North Carolina A&T graduated Rev. Jesse Jackson just endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for president in an attempt to get black people to vote for the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist.
Rev. Jesse Jackson is a hero of mine. It's one of the honors of my life to have his support. Together, we will build the nation based on justice we know we can become. pic.twitter.com/xnIsmOeQcq
“I stand with Bernie Sanders today because he stood by me,” Jackson said during one of Bernie’s campaign rallies. “I stand with him because he never lost his taste on justice for the people.”
“I stand with him because he stands with you,” he said.
Sanders gushed about the endorsement, reminding the crowd that Jackson worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had graduated from Morehouse College, and helped lead the fight against segregation in the South.
“What he did was the first major African American candidate in the history of this country was to put together a coalition which he named the Rainbow Coalition,” Sanders said.
He continued, “He came to Vermont, I’m proud we supported him back then. He won Vermont and a number of other states, including Michigan!”
Sanders last week won the vote in California 33.5% of the vote to Biden’s 24.8%.
Megan Thee Stallion just released her album, and although she’s been getting rave reviews, its a line from one of her songs that has everybody talking. She is now getting dragged online for having a 2.7 GPA at Texas Southern University! Over the last 24 hours, the topic has been trending, and several people are telling her to do better.
Here’s the full story.
Megan Thee Stallion’s album, Suga, was released yesterday, and despite the great reviews, some people found the time and energy to drag Megan, because of some of the lyrics in one of her songs. In that one song, she revealed that she current;y has a 2.7 grade point average.
For those who don’t know, a 2.7 GPA is equivalent to a C+ or a B-, depending on the school you attend.
Megan is currently attending Texas Southern University, where she majors in health administration. She is in her third year, and she’ll have a lot of hard work to do if she’s going to pull those grades up. But with Megan’s busy schedule, she rarely has the time to attend class in person.
We’ve later learned that she’s been doing her homework and taking all her tests online.
Although Megan seems to be happy with her grade, several of her fans didn’t think that it was something to be proud of. One person wrote, “I know Meg didn’t say she had a 2.7 GPA.” Another person wrote, “Meg thee Stallion just said she got a 2.7 GPA. Girl, is they gon let you even graduate?”
Some people went as far as calling Megan slow, but some of her other fans quickly came to her defense. One of her defenders wrote, “C’mon, could you perform at multiple shows, release tracks, film music videos, and be a full-time college student at the same time?”
Which side of the fence are you on?
This story originally appeared on Popular Superstar.
HBCU family, here’s to all the football players at the historically black colleges and universities who have been invited to participate in the NFL HBCU Combine on March 28!
The Instagram account Sporcasso has released a list of the players.
Vice President Mike Pence’s recent visit to Hampton University’s Proton Therapy Institute drew virtually no national media attention, but it should have.
Sure, it offered no political drama. Such visits appear routine. Yet this visit highlighted an important initiative that has been largely overlooked: ensuring the continued success of our nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) at a time when declining enrollment and financial struggles threaten their existence.
For more than a century, HBCUs have played an essential role in America’s higher education system. They provided an education for black Americans at a time when they were excluded from segregated universities. Even after desegregation, students who daily endured hostilities and humiliations in desegregated schools found acceptance at HBCUs. They met professors and administrators who cared about them, who knew the struggles they faced, and who were deeply invested in their success.
In the post-slavery era, abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass stressed the importance of education for every black person, declaring that education was another form of emancipation for newly freed blacks — emancipation from a life of ignorance. Education also meant emancipation from a life of poverty, as students learned the skills they needed to get good jobs, be truly independent and earn a living for themselves and their families. Douglass’ words apply today just as they did more than 130 years ago.
Hampton’s Proton Therapy Institute is just one example. It’s one of the largest proton therapy centers in the world and is producing new scientific discoveries and innovations. Proton therapy has changed the way we treat a variety of cancers by delivering doses of highly targeted radiation to tumors while sparing surrounding healthy tissue.
This kind of innovation isn’t surprising. Students at HBCUs represent just one-tenth of one percent of all college students in America, yet these schools produce 22% of all science, technology, engineering and math bachelor’s degrees earned by black American students. These are the kinds of degrees that bring us such incredible advances like proton therapy.
Despite this, financial struggles have been a constant problem for many of the nation’s 100-plus HBCUs, so the Trump administration has been taking steps to ease the burden and enable these schools to stay focused on their core mission.
Early in his presidency, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to create a White House initiative to promote excellence and innovation at HBCUs. Then in 2018, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos canceled the repayment of more than $300 million in federal relief loans that four HBCUs took out in 2005 in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. More recently, Trump signed the bipartisan FUTURE Act to provide more than $250 million a year for 10 years to HBCUs.
This isn’t just good news for HBCUs, this is good news for America. With the administration highlighting the accomplishments of HBCUs through visits such as Pence’s to Hampton, the American people can better appreciate the kind of return they’re getting on their investment and can begin to see how these institutions are not only creating brighter futures for minority students, but for the entire nation.
Kay C. James, a graduate of Hampton University, is president of The Heritage Foundation. Dr. Harry L. Williams is president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Chris Paul’s CP Family Foundation is dedicated to leveling the playing for students of color in the sports and entertainment industries.
In a just-announced partnership, Paul, Live Nation Urban and the foundation will begin a summer internship program at North Carolina A&T’s College of Business and Economics (COBE) tied to a business of sports and entertainment class.
“Access through education helps level the playing field and true leadership comes from knowledge,” said Paul. “I’m looking forward to expanding the partnership with A&T and Live Nation Urban and seeing the future results of our efforts.”
According to the foundation, the internship has been in discussion since December.
“The conversation started back in December with Live Nation Urban to bring resources to the table to enhance the class in some way,” said Carmen Wilson, project manager at the CP Family Foundation.
The internship will expose students to aspects of the live music industry that they may not get otherwise. They will be learning marketing, sales, promotion, staging, booking and logistics.
They are to work on the fulfillment of building out live concerts and events throughout the summer with Live Nation either in Washington, Los Angeles and North Carolina.
“We are excited to partner with Chris Paul and North Carolina A&T to offer this great opportunity to their students,” said Gee, president of Live Nation Urban. “One of my goals for Live Nation Urban has always been to introduce young African American future executives to the live music industry. We are disproportionately underrepresented in this space, and it will take programs like these and partners like Chris and N.C. A&T to help change that narrative.”
Delaware State University is starting the new decade with a new president, and in his own words, he and his team are focused on making their institution “the most diverse, contemporary Historically Black College and University [HBCU] in the nation.”
Tony Allen was named Delaware State’s 12th president on January 1, 2020, succeeding Wilma Mishoe, the University’s first female chief, who retired at the end of 2019. Allen had served as Delaware State’s Executive Vice President and Provost since 2017, when he joined the institution. Prior to that, he worked at Bank of America; was an executive vice president at MBNA Bank; and the founding president of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League. He also formerly worked for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden as a speech writer and special assistant.
Currently, about 64% of Delaware State’s 5,000 students are African-American. Allen intends to enhance the University’s attraction to additional Black students, at the same time he broadens its profile to include more students from groups that are either chronically under-represented in college or poorly served by public education.
“In Delaware and across the nation,” Allen says, “we’re looking for students with a fire to succeed, regardless of the color of their skin, their country of origin, the god they worship, or the ones they choose to love.”
Allen commented, “ I continue to get asked if HBCUs are still relevant in today’s world, and my response is always, ‘If you didn’t have HBCUs like Delaware State University, you’d have to invent us.’ There are very few places that can provide a quality, affordable, four-year comprehensive education to all students, regardless of their economic circumstance. As a system, HBCUs represent the best return on value in the nation.”
NFL Network’s Steve Wyche explained on Monday during an interview on NFL.com the benefits of having an NFL HBCU Combine, citing that many black college prospects are often overlooked.
“Let’s talk about the combine that the NFL is staging for the players of historically black colleges and universities, [it] will probably be between 40 to 50 players,” Wyche said.
He continued, “They’re still compiling a list of players who will be invited to this event right now. But this is for a group of players who weren’t invited to the scouting combine or to the Senior Bowl or East-West Shrine Game.”
He went on to say that what’s interesting about the matters is the fact that the NFL plucks a lot of players from HBCUs and another fact that, historically, there are 30 players in the NFL Hall of Fame.
And even now there are many talented players coming out of these institutions that are getting a some playing time on pro football teams like South Carolina State’s Darius Leonard of the Colts and Bears running back Tarik Cohen who was a star at NCAT.
“I spoke to some people organizing this, saying, “Why is this necessary?” Wyche said.
“And they said the key here is there are so many layers from HBCU schools, which is mainly FCS and Division II schools, that aren’t probably scouted,” he continued. “So this is just another opportunity for scouts to get eyes on players like Tennessee State’s wide receiver Chris Rowland — one of the most dynamic players in college football, who got to play in the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl but was not invited to the combine to get eyes on him.”
Chris Rowland, of course has won a lot of post-season awards last year.
“The league is trying to do something again to give everybody the opportunity to get properly evaluated and properly scouted,” Wyche said.
He also noted that the day after the NFL HBCU Combine, which takes place on March 28, there’s also a combine for international players so that scouts can get some eyes on them as well.
HBCU Texas Southern University student Megan Thee Stallion is in prime from. And her latest EP, which has arrived Friday, shows that she’s in it to win it.
Called ‘Suga,’ the EP features Atlanta drip innovator Gunna, Kehlani and Meg’s raw talent.
On “Savage,” she boats that “N***** say I taste like sugar, but ain’t s*** sweet” and keeps the same energy throughout the EP.
For a special treat to her hotties, she also released a video for “B.*.*.*.*.” on the same day.
The video is now the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.
The EP comes after the “Hot Girl Summer” rapper took her label 1501 Certified Entertainment to court, claiming that they was “instructing her distribution company “not to release or distribute any of her new music,” according to Billboard.
Karma, at least for last night, was real. After being involved in a messy disagreement with their biggest and most celebrated fan, Spike Lee, the New York Knicks experienced its lowest basketball attendance at Madison Square Garden since 2006, according to Newsweek. (Lee graduated from Morehouse College.)
The Oscar-winning writer-director and famed No. 1 Knicks fan told ESPN’s First Take earlier this week that he will not attend another Knicks home game this season. According to Lee, Madison Square Garden security wouldn’t allow him to enter the Knicks’ home court through the employees’ entrance, a ritual he has been doing for almost 30 years. The backlash has been growing as fans, former pro basketball players, TV commentators and even casual basketball fans have come out against the Knicks and Madison Square Garden after MSG released a statement essentially blaming Lee for the current mishap.
“They never said when the thing changed, so why not call me?” Lee said. “When my deposit’s due, this astronomical price for Knicks tickets, and I’m one day late, my phone is ringing off the hook.”
"Not this year … I'm done."
You won't see Spike Lee at another Knicks game this season, according to him. pic.twitter.com/jdcNLBeopC
“The idea that Spike Lee is a victim because we have repeatedly asked him to not use our employee entrance and instead use a dedicated VIP entrance—which is used by every other celebrity who enters The Garden—is laughable,” the statement from Madison Square Garden read. “It’s disappointing that Spike would create this false controversy to perpetuate drama. He is welcome to come to the Garden anytime via the VIP or general entrance; just not through our employee entrance, which is what he and [James Dolan] agreed to last night when they shook hands.”
Only 16,588 people attended Wednesday’s Knicks game at MSG, an arena that has a full capacity listed at 19,812. That was the arena’s smallest home crowd in nearly 13½ years. The Knicks, as is their won, lost to the Utah Jazz, 112-104.
Will this trend continue? The Knicks play the Oklahoma City Thunder at home tonight.
This post was written by Cedric ‘BIG CED’ Thornton, a writer at Black Enterprise, where it was originally published. It is published here with permission.
Over 40 years have passed since that historic march for voting rights, but we are still fighting for our rights. Today, 1 in 1,000 black men and boys can expect to die as a result of police violence.
Black colleges are in a protracted legal battle with the state for insufficiently funding our schools while funding other traditional state schools that duplicated our programs, right in my home state, Maryland.
We have a long way to go in addressing the issues of gender inequality, global warming and reproductive freedom. Important things like reversing Donny’s corporate tax breaks and adopting policies that enact equal pay for women in the workplace are essential to the progression of this nation.
Marijuana arrests account for more than half of drug arrests in the United States. Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% happened for simply possessing marijuana. Research exposes significant racial bias nationwide. Despite roughly equal usage rates, Blacks are 3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana.
We have to stop thinking about racism simply as someone who says the N-word or does something obvious or violent. Our country is in desperate need of great leadership that understands the systematic struggles. We need a candidate that intrinsically meets every single point on our agenda.
The time is now!
The first thing I did when writing this endorsement was looking up the word endorsement. “ An act of giving one’s public approval or support to someone or something.“ Act: taking action. Public: of or concerning the people as a whole. Support: to bear all or part of the weight of.
We need an all hands on deck, LOUD and unprecedented grassroots movement to further secure our future, our children’s future and our children’s children’s future. We desperately need new anti-racist policy agenda in the White House and change on the issues affecting our daily lives and our communities.
THE TIME IS NOW!
That’s why the HBCU Buzz team and I are endorsing Senator, Bernie Sanders for president.
Bernie’s plan addresses the five central types of violence waged against black, brown and indigenous Americans to tackle physical, political, legal, economic and environmental injustices.
Bernie’s long history of fighting for social equality the and rights of African Americans isn’t new. His record goes back to the early 1960s.(YES, around the same time my mother was born, 60years ago) Keep in mind, he was arrested in college as a student leader protesting institutional segregation and racial disparities; “disparity within the disparity”.
Bernie vowed to strengthen and support our historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) by investing $10 billion to create and expand HBCU medical, dental, and teacher training graduate programs at HBCUs. He will fight to cancel 100% of institutional HBCU loan debt from the Capital Financing Program. Bernie’s plans for tuition-free colleges and canceling student debt would lift a burden off the shoulders of millions of working-class families. He is also a cosponsor of S.461, the HBCU PARTNERS Act.
Bernie pledged to legalize marijuana in the first 100 days with executive action, vacate and expunge all past marijuana-related convictions, and ensure that revenue from legal marijuana is reinvested in communities that were hit hardest by the War on Drugs.
Bernie believes healthcare is a human right, not a political matter.
Bernie wants to adopt Equal Pay for Equal Work through the Paycheck Fairness Act and fully fund Planned Parenthood, Title X, and other initiatives that protect women’s health, access to contraception, and the availability of a safe and legal abortion.
Bernie is radical, realistic, and the best candidate for the myriad of ethnic backgrounds, economic differences, and political perspectives that make America what it is. If you DO YOUR RESEARCH, you will learn that Bernie in the White House benefits all Americans and his agenda has a little something for everyone. As a Black man, entrepreneur, son of Africa and an HBCU graduate, there is a strong alignment with my stance and his plans as president.
HBCU Family, we all are familiar with Jamal Bryant, who is the pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia. He also graduated from HBCU Morehouse College in Atlanta.
Well, in a teaching session with the women of his church that streamed on YouTube on Monday, Bryant warned his members to stay away from the practice of burning sage. According to the Oxford dictionary, sage is an aromatic plant with grayish-green leaves that are used as a culinary herb, native to southern Europe and the Mediterranean.
He said he “was amazed because two saints gave me sage for my new house.”
This lead him to do his research on the practice of it and made him question sage once he discovered that it is basically a demonic New Age practice.
He continued, “I didn’t know what to do with it. I was unsure of it. And all the more, why they’d feel comfortable giving it to a pastor. Then I began to research and study it and found out that the sales of it have gone up by over 200% in the last four years and have to be constantly placed on restock in natural health stores.”
Bryant argued that when you practice burning sage, you are essentially calling upon spirits to fight off negative spirits, not calling upon the name of Jesus:
“Another word for burning sage is smudging. The thought of the Native Americans is that certain herbs carry spirits in them … and when you burn certain herbs you’re calling on those spirits to dispel evil or vexing spirits or energies from a space, from an object or person. And so it is their contention that when I am burning sage, I am then calling down a spirit or calling up a spirit to then wrestle with that energy that’s in a room, that’s in a car or in a person.”
He said “So are those who burn sage and then put it around themselves saying that they don’t want any negative energy around them or negative energy approaching them? … It is highly practiced now by the New Age movement.”
He later said that those who practice burning sage are playing the role of God because they think that calling upon spirits to cast away the bad ones, which is what He and His angels already does for us.
“They are spiritual. They just do not believe or submit to authority … They believe through the doctrine of New Age faith or New Age theology, that mortals or humanity through the right wave of devotion and meditation can ascend themselves to become a deity. So they become their own gods.
The people who believe that they are their own god, we don’t know how to approach them or even how to attack it because we have minimized demonic possession as those who are foaming around their mouth, eyes are roaming in the back of their head and they are squirming on the floor. That’s how we’ve recognized demons.”
In a piece titled “Black Millennials Leave Church for African Witchcraft,” The Atlantic’s Sigal Samuel wrote that white millennials have left the church in droves over the last decade, embracing witchcraft instead. Black millennials are now following suit:
Over the past decade, white Millennials have embraced witchcraft in droves. Now a parallel phenomenon is emerging among black Millennials. While their exact numbers are difficult to gauge, it’s clear that African American pop culture has started to reflect the trend. In the music industry alone, there’s Beyoncé’s allusion to an African goddess in Lemonade at the Grammys; Azealia Banks’s declaration that she practices brujería (a Spanish term for witchcraft); and Princess Nokia’s hit “Brujas,” in which she tells white witches, “Everything you got, you got from us.”
African American witchcraft originated in West Africa, the birthplace of Yoruba, a set of religious traditions focused on reverence for ancestors and worship of a vast pantheon of deities known as orishas. Those traditions accompanied West Africans who were brought to the Americas as slaves, and were eventually combined with Western religions, such as Catholicism, that many slaves were pushed to embrace.
By the early 19th century, Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomblé, Haitian Vodou, and other syncretistic faiths had emerged as a result. In cities like New Orleans, voodoo (slightly different from Haitian Vodou) and hoodoo, which also descend from West African faiths, grew popular. These practices—which often involve manipulating candles, incense, or water to achieve a desired result—may have helped give slaves some sense of power, however minimal.
It’s difficult to gauge the exact numbers of black millennials who have embraced African witchcraft. But Bryant said that those who do, in particular the ones who practice burning sage, are devaluing the anointing life of Jesus Christ.
ALBANY, Ga. – Albany State University has announced its 2020 football schedule. For ASU fans, the slate has a familiar look, as the Golden Rams will face some of the same opponents as last year, with the Golden Rams hosting four home games in 2020.
“We put together a challenging schedule for 2020. We tell our recruits, they will have the opportunity to play in a tough conference and they will have the chance to play quality opponents outside of the SIAC. This schedule makes good on that promise,” Golden Rams head football coach Gabe Giardina said.
The Golden Rams will start off the 2020 campaign in Miami Gardens, Florida for the Orange Blossom Classic against Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) on September 6th. FAMU, a member of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), completed the 2019 season with a 9-2 record.
ASU will host its first home game of the season as they welcome the Mississippi College Choctaws to campus on September 12. The Choctaws finished the 2019 season with a 5-5 overall record.
The Golden Rams will then host two back-to-back home games with Valdosta State University Blazers coming to campus on September 19th in a non-conference matchup. Valdosta State University finished 2019 with a 10-1 record and the last time the two teams faced in 2019, the Blazers came away with the 38-3 win. ASU will next welcome the Panthers of Clark Atlanta University for its first Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference contest and homecoming on September 26th. CAU and ASU last faced off in 2019 as the Golden Rams secured a 54-19 victory.
After the contest at CAU, the Golden Rams will hit the road as they travel to Tuskegee, Alabama for a matchup against Tuskegee University. The Golden Rams and Golden Tigers last faced off last season where the Golden Rams collected a 21-0 victory. Tuskegee finished 2019 with a 5-5 record.
On October 10th, the Golden Rams will face off against the Dragons of Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee. These two teams faced off during the 2019 season in the ASU Coliseum with the Golden Rams coming out with the 33-13 homecoming win. The Dragons completed the 2019 campaign with a 4-6 record overall and a 2-4 record in SIAC play.
Next, the Golden Rams will wrap up a three-game road stand as they travel to Columbia, South Carolina to take on Benedict College on October 17th. The Golden Rams hosted Benedict College in 2019 and secured a 7-2 contest victory over the Tigers. Benedict College finished the 2019 campaign with a 1-9 record overall and a 1-5 mark in the SIAC. After the tilt with Benedict, ASU will return home as they host Savannah State University. The Tigers finished the 2019 season finished with a 7-3 overall record and undefeated in conference play 5-0. The last time to two schools met was last season where the Tigers collected a 35-19 victory.
Albany State will then travel to face the Maroon Tigers of Morehouse College on October 31st. The contest highlights the 9th straight year that these two have faced off against each other since 2011 with the Golden Rams boasting a 9-0 record.
To wrap up the regular season, the Golden Rams will face their rival Fort Valley State University at the 31st Annual Fountain City Classic on Saturday, November 7thin Columbus, Georgia. Kickoff is slated for 2:00 p.m. The Golden Rams secured their season finale victory 42-6 over the Wildcats last season. The Wildcats finished the season with a 6-4 record overall and a 4-2 record in the SIAC.
The 2020 SIAC Championship game will take place Saturday, November 16thon the campus of the western division champion.
One could argue it’s been a victorious year for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The FUTURE Act – legislation sustaining federal funding for minority serving institutions – made a fraught, winding journey to President Donald J. Trump’s desk, where it was signed into law in December.
But on Tuesday, Dr. Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), discouraged unbridled optimism.
“I cannot stand before you here today and say only that the state of HBCUs is strong or only that HBCUs remain resilient,” he said at the organization’s second annual “State of the HBCU Address” where HBCU leaders and allies gathered in Washington D.C. “As you know, those truths are only part of the story.”
He argued that the permanent annual $255 million in federal funding for minority serving institutions, with $85 million designated for HBCUs, marks progress, but it isn’t enough to solve the “HBCU paradox” – the fact that HBCUs enjoy broad bipartisan support but continue to be “woefully underfunded.”
The support that exists, though it spans party divides, is “too often a mile wide and an inch deep,” Lomax said. “Too often it creates an all too convenient gap between rhetoric and reality. It makes it easy for people to look and sound like they are HBCU boosters without having to take the hard steps and make a deep-seated commitment to eradicate decades of disparate treatment of HBCUs.”
Florida A&M University student Chrichanni Watson recently said during an interview with the conservative Breitbart News Daily that President Donald Trump is “making progress” for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), citing how he signed for these institutions to be permanently funded.
She had raving reviews about Trump, saying, “I personally think he’s making progress,” she said. “The first thing that I looked into, especially at my university, is how he recently signed for HBCU’s to be permanently funded.”
Watson said:
“That directly impacts us, as HBCU students, and that’s something that cannot be said for the last administration. I mean, you’ve got to give the man some credit.”
Of her experience with FAMU students if someone utters Trump’s name on campus, she said “all ears are shut off.”:
“They’re not receptive to it. If you’re trying to get their attention, the last thing you want to mention is the president.
This summer, I said something about this president on Twitter and my school definitely was not receptive of it. They were calling me sell out, they were saying I was brainwashed, they were saying all these things, and the tweets just would not end.”
Watson said that she had the opportunity to work in the nation’s capital with a Republican representative, her first experience with the conservative movement. This lead to her wanting to bring back the same energy at FAMU.
Georgia Rep. John Lewis surprised attendees at this year’s Bloody Sunday commemorative march in Selma, Alabama, imploring all attendees to vote, CNN reports. Attendees marched in remembrance across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the afternoon to commemorate the freedom-marchers who were clubbed and tear-gassed by state troopers as they peacefully marched over the same bridge over half a century ago on March 7, 1965. Seventeen people were hospitalized including Lewis after being injured by police while dozens more were hurt. The protest was held against the denial of civil rights to Americans based solely on the color of their skin, which prompted the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Fifty-five years ago, a few of God’s children attempted to march … across this bridge. We were beaten, we were tear-gassed. I thought I was going to die on this bridge. But somehow and some way, God almighty helped me here,” Lewis said during his remarks on Sunday at the apex of the bridge, “We must go out and vote like we never, ever voted before.” Lewis also encouraged those attending to use their vote as “a nonviolent instrument or tool to redeem the soul of America.”
“To see hundreds and thousands of young people with their mothers, their fathers, their grandparents, great grandparents, to see Black and White people, Hispanics, and others standing together, marching together, walking together, to not forget what happened and how it happened,” he said.
“We got to make America better for all of her people. When no one is left out or left behind, because of their race, their color, because of where they grew up, or where they were born,” he added. “We’re one people, we’re one family.”
It was unclear if Lewis would be able to attend the commemorative march as he was diagnosed withstage 4 cancer back in December but a spokeswoman for the commemoration march organizers told CNN that Lewis would be at the front of the march participants—the same position he has been at previous anniversary marches.
This post was written by Roland Michel, a writer at Black Enterprise, where it was originally published. It is published here with permission.
In 1933, a Florida A&M University administrator, J.R.E.Lee Jr., who happened to be the son of the university’s president, J.R.E. Lee Sr., founded the Orange Blossom Classic (OBC) as the football team’s postseason invitational.
Each year for nearly 50 years, until 1979, the Rattlers of FAMU went head to head with their opponents. In the very first game, at a black-only ballpark in Jacksonville, FAMU defeated Howard University 9-0.
Over the years, OBC became a FAMU tradition, and the Rattlers played against various teams including Alabama A&M University),Tuskegee University, Howard University, and more.
This year, the Orange Blossom Classic returns with much anticipation, on September 6th at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, FL. Albany State University has been invited to take on the Rattlers.
Who will win the resurgence game… Will it be the Rattlers of
FAMU or the Golden Rams of Albany State walk away as the champion?
Either way, we all know sporting events in the HBCU
community are about more than what happens on the field. There will be fun,
parties, panels and more! Don’t miss the return of OBC, connecting One BIG
Community.
Get your tickets today and be sure to visit the official website and check out the OBC social media for information and updates: http://bit.ly/OBCHBCU
