African American news blog that features news that may get little or no coverage in the mainstream media
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
1,000 HBCU students to receive free access to textbooks from UNCF, Cengage partnership
August is National Black Business Month
Support and encourage African American-owned businesses in your community. Learn more about business opportunities for the African American community. Use #NationalBlackBusinessMonth in social media correspondence. Discover more on the Black Business Month website.
Historian John William Templeton and engineer Frederick E. Jordan Sr founded National Black Business Month in August 2004 to “drive the policy agenda affecting the 2.6 million African-American businesses.“
Congressman Payne’s statement on the Newark water crisis
NJ Congressman Donald Payne Jr. released the following statement concerning the Newark Water Crisis:
”As a resident and representative of Newark, I’m very concerned about this development. Traditionally, Newark has been known for the quality of its water and had been known for some of the cleanest water in the country. We need to find out what is happening in the pipes that carry this water from the aquifers to our faucets to solve and rectify this issue immediately.
The greatest threat with this water issue is the health of our children. I introduced a bill in 2016 that would establish stronger tests for lead in school drinking water to avoid such problems in the future. The bill received 44 co-sponsors and I hope more of my colleagues support and pass it soon.
But I’m not going to wait for that bill to help improve Newark’s drinking water. I’ve called Newark’s mayor, Ras Baraka, personally to ask what I can do. I’m going to call Grace Napolitano, chair of the Subcommittee on Water Resource and the Environment and my colleague on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, to discuss solutions on a national level. We need to work tirelessly and immediately to guarantee what happened in Flint, MI. doesn’t happen anywhere else.”
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Simone Biles just became the first gymnast to land a double-double dismount
22-year-old, Simone Biles became the first gymnast to ever attempt and land a double-twisting, double somersault dismount off the balance beam, according to Team USA.
The five-time Olympic medalist and 14-time world champion completed the move on Friday at the 2019 US Gymnastics Championships in Kansas City, Missouri. Watch her spectacular moment below.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Joe Madison "The Black Eagle" inducted into The Radio Hall of Fame
Washington University Arts & Sciences alumnus Joe Madison is a groundbreaking radio personality and human and civil rights activist. He has built a legacy of using his voice for those without one.
His radio program, “The Joe Madison Show,” airs nationally weekday mornings on SiriusXM’s Urban View channel 126. During his four-hour program, Mr. Madison, also known as “The Black Eagle,” talks about political and social issues, brings attention to social injustices around the world, and challenges himself and his listeners daily to “do something about it.”
Named one of Talkers magazine’s 100 Most Important Talk Radio Hosts nine times, often in the top 10, Mr. Madison has interviewed world leaders, including President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, among other notable guests.
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Mr. Madison was raised by his grandparents. In the mid-1960s, he attended Wisconsin State, where he was captain of his undefeated freshman football team. As a student leader, he became involved in the civil rights movement. His coach, resenting Mr. Madison’s campus activism, removed him from the team.
Eventually, Mr. Madison received a welcoming call from the athletic director at Washington University, who offered him a spot on the Bears football team. A sociology major, he was an all-conference running back on the football team, a baritone soloist in the university choir and a disc jockey at the campus radio station. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1971, the first in his family to do so.
After becoming active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Mr. Madison, at age 24, was named executive director — the youngest — of the NAACP’s 10,000-member Detroit chapter in 1974.
He was promoted in 1986 by the NAACP’s president, Benjamin Hooks, to serve as the organization’s national political director. Among the highlights of his eight-year tenure, he organized a successful boycott of Dearborn, Michigan, businesses over a racist city law, and he led hundreds of volunteers on a series of successful voter registration marches, including a cross-country “march for dignity” from Los Angeles to Baltimore that also garnered thousands of signatures for an anti-apartheid bill in Congress.
In 1986, he was elected to the NAACP s Board of Directors, a position he held for 14 years. In the midst of his civil rights work, he started another career in 1980 as a socially conscious radio talk show personality on Detroit’s WXYZ-AM. He went on to host talk shows in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The popularity of his WOL-AM show led to syndication on the Radio One Talk Network and eventually to SiriusXM.
A tenacious leader in the cause for social justice, he uses his show as a platform for inspiring action on critical issues. He brought international attention to human rights abuses in southern Sudan from his three trips to the country in the middle of its second civil war. Working with the Swiss-based Christian Solidarity International, he helped free 7,000 Sudanese being held as slaves.
In February 2015, he set a Guinness World Record at 52 hours for the longest on-air broadcast. During the record-breaking show, he raised more than $250,000 for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In June 2015, Mr. Madison made history again by broadcasting live from Cuba, becoming the first American radio host to do so in more than 50 years.
He has not forgotten the opportunities he received as a Washington University student and continues to give back to his alma mater. A member of the William Greenleaf Eliot Society, he has generously supported scholarships, athletics and the university’s Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement. For the past two decades, he has interviewed potential students for the admissions office. In 2017, he received Arts & Sciences’ Distinguished Alumni Award.
A board member of the American Red Cross, his other awards include the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Journalism Award in 2000, the Washington Association of Black Journalists Community Service Award in 1997 and the NAACP Image Award in 1996.
Mr. Madison and his wife of 42 years, Sharon, live in Washington, D.C. They have four children and five grandchildren