*On this date in 1999, publication of The Boondocks is celebrated. This is an African American adult animated sitcom. The Boondocks is created by Aaron McGruder for Cartoon Network’s late-night programming block, Adult Swim. It is based upon his comic strip of the same name. The series premiered on November 6, 2005. The show […]
learn more*Emicida, was born on this date in 1985. He is an Afro Brazilian rapper, singer, songwriter and MC. He was born Leandro Roque de Oliveira into a poor family in Sau Paulo, Brazil. His father died when Leandro was still a child, as told in the song “Ooorra …”. He composed rhymes and passed them […]
learn more*Leigh Kamman was born on this date in 1922. He was a white-American radio announcer. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota; he became intrigued with jazz in the 1930s when he was 12 years old, doing odd jobs and worked a at resort in central Minnesota. His parents and their friends would get together to […]
learn more*George P. Johnson was born on this date in 1885. He was a Black businessman, journalist and pioneer in Black cinema. George Perry Johnson and his brother Noble Johnson were raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado. George attended Hampton Institute, in Hampton, Virginia, before moving to Oklahoma, where he worked at one of the region’s early […]
learn moreMedia education producer Grady Appleton talks about the lingering racial stereotypes in media and ways to defend against them.
learn more*Günther Kaufmann was born on this date in 1947. He was a Black German Gay actor. Born in Munich, Germany Kaufmann’s Black GI father, whom he never knew, returned to the US before he was born. He was what some Germans call a “Besatzungskind“, one of the many children born between 1945 and 1949 as […]
learn more*On this date in 1919, we celebrate the founding of the Norman Film Manufacturing Company. Norman Studios was an American film studio in Jacksonville, Florida. Founded by Richard Edward Norman, the studio produced silent films featuring African American casts from 1919 to 1928. The only surviving studio from the period of early film-making in Jacksonville, […]
learn more*Suzan-Lori Parks was born on this date in 1963. She is a Black playwright, screenwriter, musician and novelist. She was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky. She grew up with two siblings in a military family. Parks enjoyed writing poems and songs and created a newspaper with her brother, called the “Daily Daily”. Parks attended high […]
learn more*Joseph Wilcots was born on this date in 1939. He was a Black Cinematographer. From Des Moines, Iowa, Joseph Morrow Wilcots was the son of Henry Nathaniel Wilcots, a janitor at the Des Moines Register newspaper. As a child Joseph’s father resolved a worker strike at the newspaper and became their business manager. His mother, […]
learn more*Blaxploitation in media (video/film) is affirmed on this date in 1971. Often called or blacksploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The films, while popular, endured backlash for disproportionate numbers of stereotypical film characters showing bad or questionable motives, including most roles as criminals resisting arrest. However, the genre does rank […]
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