Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 409

Norman Lear on how Sammy Davis, Jr. Broke Barriers on Television

'Norman Lear discusses Sammy Davis, Jr.’s groundbreaking guest appearance on All in the Family.' -- American Masters PBS

'Boss: The Black Experience in Business' Explores the History of African American Entrepreneurship

Boss: The Black Experience in Business Explores the History of African American Entrepreneurship Tuesday, April 23 on PBSDirected by award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson, the new documentary brings the largely unknown stories of enterprising African Americans to the forefrontThe history of business and entrepreneurship lies at the heart of the American story, but often absent from that narrative are the names and experiences of African Americans who, from the country’s earliest days, have embodied the qualities of innovation, risk-taking and determination to forge a path toward a better life. Tracing more than 150 years of African American men and women, from those bound by bondage to moguls at the top of multimillion-dollar empires, the new two-hour documentary Boss: The Black Experience in Business , premiering nationwide Tuesday, April 23 at 8:00 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), seeks to claim their place in the story of American entrepreneurship. The film will be available to stream the following day on pbs.org/boss and on PBS apps.
Directed by Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution and Freedom Summer), Boss: The Black Experience in Business shines a light on the story of resilience and resistance within the black American experience in the face of overwhelming odds, including racial hostility and violence, economic exclusion, segregation and discrimination.
Tying together the past and the present, Boss: The Black Experience in Business explores the inspiring stories of trailblazing African American entrepreneurs while spotlighting the significant contributions of contemporary business leaders. Stories featured in the film include those of entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker, publisher John H. Johnson, Motown CEO Berry Gordy, and business pioneer and philanthropist Reginald F. Lewis, among others. The film features new interviews with Vernon Jordan, senior managing director of Lazard, Freres & Co. LLC.; Cathy Hughes, CEO and founder of Urban One; Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox and chairman of VEON; Ken Frazier, chairman, president and CEO of Merck & Co., Inc.; Richelieu Dennis, founder, CEO and executive chairman of Sundial Brands; Robert F. Smith, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Managing Partners, LLC; Earl “Butch” Graves, Jr.,  CEO of Black Enterprise; and John Rogers, CEO and founder of Ariel Investments.
As a capitalist system emerged in the United States, African Americans found ways to establish profitable businesses in numerous industries, including financial services, retail, beauty, music and media. Boss: The Black Experience in Business brings viewers on a journey from the end of Reconstruction through the present, tracing the emergence of a stable black business community alongside the greater struggle for civil rights.
Notable historians and scholars help tell the story, including Mehrsa Baradaran, author, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap; A’Lelia Bundles, journalist, historian and author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker; Marcia Chatelain, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University; Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University; Jane Rhodes, Professor of African American History, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Juliet EK Walker, Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin.
“African Americans have played a central role in the history of American business, but their stories are often left untold,” said Nelson. “Today, as we see talented black businessmen and women not only building successful companies in mainstream America, but also emerging as managers and CEOs for some of the most powerful corporate entities in the world, Boss: The Black Experience in Business shares the remarkable stories of a community facing tremendous obstacles to pursue social, political and economic progress.”
Boss: The Black Experience in Business is a Firelight Films production for THIRTEEN Productions LLC, in association with The HistoryMakers, the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive. Stanley Nelson is director and producer. Traci Curry is producer. Marcia Smith is writer. For The HistoryMakers: Julieanna Richardson is co-executive producer. For THIRTEEN: Lesley Norman is executive producer. Benjamin Phelps is coordinating producer. Stephen Segaller is executive in charge.
Major funding for Boss: The Black Experience in Business is provided by Citigroup and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by The JPB Foundation as part of Chasing the Dream, a public media initiative from WNET reporting on poverty, jobs and opportunity in America; and by Fairview Capital, Yusef Kassim and public television viewers.

ArchCity Defenders, Advancement Project National Office, Civil Rights Corps, and Georgetown Law File Lawsuit to Challenge St. Louis City’s Unconstitutional Cash Bail System

ArchCity Defenders, Advancement Project National Office, Civil Rights Corps, and Georgetown Law File Lawsuit to Challenge St. Louis City’s Unconstitutional Cash Bail System
Currently, hundreds of people have been condemned to the Workhouse, a de facto “pretrial detention” center as a result of the City’s unlawful bail practices. Local and national advocates raise awareness on the issue, announce new litigation, and call for systemic change. ST. LOUIS, MO -- Today in federal court, ArchCity Defenders, Advancement Project National Office, Civil Rights Corps, and Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) filed a lawsuit against the City of St. Louis, Sheriff Vernon Betts, judges of the 22nd Judicial Circuit, and Commissioner of Corrections Dale Glass to challenge St. Louis’s unconstitutional cash bail system and demand the release of all named plaintiffs in the class action suit. This suit is part of national campaign to end pretrial detention and permanently shutter jails and prisons around the country. A press conference was held today at 2 pm CST at Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being where co-counsel were joined by advocates leading the Close the Workhouse campaign.
“For years, St. Louis City’s poor, and majority Black, residents have been denied their right to pretrial liberty due to an unconstitutional bail system and it’s time to correct this injustice,” said Blake Strode, Executive Director of ArchCity Defenders. “A presumptively innocent person is caged in the Workhouse on average 291 days because they simply cannot afford bail. This is time missed from work, school, family that is lost forever. The collateral consequences are devastating. Loss of wages or the loss of one’s job altogether; the inability to care for loved ones and the possibility of children going into the foster care system; and the race disparity impacting our city’s Black population is unforgivable. This is illegal, unjust and the city - and the nation needs to be put on notice that lives are at stake.”
The experiences of the four named plaintiffs-- David Dixon, Aaron Thurman, Jeffrey Rozelle and Richard Robards-- shed light on how St. Louis City’s cash bail scheme renders poor residents powerless in court and condemns them to suffer the hellish conditions of the Workhouse, a local jail with a long history of abusive behavior by guards and inadequate medical care. Instead of inquiring into their ability to pay or performing a needs assessment to determine what supports may help them get back to court, judges use money bail as a proxy for freedom.  Judges do not allow people to say if they can pay the bond or ask about alternatives to cash bail, leading to a de facto preventive detention without constitutional safeguards. In addition, not only are bail amounts higher in St. Louis than the national average, judges set bail solely based on police reports and allegations made by police. This unconstitutional scheme leads to the systematic jailing of presumptively innocent people solely because they are impoverished.
“We are attacking the City of St Louis’ illegal procedures used to jail more than 1,000 people solely because of their inability to make a cash payment to purchase their freedom,” said Thomas Harvey, Senior Attorney and Justice Project Program Director for Advancement Project National Office. “About 95 percent of people locked in the city of St. Louis' cages are held there because of cash bail. There are eight times as many Black detainees as White detainees in the jail, even though the Black population makes up only 47 percent of the City of St. Louis.
By challenging the overtly illegal policies and practices that lead to so many poor and Black St. Louis residents losing their freedom, our lawsuit supports the goals of the Close the Workhouse campaign, will ultimately lead to policy change that will reduce the jail's population enough that it can be closed permanently and the money used to fund it is reinvested in the most impacted communities,” continued Harvey. “Advancement Project National Office is involved to support our grassroots partners in St. Louis and participate in the national movement to end pretrial detention and end the country’s reliance on incarceration.”
"Cash bail systems like the one in place in St. Louis criminalize poverty. Not only are these systems unconstitutional, they cause serious harm to people who are presumed innocent and their families, without contributing to public safety,” said Seth Wayne, a litigator at ICAP. “As part of our mission to defend American constitutional rights and values, ICAP is proud to join other legal experts in challenging this unjust and counterproductive system."
Approximately 96 percent of people charged with a crime in St. Louis City are assigned bail amounts higher than state and national averages. In comparison, the percentage of people assigned bail in Philadelphia is 60 percent while New York is 39.8 percent and Washington, DC, is 15 percent. Instead of first meeting with a judge, a defendant meets with a bail commissioner who makes a recommendation for their bond. The person then goes in front of a judge via video conference without legal representation and is told what their bond amount is. Residents are denied basic rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution and Missouri law, and forced into pretrial detention, often at the Workhouse, a notoriously hellish and inhumane jail in the City of St. Louis.
This lawsuit is the latest challenge to the City’s criminal legal system. In November 2017, ArchCity Defenders filed a conditions case on behalf of people detained in the Workhouse that is still pending. In addition to the litigation, the Close the Workhouse campaign made up of directly impacted people and regional allies, took root in 2018 with the primary goal of permanently closing the Workhouse and ensuring another jail is not built in its place.
In addition to advocating for residents who have lost employment and housing as a result of spending unnecessary time incarcerated pre-trial, this lawsuit is part of a larger campaign to close the Workhouse. Additional local organizations including the Bail Project and Action STL are involved in the Close the Workhouse campaign to raise awareness about how damaging cash bail is to families throughout the region. Advancement Project National Office is working with these grassroots partners as part of its campaign to shine a light on the country’s reliance on incarceration and get communities to re-imagine public safety.
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ArchCity Defenders (ACD) is a 501(c)3 non-profit civil rights law firm providing holistic legal advocacy and combating the criminalization of poverty and state violence against poor people and people of color.  ACD uses direct services, impact litigation, and policy and media advocacy as its primary tools to promote justice, protect civil and human rights, and bring about systemic change on behalf of the poor and communities of color directly impacted by the abuses of the legal system.
Advancement Project’s National Office is a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization. Rooted in the great human rights struggles for equality and justice, we exist to fulfill America’s promise of a caring, inclusive and just democracy. We use innovative tools and strategies to strengthen social movements and achieve high impact policy change. For more information, please visit https://advancementproject.org/.
Civil Rights Corps is a non-profit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system. We work with individuals accused and convicted of crimes, their families and communities, people currently or formerly incarcerated, activists, organizers, judges, and government officials to challenge mass human caging and to create a legal system that promotes equality and human freedom. Civil Rights Corps engages in advocacy and public education and specializes in innovative, systemic civil rights litigation with the goal of resensitizing the legal system and our culture to the injustice and brutality that characterize the contemporary American criminal system. The mission of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) is to use the power of the courts to defend American constitutional rights and values. The Institute, based at Georgetown University Law Center, draws on expert litigators, savvy litigation strategy, and the constitutional scholarship of Georgetown to vindicate individuals’ rights and protect America’s constitutional way of life. For more information, please visit: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/.

Words & Vision: Omar Offendum -- "Close My Eyes" (dir. Wesam Nassar)

"Close My Eyes" is a lyrical / visual reflection from Omar Offendum on immigration, fatherhood, mortality, Syria, America & Mother Nature.

Masculinity And U.S. Extremism: What Makes Young Men Vulnerable To Toxic Ideologies

'NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Tony McAleer, a former skinhead recruiter, about the trend of young men in the U.S. who turn to violent extremism. McAleer helped start the group, Life After Hate.' -- Weekend Edition Sunday

The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers

Photograph by Ernest Withers'Author Preston Lauterbach joins us to talk about his new book, Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers. The book discusses the life of civil rights photographer Ernest Withers, who captured some of the most pivotal moments of the Civil Rights Movement, but ultimately turned on his subjects to become an FBI informant.' -- All of It
         
        

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka Addresses City's Lead Crisis

'Star Ledger reporter Karen Yi shared her reporting on Newark's growing lead crisis. Since 2016, it became clear that some schools and houses were testing positive for lead-contaminated water. But new results earlier this month showed the problem to be at a 17-year high. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka joins the program to respond first-hand to how he's been communicating to residents the nature of the threat. He also talks about his plea to President Trump, asking for federal help to replace the city's aging lead service lines.' --The Takeaway

Jada Pinkett-Smith, And Her Mom And Daughter, Get Candid On 'Red Table Talk'

'Jada Pinkett-Smith been a steady presence on television since the early '90s: Think A Different World or Gotham. Her movie roles have varied widely: Set It Off, or the Matrix sequels, or Girls Trip . She has produced a new film, Hala, set to premiere this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival. She's also on the screen of your laptop or smartphone. Her Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk , is now more than 20 episodes into its first season. Every week, she and her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and daughter Willow Smith, sit down for discussions on often complex and emotional topics. This season alone has covered mental health, race relations, addiction, divorce and forgiveness.' -- Morning Edition
         
        

#BackChannel: The Stardom Of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, The Fate Of R. Kelly, And Meeting “Mr. SOUL!”

California Sen. Kamala Harris joined the growing list of Democratic contenders for the 2020 presidential race. How will her legacy as a prosecutor and her biracial identity impact her campaign and candidacy? It is one of many topics Mark Anthony Neal and Natalie Bullock Brown take on with host State of Things host Frank Stasio in the latest installment of #BackChannel, including the social media stardom of freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY);  the new Barry Jenkins film If Beale Street Could Talk; the documentary Mr. SOUL! which pays tribute to Ellis Haizlip , the black, openly-gay television host behind a seminal, star-studded PBS variety program; and the new six-part Lifetime documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, which traces decades of sexual abuse allegations against the artist and has given new life to the efforts to #MuteRKelly.

Oscar Winner and Nominee Barry Jenkins on Adapting the Work of James Baldwin to the Screen

'The film If Beale Street Could Talk is nominated for three Academy Awards, including best supporting actress and best adapted screenplay. Director Barry Jenkins previously drew critical acclaim for his work on the 2017 best picture, Moonlight. He sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss the process of adapting James Baldwin’s work to the screen.' -- PBS NewsHour