Celebrate Black History Month - Every Month!

Steve LaTreal McNair (February 14, 1973 – July 4, 2009), nicknamed Air McNair, was an American football quarterback who spent the majority of his NFL career with the Tennessee Titans. McNair played college football at Alcorn State in Lorman, Mississippi where he won the 1994 Walter Payton Award as the top player in NCAA Division I-AA. He was drafted third overall by the NFL’s Houston Oilers in 1995. He became the Oilers’ regular starting quarterback in 1997, their first season in Tennessee (though he started six games over the prior two seasons in Houston), and remained the starting quarterback for the Titans until 2005. After the 2005 season, McNair was traded to the Baltimore Ravens, with whom he played for two seasons before retiring after 13 NFL seasons.
McNair led the Titans to the playoffs four times, and the Ravens once, and played in Super Bowl XXXIV with the Titans. He is the Titans’ all-time leading passer. McNair was selected to the Pro Bowl three times, and was All-Pro and Co-MVP in 2003.
On July 4, 2009, the bodies of McNair and Sahel Kazemi were found in McNair’s home in Nashville; both bodies had gunshot wounds. On July 8, 2009, the Nashville-Davidson County assistant medical examiner announced that traces of gun powder residue were found on the hands of Kazemi and confirmed that their deaths were the result of a murder-suicide, with McNair being the murder victim.

This reminded me of something my pastor said to us a long time ago:
“There are only two types of people in the world. The caught and the uncaught. All of us have done something in our lives. We just haven’t been caught.” Please don’t judge Steve McNair. He has already paid the ultimate price.

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009), dubbed the King of Pop, was an American recording artist, entertainer and businessman. One of the most commercially successful recording artists of all time, his contributions to music and dance, along with a highly publicized personal life, made him a part of popular culture around the world for four decades.
A double-inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his other achievements feature multiple Guinness World Records—including the “Most Successful Entertainer of All Time”—13 Grammy Awards, 13 number one singles, and the sale of over 750 million records. He was also a notable philanthropist, donating millions of dollars to the 39 charities he supported, and raising more through his own Heal the World Foundation.
The seventh child of the Jackson family, he made his debut in 1964 as a member of The Jackson 5, beginning a solo career in 1971. His 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time, with four others—Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), and HIStory (1995)—among the best selling. He popularized several physically complicated dance moves, such as the robot and the moonwalk, now iconic. His inventive music videos, including Thriller, “Beat It” and “Billie Jean”, helped to transform the music video into an art form in addition to its original function as a promotional tool. He was the first African American artist to amass a strong crossover following on MTV, and his continually ground-breaking videos, such as “Black or White” and “Scream”, ensured his popularity well into the 1990s.
Jackson’s personal life generated significant controversy. His changing appearance was noticed from the early 1980s, his skin appearing paler and his facial features becoming almost androgynous. He was accused in 1993 of child sexual abuse, and though no charges were brought, his health suffered when he started using painkillers to cope with the stress. He married twice, first in 1994 and again in 1996, and brought up three children, one of them born to a surrogate mother, actions that triggered more speculation about his life. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of different child molestation allegations, which provoked a further decline in his health. Jackson died at the age of 50 on June 25, 2009, in Los Angeles, after suffering from cardiac arrest. His memorial service was broadcast live around the world.

WASHINGTON – Marian Anderson couldn’t sing at Constitution Hall or even a local high school because of the color of her skin. So the opera singer performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in April 1939 and sang “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.”
Unlike other events then, the 75,000-person crowd that had gathered to hear the African-American woman sing wasn’t segregated. Blacks and whites stood together. Senators and Supreme Court justices also came on that Easter Sunday. The event came to symbolize the ideal of America’s racial equality.
On Sunday afternoon, 70 years later, there will be another free concert at the Lincoln Memorial, this one designed to commemorate the 1939 landmark event. The Sunday concert will incorporate songs from Anderson’s event and remember its significance during America’s era of segregation.
A modern African-American opera star, Denyce Graves, will sing classical songs at Anderson’s anniversary concert. Chicago Children’s Choir, the women’s a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock and the U.S. Marine Band are also scheduled to perform.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell will recite excerpts from Lincoln’s second inaugural address during the concert. Following the hour-long performance about 200 people will be sworn as U.S. citizens, symbolizing the rights all Americans are guaranteed.
“To me, it’s just very dramatic,” said Josephine Pesaresi, 75, the daughter of Justice Hugo Black, who attended the 1939 event. “People are younger, they don’t realize what huge things have happened and how far we have come. It makes me weep, I’m so happy.”
Pesaresi, who will be present at Sunday’s concert, says it makes her recall how her father had grown in his racial outlook. Black, once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, later joined a unanimous Supreme Court in outlawing segregation in public schools in 1954 and often voted with the court’s liberal wing on civil rights cases.
“He and my mother went to that concert, because he so firmly believed in equality,” she said.
It’s a time to reflect “where we were then, where we are now, and how far we have to go,” said Raymond Arsenault, who has written a book on Anderson’s concert and has consulted with the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. The commission and the National Park Service are sponsoring the event.
Seventy-year anniversaries ceremonies aren’t that common, but the Bicentennial Commission decided to hold the concert this year because it coincided with the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birthday. Organizers view Anderson’s concert as a major step in the advancement of civil rights that Lincoln helped inspire.
The anniversary performance also occurs within the first 100 days of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Arsenault said the 1939 event wasn’t just a concert. “It was this sort of crack in the mold; it just showed people this alternative vision of what America might be like if it lived up to its goals of liberty,” he said.
Anderson grew up in poverty in South Philadelphia, but she became famous in the 1930s, performing for royalty and in major concert halls in Europe, New York and Philadelphia.
When her manager tried to book Anderson at Constitution Hall, the largest venue in segregated Washington at the time, she was rejected by the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owned the hall and prohibited African Americans from performing there. The district’s school board also turned her way from singing at a school’s auditorium.
“She had sung for crowned heads of Europe,” Arsenault said, “but she couldn’t sing in her own nation’s capital.”
First lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest. She and then-Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, along with a coalition of black and white community leaders, mobilized to have Anderson sing at the Lincoln Memorial.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was asked for his approval, Arsenault said that the president declared “she can sing from the top of the Washington Monument if she wants to.”

~By CHRISTINE SIMMONS, Associated Press Writer

I’m going to try to get through this without

blubbering. As is tradition in our church

we have a Black History celebration the

last Sunday in February. I haven’t been

able to wrap my mind around this year’s

celebration until now without crying. This

year the theme was Generations Remember.
We started with the oldest members who

painted vivid memories of their lives as

small children in a segregated south. It was

very powerful and the young children sat in

total silence listening. When we got to the

youngest generation, my daughter-in-law

asked for a volunteer. A young girl who

rides the church van every Sunday along

with about eight other children raised her

hand. It was hard to judge her age at the

time but we soon learned she is seventeen.

She may weigh 85 lbs if that much. She told

the congregation I listened to my elders

today and I can’t relate to their struggles.

Their struggles have

made the world a better place for us. I

would like to tell you about my personal

struggles. My brother is sitting over there

(raise your hand) we watched our Dad kill

our Momma. I tried to pick her up off the

floor, blood was everywhere. my brother was

screaming and I tried to comfort him. I was

seven he was four. We lost both parents

that day, my Dad went to prison where he is

right now. We were sent to live with a Aunt

who blamed us for my mother’s death. I

still don’t know why. She would not show us

any love or do anything for us. I was seven

and had to wash our clothes in the bath tub

and hang them outside on the clothesline.

We were not allowed to use the washer or dryer like her kids. She beat us so badly we would be bleeding through our clothes at school. The police came out several times but nothing happened. I got tired of it and ran away to live with my Godmother where I am now. Life is better but she has her own kids to take care of. My Aunt was getting public assistance for us and would not give up the money. We are not struggling because we’re black but struggling just trying to live.

I’m blubbering again.
This young girl asked if she could sing a song that keeps her focused, here it is and she sang it with conviction!

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heav’n and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant Friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
Refrain:
I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
“Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I would like to thank my photo-journalist friends who shared these amazing pictures with me. It’s good to have that kind of relationship with people around the world.

CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ENLARGE IT.

U.S. President Barack H. Obama greets guests after he is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on the West Front of the Capitol January 20, 2009 in Washington, DC.

U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta replaces an official picture of outgoing President George W. Bush with that of newly-sworn-in U.S. President Barack Obama, in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Base January 20, 2009 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

40 years after their silent protest at the 1968 Olympics, Gold Medalist Tommie Smith hugs Bronze Medalist John Carlos, and their wives Delois Smith and Charlene Carlos after Barack Obama is officially sworn in as the President of the United States. Photo taken in the Smith room at the Sheraton Boston in Boston, MA.

Kenyans who gathered at the grounds of the University of Nairobi to watch in giant screens the inauguration ceremony where Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America celebrate the ocassion on January 20, 2009. Barrack Obama’s father was born in Kenya.

Students of the Crested Butte Community School, in Crested Butte Colo. sit on the floor in the main hallway of the school and applaud the inaugural address of President Barack Obama while watching the presidential inauguration in Washington, Tuesday, Jan., 20, 2009.