Kool Cats And Hip Chicks Blog

Ronald “Butch” Lewis, known in the fight industry for tenaciously landing his light heavyweight champion Michael Spinks a massive $13.5 million purse for what turned out to be a brutal, one round KO at the hands of Iron Mike Tyson, apprently suffered a massive heart attack. Lewis, age 65 and more active in recent years in the music and TV fields than in boxing, was in or around his stately home in Delaware when he went into cardiac arrest.

Other close friends of Lewis were actor Denzel Wasdhington and former Black Entertainment Television Network owner turned NBA Charlotte franchise owner Bob Johnson. The celebrity trio often sat at ringside at major fights together and I think they may have had “ringside seats” together at President Barack Obama’s Inauguration.

Later on in his illustrious life, soul signer supreme, Soul Brother Number One, Mr. James Brown did a jail stint for drug use. When he got out of jail, he had a comeback concert at an historic theater in the Hollywood area and the promoter of the event was none other than Butch Lewis.

Lewis’ sartorial trademark was his “Chocolate Tuxedo” look which only mean he wore a tuxedo without a shirt underneath it. Lewis even had one of his sons at ringside for a big fight dressed the same way.

Lewis grew up in Philadelphia, was always fascinated by boxing and became a close friend and associate of first Smokin’ Joe Frazier and then Muhammad Ali.

In the boxing industry, Lewis oversaw the development of Leon Spinks when Lewis was a VP to Bob Arum’s Top Rank company, including that incredible night in Las Vegas when Leon, with only eight pro bouts, took a unanimous decision over “The Greatest” in Las Vegas.

Source: www.examiner.com

Today I ventured to the Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con with three goals in mind. To meet Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree and Billy Dee Williams. As my business partner and I made our trek, we talked about our continued love of the 1970′s, the films, the animation from the Saturday morning cartoons and the comics. We even discussed how this could be a small turning point in our lives as we continue to follow our passion by meeting these 1970′s film icons.

Once we arrived at the Philadelphia Convention Center I saw Pam Grier with her manager crossing the street heading toward the center. I shouted out “THERE’S PAM GRIER” and startled my business partner. I acted like I was a crazed fan screaming “WHERE’S THE CAMERA”…it was one of my funnier moments. I was reminded that I came here to take a picture with her and may have a chance to talk to her.

We parked the car and walked to the Convention Center, turned the corner and BAM, people with and without tickets were stacked up in the same line, all the way around the block waiting to get in. The process for entry was a nightmare…a 35 minute wait once I was in the Convention Center, and this was with tickets that I pre-ordered and paid for over the internet. When we finally arrived for the picture Pam Grier was gone. Well as anyone who PAID to have their picture taken at these events in hopes of having a 1 to 2 minute conversation would have been…I was ticked off. But I kept my cool and demanded my photo, since the Convention Center was ridiculously slow in processing my intake, which prevented me from seeing Pam on time.

Finally after much complaining a photographer escorted me to Pam’s booth and I was introduced to her. She was ever so gracious and kind. She shook my hand and for what felt like an eternity we stood arm in arm and I had my photo taken. I took a minute to gain my composure and I walked over to her booth and had a chance to talk to her about The Museum of UnCut Funk (MOUF), it’s mission and how we would love to do an interview with her. She expressed an interest and gave us a timeframe that would be good. I thanked her again and proceeded to pick up my Pam Grier and Billy Dee Williams photos.

There was as lag in time to pick up photos so we visited Richard Roundtree at his booth. He too was kind and gracious. I told him about the MOUF and our collection, especially items related to him and his body of work. Like Pam Grier he expressed interest in being interviewed. My photo of Richard will be mailed to me due to a back log in processing photos.

Billy Dee Williams was more reserved and since I had taken a photo with him earlier I introduced myself and shared with him our mission at The Museum of UnCut Funk. He too took my card and like the others seemed interested in an interview.

I can’t tell you if or when these interviews will come to fruition. We will certainly do our best to make them happen. But what I will tell you is that yesterday was one of the best days I have had while pursuing my passion.

Sista ToFunky

Clarice Taylor, the actress and comedian best known for playing grandmothers on “The Cosby Show” and “Sesame Street,” has died at the age of 93. Taylor died of congestive heart failure in her home in Englewood, N.J., on Monday, said her son, William Taylor.

During a career that spanned five decades, Taylor performed on radio and TV, in film and on stage, including in the original Broadway cast of the musical “The Wiz.”

Her films included the 1971 Clint Eastwood thriller “Play Misty for Me” and, besides “The Cosby Show,” she had another recurring TV role on “Sesame Street,” where she was grandmother to the character David.

Both Taylor and Earle Hyman, who played her husband on “The Cosby Show,” received Emmy nominations in 1986 for their roles as Anna and Russell Huxtable, parents of Bill Cosby’s character and grandparents of the Huxtable youngsters.

While touring with “The Wiz,” she roomed with Phylicia Rashad, who played Cosby’s wife on the “The Cosby Show.” She told The Associated Press in a 1987 interview that she decided to audition to play Rashad’s mother.

The Wiz broadway window card is a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk Collection

“I spent three hours making up my face and putting on my tight clothes,” Taylor said. “I didn’t want to look too old to be her mother.” She didn’t get the part.

Later, however, she was asked to audition for the part of Cosby’s mother. “I put on a gray wig, a bandana over that, flat-heeled shoes and a long dress with no shape to it,” she told the AP. “Bill saw through my act. I read five lines and he said, ‘If you’re going to go through all of this – you’ve got the part.’”

In 1987, she played the pioneering black female comedian Jackie “Moms” Mabley in an original off-Broadway play, “Moms,” with future “Law & Order” regular S. Epatha Merkerson also in the cast. Taylor later toured as Mabley in a one-woman show.

The Clarice Taylor as “Moms” Broadway window cards is a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk Collection

She also played the role of Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North, in the stage version of “The Wiz,” which opened in 1975. Taylor began her acting career with Harlem’s American Negro Theatre, and in the late 1960s was one of the original members of the New York-based Negro Ensemble Company.

Born Sept. 20, 1917, in Buckingham County, Va., she grew up in Harlem, where she skipped school to watch the sassy comedian Moms Mabley perform at the Apollo Theater. Taylor told the AP she portrayed Mabley in “Moms” because she was determined that the world not forget her. “She was so special and so wonderful,” she said in the 1987 interview. “Here’s a Black woman born in the last century who made a living at her craft. She never cleaned house or picked cotton. She went through a lot but she stuck with it.”

Taylor is survived by two sons, William and James, and four grandchildren.

Source: Associated Press

Emmy, Tony and Oscar winning production, set and costume designer Tony Walton (All That Jazz, Mary Poppins and Broadway’s Pippin just to name a few) shared his Oscar nominated set and costume work for the 1978 film The Wiz. The film was the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical of the seventies and the Black version of the L. Frank Baum classic The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Sidney Lumet, it featured Diana Ross as Dorothy, Nipsey Russell as the Tinman, Richard Pryor as The Wiz and a young Michael Jackson as The Scarecrow. Lena Horne played Glinda the Good Witch.

Universal spent a record $24 million on the production, making the movie the must expensive musical made up until that time. Studio execs were worried Ross was too old to effectively play Dorothy and rumor had it she won the coveted role by promising to deliver the pop sensation as The Scarecrow. Sadly Jackson’s dance skills were never fully utilized in the film. And even sadder for his fans, he had only one solo number, “You Can’t Win” which was at the film’s end.

The multi-talented Walton designed the sets along with Philip Rosenberg, creating a yellow brick road out of Congoleum at the Astoria studios in Queens. Apparently the flooring company came out with a style called Yellow Brick Road in their collection shortly after the film premiered. Many of the film’s special effects were created with matte paintings, as evidenced by the Manhattan skyline scenes below, by the Hollywood master Albert Whitlock.

Born in Santa Barbara, California, the 75-year-old cartoonist/animator/writer studied illustration at Art Center College of Art and Design. Floyd began his Disney career fresh out of art school, as an animator and in-betweener (an artist who creates intermediate frames for smooth transitions between two images). “I walked through the Buena Vista main gate back in 1956 … I was still in my twenties. This was Walt’s ‘magic factory’ and the place to be if you wanted to meet smart, talented, brilliant people. You could learn everything here – it was like a master class in animation, filmmaking, engineering, and design. And that’s exactly how many people learned their craft … they came here and just started doing it.”

Floyd worked on Disney animated classics like “Sleeping Beauty,” “101 Dalmatians,” and “The Sword in the Stone,” but had no interaction with Walt for almost 10 years. Out of the blue, he was told to work on “The Jungle Book” – as a writer! “It was weird working here and seeing Walt walk by. But when I was drafted into the story department got a chance to work with the boss. Being in meetings and story conferences with Walt was amazing … what better boss could you work for than Walt Disney? He could be scary and demanding, but that’s because he wanted the best. And that was the standard we had to meet. What better standard than the highest one possible?”

According to Floyd, meeting celebrities like Fess Parker (“Davy Crockett“), David Stollery (“Spin and Marty”), Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke was a privilege. “I was just a kid working on ‘Mary Poppins‘ in the early 60′s and one day this boisterous redhead came crashing through the door and down the hall. I remember thinking, ‘Who’s this very loud, pregnant woman?’” That woman was “practically perfect” Mary herself, Julie Andrews, who was pregnant with daughter Emma.

“Julie was only there for a meeting because Walt was willing to wait until she had the baby and was ready to return to work.” Almost a year later, Floyd attended the recording sessions where Julie, Dick Van Dyke, songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman, and musical director Irwin Kostal recorded the music for “Mary Poppins” on Stage A. “With musicals, the songs are recorded [with a full orchestra] first. Once that was done, the real work began – making the movie. Every stage on this lot was used to build sets because all the film’s exteriors were shot indoors for maximum control.”

“Mary Poppins” wasn’t Disney’s first foray into combining live action with animation – Floyd mentions the “Alice Comedies” and Virginia Davis. “I met Virginia years ago when we did a personal appearance in Kansas City. She was well into her 80s or 90s, and had worked for Walt as a child in the 1930s. Walt coaxed her family to move to Hollywood because he needed her to do the ‘Alice Comedies’ here. So she moved to work for Walt – imagine the stories she has to tell!”

He goes on to say that despite the limitations of 1940s technology, Walt’s early live-action/animated films (like “Song of the South”) were, “absolutely flawless! Ub Iwerks developed processes that were amazing. They used ‘optical composites’ and everything lined up perfectly … to the envy of every other studio in town.”

When Walt passed away in 1966, Disney films just weren’t the same … nor was the atmosphere around the Lot. Floyd remembers everyone felt “lost” without their beloved leader, and he left Disney to focus on other projects. He returned to Disney Publishing in the 1980′s when Greg Crosby wanted him to write Disney comics. “He couldn’t find anyone who understood the tone, approach, and humor. I thought it was the easiest thing in the world. My childhood was so infused with Disney that I just knew what the characters should do and say – it was like second nature.”

When Pixar began work on “Toy Story 2” and “Monsters Inc.,” it’s no surprise that Floyd’s talents were recruited once again. “Steve Jobs, like Walt Disney, is one of my heroes. He’s very demanding, wants things done his way, and settles for nothing less. Walt was very much that same kind of person. People marveled at everything that came out of his studio, be it a Theme Park, movie, book, whatever. Disney meant top quality – and everyone else followed.”

Which film’s his favorite? “That’s really tough because they all have a special place in your heart – it’s hard to pick. The reason ‘The Jungle Book’ stands out is because I worked on the film with Walt Disney – and that was one time and one time only. That was Walt’s last film … life was simple back in those days. All we had to do was keep Walt happy by making the movie he wanted. That’s all that mattered to me.”

Through five generations of management regimes, Floyd remains extremely humble about his accomplishments. “I’m an apprentice really … still learning how to animate, write, direct, and be a better musician. I’ve spent my life learning how to do things – just like Walt Disney. Up to his last days, Walt was always learning something new because everything fascinated him. It didn’t matter who you were or what you did, he wanted to know all about it. What a lesson for kids – an older man who’s so eager to learn. I find it inspiring.” These days, Floyd keeps artistically fit by writing and drawing daily, whether it’s for his current collaboration with Disney Publishing, his upcoming book, or pure practice. Talk about inspiring!

Michael Ray Charles was born in 1967 in Lafayette, Louisiana, and graduated from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1985. In college, he studied advertising design and illustration, eventually moving into painting, his preferred medium. Charles also received an MFA degree from the University of Houston in 1993.

His graphically styled paintings investigate racial stereotypes drawn from a history of American advertising, product packaging, billboards, radio jingles, and television commercials. Charles draws comparisons between Sambo, Mammy, and minstrel images of an earlier era and contemporary mass-media portrayals of black youths, celebrities, and athletes—images he sees as a constant in the American subconscious. “Stereotypes have evolved,” he notes. “I’m trying to deal with present and past stereotypes in the context of today’s society.” Caricatures of Black experience, such as Aunt Jemima, are represented in Charles’s work as ordinary depictions of blackness, yet are stripped of the benign aura that lends them an often unquestioned appearance of truth. “Aunt Jemima is just an image, but it almost automatically becomes a real person for many people, in their minds. But there’s a difference between these images and real humans.” In each of his paintings, notions of beauty, ugliness, nostalgia, and violence emerge and converge, reminding us that we cannot divorce ourselves from a past that has led us to where we are, who we have become, and how we are portrayed.

His paintings are not about people, they are about images. They are about the negative stereotypes that Blacks still buy into – the minstrel and the mammy-’ and how they are updated, and (hidden in new images). These images are about the racial stereotypes that white people created and perpetuate, rather than knowing Blacks as (elaborate) individual human beings. Charles says ‘that the negative images about Blacks are hiding throughout American culture, just below the surface, on TV sitcoms and cartoons of every vintage and in advertising and sports.’ He didn’t invent them, and he is not singlehandedly perpetuating them. The images that Michael Ray Charles paints are not to confuse people, he is not creating these stereotypes. He is trying to seek and create an understanding’ among all people.

Michael Ray Charles takes old tired images, and, like a surgeon, tries to expose the cancer within them, and like a doctor, the artist’s intent is to heal us by showing us our scabs. Michael Ray Charles is trying to express to the world for all people to understand that blacks are human beings, and don’t deserve being pigeonholed through images which play and still play a major role in society today.

Michael Ray Charles is filmed on location at his home and studio in Austin, Texas. Through his studies of advertising, the minstrel tradition, and blackface, Charles seeks to deconstruct and subvert images of blackness through painting. “I’ve been called a sellout. People question my blackness. A lot of people accuse me of perpetuating a stereotype,” he says. “I think there’s a fine line between perpetuating something and questioning something. And I like to get as close to it as possible.” Pointing out items from his collection of memorabilia, Charles traces the transformation of stereotypes in his work.

Today, Charles continues to exhibit in national and international venues. His work remains the subject of books, magazines, and newspaper articles and is included in many public and private collection. Currently, Charles is a Professor of Art in the department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin. He and his family reside in Austin, Texas.

Source: The Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Artcyclopedia.com, PBS, Ask Art and Art Net

Dwayne McDuffie, who wrote comic books for Marvel and DC and co-founded his own publishing company before crossing over to television and animation, has died. He was 49.

The Detroit native died Monday, a day after his birthday, DC Comics said. His cause and place of death weren’t immediately known.

McDuffie wrote comics for the New York-based DC and Marvel, including runs on Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, the Fantastic Four and the Justice League of America. He also penned several animated television shows and features, including the just-released “All-Star Superman” as well as “Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths” and the animated TV series “Static Shock” and “Ben 10: Alien Force.”

News of McDuffie’s death was first reported Tuesday by the website Comic Book Resources. As recently as last week, McDuffie attended the premieres of the new “All-Star Superman” film in Los Angeles and New York, and was scheduled to appear at an event Wednesday at Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles.

Instead, there would be a remembrance at the launch party that McDuffie was supposed to attend, said film director Reginald Hudlin, a friend of about 15 years who was debuting a new project.

McDuffie’s work for Marvel included “Damage Control,” which took a serious but fictional look at a company whose job it was to clean up the damage — both physical and legal — resulting from battles between superheroes and supervillains. In 1992, however, he helped form the comic book company Milestone Media Inc., which gave him the freedom and leeway to create his own characters, many of whom were of differing ethnic backgrounds.

Milestone Media focused on creator-owned multicultural superheroes including “Hardware,” “Icon,” “Blood Syndicate,” “Xombi” and “Static,” which was turned into the popular children’s cartoon “Static Shock,” on which he served as a story editor.

McDuffie also wrote for other titles and characters, too, including Black Panther and Deathlok.

His work at Milestone set a new tone for the use of multicultural characters in the pantheon of heroes, something that lent itself to his television work, too, where characters of color became part of interlocking teams.

Besides comics, McDuffie was a producer and story editor on Cartoon Network’s “Justice League Unlimited,” and wrote and produced episodes of other cartoons, including “What’s New, Scooby Doo?,” “Ben 10: Ultimate Alien” and “Teen Titans.”

Christopher Chambers, a journalism professor at Georgetown University and author of the graphic novel “The Darker Mask,” told The Associated Press that McDuffie’s influence resonated in animation and comic books.

“For minorities in this mode of entertainment … he was a hero, he was a pioneer,” Chambers said Tuesday. “Not just for we who are fans but also for content creators. He spilled over into other media.”

Bruce Timm, executive producer of the DC Universe animated original movie series, heaped praise on McDuffie’s talents and character.

“As a writer he was simply brilliant — adventurous, effortlessly funny, ferociously smart. As a person, he was all that and much, much more — more, in fact, than my puny words can even hope to express,” Timm said.

McDuffie was nominated for two Emmy Awards for “Static Shock,” a Writers Guild award for “Justice League” and three Eisner awards for his work in comic books, his website said.

Organizers of Seattle’s annual Emerald City Comicon said they planned to hold a memorial panel remembering McDuffie at the three-day event on March 5.

Dan DiDio, co-publisher of DC Entertainment, said McDuffie “left a lasting legacy on the world of comics that many writers can only aspire to. He will not only be remembered as an extremely gifted writer whose scripts have been realized as comics books, in television shows and on the silver screen, but as the creator or co-create of so many of the much-loved Milestone characters, including Static Shock.”

Tom Brevoort, Marvel’s senior vice president for publishing, said McDuffie was a force behind bringing more diversity into comics.

“He was very interested in creating a wider range of multiculturalism in comics, having been profoundly affected by the example of the Black Panther when he was growing up, and wanting to give that same opportunity to others of all races, creeds and religions, which is one of the reasons he left Marvel and co-founded Milestone,” Brevoort told the AP. “And he eventually came back to write both Beyond! and Fantastic Four for me.”

McDuffie is survived by his wife, Charlotte, and his mother, Edna McDuffie-Gardner.

Source: Associated Press

Kerry James Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, and was educated at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, from which he received a BFA, and an honorary doctorate in 1999. The subject matter of his paintings, installations, and public projects is often drawn from Black popular culture, and is rooted in the geography of his upbringing: “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central, Los Angeles near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility. You can’t move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it. That determined a lot of where my work was going to go,” says Marshall. In his “Souvenir” series of paintings and sculptures, he pays tribute to the Civil Rights movement with mammoth printing stamps featuring bold slogans of the era—Black Power!—and paintings of middle-class living rooms where ordinary Black citizens have become angels tending to a domestic order populated by the ghosts of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and other heroes of the 1960s.

Marshall creates a comic book for the twenty-first century, pitting ancient African sculptures come to life against a cyberspace elite that risks losing touch with traditional culture. Marshall’s work is based on a broad range of art-historical references, from Renaissance painting to black folk art, from El Greco to Charles White. A striking aspect of his paintings is the emphatically Black skin tone of his figures, a development the artist says emerged from an investigation into the invisibility of Blacks in America and the unnecessarily negative connotations associated with darkness. Marshall believes “you still have to earn your audience’s attention every time you make something.” The sheer beauty of his work speaks to an art that is simultaneously formally rigorous and socially engaged.

“I persist, trying to make pictures that inscribe Black existential realities without sacrificing a sense of majesty. I’m driven by a desire to meaningfully provoke others’ curiosity, to paint without cynicism. I still believe in mastery; in the service of imagination it can exceed the limitations of circumstance.”     
— Kerry James Marshall

Source: PBS, Greg Kucera Galley, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Christies.com and Wikipedia

The 1970s produced the film genre that would become known as ‘Blaxploitation’. These films were made specifically with an urban Black audience in mind. These movies were larger-than-life, action-packed and full of funk and soul music. These films also incorporated progressive social and political commentary. From Pam Grier to Bill Cosby, check out who delved into this genre and what the actors have been doing since the 1970s.

Pam Grier’s fame grew in the 1970s when she starred in several Blaxploitation films like ‘Coffy’ and ‘Foxy Brown’. Grier revitalized her career and paid homage to the ’70s genre in 1997 when she appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Jackie Brown.’ Her role as Jackie Brown earned her a Golden Globe nod for Best Actress. 

Grier played Louis Williams in ‘Mars Attacks!’ in 1996 and Carol in ‘Holy Smoke’ in 1999. Grier’s acting resume is extensive and lately she’s hit the television screen. She played Kit Porter on ‘The L Word’ for 5 years and appeared in ‘Smallville’ in 2010.

The Museum of UnCut Funk celebrates some of our favorite Black Activists

Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Townsend was born on October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. The daughter of sharecroppers, she began working the fields at an early age. Her family struggled financially, and often went hungry.

Married to Perry “Pap” Hamer in 1944, Fannie Lou continued to work hard just to get by. In the summer of 1962, however, she made a life-changing decision to attend a protest meeting. She met civil rights activists there who were there to encourage Blacks to register to vote. Hamer became active in helping with the voter registration efforts.

Hamer dedicated her life to the fight for civil rights, working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This organization was comprised mostly of Black students who engaged in acts of civil disobedience to fight racial segregation and injustice in the South. These acts often were met with violent responses by angry whites. During the course of her activist career, Hamer was threatened, arrested, beaten, and shot at. But none of these things ever deterred her from her work.

In 1964, Hamer helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which was established in opposition to her state’s all-white delegation to that year’s Democratic convention. She brought the civil rights struggle in Mississippi to the attention of the entire nation during a televised session at the convention. The next year, Hamer ran for Congress in Mississippi, but she was unsuccessful in her bid.

Along with her political activism, Hamer worked to help the poor and families in need in her Mississippi community. She also set up organizations to increase business opportunities for minorities and to provide childcare and other family services. Hamer died of cancer on March 14, 1977, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

Black political activist, founder, along with Huey Newton, and national chairman of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale was born on October 22, 1963 in Dallas Texas. Bobby Seale was one of a generation of young Black radicals who broke away from the traditionally nonviolent Civil Rights Movement to preach a doctrine of militant black empowerment. Following the dismissal of murder charges against him in 1971, Seale somewhat moderated his more militant views and devoted his time to effecting change from within the system.

Seale grew up in Dallas and in California. Following service in the U.S. Air Force, he entered Merritt College, in Oakland, Calif. There his radicalism took root in 1962, when he first heard Malcolm X speak. Seale helped found the Black Panthers in 1966. Noted for their violent views, they also ran medical clinics and served free breakfasts to school children, among other programs.

In 1969, Seale was indicted in Chicago for conspiracy to incite riots during the Democratic national convention the previous year. The court refused to allow him to have his choice of lawyer. When Seale repeatedly rose to insist that he was being denied his constitutional right to counsel, the judge ordered him bound and gagged. He was convicted of 16 counts of contempt and sentenced to four years in prison. In 1970–71 he and a codefendant were tried for the 1969 murder of a Black Panther suspected of being a police informer. The six-month-long trial ended with a hung jury.

Following his release from prison, Seale renounced violence as a means to an end and announced his intention to work within the political process. He ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973, finishing second. As the Black Panther Party faded from public view, Seale took on a quieter role, working to improve social services in black neighborhoods and to improve the environment. Seale’s writings include such diverse works as Seize the Time (1970), a history of the Black Panther movement and Barbeque’n with Bobby (1988), a cookbook.

James Armistead, the spy and revolutionary, was born into slavery to owner William Armistead around December 10, 1748, in New Kent, Virginia. In 1781, James Armistead volunteered to join the U.S. Army in order to fight for the American Revolution. His master granted him permission to join the revolutionary cause, and the American Continental Army stationed Armistead to serve under the Marquis de Lafayette, the commander of allied French forces.

Lafayette employed Armistead as a spy, with the hopes of gathering intelligence in regards to enemy movements. Posing as a runaway slave hired by the British to spy on the Americans, Armistead successfully infiltrated British General Charles Cornwallis’ headquarters. He later returned north with turncoat soldier Benedict Arnold, and learned further details of British operations without being detected. Able to travel freely between both British and American camps, Armistead could easily relay information to Lafayette about British plans.

Using the details of Armistead’s reports, Lafayette and General George Washington were able to prevent the British from sending 10,000 reinforcements to Yorktown, Virginia. The American and French blockade surprised British forces and crippled their military. As a result of the Lafayette and Washington’s victory in Yorktown, the British officially surrendered on Oct. 19, 1781.

Despite his critical actions, Armistead returned to William Armistead after the war to continue his life as a slave. He was not eligible for emancipation under the Act of 1783 for slave-soldiers, because he was considered a slave-spy, and had to petition the Virginia legislature for his emancipation. The Marquis de Lafayette assisted him by writing a recommendation for his freedom, which was granted in 1787. In gratitude, Armistead adopted Lafayette’s surname.

After receiving his freedom, he moved nine miles south of New Kent, bought 40 acres of land, and began farming. He later married, raised a large family, and was granted a $40 annual pension by the Virginia legislature for his services during the American Revolution. He lived as a farmer in Virignia until his death on August 9, 1830.

Frederick Douglass was born February 1818, in Tuckahoe, Maryland, U.S. and died on February 20, 1895, Washington, D.C.. Douglass was one of the most eminent human-rights leaders of the 19th century. His oratorical and literary brilliance thrust him into the forefront of the U.S. abolition movement, and he became the first Black citizen to hold high rank in the U.S. government.

Separated as an infant from his slave mother (he never knew his white father), Frederick lived with his grandmother on a Maryland plantation until, at age eight, his owner sent him to Baltimore to live as a house servant with the family of Hugh Auld, whose wife defied state law by teaching the boy to read. Auld, however, declared that learning would make him unfit for slavery, and Frederick was forced to continue his education surreptitiously with the aid of schoolboys in the street. Upon the death of his master, he was returned to the plantation as a field hand at 16. Later, he was hired out in Baltimore as a ship caulker. Frederick tried to escape with three others in 1833, but the plot was discovered before they could get away. Five years later, however, he fled to New York City and then to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he worked as a labourer for three years, eluding slave hunters by changing his surname to Douglass.

At a Nantucket, Massachusetts, antislavery convention in 1841, Douglass was invited to describe his feelings and experiences under slavery. These extemporaneous remarks were so poignant and naturally eloquent that he was unexpectedly catapulted into a new career as agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. From then on, despite heckling and mockery, insult, and violent personal attack, Douglass never waivered in his devotion to the abolitionist cause.

To counter skeptics who doubted that such an articulate spokesman could ever have been a slave, Douglass felt impelled to write his autobiography in 1845, revised and completed in 1882 as Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Douglass’s account became a classic in American literature as well as a primary source about slavery from the bondsman’s viewpoint. To avoid recapture by his former owner, whose name and location he had given in the narrative, Douglass left on a two-year speaking tour of Great Britain and Ireland. Abroad, Douglass helped to win many new friends for the abolition movement and to cement the bonds of humanitarian reform between the continents.

Douglass returned with funds to purchase his freedom and also to start his own antislavery newspaper, the North Star (later Frederick Douglass’s Paper, which he published from 1847 to 1860 in Rochester, New York). The abolition leader William Lloyd Garrison disagreed with the need for a separate, Black-oriented press, and the two men broke over this issue as well as over Douglass’s support of political action to supplement moral suasion. Thus, after 1851, Douglass allied himself with the faction of the movement led by James G. Birney. He did not countenance violence, however, and specifically counseled against the raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (October 1859).

During the Civil War (1861–65) Douglass became a consultant to President Abraham Lincoln, advocating that former slaves be armed for the North and that the war be made a direct confrontation against slavery. Throughout Reconstruction (1865–77), he fought for full civil rights for freedmen and vigorously supported the women’s rights movement.

After Reconstruction, Douglass served as assistant secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission (1871), and in the District of Columbia he was marshal (1877–81) and recorder of deeds (1881–86); finally, he was appointed U.S. minister and consul general to Haiti (1889–91).

Born a slave, Araminta Ross later adopted her mother’s first name, Harriet. From early childhood she worked variously as a maid, a nurse, a field hand, a cook, and a woodcutter. About 1844 she married John Tubman, a free black.

In 1849, on the strength of rumours that she was about to be sold, Tubman fled to Philadelphia, leaving behind her husband, parents, and siblings. In December 1850, she made her way to Baltimore, Maryland, whence she led her sister and two children to freedom. That journey was the first of some 19 increasingly dangerous forays into Maryland in which, over the next decade, she conducted upward of 300 fugitive slaves along the Underground Railroad to Canada. By her extraordinary courage, ingenuity, persistence, and iron discipline, which she enforced upon her charges, Tubman became the railroad’s most famous conductor and was known as the “Moses of her people.” It has been said that she never lost a fugitive she was leading to freedom.

Rewards offered by slaveholders for Tubman’s capture eventually totaled $40,000. Abolitionists, however, celebrated her courage. John Brown, who consulted her about his own plans to organize an antislavery raid of a federal armoury in Harpers Ferry, Va. (now in West Virginia), referred to her as “General” Tubman. About 1858 she bought a small farm near Auburn, New York, where she placed her aged parents (she had brought them out of Maryland in June 1857) and herself lived thereafter. From 1862 to 1865 she served as a scout, as well as nurse and laundress, for Union forces in South Carolina. For the Second Carolina Volunteers, under the command of Colonel James Montgomery, Tubman spied on Confederate territory. When she returned with information about the locations of warehouses and ammunition, Montgomery’s troops were able to make carefully planned attacks. For her wartime service Tubman was paid so little that she had to support herself by selling homemade baked goods.

After the Civil War Tubman settled in Auburn and began taking in orphans and the elderly, a practice that eventuated in the Harriet Tubman Home for Indigent Aged Negroes. The home later attracted the support of former abolitionist comrades and of the citizens of Auburn, and it continued in existence for some years after her death. In the late 1860s and again in the late 1890s she applied for a federal pension for her Civil War services. Some 30 years after her service, a private bill providing for $20 monthly was passed by Congress.

Source: History Channel, A&E,  Wikipedia and Discovery

The Museum of UnCut Funk celebrates and pays homage to a few of our favorite Black sports heroes who rocked the 1960′s and the 1970′s (“The Greatest Decade Ever”).

Jim Brown was born on February 17, 1936, in St. Simons, Georgia. He was an outstanding professional football player who led the National Football League in rushing for eight of his nine seasons. He was the dominant player of his era and one of the small number of running backs rated as the best of all time.

In high school and at Syracuse University in New York, Brown displayed exceptional all-around athletic ability, excelling in basketball, baseball, track, and lacrosse as well as football. In his final year at Syracuse, Brown earned All-America honours in both football and lacrosse. Many considered Brown’s best sport to be lacrosse, and he was inducted into both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the U.S. Lacrosse National Hall of Fame.

From 1957 through 1965, Brown played for the Cleveland Browns of the NFL, and he led the league in rushing yardage every year except 1962. Standing 6.2 feet and weighing 232 pounds, Brown was a bruising runner who possessed the speed to outrun opponents as well as the strength to run over them. He rushed for more than 1,000 yards in seven seasons and established NFL single-season records by rushing for 1,527 yards in 1958 (12-game schedule) and 1,863 yards in 1963 (14-game schedule), a record broken by O.J. Simpson in 1973. On November 24, 1957, he set an NFL record by rushing for 237 yards in a single game, and he equaled that total on November 19, 1961. At the close of his career, he had scored 126 touchdowns, 106 by rushing, had gained a record 12,312 yards in 2,359 rushing attempts for an average of 5.22 yards, and had a record combined yardage (rushing along with pass receptions) of 15,459 yards. Brown’s rushing and combined yardage records stood until 1984, when both were surpassed by Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears.

At 30 years of age and seemingly at the height of his athletic abilities, Brown retired from football to pursue a career in motion pictures. He appeared in many action and adventure films, such as Slaughter (1972) and Slaughter’s Big Rip Off (1973). Brown was also active in issues facing  Blacks, forming groups to assist black-owned businesses and to rehabilitate gang members.

Julius Erving was born on February 22, 1950, in Roosevelt, New York. Erving—called as “Dr. J” by his fans—became known for his style and grace on and off the court during his sixteen-year professional basketball career. A solid player in high school, Erving went on to play for the University of Massachusetts in 1968. At the university, he played on the school’s varsity team for two seasons, averaging more than 26 points and 20 rebounds per game.

Erving left college in 1971 to play for the Virginia Squires, a team in the American Basketball Association (ABA). With the Squires, he scored more than 27 points per game in his first season. But it was the move to the New York Nets in 1973 that allowed Erving to really shine. He helped the team win ABA championships in 1974 and 1976 and received the league’s Most Valuable Player award for each of those seasons. He earned a lot of fans and attracted a lot of attention for his athletic performance—graceful spins, dramatic jump shots, and powerful slam dunks. He was considered by many to be one of the league’s leading players.

In 1976, Erving switched leagues, moving to the National Basketball Association (NBA) to play for the Philadelphia 76ers. In his eleven seasons with the team, he helped them win the 1983 NBA championship. Erving was also selected as the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1981 and played in 11 NBA All-Star games. At the time of his retirement in 1987, he had played in more than 800 games, scoring an average of 22 points per game in the NBA. His career scoring total was more than 30,000 points during ABA and NBA careers.

Erving may have retired, but he hasn’t really left the game. He has worked as a sports analyst for the NBC television network and as an executive for the Orlando Magic, a Florida-based NBA team. He has also pursued many other business opportunities.

Henry Louis Aaron was born on February 5, 1934 in Mobile, Alabama. Formerly baseball’s all-time home-run king, Aaron played 23 years as an outfielder for the Milwaukee (later Atlanta) Braves and Milwaukee Brewers (1954–76). He holds many of baseball’s most distinguished records, including runs batted in (2,297), extra base hits (1,477), total bases (6,856) and most years with 30 or more home runs (15). He is also in the top five for career hits and runs. Aaron also had the record for most career home runs (755) until Barry Bonds broke it with his 756th home run on August 7, 2007, in San Francisco.

Born in a poor black section of Mobile called “Down The Bay,” Aaron and his family moved to the middle class Toulminville neighborhood when he was a young boy. When he got to high school, Aaron played shortstop and third base on his school’s team. Aaron, perhaps sensing he had a bigger future ahead of him, quit school in 1951 to play in the Negro Leagues for the Indianapolis Clowns.

It wasn’t a long stay. After leading his club to victory in the league’s 1952 World Series, Aaron was recruited the following June to the Milwaukee Braves for $10,000. The Braves assigned their new player to one of their farm clubs, The Eau Claire Bears. Again Aaron did not disappoint, getting named Northern League Rookie of the Year.

A year later, the 20-year-old Hank Aaron got his Major League start when a spring training injury to a Braves outfielder created a roster spot for him. Following a respectable first year (he hit .280), Aaron charged through the 1955 season with a blend of power (27 home runs), run production (106 runs batted in), and average (.328) that would come to define his long career. In 1956, after winning the first of two of his batting titles, Aaron registered an unrivaled 1957 season, taking home the National League MVP and nearly nabbing the Triple Crown by hitting 44 homeruns, knocking in another 132, and batting .322.

That same year, Aaron demonstrated his ability to come up big when it counted most. His 11th inning homerun in late September propelled the Braves to the World Series, where he led underdog Milwaukee to an upset win over the New York Yankees in seven games.

With the game still years away from the multi-million dollar contracts that would later dominate player salaries, Aaron’s annual pay in 1959 was around $30,000. When he equaled that amount that same year in endorsements, Aaron realized there may be more in store for him if he continued to hit for power. “I noticed that they never had a show called ‘Singles Derby,’” he said.

He was right, of course, and over the next decade and a half, the always-fit Aaron banged out a steady stream of 30 and 40 homerun seasons. In 1973, at the age of 39, Aaron was still a force, clubbing a remarkable 40 homeruns to finish just one run behind Babe Ruth’s all-time career mark of 714.

But the chase to beat the Babe’s record revealed that world of baseball was far from being free of the racial tensions that prevailed around it. Letters poured into the Braves offices, as many as 3,000 a day for Aaron. Some wrote to congratulate him, but many others were appalled that a Black man should break baseball’s most sacred record. Death threats were a part of the mix.

Still, Aaron pushed forward. He didn’t try to inflame the atmosphere, but he didn’t keep his mouth shut either, speaking out against the league’s lack of ownership and management opportunities for minorities. “On the field, Blacks have been able to be super giants,” he said. “But, once our playing days are over, this is the end of it and we go back to the back of the bus again.”

In 1974, after tying the Babe on Opening Day in Cincinnati, Aaron came home with his team. On April 15, he banged out his record 715th homerun at 9:07 P.M. in the fourth inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was a triumph and a relief. The more than 50,000 fans on hand cheered him on as he rounded the bases. There were fireworks and a band, and when he crossed home plate, Aaron’s parents were there to greet him.

Overall, Aaron finished the 1974 season with 20 homeruns. He played two more years, moving back to Milwaukee to finish out his career to play in the same city where he’d started.

After retiring as a player, Aaron moved into the Atlanta Braves front office as executive vice-president, where he has been a leading spokesman for minority hiring in baseball. He was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1982. His autobiography, I Had a Hammer, was published in 1990.

In 1999, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of breaking Ruth’s record, Major League Baseball announced the Hank Aaron Award, given annually to the best overall hitter in each league. Hank Aaron was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.

Boxer, philanthropist, social activist  Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. Once one of the top American boxers, Muhammad Ali has shown that he is not afraid of any fight—inside or outside the ring. Growing up in the segregated South, Ali experienced firsthand the prejudice and discrimination that Blacks faced during this era.

At the age of 12, Ali discovered his talent for boxing through an odd twist of fate. His bike was stolen, and Ali told a police officer, Joe Martin, that he wanted to beat up the thief. “Well, you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people,” Martin reportedly told him at the time. In addition to being a police officer, Martin also trained young boxers at a local gym.

Ali started working with Martin to learn how to box, and soon began his boxing career. In his first amateur bout in 1954, he won the fight by split decision. Ali went on to win the 1956 Golden Gloves Championship for novices in the light heavyweight class. Three years later, he won the Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions and the Amateur Athletic Union’s national title for the light-heavyweight division.

In 1960, Ali won a spot on the U.S. Olympic Boxing Team. He traveled to Rome, Italy, to compete. At 6 feet 3 inches tall, Ali was an imposing figure in the ring. He was known for his footwork, and for possessing a powerful jab. After winning his first three bouts, Ali then defeated Zbigniew Pietrzkowski from Poland to win the gold medal.

After his Olympic victory, Ali was heralded as an American hero. He soon turned professional with the backing of the Louisville Sponsoring Group. During the 1960s Ali seemed unstoppable, winning all of his bouts with majority of them being by knockouts. He took out British heavyweight champion Henry Cooper in 1963 and then knocked out Sonny Liston in 1964 to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

Often referring to himself as “the greatest,” Ali was not afraid to sing his own praises. He was known for boasting about his skills before a fight and for his colorful descriptions and phrases. In one of his more famously quoted descriptions, Ali told reporters that he could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” in the boxing ring.

This bold public persona belied what was happening in Ali’s personal life, however. He was doing some spiritual searching and decided to join the black Muslim group, the Nation of Islam, in 1964. At first he called himself Cassius X, but then settled into the name Muhammad Ali. Two years later, Ali started a different kind of fight when he refused to acknowledge his military service after being drafted. He said that he was a practicing Muslim minister, and that his religious beliefs prevented him from fighting in the Vietnam War.

In 1967, Ali put his personal values ahead of his career. The U.S. Department of Justice pursued a legal case against Ali, denying his claim for conscientious objector status. He was found guilty of refusing to be inducted into the military, but Ali later cleared his name after a lengthy court battle. Professionally, however, Ali did not fare as well. The boxing association took away his title and suspended him from the sport for three and a half years.

Returning to the ring in 1970, Ali won his first bout after his forced hiatus. He knocked out Jerry Quarry in October in Atlanta. The following year, Ali took on Joe Frazier in what has been called the “Fight of the Century.” Frazier and Ali went for 15 rounds before Frazier dropped Ali to the ground, scoring a knockout. Ali later beat Frazier in a 1974 rematch.

Another legendary Ali fight took place in 1974. Billed as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the bout was organized by promoter Don King and held in Kinshasa, Zaire. Ali fought the reigning heavyweight champion George Foreman. For once, Ali was seen as the underdog to his younger, powerful opponent. Ali silenced his critics by defeating Foreman and once again becoming the heavyweight champion of the world.

Perhaps one of his toughest bouts took place in 1975 when he battled longtime rival Joe Frazier in the “Thrilla in Manila” fight. Held in Quezon City, Philippines, the match lasted for more than 14 rounds with each fighter giving it their all. Ali emerged victorious in the end.

By the late 1970s, Ali’s career had started to decline. He was defeated by Leon Spinks in 1978 and was knocked out by Larry Holmes in 1980. In 1981, Ali fought his last bout, losing his heavyweight title to Trevor Berbick. He announced his retirement from boxing the next day.

In his retirement, Ali has devoted much of his time to philanthropy. He announced that he has Parkinson’s disease in 1984, a degenerative neurological condition, and has been involved in raising funds for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Over the years, Ali has also supported the Special Olympics and the Make a Wish Foundation among other organizations.

Muhammad Ali has traveled to numerous countries, including Mexico and Morocco, to help out those in need. In 1998, he was chosen to be a United Nations Messenger of Peace because of his work in developing countries.

In 2005, Ali received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush. He also opened the Muhammad Ali Center in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, that same year. “I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given,” he said. “I believed in myself and I believe in the goodness of others,” said Ali. “Many fans wanted to build a museum to acknowledge my achievements. I wanted more than a building to house my memorabilia. I wanted a place that would inspire people to be the best that they could be at whatever they chose to do, and to encourage them to be respectful of one another.”

Despite the progression of his disease, Ali remains active in public life. He embodies the true meaning of a champion with his tireless dedication to the causes he believes in. He was on hand to celebrate the inauguration of the first African-American president in January 2009 when Barack Obama was sworn-in. Soon after the inauguration, Ali received the President’s Award from the NAACP for his public service efforts.

As he has done every year since its inception, Ali hosted the 15th Annual Celebrity Fight Night Awards in Phoenix in March 2009. The event benefited the Celebrity Fight Night Foundation and the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center.

Ali has been married to his fourth wife, Yolanda, since 1986. The couple has one son, Asaad, and Ali has several children from previous relationships, including daughter Laila who followed in his footsteps for a time as a professional boxer.

Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. was born on July 10,1943, in Richmond, Virginia. The oldest of Arthur Ashe, Sr. and Mattie Cunningham’s two sons, Arthur Ashe, Jr. blended finesse and power to forge a groundbreaking tennis game. He became the first, and currently only, African-American to win the men’s singles at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, or the Australian Open.

Ashe’s childhood was marked by hardship and opportunity. Under his mother’s direction, Ashe was reading by the age of four. But his life was turned upside-down two years later, when Mattie passed away.

Ashe’s father, fearful of seeing his boys fall into trouble without their mother’s discipline, began running a tighter ship at home. Ashe and his younger brother Johnnie went to church every Sunday, and after school were required to come straight home. Arthur, Sr. even clocked the distance: “My father…kept me home, out of trouble. I had exactly 12 minutes to get home from school, and I kept to that rule through high school.”

About a year after his mother’s death, Arthur discovered the game of tennis, picking up a racket for the first time at the age of seven, at a park not far from his home. Sticking with the game, Ashe eventually caught the attention of Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, Jr., a tennis coach from Lynchburg, Virginia, who was active in the black tennis community. Under Johnson’s direction, Ashe excelled.

In his first tournament, Ashe reached the junior national championships. Driven to excel, he eventually moved to St. Louis to work closely with another coach, winning the junior national title in 1960 and again in 1961. Ranked the fifth best junior player in the country, Ashe accepted a scholarship at UCLA, where he graduated with a degree in business administration.

Ashe continued to refine his game, gaining the attention of his tennis idol, Pancho Gonzales, who further helped Ashe hone his serve-and-volley attack. The training all came together in 1968, when the still-amateur Ashe shocked the world by capturing the U.S. Open title. Two years later, he took home the Australian title, and in 1975 registered another upset by beating Jimmy Connors in the Wimbledon finals.

For Ashe, however, success also brought opportunity and responsibility. He didn’t relish his status as the sole Black star in a game dominated by white players, but he didn’t run away from it either. With his unique pulpit, he pushed to create inner city tennis programs for youth; helped found the Association of Men’s Tennis Professionals; and spoke out against apartheid in South Africa—even going so far as to successfully lobby for a visa so he could visit and play tennis there.

Ashe’s causes were shaped by both his own personal story and his health. In 1979, he retired from competition after suffering a heart attack, and wrote a history of African-American athletes: A Hard Road to Glory (3 vols, 1988). He also served as national campaign chairman of the American Heart Association.

Ashe was plagued with health issues over the last 14 years of his life. After undergoing a quadruple bypass operation in 1979, he went under the knife again in 1983 for a second bypass. In 1988, he underwent emergency brain surgery after experiencing paralysis of his right arm. A biopsy taken during a hospital stay revealed that Ashe had AIDS. Doctors soon figured out that Ashe had become positive for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, from a transfusion of bad blood during his second heart operation.

Initially, Ashe kept the news hidden from the public. But in 1992, Ashe came forward with the news after he learned that USA Today was working on a story about his health battle. Finally free from the burden of trying to hide his condition, Ashe poured himself into the work of raising awareness about the disease. He delivered a speech at the United Nations, started a new foundation, and laid the groundwork for a $5 million fundraising campaign for the institution.

He continued to work, even as his health began to deteriorate, making it down to Washington D.C. in late 1992 to participate in a protest over the U.S. treatment of Haitian refugees. For his part in the demonstration, Ashe was taken away in handcuffs. It was a poignant final display for a man who was never shy about showing his concern for the welfare of others.

On February 6, 1993, Arthur Ashe passed away. Four days later he was laid to rest in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Some 6,000 people attended the service. Ashe, who was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985, was married to Jeanne Moutoussamy from 1977 until his death. They have one daughter, Camera.

Born on August 21, 1936, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and known as “Wilt the Stilt” and the “Big Dipper,” Wilt Chamberlain was one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He scored more than 30,000 points during his professional career.

Chamberlain was a standout player at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia. He played on the school’s varsity team for three years, scoring more than 2,200 points in total. Standing at 6-feet 11-inches, Chamberlain physically dominated other players. He eventually reached his full height of a staggering 7-feet 1-inch tall. Many of his nicknames were derived from his stature. He hated being called “the Stilt,” which came from a local reporter covering high school athletics. But Chamberlain didn’t mind “Dipper” or “Big Dipper,” a nickname given to him by friends because he had to duck his head down when passing through a doorframe.

When it came time for college, Chamberlain was sought after by many top college basketball teams. He chose to go to the University of Kansas, making his college basketball debut on the Jayhawks in 1956. Chamberlain helped the team make it to the NCAA finals in 1957. The Jayhawks were defeated by North Carolina, but Chamberlain was chosen as the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament. Continuing to excel, he made the all-America and all-conference teams the following season.

Leaving college in 1958, Chamberlain had to wait a year before going professional due to NBA rules. He chose to spend the next season performing with the Harlem Globetrotters before landing a spot on the Philadelphia Warriors. In 1959, Chamberlain played his first professional game in New York City against the Knicks, scoring 43 points. His impressive debut season netted him several prestigious honors, including NBA Rookie of the Year and NBA Most Valuable Player. Also during this season, Chamberlain began his rivalry with Celtics defensive star Bill Russell. The two were fierce competitors on the court, but they developed a friendship away from the game.

Chamberlain’s most famous season, however, came in 1962. That March, he scored his first 100-point game. By season’s end, Chamberlain racked up more than 4,000 points, becoming the first NBA player to do so, scoring an average of 50.4 points per game. At the top of his game, Chamberlain was selected for the All-NBA first team for three years in a row—1960, 1961, and 1962.

Chamberlain stayed with the Warriors as they moved out to San Francisco in 1962. He continued to play well, averaging more than 44 points per game for the 1962-1963 season and almost 37 points per game for the 1963-1964 season. Returning to his hometown in 1965, Chamberlain joined the Philadelphia 76ers. There he helped his team score an NBA championship win over his former team. Along the way to the championship, he also assisted the Sixers in defeating the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Division Finals. The Celtics were knocked out of the running after eight consecutive championship wins. Crowds gathered to watch the latest match between two top center players: Chamberlain and Bill Russell.

Traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1968, Chamberlain again proved that he was a competitive, successful athlete. He helped the Lakers win the 1972 NBA championship, triumphing over the New York Knicks in five straight games, and was named the NBA Finals MVP.

By the time he retired in 1973, Chamberlain had amassed an amazing array of career statistics. He played in 1,045 games, and achieved an average of 30.1 points per game. This average was the NBA record until Michael Jordan broke it when he retired in 1998. To this day, Chamberlain still holds the record for the highest number of points scored in a single game, and remains notable for never fouling out of an NBA game.

After his retirement, Chamberlain explored other opportunities. He published his autobiography, Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door in 1973. He tried coaching for a time, and was a popular pitchman for commercials. Chamberlain later branched out in acting, appearing in the 1984 action film Conan the Destroyer with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Still, his feats as a player were not forgotten. In 1978, Chamberlain was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. He was named one of the top all-time 50 NBA players in 1996. In 1991, Chamberlain claimed another, more unusual distinction, when he wrote in his book A View from Above that he had slept with more than 20,000 women during his lifetime.

Chamberlain died of heart failure on October 12, 1999, at his Los Angeles home. He once said that “no one cheered for Goliath,” but the response to his passing proved that to be false. “Wilt was one of the greatest ever, and we will never see another like him,” said basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. His former rival Bill Russell told the press that “he and I will be friends through eternity.”

Source: IMDB, History Channel, A&E, ESPN and Wikipedia

Leontyne Price, a lyric soprano, is one of the world´s leading lyric sopranos. Her career in concerts and opera has brought her the praise of public and critics alike. Miss Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi on February 10, 1927, and received her B.A. in 1948 from the College of Educational and Industrial Arts (now Central State College) in Wilberforce, Ohio. She later accepted a scholarship to Juilliard where she studied with Florence Page Kimball. After seeing her in the student production of Verdi’s Falstaff, Virgil Thompson, the noted critic selected her to sing in the revival of his Four Saints in Three Acts which was performed on Broadway for two weeks in 1952.

She then played the role of Bess in the 1952 revival of Porgy and Bess, and continued in the part on a tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. During the run of Porgy and Bess, she introduced works by Stravinsky, Henri Saguet, John La Montaine and others at such places as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.. In 1954, she gave a successful Town Hall recital and, the following year, sang Tosca for the NBC-TV Opera Company. She later appeared on this network in The Magic Flute (1956); Dialogue of the Carmelites (1957), and Don Giovanni (1960).

Miss Price made her Metropolitan debut in Il Trovatore on January 27, 1961. Since then, she has made numerous recordings of operas and operatic arias. She is married to the noted black bass baritone, William Warfield. Just one season after she had made her Met debut as Leonora in Verdi´s Il Trovatore, Miss Price had her first Met opening in 1961 in the title role of Puccini´s The Girl of the Golden West. Since then, she has made numerous recordings of operas and operatic arias. In September of 1966. Miss Price opened the Metropolitan Opera season in the role of Cleopatra. The opera (Anthony and Cleopatra) was said to have been written by composer Samuel Barber with her in mind. In the world of opera, Miss Price ranks alongside Birgit Nilsson, Joan Sutherland and Renata Tebaldi as one of the most esteemed and celebrated sopranos of the contemporary era. Her voice is said to be the perfect Verdi voice; her Aida is often regarded as the paragon against which all others should be measured.

Source: Classic Black

Janet MacLachlan, who played the compassionate schoolteacher in Martin Ritt’s Oscar-nominated “Sounder” (1972), has died at age 77. A highly respected stage, film and television actress, Maclachlan was known for a serious, no-nonsense style that led her to be often cast as a judge, nurse, doctor, psychiatrist, teacher or social worker. She was highly visible during the transitional period of the 1960s and 70s, when African-Americans fought against negative stereotypes on screen and began to make significant inroads in front of and behind the cameras.

MacLachlan died Monday, October 11 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hollywood. She had been admitted two days earlier suffering from cardiac symptoms, family members said.

She was born Janet Angel MacLachlan in Harlem on August 27, 1933, to James and Ruby MacLachlan, both Jamaican immigrants. She attended the all-girl Julia Richman High School and excelled in math, graduating in 1950. According to a New York Times interview, it was in high school that Maclachlan “felt black” for the first time, as there were only three other African-American students on campus. “It was very strange because I had come from an all-black school and I didn’t know how to deal with it,” she said.

MacLachlan’s first acting experience was in a Harlem Boys Club play, as a teen. Later, while she was attending Hunter College, she studied drama in a private class taught by Sidney Poitier, who instilled in her not only the importance of refining her craft but also of developing a point of view. “He had a tendency to lecture me because I had no attitudes and no beliefs and I was very wishy-washy,” she once recalled. “He wanted me to help find out who I was and not to let people tell me what to do.”

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1955, MacLachlan worked at clerical jobs while studying acting at the Harlem YMCA, the Herbert Berghof Acting Studio and the Little Theatre of Harlem. After a few years she had worked her way up to become an executive secretary and office manager for a New York public relations firm, but the business world was unsatisfying and she felt the calling of the stage. In 1961, MacLachlan impulsively gave up her job and its then-decent salary of $175 per week and traded it for a $5-a-week stipend to understudy Cicely Tyson in two productions simultaneously: “Moon on a Rainbow Shawl” and Jean Genet’s controversial off-Broadway play, “The Blacks: A Clown Show.” After Tyson’s departure from “The Blacks,” MacLachlan played the role of Virtue, the prostitute, for six weeks, working alongside such acclaimed and established actors as James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Jr., Maya Angelou and Roscoe Lee Browne. Suddenly her acting career was off and running. That same year she appeared in the parody “Raisin’ Hell in the Son” and was called the “most memorable member of the cast” by a New York Times reviewer.

Robert Hooks, who portrayed Deodatus Village (a role first played by James Earl Jones) in “The Blacks,” remembered MacLachlan as “…a brilliant woman and a great individual and super talent. I always admired her acting ability, and just as a strong black woman she was there all the way. Not necessarily a feminist but just a strong black woman with strong beliefs about feminism. There was a pridefulness in her work, and she refused to do the silly stuff.

“She played the role of Virtue, a role that Cicely Tyson originated, and that’s when I got so taken with her,” Hooks continued. “It was probably the meatiest role she’s ever done, because she was one of those actresses who never really got the big shot, the Cicely Tyson-type shot as an artist, but when she did do the roles she mastered them. We had a wonderful time, because most of our scenes were together. I witnessed the depth of her character study, and I was right there on the stage with her when she was doing it.”

MacLachlan made her Broadway debut in December 1962 in Peter Feibleman’s “Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright” at the Booth Theater; the cast featured an array of established and up-and-coming black thespians from the New York stage, including Roscoe Lee Browne, Al Freeman Jr., Rudy Challenger, Ellen Holly, Diana Sands, Claudia McNeil, as well as Tyson and Hooks. MacLachlan then spent time with the repertory company at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, honing her craft by appearing in “Hamlet,” “Death of a Salesman” and “The Miser.”

By 1964 she had moved to Hollywood and was signed by Universal as a contract player.  MacLachlan had one-shot parts on TV series such as “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater,” “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Fugitive.” Through the late 1960s and early 70s she appeared on “The Invaders,” “The FBI,” “Ironside,” “The Mod Squad,” The Name of the Game” and other series. Two of her best TV roles, both of which aired in 1967, are an African girl in an episode of “I Spy” with Bill Cosby, which was shot on location in Greece, and a first-season episode of “Star Trek” in which MacLachlan played an Enterprise crewmember named Lt. Charlene Masters.

MacLachlan made her feature film debut in “Up Tight” (1968), a remake of John Ford’s “The Informer” with the Irish Republican Army’s struggle against the British replaced by a faction of the black power movement in a Cleveland ghetto. This politically charged, controversial film was released shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (it begins with documentary footage of King’s funeral procession) and depicted the struggle between groups advocating nonviolent and armed resistance. It was the first American-made film by director Jules Dassin since his blacklisting and exile in Europe, and its cast was a virtual who’s-who of black Hollywood in the late 1960s, including Ruby Dee, Roscoe Lee Browne, Frank Silvera, Max Julien, and Raymond St. Jacques. MacLachlan played Jeannie, girlfriend of the leader of a militant gang (St. Jacques).

Dick Anthony Williams (actor, “Up Tight”): “She was a great teacher and a solid, grounded actress. We had great, great respect for each other. We’d been in a number of things together: “Up Tight,” “The Sophisticated Gents” and other things. She quietly went about her work; she didn’t go for a great deal of fanfare like some actors. She was a very fine actress and fine person, and she’ll be terribly missed.”

Although MacLachlan was not always outspoken about her political beliefs, she did not hesitate to express her views on the status of African-Americans in Hollywood. In a 1968 interview with Soul magazine, she said, “There really hasn’t been, say on television, a truthful honest black character on any show in a continuing role … 99 percent of the writers are white. And they don’t really know. So what they are doing is writing white roles for black people. The only way to correct that is to have black writers.”

During the early 1970s, MacLachlan avoided the Blaxploitation pictures that were in fashion and instead focused on film roles reflecting her desire to bring credible African-American characters to the screen. In “Change of Mind” (1969), a bizarre sci-fi-drama wherein a white man’s brain is transplanted into a black man’s skull, she played the dead black man’s confused and conflicted widow. In “Halls of Anger” (1970) she was Lorraine Nash, a no-nonsense high school teacher who counsels a fellow educator (Calvin Lockhart) whose classroom is a tempest of racial tensions. “…tick… tick… tick…” (1970) had MacLachlan playing a rather thankless role as the wife of a black sheriff (Jim Brown) in a small, racially divided southern town. “The Man” (1972), based on an Irving Wallace novel and scripted by Rod Serling, cast MacLachlan as the rebellious daughter of the first African-American president of the United States, played by James Earl Jones.

Paul Bogart (director, “Halls of Anger”): “She was a serious actress, and she didn’t have a lot of attitude, which was easy for black actors at that time to have. She was devoted to her craft. All I know is that I liked her a lot, and I depended on her and I was grateful when I had her.”

Contributor: Steve Ryfle

The Movie Posters featured in this article are from the archives of The Museum of UnCut Funk.

The Museum of UnCut Funk is all about celebrating the power of THE FUNK and of 1970′s Black Culture. As we continue to provide information on one of the most powerful and productive decades in Black history, we also want to pay homage those those who passed this year who were major players during this period and beyond.

As the year 2010 closes and southern states in the U.S, continue to rewrite our history, The Museum of UnCut Funk proudly acknowledges the civil and human rights, public service, music and art achievements that these great Black Americans gave to the world.

All of your hard work and service was not done in vain…Rest in Peace.

The Museum Of UnCut Funk honors:

Percy Sutton – Politician

Juanita Goggins – Legislator

Manute Bol – Athlete and Humanitarian

Paul R. Jones – Major Collector of African American Art

Teena Maria – Funk, R & B Singer

Lena Horne – Singer and Actress

Janet MacLachian - Actress

Gary Coleman – Actor

Jefferson Thomas – Little Rock Nine

Teddy Pendergrass – R&B Singer

Vonetta McGee – Actress

Benjamin Hooks – Civil Right Activist

Abbey Lincoln – Jazz Singer

Albertina Walker – Opera Singer

Soloman Burke – Soul Singer

Dorothy Height – Civil Rights Activist

RIGHT ON!!!

Comedy has always been a tool for artists to ease the pain of social issues, stereotypes and racial injustice. It has also brought front and center the positive transformation of pain into humor. Perhaps no ethnic group has displayed this with such commercial success as Blacks, but this transformation has not come without great struggle and criticism from forces both internal and external of their cultural experience. It is without dispute, Black humor has left a distinct impression not only in our society but in the greater world experience as well.

Please visit The Museum of UnCut Funk to see our current exhibition on  Black Comedians who paved they way for today’s comics.

Rodney is a child actor who appeared in TV commercials for the fast-food chain Jack in the Box in the early 1970s, as well as in numerous roles in television and movies.

In the spots, he was seen trying to wrap his mouth around the super-sized Jumbo Jack hamburger. The tag line “It’s too big to eat!”  became a catch-phrase. Another spot showed Rodney giggling while singing the song “Take Life A Little Easier,” which was released as a single by Bell Records in the fall of 1973 in the wake of the commercial’s popularity. The 45 approached Billboard Magazine’s Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart in October 1973, peaking at #112. At the age of five, Rippy became the youngest person ever to make any Billboard music chart.

Rippy subsequently had guest-roles in many popular television shows, including The Six Million Dollar Man, Marcus Welby, MD, Police Story, and The Odd Couple. He also appeared frequently on talk shows such as The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Dinah’s Place with Dinah Shore. Rippy also had a co-starring role on the CBS Saturday morning children’s show The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine.

Rodney made his big screen debut in the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles in 1974. He portrayed a young Sheriff Bart aboard his parents’ buckboard wagon after a brutal Sioux nation attack. When the chief, portrayed by Brooks, allows the pioneers passage, for being darker than they are, Rippy says his only line, “Thank you.”

In a Peanuts newspaper comic strip dated July 3, 1974, Snoopy awakens from a dream in which he “had been invited out to dinner by Rodney Allen Rippy!”

In the mid 1970s, uber-cute child actor Rodney Allan Rippy was a sensation as the spokesperson for the Jack in the Box restaurant chain…so much so that Shindana Toys thought he needed his own doll.

Rodney was critically injured in a motorcycle accident in North Carolina in September of this year. It was last reported that he is recuperating in a trauma unit. The Museum Of UnCut Funk wishes him well.

Dobbs as the Queen of Shemakha in Le Coq d’Or at Covent Garden, 1954

An internationally acclaimed opera and concert singer, Mattiwilda Dobbs has a voice often compared to the clear and resonant sound of a bell and she is known for warm, intimate performances. Only two Blacks sang at the Metropolitan Opera before her, and, appearing in Rigoletto in 1956, she was the first Black to perform a romantic lead on that stage. 

An Atlanta, Georgia, native, Dobbs was born and raised in the Jim Crow south. Her father, John Dobbs, a railroad postal clerk, was determined that his children should receive a well-rounded education; because the Atlanta public library did not lend books to Blacks, he borrowed books from other libraries on his postal route for his six daughters to read. He also insisted that each of his children study music. Because of his commitment to her early musical training, Dobbs has credited her father with her success as a singer. John Dobbs played a significant role in shaping the future of his community when, in 1935, he founded the Georgia Voters League and began the fight to register southern Black voters. He helped to lay the groundwork for future civil rights activists.

While training with some of the opera world’s most prominent and rigorous voice instructors, Dobbs earned a number of important scholarships, allowing her to travel to Europe to continue her studies. Among these was the Marian Anderson Scholarship, named in honor of the groundbreaking Black singer. Dobbs was one of the first people to receive this prestigious award. Years later, when President Jimmy Carter awarded Anderson the Congressional Gold Medal, Dobbs, by then a world-class opera star, performed at the ceremony in Anderson’s honor.

During the course of her career, Dobbs has received decorations and awards from the international opera community. She won acclaim all over the world—from Israel to Ireland, Scandinavia to New Zealand—in part because of her personal connection to her audiences. For a performance in the Soviet Union, Dobbs learned a song in Russian; when she performed in the United States, she often included adaptations of old Negro spirituals, Creole slave songs, and works of contemporary American composers. When she sang at the Municipal Auditorium in her hometown of Atlanta in 1963, she performed for one of the city’s first un-segregated audiences. And when her nephew, Maynard Jackson, became that city’s first Black mayor, she sang at his inauguration. 

Dobbs was one of Carl Van Vechten’s favorite opera performers. “Mattiwilda  was glorious,” he wrote of her debut opera at the Met, “a warm and brilliant coloratura and the best Gilda in my experience and I have heard Nellie Melba, Emma Eames, and Bessie Abott, to say nothing of the current Hilde Gueden who always leaves me cold as a sardine in the icebox.”

Portrait by Carl Van Vechten

If Dobbs has not received the popular attention her voice and accomplishments deserve, it is likely that she has been overlooked only because of the abundance of fine singers who were her contemporaries. “Sandwiched between the debuts of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price, momentous and sensational respectively, Dobbs’s bow at the house in 1956 was greeted warmly but inevitably overshadowed,” Opera News critic Ira Siff has said. “The impact was perhaps reduced even more by the advent of the big-voiced coloratura, personified by Maria Callas (who arrived at the Met a few weeks before Dobbs) and later by Joan Sutherland.” Still, Dobbs is often celebrated for what Paul Hume has called the “singular purity and radiant texture” of her voice.

In 1974, after retiring from the stage, Dobbs began a teaching career at the University of Texas, where she was the first Black artist on the faculty. She spent the 1974-75 school year as artist-in-residence at Spelman College, giving recitals and teaching master classes. In 1979 Spelman awarded honorary doctorates to both Dobbs and Marian Anderson.

Dobbs continued her teaching career as professor of voice at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. She served on the board of the Metropolitan Opera and on the National Endowment of the Arts Solo Recital Panel. Dobbs continued to give recitals until as late as 1990 before retiring to Arlington, Virginia, where she currently resides.

Sources: Wikipedia and  Opera News

Sissieretta Jones aka Black Patti (1869 – 1933) was a pioneer of Black operatic singing, and she paved the way for a long list of black opera singers to follow, including Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, Leontyne Price, and Grace Bumbry, among others.

From 1890 to 1916, Sissieretta Jones was one of the best-known and highest-paid Black singers in America. She sang for U.S. presidents and for royalty in Europe, and drew sellout crowds with her own minstrel show, Black Patti’s Troubadors. But she died nearly penniless in Providence. Born in Virginia in 1869, Matilda Sissieretta Joyner was the daughter of a minister of the African Methodist Church. The family moved to Providence in 1876, and Sissieretta attended Meeting Street and Thayer Schools in Providence.

From an early age, she sang for the public – at school functions and festivals at Pond Street Church. She married in 1883 when she was only 14, and had one child, Mabel, who died before the age of 2. Her husband, David Richmond Jones, was her manager for several years but apparently squandered and mismanaged her money. They divorced in 1899.

When she was 18, she attended the New England Conservatory in Boston, one of the best music schools in America.By 1887, Sissieretta had begun to draw public acclaim, appearing in front of 5,000 people at Boston’s Music Hall in a benefit for the Parnell Defence Fund. In 1888, she made her successful New York debut and was engaged to tour the West Indies with a Black troupe. During that tour, she was presented with the first of many medals she was often photographed wearing.

As Sissieretta’s fame grew, she began to be known as “The Black Patti,” a phrase coined by a New York City newspaper, comparing her to the great Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Although Sissieretta reportedly disliked the name, it remained with her throughout her career. In 1892, she sang for President Banjamin Harrison in the White House and starred in the Grand African Jubilee, a three-day event at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

After she signed a three-year contract with Maj. J.B. Pond, a manager of other well-known singers and lecturers such as Mark Twain and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Jones’s fees began to rise. She was paid $2,000 for a week’s appearance at the Pittsburgh Exposition, the highest fee ever paid to a Black artist. (By comparison, Adelina Patti was paid $4,000 a night.) After legal troubles involving her husband’s attempt to book appearances for her independent of Pond, Jones went to Europe for an extended tour.

She sang for the Prince of Wales and the Kaiser, and in a letter home said that she encountered much less racial prejudice in Europe. ”It matters not to them what is the color of an artist’s skin,” she wrote. “If a man or a woman is a great actor, or a great musician, or a great singer, they will extend a warm welcome. . . . It is the soul they see, not the color of the skin.”

In 1896, Jones formed her own touring company, Black Patti’s Troubadors, which toured for the next 20 years, playing Black and white audiences alike. The show included Jones’s singing as well as vaudeville and minstrel acts. Around 1916, she retired to her home in Providence. By the time she died in 1933, her savings were nearly gone and she had sold three of her four houses and most of her jewels and medals. In her final years, William Freeman, a real estate agent and president of the local chapter of the NAACP, paid her taxes, water bill and provided coal and wood.

Contributor: Jane Lancaster

Eartha Kitt established herself in film, theater, cabaret, music and on television. By the time she was 20, Eartha was a featured dancer and vocalist in the Katherine Dunham Dance Company Troupe and was touring Europe where she was seen by Orson Wells who was

Eartha Kitt and James Dean circa 1955 At Katherine Dunham studios.

quoted as calling her ”the most exciting woman in the world”. Wells hired her to play Helen of Troy in his production of Dr. Faust. When she returned to the States she was seen by Leonard Stillman, who included her in his production of New Faces of 1952. The run lasted for a year and ended up leading to her landing recording contracts. Some of her more famous songs were Love for Sale, I Want to Be Evil and Santa Baby.

Kitt made her film debut in 1957 in The Mark of the Hawk with Sidney Poitier. Her other movies during this time were Anna Lucasta with Sammy Davis, Jr. and St Louis Blues with Nat King Cole. During this time Kitt also published her first autobiography called Thursday’s Child. Then in 1967, Kitt became the third actress to play Catwoman after Julie Newmar was unable to continue for the third season of Batman.

In 1968, during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kitt encountered a significant professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. Kitt was invited to a White House luncheon and was asked by Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War. She replied: “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.” The remark reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears and led to the derailment of Ms. Kitt’s career. The public reaction to Kitt’s statements was extreme, both pro and con. Publicly ostracized in the US, she devoted her energies to performances in Europe and Asia. After which she was pretty much banned from performing in the United States and ended up having to travel overseas for work. Eartha didn’t return to the States until 1974 with a concert in Carneige Hall. In 1976 she published her second autobiography called Alone With Me. Her third autobiography was published in 1989, I’m Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten.

In 2001, she released her fitness and positive attitude book called Rejuvenate (It’s Never Too Late). Eartha’s first love was always live theater so over the next few years she did a lot of Broadway shows such as George Wolfe’s The Wild Party, National Tours The Wizard of Oz and Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella along with a few appearances in movies like Boomerang with Eddie Murphy and Harriet The Spy. She also did voice over work in animated shows like The Emperor’s New Groove, The Emperor’s New Groove 2: Kronk’s New Groove, The Emperor’s New School, The Jungle Book and My Life As A Teenage Robot to name a few.

On December 25, 2008, Eartha Kitt passed away at home from colon cancer, leaving behind her daughter Kitt from her marriage to William MacDonald from 1960 – 1964 and 2 grandchildren.

Contributors: New York Times

Stick It To The Man

What else is there to say…To read the profile of this brother please visit his site at www.myspace.com/jasirix