Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 784

Debbie Allen on the Social Impact of 'A Different World'

OWN

In the '80s and '90s, the groundbreaking hit sitcom A Different World didn't shy away from tackling the most pressing issues of the day. In fact, producer and director Debbie Allen says they were the first sitcom to bring awareness to the AIDS epidemic, in 1991.  Now, more than 20 years after the final episode, Debbie reflects on the impact of the show. "We don't have a show that gives the voice of young people who are about what's happening in the country," she says.              

'Left of Black' Host Mark Anthony Neal Has DNA Tested by Dr. Rick Kittles of African Ancestry

At the closing ceremonies of the 2nd Annual Black Doctoral Network Conference in Philadelphia, PA, Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal was given DNA tests by Dr. Rick Kittles , co-founder of of African Ancestry , the world leader in tracing maternal and paternal lineages of African descent. Results of Professor Neal's DNA testing with be revealed in an episode of Left of Black in the Spring of 2015.
Dr. Kittles, a geneticist by training with a focus on Prostate Cancer, is Director of the Center for Population Genetics and a Professor of Public Health and Surgery at the University of Arizona.
Left of Black is produced in collaboration with The John Hope Franklin Center and in conjunction with the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE), directed by Professor Neal, at Duke University.

A Black Cosmetic Company Sells, Or Sells Out?

Lennon Lee Lacy: A New Generation’s “Strange Fruit”

Lennon Lacy: A New Generation’s “Strange Fruit”by Lamont Lilly | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

“The nineteenth century lynch mob cuts off ears, toes and fingers, strips off flesh and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.”  ~Ida B. Wells Lennon Lacy did not hang himself; he was lynched!  He did not commit suicide; he was murdered! Capturing the correct language is so critical in this case, which is probably why mainstream media has refused to cover it.  The correct language reflects a history America would rather not share, while “lynching” is a word most Black folk would rather forget.  The harsh reality is that Lennon Lacy, a 17 year old Black kid from North Carolina was lynched just two months ago. What happened down there? It was on Friday, August 29th 2014 that 17 year old high school student, Lennon Lee Lacy was found hanging from a wooden swing set in Bladenboro, NC.  His lifeless body was left dangling in thin air on a makeshift rope.  His neck was visibly marked with dark abrasions from asphyxiation.  A belt buckle imprint was found just below his right ear.  There were lacerations on his face, arms and chest – bruises on his chin, cheeks and nose – a series of unexplained scratches on Lennon’s scrotum, and an enlarged knot on the right side of his forehead.   The black Air Jordan’s Lacy was originally wearing were removed and replaced with a pair of sneakers no member of his family was able to recognize.  Though Lennon’s feet were a size 12, the white sneakers placed on Lennon’s feet at his time of death were a size ten and a half. Lennon’s mortician, F.W. Newton described his body as if Lennon Lacy “had been killed in a bar room fight.” As if Lacy’s lynching was not enough, just a few days after Lennon was laid to rest, someone (or some group) dug a small hole on top of his grave.  They also destroyed the floral arrangement that friends and family had placed at his burial marker, tossing the arrangement alongside the road 40 ft away.  While local authorities are suggesting suicide, the Black community is calling the Lacy case for what it is: a 2014 lynching. Every reason to live On the evening of Lennon Lacy’s disappearance, his father, Larry Walton was the last family member to see him alive.  According to Walton, his son Lennon had every reason to live.  His high school football team was scheduled to play their first game of the season later that evening.  Lennon’s dream was to play in the NFL.  He was a linebacker whose size, skill and work ethic basically guaranteed a scholarship to college.  His performance in the classroom was equally stellar.   Local residents have spoken highly of Lennon’s character, manners and overall demeanor.  Lennon was also active in his church youth group, had no criminal record, and no history of mental illness.  His only “harm to society” was dating a white woman who lived nearby.  Local residents were well aware of Lacy and 31 year old, Michelle Brimhall’s “intimate interactions,” which of course garnered a heaping of local gossip and disdain.  Some things have not changed down south: the general attitude toward Black men dating white women just happens to be one of them. Jim Crow and the southern confederacy Bladenboro, NC is a small town of 1,746 residents located just outside of Wilmington, NC.  Nicknamed “Crackertown” by local Black residents, Bladenboro is 80% white and well known for its engrained racism within the social order.  For those unfamiliar, Wilmington (NC) is home of the 1898 Race Massacre, a two day armed attack on Wilmington’s Black middle class by white terror mobs.  What that moment literally created was Jim Crow Segregation – an oppressive and bloody end to Reconstruction and post slavery progress.  Wilmington was also the site of the 1971 frame up of The Wilmington 10 (who were finally pardoned by NC Governor, Beverly Perdue in 2013).  Such history and close proximity means everything.   This history contributes to the political and social climate of the community.  White supremacy was at one time, the law in North Carolina.  Many would argue it still is.  Keep in mind that between 1882 and 1968 there were 86 Black folk lynched in this state – and those are just the lynchings we know of.   Ironically, neighbors of the Lacy Family had just recently been made to remove a sign in their front yard that read “Niggers Keep Out.” Police botch investigation Stating that local authorities have failed to conduct a thorough investigation in this case is an understatement.  It has been reported that Lacy’s fingernails were not properly swabbed for DNA testing.  His hands, body hair and mouth were not examined either.  Due to the presumption of suicide, Lennon’s neighbors, friends and ex-girlfriend, Michelle Brimhall have not been questioned. It is obvious the Bladenboro Police Department have not taken this matter serious.  A 200lb teenager was found hanging from a swing set in the middle of a trailer park, and no one knows anything?  Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the local police department was partly involved.  It was not long ago that police officers, sheriff departments and the Ku Klux Klan worked hand in hand to enforce white supremacy, particularly throughout the south. If you are learning of this case for the first time, please tweet, Instagram and Facebook it.  Dig deep and research the history.  Tell your friends around the world how a 17 year old Black boy was lynched in North Carolina on August 29th 2014.  Tell the world how America is still racist and lackadaisical in the pursuit of justice for all.  Tell the world how democracy does not really exist here.  In the case of Lennon Lacy, all I ask is that we tell the truth.  Lennon Lee Lacy did not hang himself; he was lynched.  He did not commit suicide; he was murdered. ■ “Our country’s national crime is lynching.  It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an “unwritten law” that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.”  ~Ida B. Wells ***
Lamont Lilly is a contributing editor with the Triangle Free Press and organizer with Workers World Party.  He has contributed to The Root, Truthout, CounterPunch and Black Youth Project, among others.  He resides in Durham, NC.  Follow him on Twitter @LamontLilly.

With #Ferguson Protests, 20-Somethings Become First-Time Activists

Mining the Soul Archive: A Conversation with Harry Weinger--VP of A&R for Universal Music Enterprises | Oct. 29, 2014

Mining the Soul Archive: A Conversation with Harry Weinger--VP of A&R for Universal Music Enterprises
On Wednesday October 29, 2014 at 6:30 in the White Lecture Hall on Duke’s East Campus, Harry Weinger, VP of A&R for Universal Music Enterprises sits down with Professor Mark Anthony Neal to talk about his work in “the Soul Archive.”   
The event is free and open to the public.   
The event was made possible by a grant from the  David L. Paletz Innovative Course  Enhancement Fund at Duke and is co-sponsored by the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE) and the Department of African & African American Studies.

Trans lives matter! Justice for Islan Nettles! ( a short film)

Seyi Adebanjo
Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles- a multimedia photography piece by Seyi AdebanjoA powerful and intensely moving document of a community vigil for Islan Nettles a transgender Womyn of Color and victim of hate crime. Islan’s murder was a hate crime, she was beaten to death in front of an NYPD precinct in Harlem. She was only 21.

Misty Copeland and the Myth of the Ideal Ballerina

Marketplace | American Public Media
A soloist with the American Ballet Theater in New York, Misty Copeland recently explained how she doesn't really fit into the traditional model for ballet, but still made it work. “All of those numbers, they just don’t add up to create a classical dancer,” she says. "No matter what, I'm going to be who I am."

When Women Stopped Coding?

NPR | Planet Money

Mark Zuckerberg. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Most of the big names in technology are men. But a lot of computing pioneers, the ones who programmed the first digital computers, were women. And for decades, the number of women in computer science was growing. But in 1984, something changed. The number of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged.

"Willie's Last Stand" by Mark Anthony Neal #WhenTheWordsWereMine

Willie’s Last Standby Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
“Other than counting money, Baseball was the best measure of how the Man’s mind worked: intricate, nuanced, attention to small details (like that feathery fluttery thing that his favorite singer Sam Cooke used to do), thoughtful.  The woman he loved and was married to for just short of 45 years was pure bombast; Baseball was one of his reprieves. 
Always a National League guy—the residue of Mr. Robinson rounding third and trampling the Color Line—the Giants and Dodgers were out West by the time he landed in Harlem.  He had no choice but to roll with the Orange and Blue--colors borrowed from those same Giants and Dodgers. Though my first memories of the sport recall Mom’s Orioles (Grandma Elenor used to work for their second baseman) taking on the Pirates—the epitome of Black National League baseball at the time -- and the great Clemente losing his caps rounding second in a way that must have made Mr. Robinson proud, it didn’t become my sport until Willie—Mr. Mays—put on that Orange and Blue.
To be sure, Mr. Mays’s skills had long since eroded--I would never witness them live--but my Dad’s memories of the man in his prime made me feel like I was there when Willie made that catch in the deep recesses of that field in Harlem.  That late season run in 1973—Mr. McGraw pounding his glove in his thigh—was the magic that turned every little girl and boy into a fan of the game.  The Man and I were sitting there in front of our first color TV that Sunday evening, that had started as a Sunday afternoon, as Game 2 of the 1973 World Series between those A’s from Oakland, with their day-glo uniforms, and the right fielder who would own my City four years later, and the Orange and Blue. 
The play at the plate in extra innings and Mr. Mays pleading with the umpire, because it was the most useful physical skill that he still possessed in a game dominated by men who were younger, stronger, faster—and who all once dreamed of being him. 
Mr. Mays was 42 years-old that brilliant fall  of 1973 when the Orange and Blue both captured and broke my heart (for the first time).  Willie was four years older than my dad; my dad reaching the peak of his powers, watching the man who during his own peak years on that field in Harlem was inspiration for the possibilities of  a generation of Black men and their sons. 

The Man and I never talked about that last glimpse of Mr. Mays’s greatness—it was not our way.  But there was a phone call home, a little more than a decade later, when the Orange and Blue, with its own cast of young Black men—Straw and Doc—who held the promise and the curse of a generation, and failed and found redemption as we all would—raised  the banner.  They were managed by that same Oriole second baseman, whose home my grandmother cooked and cleaned in.