Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Dr. Harold Amos, a microbiologist at the Harvard Medical School who campaigned for decades on behalf of minority scientists in higher education and was widely recognized for wielding his influence to open doors for other blacks, died on Feb. 26 in Boston. He was 84.
The cause was complications of a stroke, his family said.
Dr. Amos was the first black department chairman at the medical school, but even his hiring in 1954 as an instructor in the department of bacteriology and immunology was highly unusual, his colleagues said.
"He was the lone black person there at Harvard for a long time," said Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard.
(con't.)
Dr. Amos encouraged blacks and members of other underrepresented minorities interested in becoming scientists. He also encouraged universities to make a place for them. But perhaps most important, he urged students to consider going into teaching.
Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, emeritus president of the Morehouse School of Medicine and a former health and human services secretary, recalled being a first-year medical student at Boston University and meeting Dr. Amos. "For people like me," Dr. Sullivan said, "he was very inspiring."
Dr. Amos was also known for his work in animal cell culture, bacterial metabolism and virology, specializing in cell metabolism, including its effects on gene expression. He also helped explain the workings of DNA and RNA.
Harold Amos was born in Pennsauken, N.J. The second of nine children, he attended a two-room segregated schoolhouse, recalled Howard R. Amos, his younger brother. His father, a mail carrier, had left school in the ninth grade, but pushed his children to do better. Four earned college degrees, including Howard, a former deputy superintendent of schools in Philadelphia.
In addition to Howard, of Pennsauken, survivors include four sisters, Iola Thomas and Margaret Johnson, both of Pennsauken; Joyce Hester of Toms River, N.J.; and Florine Williams of Lawnside, N.J.
Dr. Amos received his bachelor's degree from Springfield College in Massachusetts, which he attended on scholarship......Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Over the weekend, the New York Times photojournalism blog Lens featured the work of Kamoinge, a collective of African American artists who have been documenting the African diaspora for the last forty years through photography. ColorLines: Celebrating Black America’s Resilient Love Through Photos
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Many of the photos document the daily life of black America and it’s an extraordinary look into a slice of American history.
Kamoinge was formed in 1963 to address the under-representation of black photographers in the art world. It was founded by notable African American photographers Louis Draper, Ray Francis, Herbert Randall and Albert Fennar, with Roy DeCarava serving as its first director. The word Kamoinge comes from the Kikuyu language of Kenya and means a group of people acting together.
Photos over the years range from the Civil Rights Movement and the Harlem Renaissance to artistic portraits shot inside refugee camps in Africa, and vibrant shots of musicians and athletes. It’ll be exciting to see the work of its current 24 members continue well into the 21st century.
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Thousands gathered at Prince George’s County’s Showplace Arena May 21 to see members from the “Divine Nine” organizations face off at the annual Sprite Step Off competition. Afro American: Clark Atlanta Deltas, Chicago Alphas Stomp into First Place at Sprite Step Off
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Many audience supporters donned Greek-lettered paraphernalia in support of the various organizations, including leaders of the sororities and fraternities.
At the end of the night, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s Sigma chapter from Clark Atlanta University and Alpha Phi Alpha’s Delta Xi chapter from Central State University, Chicago, took the $100,000 scholarship prizes for their dynamic step routines.
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It's about time the media started noticing this. Salon: Matt Drudge's disgusting race war awareness campaign
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Matt Drudge's non-political obsessions used to be harmless things like "extreme weather" and "pictures of Olympic wrestlers." Since the election of Barack Obama, though, Drudge -- the proto-blogger and reclusive creator of the noted Courier New tribute site the Drudge Report -- has developed a new fixation. He seems to be actively seeking out and publicizing stories of kids and young people getting in fights. Not just any people, mind you! People with something in particular in common.
It sort of started with the tale of Ashley Todd, the 20-year-old McCain campaign volunteer who claimed she was attacked by a savage, black Obama supporter, who supposedly carved the letter "B" into her face. She made the whole thing up, but her story's many inconsistencies and unlikely elements did not stop Drudge from heavily publicizing it, until it all fell apart.
Then there was the tale of the New Black Panther Party poll-watchers who "intimidated" Fox cameras in Philadelphia. You can imagine how much Drudge enjoyed that one.
Since Obama actually took office, though, Drudge has seriously stepped up his "scary black people" coverage. There was, in September of 2009, the story he heavily publicized of a kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up. A kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up is not really national news -- until Drudge makes it so. The fact that the beater was black and the victim white is why Drudge made it national news. Rush Limbaugh made the subtext explicit: "In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."
This is the narrative that Drudge is trying to create, especially on slow news weekends when there's nothing real to aggregate and post: The blacks are rising up and attacking the whites. If that sounds a bit crazy, in a Charles Manson way, then you're obviously not paying attention. Black people are angry and they're taking over! When Barack Obama was campaigning to win Chicago the Olympic games, Matt Drudge led with a terrifying photo of (black) gang violence and the breathless, all-caps headline, "OLYMPIC SPIRIT."
The violent death of a young man is definitely news ... in Chicago, where it happened. It had very little to do with whether Chicago is a suitable venue for the Olympics. Violent murders happen in big cities and small towns across the nation every day. But only some of them can be used to stoke paranoia about emboldened, angry black people rising up.
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HBCU athletic teams are disproportionately sanctioned for poor academic performance. What gives? The Root: Not Keeping Up: HBCU Athletes and Academics
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Resources, or the lack thereof, are cited as the main factor in HBCUs' lagging performances. The powerhouse programs at predominantly white institutions employ an army of academic advisers and professional tutors to help student-athletes, surrounding them with substantial infrastructure and support systems. And those student-athletes never have to take time to participate in fundraisers, or make long road trips solely to play in big-money "guarantee" games to help balance the athletic department's budget.
George Wright, president of Prairie View A&M, has seen both sides, having worked at the University of Texas and Duke before accepting his current job eight years ago. "I have often speculated about [Heisman Trophy winner] Vince Young, who went to Texas from an inner-city Houston high school," Wright told NCAA.org. "If a kid with the same academic profile as Vince Young went to Prairie View while Young goes to Texas, Young would do better over time because of the resources they can provide.
"Every administrator here at Prairie View has two jobs," he said. "That's part of the problem. Yet, if you look at our graduation rates, our athletes graduate at a higher rate than our other students do. But we often come out of this with a lower APR. We come across as seeming to not do so well with our athletes in the academic sphere."
The NCAA needs to address its formula in cases where a school might be penalized even though its athletes perform better academically than nonathletes. It also needs to take into account that some schools admit borderline students to grant them a second chance, or because they'd be the first in their family to ever attend college.
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How the US government interfered in Haiti over the years. The Nation: WikiLeaks Haiti: The Nation Partners With Haïti Liberté on Release of Secret Haiti Cables
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Drawing from a trove of 1,918 Haiti-related diplomatic cables obtained by the transparency-advocacy group WikiLeaks, The Nation is collaborating with the Haitian weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté on a series of groundbreaking articles about US and UN policy toward the Caribbean nation.
Haïti Liberté, published largely in French and Creole, is working with WikiLeaks to release and analyze the Haiti-related cables, which will be featured in a series of English-language Nation pieces, written by a variety of freelance journalists with extensive experience in Haiti and posted each Wednesday for several weeks.
The cables from US Embassies around the world cover an almost seven-year period, from April 17, 2003—ten months before the February 29, 2004, coup d’état that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—to February 28, 2010, just after the January 12 earthquake that devastated the capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding cities. They range from “Secret” and “Confidential” classifications to “Unclassified.” Cables of the latter classification are not public, and many are marked “For Official Use Only” or “Sensitive.”
The cables that form the basis of the articles in this series are being published in their entirety on the WikiLeaks site. However, in some cases, names will be redacted for safety reasons.
While not revealing any intelligence or military operations, and not comprising a complete set of all Port-au-Prince Embassy communiqués, the cables offer a penetrating look into US strategies and maneuvering in Haiti during the brutal coup years (2004–2006) and the period after President René Préval’s election (2006–2010). We see Washington’s obsession with keeping Aristide out of Haiti and the hemisphere; the microscope it trained on rebellious neighborhoods like Bel Air and Cité Soleil; and its tight supervision of Haiti’s police and of the United Nations’ 9,000-man military occupation known as the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).
Also: How the US tried—and failed—to scuttle a Venezuelan oil deal even though it would bring huge benefits to Haiti's impoverished people.
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