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News Releases
June 5th, 2007
---On Broadway: Join UnityFirst.com in New
York City on June 30, 2007 for August Wilson's history-making
play, "Radio Golf," an award-winning perspective on African
American life and progress---August Wilson was the
first African American to have two plays running simultaneously
on Broadway and is one of seven American playwrights to win two
Pulitzer Prizes. The most contemporary of all of August Wilson's
works, RADIO GOLF is the final play in his unprecedented 10-play
cycle chronicling African-American life in the 20th century.
Don't miss this rare opportunity to experience his final play on
Broadway! RADIO GOLF is a fast-paced, dynamic and wonderfully
funny work about the world today and the dreams we have for the
future. Set in 1997 in Pittsburgh's Hill District, RADIO GOLF
could be ripped from today's headlines. It's the story of a
successful entrepreneur who aspires to become the city's first
Black mayor. But when the past begins to catch up with him,
secrets get revealed that could be his undoing. The Late AUGUST
WILSON (Playwright) was the author of Jitney, Ma Rainey's Black
Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson,
Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Gem of the
Ocean and Radio Golf. Directed by Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the
Sun, Gem of the Ocean), Radio Golf stars Harry Lennix (Stomp the
Yard, Fox's "24," NBC's "Commander in Chief") and Tony Award
winner and Olivier Award nominee Tonya Pinkins (Jelly's Last
Jam; Caroline, or Change). Let's make history by going to this
historic performance! For special discount tickets (now only
$42.50 ) and to join UnityFirst.com at the Saturday, June 30,
2007 (matinee performance - 2 pm), use the UnityFist.com
Discount Code (RGNFP62) and order your tickets as follows:
1) Order Online: Visit BroadwayOffers.com and enter code
RGNFP62.
2) Order by Phone Call 212-947-8844 and mention code RGNFP62.
3) Order via Unityfirst.com: Call (413) 734-6444 and mention
Radio Golf Tickets.
If you would like to attend performances other than the June 30,
use the UnityFirst.com discount code (RGNFP62) for a $42.50
ticket (regular price is $96.25) for performances through July
1, 2007. Looking forward to seeing you in New York…if you have
any questions, call (413) 734-6444. |
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Tyler Perry
Michael Lee-Chin
Mayme Clayton |
Business World Index
---There's a New Family
on the Block: Tyler Perry's HOUSE OF PAYNE, Premiering
Wednesday, June 6 on TBS---Television's newest family
is moving into the neighborhood this Summer as Tyler Perry's
HOUSE OF PAYNE takes up residence on TBS, television's top-rated
comedy network. HOUSE OF PAYNE is set to premiere on TBS
Wednesday, June 6, at 9 p.m. (ET/PT) with back-to-back episodes.
This endearing half-hour comedy series follows the lives of a
multi-generational family forced by circumstances to live under
one roof. Allen Payne (Jason's Lyric), LaVan Davis (The Gospel
Truth), Cassi Davis (Daddy's Little Girls), Lance Gross (The
Bernie Mac Show), Larramie Doc Shaw (Nobody Loves Me), China
Anne McClain (Daddy's Little Girls) and Demetria McKinney (Why
Did I Get Married?) star in the ensemble comedy that comes to
TBS from Debmar-Mercury and creator Tyler Perry (Daddy's Little
Girls, Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion).
In addition to serving as director, executive producer and
writer on the show, Perry is slated to make a guest appearance
in the first episode as his now-legendary character Madea. He
will be joined by special guest star KeKe Palmer (Akeelah & the
Bee) "With HOUSE OF PAYNE, I'm drawing on the kind of family
experiences, both good and bad, that most of us go through at
some point in our lives, regardless of our individual
backgrounds," said Perry. "And that's what makes this show
relatable to a wide audience and its humor so universal. The
Paynes may not be perfect - no family is - but no matter what
happens, there's always a tangible bond holding them together as
they face the world with love and endurance." TBS, a division of
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., is television's top-rated
comedy network. Watch the show… and let us know what you think
about it….send comments to info@unityfirst.com.
---United Nations
Global Compact to Host 2007 World Diversity Leadership Summit
June 4-6, 2007---The United Nations Global Compact
will host the third annual World Diversity Leadership Summit
(www.wdls2007.com), to be held on June 4-6 at UN Headquarters in
New York. The WDLS is the world's premier gathering of senior
corporate executives, experts, and policymakers focused on
global and local diversity management practices. Confirmed
conference speakers include the Major League Baseball
Commissioner, Alan H. (Bud) Selig and Michael Grissom of the New
York Times. The conference will also honor the contributions of
billionaire and philanthropist Michael Lee-Chin. This year's
conference, "Globalization and Diversity: Unleashing the Power
of Diverse Workers, Suppliers and Customers," will consider the
impact of diversity in areas such as academia, global supply
chains, major international cities, global workers, customers,
and sports. For more information about the World Diversity
Leadership Summit, including a complete schedule and
registration information, please visit www.wdls2007.com, or
contact John Phillips at 212-239-5487.
---Barack Obama and
Hillary Rodham Clinton to speak at the National Urban League's
annual conference--- Democratic presidential
contenders Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton are the first of a field of presidential
candidates invited from both political parties to confirm that
they will speak at the National Urban League's 97th annual
conference in St. Louis, Mo., from July 25 through July 28, NUL
President Marc Morial announced. Sen. Obama, followed 12 hours
later by Sen. Clinton, was the first to accept the League's
invitation to appear at one of the conference's presidential
candidate forums scheduled for July 27. The league is awaiting
confirmation from the rest of the field of contenders from both
sides of the aisle. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also
confirmed that he will be attending the conference, with plans
to speak at a leadership luncheon on July 25, the day of the
conference's kickoff. The four -day conference, entitled "You,
Your Money, Your Future," is expected to draw over 10,000
attendees from across the nation to the America's Center in St.
Louis.
---From Hollywood to
Harlem: An Exhibition of Early Black Films---New
York's Casa Frela Gallery recently presented Hollywood to
Harlem, a glorious exhibition which honors early African
American contributions to America's motion picture industry and
highlights the commitment of Mayme A. Clayton (1923 - 2006) who
dedicated years to preserving its history with an expansive
collection of rarely seen African American films produced from
the 1920s through the 1950s. The Hollywood to Harlem event
featured the showing of the film "Stormy Weather". Films
featured in the Hollywood To Harlem exhibit are from the film
archives of the Mayme A. Clayton Library Museum, Culver City,
CA. The Clayton Film Archives comprise one of the largest and
most substantial African American film collections in the world
and dates back to 1916. The Mayme A. Clayton Collection of
African American History & Culture is widely known as the
world's largest privately held collection of rare and
out-of-print books, documents, films, music, photographs and
memorabilia on African American culture and history. Dr. Clayton
often said she was motivated to use her time and resources to
assemble the collection so "children would know that Black
people had done great things." Congrats on a great event! Avery
Clayton, the eldest of Mayme Clayton’s three sons is leading the
effort to establish the Mayme A. Clayton Library Museum in
Southern California as a full service research and education
center, a repository for endangered collections, a museum for
contemporary art and a media center for film and live
performances. A special thanks to Alicia Evans of New York's
Total Image Communications for coordinating this stellar event!
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Black Author wins The Matrix Copyright Infringement Case This
little known story has met a just conclusion, as Sophia Stewart,
African American author of The Matrix will finally receive her just
due from the copyright infringement of her original work!!! Monday,
October 4th 2004 ended a six-year dispute involving Sophia Stewart,
the Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver and Warner Brothers. Stewart's
allegations, involving copyright infringement and racketeering, were
received and acknowledged by the Central District of California, Judge
Margaret Morrow residing.
Stewart, a New Yorker who has resided in Salt Lake City for the
past five years, will recover damages from the films, The Matrix I, II
and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. She will soon
receive one of the biggest payoffs in the history of Hollywood, as the
gross receipts of both films and their sequels total over 2.5 billion
dollars.
Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she
felt had been based on her manuscript, "The Third Eye,"
copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her
manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new
sci-fi works.
According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered
that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film,
in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement. The
investigation also stated that "credible witnesses employed at
Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers
had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the
Wachowski Brothers." These witnesses claimed to have seen
Stewart's original work and that it had been "often used during
preparation of the motion pictures." The defendants tried, on
several occasions, to have Stewart's case dismissed, without success.
Stewart has confronted skepticism on all sides, much of which comes
from Matrix fans, who are strangely loyal to the Wachowski Brothers.
One on-line forum, entitled Matrix Explained has an entire section
devoted to Stewart. Some who have researched her history and writings
are open to her story. Others are suspicious and mocking. "It
doesn't bother me," said Stewart in a phone interview last week,
"I always knew what was true."
Some fans, are unaware of the case or they question its legitimacy,
due to the fact that it has received little to no media coverage.
Though the case was not made public until October of 2003, Stewart has
her own explanation, as quoted at aghettotymz.com:
"The reason you have not seen any of this in the media is
because Warner Brothers parent company is AOL-Time Warner... this
GIANT owns 95 percent of the media... let me give you a clue as to
what they own in the media business... New York Times
papers/magazines, LA Times papers/magazines, People Magazine, CNN
news, Extra, Celebrity Justice, Entertainment Tonight, HBO, New Line
Cinema, Dreamworks, Newsweek, Village Roadshow... many, many more!...
They are not going to report on themselves. They have been suppressing
my case for years..."
Fans who have taken Stewart's allegations seriously, have found
eerie mythological parallels, which seem significant in a case that
revolves around the highly metaphorical and symbolic Matrix series.
Sophia, the Greek goddess of wisdom has been referenced many times in
speculation about Stewart. In one book about the Goddess Sophia, it
reads, "The black goddess is the mistress of web creation spun in
her divine matrix"
Although there have been outside implications as to racial
injustice (Stewart is African American), she does not feel that this
is the case. "This is all about the Benjamins," said
Stewart. "It's not about money with me. It's about justice."
Stewart's future plans involve a record label, entitled Popsilk
Records, and a motion picture production company, All Eyez On Me, in
reference to God. "I wrote The Third Eye to wake people up, to
remind them why God put them here. There's more to life than
money," said Stewart. "My whole to the world is about God
and good and about choice, about spirituality over
'technocracy'."
If Stewart represents spirituality, then she truly has prevailed
over the "technocracy" represented in both the Terminator
and the Matrix, and now, ironically, by their supposed creators.
Stewart is currently having discussions with CBS about a possible
exclusive story and has several media engagements in the near future
to nationally publicize her victory. June 13th 2004. Sophia Stewart's
press release read: "The Matrix & Terminator movie franchises
have made world history and have ultimately changed the way people
view movies and how Hollywood does business, yet the real truth about
the creator and creation of these films continue to elude the masses
because the hidden secret of the matter is that these films were
created and written by a Black woman... a Black woman named Sophia
Stewart. But Hollywood does not want you to know this fact simply
because it would change history. Also it would encourage our Black
children to realize a dream and that is... nothing is impossible for
them to achieve!"
Alabama Vote Opens Old Racial Wounds
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- On that long-ago day of
Alabama's great shame, Gov. George C. Wallace (D) stood in a
schoolhouse door and declared that his state's constitution forbade
black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.
He was correct.
If Wallace could be brought back to life today to
reprise his 1963 moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would
still be correct. Alabama voters made sure of that Nov. 2, refusing to
approve a constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording
requiring separate schools for "white and colored children"
and to eliminate references to the poll taxes once imposed to
disenfranchise blacks.
The vote was so close -- a margin of 1,850 votes out
of 1.38 million -- that an automatic recount will take place Monday.
But, with few expecting the results to change, the amendment's saga
has dragged Alabama into a confrontation with its segregationist past
that illuminates the sometimes uneasy race relations of its present.
The outcome resonates achingly here in this college
town, where the silver-haired men and women who close their eyes and
lift their arms when the organ wails at Bethel Baptist Church -- a
short drive from Wallace's schoolhouse door -- don't have to strain to
remember riding buses past the shiny all-white school on their way to
the all-black school.
"There are people here who are still fighting
the Civil War," said Tommy Woods, 63, a deacon at Bethel and a
retired school administrator. "They're holding on to things that
are long since past. It's almost like a religion."
There are competing theories about the defeat of
Amendment 2, the measure that would have taken "colored
children" and segregated schools out of Alabama's constitution.
One says latent, persistent racism was to blame; another says voters
are suspicious of all constitutional amendments; and a third says it
was not about race but about taxes.
The amendment had two main parts: the removal of the
separate-schools language and the removal of a passage -- inserted in
the 1950s in an attempt to counter the Brown v. Board of Education
ruling against segregated public schools -- that said Alabama's
constitution does not guarantee a right to a public education. Leading
opponents, such as Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles,
said they did not object to removing the passage about separate
schools for "white and colored children." But, employing an
argument that was ridiculed by most of the state's newspapers and by
legions of legal experts, Giles and others said guaranteeing a right
to a public education would have opened a door for "rogue"
federal judges to order the state to raise taxes to pay for
improvements in its public school system.
The argument plays to Alabama's primal fear of
federal control, a fear born of years of resentment over U.S. courts'
ordering the desegregation of schools and the creation of
black-majority legislative districts.
"Activists on the bench know no bounds,"
Giles said. "It's a trial lawyer's dream."
Giles was aided by a virtually unparalleled Alabama
celebrity in his battle against the amendment, distributing
testimonials from former chief justice Roy Moore, whose fame was
sealed in 2003 when he defied a federal court order to remove a
two-ton granite Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the
Alabama Supreme Court. They were joined by former Moore aide Tom
Parker, who handed out miniature Confederate flags this fall during
his successful campaign for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court.
Arguing that the amendment could lead to higher
taxes is a potent strategy in Alabama, which is one of the nation's
most lightly taxed states and which resoundingly rejected a record
$1.2 billion tax increase proposed last year by Gov. Bob Riley (R), a
conservative, to pay for school improvements and lessen the tax burden
on the poor. But many blacks view the Amendment 2 opponents' tax pitch
as a smoke screen.
As the vote results sink in, the deacons and the
Bible-toting ladies at the Bethel church here have spoken of dark
conspiracies, of sinister agendas. They speak from experience.
Vertia Killings, 72, was riding on a bus that had to
be rerouted because of the commotion at the University of Alabama on
the day Wallace -- who eventually renounced his segregationist past --
made his stand. Her father, Benny Mack, paid a $45 poll tax and
"ate a little less" because of it, she said. Others chose to
eat instead of vote.
Killings does not see the amendment's defeat as a
matter of mere symbolism, even though Alabama's constitutional ban on
integrated schools was trumped -- then and now -- by federal law. She
has watched school testing results with growing uneasiness.
Black students in Alabama have struggled on some
national tests, with 73 percent of black eighth-graders rated below
basic competency in math, compared with 32 percent of white
eighth-graders. Killings also frets about Alabama schools -- just as
schools in many other parts of the country -- steadfastly
resegregating. This phenomenon, which is getting increased attention
among national education experts, is attributed to a kaleidoscope of
factors, including the suburban migration of white families, private
school expansion and the rising popularity of home schooling among
white conservatives.
"It seems like we're having a reversal,"
Killings said.
It matters not at all to Killings and her friends
that the amendment's opponents say they want to remove the
segregated-schools portion of the constitution but cannot abide by
guaranteeing a public education and fear mandates for higher education
taxes. The people who are most affected by poorly funded schools are
the same people who were affected in another era by poll taxes: poor
blacks and poor whites.
"I don't know but a few black folks who can
afford to send their kids to private school," said Charles Steele
Jr., a former Democratic member of the Alabama legislature who lives
here and is national vice president of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference.
This is not the first time that Steele has tangled
with Alabama's constitution, a gigantic document that has more than
740 amendments and more than 310,000 words, making it the world's
longest, at nearly 40 times the length of the U.S. Constitution. Four
years ago, voters repealed a constitutional amendment banning
interracial marriage.
The state constitution, which most historians agree
was written to protect large landowners and to disenfranchise blacks,
is so riddled with antiquated wording that some high school students
in Birmingham make an annual trip to the city library for a project
known as the search for "the loony laws."
Yet the constitution, with its racist past and its
racist present, only grows. On Nov. 2, it was amended three times --
numbers 743, 744 and 745.
Giles has said he would support taking out the
passage about separate schools for "white and colored
children" as long as the part about not guaranteeing a right to
an education is kept.
Ken Guin, the Democratic House majority leader who
wrote Amendment 2, is talking about trying again. Next time, he said,
he might do it Giles's way.
Taken from the Washington Post
---Don't Rush; Relish the Holidays by Kirk Byron
Jones---
There is a story told of the musk deer of North India. In the
springtime, the roe is haunted by the odor of musk. He runs wildly
over hill and ravine with his nostrils dilating and his little body
throbbing with desire, certain that around the next group of trees or
bushes he will find musk, the object of his quest. Then at last he
falls, exhausted, with his little head resting on his tiny hoofs, only
to discover that the odor of musk was in his own hide. Kirk Byron
Jones, author of Addicted to Hurry: Spiritual Strategies for Slowing
Down, (Judson Press, 2003) says, "During the holiday season many
of us run ourselves ragged in search of fulfillment that is closer to
us than we think." Jones offers the following five strategies for
relishing the inner riches of the season:
1. Begin with Peace. Start your day with meditation, prayer,
journaling or other peacemaking activities.
2. Plan Breaks. Don't overdose on over commitment. Schedule times for
playing, reflecting, and resting. Remember the advice from legendary
baseball pitcher Satchel Page: "Sometimes you need to sit and
think, and sometimes you need to just sit."
3. Live at a Savoring Pace. Life doesn't have to be fast to be fun.
Monitor your pace as you go through your daily activities; downshift
when you feel yourself becoming overly anxious and stressed. To gauge
your present living speed, take The Hurry Test at www.savoringpace.com.
4. Share Time with Loved Ones. Maybe the best gift you can give
someone this year is more of you.
5. Celebrate Your Inner Wealth. Remember the story of the musk deer,
and appreciate the joys and hopes that enrich your life everyday.
To learn more about Kirk Byron Jones go to: kirkbjones.com
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