Category: 2000 & Later

15Mar

March 15, 2009- Condoleezza Rice

GM – FBF -“The day has to come when it’s not a surprise that a woman has a powerful position” Condoleezza Rice

Remember – “When people don’t have a hopeful vision before them or the possible resolution of their difficulties by peaceful means, then they can be attracted to violence and to separatism.” – Condoleezza Rice

Today in our History – March 15, 2009 – Rice returned to Stanford University as a political science professor and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.The first Black Woman to hold such a position at Stanford University.

Condoleezza Rice became one of the most influential women in the world of global politics when President George W. Bush (1946–) named her as his national security adviser in December of 2000. Her role became extremely important after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon in Washington. Rice has played a crucial part in shaping the most aggressive U.S. foreign policy in modern history, with wars launched against Afghanistan and Iraq during her time in office.

Became kindergarten piano prodigy
Rice grew up during a deeply segregated era of American history. She was born in 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, to parents who were both educators. Her father, John Wesley Rice Jr., was a football coach and high school guidance counselor at one of Birmingham’s black public schools. He was also an ordained Presbyterian minister in Birmingham’s Westminster Presbyterian Church, which had been founded by his own father, also a minister. Rice’s mother, Angelena, was a teacher and church organist. Angelena loved opera, and so named her only child after an Italian-language term, con dolcezza. It is used in musical notation and means “to play with sweetness.”

Birmingham was clearly divided into black and white spheres during Rice’s childhood, and the two worlds rarely met. But her parents were determined that their only child would grow up to be an accomplished and well-rounded young woman. Rice began piano lessons at the age of three, and gave her first recital a year later. She became somewhat of a musical prodigy in the Birmingham area, performing often at school and community events. In addition to long hours spent practicing the piano, she also took French and Spanish lessons after school, and later became a competitive figure skater. “My whole community was determined not to let their children’s horizons be limited by growing up in segregated Birmingham,” Rice recalled in an interview with television personality Oprah Winfrey (1954–) for O, The Oprah Magazine. “Sometimes I think they overcompensated because they wanted their kids to be so much better.”

“I find football so interesting strategically. It’s the closest thing to war. What you’re really doing is taking and yielding territory, and you have certain strategies and tactics.”

Not surprisingly, Rice earned good grades in school, even at an early age. Attending segregated schools in Birmingham, she skipped the first grade entirely and was later promoted from the sixth directly into the eighth grade. Her city became a battleground during the emerging civil rights movement in the late 1950s, and the strife directly touched Rice’s early life. In 1963 the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, situated in the middle of Birmingham’s black community, was the site of a tragic firebombing that killed four little girls who were attending Sunday school. Rice knew two of them.

Finished high school at fifteen
Rice’s family moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, around 1965, when she was eleven years old. Her father had taken a job there as a college administrator. They later settled in Denver, Colorado, where she attended an integrated public school for the first time in her life, beginning with the tenth grade. She finished her last year of high school and her first year at the University of Denver at the same time.

“The Most Powerful Woman in the World”
U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has sometimes been described as the most influential woman in global politics. A university professor and expert on Russian history, Rice is known for her cool, calm manner. When Bush appointed her to the job in 2000, some wondered if she was qualified for it. But Janne Nolan, a friend of Rice’s from her early days as a Stanford University professor, told New Yorker writer Nicholas Lemann that Rice had a solid track record for proving herself. “I’ve watched it over and over again—the sequential underestimation of Condi,” Nolan told Lemann. “It just gets worse and worse. She’s always thought of as underqualified and in over her head, and she always kicks everyone’s butt.”

A job such as Rice’s requires nerves of steel, and the French- and Russian-fluent academic, whose friends and family call her “Condi,” fits the bill. She explained in an interview with Essence writer Isabel Wilkerson, “My parents went to great lengths to make sure I was confident. My mother was also a great believer in being proper.” As an African American and a professional, Rice has experienced the occasional racial snub. She recalled one occasion when she asked to see some of the nicer jewelry in a store, and the saleswoman mumbled a rude remark under her breath. As Rice recalled to Wilkerson, she told the woman, “‘Let’s get one thing clear. If you could afford anything in here, you wouldn’t be behind this counter. So I strongly suggest you do your job.'”

The confidence that Rice’s parents instilled in her comes out in other ways, too. She favors suits by Italian designer Giorgio Armani, but the trim, fit national security adviser prefers her skirts to hit just above the knee. Her favorite lipstick comes from the Yves Saint Laurent cosmetics counter. When asked about her off-duty hours, Rice told Wilkerson that she watches sports and goes shopping. Wilkerson wondered about the Secret Service security detail that accompanies Rice in public, but Rice responded with a humor rarely on display in public, “They can handle shopping.”

For years Rice dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. At the University of Denver she was originally a music major, but eventually gave up on her dream after spending a summer at music camp. “Technically, I can play most anything,” she explained to Winfrey about her decision to change majors. “But I’ll never play it the way the truly great pianists do.” She fell in love with political science and Russian history after she took a class taught by Josef Korbel (1909–1977), a refugee from Czechoslovakia. In the 1990s Korbel’s daughter, Madeleine Albright (1937–), became the first female U.S. Secretary of State.

Rice began taking Russian-language and history courses, and became fascinated by Cold War politics. The term refers to the hostilities between the United States and the world’s first Communist state, Soviet Russia, in the years following World War II (1939–45). Each “superpower” tried to win allies to its brand of politics, and in the process each side built up a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. After she graduated from the University of Denver in 1974, Rice enrolled at Notre Dame University in Indiana, where she earned a master’s degree in government and international studies.

Drifted for a time
Years later Rice admitted, in the interview with Winfrey, “I am still someone with no long-term plan.” To begin her post-college career, she lined up a job as an executive assistant—in other words, a secretary—to a vice president at Honeywell, a large electronics corporation. But a company reorganization ended that career possibility. For a time she gave piano lessons. Then her former professor, Josef Korbel, suggested that she return to school, and she began work on a Ph.D. degree at the University of Denver.

Rice was a promising new talent in her field even before she earned a doctorate in 1981. Her dissertation investigated the relationship between the Czechoslovak Communist Party and its army. Soon she was offered a fellowship at Stanford University. No other woman had ever been offered a fellowship to its Center for International Security and Arms Control. She eagerly accepted, and the following year she was hired by Stanford to teach political science.

Rice became a tenured professor at Stanford in 1987. She was also a rising star in U.S. foreign policy circles. She served as the informal campaign adviser to a Colorado Democrat, Gary Hart (1936–), during his 1984 bid for the White House. She came to know a foreign policy expert, Brent Scowcroft (1925–), and was offered her first official job in government. Scowcroft had been named national security adviser by George H. W. Bush (1924–), who was elected president in 1988. Scowcroft then hired Rice as a staff member on the National Security Council.

Served in first Bush White House
The National Security Council helps analyze data and plan American foreign policy. It looks at potential global threats from hostile nations, and works to make strategic alliances with friendly ones. Rice eventually became a special assistant to the first President Bush, serving as his expert on Soviet and East European affairs. It was an important time in American foreign policy. The political system of the Soviet Union was crumbling, and by 1991 the Communist governments allied with Soviet Russia had been peacefully ousted throughout the Eastern Bloc (as the communist nations in Eastern Europe were known).

But Rice tired of the toll the White House job took on her personal life, and she resigned in 1991. She went back to teaching at Stanford, and in 1993 became the university’s first-ever female provost, which essentially made her second-in-command at the school. She was also the first African American to be selected for the position. “That was the toughest job I ever had,” she told Nicholas Lemann in a New Yorker profile. She was charged with eliminating a large budget deficit, and the university had also been accused of misusing government grant money intended for military research. There was internal turmoil as well, and some faculty members complained about Rice’s no-nonsense manner. “I told people, ‘I don’t do committees,'” she explained to Lemann.

Rice remained on friendly terms with the Bush family and came to know one of the sons, George W., during visits to the Bush summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine. In 1999 George W. Bush decided to try and win the Republican Party’s nomination as its presidential candidate for 2000. He hired Rice to lead his team of foreign policy advisers, and she quit the Stanford job. She began working closely with Bush, who was governor of Texas at the time and had very little other political experience, especially in foreign relations.

Bush won his party’s nomination and later was declared the winner of a hotly contested November election. The president-elect immediately named Rice as his national security adviser. Though she was not the first African American ever to hold the post—Bush’s new Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell (1937–), had held the job for a year in the late 1980s—she was the first woman ever to serve in the position. The national security adviser helps shape American foreign policy, both on the public front and behind the scenes, in strategy sessions with the president and his team.

Plotted strategy from underground bunker
Rice’s duties also included coming up with ideas to combat threats to American interests at home and overseas. This became an important part of her job on the morning of September 11, 2001. She was in a meeting at the White House when an aide notified her that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. She quickly ended the meeting and notified the President, who was in Florida. After a second plane crashed into the other tower of the New York landmark, she and other key personnel gathered in what is known as the White House “Situation Room.” When a third plane crashed into the Pentagon Building, which is the command center for the U.S. Armed Forces, Rice and the others retreated to an underground bunker. The attack was the deadliest ever to occur on American soil.

Rice worked long days in the months afterward to shape U.S. foreign policy. The first order of business involved Afghanistan, which was suspected of harboring the shadowy Islamic fundamentalist group known as Al Qaeda. It was founded by a Saudi exile, Osama bin Laden (1957–), who quickly took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Less than a month later, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan. Rice also worked to create a new policy for dealing with longtime Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (1937–). The Bush White House believed that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States. In March of 2003 the United States invaded Iraq.

The fourth year of the Bush Administration was a difficult one for Rice and other top White House and Pentagon personnel. Though Hussein had been captured and the war in Iraq was officially declared over, U.S. troops stationed in Iraq had become the target of repeated attacks by insurgents. And American military operatives had yet to capture bin Laden. In April of 2004 Rice was called to testify before a

Condoleezza Rice testifies before the 9/11 Commssion, April 8, 2004.
AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.
special panel that had been set up to investigate the 9/11 attacks, namely whether or not the attacks could have been prevented and how the emergency response to such an attack could be improved. There were charges that U.S. intelligence officials may have come across suspicious information but failed to put the pieces together. Rice sat before the official 9/11 Commission, in front of a barrage of television cameras, and held her ground. “There was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States,” she asserted, according to the New York Times. “If there had been something, we would have acted on it.”
Dreams of top NFL job
Rice lives in a luxury apartment complex in Washington known as Watergate. Her mother died in 1985, and her father died the same month that Bush named her to the national security adviser post. She attends church regularly, and is known to be close to the President and his wife, Laura (1946–). At the Maryland presidential retreat known as Camp David, she has been known to watch hours of televised sports with President Bush. Both are dedicated football fans, and Rice has also been known to spend an entire day on her own watching college and pro football games.

Rice’s name has been mentioned as a possible future vice-presidential candidate. Although she has joked that she would love to serve as commissioner of the National Football League, she has also said that she looks forward to returning to teaching once her service to the Bush White House comes to an end. “I miss my kids,” she said in the interview with Winfrey. “In a class of 20, there are always two or three for whom the lights go on. When that happens, I think I’ve done for them what Dr. Korbel did for me.” Research more about this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

13Mar

March 13, 2009- Anne Wiggins Brown

GM – FBF – “I take the world very personally. I take history personally; I want to place myself in the larger context.” – Marianne Wiggins

Remember – “I write on a visual canvas, ‘seeing’ a scene in my thoughts before translating it into language, so I’m a visual junkie.” – Marianne Wiggins

Today in our History , March 13, 2009 – Brown, Anne Wiggins (1912-2009) – The Fist lady to praform “BESS” in the broadway production of “PORGY AND BESS”.

Broadway performer Anne Wiggins Brown was born August 9, 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland to Dr. Harry F. Brown and Mary Wiggins Brown. Her father, the grandson of a slave, was a respected physician, and her mother was of black, Cherokee, and Scottish-Irish decent. Brown was a talented singer from a young age, but when her parents tried to enroll their daughter in a private Catholic elementary school with a music program, she was denied entrance because she was African American.

Brown began her training at Morgan College (now Morgan State University), after which she applied to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Once again she was denied admittance because of her race. Brown did not give up and in 1928, when she was just 16 years old, Brown auditioned for and was admitted to the Julliard School in New York, becoming the first African American vocalist to attend the school. While at Julliard, Brown was awarded the prestigious Margaret McGill scholarship.

Brown got her big break in 1935 when she sang the part of Bess in the world premiere of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Colonial Theater in Boston. The play, which featured an all-African American cast, focused on the lives African Americans living in Charleston, South Carolina during the 1920s. After a successful opening, Porgy and Bess was moved to the Alvin Theater in New York in October 1935. Although Brown’s performance was highly praised, the opera received mixed reviews. Many African Americans, including Brown’s father, believed that the play was racist and portrayed stereotypes of black people.

Brown continued to appear on Broadway in such shows as Pins and Needles (1937) and Mamba’s Daughters (1939). The successful singer/actress also continued to play Bess in multiple revivals of Porgy and Bess including the Broadway revival in 1942. Although she had gained fame and success, Brown was still forced to deal with the reality of segregation in America. Brown encountered prejudice on many occasions and was even denied use of a performance hall in Baltimore, her hometown.

Brown’s experiences persuaded her to live in Europe. In 1946, she traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark to perform in the Royal Opera’s production of Porgy and Bess and afterwards decided to remain there. Brown began touring from Copenhagen and gave recitals throughout Europe. In 1948, while traveling in Norway, she met and married her husband, the philosopher, journalist, and Olympic medal skier Thorleif Schjelderup. The couple settled in Norway and raised two daughters together.

In 1953, Brown began the transition from performer to voice coach and director, and in 1967 she put on a Norwegian production of Porgy and Bess. In 1998 Brown was awarded the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Music in America by the Peabody Institute as a way to apologize for their admission denial. Anne Wiggins Brown passed away in Oslo, Norway on March 13, 2009. Research more about this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

12Mar

March 12, 2015- Willie T. Barrow

MafGM – FBF – “I am about doing the work of our people in Chicago or the Nation” – Willie T. Barrow

Remember – ” I am proud to with Jesse Jackson and Operation PUSH to support the people of our great City” – Willie T. Barrow

Today in our History – March 12, 2015 – Religious leader and civil rights activist Reverend Willie T. Barrow was born on December 7, 1924 to Octavia and Nelson Taplin, a minister. Barrow was raised in Burton, Texas, where as a student she led a demonstration of rural African American schoolchildren against a segregated school system. Barrow later attended Warner-Pacific Theological Seminary in Portland, Oregon, and helped build a church in that city in the 1940s.
Upon graduation, Barrow was ordained as a minister and began her career as both a spiritual and social activist. From 1953 to 1965, she was a field organizer for Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where she was responsible for the organization of transportation, shelter, meetings and rallies for demonstrations, including the 1965 March on Selma, Alabama. During the 1960s, Barrow was among the founding members of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, Illinois, a program that provided spiritual guidance and practical assistance to communities in need. Later, in 1968, she led a three-person delegation to North Vietnam and participated in the negotiation of the Vietnam Peace Treaty.
Barrow went on to serve as co-chair of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the organization that grew out of Operation Breadbasket. At the Coalition, she coordinated activities and served as an aide to Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. Barrow also served as associate minister of the Vernon Park Church of God in Chicago, and was active in the National Urban League and National Council of Negro Women.
Barrow was honored with a Doctor of Divinity degree from Monrovia, Liberia and a Leadership Certificate from Harvard University. She also received awards from the League of Black Women, the Christian Women’s Conference, and the Indo-American Democratic Organization. In September of 1997, a street on Chicago’s South Side was renamed in her honor; and, that same year, the Reverend Willie Barrow Wellness Center was opened to bring affordable and accessible health care to needed areas in Chicago. She authored the book, How to Get Married and Stay Married, which was published in 2004.
Reverend Barrow passed away on March 12, 2015 at the age of 90. Reserch more about the NAACP, SCLC and Operation PUSH and people who are Civil Rights Activeist and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

06Feb

February 5, 1884- Willis Johnson

GM – FBF – We’re going to win Sunday, I’ll guarantee you.

Remember – “African-American assistant coaches in the NFL, were so important to the progress of this league.” – Tony Dungy – All Pro Player, Super Bowl Winning Coach and Hall of Fame Member.

Today in our History – Febuary 4, 2007 – Well before the opening kickoff, it is already clear that Super Bowl XLI will be one for the history books.

That’s because both competing coaches – Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears’ Lovie Smith – are of African-American heritage. On Sunday night, one of them will become the first black coach to win a Super Bowl.

That’s not just a piece of sports trivia. It is part of the civil rights movement, an important chapter of American history that for many will outshine even the most amazing gridiron heroics.

As devastating as their 29-17 Super Bowl XLI loss to the Colts was for the proud Chicago Bears, it was worse for their coach: Lovie Smith will forever be remembered as the first African-American coach to lose a Super Bowl.

During his remarkable seven-year run with the Colts and its star quarterback, Peyton Manning, Dungy turned the franchise into a perennial Super Bowl contender. The Vince Lombardi trophy finally came Dungy’s way on February 4, 2007, when the Colts defeated the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI, 29-17, in Miami.

The victory made Dungy the first African American to coach a Super Bowl–winning club. It also made him just the third person in NFL history to win a title as a player and as a head coach.

Following the 2008 season, and after 31 seasons patrolling an NFL sideline, Dungy retired from coaching. Tony Dungy, former NFL head coach, Inducted to the 2016 Class Pro Football Hall of Fame. Research more about African – Americans and the Super Bowl and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

04Feb

February 4, 2007- Super Bowl XLI

GM – FBF – We’re going to win Sunday, I’ll guarantee you.

Today in our History – February 4, 2007 – Well before the opening kickoff, it is already clear that Super Bowl XLI will be one for the history books.

That’s not just a piece of sports trivia. It is part of the civil rights movement, an important chapter of American history that for many will outshine even the most amazing gridiron heroics.

The victory made Dungy the first African American to coach a Super Bowl–winning club. It also made him just the third person in NFL history to win a title as a player and as a head coach.

20Jan

January 20 2009- Barack Hussien

GM- FBF – You can only loose what you cling to.

Remember – “The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.” President Barack H. Obama

Today in our History – January 20, 2009 – Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th President of the United States of America and the first African American to have held the post. He was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham. His parents separated when he was an infant and divorced when he was 2 years old, after which Obama Sr. returned to Kenya. Obama admitted to a feeling of loss and confusion at the absence of his father as well as an identity crisis about being a black child in predominantly white surroundings. Obama Sr. was killed in a tragic car accident in Nairobi in 1982 when Obama was 21 years old. Ann moved to Indonesia and remarried, and Obama has a half sister named Maya Soetoro Ng fom his mother’s second marriage. He was sent back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents while his mother and sister lived in Jakarta. He enrolled at Punahou Academy and graduated with academic honors.

After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University in New York. He graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a degree in political science. After a brief stint in the business sector, he moved to Chicago in 1985 to work as a community organizer for low-income residents. During this time, he visited his father and grandfather’s graves in Kenya and upon his return, entered Harvard Law School in 1988. he met his future wife, Michelle Robinson, while working as an associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin when she was assigned to be his adviser during her summer internship at the firm. At Harvard, Obama was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1991. He then returned to Chicago to practice civil law at the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, while also teaching part time at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992-2004. He married Michelle in 1992 and have two daughters named Malia and Sasha.

Obama published his autobiography in 1995, titled “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”. It received great reviews and an audio-book version of the same, narrated by Obama himself, received a Grammy Award for best spoken word album. In 1996, Obama won a seat in the Illinois State Senate and in 2000 he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives seat. As a state senator, he openly expressed his views against George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. He then started rallying support for his decision to run for the U.S. Senate, a nomination that he won with a 52% vote. In August 2004 he went head to head with former presidential candidate Alan Keyes in three televised debates, discussing diverse issues such as gun control, stem cell research, abortion and taxation. Obama won a seat in the U.S. Senate with 70% votes, becoming the third African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Obama published his second book, titled “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” in 2006 which became a New York Times as well as Amazon.com best seller. He announced his candidacy for president against Hillary Clinton in 2007, and defeated her in a close contest. In November 2008, Obama won the election against the Republican candidate John McCain and was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009. He faced various challenges in his term including a global economic crisis and two wars being fought abroad. Obama introduced several reforms such as the Affordable Care Act (or Obama Care, as it is more popularly known) which has received equal measure of support and criticism, and the Budget Control Act of 2011 to contain excessive government spending. Some of his other major decisions included legalizing gay rights, advocating gun control after the school shooting in Connecticut and resuming foreign relations with Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.
Obama was re-elected in January 2013 for a second term in office. He has taken several initiatives but his popularity ratings have gone down compared to his last term. With a number of international crisis to handle such as the situation in Syria, Palestine and Ukraine, Obama continues to show his leadership abilities and pave the way for economic and social reform. He is also the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and climate change, and his support for multilateral agencies such as the United Nations in order to promote international cooperation. Research more about this great American and tell your babies. Make it a champion day!