The private eye
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1047161895

The woman
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1047162732

the secretary
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1047163539

for the invitational
https://www.deviantart.com/xyron7777777/journal/Week-4-Folder-Open-AND-Poetry-Challenge-1044434074
 

The truth of law enforcement groups in the usa, is all have a history of severe abuses which when you parallel them to the crimes they prevent, i argue far outweighs what they prevent, sequentially making them dysfunctional. The tragedy is the populace in the usa who actually need aid by law enforcement is a fraction of a percentage of the whole but their mouthpiece is amplified by the communication channels of the wealthy in the usa who know false problems make great news. 

A police officer took a teen for a rape kit.

Then he assaulted her, too.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been accused of sexually abusing children over the past two decades, a Post investigation found

A teen who was sexually abused by a New Orleans police officer.

Story by Jessica Contrera, 

Jenn Abelson and 

John D. Harden

Updated March 14, 2024 at 5:54 p.m.Originally published March 14, 2024

The 14-year-old did not want to go to the emergency room. Her mother had begged her. Her therapist had gently prodded. And now there was a police officer in her living room.

“You really should think about it,” he said.

He introduced himself as Officer Rodney Vicknair. His New Orleans Police Department cruiser was waiting outside, ready to take her to the hospital for a rape kit. Early that morning, the girl said, a 17-year-old friend had forced himself on her.

Under the police department’s rules, a case like this was supposed to be handled from the start by a detective trained in sex crimes or child abuse. But on this afternoon in May of 2020, it was Vicknair, a patrol officer with a troubled past, who knocked on the girl’s door.

He tried to coax her into changing her mind. “If I’m a young man that has done something wrong to a young lady and she doesn’t follow up and press the issue,” Vicknair said as his body camera recorded the conversation, “then I’m gonna go out and do it to another young lady.”

“And it’s gonna be worse, maybe, the next time,” Vicknair said, “because I’m gonna think in my head, ‘Oh, I got the power. I can go further this time.’ ”

The girl didn’t want that. She just wanted this to be over.

She didn’t know it was only the beginning. Four months later, police would arrest a man for sexually assaulting the girl. But it wouldn’t be her teenage friend. It would be Officer Rodney Vicknair.

The day the 14-year-old met 53-year-old Vicknair was the day the officer began a months-long grooming process, prosecutors would allege. Within hours of meeting the girl, Vicknair wrapped his arm around her while they took a selfie. He let her play with his police baton. He joked with her about “whipping your behind.” He showed her multiple photos of a young woman dressed only in lingerie.

Officer Vicknair talks to teen at the hospital

0:23

The Washington Post blurred the teen’s face to protect her identity. (Obtained by The Washington Post)

Americans have been forced to reckon with sexual misconduct committed by teachers, clergy, coaches and others with access to and authority over children. But there is little awareness of child sex crimes perpetrated by members of another profession that many children are taught to revere and obey: law enforcement.

A Washington Post investigation has found that over the past two decades, hundreds of police officers have preyed on children, while agencies across the country have failed to take steps to prevent these crimes.

At least 1,800 state and local police officers were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022, The Post found.

Abusive officers were rarely related to the children they were accused of raping, fondling and exploiting. They most frequently targeted girls who were 13 to 15 years old — and regularly met their victims through their jobs.

The Post identified these officers through an exclusive analysis of the nation’s most comprehensive database of police arrests at Bowling Green State University, as well as a review of thousands of court documents, police decertification records and news reports.

In case after case, officers intentionally earned the trust of parents and guardians, created opportunities to get kids alone and threatened repercussions for broken silence. Unlike teachers and priests, they did it all while wielding the power of their badges and guns.

Chuck Wexler, who leads the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement policy and training organization, said the number of officers charged with these crimes is “very troubling.”

“Whatever we can do to prevent this and hold those accountable will help restore the trust in the police,” Wexler said.

But while many school systems and churches have created practices and policies to root out predators, law enforcement agencies have largely treated child sexual abuse as an isolated problem that goes away when an officer is fired or prosecuted — rather than an always-present risk that requires systemic change.

There is no national tracking system for officers accused of child sexual abuse. At a time when police departments across the country face staffing shortages and are desperate to hire, there are no universal requirements to screen for potential perpetrators. When abuse is suspected, officers are sometimes allowed to remain on the job while investigations of their behavior are left in the hands of their colleagues.

In the New Orleans Police Department, child sexual abuse has been a problem before. The city recently paid $300,000 to settle a lawsuit over its 1980s Police Explorers program led by a lieutenant who was accused of sexually exploiting 10 boys. The case was investigated by the head of NOPD’s juvenile sex crimes unit — who in 1987 was convicted of child sex crimes, too.

In more recent years, two officers remained on the force after they were accused of abusing young girls. Then they sexually assaulted other children. They are among six NOPD officers who have been convicted of crimes involving child sexual abuse since 2011.

Vicknair is the latest. His case reflects larger problems that police departments confront in conducting background checks, identifying red flags and responding to complaints of inappropriate behavior. To reconstruct what happened in New Orleans, The Post obtained hundreds of internal law enforcement records, hours of video footage and dozens of text messages.

Vicknair was hired in 2007 despite a record that included multiple arrests and a conviction for battery on a juvenile. His sexually charged interactions with the girl he drove to the hospital, though witnessed by another officer, went unreported to superiors. He frequently visited the girl’s home in the summer of 2020, telling new cops he was training that they should stay in the car while he went inside alone. And when concerns about Vicknair’s behavior were reported to the department, police officials allowed him to remain on duty for a week. During that week, the girl said, Vicknair sexually assaulted her.

Reached by phone last year, Vicknair declined to comment for this story. In November of 2022, he pleaded guilty to violating the girl’s civil rights, admitting that he locked her in his truck and touched her under her clothing.

The city of New Orleans and its police department also declined to discuss the case with The Post, citing pending litigation. The victim and her mother filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and its superintendent of police in 2021.

In court filings, the city has repeatedly denied that the police department is responsible for the girl’s abuse, arguing that Vicknair was not on duty at the time of the assault he pleaded guilty to and was not acting on behalf of NOPD “while performing any of the inappropriate actions alleged against him.”

Soon, the case will go before a jury. A trial over what, if anything, the girl is owed by NOPD was scheduled to begin March 18. But hours after The Post published this story online, a judge ordered that the trial be delayed.

With the permission of the victim and her mother, The Post is identifying the girl only by her middle name, Nicole.

At 14, Nicole was barely 100 pounds. She hadn’t yet gotten braces. A large stuffed giraffe still watched over her bedroom.

She’d spent her preteen years in custody battles between divorced parents, in a domestic violence shelter with her mom and in a hospital for self-harm. She believed all adults just wanted to tell her what to do. But on the day Vicknair persuaded her to go to the emergency room and then sat with her and her mother for hours, Nicole felt like he actually wanted to listen.

“If you ever just want to shoot, talk, text me,” he told her as his body camera continued recording. “You having problems, just need somebody to talk to, if I’m working I’ll come swing by and talk to ya, okay? ... We’ll go get some ice cream in McDonald’s or something.”

Nicole saved Vicknair’s number in her phone as “Officer Rodney.”

“Now hit call so I know it’s you and I can save you as a contact,” Vicknair said before leaving. He lifted his phone and aimed his camera down at her. Her bare legs were dangling off the hospital bed.

“No,” Nicole objected, raising her hand to block his view.

Vicknair took the picture anyway. “There we go,” he said. “Perfect.”

icole was just a year old when Vicknair applied for the job that would make it possible for him to meet her and other children.

“I always wanted to be a police officer in New Orleans,” Vicknair wrote on his NOPD application in 2006. “I truly love helping + serving my community.”

He was far from the typical police recruit. He’d worked as an EMT and a hospital security guard, but he was about to turn 40 — an age that would have disqualified him from joining some departments at the time. At 5-foot-11, he weighed 237 pounds. He had lifelong tremors that regularly made his hands shake.

A department spokesperson told The Post that, today, NOPD has some of the most stringent hiring requirements in the state of Louisiana. Since entering into a consent decree with the Justice Department in 2012, NOPD has been working to reform its policies and practices.

But at the time Vicknair applied, NOPD was in disarray following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Public outcry over officers’ actions had resulted in intense scrutiny from the outside and low morale on the inside. Recruiters needed to find people willing to wear the badge. According to the Justice Department, NOPD began lowering hiring standards and performing less rigorous background checks.

In his application, Vicknair disclosed to the department that he’d previously been charged with disturbing the peace and aggravated assault. Just the year before he applied, deputies from the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office were called when Vicknair reportedly brandished a knife at his ex-girlfriend and beat a man she was dating.

Citing the “potential for future violence, as well as threats made by Mr. Vicknair in the presence of deputies,” law enforcement seized Vicknair’s knife and his gun before taking him to jail, according to a police report included in his background check.

The charges were eventually dropped. Vicknair’s ex-girlfriend, Denise Trower, told The

that she asked authorities to stop pursuing the case because she was afraid of what Vicknair might do if she didn’t. During their relationship, she said, Vicknair choked her and held a loaded gun to her head.

“He had threatened that he would make sure somebody did something to my son,” Trower said.

Without calling Trower to learn more about what happened, the NOPD background investigator wrote that the arrest “should not reflect poorly” on Vicknair’s application.

The incident was not the only time Vicknair had been charged with a serious crime. In 1987, he was convicted in Ascension Parish of simple battery on a juvenile — a part of his past he did not disclose to NOPD. He was sentenced to $50 in fines or 10 days in jail.

Three of Vicknair’s family members told The Post that he was charged after he had what they described as a sexual relationship with a minor. Vicknair was 20 years old. The girl, whom The Post is not identifying, was a preteen at the time. She did not respond to interview requests.

There is no indication that the background investigator looked into the simple battery conviction; he didn’t appear to know it existed. Though The Post obtained a record of Vicknair’s conviction from the court, the background investigator reported in his notes that Vicknair had no criminal record in Ascension Parish.

Records show the NOPD background investigator also did not contact anyone in Vicknair’s family.

Vicknair’s sister, Kim Vogel, said that if she had been contacted, she would have told the department not to hire her brother. She described him as loyal, generous and eager to help other people. But she also said his history of anger and violence still gives her nightmares.

“I don’t think he should have been a police officer, and I hate even bringing that out there,” Vicknair’s sister said. “But I also blame that on the police department, because I know they do background checks, they do psychological tests and all that. And they missed all of it.”

Vicknair did undergo a computerized voice-stress analysis, a type of lie detector test.

“Did you intentionally withhold any information from your employment application?” the examiner asked.

Vicknair answered no. The NOPD investigator rated his application as “acceptable.” He was hired onto the force in March 2007.

During the next 12 years, he was internally investigated for allegations of misconduct a dozen times, according to NOPD records.

In eight of the cases, which included accusations of unauthorized force, theft of $1,000 and drug possession, the department found no evidence of misconduct, could not determine whether the wrongdoing occurred or deemed his actions justified. Vicknair was not disciplined.

Records show he was formally punished twice for reckless driving and twice for acting inappropriately toward women who claimed he had mocked or harassed them while on duty. The most severe consequence he received was a five-day suspension.

In 2016, he was promoted to become a mentor to new officers while he patrolled the neighborhood where he would meet Nicole.

After the swabbing was over, after she stopped hyperventilating, after she stayed at the hospital to ensure she didn’t hurt herself, Nicole was discharged. Then she called Officer Vicknair.

“Let me know when back home and I’ll come check on you,” Vicknair texted the 14-year-old on May 26, 2020. He’d started messaging her the night he met her, by sending a GIF of a waving puppy.

In the weeks that followed, he began showing up at her house in uniform. He’d sip a Dr Pepper while talking about the headlines on Fox News. He’d lecture Nicole about staying out of trouble.

Nicole’s mother, Rayne, witnessed it all. Rayne — The Post is identifying her by her first name to protect Nicole’s privacy — had grown up with a sheriff’s deputy for a grandfather. She trusted law enforcement and raised her daughter to feel the same way.

So Rayne encouraged Vicknair to follow up on his idea to take Nicole out for ice cream. She called him when Nicole was having a breakdown. She invited him to visit Nicole on her 15th birthday.

Rayne didn’t worry when she discovered that the 53-year-old officer was talking to her daughter on the phone late at night that summer. She was grateful that Nicole, who had become silent and surly in the weeks following her sexual assault report, was finally opening up to someone. Someone who could be a role model.

“She would be like, ‘Oh, I had the best talk with Rodney last night, Mom. He’s so nice,’” Rayne remembered.

The interest Vicknair was taking in her daughter was so different from how NOPD first responded. On the morning in May when Rayne discovered her daughter on the couch with her 17-year-old friend, two other patrol officers were the first to be dispatched to a report of attempted rape at her house.

It was 5:21 a.m. The teenage boy had already fled. Records show the officers spent 11 minutes at the house before leaving. They appeared to take no further action.

Their response was exactly what the federal government had spent years trying to fix at NOPD. As a part of the 2012 consent decree, the Justice Department’s investigators found that officers were repeatedly mishandling reports of sexual assault. NOPD’s investigations were “seriously deficient, marked by poor victim interviewing skills, missing or inadequate documentation, and minimal efforts to contact witnesses or interrogate suspects.”

Years later, NOPD’s special victims unit continued to be understaffed and overwhelmed. According to a recent Justice Department report, the unit closed out 3 percent of cases in 2022.

Several hours after the first officers left Nicole’s house, her therapist called to report the assault a second time. NOPD sent Vicknair and two other patrol officers to her house. Then a special victims detective, Kimberly Wilson, arrived. Body-camera footage shows she spent a total of four minutes with Nicole before saying she had somewhere else to be.

She left Vicknair and another officer to drive and sit with the teen at the hospital. Wilson stopped by later that afternoon, but didn’t interview Nicole until two days later.

“I told him to stop,” Nicole said about the 17-year-old. “He said ... ‘No, let me get it over with.’ ”

Wilson declined to comment on her investigation. There is no record that Wilson ever interviewed the 17-year-old, and it is unclear from the case file whether Nicole’s rape kit DNA was tested by the crime lab.

Instead of progress in her case, Nicole got visits from Vicknair.

The first time Vicknair came over when her mother wasn’t home, Nicole remembered, he asked if she owned any booty shorts.

“What was running through my mind at that time was ‘Oh, he’s just a guy,’ ” Nicole said. “You know, that’s how guys think.”

The more he came over and called, the more he learned about what Nicole had been through in her life. Rayne told the officer that her daughter was the “textbook poster child for daddy issues.” Nicole told him about sneaking into bars on Bourbon Street while her mom worked nights — and about the older men who bought her drinks there.

Vicknair began warning her, Nicole said later, that he could report her mom for child endangerment and get her thrown in jail. He told Nicole he could arrest anyone. He whacked her with his baton.

She’d been taught to be afraid of strangers who might want to kidnap her, not adults in positions of authority who increasingly tested her boundaries.

So she told no one when Vicknair’s texts shifted from “Lion King” GIFs to tongue emojis. Or when he confided in her about his own childhood trauma, then asked her to send nudes. Or when he went from telling her he wanted to touch her to actually doing it.

“I passed your house earlier,” Vicknair texted Nicole on Sept. 7, three and a half months after he met her.

“Stalker,” she replied.

“You like it,” he texted back.

Later, she would wish she had told him to leave her alone. “I just kept going along with shit,” Nicole remembered. “He knew where we lived, you know?”

Vicknair would admit to investigators after he was arrested that he visited Nicole at her house at least a dozen times.

But it wasn’t anyone within NOPD who raised concerns about Vicknair’s behavior. It was Nicole’s mother, who in September found a photo on her daughter’s phone. In it, Vicknair’s tattooed arms were wrapped around Nicole, pressing the back of her body into the front of his.

Nicole told her mom only that Vicknair once followed her in his police cruiser while she was on a run, yelling “Nice ass!” out the window. Rayne consulted with Nicole’s therapist. They both worried there was more going on.

How, Nicole’s mother began to wonder, do you report the police to the police?

On Friday, Sept. 18, 2020, nearly four months after Vicknair met Nicole, the head of the New Orleans Police Department received a text.

“It’s about potential sexual abuse of a minor by an officer,” read the message to then-Superintendent Shaun Ferguson.

The text was sent by Susan Hutson, then the city’s independent police monitor, a civilian oversight agency created after Hurricane Katrina. Hutson’s job included listening to citizens’ complaints about police and trying

When the interview was over, investigators did not immediately seek a warrant for Vicknair’s arrest. Instead, they asked Nicole to call the officer who she had just said assaulted her — and ask him if he would do it again.

She was deeply uncomfortable. But she did as she was told. She pulled up “Officer Rodney” on her phone.

[Excerpt from call]

Nicole:

Can we do what we did in your truck again?

Vicknair:

Um.

In the background, a girl’s voice can be heard saying, ‘Love you, Dad!’

Nicole:

Can we?

Vicknair:

I don’t know if it’s your phone or my phone, it’s breaking up.

[Vicknair ended the call.]

Vicknair already knew that Nicole was going to the child advocacy center for a forensic interview that day. Nicole told him the interview was about another man, one she’d met on Bourbon Street.

Now, Nicole feared, Vicknair knew what was going on.

Less than an hour after Vicknair hung up on Nicole, he got into his Toyota Tundra, the same vehicle Nicole said she’d been assaulted in two nights earlier. He was followed by an officer who’d been sitting outside his house, conducting surveillance.

The officer quickly lost sight of Vicknair’s truck.

When the truck returned, it was gleaming, with fresh gloss on the tires and exterior. The officer wrote in his surveillance report that it appeared Vicknair had gone to get his vehicle detailed.

If there was any evidence — or underwear — remaining in the truck, it had just been washed away.

to get something done about them.

Often, that meant contacting NOPD’s version of internal affairs, known as the Public Integrity Bureau. While some police departments turn to outside agencies to conduct investigations when one of their officers is suspected of committing a serious crime, NOPD investigates its own.

Hutson notified Ferguson and then-integrity bureau leader Arlinda Westbrook that same Friday evening. Sgt. Lawrence Jones, a criminal investigator with the public integrity bureau, did not begin looking into Vicknair until the following Monday, Sept. 21. (Jones and Westbrook did not respond to interview requests from The Post. Ferguson, who retired in 2022, declined to comment.)

Jones first spoke with Nicole and her mother that Monday. Sitting in on the call was Stella Cziment, the deputy police monitor at the time.

Listening to Nicole talk, Cziment later told The Post, she could tell the girl was afraid to speak honestly about Vicknair. She called him her friend, and was clearly trying to protect him. They weren’t certain that sexual abuse had already occurred. But the red flags about the officer’s behavior were obvious, Cziment said. She assumed that NOPD would act to remove Vicknair from duty as quickly as possible.

“What we were scared of was the amount of access he had to the child,” Cziment said.

But Vicknair was not removed from active duty that day, even after Jones, the investigator, visited Nicole’s house and saw the photo of Vicknair, in uniform, pressing Nicole into his body and texts in which the officer called her sweetie, honey, buttercup, baby girl and boo.

Vicknair remained on patrol the next day, even after Jones reviewed the body-camera footage from when Vicknair took Nicole to the hospital and showed her photos of a nearly naked woman.

The entire week, Vicknair kept his job, his badge, his gun. Not until Friday, Sept. 25, seven days after the text to the head of police, was Nicole interviewed by someone specially trained in child abuse at the New Orleans Child Advocacy Center.

“I try to keep him happy,” Nicole told the forensic interviewer, according to a videotaped recording obtained by The Post. “He’s a cop, so it’s not like he’s going to get in trouble for any of this.”

The last time she’d seen Vicknair, she said, was just two days earlier. He’d come to her house while on duty, then returned after his shift. She went out to his truck and got inside.

“Did something happen?” the interviewer asked.

Nicole squirmed in her chair, her Converse high-tops shaking.

“I just can’t say it,” she said.

“I’m not gonna put words in your mouth,” the interviewer said.

“Fine,” Nicole said. “He stuck his finger in my, in my — ”

She pointed downward. At 15, she was too embarrassed to name her own body parts. The interviewer asked her one more time, and then her story came rushing out. How weird it felt. How scared she was.

She tried to hug him goodbye, she said, but then, “He stuck his finger in one more time and was like, ‘Just one more taste.’ ”

That night in Vicknair’s truck, Nicole said, he asked her for a favor. He wanted to keep her underwear.

He still had them, she said.

By 2 a.m. the next day, Vicknair was inside an interview room, handcuffed to a table.

“Rodney, first of all, I want to thank you for sitting down and talking with us,” said Jones, seated across from his colleague.

“I didn’t have much choice,” Vicknair balked.

Sheriff’s deputies had knocked on the door of Vicknair’s home just before 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 26.

Vicknair came out in only his boxer briefs and lit a cigarette. He kept smoking as they cinched cuffs behind his back.

When he learned during his recorded interview that his arrest was related to Nicole, he laughed.

“On her?” he said. “Okay.”

Over the next hour and a half, Vicknair switched between denials and explanations for what he couldn’t deny. Yes, he’d gone to Nicole’s house just before midnight two nights earlier — but only because she’d asked him to sniff her to see if she smelled like weed, he said. Yes, he had sexual photos of her on his phone — but he’d only taken screenshots of her Snapchats “in case something ever did happen,” he said. Yes, he told her which of her thongs were his favorite and that she had “a nice ass for your age.”

“If that was inappropriate, then so be it. It was inappropriate,” he said. “But there was never nothing sexual.”

Vicknair was adamant that he did not penetrate her or take her underwear.

“I care about her the same way I cared about several other girls and boys that I’ve given my business cards to and talked to them,” Vicknair said.

He accused Jones of trying to “make a case or something of a disturbed child.”

“The issue is that we have a 52-year-old, 15-year, veteran police officer who’s seeing … this 15-year-old girl regularly,” Jones said.

“That ain’t nothing,” Vicknair said. “I talk to a lot of younger people four or five times a week.”

At no point during the interview did Jones ask for the names of the other young people Vicknair claimed to be talking to, including a runaway girl he mentioned specifically. There is no indication in the internal case records that NOPD ever conducted a review of other children Vicknair had interacted with.

“We just hope,” Jones told Vicknair, “none of them come calling here.”

Charged with sexual battery, indecent behavior with a juvenile and malfeasance in office, Vicknair spent a week in jail before posting a $55,000 bond.

He submitted a letter of resignation to the police department in January 2021.

His wife of five years filed for divorce. He suffered three heart attacks and a stroke.

The Justice Department, which took over his prosecution from Orleans Parish, charged him with deprivation of rights under the color of law, the same federal charge often filed against officers who use excessive force. In November 2022, Vicknair agreed to plead guilty.

In his plea, he signed a statement admitting that he made sexual comments, requested and received sexually explicit photos and touched Nicole’s genitals under her clothing without her consent inside his locked vehicle.

In exchange, prosecutors asked the judge to send him to prison for seven years.

On March 8, 2023, Vicknair shuffled into a federal courthouse for his sentencing hearing using a cane. For the first time since the night in his truck, he was in the same room as Nicole.

She was 17 years old. She wouldn’t stick with therapy. She and her mother fought so often that she’d moved with a boyfriend to California. There, she reasoned, she would never have to see an NOPD cruiser again.

She spent her days sleeping and watching documentaries about sex crimes and murders, telling herself that what happened to her wasn’t as bad as what happens to other girls. She spent her nights playing “Call of Duty” online with strangers, nearly all of them boys and men. She shot and swore and screamed at them, and reminded herself that none of them knew where she lived.

“Is there something you would like to say to the court?” the judge, Lance Africk, asked her.

She stood at a microphone in a stiff white button-down shirt she’d purchased just hours before. She hoped it would make the judge take her seriously.

All day, people had been telling her how “strong” she was. She thanked them, saying nothing about her recurring nightmare in which uniformed, tattooed arms were wrapping around her again. Or the knife she kept in her closet in case they ever did.

“To her, he appears as a helping hand, but little does she know he had other plans,” Nicole said, reading a poem she’d written as her victim impact statement.

Vicknair, coughing behind a mask, was watching her.

“He tears her down and makes her suffer, yet she comes out 10 times tougher. Now every night the light stays on, scared he will return. She hopes he has had a change in heart and that he has learned.”

The judge told her she was strong. He told her mother not to feel guilty. Then he began to narrate, in graphic detail, everything Vicknair had done to Nicole.

“I guess he was thinking: Who is going to believe a 14- or 15-year-old over me, a New Orleans police officer?” the judge said. “He served himself, not this young, trusting child.”

But the child he was talking about was no longer there. The moment the judge began describing it all again, Nicole ran out of the courtroom in tears.

While she hovered over a bathroom sink, trying not to vomit, the judge announced that he was refusing to accept the plea. He believed seven years was not enough time. He told both sides to come back the next week.

When they did, Africk agreed to a new deal. He sentenced Vicknair to prison for 14 years, Nicole’s age when he met her.

Two months later, Nicole was scrolling on her phone when she started to shake. She rubbed her eyes, thinking she must be imagining the notification that had just appeared on her screen.

A Snapchat account with a familiar name was trying to contact her.

A bitmoji of a dark-haired man was waving at her, surrounded in confetti.

“Officer Rodney,” the notification said, “added you as a friend.”

Vicknair was not yet in prison. The judge had granted him time to seek medical care before he turned himself in.

Vicknair’s heart problems had become something more. After he was sentenced, doctors had discovered a fast-growing tumor in his brain. It appeared that Vicknair was trying to contact Nicole from his hospital bed. She did not reply.

Vicknair had two brain surgeries before his brother and ex-wife drove him to Massachusetts to report to federal prison. He continued to deny to his family members that he had sexually abused Nicole. He continued to be paid police retirement benefits of more than $2,700 per month, records show. Louisiana has no law that automatically disqualifies police officers convicted of serious crimes from receiving their pensions.

Days after Nicole’s 18th birthday, Vicknair was rolled into prison in a wheelchair.

Most of his sentence was spent at a federal prison medical facility in North Carolina, where he received chemotherapy and radiation.

He served less than six months. Vicknair died on Jan. 1, 2024.

Nicole was at a restaurant in California when she heard the news from an attorney in her civil rights lawsuit. She wanted to feel relieved. Instead, she kept thinking about how little time Vicknair served. And how, before he died, he’d given a deposition in her civil case. Under oath, he returned to denying that he’d ever assaulted her.

Now, it felt like not a single adult was taking responsibility for what happened to her. If she gave up her lawsuit against the city, no one ever would.

She’d already endured a day-long deposition in December, when an attorney representing New Orleans asked her questions such as, “Was there any sexual meaning to him hitting you with the baton?” In January at a settlement conference, she listened to the lawyers debate just how much her trauma was worth.

The same city that had once charged Vicknair with sexual battery and malfeasance in office was now claiming his assault was “wholly unrelated” to his job.

But a judge disagreed, ruling in February that the city was, in fact, liable for Vicknair’s actions. It would still be up to a jury to decide how much New Orleans owed Nicole — and whether NOPD was at fault for hiring Vicknair in the first place.

As the March trial date crept closer, Nicole’s stomach started to ache. The pain kept getting worse, until it was so agonizing that she couldn’t sleep. But for days, she refused to go to the emergency room.

When she finally gave in, she reminded herself that this ER was different. That she was no longer 14. That Vicknair was not beside her. She still hyperventilated through every exam.

She learned that what could have been a relatively minor issue had become a serious kidney infection. It would take weeks for her to recover.

While she waited for the pain to ebb, her attorneys in New Orleans prepared for her trial by deposing the city’s police officials. Why, they asked, had the city hired someone with a history of arrests? Why had no one flagged an officer repeatedly returning to the home of a child who had reported a sexual assault? Why hadn’t Vicknair been pulled from active duty as soon as the photo surfaced of his body pressed against Nicole’s?

They wanted to understand what NOPD was doing to ensure that what happened to Nicole didn’t happen to another child. But when the sergeant in charge of all department policies was asked that question, he could not cite a specific policy or training method that had changed because of the case.

“You don’t know of anything NOPD has done differently,” the attorney confirmed, “to prevent another Officer Vicknair?”

The sergeant’s answer was one word:

“Correct.”

URL

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2024/new-orleans-police-child-sexual-abuse-rodney-vicknair/

King of Dead Horses Ring

coloring page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/The-King-Of-Dead-Horses-Ring-b-w-997831321
adoptable page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/The-King-Of-Dead-Horses-Ring-adoptable-997831587

Who is the First Woman? Meet our new graphic novel hero!
Artemis [ https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/ ] is the first step in the next era of human exploration. This time when we go to the Moon, we’re staying, to study and learn more than ever before. We’ll test new technologies and prepare for our next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars. 

With today’s release of our graphic novel First Woman: NASA’s Promise for Humanity [ https://www.nasa.gov/CallieFirst/ ; free to read: ] you don’t have to wait to join us on an inspiring adventure in space.

Meet Commander Callie Rodriguez, the first woman to explore the Moon – at least in the comic book universe.

In Issue No. 1: Dream to Reality, Callie, her robot sidekick RT, and a team of other astronauts are living and working on the Moon in the not-too-distant future. Like any good, inquisitive robot, RT asks Callie how he came to be – not just on the Moon after a harrowing experience stowed in the Orion capsule – but about their origin story, if you will.

From her childhood aspirations of space travel to being selected as an astronaut candidate, Callie takes us on her trailblazing journey to the Moon.

As they venture out to check on a problem at a lunar crater, Callie shares with RT and the crew that she was captivated by space as a kid, and how time in her father’s autobody shop piqued her interest in building things and going places.

Callie learned at a young age that knowledge is gained through both success and failure in the classroom and on the field.

Through disappointment, setbacks, and personal tragedy, Callie pursues her passions and eventually achieves her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut – a road inspired by the real lives of many NASA astronauts living and working in space today.

Callie''s official page
free to read or listen
https://www.nasa.gov/CallieFirst/

Video Trailer

First Book Audio
 

URL
https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/663314232247549952/who-is-the-first-woman-meet-our-new-graphic-novel

Episode 2 cover page, use links above to read or listen to more

Ask Mission Control agents a question
https://nasa.tumblr.com/ask
more about them

Weed Gone Wild: 34 Cannabis Shops — But Just One Licensed — on the Lower East Side
New York’s marijuana legalization was supposed to bring order and justice to the market. Instead, one year later, it’s created a confusing potpourri of vendors.
BY ROSALIND ADAMS 
JAN. 5, 2024, 6:00 A.M.

A map shows unlicensed Lower East Side cannabis shops near state sanctioned smoke shop Conbud. Credit: Illustration by Naomi Otsu

This article is a collaboration between New York Magazine and THE CITY.

On a recent Friday afternoon, a line of people wrapped around a corner of Delancey Street waiting for a turn to get into Conbud, one of the city’s 15 legal weed dispensaries. It’s the kind of scene New York State lawmakers imagined would be commonplace when they legalized cannabis in March 2021: customers neatly queuing up at a limited number of suppliers. 

But instead such crowds are a rarity outside Conbud, and this particular one wasn’t even there for the weed. People were there to see Mike Tyson, the boxer, who grinned and flexed with fans inside to promote the New York launch of his cannabis brand. 

On line, I met Vinay, 23, who had invited a group of his college buddies to the event. “My roommate sent me the email, and my friends are in town, so why not?” Vinay told me. “We love weed, and Mike Tyson is cool,” one of his friends interjected. 

While we chatted, dispensary staff moved through the line with iPads to take orders (a purchase was required to snap a photo with Tyson). Vinay told me he had never been to Conbud before. He said he usually bought weed from one of the smoke shops a couple blocks away on Clinton Street. None of those are licensed to sell cannabis products, though. When I mentioned this, Vinay shrugged.

“I guess if I knew it was illegal, I wouldn’t go, but you don’t realize,” he said. 

There are, in fact, only 43 legal retailers across the state, including delivery operations — and they are all run by people impacted by cannabis charges. When lawmakers legalized pot, they intended to give those harmed by prohibition a head start in the market. But a year after the first legal store debuted near Astor Place, the pace of licensed dispensary openings has been painstakingly slow. 

Just to open their doors, legal dispensaries had to overcome a gamut of regulatory hurdles that came with a steep price tag. Anthony Crapanzano, who has a dispensary license in Staten Island, said he has racked up about $1.6 million in expenses so far, including $200,000 in legal fees, and is still not open. Coss Marte, the owner of Conbud, said he’s spent more than $1 million getting ready to open. 

Once in business, state-approved weed shops can only carry products cultivated by New York farmers and are subject to strict regulations on how they market their goods. Neon colors, bubble letters, and colloquial references to cannabis itself are barred from store advertisements. Everything must be tested — and taxed.

While the cannabis-impacted entrepreneurs waded through Albany’s new marijuana bureaucracy, an estimated thousands of unlicensed smoke shops popped up in New York City. Because there’s little oversight, the exact number remains unclear. Around Conbud alone, rival smoke shops and weed bodegas line the blocks, flouting the rules with their white fluorescent lights and bright signage that make them so instantly recognizable as cannabis stores with names like Zaza City and Smoke Kave.

These unlicensed shops can be cheap and easy to set up (some keep just a small amount of product in the store in case they’re raided). And unlike their legal counterparts, the unlicensed stores don’t pay state taxes on cannabis sales, which means their weed is often cheaper. Some of them try to get around the regulations by operating as private membership clubs where pot isn’t sold outright but “gifted” or held onto for a friendly patron. Others are bodegas that dedicate a small amount of shelf space to cannabis products alongside the usual offerings of pints of ice cream and cans of Arizona iced tea. 

The rapid rise of unlicensed shops has alarmed lawmakers who are trying a number of solutions to deter them. This past February, the Manhattan DA sent out letters warning more than 400 smoke shops that they could be evicted for unlicensed activity. In June, the Office of Cannabis Management and the Tax Department began the first of hundreds of armed raids of shops around the state, seizing product and posting vibrant warning signs in store windows. The city has filed lawsuits against dozens of shops in Manhattan for allegedly selling cannabis to minors. The New York City sheriff, too, has been inspecting unlicensed shops and seizing their goods. While a few shops have shuttered, the sheer volume of stores is proving to be a difficult test of these efforts.

THE CITY and New York counted at least 33 stores selling cannabis within a few blocks of Conbud on the Lower East Side. We visited five of the stores in the neighborhood to learn more about how the weed market has developed a year after the first legal sale of cannabis in the state. 

Conbud – The Sole Licensed Dispensary

Conbud, which finally opened in October, is the only licensed dispensary in the neighborhood so far. Owner Coss Marte, who has three felonies for dealing drugs, was awarded a special license back in April. But after a lawsuit challenged the legality of the license program, a court injunction prevented stores from opening for months. Marte’s plans for a summer launch were derailed. Meanwhile, he and other licensees were racking up expenses paying pricey New York rents for idle storefronts. 

In the meantime, the delay gave unlicensed stores an opportunity to gain more of a foothold in the neighborhood, Marte acknowledges. “The market has already matured in the Lower East Side specifically. Some of the stores around here have already been open two or more years,” he told me. “Consumers are just thinking that this is what it is, not that the stores are illegal.”

Inside, the shop borrows a lot from Marte’s personal story: There are product displays reminiscent of the milk crates he used to sit on outside a bodega selling drugs. A full-screen television shows a loop of Marte at a local farm tending to cannabis plants that would soon be harvested and sold in the store, an employee told me. On one wall, the text of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, is posted in bold letters. Conbud-brand T-shirts with the law’s text are available for sale, too. The effect is twofold: Marte is selling customers on the store’s cannabis products, like gummies marketed for sleep or energy and locally grown cannabis flower, but more broadly on the idea that legalization can be a form of reparation to those harmed by the war on drugs. 

One of the most popular products is an ounce of Hudson Cannabis that’s grown upstate and runs for $185 — the best deal in the store but not as inexpensive as what some of the unlicensed shops offer.

A week before the Tyson event, Conbud threw a party to celebrate the launch of the Dr. Midtown brand, owned by a former legacy operator who goes by Nas. He told me he used to run a 1,200-person delivery route in Manhattan and was arrested in January 2021, right before the law changed. “I grew up in Queens, and it’s just been constant harassment,” he said. To see his brand now in stores, he added, “is exactly what we’ve been fighting for.”  Promotional flyers for the party were printed with both Marte’s and Nas’s old mug shots along with the slogan “From Legacy to Legal.”

Part of the goal in hosting events like the one with Tyson and the launch party for Dr. Midtown is to educate people, Marte said. People living in the neighborhood see the long lines or hear the music and stop by to see what’s going on. That gives Marte an opportunity to explain that Conbud is the only legal cannabis store in the Lower East Side, he said. 

“The more events we do, the more the community is aware that, ‘Hey, we’re here and we’re legal.’” 

Flame Zone – A Shiny Smoke Shop

Shortly after Conbud opened in October, a flashy new smoke shop called Flame Zone Convenience appeared right across Delancey Street. The store employs several of the marketing techniques that legal stores are specifically prohibited from using. Its signage is written in a neon-green rounded bubble font. A sign advertised a grand-opening sale of an eighth of an ounce of weed for $20 (less than half what an eighth of Mike Tyson’s brand costs across the street), while another says the vape shop has the lowest prices around. If there was any doubt the store sold weed, there’s a towering inflatable joint just inside and a second one suspended from the ceiling. 

Before Flame Zone opened, the business here was called Gee Vape and Smoke Shop. In February, Gee Vape was one of more than 400 stores the Manhattan DA warned in a letter could be evicted for selling cannabis. The store later closed. Flame Zone, according to the employee at the counter, is a different business from Gee Vape. “This is a new owner. She changed everything,” he told me. 

While the shop may have a shiny new exterior, the property owner has been the same since 2007, city records show. Enforcement efforts have started to increasingly target landlords, not just the stores. But so far those measures have done little to deter a landlord from simply leasing the space to a new smoke shop. The volume of shops is simply too high. 

In mid-November, shortly after Flame Zone opened, the Office of Cannabis Management and the New York State Tax Department raided the store. The two agencies are one part of the enforcement effort to curb the illegal shops. Last year, the state inspected 350 storefronts and seized more than $50 million worth of product, according to its latest figures LOOK BELOW. Though a pink slip from the raid is still posted in the door, it’s open for business.

Behind the counter, there are vape cartridges and pre-rolls branded with major California companies like Stiizy and Jungle Boys. House pre-roll joints are three for $20. When I ask the shopkeeper where the weed is from, he says, “Here, it’s in-house.” Only New York–grown weed is permitted in legal shops, and it remains illegal to transport cannabis across state lines. But for years California brands have faced allegations of “backdooring” their product to other states, and a number of websites sell counterfeit packaging from California brands down to a randomized serial number and QR code. That makes it hard for customers to know what they’re really buying. 

Despite the bright lights and the low prices, the store still gets little foot traffic on a chilly December evening. In a half-hour or so, I see only one woman go into the store. She popped in while waiting for her order at Wingstop next door, she told me. When I asked what made her choose that particular store, she shrugged. “It’s just the closest one,” she said. 

MetroBud – A Private Members Club

Owned by Joe and Jason Coello, two brothers from Queens, MetroBud on Allen Street operates as a private membership club. Blue velvet ropes guide customers to the entrance, and an employee checks IDs before letting anyone inside. The shop differentiates itself by encouraging people to stay awhile. Inside, two televisions loaded with video games are available to rent, and there are a few couches where you can just smoke and chill. MetroBud also hosts events like a weekly yoga class. 

Joe Coello started planning to open the store as soon as legalization passed in March 2021, reasoning that a membership model was a way to get started without a state license. “We were trying to operate as above board as we could,” said Coello. “We were operating legally, as far as we were concerned.”

When the cannabis law passed, it included protections for people possessing weed as well as giving it away to their friends. Interpreting the latter to mean that they may legally “gift” weed to patrons or possess weed on behalf of members, cannabis membership clubs like MetroBud began popping up across the city. At one club I visited, customers pay for a photograph — and then are “gifted” cannabis in return. 

There are no specific regulations that govern how the clubs operate because the distinction is not sanctioned by the state regulatory agency and there’s no specific license category for the model. 

On many days, MetroBud seems to function like any other weed store. Daily membership is effectively free, so anyone with ID can walk in off the street and make a purchase. On a recent Saturday night, there was little foot traffic and just one customer inside fixated on playing Mortal Kombat. The store carries various branded MetroBud strains of weed from New York farmers as well as other brands. Prices are divided by tiers and at the low end can beat prices that legal shops like Conbud offer.

The membership-club interpretation of “gifting” hasn’t been tested in court, but last year, the Office of Cannabis Management sent out letters warning operators that running unlicensed shops could potentially jeopardize their ability to get a license in the future. The letters specifically stated that a membership-club model was not allowed. 

Despite the state’s warnings, Coello still hopes to go legal and has applied twice for retail licenses since opening MetroBud. “It would be nice just to not have to look over our shoulder,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Coello defends his business model — and the crop of unlicensed shops in the neighborhood. “I believe in a free market,” he said. “As long as they’re putting out products that are safe and don’t have heavy metals, mold, or pesticides in them, I don’t see a problem with it.” 

Allen Convenient Exotic – Twice Raided

Walk down Allen between Delancey and Broome Streets, and you’ll find two more smoke shops near MetroBud: Green Apple Cannabis Club and Allen Convenient Exotic. Red, green, and purple lights from the trio of stores overwhelm passersby. As I stood outside on a recent evening, I watched a couple point to the fluorescent lights. “Why do all these places look so ugly?” one asked. 

Cannabis was legalized just one year into the pandemic, as restaurants and retail shops were struggling to stay afloat. Some smoke shops have opened in place of establishments that stopped paying rent in the pandemic. The space occupied by Allen Convenient Exotic had been a smoke shop for years, selling items like vapes and glass pipes and cigarettes. But Green Apple Cannabis Club used to be a clothing store, and MetroBud was previously a pop-up space hosting events from brands including PornHub and Subway. 

The three stores are an example of how ineffective state enforcement has been in curbing unlicensed sales. While Green Apple and Metrobud’s owners both say they’ve never had any major issues with state or local law enforcement, Allen Smoke Shop has a poster in the window with loud red letters: ILLICIT CANNABIS SEIZED. The store has been raided at least twice by state officials, according to the posted notices.

To allay any doubt that it still sold cannabis, the shop projects a roving image of the cannabis plant on the sidewalk outside.

Inside, there’s a wall of sodas and chips and even a small shelf of Bounty paper towels as in any other neighborhood bodega. Much more discreetly than in a place like MetroBud, the cannabis products like THC-laced edibles as well as “mushroom extract” gummies are confined to just a small section at the front counter. With a few cannabis-plant signs in the window and a bit of shelf space, the shop is an example of how easy it is for owners to add on a few products.  When I snap a photo with my phone, it immediately catches the attention of the shopkeeper. “Hey, no photos. You can’t take a photo in here.” With the flip of a switch, the clear glass counter turned a frosted white, concealing the contents from view. 

Dubai Cannabis Supply – Sued by NYC

I head over from Allen to Stanton Street, which has its own row of unlicensed shops selling cannabis. I pass by a few of them and head into Dubai Smoke, which the city sued in July, to see how it’s currently operating. 

The complaint cited three instances in which the shop allegedly sold illegal psilocybin products. Created in the 1970s as a means to shutter undesirable businesses like places of prostitution, the nuisance-abatement law is one more tool the city has to curb illicit cannabis shops. In 2023, it filed at least 35 cases against smoke shops and their landlords for selling cannabis products to minors. Inspections are typically carried out by the NYPD, which documents at least three instances of the unlicensed activity before seeking a court order to close the store for one year. The city settled with Dubai in November on the condition that it would not sell unlicensed cannabis or tobacco products.

But a December visit shows that’s plainly not the case yet. Inside, the shop looks like the color palette of a Jojo Siwa concert. The walls are covered in rainbow graffiti, and under the glass cases there are glass tubes of pre-rolled joints for $20 labeled ZKITTLES. The man at the counter pulls out the tray of ones that come in flavors labeled Cotton Candy, Jungle Juice, and Froot Loops. A row of vape cartridges has options in lilac and teal and fuchsia. There are more California brands, like Stiizy gummies, on display here, too. None of these rainbow offerings would be allowable at the neighborhood’s one legal dispensary, Conbud.

Outside, I spot a group of what appear to be teen boys passing a joint among them. I nod to the joint and introduce myself as a reporter working on a story about cannabis shops in the neighborhood. 

One tells me loudly they’re all 21 before laughing. 

“Bro, no you’re not, no you’re not,” one of them shouts.  

“Okay, yeah, we’re all 16.” 

“I’m actually 35,” says a third. (I start to believe they are indeed 16.)

Dubai Smoke Shop wasn’t cited for selling to minors, but at least 34 other shops in Manhattan last year were, according to a review of nuisance-abatement complaints. This has been a rallying cry of lawmakers looking to shut down unlicensed shops with no oversight of its sales. 

When I asked the teens where they liked to go for weed, they brushed me off. “I mean wherever they will sell to us, there’s only a few places around here,” one said. 

“We’re not gonna tell you which ones.”

Article link
https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/01/05/weed-gone-wild-cannabis-lower-east-side/

referral 
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/new-york-fined-unlicensed-weed-shops-more-than-25-million-and-collected-almost-none-of-that/ar-BB1iHoNr

New York Fined Unlicensed Weed Shops More Than $25 Million — and Collected Almost None of That
Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she wants to shut down the illegal stores, but the lack of enforcement reveals just how hard that task will be.
BY ROSALIND ADAMS 
FEB. 22, 2024, 5:00 A.M.

The state has levied more than $25 million in fines against unlicensed smoke shops for selling cannabis products since last year, but so far only a minuscule percent of those fines have been collected by both the state Tax Department and the Office of Cannabis Management, THE CITY has learned.

The two agencies were granted greater authority last year to enforce the 2021 cannabis law and began joint raids against smoke shops for selling cannabis products without a license last summer. They levy and collect fines separately, however. Fines may be levied against individuals who operate the smoke shops or the business itself when it’s difficult to track down an owner. 

The Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) said it has collected $22,500 in fines from unlicensed shops. The Department of Taxation and Finance has collected $0 in fines so far, said sources familiar with the state’s enforcement progress. 

Last October, THE CITY reported that the state cannabis agency, citing a lack of resources, had paused the enforcement hearings that follow state agency raids on unlicensed shops. Lawyers for unlicensed shops told THE CITY at the time that they had received notices on behalf of their clients that the cases were being withdrawn. Meanwhile, the raids have continued.

But while OCM has withdrawn many cases, some shops and their operators have separately received letters separately from the tax department warning them of fines more than $150,000, according to notices obtained by THE CITY.

“Currently, the State is prioritizing shutting down illegal shops and seizing unlawful products,” said Aaron Ghitelman, a spokesperson for OCM. “While we recognize entities being fined have a right to due process, we are committed to working within the confines of the law to collect the fines once the legal process is complete.”

Fines levied by the tax department may be appealed, for example. And shops fined by the Office of Cannabis Management may be challenged in the administrative hearings the agency paused back in October, which lengthens the state’s timeline to collect the fines. 

Ghitelman added that the state has seized tens of millions of dollars in illicit products as part of its enforcement measures. Gov. Kathy Hochul has repeatedly emphasized the amount of product seized in press releases about the progress of the raids. 

The governor’s office and the state tax department declined to answer questions and deferred to the statement provided by OCM. 

The dearth of fines collected so far highlights the challenge of enforcing the cannabis law in a state with a booming gray market.

In New York City alone, unlicensed shops are rampant throughout some neighborhoods. Though there is no official count of the number of unlicensed smoke shops, it is estimated to be in the thousands. Last month, local news outlet CNY Central reported that OCM has only 14 investigators on staff. 

The two state agencies are not the only ones involved in enforcement. The Sheriff’s Department is inspecting smoke shops in New York City as well, and the NYPD has done undercover inspections of shops suspected of selling cannabis to minors. 

In Hochul’s annual state of the state address last month, the governor said that she would seek new enforcement powers this year as part of the annual budget. 

“We know there’s more to be done and we need more tools to do it. We’re going to continue working with local leaders, including in New York City, to shut down illegal cannabis stores once and for all,” she said. 

Sen. Jeremy Cooney, the chair of the Senate Cannabis Committee, agreed that more enforcement powers are needed, but added that the effort has to be in tandem with opening up new stores. 

“The way forward is to make sure that we have more legal stores operating on our streets,” Cooney told THE CITY in an interview. “It’s a parallel track – one is to close down stores and make sure enforcement is happening, the other is to make sure that new ones are opening.” 

“We’re not moving fast enough,” Cooney added. 

At a Senate hearing in late October, executive director Chris Alexander testified that he did not think fines were enough to deter unlicensed shops. In response to questions, he said that he expected OCM’s administrative hearings to resume within weeks. But months later, the hearings have not resumed. OCM said it is seeking expanded enforcement powers to padlock stores instead of issuing fines. 

Sen. Cooney told THE CITY he was unaware of this and found it “very concerning.”

The fines levied by the Tax Department are  determined by a formula that assesses that unlicensed shops owe up to two times the amount of tax that would have been due on that illicit cannabis, the deficiency notices said. 

Both letters reviewed by THE CITY say that more than 12 pounds of illicit cannabis had been seized but do not show specifically the details of the calculation. The law affords people the right to appeal the fines, which may be part of the reason why the agency has not collected any fines from unlicensed shops yet.

But in both instances, the shops had been raided by the OCM and the Tax Department and had product seized but the state cannabis agency had withdrawn their proceedings.  

“Of course no one is paying them,” said Paula Collins, a lawyer who represents clients who operate unlicensed smoke shops. “They thought it was over.” 

URL
https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/02/22/new-york-state-hochul-fines-illegal-cannabis-shops/

CANNABIS FIGURES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 4, 2023

CONTACTS: Aaron Ghitelman /Aaron.Ghitelman@ocm.ny.gov / 518-728-9570

NEW: OFFICE OF CANNABIS MANAGEMENT NOVEMBER ENFORCEMENT UPDATE ON STATEWIDE ACTIONS AGAINST UNLICENSED CANNABIS SHOPS The Office of Cannabis Management and the Office of the Attorney General win major court victory; new precedent set for State to use Cannabis Law to permanently close illegal businesses More than $50 million worth of illicit cannabis seized to date Additional court victory and new trainings for localities also announced NEW YORK, NY – Today, the New York State Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) published the second in a monthly series of enforcement action updates against unlicensed cannabis shops across the State. These updates will be released on the first Monday of each month through the end of the year. Inspections & Seizures: During the month of November, investigators from OCM and the Department of Taxation and Finance (DTF) inspected 71 shops, including 13 re-inspections, suspected of selling unlicensed cannabis. These inspections resulted in the seizure of 812 pounds of flower, 701 pounds of edibles, and 61 pounds of concentrate, with an estimated value of $7,284,986. These actions bring the total of inspections to 350 locations, 88 of which have been re-inspected, to yield over 11,000 pounds of seized illicit cannabis worth more than $54 million. OCM and DTF investigators will continue inspections each and every week across the State. Court Victories: On November 21, OCM, in collaboration with the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), won its first petition for emergency relief under Section 16-a of the Cannabis Law, a new section of the law that just went into effect this year. This victory established an important precedent allowing the State to seek longer term closures for businesses found to be illegally selling cannabis. In this case, the Court issued a permanent injunction and one-year permanent closing order against illegal operator David Tulley of "I'm Stuck" in Wayne County. The Court agreed with OCM and the OAG that Tulley had engaged in unlicensed sale of cannabis and rejected Tulley's argument that the “cannabis consulting business model” did not require a license. The Court’s Order continued the padlocking that had been granted by the Court on an emergency basis earlier this year. An assessment of total penalties will be finalized in the coming weeks. On November 29th, OCM, in collaboration with the OAG, also successfully secured a temporary restraining order and temporary/closing/padlocking order against the unlicensed operator George West of Jaydega 7.0 in Canandaigua. A hearing on the request for a permanent injunction and closure of Jaydega 7.0 is scheduled for next month in Ontario County Supreme Court. Training for Municipalities: With a continued focus on collaboration and coordination with the goal of maximizing enforcement partnerships, OCM and the OAG will host a public webinar for municipalities across the state on Thursday, December 7 to provide vital education and resources around best practices and opportunities to shut down illicit operators. “As we look ahead to this next chapter in New York’s cannabis market, we continue to prioritize safety across the state by working diligently to shut down illegal operators,” said Chris Alexander, Executive Director of The New York State Office of Cannabis Management. “The number one remedy for the problem of these illicit shops is getting more legal businesses open. New Yorkers want to know where their products are coming from, and they know they can rely on safe, trusted, and locally grown cannabis when they walk into one of our legal dispensaries. We will continue to seize illegal products, and we know that the collaborative work continues across all levels of government to address this public health crisis.” Fines for the illegal sale of cannabis start at $10,000 per day and can rise up to $20,000 per day for the most egregious conduct. An additional fine of $5,000 can be levied for removal of the Order, and the inspected businesses may also be subject to additional violations and penalties under the Tax Law. Additional fines may be assessed. The enforcement legislation passed in May 2023 also authorizes OCM to seek a State court order to ultimately padlock businesses found to be in repeated violation of the law. In addition, the law makes it a crime to sell cannabis and cannabis products without a license. To bring many levels of government together to combat the illicit sale of cannabis, Governor Hochul announced partnerships between OCM and the OAG through which municipalities across the state can receive training on how to utilize a particular provision -- Section16-A -- of the new enforcement law signed by Governor Hochul in May 2023 to pursue padlocking orders in State Court. 16-A authorizes local governments, including county attorneys, with OCM’s approval, to pursue padlocking orders from a court against an unlicensed cannabis business found to be engaged in egregious conduct. This authority significantly augments the ability for different levels of government to work together to shut down illegal cannabis operators. In addition to these new partnerships with localities, the Governor announced that additional State agencies will now be bringing the weight of their business enforcement powers to bear as part of the State’s creative and aggressive approach to combating the illicit market. The Department of Labor and the Workers Compensation Board are joining these efforts to ensure businesses selling cannabis without a license are compliant with New York State labor and workers compensation laws. This approach, which combines the enforcement powers of labor law, tax law, and cannabis law, can result in non-compliant business owners potentially facing tens of thousands of dollars in penalties as the result of a single inspection and violations, significantly enhances the State’s ability to crack down on those who engage in illicit sales, and reaffirms the Governor’s deep commitment to ensuring that the law is being followed and that New Yorkers are protected from potentially unsafe products. New York State currently has 27 licensed adult-use cannabis dispensaries and has approved 44 Cannabis Growers Showcases. All regulated, licensed dispensaries must post the Dispensary Verification Tool sticker near their main entrance. Any store selling cannabis that does not display this sticker is operating without a license. ### Follow us on all of our social media at @nys_cannabis

URL

https://cannabis.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2023/12/new-office-of-cannabis-management-november-enforcement-update-on-statewide-actions-against-unlicensed-cannabis-shops.pdf

The Labors of Judasa is a history in the Chronicle of The Four King in the Tarikh Rohoregens. No one has a complete Tarikh Rohoregens, but recently this Incomplete Labors of Judasa in the Chronicle of The Four King was discovered.
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/An-Incomplete-Labors-of-Judasa-970676145
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https://www.kobo.com/audiobook/an-incomplete-labors-of-judasa-from-a-griot 

A Runic Remnant Of The Labors Of Judasa
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https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/orc-tofusenshi-dtiys-2023-blackandwhite-970678468
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@richardmurraytiktok The Labors of Judasa is a history in the Chronicle of The Four King in the Tarikh Rohoregens. No one has a complete Tarikh Rohoregens, but recently this Incomplete Labors of Judasa in the Chronicle of The Four King was discovered. https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/An-Incomplete-Labors-of-Judasa-970676145 Audiobook https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/an-incomplete-labors-of-judasa-from-a-griot A Runic Remnant Of The Labors Of Judasa Colored https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Orc-Tofusenshi-Dtiys-2023-Color-970678947 Coloring https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/orc-tofusenshi-dtiys-2023-blackandwhite-970678468 Cento https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/An-Incomplete-Labors-of-Judasa-Cento-970677156 #rmtja #rmaalbc #kobo #audiobook #richardmurray #black #artist #poetry #calligraphy ♬ original sound - richardmurraytiktok

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Google's New AI Text-to-Video Tool Is Fun to Look At. But What Next?

Story by Lisa Lacy • 38m

Google has teased an AI-based video generation tool, but it's not clear when — or if — anyone outside the search giant will be able to kick the tires. It's certainly fun to look at, though.

On Wednesday, Google's Research arm released a video highlighting this new text-to-video model, which is called Lumiere.

In a LinkedIn post, team leader Inbar Mosseri said the tool "generates coherent, high-quality videos using simple text prompts" that New Atlas says run up to five seconds. Sample inputs include, "A fluffy baby sloth with an orange knitted hat trying to figure out a laptop" and "An escaped panda eating popcorn in the park."

In the year or so that generative AI has been the hottest technology going, much of the attention has been focused on tools like ChatGPT that produce text answers to prompts, or those like Dall-E that create still images. Video creation from text prompts is arguably the next frontier, so if Lumiere really can "demonstrate state-of-the-art text-to-video generation results" as Google says, we may already be evolving beyond the "grotesque abominations" of the AI-generated images of 2023.

As the video illustrates, Lumiere's capabilities include text-to-video and image-to-video generation, as well as stylized generation — that is, using an image to create videos in a similar style. Other tricks include the ability to fill in any missing visuals within a video clip.

That includes the ability to animate famous paintings, like Van Gogh's Starry Night ("A timelapse oil painting of a starry night with clouds moving") or Da Vinci's Mona Lisa ("A woman looking tired and yawning"). While the Starry Night example works almost flawlessly, Mona Lisa looks far more like she's laughing than yawning.

And while many of the animals — such as "a muskox grazing on beautiful wildflowers" and "a happy elephant wearing a birthday hat walking under the sea" — look realistic, there's something off about some of the dogs. Both a toy poodle riding a skateboard and a golden retriever puppy running in the park are close to passing as real, but their faces — and perhaps their eyes specifically—betray the fact that they're CGI.

Nevertheless, the video editing tools hold a lot of promise. Using a source video and prompts like "made of colorful toy bricks" or "made of flowers," users can purportedly change the style of the subject completely. And with inputs like "wearing a bathrobe," "wearing a party hat" and "wearing rain boots" to add said items to an image of, say, a baby chick, Lumiere may very well make fiddling with videos more accessible to those of us who didn't major in graphic design.

Though the assets shared so far certainly make Lumiere seem like it's user-friendly, the description of how it works isn't. (Google didn't respond to a request for additional comment.)

A project page < https://lumiere-video.github.io/  > describes Lumiere as "a space-time diffusion model," which sounds like something Doc Brown was working on in Back to the Future. Google Research said this means the text-to-image model learns to generate a video by processing it in multiple space-time scales, which helps create videos that "portray realistic, diverse and coherent motion."

According to Google, this is superior to existing models, which "synthesize distant keyframes followed by temporal super-resolution." 

Jason Alan Snyder, global chief technology officer at ad agency Momentum Worldwide, explained it this way: "It's like the difference between watching a puppet show and experiencing a ballet at Lincoln Center."

That's because Lumiere "doesn't just focus on snapshots, it crafts smooth, flowing motion for every frame," he added.

In other words, if you think about the traditional method of making a movie, you'd have to build key scenes and fill in the gaps later.

"Lumiere is different. It sees the whole movie in its mind, understanding how characters move, objects interact and everything changes over time," Snyder said. "It's like drawing the entire flip book simultaneously, ensuring every page flows perfectly."

So this "space-time thinking" helps Lumiere create videos that feel real, which, he added, means no more jumpy transitions or robotic movements. (Except maybe for puppy eyes.)

Time will tell.

In the meantime, as fans of Beauty and Beast will know, Lumiere is French for "light."  

Editors' note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post. < https://www.cnet.com/ai-policy/#ftag=MSF491fea7 >

URL

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/googles-new-ai-text-to-video-tool-is-fun-to-look-at-but-what-next/ar-BB1hgBUi

Lupita Nyong'o On Why She Decided Not To Star In 'The Woman King'
Bre Williams
October 19, 2022

Lupita Nyong’o is talking about why she decided to not star in The Woman King.

The actress was set to star alongside Davis in the upcoming historical film The Woman King. But back in 2020, the actress walked away from the film in which she was to play an Agojie warrior.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Nyong’o opened up about why she decided against starring in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film.

Nyong'o didn't feel like the role was right for her.
According to IndieWire, Nyong’o was set to play an Agojie warrior in The Woman King starring Viola Davis, who also produces. The Agojie tribe inspired the fictional Dora Milaje female army in Black Panther.

After she was cast in the film, the actress made a short documentary about the Agojie tribe called “Warrior Women With Lupita Nyong’o.”
Per The Hollywood Reporter, the Academy Award winner “grapples uncomfortably with the tribe’s legacy of violence.” After the documentary, Nyong’o decision to exit The Woman King though she hasn’t specifically revealed why.

“It was very amicable, the departure from it,” Nyong’o said. “But I felt it wasn’t the role for me to play.”

Thuso Mbedu took over the role Nyong’o was slated to play.
After her departure, Lupita Nyong’o’s role was given to Thuso Mbedu.

In addition to The Woman King, Nyong’o also exited the upcoming Apple TV+ series Lady in the Lake, which stars Natalie Portman. Moses Ingram replaced her in that series.

“I’m desperate for small projects,” Nyong’o told THR. “They’re harder to get off the ground, they’re harder to stay on track. Bigger movies elbow them out of the way. The pandemic and the fiscal stress on the industry has made it even harder for those movies to get made.”

Nyong'o is currently balancing large projects with smaller independent roles.
“I think to be culturally prosperous, to be artistically prosperous as a people, is to have options. I personally love a good Marvel movie, but it doesn’t take me away from really wanting the little character-driven film,” the Us actress shared. “I believe in the fight for those things to be kept alive because the one thing we always want, the ultimate privilege, is choice.”

She concluded, “It becomes a philosophical question about what is art and what is its purpose. I believe that art plays a role in moving the people that experience it, and a lot of people are moved by Marvel. Is you being moved by this thing less important than me being moved by Picasso?”

Bre Williams
October 19, 2022

ARTICLE
https://shadowandact.com/lupita-nyongo-on-why-she-decided-not-to-star-in-the-woman-king

THE BLACK DRAGON'S REVENGE - RON VAN CLIEF - FULL HD MARTIAL ARTS MOVIE IN ENGLISH
imdb
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072858/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_16

film
 

LINK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeOoWRtASY4

Is Kanye Finally CANCELED? from Bad Faith
 

LINK
https://youtu.be/wxHAm-bgFyM
Referral
https://twitter.com/msolurin/status/1580952441839026179
 
Art Block and Burnout from chrissa bug
 

LINK
https://youtu.be/e_tYHhkjC4s
REFERRAL
https://www.deviantart.com/chrissabug/status-update/New-Video-about-Art-Block-933740572

28 Stories You Can Read Online for Black History Month

“Anything Could Disappear“
By Danielle Evans
Electric Literature
https://electricliterature.com/anything-could-disappear-danielle-evans/

“Drinking Coffee Elsewhere“
By Z.Z. Packer
The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/06/19/drinking-coffee-elsewhere

“The Era“
By Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Guernica
https://www.guernicamag.com/the-era/

“Suicide, Watch“
By Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Dissent Magazine
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/suicide-watch-heads-colored-people-social-media

“French Absolutism“
By Brandon Taylor
Joyland
https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/french-absolutism/

“What’s For Sale“
By Nicole Dennis-Benn
Kweli Journal
http://www.kwelijournal.org/fiction/2014/5/14/whats-for-sale-by-nicole-y-dennis-benn?rq=What's

“Sunflowers“
By Bryan Washington
Boston Review
http://bostonreview.net/fiction/bryan-washington-sunflowers

“Dangerous Deliveries“
By Sidik Fofana
Epiphany
https://epiphanyzine.com/features/dangerous-deliveries-fofana

“Williamsburg Bridge“
By John Edgar Wideman
Harper’s Magazine
https://harpers.org/archive/2015/11/williamsburg-bridge/

“The Key“
By Nnedi Okorafor
Enkare Review
https://enkare.org/2016/11/14/key-nnedi-okorafor/

“Milk Blood Heat“
By Dantiel W. Moniz
Ploughshares
https://www.pshares.org/issues/spring-2018/milk-blood-heat

“Bear Bear Harvest“
By Venita Blackburn
Virginia Quarterly Review
https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2018/12/bear-bear-harvest

“Beg Borrow Steal“
By Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Kenyon Review Online
https://kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2015-summer/selections/maurice-carlos-ruffin-342846/

“How to Kill Gra’ Coleman and Live to Tell About It (Vauxhall, NJ, c. 1949)“
By Kim Coleman Foote
Missouri Review
https://www.missourireview.com/how-to-kill-gra-coleman-and-live-to-tell-about-it-vauxhall-nj-c-1949-by-kim-coleman-foote/

“Allentown, Saturday“
By Gabriel Bump
Brooklyn Rail
https://brooklynrail.org/2020/06/fiction/Allentown-Saturday

“Books and Roses“
By Helen Oyeyemi
Granta
https://granta.com/books-and-roses/

“God’s Gonna Trouble the Water“
By Randall Kenan
Oprah Magazine
https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/books/a33350187/randall-kenan-short-story-gods-gonna-trouble-the-water/

“What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky“
By Lesley Nneka Arimah
Catapult
https://catapult.co/stories/some-mathematicians-remove-pain-some-of-us-deal-in-negative-emotions-we-all-fix-the-equation-of-a-person

“The City Born Great“
By N.K. Jemisin
Tor.com
https://www.tor.com/2016/09/28/the-city-born-great/

“202 Checkmates“
By Rion Amilcar Scott
Electric Literature
https://electricliterature.com/202-checkmates-by-rion-amilcar-scott/

“All This Want and I Can’t Get None“
By Tia Clark
Joyland
https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/all-this-want-and-i-cant-get-none/

“Wet Paper Grass“
By Jasmon Drain
Terrain
https://www.terrain.org/fiction/26/drain.htm

“Emperor of the Universe“
By Kaitlyn Greenidge
Kweli Journal
http://www.kwelijournal.org/fiction/2014/10/10/emperor-of-the-universe-by-kaitlyn-greenidge

“Ark of Light“
By Victor LaValle
Lightspeed Magazine
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/ark-of-light/

“False Cognates“
By Ladee Hubbard
Guernica
https://www.guernicamag.com/false-cognates-1991/

“Whiskey & Ribbons“
By Leesa Cross-Smith
Carve Magazine
https://www.carvezine.com/story/2011-fall-cross-smith

“A Selfish Invention“
By Donald Quist
Storychord
http://www.storychord.com/2017/03/issue-140-donald-edem-quist-tracy.html

“Best Features“
By Roxane Gay
Barrelhouse
https://www.barrelhousemag.com/onlinelit/2010/11/1/best-features

ARTICLE
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2021/02/01/28-stories-you-can-read-online-for-black-history-month/

Lupita Nyong'o On Why She Decided Not To Star In 'The Woman King'
Bre Williams
October 19, 2022

Lupita Nyong’o is talking about why she decided to not star in The Woman King.

The actress was set to star alongside Davis in the upcoming historical film The Woman King. But back in 2020, the actress walked away from the film in which she was to play an Agojie warrior.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Nyong’o opened up about why she decided against starring in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film.

Nyong'o didn't feel like the role was right for her.
According to IndieWire, Nyong’o was set to play an Agojie warrior in The Woman King starring Viola Davis, who also produces. The Agojie tribe inspired the fictional Dora Milaje female army in Black Panther.

After she was cast in the film, the actress made a short documentary about the Agojie tribe called “Warrior Women With Lupita Nyong’o.”
Per The Hollywood Reporter, the Academy Award winner “grapples uncomfortably with the tribe’s legacy of violence.” After the documentary, Nyong’o decision to exit The Woman King though she hasn’t specifically revealed why.

“It was very amicable, the departure from it,” Nyong’o said. “But I felt it wasn’t the role for me to play.”

Thuso Mbedu took over the role Nyong’o was slated to play.
After her departure, Lupita Nyong’o’s role was given to Thuso Mbedu.

In addition to The Woman King, Nyong’o also exited the upcoming Apple TV+ series Lady in the Lake, which stars Natalie Portman. Moses Ingram replaced her in that series.

“I’m desperate for small projects,” Nyong’o told THR. “They’re harder to get off the ground, they’re harder to stay on track. Bigger movies elbow them out of the way. The pandemic and the fiscal stress on the industry has made it even harder for those movies to get made.”

Nyong'o is currently balancing large projects with smaller independent roles.
“I think to be culturally prosperous, to be artistically prosperous as a people, is to have options. I personally love a good Marvel movie, but it doesn’t take me away from really wanting the little character-driven film,” the Us actress shared. “I believe in the fight for those things to be kept alive because the one thing we always want, the ultimate privilege, is choice.”

She concluded, “It becomes a philosophical question about what is art and what is its purpose. I believe that art plays a role in moving the people that experience it, and a lot of people are moved by Marvel. Is you being moved by this thing less important than me being moved by Picasso?”

Bre Williams
October 19, 2022

ARTICLE
https://shadowandact.com/lupita-nyongo-on-why-she-decided-not-to-star-in-the-woman-king

THE BLACK DRAGON'S REVENGE - RON VAN CLIEF - FULL HD MARTIAL ARTS MOVIE IN ENGLISH
imdb
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072858/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_16

film
 

LINK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeOoWRtASY4

Is Kanye Finally CANCELED? from Bad Faith
 

LINK
https://youtu.be/wxHAm-bgFyM
Referral
https://twitter.com/msolurin/status/1580952441839026179
 
Art Block and Burnout from chrissa bug
 

LINK
https://youtu.be/e_tYHhkjC4s
REFERRAL
https://www.deviantart.com/chrissabug/status-update/New-Video-about-Art-Block-933740572

28 Stories You Can Read Online for Black History Month

“Anything Could Disappear“
By Danielle Evans
Electric Literature
https://electricliterature.com/anything-could-disappear-danielle-evans/

“Drinking Coffee Elsewhere“
By Z.Z. Packer
The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/06/19/drinking-coffee-elsewhere

“The Era“
By Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Guernica
https://www.guernicamag.com/the-era/

“Suicide, Watch“
By Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Dissent Magazine
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/suicide-watch-heads-colored-people-social-media

“French Absolutism“
By Brandon Taylor
Joyland
https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/french-absolutism/

“What’s For Sale“
By Nicole Dennis-Benn
Kweli Journal
http://www.kwelijournal.org/fiction/2014/5/14/whats-for-sale-by-nicole-y-dennis-benn?rq=What's

“Sunflowers“
By Bryan Washington
Boston Review
http://bostonreview.net/fiction/bryan-washington-sunflowers

“Dangerous Deliveries“
By Sidik Fofana
Epiphany
https://epiphanyzine.com/features/dangerous-deliveries-fofana

“Williamsburg Bridge“
By John Edgar Wideman
Harper’s Magazine
https://harpers.org/archive/2015/11/williamsburg-bridge/

“The Key“
By Nnedi Okorafor
Enkare Review
https://enkare.org/2016/11/14/key-nnedi-okorafor/

“Milk Blood Heat“
By Dantiel W. Moniz
Ploughshares
https://www.pshares.org/issues/spring-2018/milk-blood-heat

“Bear Bear Harvest“
By Venita Blackburn
Virginia Quarterly Review
https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2018/12/bear-bear-harvest

“Beg Borrow Steal“
By Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Kenyon Review Online
https://kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2015-summer/selections/maurice-carlos-ruffin-342846/

“How to Kill Gra’ Coleman and Live to Tell About It (Vauxhall, NJ, c. 1949)“
By Kim Coleman Foote
Missouri Review
https://www.missourireview.com/how-to-kill-gra-coleman-and-live-to-tell-about-it-vauxhall-nj-c-1949-by-kim-coleman-foote/

“Allentown, Saturday“
By Gabriel Bump
Brooklyn Rail
https://brooklynrail.org/2020/06/fiction/Allentown-Saturday

“Books and Roses“
By Helen Oyeyemi
Granta
https://granta.com/books-and-roses/

“God’s Gonna Trouble the Water“
By Randall Kenan
Oprah Magazine
https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/books/a33350187/randall-kenan-short-story-gods-gonna-trouble-the-water/

“What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky“
By Lesley Nneka Arimah
Catapult
https://catapult.co/stories/some-mathematicians-remove-pain-some-of-us-deal-in-negative-emotions-we-all-fix-the-equation-of-a-person

“The City Born Great“
By N.K. Jemisin
Tor.com
https://www.tor.com/2016/09/28/the-city-born-great/

“202 Checkmates“
By Rion Amilcar Scott
Electric Literature
https://electricliterature.com/202-checkmates-by-rion-amilcar-scott/

“All This Want and I Can’t Get None“
By Tia Clark
Joyland
https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/all-this-want-and-i-cant-get-none/

“Wet Paper Grass“
By Jasmon Drain
Terrain
https://www.terrain.org/fiction/26/drain.htm

“Emperor of the Universe“
By Kaitlyn Greenidge
Kweli Journal
http://www.kwelijournal.org/fiction/2014/10/10/emperor-of-the-universe-by-kaitlyn-greenidge

“Ark of Light“
By Victor LaValle
Lightspeed Magazine
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/ark-of-light/

“False Cognates“
By Ladee Hubbard
Guernica
https://www.guernicamag.com/false-cognates-1991/

“Whiskey & Ribbons“
By Leesa Cross-Smith
Carve Magazine
https://www.carvezine.com/story/2011-fall-cross-smith

“A Selfish Invention“
By Donald Quist
Storychord
http://www.storychord.com/2017/03/issue-140-donald-edem-quist-tracy.html

“Best Features“
By Roxane Gay
Barrelhouse
https://www.barrelhousemag.com/onlinelit/2010/11/1/best-features

ARTICLE
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2021/02/01/28-stories-you-can-read-online-for-black-history-month/

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PITCH: ONE WOMAN’S MISSION TO HELP HER SISTER ENTREPRENEURS MATCH VISION WITH CAPITAL
by BLACK ENTERPRISE  Jan. 26, 2023

Shelly “Omi” Bell saw the struggle first-hand as an entrepreneur, so she created Black Girl Ventures to help all ideas from women entrepreneurs succeed. 

Shelly “Omi” Bell remembers the day she was laid off from her computer science job. She decided at that moment that she had received her last pink slip.

“After I walked out of that job, I said to myself, ‘I won’t ever again put myself in a place where an employer can just lay me off for their own reasons. I have to make my own way.’”

PHOTO source
none

That promise to herself led to the launch of Black Girl Ventures (BGV) in 2016. BGV is Bell’s crowdsourcing enterprise that provides women founders of color with direct access to capital and tools that can help them get through the initial stages of starting a business, create and meet key business milestones, and kick-start growth. < https://www.blackgirlventures.org/ > 

“The motivation came from my journey,” explains Bell. “The news reported that Black women were launching businesses at six times the national average yet receiving less than 1% of venture capital. Instead, Black people depend on earned capital – our paychecks and savings.” Part of Bell’s funding came from her mother’s retirement.

A 2021 Harvard Business Review analysis confirms Bell’s point. More than 60% of Black women self-fund their startup costs—a high-risk gamble when only 29% of Black women entrepreneurs live in households with incomes over $75,000. High college debt and disparities in homeownership stack the deck further. 

To change the narrative, Bell found inspiration in the fabled Harlem “rent parties” of an earlier era. She explains, “People would throw these fabulous house parties whenever landlords raised the rent. You’d pay at the door, and they’d use the money to cover the increase. The community came together to keep people in their homes.” 

VIDEO- could not embed
View Transcript »
On-screen graphics:
Blue background with BLACK ENTERPRISE and Bank of America logos shown on screen.
Various images of Shelly “Omi” Bell appear.

On-screen copy:
Shelly “Omi” Bell, Founder
Black Girl Ventures

On-screen copy:
Shelly “Omi” Bell, Founder
Black Girl Ventures

On-screen graphics:
Black Enterprise logo
“in partnership with Bank of America” logo

Shelly “Omi” Bell: I’m Shelly Omílàdé Bell, but I go by Omi, and I’m the founder and CEO of Black Girl Ventures.

Black Girl Ventures is a non-profit enterprise where we focus on creating access to capital, capacity, and community for Black and Brown women-identifying founders.

On-screen graphics:
Homepage of Black Girl Ventures' website
Change Agent Fellowship program page of Black Girl Ventures' website
The BGV Next Gen page of Black Girl Ventures' website
The Pitch Program page of Black Girl Ventures' website

Shelly “Omi” Bell: We have three main programs: An Emerging Leaders program is our change agent fellowship. We have our NextGen program, which is our HBCU program, and we have a pitch program, which is our signature program.

On-screen graphics:
Black Girl Ventures’ Raisify.co platform

Shelly “Omi” Bell: The audience votes with their dollars for the pitch that they favor.

On-screen graphics:
Various images of Black/African American women with microphones at the Black Girl Ventures’ pitch competitions

Shelly “Omi” Bell: We take that capital, and we create a grant out of it, and we give it back to those founders. We also work with partners to either match the funding or give bigger prizes to the top three.

On-screen graphics:
Various images of Black Girl Ventures’ pitch competitions

Shelly “Omi” Bell: And it’s not just the pitch competition that comes with BGV pitch; what is available to you is a new customer base and visibility, there’s coaching, and we also do deck review, which is an opportunity to gain more capital for your business.

We want to build a sustainable community practice.

On-screen graphics:
Various images of the Black Girl Ventures’ founder and employees

Shelly “Omi” Bell: So, since the inception of BGV, we have funded over 300 founders, and this is direct funding to those founders. We’ve also directly impacted over 20,000 people through training.

Our partnership with Bank of America was specifically focused on communities, and the power of crowdfunding is the power of being able to build a community.

On-screen graphics:
Various images of Black/African American women
Short video clips of Black Girl Ventures’ pitch competitions

Shelly “Omi” Bell: The importance of working with women, in general, is that women actually are the caretakers of the family.

We’re the ones that put the energy of the household on our back. So, when you serve a family, when you serve a woman, you are serving the community.

When you serve a woman, you are serving an entire family unit, not just one person. So, the importance of serving women, in general, is to be sure that we’re supporting an entire community and the future of generations to come.

Bell initially hosted small get-togethers in her southeast Washington, D.C. home, inviting local businesswomen to pitch to the group. “We voted for the best pitch and gave what we collected at the door back to the winner in cash.”

Those early gatherings eventually turned into the company’s signature program, BGV Pitch. The door charge is gone, but the concept is the same. Competitions are conducted virtually on Raisify, BGV’s online crowdsourcing platform. Funders who qualify (they must be in business for at least a year and generating revenue) tell the story of their business or product line to an online community of potential investors. “We let people vote with their dollars,” Bell says. “Then we take that capital, create grants with it and award the funds to businesses that stand out.”

Bell emphasizes that deep pockets aren’t required to be a contributor. “The BGV Pitch allows people to engage where they are. It could be $5 or $500. You can change somebody’s life in real-time.”

Bell’s strategic partnership with Bank of America has extended BGV’s reach and capacity. “With that help, we’ve created 120 new jobs and provided 1,040 technical assistance hours. Since we launched, BGV has funded 300 women entrepreneurs who, collectively, generate over $10M in revenue and support 3,000 jobs, making us the largest ecosystem builder for Black/Brown women founders on the East Coast.” BGV hopes to help more than 100,000 Black/Brown women founders by 2030.

 “With the support of our partners, BGV is driving change and making a tangible impact in the community,” says Bell. She adds, “BGV is shooting for the moon, and we believe we can do it. There’s no doubt.”

Are you looking for a community that supports the growth of your business? Learn more about the resources BGV offers to kick-start or continue to elevate your business here. < https://www.blackgirlventures.org/ >  

ARTICLE Source
https://www.blackenterprise.com/sponsored/?prx_t=rQoIAHS1aAMH4RA&ntv_acpl=1146416&ntv_acsc=0&ntv_ui=35f780c5-c4c3-4103-9a6e-29cd618c89b5&ntv_ht=uf7TYwA
 

Photo source
(https://theblackpages815.wixsite.com/my-site/about)

BLACK WOMAN’S DIRECTORY, ‘THE BLACK PAGES’ HELPS COMMUNITY FIND BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES
Stacy JacksonFebruary 16, 2023

Find all things Black-owned in this directory.

Courtney Wade is bringing the community together with The Black Pages, a directory she created for easier access to finding local Black-owned businesses.

According to Daily Journal, Wade was motivated to create the directory following the May 2020 killing of George Floyd.

“The community was in arrest, but they were looking for something and wanted to come together,” she said regarding the incident.

Wade observed the needs of the community and, alongside family members and other activists, she developed a festival as part of Juneteenth to celebrate the Black community. She initially imagined the directory as a way to merge the community with local businesses.

"As you go through the festival, there were so many businesses I didn’t know existed,” she said. “After talking to people in the area, especially the older population, they weren’t aware of that either.”

The Black Pages includes more than 70 local businesses and organizations.

“But the idea is for it to become a fully-functional thing,” she said. “So, wherever you go, you can find what you’re looking for.”

A new copy of the directory is published via a local printer around every six months.

Although the primary focus of the directory is Kankakee County, Wade has received involvement from multiple businesses outside the county.

“Overall, my focus and main job — besides my family — is bridging the gaps in the community,” Wade said. “Merging the needs of the community with the resources of the community.”

Wade and her team are working to continue the expansion and growth of the directory this year.

The directory will be available through Facebook and The Black Pages website.  < https://theblackpages815.wixsite.com/my-site >  

The cost for inclusion is $10, and businesses can reach out via email to submit information for directory inclusion. < theblackpages815@gmail.com  > 

Article source
https://www.blackenterprise.com/black-womans-directory-the-black-pages-helps-community-find-black-owned-businesses/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter_02/16/2023
 

Happy birthday all jarreau- king of vocaleze!!

one of my favorite al jarreau interpretations, best to start with this 

Boogie down written by al jarreau

All or nothing at all - the love letter

happy valentines day:) he didn't write it, but his interpretation feels so good

There's no greater crime
Than wastin' your life
On a boat goin' nowhere
When you came along
You made it safe
For love to survive
I trusted and dreamed
And you came like I knew you would
I've been 'round before
But this feels so good

I could not walk by
I knew that I'd found
What's at the end of the rainbow
There's no place on earth I'd rather be
Than stayin' right here with you
It's not about luck
I don't need to knock on wood, no no
Been 'round before
But this feels so good

Night after night
It's so hard to believe
That I wake up each day next to you
Time after time
In the cold mornin' light it's good to know
It's good to know that it's true

There's no greater sin
Than missin' your chance
But when it's starin' right at 'ya
That look in your eyes
Say everything and tells me I'm home
For once in my life
You know I don't feel misunderstood
Well I've been 'round before
Oh but this time you know it feels so sure
Been 'round before
But this feels so good
Been, been 'round before
This feels so good

You all sing
So good, so good, so good
So good, so good, this feels so good
This is what I mean
Exactly what I am talking about
This feels so good
So good, so good so good
So good, so good
This feels so good
So good, so good, so good
So good

SECRETS OF THE DEAD : THE WOMAN IN THE IRON COFFIN

Follow a team of forensic experts as they investigate the preserved remains of a young African American woman from 19th century New York and reveal the little-known story of early America’s free Black communities.

Notes are after the full video 

official link

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/woman-in-the-iron-coffin-about-the-film/3923/

FULL VIDEO

NOTES

On October 4, 2011, construction workers were shocked to uncover human remains in an abandoned lot in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens, New York. So great was the level of preservation, witnesses first assumed they had stumbled upon a recent homicide. Forensic analysis, however, revealed a remarkably different story. Buried in an elaborate and expensive iron coffin, the body belonged to a young African American woman who died in the first half of the 19th century, before the Civil War and the federal abolishment of slavery. But who was she? Secrets of the Dead: The Woman in the Iron Coffin follows forensic archaeologist Scott Warnasch and a team of historians and scientists as they investigate this woman’s story and the time in which she lived, revealing a vivid picture of what life was like for free African American people in the North.

Noteworthy Facts

The iron coffin was created in 1848 by Almond Dunbar Fisk, a stove manufacturer from New York. The coffin was created to preserve bodies for sanitary storage and for transportation prior to modern embalming. The airtight coffins also preserved bodies well enough for legal identification purposes. Iron coffins were very expensive for the era and used by the wealthy and elite, including former first lady Dolley Madison, former President Zachary Taylor, and former Vice President John C. Calhoun.
New York, one of the largest slaveholding states, officially abolished slavery on July 4, 1827. Following the abolishment, freed African Americans began to establish communities in New York City, including the Queens community of Newtown (now Elmhurst), where a body was found at what was once the location of an African Methodist Episcopal church and burial ground.
The “Woman in the Iron Coffin” was first discovered by construction workers on October 4, 2011 and was believed to be a victim of a homicide. Archaeologists were called to the site on October 5, 2011, where they discovered metal fragments, suggesting the woman was buried more than 150 years ago.
From initial examinations, it was determined that the body was that of an African American woman, dressed in a long white nightgown with thick, knee-high socks and a hand-crafted comb that held a delicate knit cap on her head.
After examining the body and studying the 1850 Census of New York City, Warnasch determines that the remains likely belonged to Martha Peterson, a 26-year-old African American woman living in New York City in 1850. Peterson was the daughter of John and Jane Peterson, prominent figures in Newtown’s African American community.
Public records also noted that Martha Peterson lived with William Raymond, the brother-in-law, neighbor and business partner of Almond Dunbar Fisk, the iron coffin creator.
In 2016, the “Woman in the Iron Coffin” was given a proper burial by the Saint Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church of Jackson Heights.
 Buzzworthy Moments

For a non-evasive way to further examine the woman’s remains, Warnasch seeks the help of Prof. Jerry Conlogue to conduct a “virtual” autopsy. Using sophisticated computer software and hardware, Warnasch and Conlogue determine the woman was between 25 and 30 years old, and died from smallpox.
Forensic imaging specialist Joe Mullins creates a facial reconstruction of the “Woman in the Iron Coffin” by using a CT scan of the skull, digitally fixing the damaged parts of the skull, and incorporating age-and-ancestry-appropriate features from a database of thousands of body parts. To give back to the Queens community, Warnasch shares the image of the woman with members of the Saint Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church
Secrets of the Dead: The Woman in the Iron Coffin is a production of Impossible Factual. Directed by Adam Luria. Stephanie Carter is executive producer for Secrets of the Dead.
 

Photo still

Dogs in the wild

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/collections/dogs-wild/

FULL EPISODE

Meet the family - full episode

CLIPS

Meet the family

African wild dog vote with sneezes

Ethiopian wolf vs mole rat

Meet the world's smallest wild dog

Dhole pack coordinates attack on deer

Defending wild dogs

Urban foxes battle over territory

Secrets of success

IMAGE STILL

viola davis lashana lynch thuso mbedu sheila atim in "the woman king"

Jann Wenner Defends His Legacy, and His Generation’s
The co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine on the legacy of boomers and why he chose only white men for his book on rock’s “masters.”

In 2019, Jann Wenner officially left Rolling Stone, the magazine he co-founded in 1967, but he hasn’t left it behind. Since stepping away from the iconic publication, where I briefly worked as an online editor a decade ago, Wenner, 77, has written two books rooted in his time there. The first, a hefty, dishy memoir called “Like a Rolling Stone,” was a best seller after it was published last year. The second, “The Masters,” which will be published on Sept. 26, consists of interviews that Wenner conducted during his Rolling Stone years with rock legends like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Bono and others, as well as a new interview with Bruce Springsteen.

Those interviews — lengthy, deeply informed, insightful — are the kinds of pieces that helped Rolling Stone earn the reputation it held for so long as the music publication. Under Wenner’s guidance, the magazine also developed a reputation as a source of crucial and hard-hitting investigative journalism. But it has taken some reputational hits over the years. Chief among them a widely read investigative piece on an alleged rape at the University of Virginia — which turned out to never have happened.

As befits a man who has been held up as an avatar of his generation’s achievements and failings, Wenner has left behind a complex legacy. But it’s one that he’s happy to defend. Talking to Wenner, who spoke from his home in Montauk, N.Y., I couldn’t help but suspect that he missed the cut-and-thrust of his journalism days. He was very willing, eager even, to engage in discussion about his approach to interviewing his famous rock star friends, his own and his magazine’s possible missteps and what the baby boomers really achieved.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Q: You developed personal friendships with a lot of the people you interviewed in “The Masters.” I’m curious how you think those friendships helped the interviews, and are there any ways in which they hindered them?

A: By and large, they helped. Because the interviews I did, they’re not confrontational interviews. They’re not interviews with politicians or business executives. These are interviews with artists. They’re meant to be sympathetic, and they’re meant to elicit from the artist as deep as possible thinking that they’re willing to reveal. I think that the friendships were critical. I mean, the example of Mick Jagger — he just didn’t give interviews to anybody, and he still doesn’t. It’s because we were friends, I got him to do it. I had a particular kind of relationship with Bob Dylan. Jerry Garcia, we were old buddies from years ago. So, it really works. The only place it hurt was with Bruce. That was the interview I did for the book, not for the magazine. And my friendship with Bruce is very deep at this point. It makes it difficult to ask questions that you know the answers to. You’re trimming your sails to the friendship.

Q: = Question

A: = Answer

Q: In the Maureen Dowd profile of you last year, you said that the Rolling Stones look like “Lord of the Rings” characters. Did Mick Jagger give you a hard time about that?

A: Oh, yeah.

Q: What did he say?

A: He couldn’t believe I had said that. I had to say, Look, I’m so sorry. I was just, in the pursuit of publicity, trying to be super clever and please forgive me. Of course, he did. But it was one of those careless remarks. A friend shouldn’t say that kind of thing. You don’t want to read it in Maureen Dowd’s thing in The New York Times. Oh, Mick Jagger looks like he’s Gandalf the wizard. He was absolutely right and I felt terrible.

Q: In the introduction to the Bono interview in “The Masters,” you mentioned that he edited and reviewed the transcript. What does editing mean in that context?

A: Looking for grammatical stuff, usage stuff; changing a word here and there, if he’d want to use a different word that’s more precise; maybe something was too intimate and he decides he doesn’t want to put it on the public record. I’m happy to do that with these subjects. As I said before, these are not meant to be confrontational interviews. These are profiles in a way. If I have to trade the level of trust that is necessary to get this kind of interview, to let people put a few things off the record, nothing of any value, maybe something about their kids or their family or not wanting to put down somebody. I let John Lennon edit his interview, and everything he said in that interview ——

Q: Oh, is that true? This is a famous interview from 1970. He unloaded his public feelings about the Beatles. But I didn’t realize that you let him edit it.

A: Yes. He went through, and he made changes here and there. Basically, it’s interview subjects clarifying what they want to say, making it more precise. Because it’s a long stream of yap and verbiage and you sometimes don’t think through every word. I want them to have the opportunity to say precisely what they meant.

Q: I think it’s fair to say that the average reader assumes that what shows up in the publication is basically what was said. But you’re saying, actually the subjects go over the transcripts. And, for example, you got pilloried for reviewing Mick Jagger’s “Goddess in the Doorway,” giving it five stars, when the critical consensus on that album was that it was kind of a dud. The broader question is, when it comes to interviews with the people that you admire, who are also your friends, are you shading into something that’s a little more like fan service, or a kind of branding, than objective journalism?

A: Look, nothing was ever substantively changed from the original interviews. These are all minor changes that really get to accuracy and readability and all that stuff. Secondly, these were not meant to be confrontational interviews. They were always meant to be cooperative interviews.

Q: But there aren’t two kinds of interviews.

A: Yes, there are. The kind of interview I wanted to do was to elicit real thinking, not to confront or challenge or get somebody defensive. But let’s go to the underlying thing: Did my too-cozy relationships alter our coverage?

Q: That’s right.

A: OK, let’s go to the example of the Mick Jagger thing. The editors themselves put it at four stars, and there was not a critical backlash to the thing. The only backlash to it was from Keith Richards, who, instead of calling it “Goddess in the Doorway,” called it “Dogshit in the Doorway.” It’s still quite a good album. So I personally intervened. Having sat there and listened to Mick make it, I was in love with it. I confess: I probably went too far. So what? I’m entitled.

Q: Rolling Stone had a history of producing certain kinds of stories that ended up being definitive. But there were a handful of stories that raised questions of integrity. The U.Va. campus rape story would be one of those. Even Hunter S. Thompson — I don’t know that anyone would hold him up as a beacon of factual accuracy, regardless of the literary merit of his stories. Was there anything endemic to Rolling Stone that caused you to put the pursuit of the juicy story ahead of concerns with accuracy?

A: One word answer: no.

Q: Is it just one-offs?

A: The University of Virginia story was not a failure of intent, or an attempt to be loose with the facts. You get beyond the factual errors that sank that story, and it was really about the issue of rape and how it affects women on campus, their lack of rights. Other than this one key fact that the rape described actually was a fabrication of this woman, the rest of the story was bulletproof. It wasn’t for recklessness. I mean, we made one of those errors — every publication in the country, including The Times, makes every 50 years at least. You get slammed for it. We took our beating. But it wasn’t indicative of how we operated. It wasn’t an error of being casual with the truth, or trying to stretch it, or mission creep, or anything like that.

Hunter, well, you know, sui generis. Hunter, in fact, was as accurate a reporter as I’ve ever had, but it’s just that his stories went beyond facts, into areas of the truth and spirituality and pharmacology that none of us are really able to judge on our own. My mission always, journalistically speaking, was the truth is the most important thing. As we all know now, if somebody really wants to hoax you, there’s very little you can do about it. Except have the kind of hypervigilance that would mean you could probably publish nothing.

Q: So almost a decade later, there are no lessons that you drew from that experience? In your mind, it’s just wrong place, wrong time? That seems like sort of a glib response.

A: There are two main things in the story. One was the account of this gang rape given to us by this source, Jackie. That turned out to be a fabrication. Because we didn’t want to identify her, we didn’t demand to meet people to corroborate her story. Our mistake was to let her out of that demand, not wanting to put her through the trauma again. That was one story that ran through the long piece. The other story, having nothing to do with Jackie, was about the handling of rape on that campus by other people — handling rape in general across the country. It was a conscientious, serious attempt to do that issue, and that was like the third piece by that particular individual on sex crimes and one of our second or third pieces about campus rape. So then the hoax was discovered and we lived with the consequence of that. It was one of the most miserable professional experiences I’ve ever had. I don’t mean to be glib about it, but I don’t feel wholly to blame for this, or that it’s some terrible black mark. I think the lesson I learned is, yes, it does happen to everybody. The other thing is, of course, we could have been tighter. So, you know, there’s a series of circumstances. I can’t pull out the hara-kiri knife for that one.

Q: To go back to the book now, in the introduction to the book ——

A: Am I let off the hook, David? Am I forgiven?

Q: That’s not for me to decide.

A: History will speak.

Q: History will speak. This is also a history-will-speak kind of question. There are seven subjects in the new book; seven white guys. In the introduction, you acknowledge that performers of color and women performers are just not in your zeitgeist. Which to my mind is not plausible for Jann Wenner. Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Stevie Wonder, the list keeps going — not in your zeitgeist? What do you think is the deeper explanation for why you interviewed the subjects you interviewed and not other subjects?

A: Well, let me just. …

Q: Carole King, Madonna. There are a million examples.

A: When I was referring to the zeitgeist, I was referring to Black performers, not to the female performers, OK? Just to get that accurate. The selection was not a deliberate selection. It was kind of intuitive over the years; it just fell together that way. The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them. Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.

Q: Oh, stop it. You’re telling me Joni Mitchell is not articulate enough on an intellectual level?

A: Hold on a second.

Q: I’ll let you rephrase that.

A: All right, thank you. It’s not that they’re not creative geniuses. It’s not that they’re inarticulate, although, go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest. You know, Joni was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test. Not by her work, not by other interviews she did. The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock.

Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right? I suppose when you use a word as broad as “masters,” the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.

Q: How do you know if you didn’t give them a chance?

A: Because I read interviews with them. I listen to their music. I mean, look at what Pete Townshend was writing about, or Jagger, or any of them. They were deep things about a particular generation, a particular spirit and a particular attitude about rock ’n’ roll. Not that the others weren’t, but these were the ones that could really articulate it.

Q: Don’t you think it’s actually more to do with your own interests as a fan and a listener than anything particular to the artists? I think the problem is when you start saying things like “they” or “these artists can’t.” Really, it’s a reflection of what you’re interested in more than any ability or inability on the part of these artists, isn’t it?

A: That was my No. 1 thing. The selection was intuitive. It was what I was interested in. You know, just for public relations sake, maybe I should have gone and found one Black and one woman artist to include here that didn’t measure up to that same historical standard, just to avert this kind of criticism. Which, I get it. I had a chance to do that. Maybe I’m old-fashioned and I don’t give a [expletive] or whatever. I wish in retrospect I could have interviewed Marvin Gaye. Maybe he’d have been the guy. Maybe Otis Redding, had he lived, would have been the guy.

Q: The last interview in the book — Springsteen, you ask him: Did we change things? You were talking about the boomers. And he has this humble, positive answer: We didn’t fix all the world’s problems, but we moved some social ideas and practices forward. What’s your answer to that question?

A: Bruce is a little more modest than I am. I think that we made striking changes socially and morally and artistically. I don’t think rock ’n’ roll changed everything. I don’t think rock ’n’ roll overturned segregation or the war in Vietnam, but we played huge parts in it. Both consciously and unconsciously. Despite the Trump thing, despite the Republican presidents of the last 30 years, which have held back enormous amounts of progress, society has become so much more liberal. I think rock ’n’ roll played a huge role in that. Did it do everything? No. Was it the sole thing? No. But we did a lot.

Q: So what are valid criticisms of your generation?

A: What didn’t the rock ’n’ roll generation do? I mean, it didn’t get everything done. But I have no fundamental, deep criticisms. Is there something that you think we didn’t get right?

Q: I did one of these interviews a few years ago with Pete Townshend, and I asked him a similar question about the promise of rock ’n’ roll — how it ended up playing out. He was much more negative and, I think, realistic about that — basically saying that the promise ended up being abandoned as soon as there was enough money and stardom. I think that’s a valid criticism. Something that had potential as a social force was reduced to entertainment.

A: Well, God bless Pete. I could have predicted what he’d say. Pete has got a pox on everybody.

Q: But a smart man who has some good ideas.

A: Smart, articulate, a wonderful person to talk to. So you are saying, and Pete is saying, Oh, it became commercial?

Q: That it ceased to have meaning beyond itself.

A: So it became commercial. It became successful. I think I say this somewhere in my introduction to the book that, despite the fact that it became a billion-dollar business, the ideals and goals were never abandoned. I mean, to reach the peak in our society is now being called becoming a rock star. Yes it became commercial, but so what? It’s still a music that speaks to people’s deepest desires and innermost thoughts. It’s still a music of political consequence.

The financial success that these people had didn’t require them to sell out. It required them to do more of the same. Be just as outrageous; do what you’re doing. Nobody said, You have to tone back your message now. I mean, God bless Pete, and I know he’d say that. But it’s not true. The work was worthwhile, we had fun doing it. It was meaningful. We were very lucky. We’ve lived really privileged lives. Now we get to rest. At the same time, we can look at our kids and the world we leave behind as being as motivated and as inspired to do the same thing. In that sense, rock ’n’ roll still lives — and will live.

Q: Well, thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

A: I enjoyed doing it. I wouldn’t mind seeing the written transcript. I’d be curious to look it over.

Q: Yeah, right!

A: After it’s published. God, forgive me.

URL
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/arts/jann-wenner-the-masters-interview.html

MY THOUGHTS

AS a writer and someone who has interviewed a few people. Wenner is correct, the fact that most interviews don't allow for the interviewer to edit exposes the baiting commercial culture in most news firms. Notice I said baiting commercial. The issue isn't making money, all who live in fiscal capitalism are trying to make money de facto but can one make money while not using baiting techniques? Can one be true to oneself and still make money. To non whites plus women, Wenner hurt himself or showed less sharp intellect by not admitting the simple truth. non whites plus women entertainers communicate more guarded plus are less trusting to open their true thoughts in the mediasphere. why? both are more afraid to lose their revenue streams or opportunity. Sequentially, he does feel a greater kinship to white male artists who through a combination of individual character plus environmental allowance, are more than likely speak their mind or not give a fuck. To the 1960's multiracial youth movement in the USA. They did fail their goal which was a united human race on earth with the smallest amount of biases. But why is their saving grace? THey failed because they didn't have support outside the usa. while the youth movements in the usa were rallying most youth in humanity were being indoctrinated in systems that are heavily negatively biased. Everyone is racial,the word is biased. They failed because the unity they seek is a very hard thing to create. Many humans are individuals, but most humans like community. They bend to community and all communities have an unwanted other. 

Writeup as I listened

12:10 
Secrets to writing great horror

12:12
He wrote the Kundalini equation < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-kundalini-equation-1 >

originally wrote to have a best seller and increase his career. A white guy was put on a peers cover. The firms back in the day to the original publication was not willing to look at their own responsibility. 
True, the white audience in modernity is used to 

17:36 
STeven sees the potential to do something unique to him. He will rewrite a former novel and turn it into something it should had been, and he will collaborate with Tananarive in the script form. He wants to use Tananarive practical historical smoothing.

18:46 
People suggest Tananarive Due is one of the greatest horror writers alive. 

20:10 
what makes a great horror story?

22:06
What is the greatest extent, what is the most extreme moment?
There is a point where it is too much or that is not enough. A symphony of different emotions to feel the experience. Using vision boards matters.  You can feel your way before you write it. 

23:50 
Now that a cardboard treatment, and now a written treatment and ask what is the experience of this movie be.
What is the difference between action or horror movies?
In action movies, people are getting hurt in a sequence, like in horror. 
For Tananarive, the difference is the depth of characters.
For example, a horror movie about a bunch of college students on a ski trip. She can relate to college students through friends who like skiing.
Then a mercenary on a mission is on a ski lift. She can't relate to a mercenary or being on a ski lift. 

26:31 
Horror needs a relatable character who is experiencing fear, a haunted house is not enough. You need a customer who has never been in that haunted house and something goes wrong. A couple for example trying to work out their stuff and it makes the external side internal.

27:41 
Tananarive has a template. 
If she has to write a horror story and has three weeks.
->What scares you?
She uses survivor horror as that is scary to her and she has been camping, rafting. 
->How do you make the story yours? 
So more than bears, it becomes about a cult. Stephen King was a teacher growing up
->Believe in the characters
Suffered a trauma, and committed a transgression is common among writers of horror. Grief is common , the one horror no one overcomes. 

31:29 
All horror is about surviving what you are in.
Imagine Get Out if Chris wasn't in grief over the lost of his mother.
Steven makes a point, deer antlers were used as a symbol to defend himself, which is like the deer he hit in the beginning of the film.

32:37 
Tananarive, she weaponized his Grief, and by the end, he has weaponized his own grief. To make it his strength and overcome. 

34:09 
Tananative You can make "Get Out" a drama. Is Chris in love with the secret psycho white woman? 
Peele discussed Guess who is coming to dinner in the early screenplay version of "Get Out" 
< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpGmCLcqgAw >
< https://www.shadowandact.com/what-is-black-horror-the-sunken-place-professor-tananarive-due-explains > 

36:27
Peele started with social anxiety. It wasn't about phenotypical frictions, merely the frictions of the stranger among a group of friends and amplify it. 
Turn it up to 11. 
Tananarive isn't into human horror. She is triggered by Human horror and make it a journey. It is a journey of self revelation. 

37:39
Liam Neeson, eyes in the grey.
She loves that film, for not about the wolf winning but standing up. Even though many call the end a downer. The film is about who the character becomes. 

38:44 
Tananarive considers gaslighting her least favorite horror. PArents or spouses gaslighting children or spouses in her opinion is poor storytelling. Is it going to kill your character to cut on a flashlight in the dark room? She feels it is overdone. She calls it an artificial conceit. She loves Miles in the good house. Miles doesn't believe but stands by the female character. 
< https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-good-house-2 > 

40:47
You want psychological realism, nothing breaks more than when people act away from common responses. If you do not pick up a weapon going to a dark place you are an idiot.

41:36
STeven Barnes, asks is that why meetings are the best part in horror to Tananarive. 
Tananarive loves the meeting in horror.  

42:40 
Steven talks of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, people of normal intelligence with no idea what is about to happen. In alien, normal people of normal intelligence. Whereas in prometheus, they were scientist and should had known better. 

43:57
Steven, Difference between action in horror, something killing you in the dark is horror, in the light as a tiger is action. 
Horror is unknown, playing on the minds ways to whatever the truth is in the darkness. Action is more strategic, allows for knowable assessment. 
 
45:20 
Tananarive, the feeling of fear is different in action. 
Steven, it will be interesting to take a liam neeson skill set taken man into a situation where he finds himself in a situation beyond his comprehension that he realizes. 

46:42
Tananarive, war time horror is like that. ala Predator. 

47:25 
Steven, talks of Prey, the predator underestimates the human female lead. 

48:25 
Elegance usually takes years. Steven says, the best pieces of horror were not primordial, they evolved. 

49:33 
Tananarive, Think about the antagonists too. Make sure their is logic to Zombies. What is different in the way you write zombies?
< https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/devil-s-wake > 

Put your own unique spin. For example, the reason for haunting of ghost matters. 
The interaction between characters side antagonist matters. 
Steven, your god of the universe in your story
Alot of readers like the antagonist more than anybody else in the story, make it pop ,and don't repeat things. 

52:55 
September 23rd 5-8 on the east coast , 
3 hour workshop. It is 197 dollars. If you can't afford it. You can email us and ask for a lower price.
how to format screenplay, all the hacks. 
www. hollywoodloophole.com
< https://store.payloadz.com/details/2686637-other-files-arts-and-crafts-10-secrets-of-hollywood-writers-live-zoom-workshop.html > 

They want engaged people. 

Title: Artwork process for ‘Nubia wonder woman’

Video Process

Artist: Clarence Bateman
https://www.deviantart.com/clarencebatemanart/art/Artwork-process-for-Nubia-Wonder-Woman-910623152

Prior Post

https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2092&type=status

Post with Clarence Bateman

https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?&q=clarence bateman&type=core_statuses_status&quick=1&search_and_or=and&sortby=newest

Quoted from the author Milton j Davis @Milton  not me

My novel Woman of the Woods was inspired by my research on the Mino of Dahomey, the same source of inspiration of The Woman King.  It tells the story of Sadatina, a girl on the brink of becoming a woman living with her family in Adamusola, the land beyond the Old Men Mountains. But tragic events transpire that change her life forever, revealing a hidden past that leads her into the midst of a war between her people and those that would see them destroyed, the Mosele. Armed with a spiritual weapon and her feline 'sisters,' Sadatina becomes a Shosa, a warrior trained to fight the terrible nyokas, demon-like creatures that aid the Mosele in their war against her people.

https://www.mvmediaatl.com/product-page/woman-of-the-woods

A Call for Submissions
for the Killens Review of Arts & Letters
Spring 2024

All That We Carry: Where Do We Go From Here?

Deadline: Friday, December 1, 2023

The Killens Review of Arts & Letters is a peer-reviewed journal that welcomes Black writers and artists whose work speaks to the general public and to an intergenerational range of readers represented throughout the African diaspora. For the Spring 2024 issue of the Killens Review, we are seeking short stories, essays, creative nonfiction, poetry, art, and photography. Inspired by questions posed by Dr. Tiya Miles, eminent historian and creative writer, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are soliciting content that reflects how Black creatives from all parts of the world move forward when all around us is in disarray. Specifically, we ask that you submit original writing or art that explores the themes of legacy, memory, inheritance, and/or radical hope (or pessimism), with an orientation toward the future and future generations of Black peoples.

Application

https://centerforblackliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CFP_Killens-Review-Spring-2024.pdf

HISTORY | SEPTEMBER 2022

Was King Arthur a Real Person?
The story of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table has captivated us for a thousand years. But is there any truth behind the tales?

By Joshua Hammer https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Joshua-Hammer/19043478

Photographs by Jooney Woodward https://jooneywoodward.co.uk/information/

A cold, wind-driven rain soaks through my parka as I walk across a narrow foot-bridge that links the Cornwall mainland in southwest England to a rocky promontory overlooking the Bristol Channel. Far below this cantilevered span, waves crash against the cliffs and swirl inside a grotto known as Merlin’s Cave. Win Scutt, a burly, amiable archaeologist from nearby Plymouth, opens a gate and leads me down a path to the ruins of a medieval castle. Its fragmentary walls mark the lair where Richard, the 13th-century Earl of Cornwall and the brother of King Henry III, is said to have gathered with his followers to feast on mutton and ale and pay homage to a monarch who may never have existed: King Arthur.

The figure of Arthur first appeared in Welsh poetry in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, a hero who was said to lead the Britons in battle against Saxon invaders. But it wasn’t until the 12th century that he was first tied to this dramatic headland, known as Tintagel. In the Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, which was written in 1136 and purported to trace Britain’s history back to its supposed founding by Trojan exiles, an almost certainly fictitious sixth-century king named Uther Pendragon sleeps with the beguiling Ygerna, the wife of a local duke, at her castle in Tintagel, after the magician Merlin turns Pendragon into a likeness of her husband. “That night she conceived Arthur, the most famous of men, who subsequently won great renown by his outstanding bravery,” Geoffrey wrote.

Scholars have universally dismissed Geoffrey’s text as a pseudo-history, woven from ancient Welsh folk tales and his febrile imagination. Still, many people at the time believed the story, and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, was so convinced Arthur was real that, in May 1233, he traded three prime estates for this treeless headland, which is separated from the mainland by an isthmus, and built a castle on it. “It had no function,” Scutt says, as he leads me through the stone ruins of the castle’s great hall. “It’s in a remote part of Cornwall that had no use to him. But he wanted to anchor his position in legend and history. He was the Earl of Cornwall—but he was also the successor of Arthur.”

King Arthur has never relinquished his hold on the imagination. Writers in Geoffrey’s wake added their own flourishes—the magical sword Excalibur, the Knights of the Round Table, Arthur’s romantic triangle with Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, and Arthur’s mortal wound at the Battle of Camlann. Arthurian tales of courtly love, magic and martial bravery have been told and retold in countless versions over the centuries, from the earliest eulogistic stanzas in Welsh poetry to T.H. White’s 1958 novel The Once and Future King, from Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century Le Morte d’Arthur to the 2021 film The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel as Sir Gawain, a knight at Camelot, the legendary castle where Arthur held court. “There is something in the Arthur legend for everyone,” says Leah Tether, a professor of medieval studies at Bristol University and former president of the British branch of the International Arthurian Society, which regularly brings together scholars and other enthusiasts interested in Arthurian literature. The story of King Arthur, she says, “has got flawed characters with whom we can empathize, quests to achieve impossible goals, and an adaptable story line that fits the sociopolitical landscape of the time.” Raluca Radulescu, a professor of medieval literature at Bangor University in Wales, suggests Arthur’s perennial appeal is also tied to “a standard of moral integrity” that readers find inspirational, one “they cannot find in the world around them, but will discover in the stories of King Arthur.”

The timeless popularity of the Arthur legend has overshadowed a central, unresolved question: Was there really a King Arthur, or at least a historical prototype upon whom Geoffrey’s hero is based? That’s what has brought me to Tintagel on this stormy winter morning. Scutt leads me down a grassy slope to the foundations of a dozen houses built on terraces overlooking the sea. Ralegh Radford, the English archaeologist who exposed these ruins in the 1930s, was reminded of similar structures at remote sites in Ireland, and after observing Christian symbols on ceramics found at the site he guessed the ruins were the remains of a Celtic monastery that existed between the fifth and seventh centuries.

Over the past four years, however, Scutt and his team from English Heritage, a nonprofit organization that administers more than 400 historical sites in Britain, have conducted their own research, and they’ve challenged Radford’s assessment of the site. They have excavated three additional houses and have also unearthed fragments of glass goblets from Spain, cups from Merovingian-era France, pottery from Tunisia and amphorae from Turkey used for storing wine or olive oil. Carbon dating, unavailable to Radford a century before, has confirmed the settlement existed in the sixth century. But rather than being a retreat for religious ascetics, Scutt believes that the site, with its protected position on the Cornwall coast, was a flourishing local stronghold. “This could have been home to a mercantile elite whose economy was based entirely on trade,” he says.

Tintagel, Scutt says, was likely home to several thousand people and controlled a territory that extended across modern-day Cornwall. He points out that while much of the British Isles had sunk into illiteracy and destitution during this period—commonly known as the Dark Ages—most residents at Tintagel lived in comfortable slate-roofed homes with sturdy wooden timbers and, in some cases, a second story. It’s not implausible, he argues, that a ruler or commander—perhaps one named Arthur—rose out of this society, and served as an inspiration for Geoffrey of Monmouth. The headland has given up other tantalizing clues, including a sixth-century stone slab with the mysterious word “Artognou” carved into it. Experts in Celtic, the language spoken in Britain at the time, dismiss its significance. But some insist the inscription is a variation of “Arthur.” The slab, they say, is a mark of the king’s realm.

When the legend of Arthur was born, Britain was in a state of collapse. The Roman Empire had made its first incursion into the British Isles in 55 B.C., eventually conquering much of the territory up to present-day Scotland. Its conquest and long rule was often violent, but the Romans also built roads and established towns such as Londinium and Durovernum Cantiacorum, today London and Canterbury. Throughout the Roman province of Britannia the quality of life largely improved.

Then, in A.D. 410, Rome, under siege at home from Visigoths, a Germanic tribe from Eastern Europe, withdrew its troops and plunged Britannia into chaos. Civil institutions vanished, the economy collapsed, and basic household goods became scarce. Saxon invasions terrorized the population, and Britannia fragmented into fiefdoms dominated by often brutal strongmen and their gangs. “Britain has kings, but they are tyrants . . . engaged in plunder and rape, but always preying on the innocent,” a British monk named Gildas wrote in the sixth century. Plague and drought struck the region, wiping out a significant part of the population.

“Britain was a failed state,” says Marc Morris, a British historian and author of 2021’s The Anglo Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 to 1066. “It was a miserable time to be alive.”

Many historians believe that a heroic warrior likely rose during this period to lead the Britons, who had largely embraced Christianity, against the pagan Saxons. The Welsh poem Y Gododdin, written between A.D. 540 and 640, describes a fallen soldier by likening him to another called Arthur, which some scholars interpret as showing that a warrior named Arthur was so famous when the poem was written that the bravery of others could be measured by comparison. Around the same time, Gildas, the monk, described a British triumph at the Battle of Badon Hill, which he dated to “the year of my birth,” probably in the early sixth century. He didn’t mention Arthur (he called his hero Ambrosius Aurelianus), but three centuries later, around 830, a Welsh monk named Nennius, in his History of the Britons, described how a warrior named Arthur led the Britons to victory in 12 glorious battles against the Saxons. “The twelfth battle was on the mountain of Badon, in which there fell in one day 960 men from one charge of Arthur, and no one slew them except him alone, and in all battles he was the victor,” Nennius wrote.

Some scholars have pointed to Nennius’ account as evidence of Arthur’s existence. Yet Nicholas Higham, a retired medievalist at University of Manchester and the author of 2018’s King Arthur: The Making of the Legend, says the evidence is hardly conclusive. For one thing, the account was written 300 years after the Battle of Badon Hill was purported to take place. (Although Gildas’ text provides the only contemporaneous mention of the battle, other British histories, including the eighth-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, describe the fighting in detail, and scholars are generally convinced that such a battle did take place.) For another, historians in the Middle Ages are widely known to have blended fact and fiction to advance a political or religious agenda. At a time when the Saxons were conquering Britain, Higham says, the Britons needed a “god-beloved warrior” to rally their spirits and restore the emergent nation to glory, and Nennius concocted a character to fit the bill. “Arthur was winning battles with the support of Jesus Christ and Mary against the Saxons,” he says. “The Saxons were presented as barbaric, dishonest and latecomers to Christianity.” To show that Arthur had roots in Roman culture, which was still widely admired, Higham argues, Nennius derived the name from Artorius, a general who gained fame in the Punic Wars in the third century B.C.

If Nennius established Arthur as a British hero, Geoffrey of Monmouth brought him to life. Born around 1090, possibly in Wales, and educated in Paris and Oxford, Geoffrey was ensconced as a bishop in Britain in the mid-1100s when he wrote, in Latin, perhaps the most influential book ever about Arthur. Like Nennius, Geoffrey had a political agenda: to show the superiority of the Celtic-speaking Britons, and by extension, the Welsh, who spoke the same language. “There were a lot of criticisms of the Welsh as being savages, barbarians,” says Morris. “Geoffrey invents a noble history for them, going back a hundred kings before Arthur.” A cipher in Nennius’ history, Arthur now became a Celtic-speaking warrior-king within a richly imagined narrative.

Geoffrey claimed that he’d gleaned details of Arthur’s life from an ancient Welsh history book shown to him by an Oxford archdeacon, but there’s no evidence such a book existed. There’s also no knowledge about what might have led him to set Arthur’s origin story at Tintagel, or if he ever visited the remote headland. “He would have known it as a very dramatic, rocky clifftop, a mystical place, a place that there were plenty of stories about,” says Higham. “But that’s all we can say.”

Geoffrey introduced Guinevere’s infidelity to Arthur, the wizard Merlin (a composite of earlier Welsh prophets) and a magical sword he called Caliburn (based on the Irish sword Caladbolg, a derivation of the Welsh Caledfwlch), which later became known as Excalibur. He ended the tale on an island called Avalon, where Arthur is carried by the enchantress Morgan le Fay after being “mortally injured” against the Saxons in the Battle of Camlann. Geoffrey apparently plucked this battle from The Welsh Annals, written in the late tenth century. This set of chronicles, an apparent blend of fact and fiction, established A.D. 537 as the year of “The Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut”—or Mordred, who in later Arthurian tales becomes Arthur’s treacherous nephew and rival—“fell, and there was plague in Britain and Ireland.”

Geoffrey’s fantastical account had its share of skeptics. “It is quite clear that everything this man wrote about Arthur and his successors, and indeed his predecessors...was made up,” the medieval historian William of Newburgh wrote. Yet many Britons accepted it as the truth. In 1191 the monks of Glastonbury Abbey dug up a pair of skeletons in their churchyard and touted them as the remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere—a clever hoax to draw paying tourists to the abbey. By the 13th century, writes Morris in 2015’s A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain, “It was proof positive that the fabulous king about whom Geoffrey of Monmouth had written had once really existed.”

One true believer was King Edward I. In 1278, the monarch visited the grave site at Glastonbury and ordered the remains to be disinterred, partly to lay to rest the belief in some quarters that Geoffrey’s hero was superhuman and still alive—and thus could potentially challenge Edward for the throne. “There in two caskets were found the bones of the said king of wondrous size, and those of Guinevere, of marvellous beauty,” wrote a local observer. Afterward, the king and queen wrapped the skeletons in silk, placed the royal seal on them, and returned them to their graves.

From this point, the Arthur legend not only grew but became the dominant literary tale of medieval Europe. Monasteries and royal courts bought more than 1,000 copies of Geoffrey’s manuscript, making it the most popular text in the Middle Ages after the Bible. Richard Barber, an Arthurian scholar in Sussex, has personally tracked down 235 surviving copies. He might have found more, but when Henry VIII shuttered the country’s monasteries in the 1530s during his break with the Roman church, “A lot of them were torn up and used for wrapping pies,” Barber told me.

Meanwhile, Arthur’s legend traveled across the English Channel to France, thanks to the hugely influential 12th-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes. Possibly borrowing from Geoffrey and from Welsh folk tales, and writing under the patronage of the Plantagenets, the British-French dynasty founded by Henry II, de Troyes invented Sir Lancelot, Camelot and the Holy Grail, which he described as a “vessel” used by Jesus at the Last Supper. “The Arthur story began to take off,” says Barber. “One hundred years later, you’ve got Arthur in Germany and all around Italy.”

Manuscripts retelling the Arthur myth became so common that they were often discarded and recycled, and not only as pie-wrapping paper. One winter morning I visit the rare-book room at Bristol’s Central Library with Leah Tether, the University of Bristol medievalist. A library staff member brings us four leather-bound tomes written by the French philosopher Jean Gerson and printed in Strasbourg in the late 15th century. But what we’re really here to see is something that one of Tether’s colleagues discovered pasted inside the bindings in 2019: seven parchment manuscript pages written in Old French, dating to around 1250. These pages—discarded and recycled as protective filler inside the newer volumes—show how the Arthur legend took on embellishments and mutations as it proliferated across Europe, introducing new characters, developing story lines, and reflecting the mores and culture of the different societies in which it appeared.

The seven pages come from a series of French stories known as the Vulgate Cycle, and they constitute some of the oldest known adaptations of tales by Chrétien de Troyes. I scan the thousand-year-old parchment and spot references to “Merlin” and “Gauvain,” the French spelling of Sir Gawain. Here, Tether says, Merlin advises Arthur on military tactics, leads a charge using a dragon standard that breathes real fire, and engages in an amorous encounter with Viviane, otherwise known as the Lady of the Lake, a fairy queen invented by de Troyes and further developed by later French writers. This version, says Tether, is “more chaste” than standard French medieval accounts of the relationship, which describe a spell written across Viviane’s groin that prevents men from sleeping with her; in this early version the spell is written on her ring, and prevents men from “speaking” with her. “Very little is known about de Troyes’ life, but he’s the ultimate medieval storyteller,” Tether tells me. His stories were translated into Old Norse and Swedish—the latter, Tether says, inscribed on doors across Iceland in the 12th century.

Other writers added their own touches to the Arthur story and canonized his place in literary history. Thomas Malory, a British member of Parliament and a violent criminal who probably wrote Le Morte d’Arthur while doing time in Newgate Prison for robbery or rape, created the definitive version of the Sword in the Stone story. In his account, the teenage Arthur answers a challenge inscribed on the stone—“Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England”—by performing the feat multiple times other nobles have failed. Four centuries later, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Idylls of the King, described the tortured romantic triangle involving Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere that tore apart the Knights of the Round Table: “The great and guilty love he bare the Queen, / In battle with the love he bare his lord, / Had marr’d his face, and mark’d it ere his time,” he wrote. Tennyson also brought the story full circle. The Victorian poet described the waves of the Bristol Channel carrying the infant Arthur, an abandoned castaway, to the shore of Tintagel. There Merlin stashes him in the grotto—now known as Merlin’s Cave—to protect him from the enemies of his father, Uther Pendragon.

As he had from the beginning, Arthur remained a source of legitimacy for Britain’s ruling elite. Where early medieval legends sought to cast Celtic-speaking Britons favorably, the Tudor monarchs, who came to power in the late 15th century, claimed Arthur as a direct ancestor, deriving from him the right to rule the nation. Henry VII even baptized his son Prince Arthur. And for writers, he remained the ideal vessel into which they could pour their social commentary. Tennyson, writing during the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, portrayed Arthur as a figure of moral stability and certainty, whereas Guinevere, in the light of Victorian morality, was an adulterer whose transgressions contributed to the general sickness of society.

“The interesting thing about the Arthurian legend is that it has periods of both ebb and flow,” says Tether. “It’s able to be molded to fit with current preoccupations, such that it can find applicability no matter what the mood of the moment.” She points out that the elasticity of the narrative has its roots in the Middle Ages: “Stories were transmitted orally and via manuscripts, meaning that no two versions were identical. It’s actually impossible to identify an ‘original’ version of Arthur. Arthur’s appeal is, and always was, precisely in his multiplicity.”

In and around Tintagel, the legend of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Arthur continues to draw pilgrims to the king’s “realm.” The Earl of Cornwall’s 13th-century stronghold receives 250,000 tourists a year, including 3,000 a day in the summer. Many, says Win Scutt, “believe that they’re seeing King Arthur’s castle.” Critics say English Heritage has fed that misconception since taking over the site two decades ago. In 2016, two hundred Cornish historians criticized the group for turning the castle into a “fairytale theme park” by erecting kitschy monuments such as a Merlin relief carved into stone near the grotto. Scutt replies that his organization has made it clear that the castle is Richard’s, not Arthur’s. But, he adds, “there was a great mythology to this site that was denied up to this point.”

The theme park atmosphere carries over into the modern village of Tintagel on the Cornish mainland. Visitors can spend the night at the hulking Camelot Castle Hotel, hunt for souvenirs at the Pendragon Gift Shop, or grab a pint and a Cornish pasty—a traditional crescent-shaped pie filled with meat—at the King Arthur’s Arms Inn. Tour guides in North Cornwall, meanwhile, promote several sites, claiming the places may have once been frequented by King Arthur and his knights. There’s a pair of mysterious labyrinth symbols carved into a stone in a forest, supposedly during the Early Bronze Age (skeptics say it’s a fake done by a student in the 1930s); a Neolithic stone enclosure on the eerie Bodmin Moor that some say was an Arthurian ceremonial site; and St. Nectan’s Glen, a mossy waterfall where Arthur’s knights are said to have cleansed themselves before setting off to find the Holy Grail. Matt Ward, a manager at St. Nectan’s, and previously property manager of Tintagel Castle, says he’s convinced there’s something to the Arthur story. “I think Geoffrey of Monmouth heard about Tintagel from people at the time,” he tells me. “They told him, ‘There were powerful people up there—kings.’”

About five miles southeast of Tintagel lies the village of Slaughterbridge, which has laid its own claim to the Arthur legend. Joe Parsons and his family have owned an expanse of meadows and forest here for three generations; it was the site, he maintains, of the Battle of Camlann—King Arthur’s last stand. Geoffrey of Monmouth described the battle as a fatal showdown between King Arthur and his nephew, Mordred, who had raised a rebellion against him. “Arthur was filled with great mental anguish by the fact that Mordred had escaped him so often,” Geoffrey wrote. “Without losing a moment, he followed him to that same locality, reaching the River Camlann, where Mordred was awaiting his arrival.”

Parsons leads me down a dirt road from his small museum and gift shop through the forest to the rushing Camel River. Slipping down a wet slope, he straddles a mossy stone column that lies toppled over on its side along the riverbank. Known as the Slaughterbridge Stone, the column, apparently a burial marker, bears inscriptions in Latin and Ogham, an Irish script extant during the Dark Ages. The Cornish historian Richard Carew, in his 1602 Survey of Cornwall, was the first to document this slab, noting that “the olde folke thereabouts will shew you a stone, bearing Arthur’s name.” Some have claimed the last words of the worn-away inscription once read Latinus hic iacet filius Merlini Arturus, or “Here lies Latinus, the son of Arthur the Great.” Most, however, have read it as something more prosaic: Filius Magari, or “the son of Magari.”

Parsons imagines that in A.D. 537, a warrior-king named Arthur presided over a domain in Cornwall that was centered at the stronghold of Tintagel and guarded at its borders by half a dozen Iron Age hill forts that still stand. Then invaders—possibly Saxons, possibly a splinter group from Arthur’s British tribe—crossed the Bodmin Moor and made their way west across the marshy ground toward the Camel River. “This crossing of the river into north Cornwall was the last defense of that kingdom,” he tells me. At a fording point where the Camel joins the Alan River, he theorizes, the invaders met Arthur’s men in the epic clash. Both Arthur and Mordred, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, were mortally wounded.

Parsons rattles off evidence that he says supports this scenario: beside King Arthur’s stone, an A.D. 1086 reference to a nearby village called Tremordred, which Parsons suggests may refer to Arthur’s nephew; the fact that the Camel River joins the Alan River on his property, making the portmanteau Camlann (there are several other rivers throughout the British Isles with similar names); and a wealth of archaeological evidence that, he says, was found here in the 19th century. “Spurs, battle stuff, arrowheads, horse harness pieces, other bits of weaponry.” The trove of material was taken to a Cornwall museum, he says, “and then disappeared.”

But Nicholas Higham, who’s spent much of his career subjecting claims about Arthur’s historicity to scrupulous analysis, views the Camlann story as one more tall tale pieced together from specious “evidence.” He was an undergraduate at the University of Manchester in the early 1970s, he tells me, when “archaeology and history were surging” with attempts by respected academics to prove that King Arthur had really existed. In the 1960s, Leslie Alcock, an archaeologist at the University of Glasgow, conducted excavations at Cadbury Castle, a Bronze and Iron Age hill fort in England’s Somerset County that had long been identified by Arthurians as being the real Camelot. Alcock insisted he was “an agnostic” on the question of whether Arthur had really lived, but his discoveries of fine Mediterranean pottery fragments—similar to those found at Tintagel—as well as expansive fortifications stirred speculation, and he stoked excitement by writing a book in 1972 called Was This Camelot? The next year, an English historian named John Morris, who specialized in Roman-era and Dark Ages Britain, cited the sudden appearance of the name “Arthur” in sixth-century accounts as proof of the existence of the great warrior hero.

“There was extensive pushback,” Higham tells me. He joined the ranks of the skeptics himself. “What really got me fired up was the constant flow of very bad history writing. You’ve got a whole series of writers like Alcock and Morris who accept what is not recorded until the early ninth and tenth centuries as a factual account of what happened around A.D. 500. It’s nonsense.” Morris, the British medievalist, agrees. “It’s like asking about William Wallace based on Braveheart,” he says. “There’s no evidence for it.”

The investment of time and energy that scholars have put into the question of whether Arthur really lived—to say nothing of the enormous popularity of Arthurian tales through the ages—suggests that the pursuit goes far beyond narrow academic interest. Why are cryptic references in 1,500-year-old Celtic texts so tantalizing? Might it be they’re a way of transcending humdrum reality and connecting to a glorious past and the possibility that, deep in the mists of time, giants walked the earth?

Win Scutt, for his part, isn’t ready to write off King Arthur just yet. The four years that he spent working here impressed on him the “extraordinary nature” of this Dark Ages enclave, he says, as we perch on a slope overlooking the crashing sea on a windswept morning. At a time when most Britons were struggling to find cooking utensils, Tintagel’s inhabitants were using crucibles to forge metal, inscribing slabs with Celtic writing, and controlling agricultural production across substantial territory. The settlement would have been well defended against the marauding bands that plagued the mainland: Geoffrey of Monmouth noted that just a handful of warriors positioned at the narrow neck could have staved off an army. It is not difficult to envision a charismatic leader rising here to defend northern Cornwall from Saxon invaders, says Scutt, or to imagine that his feats would enter sixth-century folklore and be passed down by storytellers to Geoffrey and other chroniclers. “We know this was a center of power,” he says. “But whose power was it? It’s always going to remain a mystery.”

ARticle link
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/king-arthur-real-person-180980466/

MY THOUGHTS
To me, growing up on High John and the Devil's Daughter I can say that the path of characters created in an environment that is not bound to books can not survive. Where Arthur went from a simple king victorious on a few battlefields, and modulated into the christian warrior with ideals that extend to places far from england. 
High John is barely known by Black people in the USA. The why is simple. It isn't that High John isn't flexible. It is the identity of High John as a slave to whites that is not enslaved. The DEvil's daughter as the Devil's daughter, the daughter of a the embodiment of sin, undetachable from sin, who is a hero. That is the problem with both characters in a Black community post War between the States whose internal minorities want the larger black community to be christian or in positive association to whites. The two paths that the characters by default oppose. 
But the question to what black fable started before the civil war in the black community in the USA can arrive stronger today is an interesting question. In england , Arthur had the luxury of a pre modern sense of storytelling or communal pride. In modernity, the idea of the global human family , has powerful priest or priestesses in the USA or elsewhere in humanity, which influences characters from any culture. 

Sammy Davis Interview

TRANSCRIPT

0:00
4 scene 22 take 33 psalm 22.
0:13
damn
0:16
[Music]
0:28
went into the army
0:31
you know that that horrible
0:34
that was my first taste really of racism
0:37
you know ever because I never been
0:40
exposed to it being in Show Business you
0:41
know
0:42
you know you'd run into the average bit
0:44
of it but not them not enough to to
0:45
upset you or anything you know or not
0:48
even to be aware because I'm in show
0:49
business so I wasn't aware of it and as
0:51
a kid being in Show Business you I
0:53
didn't learn until later the about why
0:55
we slept in bus stations and why we had
0:57
to go to the police and say where's
0:58
there
0:59
a colored family that you can stay with
1:01
because you couldn't get in the hotels
1:02
and things like that you couldn't eat in
1:04
this restaurant
1:05
but there was a very close fraternity
1:08
between most of the black and white
1:11
performers at that time
1:13
uh that doesn't exist today what were
1:17
some specific examples when you started
1:20
first getting the message
1:21
well I think the the first real thing
1:23
that I got was in the Army when I you
1:25
know and I was in basic training and I
1:28
hadn't even gone to basic training I
1:29
went in San Francisco we went to the
1:31
Presidio Monterey and the third day I
1:33
was standing in line and this is before
1:36
um desegregation came in the Army you
1:38
know uh and I'm standing in line and at
1:42
the at this place where there was black
1:43
and white soldiers and the cat said you
1:46
know
1:47
where I come from [ __ ] you know
1:48
staring in the back or they they ain't
1:50
here I forget the exact line now and I
1:53
had my my duffel bag and I'm a duffel
1:56
bag but you know the thing like use the
1:57
carry of Shaving equipment in and I just
1:59
sundied him you know
2:01
and knocked him down and had cut his lip
2:04
and he's bleeding from the lid and he
2:06
said
2:08
okay you knock me down but you still a
2:09
[ __ ]
2:12
and that laid with me you know because
2:14
that that's that's so
2:17
so venomous it really is you know that
2:20
that's the kind of cat that you ain't
2:22
gonna never reach
2:23
were there some points at which you
2:26
during that time when you had a lot of
2:29
pressures on you almost lost confidence
2:31
in yourself
2:33
oh well I that happened to me but not
2:35
until I made it really because you know
2:37
when you when you're hungry and you're
2:39
trying to get there that's one thing
2:41
because you've got that ambition that
2:43
feeds on and you keep crawling on your
2:46
ambition to get there I got there until
2:48
I lost control of everything
2:51
sense of values uh
2:53
now I've got the doll so wound up
2:56
there was no relaxing there was there
2:58
was no being aware of anything first of
3:00
all there was not much to be aware of
3:01
anyway in those days
3:04
but I mean the nominal awareness that
3:06
wasn't there I was just wrapped up in me
3:09
then then I got scared because I started
3:12
to lose what I thought was the basic
3:14
human instinct that I had had
3:17
and I got too phony I did oh I did it
3:19
all man I invented some
3:21
the ones that in the book I invented
3:23
some other problems you know but
3:26
I you know again to relate to what you
3:29
are I said today and I look back 25
3:32
years ago and I say wow I don't think I
3:35
my head would be where it is now if I
3:38
had not gone through that
3:40
25 years ago all the mistakes being on
3:43
all the time
3:45
emulating in truth emulating the white
3:48
stars not trying to get my own identity
3:52
but because that that was the kick then
3:54
you know that's what you had to do so I
3:58
decided if you got to do it then I'd do
3:59
it better than anybody else had ever
4:00
done it
4:01
you know in other words when I started
4:03
to do Impressions and all of that kind
4:04
of stuff relating to a theatrical thing
4:06
being on Broadway and Mr Wonderful you
4:09
know I wanted to do all that because I
4:11
figured if Donald O'Connor can do it man
4:13
I'm gonna do it
4:14
so in other words I was becoming a black
4:17
Donald O'Connor a black Mickey Rooney
4:19
instead of becoming a black Sammy Davis
4:21
what about the Rat Pack era you and
4:25
Sinatra and let me light a cigarette and
4:27
I'll tell you okay
4:32
I keep thinking uh just a few days
4:36
[Music]
4:38
no longer will it be anything happening
4:40
like it should be the one traffic ticket
4:42
that's the first step to maybe in 20
4:44
years is not to legalize it right now
4:46
when they legalized marijuana
4:50
but I'm just comedically I'm thinking
4:52
when they legalize it they will be back
4:55
to commercials again
4:59
[Music]
5:13
[Music]
5:18
[Music]
5:30
and plus but the most important thing is
5:32
you'd never be able to run through the
5:34
forest
5:41
thank you
5:43
what about the Rat Pack era
5:49
was that a part of your mistakes
5:51
well let me tell you about let me tell
5:53
you about the Sinatra thing
5:56
uh
5:57
if it hadn't been for Frank Sinatra
6:00
I don't I would have never been in films
6:02
really
6:03
because he gave me uh
6:07
he gave me a an opportunity
6:09
in three pictures
6:13
based upon the fact that there was
6:14
nothing to do really except the fact
6:16
that it we got the job because we were
6:17
all friends and buddies and it was based
6:19
upon a camaraderie that we had as a
6:22
bunch of guys as performers that Frank
6:24
said why don't we do all do a picture
6:26
together
6:27
but he so he helped my career
6:29
tremendously again my own personal
6:32
involvement being such that I became so
6:35
involved with that lifestyle
6:38
that again I found myself submerging
6:41
into a lifestyle that I could not equate
6:43
with after you'd leave the party you
6:45
come home and you're going to
6:47
and you say wow man it sure was nice to
6:49
be in the company of all them big names
6:50
and the movie star
6:52
but there was no
6:54
on one hand I I loved being with my
6:57
friends
6:58
but it was submerging me as a human
7:00
being I think as I analyze it now
7:03
and there were Beautiful Moments during
7:05
that period of the 60s the early 60s and
7:08
there was some frightening moments I
7:09
remember walking on the stage at the
7:11
Democratic Convention and being booed by
7:13
the southern contingent you know
7:16
because they had no business the only
7:17
reason they booed me was because I was
7:19
married to a white woman you know to put
7:21
it right where it's at that's why they
7:22
boom boom hits how dare you be married
7:25
to a white woman you know
7:27
but it was
7:28
a part of conversation privately and
7:31
publicly is that uh you were married to
7:33
a white woman how do you feel about that
7:36
how would you advise a young black
7:38
person your son about marrying a white
7:41
woman
7:42
I think a person should marry who they
7:43
want to marry man
7:45
I think that you can be committed to
7:47
your people to the cause whatever you
7:49
whatever the terminology you want to use
7:51
doesn't matter matter who you're married
7:53
to if you fall in love you fall in love
7:55
if you're if you're getting I don't
7:57
think anyone gets married has children
7:59
and the rest
8:00
to do a three cheating job you know
8:03
and uh
8:05
to me
8:07
I feel no thing about it I really don't
8:11
I really don't feel anything about that
8:13
because I think that's so damn private
8:16
man
8:16
that has to do with what I want a cat to
8:19
do if it's a brother on the corner
8:20
whatever it is look at me and say what
8:23
did you do today to help
8:24
don't talk about my private life
8:27
that's mine that if you know if I want
8:30
to marry a dog that's my life
8:33
this is the point whatever I had I paid
8:35
my dues to get it
8:38
and I mean pay them
8:40
in every way you want to talk about but
8:43
what I'm but that's professionally
8:45
that's as a human being on a
8:47
professional level but as a human being
8:48
period I tell my kids Harry who you want
8:52
to marry
8:53
now I know this sure as I'm sitting on
8:55
this floor man whole bunch of brothers
8:58
and sisters don't like me there's a
9:00
whole bunch of white people that don't
9:01
like me why do you feel there's a group
9:03
of brothers and sisters who don't like
9:05
you because there was a whole bunch of
9:07
brothers and sisters that didn't like
9:08
Jesus Christ that's why
9:11
and ain't nobody ever been put on this
9:12
Earth that everybody liked
9:14
they don't kill Martin Luther King the
9:16
only thing he kept singing was we shall
9:17
overcome and love and peace killed him
9:19
wiped him out killed Malcolm
9:23
wiped out everybody man don't you
9:25
understand and some cat hired three
9:29
black cats to wipe out the man who was
9:31
the mother of our time and when they
9:33
killed him he had a half a church full
9:35
of people it wasn't like it was packed
9:37
and jammed because already he was losing
9:42
and he says it himself if you read his
9:44
works that there's a whole bunch of
9:46
[ __ ] that don't like me black folks
9:48
like me but not the [ __ ]
9:51
which is true and three black cat three
9:55
[ __ ] knocked him off
9:57
paid by white establishment that's my
9:59
feeling and I will feel this as long as
10:01
I live
10:02
and it was afterwards at the the
10:04
Resurgence of this man and suddenly we
10:07
became aware of all the things that he
10:08
was saying because as long as doesn't it
10:12
strike you funny that as long as
10:16
Malcolm was preaching separatism
10:20
as long as he was preaching such
10:23
vehemence he never got hurt at all it
10:26
was when he came back from Mecca and he
10:28
said we must all live together we must
10:29
we must ask black people do our thing
10:31
but we must all live on this Earth as
10:34
one blah blah that's when he started
10:36
getting his house bombed
10:38
he got wiped out months later
10:40
same thing with King as long as King was
10:42
hitting the March as they put him in
10:44
jail that was it as soon as he started
10:45
talking about Vietnam
10:47
and the workers and this that and the
10:49
other getting out of his field of
10:52
reference
10:53
really
10:55
heavy too heavy for somebody wipe him
10:57
out
10:59
you know and it's frightening to me so
11:01
that's why I say a lot of people will
11:03
not like any performer and you try to
11:06
relate
11:07
as far I'm not talking about relating in
11:09
terms of oh hi bra and do the Fist and
11:12
whatever it is and hey man right on I'm
11:14
not talking about the words I'm talking
11:15
about in your heart relating to what the
11:17
problems are
11:18
but the society in which we live in
11:19
today it has gotten to a point where you
11:21
cannot do that anymore based upon the
11:24
fact that I must do what I feel
11:26
if I feel that I I want to help in this
11:29
area I try to do it and I try to do it
11:31
Sans publicity not based upon the fear
11:34
that I have for my job
11:36
but I think that sometimes if I want to
11:38
help some brothers who are in trouble my
11:40
lending my name to it defeats the very
11:44
purpose that they're trying to achieve
11:48
but money is money
11:50
heart is heart you should lend your
11:52
heart and your money you ain't got the
11:54
money
11:56
then lend this lend your body man to it
11:59
you know but I'm talking about I think
12:01
that if the performer can be used
12:05
than he should be used
12:08
to put my obligation into black positive
12:11
things I'm not talking about National
12:12
organizations it can be something that's
12:14
happening on the corner a project that
12:16
because I found out and Walter Mason can
12:19
tell you we found out that you go into a
12:22
town
12:23
and sometimes it's as little as a
12:25
hundred dollars because you go to an
12:28
area where this where where some
12:30
projects are and they got a recreation
12:31
center ain't got no pool table ain't got
12:33
no records to play so the kids don't go
12:35
there they hang on the car right
12:37
Jesus you walk in and you look around
12:40
and you say hey well I know I get a pool
12:42
table and I know I can get the record
12:44
player and I'll get reprise at that time
12:47
or my own company to send records you're
12:50
in a privileged situation first of all
12:52
uh I can't help but make an analogy
12:54
between yourself and lean a horn
12:55
I mean the two of you are for lack of a
12:58
better phrase are superstars are using
13:00
to some extent your sense of commitment
13:04
you uh you're evolving a new sense of
13:06
self and most importantly like you're
13:09
going in front of the nation and you're
13:11
saying I'm Black and I'm Proud and I'm
13:13
relating to my people
13:15
I'm not going to use anybody's name but
13:17
I'm sure you won't but where are the
13:19
heads of a lot of the black Superstars
13:21
we don't see them like we see you in
13:23
Philadelphia with the street gangs we
13:25
don't see them saying what Lena said in
13:28
terms of what's happened to her well I I
13:30
think
13:32
I think the phonies
13:34
that's what I think and the bitter irony
13:37
of it all is
13:39
that
13:40
again I have to sit by man and watch
13:44
these people be lauded by our brothers
13:46
and sisters in the streets
13:49
and they and the brothers and sisters
13:50
must be aware
13:52
that they ain't doing nothing
13:54
but it took me a long time to get there
13:55
maybe they maybe my brother brothers and
13:57
sisters who are superstars need that
13:58
kind of time and there are many who say
14:00
I don't want to get involved in it
14:02
but I don't know how you cannot get
14:04
involved in it because they are first of
14:06
all black and they are committed
14:08
whether they want to be committed or not
14:10
the very nature of the skin commits you
14:12
I don't read a script that I don't weigh
14:15
and say I wonder what the brother and
14:17
the con is going to think about this
14:20
how can I change it if it's wrong
14:23
because the black performer again has
14:25
that obligation
14:27
that we are black performers
14:30
and so therefore I'm not talking about
14:32
you gonna come out every time man and do
14:35
a number because like on Laugh-In
14:38
you know I do jokes but somewhere along
14:41
the line I've got to relate to what's
14:43
really happening
14:44
somewhere so that the brother who's
14:47
watching me who may not necessarily buy
14:49
my records
14:50
may not go to my movies may not come to
14:53
the Copa the Sands Hotel lassimi will
14:56
say yeah
14:58
in a bar or in his house yeah
15:01
that's all that's my thanks but the
15:04
black audience
15:06
owes that black performer an obligation
15:08
of watching and supporting him unless he
15:10
turns out to be really the rat of all
15:13
time
15:15
but I mean when I say rap I mean he's
15:17
not doing anything he's doing things
15:19
that embarrass the the black population
15:23
now I know a lot of people don't like
15:24
flips doing the the Deacon I've heard a
15:27
lot of talk about it Geraldine Geraldine
15:29
they don't like uh I now my personal
15:32
things I think geraldine's funny I feel
15:34
a little funny about the deacon
15:36
because I think that's going back to
15:37
something that's so deeply rooted in
15:39
black people
15:40
religiously you know that I think that
15:43
that does this to me but I think it's
15:45
still funny because I'm looking at it
15:46
again through one eye that looks
15:49
in two directions first as a performer
15:52
is it funny is it clever secondly as a
15:55
man we're trying to relate to the cat on
15:57
the corner again you understand what I
15:58
mean because first and foremost I'm a
16:01
performer that's all I've ever done all
16:02
my life
16:03
so I know he's got to weigh it but what
16:06
do you do
16:07
you've got to have the support of your
16:09
people
16:10
but geez I just love saying that number
16:13
one variety show in the country now and
16:16
start in by a black man who is very very
16:20
funny but Amos and Andy was funny don't
16:24
do that to me don't do that
16:27
and Geraldine is funny and uh the Deacon
16:31
is funny but can you move forward you
16:33
know at at the level of the struggle we
16:36
are for Liberation yeah you know came
16:38
before to continually uh entertain white
16:41
people with shows produced by white men
16:44
with a frame of reference of what we are
16:46
I mean that's not defining ourselves and
16:49
the role of the Entertainer
16:51
to some extent has to accommodate that
16:54
relevant I think that the Amos Amanda
16:56
was funny I was embarrassed by it I
16:58
signed the letters too you know but I I
17:00
say that I think at this point now we've
17:02
got more stars than we've ever had
17:04
before that I can afford the luxury
17:07
because in place of Geraldine and then
17:10
place a Flip Wilson I have Don Knotts
17:14
since you both guess no baby I was out
17:17
of town you know I haven't had a chance
17:19
to live a boat here okay so what you
17:21
think of the terrible cat dead man
17:27
we are like
17:29
in one sense limited because we will
17:33
never have the audience of a commercial
17:36
Channel but do you want that audience
17:38
I'd like to have that audience on the
17:40
other hand if getting that audience
17:43
necessitated compromising our principles
17:46
I know they have ten Brothers
17:48
out of the 200 million people in this
17:51
country watch this show yeah then they
17:53
have the 200 million people in this
17:55
country watch the show even because I
17:57
think being irrelevant is
17:58
counterproductive you know and and that
18:00
brings me to the next point
18:02
uh you have a show
18:05
that
18:06
folded
18:09
and that's when I think like what you
18:13
said you were in another era
18:15
you're being very kind yeah
18:18
I was a stone rock and you could be for
18:21
free yeah what would you do I mean I
18:24
don't know but I would I tell you what I
18:26
wouldn't do or maybe by that you can get
18:28
a clue I certainly wouldn't do nothing
18:29
more than I'm doing as an entertainer
18:31
today in other words I ain't gonna let
18:33
them change me last time out I let him
18:35
put me in suits I couldn't smoke I
18:37
couldn't say what I wanted to say and
18:39
though I put a lot of people to work and
18:40
I did a lot of things and all of that
18:42
and I changed a lot of policies at NBC
18:44
you know when they catch and went yeah
18:47
because you know I walked into the
18:48
publicity office one day I didn't see no
18:49
black people I said I don't understand
18:50
this it looks like the Lilies of the
18:52
white Fields you know and that was it
18:54
and the guy went oh he's very bitter and
18:56
I went well the hell with it I am very
18:58
bitter if I got it I gotta surround
18:59
myself with people that I know of and
19:01
we've got capable brothers and sisters
19:02
to do it now you go up there and be
19:04
seeing it's packed and jammed and the
19:05
executives are there you know but the
19:07
only thing that they are
19:11
you know
19:15
the most relevant thing I think I was
19:18
able to do was near the end of the
19:20
series I did a sketch
19:21
with nipsy Russell
19:24
about how brothers treat Brothers
19:27
and I did a very Bourgeois cat going in
19:29
to apply for a job right
19:31
and very Bourgeois with the three button
19:33
code as soon as he found out it was a
19:35
brother
19:36
he took his head on each other
19:39
right and the cat's baggies to send him
19:41
in and the cat walked in he said damn
19:43
hey babe that ain't the way he walked in
19:46
the White Secretary was there seeing he
19:47
said I'm I'm here for the job and I like
19:50
to apply I've been okayed and I went
19:51
through the IBM machines blah blah blah
19:54
talked very problem as soon as he went
19:55
in there instead of identifying and
19:57
saying Hey I want a groove it is to see
19:59
you in this position he didn't do that
20:00
he just put his feet up on the desert
20:02
dead go ahead and sign that
20:05
you know I'm straight
20:08
you know and suddenly here's the brother
20:10
sitting there trying to do something and
20:12
he is not protected and it was a funny
20:13
sketch and we loved doing it I got such
20:16
complaints from NBC you would not
20:18
believe and we never were to do another
20:19
one because I think we went through a
20:21
period where we were just pleased to see
20:23
a black guy there
20:25
yeah
20:26
there we are
20:28
there we are we in there because we
20:30
needed that at that period now we've got
20:32
to go on
20:33
further
20:35
you know what I mean and it's not just
20:37
seeing the black cat there anymore
20:39
you know it's like the guys I will
20:42
believe till I die that when the
20:44
pressure came on the Madison Avenue and
20:46
they said you got to put black people
20:47
into commercials they said we'll show
20:50
them black people in a commercial so
20:51
they put them in the commercials where
20:53
black people look ludicrous in
20:56
you know because everybody has a white
20:58
neighbor
20:59
you very rarely see two black women
21:02
talking
21:03
and if they're black women talking
21:05
they're not the sisters
21:08
it's Bourgeois middle class you know
21:11
straight hair no dues never a dude ever
21:14
never do you know can't look like Gloria
21:16
Foster no chance you know you must look
21:19
like you know the old days of of tan
21:22
confessions you know and that's it
21:24
and I look and I say it on the stage
21:26
sometimes I say it's ridiculous because
21:29
it doesn't relate to anything
21:35
you wearing a free Angela button have
21:37
you had any reaction from other people
21:39
as a result of wearing that button well
21:41
that was a fan of mine
21:43
in the restaurant and uh
21:46
was at the risk around the airport and
21:48
the guy walked up and asked my autograph
21:50
and he was white and he said Jay the
21:53
wife gets a big kick out of here when is
21:55
he on the laughing and all that sign us
21:59
for the kitties you know and I signed it
22:01
and he said I was wondering if and he
22:03
started staring at the button and I was
22:04
wearing you know this but and he was
22:06
going like this and he kept saying I was
22:08
I was and he was trying to focus on it
22:10
because I I was blowing his bubble
22:13
because they have
22:15
an image of me I guess of another kind
22:18
my involvement with Angela is again the
22:22
Injustice of it all
22:24
uh her political beliefs you know are
22:26
her own
22:28
I don't share her political beliefs I
22:30
share her blackness
22:32
and I share the Injustice to any black
22:35
person and there's no way that she's
22:36
going to get the right kind of trial we
22:38
know that
22:39
it's stacked against it
22:41
uh they made her the Most Wanted woman
22:44
since uh Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde and
22:49
I think that if a guy like myself wears
22:51
a button
22:52
that's letting somebody in that crowd
22:54
that I go around with know where my
22:55
head's at
22:57
you're now married to a sister
22:59
is she I didn't I didn't know that
23:04
[Music]
23:09
[Applause]
23:13
[Music]
23:18
and it's so groovy and so nice I've been
23:21
in the hospital five times
23:22
[Music]
23:24
[Applause]
23:30
I think he's trying to tell me so
23:34
I'm absolutely
23:36
you know flabbergasted by the by the
23:39
fact that we as a people almost without
23:42
the underground which they keep saying
23:44
we've got and everything else around the
23:46
ground as a soul underground you know
23:48
don't take no trains or nothing this
23:51
something happens it's it's the same
23:53
thing compared to
23:54
as soon as downtown gets the dance we've
23:57
gone on to another one and nobody ever
24:00
told us that they got it and we didn't
24:03
care about it but when they get funky
24:04
chicken we're into something else
24:06
uh there's something else you know it's
24:08
the thing that we have that ain't no
24:09
other people got in the world
24:12
it's that immediate eye to eye contact
24:15
that says
24:17
jamf
24:19
horse that says
24:21
yeah
24:23
that's that same thing again that one
24:25
word yeah
24:27
and you know and it's not followed by
24:29
he's down right on but really just yeah
24:33
you feel that we can solve our problem
24:34
by having some type of army or some type
24:38
of violent confrontation with whites
24:41
no
24:43
you know ain't no way you can put poor
24:45
Cadillacs against the tank
24:48
two Rusty raises
24:50
you know against an M1
24:52
and the flame throw against a bottle of
24:55
Coca-Cola with a rag in it ain't no way
24:57
you can do that
25:01
how is it that you're free enough uh to
25:04
talk the way you're talking and be an
25:06
Entertainer
25:07
because you know
25:09
the rationale is that if I'm black and
25:11
an Entertainer I can't be too involved
25:13
with black causes and survive in an
25:16
industry controlled basically by white
25:18
people how are you free enough let's say
25:20
to come on black journal and relate to
25:22
the brothers and sisters the Way You Are
25:24
but I I think
25:27
that it's called
25:29
a respect for one's opinion
25:31
because I've had too many white people
25:33
talk to me and say I
25:35
I don't like what you said on the David
25:36
Frost show about something such a thing
25:39
well you but you shared a lot of guts to
25:41
say it
25:44
and the other point is which is very
25:46
very good man
25:48
I really don't care I don't give it
25:52
when I say this is a racist society in
25:55
which we live in everybody knows it is
25:58
that ain't no that ain't no big big
26:00
statement to make it maybe it's shocking
26:03
to hear it from someone that you just
26:04
watched the night before on laughing uh
26:07
but it is man I can't say well how can
26:10
you say that white and black say this to
26:11
me how can you say that man you got it
26:13
made I said I Got It Made because I had
26:15
to fight all of that but I then owe an
26:17
obligation to my brothers and my sisters
26:19
to let them know
26:21
that it existed then it still exists now
26:24
and I've been here for 40 years you know
26:27
I've got the house I've got a wife I've
26:29
got children I've got success
26:32
and now it is time for me to try in
26:36
every way feasible
26:38
to help
26:39
the plight of my people
26:41
and to gain our freedom because I'm see
26:45
the fallacy is man and let's let me say
26:47
this and and I really mean it from the
26:49
bottom of my heart
26:50
money don't make you free
26:52
popularity don't make you free
26:55
don't you know that
26:58
you know sure I live in Beverly Hills
27:00
but I'm Shackled by the same things that
27:01
happen to the brother and Watts
27:06
I've had my bosses say to me
27:09
cats that I work for
27:11
who you know really basically give me a
27:15
Jack Entrada will say to me Sam geez
27:17
that was a little heavy statement you
27:19
said on that I said but it's true ain't
27:20
it Jack he said yeah I know it's true
27:22
but I said Butcher and that's the end of
27:24
that
27:25
I mean that man and my cousin did I say
27:29
it like it is man I've been the last
27:31
five years
27:33
go away
27:39
thank you
27:40
because he's got to respect me it's like
27:42
when a brother comes to me and says but
27:43
man you're a Jew
27:45
you know I look at him and say what's
27:46
your religion and he says I'm a Baptist
27:49
or I don't have one or I'm a Muslim I
27:51
said well our religion is blackness
27:55
because if we ever get to the point
27:57
where we started talking about he's a
27:58
black Jew he's a black Catholic he's a
28:00
black Baptist he's a black Muslim really
28:03
saved for the titles that the papers put
28:04
on people then we're in trouble our real
28:07
religion and the thing that connects us
28:08
all is our blackness
28:10
the religion of Blackness that's it
28:13
God
28:15
[Music]
28:17
[Applause]
28:18
[Music]
28:19
[Applause]
28:22
[Music]
28:23
[Applause]
 

My thoughts to the article below

I quote < “The other show is kind of mean and too grown up for me.”
 > 
her son said a show is to grown up for him:)  How does a child know what  defines grown up when many grown up don't. Know if he would had said what his mother will not like,that shows honesty.

I quote < what does it say that it is so much easier for my son to find wonderfully crafted television shows and films featuring talking animals than it is to find shows about kids who look like him? >
It says that Black people with money aren't willing to spend their money to make cartoons for black people. It says that Black people had less money in the past and white people financed cartoons to be made for white people, which is perfectly acceptable. It says that Black parents need to focus on books with rearing their  kids as a ton of content has existed that has human black characters. It says white people around the world who may be asian or muslim or latino is a larger market and satisfactory. It says Black people need to tell their children they are willing to suck a white persons penis or lick a white persons vagina for opportunities but opportunities are not meant to be shared or made universal. It says that Black people from black countries like Uganda didn't use their control to make media in Uganda or other black countries that black people globally need. 

I quote < “But where are the cartoons, Mom?” he asked. “And why does the story have to be so sad with people dying?” > 
What the author of the article the black mom was unwilling to simply say is white people wrote most of the films, live action or television, that she cites and sequentially, their themes. But, again, a Black one percent exist, they are billionaires or millionaires. She needs to tell her son, rich black people aren't spending their money on financing black cartoons. That is why ? and asking non blacks to make media for black people is unwarranted, and non blacks don't have to care about blacks. 

I quote < Where are the happy carefree storylines for young Black kids that white kids get? Where is the diversity of storyline and personality and genre representation that white kids get? > 
Pick up a book, they are out there.  And again where are the black rich. Where is Oprah's money? where is Tyler Perry's studios? 

I quote < I find it very telling that the first animated Disney movie featuring a Black woman main character and the first animated Disney movie to feature a Black man character as leads are written in such a way that both of these main characters spend a large part of their respective films in bodies that are neither Black nor even human. > 
Yes, White people finance media for white people. As DW Griffith said, when the NAACP boycotted Birth of a nation, anyone can make whatever film they want. The NAACP wouldn't spend money on making a film as a rebuttal as if teh white jews who financed the organization would do that. But, Oscar Mischeux made films in reply. So where are the Oscar Micheaux Black directors. Comprehend, Spike Lee tells similar stories of Blac plight than disney so...

I quote < What does it say to Black kids watching when the world’s biggest children’s entertainment company cannot give them even one animated film that features a Black person that stays a Black person throughout? What does this say about Blackness to kids who are not Black? About whose life is being portrayed as mattering? And whose does not? > 
It says to Black kids their Black parents are stupid telling them white people will change by black merit. It says to Black kids  their Black parents don't have the power, money isn't always power, to provide them with what they need. It tells non Black kids how impotent the black community is wherever they live, which is the truth. It tells non black kids to make sure they emphasize their non black community so that it isn't like the impotent black community. It says to Black kids their black parents are lying when they talk about a human family. All humans are human but that does mean all humans are family and that is ok. 

I quote  < When will Disney make a film with Black characters played by Black characters? Why is this so damn hard? > 
Maybe never and that is ok. Disney was started by a white artists as an independent company. So when will Black artists who are fortunate enough to get financing for films do likewise. Black people did create BET which was a black owned media outlet but sold it to whites. So, why complain about Disney? when Oscar Micheaux proved independent movies can be made. B.E.T. proves Black people with money undercut their own community. Disney is not obliged to give concern to black people. Why are Black people with money financing what the Black community need so damn hard? It isn't like Black people with money only send people to traditional black colleges so...

I quote < Or does Disney’s refusal to create an animated movie with Black characters who stay Black characters go beyond these three films that traffic in stereotypes and erasure and speak to larger institutional issues regarding perceptions of Blackness that behoove attention? > 
Institutional issues? no. Disney is a white owned firm that is free to sell to all phenotypes. If non whites absorb or dream of disney , they are the fools. Don't blame disney for black people pushing disney on black children or not rearing black children better, better meaning to media that has black created content, which has always existed.

I quote < It matters, where imagination begins in the mind. It matters whether that mind can imagine full Black personhood, or if that imagination is still constrained by unconscious bias and internalized stereotypes.> 
Yes this is true, but film is a collective project which starts with the financier and white people have more money or power than blacks and are not beholden to satisfy black needs. Black people can take care of ourselves and if our leaders: black people with money or influence, are unwilling to lead positively or lead negatively, well such is life.

I quote< There are a few future things in the works that I am hopeful about. Disney is set to premiere Ironheart on Disney+ in the near future, and is creating a TV show featuring Princess Tiana in 2023 with (hopefully) an eye to a less stereotypical portrayal than the earlier film. The Disney partnership with South African film company Kugali to produce Iwaju in 2022 looks promising as long as it doesn’t turn into a repeat of the single representation story, and diasporic wars where African, Afro European, and Black American creatives are pitted against each other.  > 
Well to be fair to Black people. White tribes have wars with each other. Black tribes have wars with each other as well. And to be blunt, because Black communities the world over usually lack power, and have to beg from whites, we tend to have bitter fights cause all the communities are based on begging.

I quote < In the meantime, my son has stopped asking to watch television. He told me the other day that he understands why I have always avoided TV and read to him instead. It is not just the wonder of imagination and language that books rather than TV provide. It is not just the vibrant storylines that inspire his own creations. As my Black son looks at his bookshelves he can see row after row of books whose covers shine with characters who look like him, whose pages are full of joyful stories about characters who look like him living their lives in full Black joy instead of the shapeshifting and death embedded into so much of mainstream American television entertainment engaging with Blackness for kids.

My son knows now, like many Black kids in America do, that if you try to look for yourself onscreen all you will see is erasure, sometimes stereotype. He knows to look for himself on the page instead. You can find some beautiful things there, if you try. > 
In my view, this passage should had been the whole article. All this about what white man isn't doing for Black people is for me worthless. Yes, Whites don't like Blacks. Blacks don't like Whites. And just because the financially wealthiest Black people are reared to cater to whites doesn't mean the financially poorest Black people want to. 
 

Disney's Disembodied Black Characters

March 23, 2021   •   By Hope Wabuke

ONCE A YEAR, from the first year of middle school until I graduated from high school, my orchestra would board the yellow school district buses along with our instruments and drive the 45-minute winding route through the San Gabriel mountains from Arcadia to Anaheim, California, to perform at Disneyland. After 30 minutes of rehearsal and another 30-minute performance, we were given free rein to wander the park until closing, when the busses would drive us home.

I knew even then that what we had was not usual; it was a privilege to experience what we experienced growing up in that tiny southern California town, miles and years away from the tiny black and white missionary TV screen in Uganda where my parents had first spied the Disney movies that had made them imagine America a wonderful, magical place. 

What we had in Arcadia, home to one of the top public school districts in the state, were the perks that went along with that education. But what we also had to go along with it — being one of the first Black families to move to that city, and usually the only Black student in my class — was the racism: being followed in stores, ordered to pay before dining in restaurants, being told we were the color of “poop” by teachers, and never seeing anyone who looked like us in the books we read in school. This is the Black experience in America when your hardworking Black parents are determined to get you the best education they can. It’s an abundance of opportunity, but only if you learn to survive within the boundaries of acceptable racism.

¤

My wealthy non-Black classmates loved wandering around the grounds of Disneyland, a place they were familiar with from regular family visits throughout the year. I was not. With the price tag at $100 per person, my family of eight people had been to Disneyland only once — with family friends from out of town when they came to visit. To prepare for the $1,000 excursion, my father had put our family on a budget for half a year, and we had packed backpacks full of lunch and dinner. We were warned there would be no souvenirs so we shouldn’t even try it.

As someone unaccustomed to its scope, Disneyland was big and overwhelming for me. But as performers in the student orchestra — both guests and employees, to some extent — we were privy to the back lots and back entrances of the park that regular visitors didn’t see — the backstage bones of the glossy stages and rides, the stacked up piles of recycled parts of shuttered amusements and worn-out characters. We were forbidden to take pictures here — it was not public Disney; it did not hold the myth of Disney perfection and magic. But I liked thinking that we alone had this secret knowledge of a place that was familiar to so many. We were part of the select few who saw what was denied public view.

Once, I was told this same story about the man himself, Walt Disney: the reason that most of  the candid photos of Walt Disney throughout the park showed his fingers shaped in a V was because he smoked cigarettes and didn’t want to be seen doing so. But this private truth did not align with his desired public image; the cigarettes had to be airbrushed out.

¤

In the middle of last summer, trying to understand the new balance of homeschooling and remote working in the pandemic, I gave in to my seven-year-old’s requests and let him have half an hour of screen time in the evenings. But being a Black parent who was once a Black girl and well aware of the horrific absence and equally horrific stereotypical and token representations of Blackness on television that I have seen, I told him that he could only watch a TV show if it had a main character who looked like him. Within that guideline, he could choose whatever age-appropriate show he wanted. He wanted cartoons, and so he began his search with those constraints. But within five minutes, he came to me in tears. We had subscriptions to am*zon Prime and Netflix, and he had searched both for Black characters in kids shows. He had found nothing.

I sat down, pulled him onto my lap and cuddled him until his tears eased. When he was soothed enough, I picked the remote up from the floor and typed in “Black kids cartoons” on Netflix. The only thing that came up was Motown Magic, which he had already seen. I tried “African American kids cartoons.” Nothing else. “Black kids shows,” “African American kids shows” had nothing else in his age range, but a couple of live action shows aimed at the tween and teenage crowd.  I tried am*zon Prime, which was even more of a desert. Searches there brought up Orphan Black and Black Mirror instead.

My son was growing impatient. “Mommy, isn’t there anything?” he called, tears eased and now bouncing on his trampoline. “Not yet,” I called back, scrolling through endless titles of movies without any Black characters in them. And then I recalled a passing conversation about the launch of Disney Plus with a fellow mom friend.

“Doc McStuffins!” I exclaimed loudly, remembering the patron saint of Black parents everywhere, as I ordered Disney Plus. Among the little Black girl doctor and her talking toys, my son was happy for most of the year. I thanked God for Chris Nee, McStuffins’s wonderful creator, every day of 2020. And then, just in time for winter break, he asked for something else.

“Did you finish Doc McStuffins?” I asked.

“No, I just want to watch something else for a while,” he said. But we couldn’t find any other cartoon show on Disney Plus that featured Black kids as main characters. So we watched an episode of Vampirina, another of Nee’s creations, this one about a vampire family living amongst human neighbors in contemporary Philadelphia. But I was uneasy at the danger made cute, uneasy with Nee’s portrayal of the mythical bloodsucking vampire-as-monster-as-outsider equated to the outsiderness of the Black girl as outsider.

Networks are so proud of each of their few Black kids shows, it seems, that they forget two things:

That kids will watch the show and then want to watch something else.

That Black kids have a diversity of tastes, and, beyond that, they grow up. One show can’t appeal to all Black kids from age three to 16. And why should we expect it to, even if it could?

Searching further on Disney, we found Moana, which my son watched because Moana was brownish like him he said, and Elena of Avalor because she was also kind of brownish and went to school with a brownish kid who looked kind of like him.  

But nothing else.

“What about these ones? I said, selecting the 2009 animated feature The Princess and The Frog and The Proud Family.

“I already looked, Mom. The girl isn’t really there; she’s a green frog most of the time,” he sighed. “The other show is kind of mean and too grown up for me.”

I searched and searched the network. Nothing. Finally, I had an idea.

“Animals!” I exclaimed. “You can watch a show if there are animals.”

My son’s face brightened. He returned to Netflix and selected Octonauts, a delightful show about animals from diverse regions of the world who work together to help other animals, teaching science along the way. Then there were Puffin Rock and Peppa Pig. And, of course, the entire Disney collection of talking animal content. The animal cartoons were fascinating and endless in their diversity and skillful edutainment. My son has yet to run out of new animal show options on the streaming services we have.

But I wonder: what does it say that it is so much easier for my son to find wonderfully crafted television shows and films featuring talking animals than it is to find shows about kids who look like him?

¤

Last fall, when the studios and networks rolled out their kids holiday fare, it was more of the same: the absence of Blackness. The most promising of the offerings was Netflix’s Jingle Jangle, which is quite lovely and which my son enjoyed. He appreciated the live action musical magic in the tradition of Disney’s own Mary Poppins.

“But where are the cartoons, Mom?” he asked. “And why does the story have to be so sad with people dying?”

I thought about my son’s questions. I had no answers, only the same questions about entertainment for Black adults, and the saturation of images of Black pain rather than Black joy. The heaviness I feel in my soul when yet another studio markets its slave film (or other narrative of historical Black oppression) as the “Black movie” release of the year is the same heaviness in my son’s soul at these kid’s movies that traffic in Black sadness and Black death.

True, films like Netflix’s Jingle Jangle and Disney’s The Lion King and the Princess and the Frog are in line with the loss-of-parent narrative that’s part of the blueprint for this kind of children’s storytelling, harkening all the way back to Disney’s Golden Age. But the impact of that loss-of-parent narrative resonates much more loudly when looking at animated Disney films with Black content because of the very small number of animated films and television that feature Black protagonists at all.

You see, all animated Disney films featuring Black protagonists have either a dead parent or the death of the protagonist as a plot point; however, there are many animated Disney films with non-Black characters where parents and protagonists escape this deathly trope simply because of the sheer numbers of Disney films made with non-Black protagonists. This lack of representation creates a single story of Blackness, predicated on death and sadness.

And, because of history, because of the way race and power work in a society where we are already saturated with images of Black death and anti-Black violence — consider how many times the deaths of unarmed Black children like Tamir Rice and unarmed Black men like Eric Garner and George Floyd were replayed across media channels versus the genteel blurring out of the death of Ashli Babbitt, the white woman insurrectionist who died while storming the Capitol in January 2021 — the death of Black parents in Disney films operates in a much different way than the death of non-Black parents in Disney films. Simply put: for every death of non-Black parents depicted in Disney films like Frozen, there are many, many other Disney films with non-Black protagonists in which the parents do not die, in which death is not a major plot point; in which the non-Black characters are allowed happiness and joy. And when that death does occur, it is not amplified in the real world by the media’s disregard for the sanctity of Black life.

Where are the happy carefree storylines for young Black kids that white kids get? Where is the diversity of storyline and personality and genre representation that white kids get? Whiteness gets multiplicity — of storyline, genre, medium, a multiplicity of films and television shows that speak to a multiplicity of age ranges and interests — all represented by white characters. Snow White. Cinderella. Beauty and the Beast. 101 Dalmatians. The Flight of the Navigator. E.T.. How to Tame Your Dragon. My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. The Incredibles. Kim Possible. WildKrats. Toy Story. Frozen. Frozen II. Inside Out. Tangled. Brave. Sarah and Duck. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Peter Pan. Pete’s Dragon. Alice in Wonderland. Sleeping Beauty. The Little Mermaid. The Sword in the Stone. Robin Hood. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Pete’s Dragon. James and the Giant Peach. Hercules. Doug’s First Movie. Recess: School’s Out. Return to Neverland. Treasure Planet. Meet the Robinsons. Enchanted. Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue. The Cat in the Hat. Sofia the First. Boss Baby. Masha and the Bear. Johnny Test. The Lorax. Dennis the Menace. Ben and Charlie’s Little Kingdom. The Magic School Bus. And on and on.

Blackness gets Doc McStuffins.

¤

My freshman year of high school, our annual performance at Disneyland coincided with a live recording session of a Disney film soundtrack. Because we were members of one of the best high school orchestras in the state, the staff said, we were to be given a special treat: a walk-through of the recording soundstages. Quiet, in the audience, we stood and watched the musicians’ bows rising and falling across their strings in unison. Onscreen, the young lion I would come to know as Simba was roaring his pain at the death of his father. I would, of course, also come to know the film as The Lion King, Disney’s first modern foray — however anthropomorphized — into engaging with Black culture on the big screen. The Disney orchestra soared. So did I.

The story, of course, since it engages with Blackness in some way, was about family disintegration and death. But still, I remember the crackling energy pervading my childhood home in the days preceding the film’s release, the excitement of going to see it in the theatre with my whole family, so starved for representations of Blackness, let alone Africa in film. I remember my African parents’ happiness and pride in seeing something like home shining across the screen.

The hunger for representations of Blackness in Disney films was not just felt in my family, but in families across the world. To date, The Lion King is the highest grossing traditionally animated Disney movie of all time. But back in 1994, Disney couldn’t imagine that this success could be repeated by making more Black stories, perhaps even with people, rather than animals. Instead, the studio just made more Lion King. We have seen The Lion King as Broadway musical, as a touring production, as a television show, as a live action remake starring the voices — but never the Black bodies of course — of the nation’s most iconic and brilliant Black performers.

Indeed, it would be another 15 years before Disney made another feature based on Black culture — and the first Disney film ostensibly to revolve around actual Black characters. But Tiana, Disney’s first Black animated protagonist, would be onscreen for just about 40 minutes. More shockingly, she would be drawn as a Black woman for just 17 of those minutes. Most of the time, as you probably know, Tiana is a frog.

¤

Some of us, like I am, are old enough to remember the public call for a Black Disney princess throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s that pushed a reluctant Disney into making The Princess and The Frog in the first place. However, the representations of Blackness in Princess Tiana’s world were problematic from the beginning. Set in the 1920s South — the height of the Jazz Age, but also Jim Crow — Princess Tiana, accounts of that time report, was originally conceived as a servant character with strong echoes of slavery in characterization and naming. Indeed, her original name “Maddy” sounded very close to the Mammy slave stereotype applied to Black women.

Although Tiana’s character was rewritten as a waitress rather than a servant, this original vision is still evident in the opening scenes of the film, when Tiana’s mother pays little attention to her daughter and focuses all her attention and dialogue in caring for Tiana’s white girl friend. Here, too, in this opening, Tiana’s white girl friend is introduced before Tiana and dominates the first scenes of the film with verbosity and energy. Tiana is silent and ignored in the background.

The dynamic is clear: here is the centering of the white character and the depiction of Tiana’s mother acting as a mammy character to the white child, while ignoring her own — a stereotype of Black motherhood that was set during Jim Crow but has roots embedded in American slavery.

But it is not just the opening racial dynamics and cinematic choices of the film that sets Tiana’s portrayal differently than any of Disney’s other non-Black princesses, or even main characters. Nor, again, is it just the fact that the Black body of Princess Tiana appears so little in her film: 17 minutes out of the film’s 98 minute runtime.

It is that so much of Tiana’s film is created through a white gaze that looks to diminish, rather than celebrate the beauty of Black womanhood, or even Blackness in general. Instead of the expected cute and cuddly Disney animal character that always accompanies a Disney hero, there is only the worst of the buck-toothed minstrel stereotypes in the firefly that adopts Tiana; instead of a magical and charming fairy godmother there is only the worst stereotypes of the bugaboo African witch doctor; and everywhere, everywhere is the ridiculing of the Black body with the obsessive attention to all the characters’ overexaggerated buttocks, a stereotype used to portray Blackness since Saartje Bartmaan was kidnapped from South Africa and exhibited onstage in European zoos in order for white audiences to gawk at her physiology. It’s not just a question, in other words, of Tiana’s relative visibility as a Black princess; it’s about the whole swamp she’s got to wade through in order to be seen at all.

¤

Soul, Disney’s ethnic animated kid’s film for this winter season, is unique among animated Disney movies in that the central characters are adults rather than children, with children sprinkled sparingly throughout the film. Also of note is the much more adult subject matter of the film: the inciting incident of the narrative is that the main character dies. Soul follows what happens after that death. More typical is the message of the film: the classic cinematic stereotype of the Black male character desperately trying to save the life of a white woman, the character 22 played by Tina Fey, to the point that the Black man sacrifices his “life” doing so. And the other message of Soul? Accept that you are going to die and don’t try to fight your fate. Yet neither of these themes seem particularly uplifting to children in the style of the Disney brand that exists when dealing with non-Black characters.

Like The Princess and The Frog, Soul begins as a promising premise showcasing some brilliant Black actors. However, like Princess Tiana, Soul’s Joe Gardner is immediately characterized by a burning desire to work. Even the character’s last name is a type of job. Tiana and Joe, unlike other non-Black Disney characters who are given other motivations — falling in love, self-discovery, or saving the world — are only represented by the labor their Black bodies can provide, another stereotype of Blackness.

But the most damaging representation is this: like The Princess and The Frog’s Black protagonist, Soul’s Black lead spends a good deal of the movie not in a Black body, but represented as a blue ghost object without the Black ethnic facial features that characterize the him when in his physical form. And then, Joe Gardner’s Black body is inhabited by 22, the spirit of the character voiced by white actress Tina Fey. Joe, on the other hand, is put in the body of a cat. In other words, the Black body is colonized by whiteness while the Black character’s “soul” is put into the body of an animal — because it’s Disney and Black people are only equal to animals — before eventually choosing to sacrifice his life for 22, the white woman.

I find it very telling that the first animated Disney movie featuring a Black woman main character and the first animated Disney movie to feature a Black man character as leads are written in such a way that both of these main characters spend a large part of their respective films in bodies that are neither Black nor even human.

Green, blue — Disney has no problem with characters that are different colors, it seems, as long as that color is not brown.

¤

What does it say to Black kids watching when the world’s biggest children’s entertainment company cannot give them even one animated film that features a Black person that stays a Black person throughout? What does this say about Blackness to kids who are not Black? About whose life is being portrayed as mattering? And whose does not?

This is how bias and harmful stereotypes are created and perpetuated in society. This is how whiteness protects whiteness and thus a system of white supremacy through media representation: by normalizing itself as human and othering Blackness through erasure and dehumanization. Whether conscious or unconscious, this bias and adherence to white supremacy and Black erasure and dehumanization is real and damaging.

And no matter how much I try, I still cannot understand why Disney — a groundbreaking company predicated on reveling in the imagination, a company whose creative products are so well-known for their tremendous ability to invest animals with human characteristics and deep wells of pathos in order to center intimate storytelling against epic themes — does nothing but relegate Black characters to animals and objects, mining stories of Black suffering and death when Black kids deal with enough violence, often based on race, in the real world.

When will Disney make a film with Black characters played by Black characters? Why is this so damn hard?

¤

In 1937, Walt Disney Animation Studios released its first full-length animated film: Snow White. As the film’s cost grew to $1.5 million over its three-year production period, Walt Disney mortgaged his house to put up the remaining financing. His financial gamble worked: Snow White was an artistic and commercial success. Disney’s groundbreaking form of storytelling captured the hearts and imagination of children and adults alike and grossed $8 million in revenue at the box office, the most money ever made by a film up to that time. Snow White was quickly followed by Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, the films now known as Disney’s Golden Age.

One of the cornerstones of the Disney entertainment phenomenon is the understanding of how an irrepressible visual imagination and sonic landscape are vital in creating lush children’s entertainment that draws viewers in and has them humming songs from the films afterwards. By the mid 1940s, the Walt Disney team had perfected this structure, setting a bar that has led the industry for decades.

Simply put, Disney stories and Disney songs are iconic in our culture.

So as we think about questions of representation, this includes looking not just at how few films with Black characters are made by Disney, but also looking behind the camera at the creative team. Who are the creatives involved in these projects? The writers and composers trusted to create for the Disney brand?

For Soul, the sonic landscape of the film was created by the wonderfully talented Trent Reznor, best known for his band Nine Inch Nails, who, along with Atticus Ross, composed the score. Black American musician Jon Batiste was brought on to provide the singing “voice” of Joe Gardner’s piano, the same way the luminous Anika Noni Rose was the “voice” of Princess Tiana. This was considered progress from The Lion King’s casting of white American actor Jonathan Taylor Thomas to play the young version of the Simba, the African hero, and white American actor Mathew Broderick to play the adult version. White American actress Moira Kelly was the voice of Nala, the female African lion who is Simba’s love interest.

As with Soul, for The Princess and The Frog, Disney again tapped another white male composer to head the team in Randy Newman. And for The Lion King, we remember Elton John’s and Hans Zimmer’s glorious soundtrack, an art object in its own right.

These artists are brilliant. That is unquestionable.

The question is this: Despite the stunning reputations and work of these white composers, with all the Black jazz and soul musicians out there; with the invention of rock, country and jazz music by Black artists, the erasure of Blackness and co-option by whites of the first two art forms; with the financial imbalance in which white artists and labels took advantage of Black artists, whether predatory contracts in the 1960s and 1970s or Black soul musician Lady A getting her name stolen by the band formerly known as Lady Antebellum this past year; with this history of marginalization of Black creatives and in this political climate, doesn’t this sonic whitewashing just seem like there is so much potential for diverse representation, wasted?

Or does Disney’s refusal to create an animated movie with Black characters who stay Black characters go beyond these three films that traffic in stereotypes and erasure and speak to larger institutional issues regarding perceptions of Blackness that behoove attention?

One wonders: if the very accomplished white writing team of John Musker and Ron Clements, who after criticism about their treatment of race in the film, brought on the gifted Black writer Rob Edwards to help pen The Princess and The Frog, had also included a Black woman on the script about the first Black woman Disney protagonist, or an eye that valued Black woman the same way white women are valued in our society, would we perhaps have seen a less stereotypical representation of the first Black Disney princess that was more in line with the value and care shown to the other lighter-skinned Disney princesses in the Disney story canon, for example? Or, if the creators had thought as intentionally about Blackness before creating this story as they did with the creation of Moana’s Oceanic Story Trust, could there have been a different result as well? Or if a Black creator had been allowed to imagine Tiana and her world from the ground up, rather than slapping a Black perspective on the film as a hasty afterthought — a quick fix band-aid to solve the racist undertones of the film when the problems were not just skin deep?

And if Soul, too, had also begun with a Black writer creating a storyline rather than white screenwriters Pete Doctor and Mike Jones again bringing on a Black American writer (this time Kemp Powers) two years into the project to add authenticity and perspective of character to a fundamentally problematic idea, could Soul have been a more positive representation of Blackness without unconscious bias and stereotypes?

It matters, where imagination begins in the mind. It matters whether that mind can imagine full Black personhood, or if that imagination is still constrained by unconscious bias and internalized stereotypes.

“We quickly came across this idea of a story about a soul who doesn’t want to die meeting a soul that doesn’t want to live,” said Mike Jones in an interview with Awards Daily from February 2021. “I think the very first version, he was an actor, and he had gotten his big break on Broadway. He was going to play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, and we thought that was just so clever but we just didn’t feel it. As soon as we came up with the idea that he should be a jazz musician, the idea of wrapping jazz and the improvisational nature of jazz was just so electric that we decided to make him a jazz musician. And let’s make him a middle school band teacher who aspires to something greater. That naturally led to the idea that he should be a middle-aged Black man, and that’s when we brought Kemp Powers in.”

Because of the complexity of the Black experience in America, stories that may read as neutral with a white main character can become, like Soul, problematic when the race of that character is changed from white to Black and the narrative is not rethought accordingly. For example, take Soul’s idea of putting a white character into the body of a Black man. Or Soul’s idea of a Black man’s soul being put into an animal. Where whiteness in America does not have a tradition of being violently colonized and enslaved, Blackness does. Where whiteness in America doesn’t have a racially loaded history of being compared to animals in a dehumanizing way, Blackness does. And suddenly, a plot point that seemed innocuous when envisioning the character as white, becomes part of a larger tradition of whiteness violating and dehumanizing the Black body, begun with American slavery.

It is not just enough to change a character’s race; when changing race, the narrative has to be re-envisioned accordingly in line with a character’s positioning in society. For Black folks in America, race informs so much of our experiences in life; to ignore this when creating a narrative of Black life is to practice a white-centered misconception of “colorblindness” that denies the full humanity of our personhood.

And nothing makes this misrepresentation clearer than Soul’s animation, which erases Joe Gardner’s Black ethnic features in the afterlife, effectively saying that the default representation of human, of a soul, is whiteness.

¤ 

There are a few future things in the works that I am hopeful about. Disney is set to premiere Ironheart on Disney+ in the near future, and is creating a TV show featuring Princess Tiana in 2023 with (hopefully) an eye to a less stereotypical portrayal than the earlier film. The Disney partnership with South African film company Kugali to produce Iwaju in 2022 looks promising as long as it doesn’t turn into a repeat of the single representation story, and diasporic wars where African, Afro European, and Black American creatives are pitted against each other. Mama K’s Team 4, a Zimbabwean cartoon, is set to premier on Netflix in 2022. And our most promising discovery: the Kweli TV app, which curates Black content from around the world with shows like Bino & Fino, a cartoon featuring two kids from Nigeria who, my son says, look exactly like him.

In the meantime, my son has stopped asking to watch television. He told me the other day that he understands why I have always avoided TV and read to him instead. It is not just the wonder of imagination and language that books rather than TV provide. It is not just the vibrant storylines that inspire his own creations. As my Black son looks at his bookshelves he can see row after row of books whose covers shine with characters who look like him, whose pages are full of joyful stories about characters who look like him living their lives in full Black joy instead of the shapeshifting and death embedded into so much of mainstream American television entertainment engaging with Blackness for kids.

My son knows now, like many Black kids in America do, that if you try to look for yourself onscreen all you will see is erasure, sometimes stereotype. He knows to look for himself on the page instead. You can find some beautiful things there, if you try.

My son’s basket of to-read books contain his current four favorites: Dragons in a Bag, Hi-Lo, Obi & Titi, and The Adventures of Mia Mayhem. In these books, like the others on his bookshelf, Black joy and Black life are embraced. And any of these would make amazing television or cinematic content.

Take Dragons in a Bag, the first book in a series about Black kids and dragons in Brooklyn written by the wonderful Zetta Elliot. Or Hi-Lo, Judd Winick’s alien robot who saves the world with his best friends — a Black girl with magical powers and an Asian boy who breaks gender stereotypes to spread love rather than violence. Or Obi & Titi, O.T. Begho’s tales of a Black boy and girl racing through magical adventures in Nigeria. Or the Mia Mayhem series, Kara West’s thrilling adventures of a Black girl superhero in a long lineage of superheroes. These books are amazing, well written stories with nuanced representations of character. And guess what?

No one Black dies in these books. And no one Black turns into a frog, a ghostly blue object, or anything else that is not Black for some corporation’s bizarre mindset that still believes that seeing Black faces onscreen for 120 minutes is too much.

They stay Black kids the whole time.

URL

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/disneys-disembodied-black-characters/

Emmett Till and justice 

Emmett Till's family seeks the arrest of a woman after a 1955 warrant is found
June 29, 20229:04 PM ET

A team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till has found the unserved warrant charging a white woman in his 1955 kidnapping, and relatives of the victim want authorities to finally arrest her nearly 70 years later.

A warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham — identified as "Mrs. Roy Bryant" on the document — was discovered last week by searchers inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Documents are kept inside boxes by decade, he said, but there was nothing else to indicate where the warrant, dated Aug. 29, 1955, might have been.

"They narrowed it down between the '50s and '60s and got lucky," said Stockstill, who certified the warrant as genuine.

The search group included members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and two Till relatives: cousin Deborah Watts, head of the foundation; and her daughter, Teri Watts. Relatives want authorities to use the warrant to arrest Donham, who at the time of the slaying was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted just weeks after Till was abducted from a relative's home, killed and dumped into a river.

"Serve it and charge her," Teri Watts told the AP in an interview.

Keith Beauchamp, whose documentary film "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" preceded a renewed Justice Department probe that ended without charges in 2007, was also part of the search. He said there's enough new evidence to prosecute Donham.

Donham set off the case in August 1955 by accusing the 14-year-old Till of making improper advances at a family store in Money, Mississippi. A cousin of Till who was there has said Till whistled at the woman, an act that flew in the face of Mississippi's racist social codes of the era.

Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. The arrest warrant against Donham was publicized at the time, but the Leflore County sheriff told reporters he did not want to "bother" the woman since she had two young children to care for.

Now in her 80s and most recently living in North Carolina, Donham has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution. But Teri Watts said the Till family believes the warrant accusing Donham of kidnapping amounts to new evidence.

"This is what the state of Mississippi needs to go ahead," she said.

District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, whose office would prosecute a case, declined comment on the warrant but cited a December report about the Till case from the Justice Department, which said no prosecution was possible.

Contacted by the AP on Wednesday, Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks said: "This is the first time I've known about a warrant."

Banks, who was 7 years old when Till was killed, said "nothing was said about a warrant" when a former district attorney investigated the case five or six years ago.

"I will see if I can get a copy of the warrant and get with the DA and get their opinion on it," Banks said. If the warrant can still be served, Banks said, he would have to talk to law enforcement officers in the state where Donham resides.

Arrest warrants can "go stale" due to the passage of time and changing circumstances, and one from 1955 almost certainly wouldn't pass muster before a court, even if a sheriff agreed to serve it, said Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi.

But combined with any new evidence, the original arrest warrant "absolutely" could be an important stepping stone toward establishing probable cause for a new prosecution, he said.

"If you went in front of a judge you could say, 'Once upon a time a judge determined there was probable cause, and much more information is available today,'" Rychlak said.

Till, who was from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he entered the store where Donham, then 21, was working on Aug. 24, 1955. A Till relative who was there, Wheeler Parker, told AP that Till whistled at the woman. Donham testified in court that Till also grabbed her and made a lewd comment.

Two nights later, Donham's then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, showed up armed at the rural Leflore County home of Till's great-uncle, Mose Wright, looking for the youth. Till's brutalized body, weighted down by a fan, was pulled from a river days later in another county. His mother's decision to open the casket so mourners in Chicago could see what had happened helped galvanize the building civil rights movement of the time.

Bryant and Milam were acquitted of murder but later admitted the killing in a magazine interview. While both men were named in the same warrant that accused Donham of kidnapping, authorities did not pursue the case following their acquittal.

Wright testified during the murder trial that a person with a voice "lighter" than a man's identified Till from inside a pickup truck and the abductors took him away. Other evidence in FBI files indicates that earlier that same night, Donham told her husband at least two other Black men were not the right person.

article

Emmett Till's family seeks the arrest of a woman after a 1955 warrant is found : NPR

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