On the weekend of June 14 to June 15, 2014, U.S. Special Forces captured Ahmed Abu Khattala in a covert mission in Libya. Khattala was one of the suspected leaders of the 2012 Benghazi attack on the American embassy.
Ahmed Abu Khattala (born c. 1971) was a Islamist militia commander in Libya, a commander of Ansar al-Sharia militia. He is suspected of participating in the 2012 Benghazi attack on the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, in which the American Ambassador and three other Americans were killed. In a December 2013 investigation of the attack, the New York Times described Abu Khattala as a central figure. However, Abu Khattala denied killing the Americans or being part of the attack.
Abu Khattala spent most of his adult life in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, jailed by the Qaddafi government for his Islamist views. During the 2011 uprising against Qaddafi in Libya, he formed his own militia of perhaps two dozen fighters, naming it Obeida Ibn Al Jarra for an early Islamic general. He later became involved in Ansar al-Shariah, a group of as many as 200 militants who, had broken away from the other militias in 2012 in protest of those militia's support for parliamentary elections in Libya. Abu Khattala opposed American involvement in Libya and in interviews with the New York Times stated that “the enmity between the American government and the peoples of the world is an old case.” In regards to the role of the air campaign of NATO that overthrew Colonel Qaddafi, he believed that if NATO had not intervened, “God would have helped us.” He also claimed that, “We know the United States was working with both sides” and considering “splitting up" Libya.
Witnesses of the September 11, 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi say they saw Abu Khattala leading the attack. On August 6, 2013, United States officials confirmed that Abu Khattala had been charged with playing a significant role in the attack.
On the weekend of June 14 to June 15, 2014, U.S. Special Forces captured Abu Khattala in a covert mission in Libya. Khattala is one of the suspected leaders of the 2012 Benghazi attack.
Awards
Lupita Nyong'o won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the brutalized slave Patsey in 12 Years a Slave.
Lupita Amondi Nyong'o (born March 1, 1983) is an actress and music video director of dual Kenyan and Mexican citizenship. She made her feature film debut in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013) as Patsey, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, among numerous other awards and nominations. She is one of the few actors who has won an Academy Award for their debut performance in a feature film.
Nyong'o was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to Dorothy and Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, a politician in Kenya. It is a Luo tradition to name a child after the events of the day, so her parents named her Lupita (a diminutive of "Guadalupe" Our Lady of Guadalupe). She is of completely Luo descent on both sides of her family, and is the second of six children. Her father was the former Kenyan Minister for Medical Services. At the time of Lupita's birth, he was a visiting lecturer in political science at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City, and her family had been living in Mexico for three years.
Nyong'o moved back to Kenya with her parents when she was less than one year old, when her father was appointed a professor at the University of Nairobi. She grew up primarily in Kenya, and describes her upbringing as "middle class, suburban". At age sixteen, her parents sent her back to Mexico for seven months to learn Spanish. During those seven months, Nyong'o lived in Taxco, Mexico, and took classes at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico's Learning Center for Foreigners.
In 2013, her father was elected to represent Kisumu County in the Kenyan Senate. Nyong'o's mother was the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation and owned her own communications company. In 2012, her older cousin, Isis Nyong'o, was named one of Africa's most powerful women by Forbes magazine. Her uncle, Aggrey Nyong'o, a prominent Kenyan physician, was killed in a road accident in 2002.
She was fluent in her native Luo, English, Swahili and Spanish. On February 27, 2014, at the Essence Black Women In Hollywood luncheon in Beverly Hills, Lupita gave a speech on black beauty. Lupita talked about a letter she received from a young fan who stated she was unhappy with herself until she saw the actress on the cover of a magazine. In her speech, Lupita talked about the insecurities she had about herself as a teenager; growing up as a dark skinned black girl, women that looked like her were barely portrayed in the media and when they were, they were not deemed as being beautiful. She said her views about herself changed when she saw South Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek become successful.
Nyong'o grew up in an artistic family, where family get-togethers often included performances by the children in the family and trips to see plays. She attended an all-girls school in Kenya and acted in school plays, with a minor role in Oliver Twist being her first play. At age 14, Nyong'o made her professional acting debut as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in a production by the Nairobi, Kenya-based repertory company Phoenix Players. While a member of the Phoenix Players, Nyong'o also performed in the plays "On The Razzle" and "There Goes The Bride". Nyong'o cites the performances of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple with inspiring her to pursue a professional acting career.
Nyong'o attended college in the United States. After graduating from Hampshire College with a degree in film and theatre studies, she worked on the production crew of many films, including Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes, Mira Nair's The Namesake, and Salvatore Stabile's Where God Left His Shoes. She cites Fiennes as another individual who inspired her to pursue a professional acting career.
She starred in the 2008 short film East River, directed by Marc Grey and shot in Brooklyn, New York. She returned to Kenya in 2008 and starred in the Kenyan television series Shuga, an MTV Base Africa/UNICEF drama about HIV/AIDS prevention. In 2009, she wrote, directed, and produced the documentary In My Genes, about the treatment of Kenya's albino population, which played at several film festivals and won first prize at the 2008 Five College Film Festival. Nyong'o also directed the The Little Things You Do music video by Wahu featuring Bobi Wine, which was nominated for the Best Video Award at the MTV Africa Music Awards 2009.
Nyong'o subsequently enrolled in the acting program at the Yale School of Drama. At Yale she appeared in many stage productions, including Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale. While at Yale, she was the recipient of the Herschel Williams Prize "awarded to acting students with outstanding ability" during the 2011–2012 school year.
Nyong'o landed her breakout role when she was cast in 12 Years a Slave immediately before graduating from Yale with an MFA in 2012. The film was released in 2013 to great critical acclaim. Nyong'o received rave reviews for her performance, and was nominated for several awards including a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and two Screen Actors Guild Awards including Best Supporting Actress, which she won. She also co-starred in Liam Neeson's 2014 film Non-Stop.
On March 2, 2014, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the sixth black actress to win the award.
In 2014, she was chosen as one of the faces for Miu Miu's Spring 2014 campaign, with Elizabeth Olsen, Elle Fanning and Bella Heathcote. She also appeared on the covers of several magazines, including New York's Spring 2014 fashion issue and UK magazine Dazed & Confused. She was also a regular on Harper's Bazaar's Derek Blasberg's Best Dressed List.
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Beatrice Mtetwa was named an International Woman of Courage by the United States Department of State.
Beatrice Mtetwa is a Zimbabwean lawyer who has been internationally recognized for her defense of journalists and press freedom. The New York Times described her in 2008 as "Zimbabwe's top human rights lawyer".
Mtetwa received her LLB from the University of Botswana and Swaziland in 1981 and spent the next two years working as a prosecuting attorney in Swaziland. In 1983, she moved to Zimbabwe, where she continued working as a prosecutor until 1989. That year, she went into private practice, and soon began specializing in human rights law. In one of her more notable cases, she successfully challenged a section of Zimbabwe's Private Voluntary Organizations Act which allowed a government minister the authority to dissolve or replace the board members of non-governmental organizations. She also challenged the results of 37 districts in the 2000 parliamentary elections. In a PBS documentary, Mtetwa described her motives for her activism as "not because there is any glory or cash to it and not because I'm trying to antagonize the government... I'm doing it because it's a job that's got to be done".
Mtetwa is particularly noted for her defense of arrested journalists, both local and international. In 2003, for example, she won a court order preventing the deportation of Guardian reporter Andrew Meldrum, presenting it to security officials at Harare International Airport only minutes before Meldrum's plane was scheduled to depart. She also won acquittals for detained reporters Toby Hamden and Julian Simmonds from London's Sunday Telegraph, who had been arrested during coverage of the April parliamentary election on charges of working without government accreditation. In April 2008, she secured the release of New York Times reporter Barry Bearak, who had been imprisoned on similar charges. She also defended many local journalists arrested in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.
In 2003, Mtetwa was arrested on allegations of drunk driving. At the police station, she was reportedly beaten and choked before being released three hours later without a formal charge. Though unable to speak for two days after the attack, she returned on the third day with a folder of medical evidence in order to file charges against the police officers who assaulted her. Police officers reportedly attacked Mtetwa again in 2007, beating her and three colleagues with rubber truncheons during a march protesting harassment of Zimbabwe's lawyers.
In an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Mtetwa described her procedure for averting potential attacks:
"I think I confront the danger immediately before it happens. I always make sure that if, for instance, I'm called in the middle of the night to a scene that is potentially dangerous, I make sure that there are as many media practitioners as possible, particularly to record what will happen there. And in the glare of cameras I find that people don't want to do what they would want to do. So in a lot of ways I think I've been lucky, and I haven't received as much harassment as one would have expected, or as much as other human rights defenders have had."
In 2005, she won the Interantional Press Freedom Award of the Committed to Protect Journalists. The award citation stated that "in a country where the law is used as a weapon against independent journalists, Mtetwa has defended journalists and argued for press freedom, all at great personal risk." She also won the group's Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.
Mtetwa was also received several awards from legal organizations. In 2009, the European Bar Human Rights Institute awarded her the Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize ("The award given by lawyers to a lawyer"), reserved each year to a lawyer who throughout his or her career has illustrated, by activity or suffering, the defense of human rights in the world. Mtetwa also won the 2010 International Human Rights award of the American Bar Association. In 2011, she was awarded the Inamori Ethics Prize by Case Western Reserve University in the United States. And, most recently (2014), she was named a recipient of the International Women of Courage Award that is annually given out by the United States Department of State to women around the world who have shown leadership, courage, resourcefulness and willingness to sacrifice for others, especially for better promotion of women's rights.
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Mutaz Barshim, an African Arab from Qatar, leaped 2.43 meters at a meet in Brussels.
Mutaz Essa Barshim (Arabic: معتز عيسى برشم; b. 24 June 1991) is a Qatari track and field athlete who specializes in the high jump. He is the national record and Asian record holder with a best mark of 2.43 m (7 ft 111⁄2 in). He was the Asian Indoor and World Junior champion in 2010. He won the high jump gold medals at the 2011 Asian Athletics Championships and 2011 Military World Games, and he won the bronze medal at the 2012 Olympic Games held in London, with a height of 2.29 m (7' 6"). He jumps off his left foot, using the Fosbury Flop technique, with a pronounced backwards arch over the bar.
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Maya Angelou, original name Marguerite Annie Johnson (born April 4, 1928, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died May 28, 2014, Winston-Salem, North Carolina), American poet, memoirist, and actress whose several volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression.
Although born in St. Louis, Angelou spent much of her childhood in the care of her paternal grandmother in rural Stamps, Arkansas. When she was not yet eight years old, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and told of it, after which he was murdered; the traumatic sequence of events left her almost completely mute for several years. This early life is the focus of her first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969; TV movie 1979), which gained critical acclaim and a National Book Award nomination. Subsequent volumes of autobiography include Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002), and Mom & Me & Mom (2013).
In 1940, Angelou moved with her mother to San Francisco and worked intermittently as a cocktail waitress, a prostitute and madam, a cook, and a dancer. It was as a dancer that she assumed her professional name. Moving to New York City in the late 1950s, Angelou found encouragement for her literary talents at the Harlem Writers’ Guild. About the same time, Angelou landed a featured role in a State Department-sponsored production of George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess; with this troupe she toured 22 countries in Europe and Africa. She also studied dance with Martha Graham and Pearl Primus. In 1961, she performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks. That same year she was persuaded by a South African dissident to whom she was briefly married to move to Cairo, where she worked for the Arab Observer. She later moved to Ghana and worked on The African Review.
Angelou returned to California in 1966 and wrote Black, Blues, Black (aired 1968), a 10-part television series about the role of African culture in American life. As the writer of the movie drama Georgia, Georgia (1972), she became one of the first African American women to have a screenplay produced as a feature film. She also acted in such movies as Poetic Justice (1993) and How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and appeared in several television productions, including the miniseries Roots (1977). Angelou received a Tony Award nomination for her performance in Look Away (1973), despite the fact that the play closed on Broadway after only one performance. In 1998 she made her directorial debut with Down in the Delta (1998).
Angelou’s poetry, collected in such volumes as Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (1971), And Still I Rise (1978), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), drew heavily on her personal history but employed the points of view of various personae. She also wrote a book of meditations, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993), and children’s books that include My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken and Me (1994), Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (1998), and the Maya’s World series, which was published in 2004–05 and featured stories of children from various parts of the world. Angelou dispensed anecdote-laden advice to women in Letter to My Daughter (2008); her only biological child was male.
In 1981 Angelou, who was often referred to as “Dr. Angelou” despite her lack of a college education, became a professor of American studies at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Among numerous honors was her invitation to compose and deliver a poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,
” for the inauguration of United States President Bill Clinton in 1993. She celebrated the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in the poem “A Brave and Startling Truth
” (1995) and elegized Nelson Mandela in the poem “His Day Is Done
” (2013), which was commissioned by the United States State Department and released in the wake of the South African leader’s death. In 2011 Angelou was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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Marvin Jerome Barnes (July 27, 1952 – September 8, 2014) was an American professional basketball player. As a 6'8" forward, Barnes played at Providence College. In 1973, he became the first player to score 10 times on 10 field goal attempts in the NCAA playoffs, and remains tied for second behind Kenny Walker, who went 11-for-11 in 1986. He led the nation in rebounding in 1973-74. On December 15, 1973, Barnes scored 52 points against Austin Peay, breaking the single-game school record. He was drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers with the second overall pick in the first round of the 1974 NBA Draft and by the Spirits of St. Louis in the 1974 ABA Draft. Barnes opted for the ABA and played for the Spirits in the American Basketball Association (ABA) from 1974 to 1976 before playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1976 to 1980. He had his greatest success in the ABA, where he starred for the Spirits and was named Rookie of the Year for the 1974–75 season. He also shares the ABA record for most two-point field goals in a game, with 27. In 2005, the ABA 2000, the second incarnation of the ABA, named one of their divisions after him.
Barnes' nickname, "Bad News," came from his frequent off-court problems, which began when he was a senior at Central High School. He was part of a gang that attempted to rob a bus. He was quickly identified as he was wearing his state championship jacket with his name embroidered on it. His case was handled by the juvenile justice system. In 1972, while playing center for Providence College, he attacked a teammate with a tire iron. He later pled guilty to assault, paid the victim $10,000 and was placed on probation. He violated probation in October 1976 when an unloaded gun was found in his bag at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, and served 152 days in Rhode Island state prison. Upon release he returned to the Detroit Pistons. He was arrested for burglary, drug possession, and trespassing. Because of his drug use, his NBA career was cut short and he wound up homeless in San Diego, California, in the early 1980s. After multiple rehab programs, he started reaching out to youth in South Providence, where he grew up, urging them not to make the same mistakes he had.
In March 2008, Providence College retired his jersey, honoring him along with Ernie DiGregorio and Jimmy Walker. He co-held (with MarShon Brooks) the school single-game scoring record of 52 points. On September 8, 2014, Barnes died at the age of 62.
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Marion Barry, in full Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr. (b. March 6, 1936, Itta Bena, Mississippi, U.S.— d. November 23, 2014, Washington, D.C.), American civil rights activist and politician who served four terms as mayor of Washington, D.C. Barry received a bachelor’s degree from LeMoyne College (1958) and a master’s degree from Fisk University (1960). He was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was selected as its first national chairman. In 1971 Barry was elected to the Washington, D.C., city school board and in 1974 won a seat on the city council. He was elected mayor in 1978 and twice won reelection, in 1982 and 1986, serving as a strong advocate of statehood for the District of Columbia. In 1990 Barry was convicted of a misdemeanor drug charge and sentenced to six months in prison. Following his release from prison, Barry reentered politics in Washington, D.C., winning a seat on the city council in 1992. In 1994 he was once again elected mayor; he left office after his term expired. In 2004 he was elected to the Washington, D.C., city council, and he was reelected in 2008 and 2012. He wrote (with Omar Tyree) the autobiography Mayor for Life (2014).
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Malik Bendjelloul (September 14, 1977 – May 13, 2014) was a Swedish Academy-Award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and former child actor. He is best known for his 2012 documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, which won an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award.
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Fr̩d̩ric Bruly Bouabr̩, also known as Cheik Nadro (11 March 1923 Р28 January 2014),[1] was an Ivorian artist.
Bouabré was born in Zépréguhé, Ivory Coast, and was among the first Ivorians to be educated by the French colonial government. On 11 March 1948, he received a vision, which directly influenced much of his later work. Bouabré created many of his hundreds of small drawings while working as a clerk in various government offices. These drawings depict many different subjects, mostly drawn from local folklore; some also describe his own visions. All the drawings are part of a larger cycle, titled World Knowledge. Bouabré also created a 448-letter, universal Bété syllabary, which he used to transcribe the oral tradition of his people, the Bétés. His visual language is portrayed on some 1,000 small cards using ballpoint pens and crayons, with symbolic imagery surrounded by text, each carrying a unique divinatory message and comments on life and history.[2]
Many of Bouabré's drawings are in The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) of Meshac Gaba. One of his emblematic drawings is saved in the L'appartement 22 collection on the African continent: "Une divine peinture relevée sur le corps d'une mandarine jaunie", made by Bouabré in 1994 in Abidjan.
- 2022: Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound, Museum of Modern Art, New York[3]
- 2013: Venice Biennale, Italy.
- 2012: Inventing the world: the artist as citizen, Biennale Bénin, Cotonou, Bénin.
- 2010–2011: Tate Modern, London, UK
- 2010: African Stories, Marrakech Art Fair, Marrakech
- 2007: Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK
- 2007: Why Africa?, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin, Italy
- 2006: 100% Africa, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
- 2005: Arts of Africa, Grimaldi Forum, Monaco, France
- 2004–2007: Africa Remix, the touring show started on 24 July 2004 at the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf (Germany), and travelled to the Hayward Gallery in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.
- 2003: Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Musée Champollion, Figeac, France
- 2002: Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany
- 2001–2002: The Short Century was an exhibition held in Munich, Berlin, Chicago and New York, organised by a team headed by Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor
- 1996: Neue Kunst aus Africa, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germania
- 1995: Galerie des Cinq Continents, Musée des arts d’Afrique et d'Océanie, Paris, France
- 1995: Dialogues de Paix, Palais des Nations, Geneve, Switzerland
- 1994: Rencontres Africaines, the touring exhibition was shown at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, Cidade do Cabo in Sud Africa, Museum Africa in Johannesburg and in Lisbon(Portugal).
- 1994: World Envisioned, together with Alighiero Boetti, the exhibition hwas shown in DIA Center for the Arts in New York and American Center in Paris
- 1993: Trésor de Voyage, Biennale di Venezia in Venice (Italy)
- 1993: Azur, Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Jouy-en-Josas (France)
- 1993: La Grande Vérité: les Astres Africains, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes (France)
- 1993: Grafolies, Biennale d’Abidjan in Abidjan (Ivory Coast)
- 1992: A Visage Découvert, Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Jouy-en-Josas (France)
- 1992: Oh Cet Echo!, Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris
- 1992: Out of Africa, Saatchi Collection in London
- 1992: L'Art dans la Cuisine, St. Gallen in Sweden
- 1992: Resistances, Watari-Um for Contemporary Art, in Tokyo
- 1991: Africa Hoy/Africa Now, the touring exhibition has shown in Centro de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), Gröninger Museum in Groningen (Netherlands), Centro de arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City
- 1989: Magiciens de la Terre, Centre Georges Pompidou and Grande halle de la Villette in Paris
- 1989: Waaah! Far African Art, Courtrai in Belgium
- 1986: L'Afrique e la Lettre, Centre Culturel Français, Lagos in Nigeria
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Roy Sinclair Campbell, Jr. (September 29, 1952 – January 9, 2014) was an American trumpeter frequently linked to free jazz, although he also performed rhythm and blues, bebop and funk at times during his career.
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Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (May 6, 1937 – April 20, 2014) was an American middleweight boxer who was wrongly convicted of murder and later freed via a petition of habeas corpus after spending almost 20 years in prison.
In 1966, police arrested both Carter and friend John Artis for a triple-homicide committed in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. Police stopped Carter's car and brought him and Artis, also in the car, to the scene of the crime. On searching the car, the police found ammunition that fit the weapons used in the murder. Police took no fingerprints at the crime scene and lacked the facilities to conduct a paraffin test for gunshot residue. Carter and Artis were tried and convicted twice (1967 and 1976) for the murders, but after the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time.
Carter's autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round, was published in 1975 by Warner Books. The story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane (with Denzel Washington playing Carter). From 1993 to 2005, Carter served as executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.
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William "Bunny Rugs" Clarke (February 6, 1948, Mandeville, Jamaica – February 2, 2014, Orlando, Florida, United States), also known as Bunny Scott, was the lead singer of Jamaican reggae band Third World as well as recording as a solo artist. He began his career in the mid-1960s and was also at one time a member of Inner Circle and half of the duo Bunny & Ricky.
The discography of William "Bunny Rugs" Clarke include the following:
Albums
- To Love Somebody (1975), Klik - as Bunny Scott
- Talking to You (1995), Greensleeves/Shanachie
- Bunny Rugs On Soul (2000), DFP Music
- What a World (2006), Elite Music Group
- I'm Sure (2007), CED
- Time (2012), VPAL
- Compilations
Singles
- "Let Love Touch Us Now"/"I Am I Said" (1982), Black Ark International - 12-inch, credited as 'Bunny Rags'
- "Be Thank Full" (19??), Belleville International
- "War, War, War" (198?), Black Scorpio
- "Bridges Instead" (1990), Two Friends - 12-inch, Shabba Ranks featuring Bunny Rugs
- "Here Comes Rudie" (1991), Exterminator - Gregory Isaacs & Bunny Rugs
- "Rude Boy" (1991), Xterminator - Tony Rebel, Gregory Isaacs, and Bunny Rugs
- "If I Follow My Heart" (1993), Tuff Gong
- "I'm The Ghetto" (1993), Leggo
- "Stand By Me" (1994), Shanachie - Bunny Rugs & Papa San
- "Stand By Me" (1994), Black Scorpio - Papa San & Bunny Rugs, B-side of Papa San's "Girls Every Day"
- "Now That We've Found Love" (1995), Greensleeves - 12-inch
- "Now That We Found Love" (1995), Black Scorpio - featuring Sean Paul
- "Now That We Found Love" (1995), Shanachie
- "Apartheid No!"
- "I'll Be There" (2002), Joe Frasier
- "What a World" (2004), Raw Edge
- "Marcus Garvey" (2004), Mister Tipsy
- "Writings on the Wall" (2005), Elogic Music Group - Wayne Marshall & Bunny Rugs
- "Now That We've Found Love" (2006), CED - CD maxi single
- "World Today" (2007), Hyper-Active Entertainment
- "Down in the Ghetto" (2007), Taxi - Bounty Killer & Bunny Rugs
- "Satamassagana" (20??), Coptic Lion - featuring Tappa Zukie
- Excerpts from the album Time EP (2011)
- "Big May" (2012), Black Swan/Trojan
- "Land We Love" (2012)
- With Bunny & Ricky
- "Freedom Fighter" (1974), Black Art
- "Bushweed Corntrash" (1975), Black Art
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Comer Joseph Cottrell (b. December 7, 1931, Mobile, Alabama - d. October 3, 2014, Dallas, Texas) was the founder of Pro-Line Corporationand philanthropist Comer Joseph Cottrell was born December 7, 1931 in Mobile, Alabama. His parents, Comer J., Sr. and Helen Smith Cottrell were Catholics. As a youngster, Cottrell and his brother, Jimmy, turned a pair of bunnies into a business, including selling their progeny as Easter bunnies, meat and fur. Cottrell attended Heart of Mary Elementary and Secondary Schools. At age seventeen, Cottrell joined the United States Air Force where he attained the rank of First Sergeant and managed an Air Force PX in Okinawa. Cottrell attended the University of Detroit before leaving the service in 1954. He joined Sears Roebuck in 1964 and rose to the position of division manager in Los Angeles, California.
In 1968, with an initial investment of $600.00, Cottrell and a friend got into the black hair care business. Then, with his brother, Jimmy, Cottrell manufactured strawberry scented oil sheen for Afro hairstyles and founded Pro-Line Corporation in 1970. By 1973, he made his first million dollars in sales. In 1979, Cottrell took the $200.00 “Jerry Curl” out of the beauty shop and into black homes with his $8.00 Pro-Line “Curly Kit”, which increased his sales from one million dollars a year to ten million dollars in the first six months. Shortly thereafter Cottrell moved Pro-Line to Dallas, Texas. At the top of the ethnic hair care business, Cottrell became a part owner, with George W. Bush of the Texas Rangers professional baseball team in 1989; turning a $3 million dollar profit on a $500,000.00 investment. He recently founded FCC Investment Corporation.
In 1990, he purchased and restored the 131-acre, HBCU, Bishop College campus for $1.5 million and transferred it to A.M.E. Paul Quinn College. Cottrell is a trustee of Northwood University and a member of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, the North Texas Commission, and the Dallas Citizens Council. He is the former chairman of the Texas Cosmetology Commission and vice chair of the Texas Youth Commission. He has been a board member or officer of NAACP, National Urban League, YMCA, Dallas Family Hospital, Better Business Bureau, Compton College Foundation, Paul Quinn College and Baylor University Foundation. Cottrell was former vice chair of the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce. Recipient of scores of awards, Cottrell hosted a yearly “Taste of Cottrell” event in Dallas.
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Judith Cummings (December 27, 1945, Detroit, Michigan - May 6, 2014, Detroit, Michigan) was the first black woman to head a national news bureau for The New York Times, serving as chief correspondent in Los Angeles from 1985 to 1988.
Cummings was born on December 27, 1945, in Detroit and attended Howard University, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1967.
In 1971, her career in journalism began after she was recruited by the Times in their minority training program. Prior to this, she was a speech writer for Clifford L. Alexander Jr., the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, D.C.
From 1972 to 1979, Cummings was a general assignment reporter for the Times, where she covered crime and major events in New York City. Unsatisfied with the fact that Blacks and other minorities were pigeonholed into covering local beats, she joined others in filing a federal lawsuit against the paper for neglecting to promote journalists of color to cover national stories.
The Times agreed in a settlement to expand their minority hiring, training and promotional practices. Cummings became a correspondent for the Los Angeles area in September 1981 and became the bureau chief four years later.
In 1988, Cummings retired to care for her parents.
*****
Ruby Dee, byname of Ruby Ann Wallace (b. October 27, 1922, Cleveland, Ohio, - d. June 11, 2014, New Rochelle, New York), was an American actress and social activist who was known for her pioneering work in African American theatre and film and for her outspoken civil rights activism. Dee’s artistic partnership with her husband, Ossie Davis, was considered one of the theatre and film world’s most distinguished.
After completing her studies at Hunter College in Manhattan, Dee served an apprenticeship with the American Negro Theatre and began appearing on Broadway. She met Davis on the set of the play Jeb and married him in 1948. She often appeared with her husband in plays, films, and television shows over the next 50 years. Among Davis and Dee’s most notable joint stage appearances were those in A Raisin in the Sun (1959; Dee also starred in the film version in 1961) and the satiric Purlie Victorious (1961), which Davis wrote; Davis and Dee also appeared in the film version of the latter (Gone Are the Days, 1963). The couple acted in several movies by director Spike Lee, including Do the Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991). Among their television credits are Roots: The Next Generation (1978), Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum (1986), and The Stand (1994). The couple’s partnership extended into their activism as well; they served as master and mistress of ceremonies for the 1963 March on Washington, which they had helped organize.
Dee continued to act into the early 21st century, and her later films include The Way Back Home (2006) and American Gangster (2007). Her performance as the mother of a drug kingpin (played by Denzel Washington) in the latter film earned Dee her first Academy Award nomination. She also appeared in numerous television productions, notably Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel. In addition to her acting, Dee authored several books. Dee and Davis were jointly awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1995 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2004.
*****
Jean-Claude Duvalier, byname Baby Doc, French Bébé Doc (born July 3, 1951, Port-au-Prince, Haiti—died October 4, 2014, Port-au-Prince), president of Haiti from 1971 to 1986.
The only son of Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier, Jean-Claude succeeded his father as president for life in April 1971, becoming at age 19 the youngest president in the world. Partly because of pressure from the United States to moderate the tyrannical and corrupt practices of his father’s regime, Duvalier instituted budgetary and judicial reforms, replaced a few older cabinet members with younger men, released some political prisoners, and eased press censorship, professing a policy of “gradual democratization of institutions.”
Nevertheless, no sharp changes from previous policies occurred. No political opposition was tolerated, and all important political officials and judges were still appointed by the president. Under Duvalier, Haiti continued a semi-isolationist approach to foreign relations, although the government actively solicited foreign aid to stimulate the economy.
Duvalier graduated from secondary school in Port-au-Prince and briefly attended law school at the University of Haiti. In 1980 he married Michèle Bennett, who later supplanted Duvalier’s hard-line mother, Simone, in Haitian politics. In the face of increasing social unrest, however, Duvalier and his wife left the country in February 1986, and a military council headed the country for several years. From 1986 Duvalier resided in France, despite the urging of Haitian authorities that he be extradited to stand trial for human rights abuses.
Duvalier returned to Haiti in January 2011, one year after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Two days later, Duvalier was taken into custody by authorities for questioning regarding alleged corruption and embezzlement during his rule; he was subsequently released. He remained in Haiti but refused several times to appear for hearings on human rights violations he was alleged to have committed while president. In late February 2013, Duvalier was taken before a pretrial hearing to face questioning on those charges.
Duvalier died in his home of a heart attack on October 4, 2014.
*****
James Albert "Jimmy" Ellis (February 24, 1940 – May 6, 2014) was an American boxer from Louisville, Kentucky in what many call boxing's golden era. Fellow top heavyweights included Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Ken Norton, Floyd Patterson, Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, George Chuvalo, Jimmy Young, Ron Lyle, Buster Mathis, Cleveland Williams, and Earnie Shavers, among others.
Ellis held the WBA World Heavyweight Championship from 1968 to 1970. He was a skilled boxer with a good chin and much better punching power than many expected.
*****
William Greaves (October 8, 1926 – August 25, 2014) was a documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of African-American filmmaking. He produced over two hundred documentary films, having written and directed more than half of them. Greaves garnered many accolades for his work, including four Emmy ominations.
Greaves was born in Harlem in New York City on October 8, 1926. He was one of seven children of taxi driver and minister Garfield Greaves and the former Emily Muir. After graduating from the elite Stuyvesant High School at the age of eighteen, Greaves attended City College of New York to study science and engineering, but eventually dropped out to pursue a career in theater. Starting as a dancer, he eventually moved into acting, working in the American Negro Theater.
n 1948, Greaves joined The Actor's Studio and studied alongside the likes of Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Anthony Quinn, Shelley Winters and others. During this time, he undertook a number of roles on the stage and in the theater, but eventually grew dissatisfied with the roles in which he was being cast. Realizing that most of the parts he could play were stereotype and derivative due to racism prevalent throughout American culture at the time, Greaves looked into African-American history. Seeing his opportunities limited were he to continue to stay in America and focus on his planned course of acting, Greaves sought and attempted his hand at movie making, electing to move to Canada and study at the National Film Board of Canada.
After six years working in various stages of production from director to editing, Greaves found himself behind the camera as director and editor of a film called Emergency Ward, which focused on the goings-on of a hospital emergency room on a Sunday evening.
As the 1960s saw the rise of the American Civil Rights Movement, Greaves returned to The United States to participate in the ongoing discourse regarding African-Americans and their place in society. Based on his work on Emergency Ward, Greaves was hired by both the United Nations and the film division of the United States Information Agency (USIA) to make several documentaries, the two most acclaimed of which were Wealth of a Nation, which was an examination of personal freedom as a key boon to America's strength, and The First World Festival of Negro Arts, which documented a celebration of the mixture of both African and African American culture.
In 1969, following soon after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., public broadcasting channel National Educational Television (a direct predecessor to the modern day PBS) began to air a show called Black Journal under the aegis of presenting news by African Americans, for African Americans, and about African Americans. After a tumultuous opening during the first few tapings, the NET network promoted Greaves (a co-host at the time) to executive producer of the show. Greaves ran the show until 1970, winning the show and himself an Emmy award for his work on the program in 1969.
In 1970, after working on Black Journal for three years, Greaves opted to leave television to focus on film making. In 1971, he released a film titled Ali, the Fighter, which focused on Muhammad Ali's first attempt to regain his professional boxing heavyweight title. Greaves then went on to produce and make films for various commissions and government agencies, including NASA and the Civil Service Commission.
After this, Greaves produced numerous works, including From These Roots; Nationtime: Gary, Where Dreams Come True; Booker T.Washington: Life and Legacy; Frederick Douglass: An American Life; Black Power in America: Myth or Reality?; The Deep North; and Ida B. Wells: An American Odyssey, which was narrated by Nobel Prize in Literature and Pulitzer Prize recipient, Toni Morrison.
In 2001, Greaves released one of his most ambitious works Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey. According to Greaves, between attempting to secure funds and researching countless old manuscripts, photos, and newsreel footage, the film took him ten years to make. The final product was edited down from an initial cut of seventeen hours to two hours for the PBS show American Odyssey. The final project, narrated by Sidney Poitier, sought to bring the name of Ralph Bunche back into the public lexicon as Greaves felt he was an important, yet forgotten, political figure; one important to African American history and the Civil Rights movement.
While working on Black Journal, Greaves continued to produce films out of his own production company, William Greaves Productions, which he had founded in 1964. One of the films he produced in this time period was a documentary which blended his fascination with the acting process with documentary film, which he called Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, an experimental, avant-garde film that he shot in the growing-in-popularity cinema verite documentary style.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, which was shot in 1968, takes place in Central Park in New York City and follows a documentary titled Over the Cliff, one supposedly directed by Greaves himself and focusing on different pairs of actors who prepare to audition for a dramatic piece. What makes the film complicated are the three sets of camera crews Greaves employs to document this audition process. The first is told to film the actors in an effort to document the audition process. The second is told to document the first film crew. The third is told to document the actors, the remaining two crews, and any other passers-by or spectators who happen to fit into Over the Cliff's overarching theme of "sexuality".
As the film goes on, the various film crews start to grow irritated at what they perceive is an incompetent and sexist (or perhaps even misogynistic) director in Greaves. Torn between whether or not this entire situation is a plot by Greaves or not, the crews find themselves divided against Greaves, at one point even plotting a revolt against their director. All of their doubts, insecurities, complaints, etc. are captured on film, and, when the project is complete, they turn all of their footage over to Greaves (including the incriminating evidence). Greaves, in turn incorporates their footage into his final product.
Through all of this, Greaves creates a giant circular meta-documentary featuring a documentary, a documentary about a documentary, and a documentary documenting a documentary about a documentary and all in the attempt of creating and capturing reality on film. To add to the coherence or incoherence of the piece, the film is also edited untraditionally, with the different cameras' various shots intercut in split screens so that all three sets of simultaneous footage display the same sequence but from three perspectives.
While undeniably unique and special, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm was unable to find mainstream distribution and instead toured various festivals and museum screenings, gaining something of a cult status amongst those film makers who had seen it. It eventually caught the eye of famous actor and filmmaker Steve Buscemi who saw it at a screening at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. Ten years later, Buscemi and director Stephen Soderbergh teamed up to secure widespread distribution for the film as well as financing for the making of one of the four sequels Greaves had considered once he had finished the initial product in the late Sixties.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm was finally released theatrically under its new title Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One alongside its sequel, Symbiopsychotaxipasm: Take 2½, in 2003. The sequel focused on two of the actors from the original and picks up the narrative of the original film some thirty five years later.
On August 23, 1959, Greaves married Louise Archambault, who became a frequent collaborator on his projects, going so far as to even produce his documentary on Ralph Bunche. They had three children: David, Taiyi, and Maiya.
Between 1969 and 1982, Greaves taught film and television acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York.
While not working, Greaves could be found touring various universities and cultural centers around the world presenting his films, conducting workshops, and speaking about his experiences in indie film and the process of creating film as it is to actors, directors, professionals, and more.
Greaves died at the age of 87 at his home in Manhattan on August 25, 2014.
Besides the Emmy Greaves won for his work as executive producer of Black Journal in 1969, Greaves was nominated for an Emmy for his work Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class which also won the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film Festival. Beyond these, many of Greaves' films have played at festivals and garnered numerous awards with certain films (such as Ida B. Wells) winning upwards of twenty awards across the many venues at which they have been played.
In 1980, Greaves was honored alongside Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Marlon Brando, Arthur Penn, Sally Field, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, Shelley Winters, Dustin Hoffman, Estelle Parsons and Ellen Burstyn with the Actors Studio in New York's first ever Dusa Award. Also in the same year, Greaves was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and received a special homage at the first Black American Independent Film Festival in Paris. In 2008, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival honored him with its Career Award.
*****
Vincent Gordon Harding (July 25, 1931 – May 19, 2014) was an African-American historian and a scholar of various topics with a focus on American religion and society. A social activist as well, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom Harding knew personally. Besides having authored numerous books such as There Is A River and Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals, he served as co-chairperson of the social unity group Veterans of Hope Project and as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado.
Harding was born in Harlem, New York, and attended New York public schools, graduating from Morris High School in the Bronx in 1948. After finishing high school, he enrolled in the City College of New York, where he received a B.A. in History in 1952. The following year he graduated from Columbia University, where he earned an M.S. in Journalism. Harding served in the United States Army from 1953-1955. In 1956 he received an M.A. in History at the University of Chicago. In 1965 he received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago, where he was advised by Martin E. Marty.
In 1960, Harding and his wife, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, moved to Atlanta, Georgia to participate in the Southern Freedom Movement (also known as the American civil rights movement) as representatives of the Mennonite Church. The Hardings co-founded Mennonite House, an interracial voluntary service center and Movement gathering place in Atlanta. The couple traveled throughout the South in the early 1960s working as reconcilers, counselors and participants in the Movement, assisting the anti-segregation campaigns of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Vincent Harding occasionally drafted speeches for Martin Luther King, including King's famous anti-Vietnam speech, "A Time to Break Silence" which King delivered on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City, exactly a year before he was assassinated.
Harding taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Spelman College, Temple University, Swarthmore College, and Pendle Hill Quaker Center for Study and Contemplation. He was the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center and of the Institute of the Black World, both located at Atlanta. He also became senior academic consultant for the PBS television series Eyes on the Prize.
Harding served as Chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project: A Center for the Study of Religion and Democratic Renewal, located at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. Harding taught at Iliff as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation from 1981 to 2004.
*****
Louis Clyde Hudson (July 11, 1944 – April 11, 2014) was an American National Basketball Association (NBA) player.
Lou Hudson graduated from Dudley High School in Greensboro. As a junior at the University of Minnesota, Hudson averaged 24.8 points and 10.7 rebounds and was named an All-American. After starring at the University of Minnesota, Hudson was selected by the St. Louis Hawks with the 4th pick of the 1966 NBA Draft.
Hudson was named to the 1967 NBA All-Rookie Team after averaging 18.4 points per game in his first season. At 6'5", Hudson could play as either a guard or a forward, and he had a long and successful professional career. Hudson went on to average at least 24 points per game for five consecutive seasons beginning in 1969-70, and scored 17,940 points in 13 seasons (1966–1979). He was a six time All-Star with the Hawks (who moved to Atlanta in 1968), and he earned the nickname "Sweet Lou" for his smooth and effective jump shot.
Hudson's jersey number was retired by both the Atlanta Hawks and the University of Minnesota.
After his NBA career ended in 1979, Hudson sold restaurant equipment in Atlanta and briefly worked as a radio announcer for the Atlanta Hawks. In 1984, Hudson relocated to Park City, Utah, where he became a real estate investor and served on the Park City city council in the early 1990s. In Park City, he created a recreation basketball league where he served as coach for 20 years before suffering a major stroke on a Park City ski slope in February 2005. He made public appearances as an "ambassador" for the "Power to End Stroke" organization.
In 2014, he died after a stroke, aged 69.
*****
Herbert "Herb" Jeffries, born Umberto Alexander Valentino (September 24, 1913 – May 25, 2014), was an American jazz and popular singer and actor. Herb Jeffries sang with Duke Ellington and starred in early black westerns as a singing cowboy known as “the Bronze Buckaroo” — a nickname that evoked his malleable racial identity.
In the 1940s and 1950s Jeffries recorded for a number of labels, including RCA Victor, Exclusive, Coral, Decca, Bethlehem, Columbia, Mercury and Trend. His album Jamaica, recorded by RKO, is a concept album of self-composed calypso songs.
Jeffries was born Umberto Alexander Valentino in Detroit to an Irish mother who ran a rooming house, and a father, whom he never knew, of mixed Sicilian, Ethiopian, French, Italian and Moorish roots, on September 24, 1913. He once characterized himself in an interview as "three-eighths Negro", claiming pride in his racial heritage during a period when many other light-skinned black performers were attempting "to pass" as all-white in an effort to broaden their commercial appeal. In marked contrast, Jeffries used make-up to darken his skin—in order to pursue a career in jazz and to be seen as employable by the leading all-black musical ensembles of the day. Yet, much later in his career, Jeffries would assume the identify of a white citizen for economic or highly personal reasons.
A 2007 documentary short describes Jeffries as "assuming the identity of a man of color" early in his career. He is shown in Black/White & All That Jazz explaining that he was inspired by New Orleans-born musician Louis Armstrong to say falsely, at a job interview in Chicago, that he was "a creole from Louisiana" when he was of Irish and Sicilian heritage, among other ethnic backgrounds.
In 2007, while assembling material for the producers of a documentary film about him (A Colored Life), Jeffries found his birth certificate; this reminded him that he actually was born in 1913 and that he had misrepresented his age after he left home to look for a job. His four marriages (including one to exotic dancer Tempest Storm) produced five children. He appeared at jazz festivals and events benefiting autism and other developmental problems and lectured at colleges and universities. He supported music education in schools. In June 2010, aged 96, Jeffries performed to raise funds for the Oceanside (California) Unified School District's music program, accompanied by the Big Band Jazz Hall of Fame Orchestra under the direction of clarinetist Tad Calcara.
A jazz and popular singer, he starred as a singing cowboy in several all-black Western films, in which he sang his own western compositions. Jeffries obtained financing for the first black western film and hired Spencer Williams to appear with him. In addition to starring in the film, he sang and performed his own stunts as cowboy "Bob Blake". He began his career working with Erskine Tate and his Vendome Orchestra when he moved to Chicago from Detroit at the urging of Louis Armstrong. His break came during the 1933 Chicago World's Fair—Century of Progress Exposition singing with the Earl Hines Orchestra on Hines’ national broadcasts live from the Grand Terrace Cafe. His first recordings were with Hines in 1934, including "Just to be in Carolina". He then recorded with Duke Ellington from 1940 to 1942. His recording of "Flamingo" (1940) with Ellington was a best seller in its day. He was replaced in the Ellington band by Al Hibbler in 1943.
Playing a singing cowboy in low-budget films, Jeffries became known as the "Bronze Buckaroo" by his fans. In a time of American racial segregation, such "race movies" played mostly in theaters catering to African-American audiences. The films, now available on video, include Harlem on the Prairie, The Bronze Buckaroo, Harlem Rides the Range and Two-Gun Man from Harlem. Jeffries went on to make other films, starring with Angie Dickinson in Calypso Joe (1957). He later directed and produced Mundo depravados, a cult film starring his wife, Tempest Storm. In 1968, Jeffries appeared in the long-running western TV series The Virginian playing a gunslinger who intimidated the town. At the age of 81, he recorded a Nashville album of songs on the Warner Western label in 1995 entitled The Bronze Buckaroo (Rides Again).
Jeffiries lived in Wichita, Kansas, and tur
ned 100 on September 24, 2013. He died of heart failure at a California hospital on May 25, 2014.
For his contributions to the motion-picture industry, Jeffries has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6672 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2004 he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A restaurant in Idyllwild, Cafe Aroma, has a room named for him. In 1998, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.
The filmography of Herb Jeffries includes the following:
- Harlem on the Prairie (1937)
- Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938)
- Harlem Rides the Range (1939)
- The Bronze Buckaroo (1939)
- Calypso Joe (1957)
- Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)
- Portrait of a Hitman (1977)
The discography of Herb Jeffries includes the following:
- Sidney Bechet: "1940-1941" (Classics)
- Earl Hines: "1932-1934" (Classics)
- Duke Ellington: "The Blanton-Webster Band" (RCA, 1940–42)
- Michael Martin Murphrey: "Sagebrush Symphony"
- "Jamaica" (RKO Records ULP - 128) all songs composed by Jeffries
- "Passion" (Brunswick, BL 54028) Coral singles compiled on 12" LP
- "Say it Isn't So" (Bethlehem BCP 72) with the Russ Garcia Orchestra
- "Herb Jeffries" (Harmony HL 7048) Columbia singles LP
- "Magenta Moods" (Mercury 2589 10") LP transfer of Exclusive label album
- "Herb Jeffries Sings" (Mercury 2590 10") more Exclusive singles with the Buddy Baker Orchestra
- "Herb Jeffries and his Orchestra" (Mercury 2591 10") Exclusive label singles
- "Songs by Herb Jeffries" (Mercury 2592 10") Exclusive label singles
- "I Remember the Bing" (Dobre Records 1047)
- "Play and Sing the Duke" (Dobre Records 1053)
- "The King and Me" (Dobre Records 1059)
*****
Caldwell "Pops" Jones (August 4, 1950 – September 21, 2014) was an American professional basketball player. Jones played 14 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and three in the American Basketball Association (ABA).
Jones was drafted from Albany State College (Georgia) by the Philadelphia 76ers with the 14th pick in the 1973 NBA Draft. He played 3 seasons in the American Basketball Association before joining the 76ers. Jones then spent six seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers before being traded to the Houston Rockets for Moses Malone.
Jones led the ABA in blocked shots in the 1973-74 season, and played in the 1975 ABA All-Star Game. He shares (with Julius Keye) the ABA's all-time record for blocked shots in a game with 12.
He spent six seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers before being traded to the Houston Rockets for Moses Malone.
Jones made the 1975 ABA All-Star Game, and he spent six seasons with the Sixers starting in 1976. He was sent to the Houston Rockets in 1982, then played for the Portland Trail Blazers from 1985 to 1989. Jones finished his playing career with the San Antonio Spurs in 1989-1990, where he served as a mentor for David Robinson. His three brothers, Charles Jones, Wil Jones and Major Jones, also played in the NBA. All of the Jones brothers attended Albany State University.
Caldwell Jones, a standout veteran NBA and ABA center, died on Sunday, September 21, 2014 after suffering a heart attack while playing golf. He was 64.
*****
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah (February
16, 1932 – March 13, 2014) was the third President of Sierra Leone from
1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2007. An economist and attorney by
professions, Kabbah spent many years working for the United Nations
Development Programme. He retired from the United Nations and returned
to Sierra Leone in 1992.
In
early 1996, Kabbah was elected leader of the Sierra Leone People's
Party (SLPP) and the party's presidential candidate in the 1996
presidential election. He was elected President of Sierra Leone in the
1996 presidential election with 59% of the vote defeating his closest
rival John Karefa-Smart of the United National People's Party (UNPP) who
had 40% in the runoff vote and conceded defeat. International observers
declared the election free and fair. In his inauguration speech in
Freetown, Kabbah promised to end the civil war, which he indeed achieved
later in his presidency.
An
ethnic Mandingo, Kabbah was Sierra Leone's first Muslim head of
state. Kabbah was born in Pendembu, Kailahun District in Eastern Sierra
Leone, though he was largely raised in the capital Freetown.
Most
of Kabbah's time in office was influenced by the civil war with the
Revolutionary United Front, led by Foday Sankoh, which involved him
being temporarily ousted by the military Armed Forces Revolutionary
Council from May 1997 to March 1998. He was soon returned to power after
a military intervention by the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS), led by Nigeria. Another phase of the civil war led to
United Nations and British involvement in the country in 2000.
As
President, Kabbah opened direct negotiations with the RUF rebels in
order to end the civil war. He signed several peace accords with the
rebel leader Foday Sankoh, including the 1999 Lome Peace Accord, in
which the rebels, for the first time, agreed to a temporary cease fire
with the Sierra Leone government. When the cease fire agreement with the
rebels virtually collapsed, Kabbah campaigned for international
assistance from the British, the United Nations Security Council, the
African Union and the Economic Community of West African States to help
defeat the rebels and restored peace and order in Sierra Leone.
Kabbah
declared the civil war officially over in early 2002. Tens of thousands
of Sierra Leoneans across the country took to the streets to celebrate
the end of the war. Kabbah went on to easily win his final five year
term in office in the presidential election later that year with 70.1%
of the vote, defeating his main opponent Ernest Bai Koroma of the main
opposition All People's Congress (APC). International observers declared
the election free and fair.
Alhaji
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was born on February 16, 1932 in the rural town of
Pendembu, Kailahun District in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone to
devout Muslim parents. Kabbah's father was an ethnic Mandingo and a
deeply religious Muslim of Guinean descent and a native of Kambia
District in the north of Sierra Leone. His mother was also a Muslim and a
member of the Mende ethnic group from the Coomber family, a Chieftaincy
ruling house based in the small rural town of Mobai, Kailahun District.
Kabbah's first name Ahmad means "highly praised" or "one who constantly
thanks God" in the Arabic language. Kabba himself was a devout Muslim
and a member of the Mandingo ethnic group. Kabbah was a fluent speaker
of his native Mandingo language and was also a fluent speaker of the
local Susu language. Though born in the Kailahun District, Kabbah was
largely raised in the capital Freetown.
Though
a devout Muslim, Kabbah received his secondary education at the St.
Edward's secondary school in Freetown, the oldest Catholic secondary
school in Sierra Leone. Kabbah married a Catholic, the late Patricia
Kabbah, (born Patricia Tucker), who was an ethnic Sherbro from Bonthe
District in Southern Sierra Leone. Together the couple had five
children. Kabbah received his higher education at the Cardiff College of
Technology and Commerce, and University College Aberystwyth, Wales, in
the United Kingdom, with a Bachelor's degree in Economics in 1959. He
later studied law, and in 1969 he became a practicing Barrister-at-Law,
member of the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, London.
Kabbah
spent nearly his entire career in the public sector. He served in the
Western Area and in all the Provinces of Sierra Leone. He was a District
Commissioner in Bombali and Kambia (Northern Province), in Kono
(Eastern Province) and in Moyamba and Bo (Southern Province). He later
became Permanent Secretary in various Ministries, including Trade and
Industry, Social Welfare, and Education.
Kabbah
was an international civil servant for almost two decades. After
serving as deputy Chief of the West Africa Division of the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York, he was reassigned in
1973 to head the Programme's operation in the Kingdom of Lesotho, as
Resident Representative. He also headed UNDP operations in Tanzania and
Uganda, and just before Zimbabwe's independence, he was temporarily
assigned to that country to help lay the groundwork for cooperation with
the United Nations system.
After
a successful tour of duty in Eastern and Southern Africa, Kabbah
returned to New York to head UNDP's Eastern and Southern Africa
Division. Among other things, he was directly responsible for
coordinating United Nations system assistance to liberation movements
recognized by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), such as the
African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, and the South West
African People's Organization (SWAPO) of Namibia.
Before
his retirement in 1992, Kabbah held a number of senior administrative
positions at UNDP Headquarters in New York, including those of Deputy
Director and Director of Personnel, and Director, Division of
Administration and Management.
After
the military coup in 1992, Kabbah was asked to chair the National
Advisory Council, one of the mechanisms set up by the military to
alleviate the restoration of constitutional rule, including the drafting
of a new constitution for Sierra Leone. He reputedly intended his
return to Sierra Leone to be a retirement, but was encouraged by those
around him and the political situation that arose to become more
actively involved in the politics of Sierra Leone.
Kabbah
was seen as a compromise candidate when he was put forward by the
Mende-dominated Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) as their presidential
hopeful in the 1996 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, the first
multi-party elections in twenty-three years. The SLPP won the
legislative vote overwhelmingly in the South and Eastern Province of the
country, they split the vote with the UNPP in the Western Area and they
lost in the Northern Province. On March 29, 1996, Alhaji Ahmad Tejan
Kabbah was sworn in as President of Sierra Leone. Guided by his
philosophy of "political inclusion" he appointed the most broad-based
government in the nation's history, drawing from all political parties
represented in Parliament, and ‘technocrats’ in civil society. One
minority party did not accept his offer of a cabinet post.
The
President's first major objective was to end the rebel war which, in
four years had already claimed hundreds of innocent lives, driven
thousands of others into refugee status, and ruined the nation's
economy. In November 1996, in Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire, Kabbah signed a
peace agreement with the rebel leader, former Corporal Foday Sankoh of
the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
The
rebels reneged on the Agreement, resumed hostilities, and later
perpetrated on the people of Sierra Leone what has been described as one
of the most brutal internal conflicts in the world.
In
1996, a coup attempt involving Johnny Paul Koroma and other junior
officers of the Sierra Leone Army was unsuccessful, but served as notice
that Kabbah's control over military and government officials in
Freetown was weakening.
In
May 1997, a military coup forced Kabbah into exile in neighboring
Guinea. The coup was led by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, and
Koroma was freed and installed as the head of state. In his Guinea
exile, Kabbah began to marshal international support. Just nine months
after the coup, Kabbah's government was revived as the military-rebel
junta was removed by troops of the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) under the command of the Nigerian led ECOMOG (ECOWAS
Ceasefire Monitoring Group) and loyal civil and military defense forces,
notably the Kamajos led by Samuel Hinga Norman.
Once
again, in pursuit of peace, President Kabbah signed the Lome Peace
Accord with the RUF rebel leader Foday Sankoh on July 7, 1999.
Notwithstanding repeated violations by the RUF, the document, known as
the Lomé Peace Agreement, remained the cornerstone of sustainable peace,
security, justice and national reconciliation in Sierra Leone. On
January 18, 2002, at a ceremony marking the conclusion of the
disarmament and demobilization of ex-combatants under the auspices of
the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), he declared that
the rebel war was over.
Although
elected as president, he faced the task of fighting a brutal enemy. His
most crucial military support was however from outside. Nigeria was the
foremost participant as they crucially intervened under the leadership
of the late General Sani Abacha, who was then the military head of his
country. On February 1998, he sent his troops to push out the infamous
military junta and rebel alliance of Johnny Paul Koroma and Sam
Bockarie, known as Maskita. The rebels, however, continued their attempt
to dethrone Kabbah's government, despite signing numerous peace accords
with President Kabbah. In May 2000, Foday Saybanah Sankoh, who was then
part of Kabbah's cabinet, kidnapped several UN troops, and then ordered
his rebels to march to Freetown. Trouble was looming as the capital was
once more threatened with another January 6, 1999 scenario. But with
the timely intervention of the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, 800
British troops were sent to Freetown to halt the impending rebel march
to the city. President Kabbah was very grateful to the British Prime
Minister, calling his intervention "timely" and one that "Sierra Leonean
people will never forget".
As
president, Kabbah opened direct negotiations with the RUF rebels in
order to end the civil war. He signed several peace accords with the
rebel leader Foday Sankoh, including the 1999 Lome Peace Accord, in
which the rebels, for the first time agreed to a temporary cease fire
with the Sierra Leone government. When the cease fire agreement with the
rebels virtually collapsed, Kabbah campaigned for international
assistant from the British, the United Nations Security Council, the
African Union and the Economic Community of West African States to help
defeat the rebels and restored peace and order in Sierra Leone.
In
October 1999, the United Nations agreed to send peacekeepers to help
restore order and disarm the rebels. The first of the 6,000-member force
began arriving in December, and the United Nations Security Council
voted in February 2000 to increase the force to 11,000, and later to
13,000. The UN peacekeeping forces were made up mainly of soldiers from
the British special forces, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The African
Union special forces sent to Sierra Leone to assist the government in
fighting the rebels were made up mainly of soldiers from Nigeria,
Guinea, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Zambia and The Gambia. The international
forces, led by the British troops, launched many successful military
operations in repelling the RUF rebels and retook many of the areas of
the country that were under the rebel control. The rebel lines of
communication were severely destroyed and many senior rebel leaders were
captured or fled the country, including the RUF leader Foday Sankoh,
who was captured.
The
fragile rebels finally agreed to be dissarmed. In return the Sierra
Leone government, lead by Kabbah, offered the rebels amnesty, career
opportunities and mental institutions. The child rebels were reinstated
in public schools, also offered mental institutions and reunited with
family members. In 2001, United Nation forces moved in rebel-held areas
and began to dissarm the rebels.
The
civil war was officially declared over in early 2002 by Kabbah. Tens of
thousands of Sierra Leoneans across the country took to the streets
celebrating the end of the war. Kabbah went on to easily win his final
five year term in office in the presidential election later that year
with 70.1% of the vote, defeating his main opponent Ernest Bai Koroma of
the main opposition All People's Congress (APC). International
observers declared the election free and fair.
As
the first leader after the civil war, Kabbah's main task was to disarm
the different parties involved in the war and to build unity of the
country. Time magazine called Kabbah a "diamond in the rough"
for his success as the first civilian elected ruler of Sierra Leone in
34 years and his role in the end of what became a decade long conflict
from 1992 until 2000. Although he himself was not considered corrupt,
Kabbah was accused of an inability to deal with corrupt officials in his
government many of whom were said to be profiting from the diamond
trade. Kabbah struggled with this problem and invited the British to
help set up an anti-corruption commission.
Kabbah
left office in September 2007 at the end of his second 5-year term.
Constitutionally, he was not eligible to seek re-election. His
Vice-President, Solomon Berewa, ran as the SLPP candidate to succeed
Kabbah but was defeated by the opposition candidate Ernest Bai Koroma of
the APC.
Kabbah
was the head of the Commonwealth's observer mission for the December
2007 Kenyan election, as well as the head of the African Union's
observer mission for the March 2008 Zimbabwean election.
Kabbah
died at his residential home in Juba Hill, a middle class neighborhood
in the west end of Freetown at the age of 82 on March 13, 2014, after a
short illness. Following the announcement of Kabbah's death, Sierra
Leone's president Ernest Bai Koroma declared a week of national
mourning; and he ordered the country's flags to be flown at half mast
throughout Sierra Leone.
A
state funeral was held for Kabbah. Kabbah's funeral service was
attended by several former Heads of State, international delegations,
former and current government officials, regardless of their political
paties, and members of the civil services.
On
March 21, 2014, Kabbah's casket was carried by soldiers of the Sierra
Leone Armed Forces into the Sierra Leone House of Parliament were
members of parliament paid their last respects to the former Head of
State. On March 23, 2014 Kabbah's casket was brought to the National
Stadium, as thousands of Sierra Leoneans lined the streets of Freetown
to say goodbye to their former leader. Kabbah's body was then carried by
soldiers to the Mandingo Central Mosque in Freetown where an Islamic
prayer service was held before he was finally laid to rest at the Kissi
Road Cemetery, next to his mother Hajah Adama Kabbah's grave.
Kabbah's
wife Patricia, an ethnic Sherbro, died in 1998. They had five
children: Mariama, Abu, Michael, Isata and Tejan Jr., and three
grandchildren: Simone, Isata, and Aidan.
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