'Fat Jackie' in 'Find Me Guilty' (2006).

Attended Hunter College and got his jump start by Steven Spielberg just like fellow actors Sam Feuer and Edward Burns.

George Washington Carver


Edsel Ford, from left, Dr. George Washington Carver and Henry Ford, gathered in front of a log cabin built in Greenfield Village for use by Carver during his three-week visit to Dearborn.



BIO Creates George Washington Carver Award for Significant Contributions in Industrial Biotechnology

Washington, DC"”The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) announced Feb. 21 creation of the George Washington Carver Award to recognize significant contributions by individuals in the field of industrial biotechnology and its application in biological engineering, environmental science, biorefining and biobased products.
This new Award is intended to honor the original vision of George Washington Carver who, over a century ago, pioneered the creation and commercialization of sustainable biobased products and materials and energy derived from renewable agricultural feedstocks.
Carver's inventions include plastics, glue, soaps, paints, dyes for cloth and leather, medicines and cosmetic ingredients made from peanuts, sweet potatoes, or other crops and agricultural residues.
Today, companies are using industrial biotechnology to manufacture plastics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and even food ingredients from renewable agricultural resources.
The George Washington Carver Award will honor individuals in the private sector, government or academia who have worked toward the important goal of using biotechnology innovation to develop sustainable bio-based value-chains.
BIO is now accepting nominations for the George Washington Carver Award online.
Nominees must be living individuals who have demonstrated significant and innovative accomplishments employing industrial biotechnology to advance a biobased economy and industrial sustainability.
Written nominations should highlight the contributions the nominee has made in using biotechnology for sustainable production of biobased products, materials and energy.
In addition, nominations should include examples of the pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit of the nominee.
The deadline for nominations is March 11, 2008.
The George Washington Carver Award will be presented during the 2008 World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing, to be held April 28-30, 2008 at the Hilton Chicago in Chicago.
The World Congress is the only global conference dedicated solely to the most recent advancements in industrial biotechnology.
For more information, call Paul Winters at 202-962-9237

Some beauties and celebrities in their own rights

Ashanti

Beyonce

Brandy

Christina Milian

Ciara

Janet Jackson

Naiomi Campbell

Serena Williams

Tony Braxton

Whitney Houston (she's one of my fave)

Rosi, Women's History Month starts March 1st... save these and add their bios, or maybe Amral will bring up the thread started before like this one was... Thanks.

New Novel By Guyanese-Born Author Offers Mystique And Light Humor

CARIBPR NEWSWIRE, RAMAPO, N.Y., Weds. Feb. 27, 2008: Guyanese-national, Ingrid Walter Campbell, has released, `HerStory,` a fictional tale of a woman in search of a lamp, who eventually finds a light that will last her a lifetime.

Set in the fictional third world country of Barova, `HerStory` portrays life in a simpler time. However, this story is not one with an easy ending. The book's heroine must face her fears and is forced to make difficult choices. After a chance encounter, she discovers a light that is even more important to her than the lamp she so earnestly sought.

Inspired by the author's own life, `HerStory` is a personal testimony to all of Barova's children around the world. By writing this book, the author found peace by acknowledging her true feelings about her past. She was able to see humor in situations she once considered bad, and it is her hope that the book will encourage others to explore their own hearts and minds.

For more information or to request a free review copy, members of the press can contact the author at zeruah2001-book@yahoo.com.

HerStory is available for sale online at www.zeruahproductions.com/HerStory.html and from BookSurge at (866) - 308-6245 Ext.5692 and through additional wholesale and retail channels worldwide.

Ingrid Walter Campbell holds a master's degree in forensic science and an MBA from Pace University in New York City. She resides in Ramapo, New York and is currently working on a sequel with a tantalizing name.

Zeruah Productions is an artistic company that celebrates creativity through books, design, poetry, songs. The new company, formed at the end of 2007 is in the growing stages and is proud to showcase this author's first book. The first reader to solve the puzzle in the penultimate chapter will win one gold pin in the shape of the lamp (shown below). Stayed tuned for other exciting productions. – CaribPR.com

quote:

Originally posted by Dove:
Rosi, Women's History Month starts March 1st... save these and add their bios, or maybe Amral will bring up the thread started before like this one was... Thanks.

Yeppers Dovie, i got their pics save - i will dig up the bios for the next month.

Black History Month and the contributions of Islam
2/21/2008 - Social Opinion Interfaith - Article Ref: MO0802-3521




Celebrating Black History month in February is an excellent opportunity to learn about the struggle and achievement of African Americans, and their creativity and contribution to human civilization, and also to reaffirm the struggle and determination to fight prejudice and racism.

The Quran says: "O people, we created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into tribes and nations so that you may know each other. Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is the one who is most righteous of you." (Quran 49:13)

Today, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States; the majority of the populations embracing Islam are African Americans.

Why are African Americans embracing Islam in such large numbers? Is it because of Malcolm X's pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca or the intrinsic nature of Islamic human equality.

When people think of Africa they think of blacks, civil wars and the AIDS epidemic. The intellectual discourse on topics like African history in the Islamic context is inadequate and absent from the history books.

Today more than 50 percent of the people in Africa are Muslims. And of the Africans brought over to America in the slave trade, many came from Muslim families.

With this spirit in mind, Bilal Ibne Rabah, an Ethiopian slave living in Mecca, became a leading companion of Prophet Muhammad. Very little is known of Bilal.

Bilal was a slave freed by Prophet Muhammad. Who at the time of slavery in Arabia used to buy slaves and then free them? Bilal is associated with a very important decision taken by the Prophet Muhammad concerning the issue of race and color.

Prophet Muhammad chose a black man to perform the Azan -- the call of the faithful to prayers. His decision was based on the Quranic teaching against racial discrimination, which explains the rationale behind God's creation of humanity in different tribes, color, religion and race, so that we know each other.

Prophet Muhammad chose Bilal to be the first Muezzin (caller to prayer) not because of his racial lineage nor his power or wealth, but because Bilal possessed neither.

He was chosen because of his piety, character and honor even though his pronunciation of Arabic was not accurate. Bilal was to become one of the greatest people in the history of Islam. His name adorns the pages of Islamic history as a reminder to all those who incite discord and disunity among people, races and nations -- but especially to Muslims -- not to transgress the will of God in their behavior and thinking.

Sadly, as we reflect on the current religious practices and social conditions of so many Muslim communities in the United States, we find them divided along artificial lines of nationality, families, ethnic identity and culture.

In celebrating Black History Month, we should be able to include that rich Islamic history that has been hidden from us in the midst of Islamophobia that has marked out Muslims and Islam as "medieval and uncivilized."

American Muslims need to know that in these times of deliberate misrepresentation and spin, Islamic scholars were the inheritors, keepers and developers of Roman and Greek learning.

Islamic learning and culture first illuminated the Dark Ages in Europe.

Africa and Islam have more in common than we think. Islam entered Africa 100 years before Columbus. The ancient and renowned city of Timbuktu in modern Mali was the crossroads of West African and Islamic civilization and learning.

Timbuktu was a city where Muslim scholars would travel to acquire knowledge. African Americans have been in America for a long time, not as takers but as contributors, and it is worth celebrating this rich heritage, and as an American Muslim, I hold dear to my heart to enlighten both young and old, the black and non-black toward the truth and social justice and pursue the vision of making America not red or blue or black or white states, but rather a better place to live with equal opportunity for all.




And We sent down iron (Modern astronomical findings have disclosed that the metal of iron found in our world has come down from the giant stars in outer space.) in which there lies great force and which has many uses for mankind....
Al Quran - God's Final Testament 57:25

Baroness Amos of Brondesbury, Valerie Ann Amos

Baroness Amos with Dr. Johnetta Cole

allAfrica.com

INTERVIEW
8 December 2007
Posted to the web 8 December 2007

Tami Hultman
Washington, DC

Leaders of over 70 African and European countries have arrived in Lisbon for this weekend's African Union/European Union summit. Refusing to attend, in protest at the inclusion of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Baroness Amos – Valerie Ann Amos – to represent the United Kingdom.

The Zimbabwe controversy threatens to overshadow –at least in media coverage – the issues of trade, development, the role of China in Africa and the conflicts in Darfur and the DRC that will confront the 5000 delegates and journalists who have gathered in the Portuguese capital for the summit. And Baroness Amos has seen a small controversy erupt around her own participation, when former British secretary for international development, Claire Short, told the BBC last week that, "it's not right to send her because she's black. I don't see any other reason for sending her."


UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband called Short's comment "a bit insulting" – a defense that could be seen as a classic example of British understatement, when measured against Amos's resume. Born in Guyana in 1954, she moved as a child with her family to Britain, where she began her political career with the Labour Party, working in local government in London. Attracting attention for her intellect, poise and ability to communicate, she was appointed to a succession of increasingly influential posts, becoming under-secretary of state in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, responsible for Africa, the Caribbean and the Commonwealth, before succeeding Claire Short as secretary of state for international development in 2003 – making her the first black woman to sit in cabinet.

In 1989 she became chief executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission, and in 1995 she founded a consultancy firm and advised Nelson Mandela and the new government of South Africa on public service reform, human rights and employment equity. That year she received an honorary degree from Thames Valley University for her work on "equality and social justice".

In 1997 she was made a life peer and served as a government whip and as spokesperson on social security, international development and women's issues. In 2003 she became the third woman and the first person of color to become leader of the House of Lords. She served as Lord President of the Council – one of the four "Great Officers of State" of the United Kingdom – who presides over meetings of the Privy Council. Andrew Grice, political editor of the Independent newspaper, quoted aides to Tony Blair as saying "the Prime Minister believed Baroness Amos was a heavy hitter who could handle a big workload in the Lords in the next year, including controversial plans to remove the 92 hereditary peers, abolish the post of Lord Chancellor and set up a Supreme Court."

She has served as personal representative of the prime minister to the G8 group of most developed countries, responsible for the 2003 G8 Africa Action Plan. She was Britain's representative to the African Union and in June was nominated by the prime minister to become European Union special representative and head of the European Commission delegation to the African Union, a newly combined post.

This week that job went to European Commission insider Koen Vervaeke, a Belgian diplomat who has been serving European Union Secretary-General Javier Solana as advisor on African affairs and as head of the Africa Unit in the European Council's General Secretariat. Writing in the Independent last month, Henry Deedes raised the prospect that British EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson might block the Amos candidacy, due to wariness "of having a former Cabinet minister on his turf while he's in the middle of crunch trade talks with Africa."

Whatever the story, it is unlikely that this weekend's high-pressure job of representing Britain in Lisbon will be Valerie Amos's last high-profile engagement with African and development issues. In an interview at AllAfrica's Washington DC office last month, the baroness talked about her views and her motivations.

What are Africa's major challenges?

The challenges we face are global ones. They are not just challenges for the African continent; they are challenges that we have to face together. They are about issues of individual liberties versus collective security; about migration; about technological development; about governance; about the state of our planet in terms of the environment and climate and the whole subset of issues around poverty and HIV/Aids.

The challenge is fundamentally about how we, as different peoples, are going to live in the world in a state of peace and security. It sounds very motherhood and apple pie, but it is the thing that everyone in the world wants and that we have failed to secure or deliver.

But poverty has persisted in Africa, giving rise to theories that intrinsic factors – culture, competence, "readiness" for democracy – are to blame.

It's a philosophy that I don't accept. I think it is a debate that comes back and dogs our societies, time after time – a debate that is used to oppress peoples in the world. There are a whole range of reasons why countries on the African continent have been held back, which have to do with conflict, governance, politics, slavery, colonialism, imperialism. African peoples have historically been through a great deal in terms of slavery, imperialism, colonialism. But at the same time, there is the other side of the coin, which is the depth of history, tradition and culture. It is a complicated story and a complicated history, and I think that trying to simplify it in something like nature versus nurture, we are actually being intellectually lazy.

So what should friends of Africa do?

I don't have a definitive list of what should be done. We all come to these issues with different perspectives and different solutions. I think that sometimes when issues appear to be at their most challenging and their most difficult, that is the time to do something, because it is the point at which people want a resolution. Out of that you can find opportunity.


It is really important that we don't look at the continent as one undifferentiated body. There are differences within countries and between countries. I really worry about the way that the perception of the continent is infected by a kind of solid negativity – which is not just about the west looking in but also about Africans in the wider Diaspora looking back at their countries and being pretty negative about what is going on. We should do more to talk about the changes that have happened in the last few years, while, at the same time, being absolutely clear about the challenges which remain.

The third thing I would say is that it is really important to work in partnership with African peoples who have their own ideas about what they want and why they want it. Too often, we think that we can impose solutions. That is why I always say that finding ways to encourage participation and engagement within countries is so important – supporting not only the NGO community but also ordinary citizens.

You've been outspoken on including women among those participants, and you've just been speaking at a British Embassy-sponsored symposium on women's empowerment. What was it like?

The atmosphere was wonderful. It was one of those conferences where, at the end of the day, they had to keep turning the lights on and off because nobody wanted to leave. There's something that happens quite often at conferences about women. It's hard to explain, because you don't want to get into stereotyping, but very often the mood is different – very often there is a sense of support and solidarity which you don't necessarily get elsewhere. I think people were glad to come together to talk about women and leadership on the African continent and to talk about it in the context of a wider diaspora – how African women across the world contribute to the changes that are happening on the continent.

There was a lot of realism about the challenges and what they mean, but a lot of optimism too. A wonderful woman from Sierra Leone, who runs an organization called Fifty Fifty, was absolutely confident that the next president of Sierra Leone is going to be a woman. I think she got a lot of people who are going to help her campaign for the next elections!

Many countries are discussing gender quotas as a way to get more women into political leadership? How do you see that question?

In the UK, we would not have managed to get a critical mass of women into parliament unless the Labour Party had introduced something called "all-women short lists." Women were going for selection as members of parliament, and you would have maybe one woman on the shortlist with three or four men, and the women were not being selected. So we decided that for certain safe seats, where you would end up in parliament if you won the nomination, some of those seats would have women-only short lists .It was hugely controversial because someone always loses out, somebody local, who has watched this seat for a long time and who has felt: 'This is going to be mine'. The Labour Party was actually taken to court. But the proof of the success of the policy is the fact that in 1997 we managed to get over one hundred women into parliament for the first time. We would have never have had that without the policy of all-women short lists.

You have to look at quotas, you have to look at all-women short lists, you have to look at ways of supporting women financially – because they always have more trouble raising money than men do. You have to help women to be mentored, to give them training, and recognize that if we don't have adequate representation of women in parliament, we are denying a significant proportion of the population the right to be represented adequately.

More African-trained nurses and doctors, by far, are practicing outside Africa than in their home countries. How can the critical shortage of health professionals be addressed?

This is difficult for a range of reasons. It is difficult to tell people they can't migrate, because people are looking for better lives for themselves and their families. In addition, if you can migrate and feed an entire village, feed your family, educate your children, educate your brother's and sister's children, you will think about it seriously.

I think that we have to be more creative. We have to work on development, so that people's countries of origins become the places where people can make a decent living and where their children can be educated. We need to create the conditions where investment stays, as well. I am always astounded at the amount of capital flight out of the continent. Forty percent of Africa's resources held by Africans are overseas.

We need to be looking at things like helping countries overproduce doctors, teachers, nurses, and others, bearing in mind that some will migrate and others will stay. We have to look at it in the round.
Nigeria – for reasons of sheer size and wealth – is always an important discussion internationally. One current issue is corruption and the transfer of funds out of the country.

We've been pushed very hard by the Nigerian government in the past, where there was concern that assets which had been stolen from the people of Nigeria were laundered through financial institutions in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. I am very proud of the fact that my government passed legislation about stolen assets, whatever their source. It's now possible for governments outside of the UK to use that legislation to recover assets, where they can prove that those assets were stolen from the people of that country.


Part of the agenda is a wider issue of governance. I don't think it is just about corruption. I think it is about transparency and how governments hold themselves accountable. One of the ways in which that has been done in recent years is something called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, where companies investing in resource-rich, developing countries with oil sectors, mining, forestry and logging – that kind of thing – would declare what they are paying to governments for that privilege. Governments will also voluntarily make that information available to their citizens. That is the beginning of a process of becoming more transparent.

We recognize Nigeria's importance to the development of the continent as a whole. One in four Africans lives in Nigeria. It's a resource-rich country, as well as being a country where there are significant numbers of people still living in poverty. It's a country where, historically, there have been some very good examples of the way in which people of different religions have managed to live together but which have become much more polarized in the last few years.

I think we also recognize the importance – for Nigerians – of Nigeria working. Nigeria has not been an independent country for 50 years yet. So I think we should focus on supporting the positive and talking in robust terms, in private, about the things that we think need to be improved.

The Zimbabwe question continues to plague your policy makers.

It is a tragedy that we have a humanitarian crisis in a country like Zimbabwe. Britain are the second biggest donors to Zimbabwe, even today. Most of the money is spent tackling HIV/Aids and feeding vulnerable women and children. This is a country that is perfectly capable of producing enough food – not only for its population, but for the population in the surrounding region. The level of inflation, the humanitarian crisis, the abuse of human rights is a tragedy for the people of Zimbabwe, and we need to do something about it.

What is Britain's responsibility? We have a responsibility as an ex-colonizer, if you like. I think the support we are giving the people of Zimbabwe through our humanitarian program is a recognition of that. But because of the colonial history, the politics become skewed. So we have to look to others in the international community, and particularly those in southern Africa, as well as through the United Nations and through the European Union, to approach this as a collective response to the situation rather than Britain's response to the political situation.

Anyone who knows the strength of feeling in the United Kingdom about the humanitarian issues will understand the political pressures in the UK. The British prime minister thinks it is important that the European Union and the African Union have the possibility of dialogue and discussion. I hope that what will come out of the Summit will be some frank and open discussions about the situation in Zimbabwe and how the international community can engage in the issue. But there must be a wider EU-Africa agenda, so that everything that is happening on the African continent is not seen through the prism of Zimbabwe, which is what quite often happens.

Is this a moment of possibility in European African relations?

There is a real opportunity to transform the relationship between the countries that make up the African Union and the European Union and between the two institutions. I think it will be an immensely difficult job, because it is about managing such diverse and different relationships. But at the same time, I think that an agenda which has at its heart the issues around peace and security, sustainable development, migration, governance is one that is really worth fighting for.

What has kept you engaged with African issues throughout your career?

It has to be the people. This is a continent with people who are rich in terms of their diversity, their depth, their talent – and at the same time you see millions of people living in abject poverty who should not be. And I think that what draws me back, time and time again, is the miracle of the continent that gave us all life.

quote:

Originally posted by Rosita:

quote:

Originally posted by Dove:
Rosi, Women's History Month starts March 1st... save these and add their bios, or maybe Amral will bring up the thread started before like this one was... Thanks.

Yeppers Dovie, i got their pics save - i will dig up the bios for the next month.

...cool...

As Black History Month is coming to a close, here is an interesting link which covers the past, the present and hopefully the future.

http://www.blackvoices.com/black-history-month/darkest-...nts-in-black-history

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sunil:
Barack Obama: How I am still haunted by my father
By BARACK OBAMA - More by this author »

Last updated at 01:24am on 8th February 2008



Rise: Will Obama be the next U.S. President?
A few months after my 21st birthday, a stranger called to give me the news.


I was living in New York at the time, in a small apartment with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn't work.



The telephone line was thick with static.

"Barry? Barry, is this you? This is your Aunt Jane. In Nairobi. Can you hear me? Listen Barry, your father is dead. He was killed in a car accident."


That was all. The line cut off, and I sat down on the couch, smelling fried eggs burn in the kitchen, staring at cracks in the plaster, trying to measure my loss.

At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man.

He had left my mother and myself in Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old.

As a child, I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told.

They all had their favourites, each one seamless, burnished smooth from repeated use.

After each telling the stories would be packed away, like the few photographs of my father that remained in the house - old black and white studio prints that I might run across while rummaging through the closets in search of Christmas ornaments.

At the point where my own memories begin, my mother had already begun a courtship with the man who would become her second husband, and I sensed without explanation why the photographs had to be stored away.

But once in a while, sitting on the floor with my mother, the smell of dust and mothballs rising from the crumbling album, I would stare at my father's likeness and listen.

He was an African, I would learn, a Kenyan of the Luo tribe, born on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Scroll down for more...


Obama with his mother Ann and sister Maya

My father grew up herding his father's goats and attending the local school, set up by the British colonial administration, where he had shown great promise.

He eventually won a scholarship to study in Nairobi, and then was selected to attend university in the United States, being sent forth to master Western technology and bring it back to forge a new, modern Africa.

In 1959, at the age of 23, he arrived at the University of Hawaii as that institution's first African student. He studied econometrics, and graduated in three years at the top of his class.

In a Russian language course, he met an awkward, shy American girl, only 18, and they fell in love. The girl's parents, wary at first, were won over by his charm and intellect.

The young couple married, and she bore them a son. He won another scholarship to pursue his PhD at Harvard, but not the money to take his new family with him - or so I was told. A separation occurred, and he returned to Africa to fulfil his promise to the continent.

There the album would close, and I would wander off content, swaddled in a tale that placed me in the centre of a vast and orderly universe.

That my father looked nothing like the people around me - that he was black as pitch, my mother as white as milk - barely registered in my mind.

There was only one problem: my father was missing. Nothing my mother or grandparents told me could obviate that single, unassailable fact. Their stories didn't tell me why he had left. They couldn't describe what it might have been like if he had stayed.



Obama's father was killed in a car accident in Nairobi
Later, I'd become troubled by questions. Why didn't my father return? But at the age of five or six, I was satisfied to leave these distant mysteries intact.

I was too young to realise that I was supposed to have a live-in father, just as I was too young to know that I needed a race.

In 1960, the year that my parents were married, miscegenation - the interbreeding of races - was still described a felony in over half the states in the U.S.

In many parts of the South, my father could have been strung up a tree for merely looking at my mother the wrong way. Even in the more sophisticated northern cities, the hostile stares and whispers might have driven a woman in my mother's predicament into a backalley abortion.

Between the ages of six and ten, I lived in Indonesia where my mother had moved with her second husband.

When I was sent back to my grandparents in Hawaii for my education, I was greeted at school with a loud hoot from other pupils, like the sound of a monkey. A ruddy-faced boy asked me if my father ate people.

One day, I came across a picture in Life magazine of a black man who had tried to peel off his skin. He had received a chemical treatment, which went wrong, leaving him an uneven, ghostly hue.

I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation.

Perhaps it comes sooner for most - the parent's warning not to cross the boundaries of a particular neighbourhood, or the frustration of not having hair like Barbie no matter how long you tease and comb, or the tale of a father's humiliation at the hands of an employer or a cop, overheard while you're supposed to be asleep.

Maybe it's easier for a child to receive the bad news in small doses, allowing for a system of defences to be built up - although I suspect I was one of the luckier ones, having been given a stretch of childhood free from self-doubt.

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Promise: Obama's parents separated when he was just a baby


When I was ten, my father came back from Africa to visit us for Christmas. After a week of my father in the flesh, I decided that I preferred his more distant image, an image I could alter on a whim - or ignore when convenient. If my father hadn't exactly disappointed me, he remained something unknown, something volatile and vaguely threatening.

Like my mother, he had remarried, and I now had five brothers and one sister living in Kenya. There was so much to tell, so much explaining to do.

And yet when I reach back into my memory for the words of my father, the small interactions or conversations we might have had, they seem irretrievably lost.

I'm left with mostly images that appear and die off in my mind like distant sounds.

We stand together in front of the Christmas tree and pose for pictures, the only ones I have of us together, me holding an orange basketball, his gift to me, him showing off the tie I've bought him. He stayed a month, then he was gone.

The next five years were a placid time marked by the usual rites and rituals that America expects from its children, part-time jobs at the burger chain, acne and driving tests.


My mother separated from her Indonesian husband, Lolo, and returned to Hawaii with my sister, Maya, and I moved in with her.

I was also engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America. No one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.

The feeling that something wasn't quite right stayed with me, a warning that sounded whenever a white girl mentioned in the middle of conversation how much she liked Stevie Wonder, or when a woman in the supermarket asked me if I played basketball.

Where did I fit in? I grew tired of trying to untangle a mess that wasn't of my making.

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Through the years: Obama plays as a child

I learned not to care. Marijuana helped, and booze, maybe a little cocaine when you could afford it.

Not heroin, though - Micky, my potential initiator, had been just a little too eager for me to go through with that. Said he could do it blindfolded, but he was shaking like a faulty engine when he said it.

Maybe he was just cold, we were standing in a meat freezer in the back of the deli where he worked.

But he didn't look like he was shaking from the cold. Looked more like he was sweating, his face shiny and tight. He had pulled out the needle and the tubing, and I looked at him standing there, surrounded by big slabs of salami and roast beef, and right then an image popped into my head of an air bubble, shiny and round like a pearl, rolling quietly through a vein and stopping my heart.

Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.

The high could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. And if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bull**** and cheap moralism.

That's how it had seemed to me then, anyway. At the start of my senior year in high school, my mother marched into my room. My friend Pablo had been arrested.

I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry, I wouldn't do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned.

People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved - such a pleasant surprise to find a wellmannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time.

Except my mother hadn't looked satisfied. She had just sat there, studying my eyes, her face as grim as a hearse.

"Don't you think you're being a little casual about your future?" she said.

"One of your friends was just arrested for drug possession. Your grades are slipping. You haven't even started on your college applications."

My mother's worst fears didn't come to pass. In the end, I graduated without mishap, was accepted into several respectable schools, and settled on Occidental College in Los Angeles. I would go on to read law at Harvard.

Eventually, my mother - who died of ovarian cancer in 1995 - would tell me the truth about what had happened between her and my father.

"It wasn't your father's fault that he left, you know," she said.

"I divorced him. When we got married, your grandparents weren't happy with the idea, but came to feel it was the right thing to do.

"Then Barack's father - your grandfather Hussein - wrote Gramps this long, nasty letter saying that he didn't approve of the marriage. He didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman, he said. Well you can imagine how Gramps reacted to that.

"And then there was a problem with your father's first wife. He had told me that they were separated. But it was a village wedding, so there was no legal document that could show a divorce. She paused.

"Even then, it might have worked out. He received two scholarships, one in New York, which paid enough to support all three of us.

"Harvard had just agreed to pay tuition.

"'How can I refuse the best education?' he told me. That's all he could think about, proving that he was the best."

She stopped and laughed to herself.

"Did I ever tell you that he was late for our first date? He asked me to meet him in front of the university library at 1pm. When I got there he hadn't arrived. It was a nice day, so I laid out on one of the benches, and fell asleep.

"Well an hour later - an hour! - he shows up with a couple of his friends. I woke up and heard your father saying, serious as can be: 'You see, gentlemen. I told you that she was a fine girl, and that she would wait for me.'"

She saw my father as everyone hopes that at least one other person might see him. She had tried to help me, his son, see him in the same way.

And it was the look on her face that day that I would remember when a few months later, in 1982, I called to tell her that my father had died and heard her cry out over the distance.

I didn't go to the funeral, but later I would go to Kenya to meet the other half of my family. There, I would discover that after falling foul of the government and losing his job in the Ministry of Tourism, my father had descended into drink.

All my life, I had carried a single image of my father, one that I had sometimes rebelled against but had never questioned, one that I had later tried to take as my own.

The brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader - my father had been all of those things.

All those things and more, because except for that one brief visit in Hawaii, he had never been present to foil the image.

The fantasy of my father had at least kept me from despair. Now he was dead, truly. He could no longer tell me how to live.

A year after his death, I dreamt of him.

"Barack. I always wanted to tell you how much I love you," he said.

He seemed small in my arms now, the size of a boy. I awoke still weeping, my first real tears for him. I remembered his only visit, the basketball he had given me and how he had taught me to dance.

And I realised, perhaps for the first time, how even in his absence his strong image had given me some bulwark on which to grow up, an image to live up to, or disappoint.

"¢ Extracted and adapted by Zoe Brennan from Dreams From My Father: A Story Of Race And Inheritance by Barack Obama (Canongate).
/QUOTE]

Wow, quite riveting. Lake Victoria is where Mary Leakey found the fossilized remains of a 16-million-year-old skull. She and her family did much work in the surrounding areas to trace our earliest ancestors.

Originally Posted by TP

Postal honour for a woman who put her own stamp on Canada

TOM HAWTHORN
Special to The Globe and Mail
January 28, 2009

VICTORIA -- It was during a budget debate on agricultural estimates, of all things, when Rosemary Brown was interrupted by a woman's voice from the government benches.

"I wonder why that member doesn't go back to Jamaica!"

The ensuing bedlam included cries of "shame!" and "racist!" amid calls for order. In the shorthand of Hansard, the shouting from both sides was reduced to a decorous single word - "Interjections."

As New Democrats and Socreds exchanged accusations, Patricia Jordan, who spoke the offending words, denied having uttered a slur.

Such was the reception afforded Ms. Brown after more than a quarter-century in this land, a time during which she had distinguished herself by earning two university degrees, winning election to become the first black woman to sit in any Canadian legislature, and by leading the first serious national party leadership campaign by a woman under the cheeky slogan, "Brown is beautiful."

Even three decades after the raucous exchange in the B.C. Legislature on the afternoon of June 28, 1977, Ms. Brown's response to so provocative a taunt stands out for its understated eloquence.

"I am a Canadian," she said.

"This is my country," she added.

On Tuesday, her adopted land will honour the late activist by releasing a postage stamp with her image to mark Black History Month.

The stamp depicts Ms. Brown posed with arms crossed in front of the legislative building, inside which she was once told to return to the island of her birth.

She shares the postal honour with Abraham Doras Shadd, an American-born, 19th-century shoemaker and anti-slavery campaigner who aided escaping slaves as a "conductor" and "station master" on the Underground Railroad. He moved to North Buxton in Southern Ontario in 1851 and was elected to the Raleigh Township council eight years later, becoming the first black person to hold public office in Canada.

In philatelic lingo, the two form a pair of non-denominational permanent commemorative stamps. The post office is issuing two million panes of 16 stamps (that's eight each of Ms. Brown and Mr. Shadd on every pane).

Canada Post's program for the year includes stamps featuring ringette, five-pin bowling, roadside attractions, Bryan Adams, Stompin' Tom Connors, the centenary of the Montreal Canadiens, the Newfoundland pony, the International Year of Astronomy, and rhododendrons. With all due respect to Mr. Adams and his music, photography and charitable contributions, Ms. Brown will be by far the most remarkable British Columbian to grace an envelope this year.

Born in Jamaica in 1930, Rosemary Wedderburn lost her father at a young age and was raised by a grandmother of means. She left home to attend McGill University in Montreal, where she discovered a bigotry that was "polite, denied and accepted." No classmate was willing to share a dormitory room with her, and she later found difficulty in renting a room and finding work.

After marrying Dr. William Brown, she moved to the West Coast, where she earned a master's degree and worked as a social worker. In 1972, she won election in the dual-member riding of Vancouver-Burrard along with fellow social worker and New Democrat Norman Levi. Despite her dynamic personality and riveting speaking style, Ms. Brown was not invited by then-premier Dave Barrett into the province's first NDP cabinet.

Her demands for the creation of a women's ministry went unheeded by her male colleagues, although they did agree to fund rape crisis centres and battered-women's shelters.

Being a backbencher allowed her to run for the national party leadership in 1975, during which she shocked the NDP establishment by lasting until a fourth-ballot showdown against Ed Broadbent. The campaign made her a national figure.

The Barrett government was crushed at the polls that December, although Ms. Brown and Mr. Levi narrowly managed to hang onto their seats. The victorious Social Credit Party soon after had the electoral boundaries redrawn, eliminating their Vancouver riding. Ms. Brown managed to win re-election in nearby Burnaby.

A feminist and an advocate for visible minorities and the working poor, who count among themselves many women, Ms. Brown later became chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. She died in 2003, aged 72.

In recent years, awards have been created that carry her name. In 2005, a park in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Kitsilano was named for her. As well, a park near the Decarie Square shopping mall in Montreal bears her name. (Just around the corner are Rue Tommy-Douglas and Rue David-Lewis, the latter named after the NDP leader she came so close to succeeding.)

The green space has a playground, picnic tables and a bocce court. When it was renamed two years ago, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay said he hoped Parc Rosemary Brown Park would be a place of "openness, democracy and solidarity."

This province has a rich lore of black history, a story well told in Crawford Killian's Go Do Some Great Thing, which was released in a revised edition in November. Among the earliest settlers was a prosperous merchant named Mifflin Gibbs, who was elected to town council in Victoria. He also financed the Victoria Pioneer Rifles, British Columbia's first militia unit. Imagine the sight greeting American prospectors coming north to seek their fortune in the gold fields - a militia of free black men. This land would be different than that to the south.

The highlight of Ms. Brown's legislative career came three months after the "return to Jamaica" gibe. She pledged to do whatever possible to delay the Socreds' proposed elimination of a community welfare office. In her 1989 memoir, Being Brown, she described preparations for a filibuster: "I immediately focused on three things: Strengthening my legs so that I could stand for long periods of time, strengthening my voice so that it would survive long periods of speaking and increasing the ability of my bladder to retain fluid."

She managed to talk for nearly 16 hours over five days of the sitting of the legislature, a performance unmatched in recent annals.

Putting Rosemary Brown on a stamp is about the only way she could ever be licked.

tomhawthorn@gmail.com

The Globe & Mail

Blacks Built The Capitol By Dhanpaul Narine in the WEST INDIAN

America is up to its neck in debt. The government is split along party lines. Politics has been given a bad name. There is waste and the government is doing little to tackle it. Race has become a divisive issue and is at the heart of the debate regarding the future of America. In decision-making, Washington is suffering of the influence of the lobbyists and “backroom politics”. This sounds strikingly familiar today. But this was the description of America in 1790, only 14 years after the War of Independence.
Two hundred years later, some of the same issues of 1790 can be found in our country. President Barack Obama on his first day in power imposed rules to curb wage increases and the influence of lobbyists. After the pomp and fanfare of the inauguration of President Obama, it is important that we pause and take stock of the current situation. The present is tied to the past. As President Obama stood in the Capitol and spoke to millions, history has come full circle.
During the inauguration the Capitol was resplendent. Washington looked like a giant promenade on which stood thousands to witness history. In the old days slaves were bought and sold not far from where Presidents take the oath. The National Archives was formerly a slave market. Lincoln Park was founded in 1876 by freed slaves. It was Charlotte Scott who donated the first 5 dollars she earned as a free woman to build the park in the name of Lincoln.
The Capitol was built by slave labor. It was their blood, sweat and tears that made the “White House” white. George Washington wanted an imperial city with grand architecture. He wanted it to be finished quickly. If he failed the capital of the United States would be returned to Philadelphia. The agreement to establish America’s capital on the Potomac was as a result of a deal between Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. The First Secretary of the U.S. Treasury was Alexander Hamilton who was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis.
Hamilton rose to become one of the most influential persons in the United States of America before he fell to the bullet of Aaron Burr. The influence of the Caribbean was also prominent in the design of the Capitol building. These designs were drawn by William Thorton, a slave-owning abolitionist from the island of Tortola. The completion of the Capitol became a personal obsession of George Washington. He had the vision that the Capitol would become a great highway and a metropolis. But what was the role of blacks in the completion of the Capitol? It is well known that Benjamin Banneker was responsible for much of the architectural drawings of the Capitol. He was also famous for the many uses of peanuts and the almanacs.
According to historians, over a period of seventy years, slaves worked from dawn to dusk to make the nations capital a reality. They cleaned trenches and brush for the Mall and the Boulevards in Washington. They did not receive a fair day’s pay. However, the Germans and Irish immigrants were paid the princely sum of between 5 and 10 dollars a week for their labor.
On any given day slaves could be found in quarries digging trenches and ditches, pulling timber, cutting stones, and doing other manual work. Virginia was the largest slave holding state before the Civil War with a slave population of over 400,000. Maryland had a slave population of 100,000 while the District of Columbia had 3,000 slaves. It is generally agreed that the Capitol was built by a workforce that comprised slave labor.
The slaves were responsible for hauling bricks and for building foundations and walls. The lumber that were felled and sawed by slaves have held up the Capitol to this day. Where did the slaves come from? According to various records, they came from houses and farms in Virginia, Maryland and a District of Columbia. On the Capitol dome, there is an imposing 9ft-6 inch- statue. This is symbolic of freedom. How was the dome built? Its construction is part of a rich and fascinating story.
The plastic cast for the dome was cut in pieces in Rome but the trick was to fit the pieces and “bronze” them so that it could be hoisted onto the building. In order to accomplish this delicate operation, a slave named Phillip Reid figured out how to apply the bronze to the plaster. The story of Phillip Reid belongs to the tradition of great American biographies. Reid’s ancestors were Yorubas from Africa. They took pride in sculpture and metal casting. Reid was purchased as a slave by Clark Mills. He was the owner of a foundry that was given the contract to caste the statue of freedom on the capitol dome. The full-sized plaster model was completed in Rome by Thomas Crawford in 1856. In April 1858, the model left Rome for America on the ship “Emily Taylor”. The ship sprung a leak over the Atlantic and the statue had to be transferred to another ship in Bermuda.
The freedom statue was then transferred to Mills Foundry in Maryland but the workers there went on strike for higher wages. Time was running out for the installation. Clark Mills then turned to the slave who had been working alongside the foreman. He was Phillip Reid. The remaining casting of the statue was done in five sections, each weighing over a ton.
Under Reid’s supervision, the work was successfully completed and the statue was transported from Maryland to Washington in 1863. On December 2nd 1863, the statue of freedom was hoisted to the top of Capitol dome in the midst of great celebration. There was even a 23-gun salute to mark the event. The Capitol dome remains today the most prominently placed symbol of all in Washington and a testament to the contributions of slave labor to American heritage.

Congrats to Dhanpaul once again for a fine article.