James' World 2

MARCH 7, 2023, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: TRUDY LEE WRIGHT Carol Johnson-Dean was the first black woman superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools. She held that post from 1997 to 2003. Johnson-Dean was born 1948 to Mrs. Willie Rawls and Buddy Rawls. She grew up in Brownsville, Haywood County, Tennessee about 50 miles northeast of Memphis. Dr. Johnson is […]

DR. CAROL JOHNSON-DEAN (1948-)

Touching the Moon and Joining the Elite Four In the history of our country, August 23rd will forever be etched as a moment of unparalleled pride for India and its space community. Vikram, the lander of Chandrayaan-3, successfully touched down on the lunar surface, catapulting India into the exclusive club of countries that have achieved […]

# Touching the Moon #

MARCH 28, 2023, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: OTIS ALEXANDER Frank S. Greene, Jr. is an inventor, scientist, venture capitalist investor, educator, and the first African American to graduate from the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps. He is also responsible for developing the world’s fastest microchip in the 1960s. Greene was born on October 19, 1938, in Washington, […]

FRANK S. GREENE, JR. (1938-2009)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is an action-adventure film directed by James Mangold, who co-wrote it with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, and David Koepp. It is the sequel to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), as well as the fifth and final installment in the Indiana Jones film series. […]

INDIANA JONES and the DIAL OF DESTINY (2023) – My rating: 7.5/10

JULY 4, 2018, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: DANIEL HELTON ENTRY SPONSOR: Quintard Taylor Sarah Boone was an American inventor best known for her patented improvements to the ironing board. She was one of the first African American women to receive a patent in United States history. Boone’s legacy was her improved ironing board. The ironing board had first been patented […]

SARAH BOONE (1832-1904)

By HISTORY NET12/23/2013 The details of the Malmedy Massacre, in which members of Joachim Peiper’s 1st SS Panzer Division executed American soldiers who had surrendered during the early stages of the Battle of the Bulge, is widely known. Virtually unknown until recently, however, is the story of the Wereth 11—eleven African American soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery […]

Buried Beneath the Snow: “The Wereth 11 Massacre”

APRIL 20, 2023, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: OTIS ALEXANDER Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Leonard Bragg, Jr. made history in 2023 with the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump for crimes committed in relation to his 2016 Presidential campaign. Born in the Manhattan borough of New York on October 21, 1973, Bragg grew up in Harlem’s historic landmark […]

ALVIN LEONARD BRAGG JR. (1973-)

AUGUST 1, 2022, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: LINDA ALLEN HOLLIS Major George William Ford was an original member of the 10th Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) and later a Major with the Second Battalion of the 23rd Kansas Volunteers during the Spanish American War. Ford was born on November 23, 1847, on the Mount Vernon Plantation in Virginia, the home of […]

GEORGE WILLIAM FORD (1847-1939)

APRIL 21, 2023, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: BLACKPAST AND LISA ROY Nora Holt was an important figure in the history of Black music in Chicago in the 1930s and was a noted musician, composer, and renowned singer and performer during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1940s. While employed as a music critic for the Chicago Defender from 1917-1921, she co-founded […]

NORA HOLT (1885 – JANUARY 25, 1974)

APRIL 29, 2023, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: OTIS ALEXANDER Thelma Marie Claybrooks Harper, born in Brentwood, Davidson County, Tennessee, on December 2, 1940, was the first African American woman State Senator in Tennessee. She was born to the Rev. William Claybrooks, Sr., and Clora Thomas Claybrooks, a sharecropper who parented eleven children. Her early education began in a […]

THELMA HARPER (1940-2021)