I Didn't Ask For Any Lip
Ambrosia Wysinger Jones (b Aug 1905 - Sep 1999) Business owner who established Charm Beauty College in Oakland My mother's currency was hair. Juanita Cagney remodeled elder's naps and sweat flattened loops into bread, milk, cigarettes. On weekends, our kitchen was a revolving door of women getting press and curls, perms, cuts. Sparrows couldn't match …
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Jazz Vocalist Par Excellence Jimmy Scott (b. July 1925-June 2014) Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child has always been with us. When I looked up its origin, there was none. One day, it stood up on his hind legs in the distance and wailed. Its origin is America itself. Its an old, traditional spiritual …
Continue reading "BHM #8: SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A MOTHERLESS CHILD"
Judith Jamison (b. May 1943- Nov 2024) from 'Cry' circa 1971. Judith Jamison, Dancer and Choreographer with the Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe Jamison was from Philadelphia and stood tall at 5' 10". For 'Cry' she had to be sewn into her custom costume Watch a staging of Cry choreographed by Alvin Ailey for Judith Jamison, …
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One of the choir girls in my childhood church caught the Holy Spirit during service for the first time. "It was burning," she said surprised to be chosen and touched by hot fire stubbornly invisible and eternally curious. The Holy Spirit moves like a minister of smoke through the congregation, the church, touching people for …
Continue reading "BHM #4: BOB MARLEY MANIFESTS LIGHTNING AT THE ONE LOVE FESTIVAL, 1978"
Television was infected with TV Specials in the 70's. Any comic or singer worth a mic, who could fill a nightclub on a weekend night, would eventually be tossed an hour long TV Variety Show. Richard Pryor was becoming a huge presence on the standup circuit in the 70's and in May 1977, two years …
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Ola having tea on set of Michael Jackson's Thriller Consider Ola Ray / cover girl, model, Playboy centerfold, actress, monument to Black History. The God commissioned creme of her delicate and dreamy skin / a full galaxy thrives in her miracle reflecting eyes Ola Ray (b. 1960) as Classy Curl Model Attaché to male singers …
“He was more concerned about his mustache than his haircut. He always liked his mustache to be up off the lip, like a butterfly. He would tell me, make it like a butterfly this time.” Nelson Malden, MLK Jr.’s former barber Deputy US Marshal Bass Reeves (July 1838 to January 1910) Frederick Douglass (Feb …
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“No one can put a style on me. I've learned from many people. I change all the time. I experiment to keep up with what is going on, to hear what everybody else is doing. I even keep a little ahead of them, like a mirror that shows what will happen next.” —Mary Lou Williams …
This is the third blog I've had in about 20 years. With those first two, every February I'd challenge myself to write a biography or history one day for a month. It could be a fun exercise as a writer, especially when I'd get a day or so ahead of myself, and could post and …
Robert Hayden was one of the first poets whose work I was introduced to. Back in college, I wrote a paper on his poem, Those Winter Sundays. The Poem hit me close to home because one of the things it does successfully is underscore the tension between father and son, which I was experiencing a …
The Dirty Rat 