Daily Times
Vanessa Williams smiles when she recounts being crowned the first Black Miss America in 1984.
“I had the responsibility of something that I never thought would ever happen in my lifetime,” she tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I didn’t think it would happen, and the fact that it did happen, made my path mean something and that’s tremendously heartfelt to me because I made a change in my own little way.”
That title would eventually end with the release of unauthorized nude photos that a photographer had snapped of her years earlier. After the photos were released, Williams was pressured to resign with six weeks left in her reign. She was just 21 years old.
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Your support of our work is inspiring and invaluable. / Controversial Contest: The Nation’s Most Famous Pageant for Women Will Cease To Judge Contestants on Their Physical Appearance
Controversial Contest: The Nation’s Most Famous Pageant for Women Will Cease To Judge Contestants on Their Physical Appearance From its inception in 1921 to the present, the competition that overidealized femininity has earned admiration from many and intense disgust from others.
AFTER MONTHS OF INTENSE CONTROVERSY plaguing the Miss America Organization in 2018, Gretchen Carlson, Miss America 1989 and chairwoman of the governing body, announced that the nation’s most famous pageant for women would cease judging contestants on their physical appearance.
‘Systemic racism’: Does it even exist?
Troy Williams
Systemic racism has become the operative phrase in a lot of political circles these days. Systemic racism, also called “institutional” racism, was coined and first used by Stokely Carmichael in 1967.
Since high school, Carmichael was a fiery young civil rights activist and was one of the original Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Riders. Most notably, Carmichael originated the Black nationalism rallying slogan, “Black Power.” He graduated from Howard University in 1964 with a degree in philosophy and was the youngest person imprisoned for his participation as a Freedom Rider.
Carmichael later became frustrated with the Civil Rights Movement, particularly Dr. Martin Luther King’s nonviolent philosophy. He changed his name to Kwame Ture, became active in the African liberation movement, and urged people worldwide to fight against white imperialism. I savor in the irony that America is presentl
Black History From the Year You Were Born
By Niesha Davis, Stacker News
On 2/9/21 at 6:30 PM EST
Each February, Black History Month is dedicated to celebrating the achievements, and reflecting on the experiences, of African Americans. What began as a week in 1926 has blossomed into 28 days of remembrance and lessons on the contributions of Black Americans.
Many Black Americans come from a lineage of captured and enslaved people who were forcibly brought to the U.S. to build the culture and infrastructure of a place in which they never asked to live. Forced immigration and centuries of cultural genocide have driven Black Americans to literally and figuratively rebuild a culture from the ground up. In the face of historical oppression and inequality slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the police violence that spawned the #BlackLivesMatter movement African Americans have continuously fought for their rights and spawned countless milestones, achievements, and freedoms. While being forced