Army lifts ban on dreadlocks for female soldiers

The Army released a sweeping update to grooming and appearance regulations on Tuesday that, in addition to authorizing religious beards and head coverings, also opened the door for female soldiers to wear their hair in dreadlocks.

The services have grappled with the issue of black women's hair in recent years, as some argued that the hair regulations put an undue burden on those with thick, coarse hair, forcing many women to spend time, money and discomfort on straightening or wigs if they didn't choose to chop it all off.

The Army's compromise is now to let women wear dreadlocks along the same guidelines already allowed for braids, cornrows and twists. That is, they must be of uniform size and shape, evenly spaced, and up to 1/2 inch in width.

Read more: New Army regulations OK dreadlocks for female soldiers

Olympian Ibtihaj Muhammad says she was detained by U.S. Customs

Olympic bronze medalist and New Jersey native Ibtihaj Muhammad, who made headlines during the summer games in Rio for being the first Olympian to compete for the U.S. while wearing a hijab, says she was recently detained by U.S. Customs officials, according to a report.

In an interview at the MAKERS Conference in California, Muhammad told PopSugar.com she was held for about two hours without an explanation. Muhammad told the blog she was "disheartened" by the experience.

"I can't tell you why it happened to me, but I know that I'm Muslim. I have an Arabic name. And even though I represent Team USA and I have that Olympic hardware, it doesn't change how you look and how people perceive you," she told PopSugar.com.

She did not elaborate on exactly where or when she was detained.

Read more: Olympian from N.J. says she was detained by U.S. Customs

Republicans are being dishonest about Pres. Obama not helping HBCUs

George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.Com

GOP lawmakers are planning to meet with the presidents of several HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges & Universities) to discuss what these schools need and how they can help them survive. Now instead of just touting how they plan to help black students, Conservatives/Republicans have used this as an opportunity to attack President Obama in the eyes of African Americans.

They are spreading the lie that President Obama did little for HBCU's or cut funding to those schools and what's worse is that many of those spreading that lie are African Americans conservatives/pundits. Of course, they are saying/writing this to expound upon their false narrative that Obama did little to help African Americans. The sad part is that saying that Obama did little for HBCU's is a flat out lie.

Here are the FACTS

Over the course of 7 years, the Obama Administration has invested more than $4 billion in HBCUs, because these institutions are vital engines of economic growth and proven ladders of advancement for generations of African Americans.

Under the Obama Administration, 1 million more African-American and Latino students have enrolled in college. What’s more, black and Hispanic students earned more than 270,000 more undergraduate degrees in 2013-2014 than in 2008-2009. This Administration remains focused on continuing to increase the number of students who successfully complete college. To that end, the Department has worked to make new opportunities available to HBCUs.

Federal funding to HBCUs has grown each year since 2009. Through the Higher Education Act, HBCUs received a $17 million funding increase this year—the largest increase for the federal Strengthening HBCUs program in six years. And President Obama’s FY 2017 budget seeks to maintain and strengthen these opportunities for HBCUs to build their capacity. The FY 2017 budget proposes $85 million in mandatory funding to HBCUs, an increase of $5 million from FY 2016, plus an additional $244.7 million in discretionary funds for Title III.

The Administration has also fought for and won a historic commitment to fully fund Pell Grants and expand student aid for millions of low-income students. Pell Grant funding for HBCU students increased significantly between 2007 and 2014, growing from $523 million to $824 million. This year, President Obama announced a plan to make sure that Pell Grants are fully funded, including inflationary adjustments, and used strategically by students to reduce time and cost for receiving a terminal degree. The President’s 2017 budget also proposes a $30 million HBCU and Minority Serving Institution Innovation for Completion Fund, to help students from low-income backgrounds overcome challenges and persist through graduation day.

[SOURCE: US Dept. of Education]

What's also left out of the conversation is that most HBCUs are in states with Republican governors and state legislators. THEY are the ones that produce a budget and allocate where funds go not the President of the United States. So any funding cuts were done by the States, not President Obama.

So in closing, I would like to say to my conservative 'friends,' in the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."

When did Republicans start caring about black colleges?

George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.Com

Black Caucus Dems take to Senate to protest Sessions

Congressional Black Caucus members led a group of House Democrats to the Senate floor Wednesday in protest of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general, the Washington Examiner reported.

“Sen. Sessions may be one of the most incompatible nominees to the Department of Justice that we’ve seen in decades — that department is a department of the vulnerable,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said after exiting the Senate floor.

"It is a department that deals with the issues of civil rights mostly; it deals with the issue of voting rights and the empowerment of women,” the CBC member continued.

“It deals with the issues of protecting those on the question of marriage equality, gender discrimination — and no record has been more potent against all of those issues.”

Democratic Reps. Lacy Clay (Mo.), Hank Johnson (Ga.) and John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), Rosa DeLauro.

Read more:Black Caucus Dems take to Senate to protest Sessions

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LONNIE BUNCH III TO RECEIVE PRESIDENT’S AWARD AT NAACP IMAGE AWARDS

Lonnie Bunch III, the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will be honored at the NAACP Image Awards.

The NAACP announced today that historian, author, curator and educator, Lonnie G. Bunch, III will be presented with the NAACP “President’s Award” at the 48th NAACP Image Awards telecast LIVE from 9-11 p.m. ET on February 11 on TV One.

The NAACP “President’s Award,” chosen by NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks, is bestowed in recognition of special achievement and distinguished public service.  Past honorees include John Legend, Van Jones, President Bill Clinton, Soledad O’Brien, Ruby Dee, Muhammad Ali, the Founding Members of the Black Stuntmen’s Association, Kerry Washington, and Spike Lee.

“Historian, scholar and author Lonnie G. Bunch III, has secured among the sacred places of the American story, a place of honor for the contributions of African Americans to our nation’s history. As the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), he has helped to amplify stories of our struggles and striving to wrest the shackles of oppression from both body and mind in our undeniable quest to be free,” said Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO, NAACP.

“Dr. Bunch’s relentless work to shine a magnificent light into the incredible American prism of the Black experience from enslaved plantations to the White House mansion, has earned him this year’s NAACP President’s Award. The award bears the name of the NAACP but is invisibly inscribed with the names of Americans of every hue and heritage representing the gratitude of the nation for Dr. Bunch’s efforts.”

Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.  In this position he is working to set the museum’s mission, coordinate its fundraising and membership campaigns, develop its collections, and establish cultural partnerships.  He is designing a high-profile program of traveling exhibitions and public events ranging from panel discussions and seminars to oral history and collecting workshops.

Prior to his July 2005 appointment as director of NMAAHC, Bunch served as the president of the Chicago Historical Society, one of the nation’s oldest museums of history (January 2001-June 2005).  There, he initiated an unprecedented outreach initiative to diverse communities and launched a much-applauded exhibition and program on teenage life titled “Teen Chicago.”  He also led a successful capital campaign to transform the institution in celebration of its 150th anniversary and managed an institutional reorganization.

Bunch has held several positions at the Smithsonian.  As the National Museum of American History’s (NMAH) Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs (1994-2000), he oversaw the curatorial and collections management staff of nearly 200.  In addition to leading the curatorial team that developed the major permanent exhibition “American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,” he served as co-author of the exhibition’s companion book by the same name.

While assistant director for curatorial affairs at NMAH (1992-1994), Bunch developed “Smithsonian’s America,” an exhibition that explored the history, culture and diversity of the United States; it was shown in Tokyo, Japan as part of the “American Festival Japan ’94.  He also supervised the planning and implementation of the museum’s research and collection agendas.  As a supervising curator at NMAH (1989-1992), he oversaw several of the museum’s divisions, including Community Life and Political History.

From 1978 to 1979, Bunch was an education specialist and historian at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, where he developed multi-cultural instructional programs and researched and wrote the history of African Americans in aviation.

Bunch served as the curator of history for the California Afro-American Museum in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1989.  There he organized several award-winning exhibitions including “The Black Olympians, 1904-1950” and “Black Angelenos: The Afro-American in Los Angeles, 1850-1950.”  Committed to making history accessible, he also produced several historical documentaries for public television.

A prolific and widely published author, Bunch has written on topics ranging from slavery, the black military experience, the American presidency and all black towns in the American west to diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums. In 2010, he published the award-winning book “Call the Lost Dream Back: Essays on Race, History and Museums.” “Slave Culture: A Documentary Collection of the Slave Narratives” was published in 2014 and in 2015 he published “Memories of the Enslaved: Voices from the Slave Narratives.”  In 2016, Bunch co-authored “From No Return: the 221-Year Journey of the Slave Ship Sao Jose.”  Lectures and presentations to museum professionals and scholars have taken him to major cities in the United States and to many nations abroad including Australia, China, England, Italy, Japan, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, Ghana, Senegal and Cuba.  Since 2008, Bunch has served as the series co-editor of the “New Public Scholarship Edition” of the University of Michigan Press.  During the inaugurations of President Barack Obama, Bunch served as an on-camera commentator for ABC News.

In service to the historical and cultural community, Bunch has served on the advisory boards of the American Association of Museums, the African American Association of Museums, the American Association of State and Local History, and the ICOM-US. Among his many awards, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Commission for the Preservation of the White House in 2002 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. In 2005, Bunch was named one of the 100 most influential museum professionals in the 20th century by the American Association of Museums and in 2009, Ebony Magazine named him one of its 150 most influential African Americans.  Again, in 2016 he was chosen as one of the 100 most significant African Americans by Ebony Magazine.  In 2011, BET (Black Entertainment Television) selected Bunch to receive its BET Honors for outstanding service to American education.  In 2014, BET selected Bunch as one of its ICON Men for his work mentoring young African American men.  In recent years, Bunch has been honored with: Visionary History Award, DC Historical Society (2016), Rainbow Push Torchbearer Award (2016), Delta Sigma Theta Remembering Our Heritage Award (2016), and National Newspaper Publishers Association Torch Award (2016).  In 2016, Bunch was listed as #1 in the Washington Business Journal’s Power 100 ratings and in Vanity Fair’s Hall of Fame.

For additional information and the latest news, please visit the official NAACP Image Awards website at http://www.naacpimageawards.net.