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KIMBO SLICE

June 07, 2016

Kevin Ferguson (February 8, 1974 – June 6, 2016), better known as Kimbo Slice, was a Bahamian-born Americanmixed martial artist, boxer and occasional actor. He became famous for mutual combat street fights which were spread across the Internet, leadingRolling Stone to call him "The King of the Web Brawlers".[2] Slice left the underground fighting scene and signed a professional contract with EliteXC in 2007. Slice competed in The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights,[3] where he lost in his first fight to series winner Roy Nelson. In his UFC debut, Slice defeated Houston Alexander in the The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights finale. From January 2015 until his death in June 2016, Slice was under contract to Bellator MMA.[4] Early life Ferguson was born in Nassau, Bahamas, but moved to the United States as a child, growing up in Cutler Ridge, Florida.[5] Ferguson was raised with his two brothers by mother[6]Rosemary Clarke.[7] He went to Bel-Air Elementary School,[5] where Ferguson

CT FLETCHER

June 04, 2016

Fletcher is originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. However, he has lived in Southern California for over 50 years. Fletcher grew up in a religious home, where his father, a Pentecostal preacher, routinely punished him. One lesson he did get from his strict upbringing, however, was a mental focus and toughness that enabled him to build an illustrious career in body building. However, despite his religious upbringing, Fletcher became involved in the streets of Compton, earning him a substantial amount of time in a correctional facility. This rough past has truly molded him to unleash in the gym. Fletcher’s physique, and attitude, changed significantly after undergoing an open heart surgery in 2005. He was weighing 260 pounds before the procedure, so he shed off 45 pounds to try and avoid the surgery. However, it did not work. He came out of the surgery weighing 190 pounds and recovered fully after about two years. While most people attribute steroids to his medical problems, CT believed

BARACK OBAMA

June 04, 2016

Barack Hussein Obama II(US i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/;[2][3]born August 4, 1961) is an American politician serving as the 44th Presidentof the United States. He is the firstAfrican American to hold the office, as well as the first president born outside of the continental United States. Born inHonolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was acommunity organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as acivil rights attorney and taughtconstitutional law at University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004. He served three termsrepresenting the 13th District in theIllinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, andran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for the United States House of Representatives in 2000 against incumbent Bobby Rush. In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in the Marc

Muhammad Ali

June 03, 2016

Muhammad Ali (/ɑːˈliː/;[2] born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016[3]) was an Americanprofessional boxer, generally considered one of the greatestheavyweights in the history of the sport. Early in his career, Ali was known for being a controversial and polarizing figure both inside and outside the boxing ring.[4][5] He was one of the most recognized sports figures of the past 100 years, crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated and "Sports Personality of the Century" by the BBC.[6][7] He also wrote several best-selling books about his career, includingThe Greatest: My Own Story and The Soul of a Butterfly. Ali, originally known as Cassius Clay, began training at 12 years old and at the age of 22 won the world heavyweight championship in 1964 from Sonny Liston in a stunning upset. Shortly after that bout, Ali joined the Nation of Islamand changed his name. He converted toSunni Islam in 1975, and 30 years later began adhering

VICTOR MOORE

April 08, 2016

Victor Moore (born August 23, 1943) holds a 10th Degree Black Belt inKarate[1] and was one of the late Robert Trias Chief instructors of the Shuri-ryūKarate system.[2] Moore was one of the first ten original members of the Trias International Society[3] and also studied and trained with William J. Dometrich in the style of Chito-ryu.[4] Moore has studied martial arts for over 50 years, and is a four-time world karate champion.[5]HistoryEditMoore began to travel with a handful of his students to several tournaments as far away as Canada. He later ventured out opening karate schools throughout the Cincinnati area[6] and began traveling the Midwest and East coast. Being successful in competition,[5] he meets the father of American KarateRobert A. Trias. Robert Trias with his skills and ability took Moore under his wings.[7 He continued to train with Trias at various tournaments and seminars, learning the Kenpo and Goju-Ryu styles of Karate, Moore traveled many times to the USKA headquar

Katherine Dunham Katherine Mary Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an Americandancer, choreographer, author, educator, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance".[1] While a student at the University of Chicago, Dunham took leave and went to the Caribbean to study dance and ethnography. She later returned to graduate and submitted a master's thesis in anthropology. She did not complete the other requirements for the degree, however, and realized that her professional calling was performance. At the height of her career in the 1940s and 1950s, Dunham was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America and was widely popular in the United States, where the Washington Postcalled her "dancer Katherine the Great". For almost 30 years she maintained theKatherine Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supported American black dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more than ninety individual dances.[2]Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology. Early yearsEdit Katherine Mary Dunham was born in June 1909 in a Chicago hospital and taken as an infant to her parents' home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a village about 25 miles west of Chicago. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa andMadagascar. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham (née Taylor), who was of mixedFrench-Canadian and Native American heritage, died when Dunham was three years old. After her father's remarriage a few years later, the family moved to a predominantly white neighborhood in Joliet, Illinois, where her father ran a dry cleaning business.[3] Dunham became interested in both writing and dance at a young age. In high school she joined the Terpsichorean Club and began to learn a kind of modern dance based on ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze and Rudolf von Laban. At the age of 15, she organized the Blue Moon Café, a fund-raising cabaret for Brown's Methodist Church in Joliet, where she gave her first public performance. While still a high-school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children. Academic anthropologistEdit After completing her studies at Joliet Junior College, Dunham moved to Chicago to join her brother Albert, who was attending the University of Chicagoas a student of philosophy. In a lecture by Robert Redfield, a professor of anthropology, she learned that much of black culture in modern America had begun in Africa. She consequently decided to major in anthropology and to focus on dances of the African diaspora. Besides Redfield, she studied under anthropologists such as A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Edward Sapir, andBronisław Malinowski. Under their tutelage, she showed great promise in her ethnographic studies of dance.[4] In 1935, Dunham was awarded travel fellowships from the Julius Rosenwald and Guggenheim foundations to conduct ethnographic study of the dance forms of the Caribbean, especially as manifested in the Vodunof Haiti, a path also followed by fellow anthropology student Zora Neale Hurston. She also received a grant to work with Professor Melville Herskovitsof Northwestern University, whose ideas of African retention would serve as a platform for her research in the Caribbean. Her field work in the Caribbean began inJamaica, where she went to live several months in the remote Maroon village ofAccompong, deep in the mountains ofCockpit Country. (She later wrote a book, Journey to Accompong, describing her experiences there.) Then she traveled on to Martinique and toTrinidad and Tobago for short stays, primarily to do an investigation ofShango, the African god who remained an important presence in West Indian heritage. Early in 1936 she arrived at last in Haiti, where she remained for several months, the first of her many extended stays in that country throughout the rest of her life. While in Haiti, Dunham investigatedVodun rituals and made extensive notes on her research, particularly on the dance movements of the participants. Years later, after extensive studies and initiations, she became a mambo in the Vodun religion. She also became friends with, among others, Dumarsais Estimé, then a high-level politician, who became president of Haiti in 1949. Somewhat later, she assisted him, at considerable risk to her life, when he was persecuted for his progressive policies and sent in exile to Jamaica after a coup d'état. Dunham returned to Chicago in the late spring of 1936 and in August was awarded a bachelor's degree, a Ph.B., bachelor of philosophy, with her principal area of study named as social anthropology. In 1938, using materials collected during her research tour of the Caribbean, Dunham submitted a thesis, "The Dances of Haiti: A Study of Their Material Aspect, Organization, Form, and Function," to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master's degree, but she never completed her course work or took examinations to qualify for the degree. Devoted to dance performance as well as to anthropological research, she realized that she had to choose between the two. Although she was offered another grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to pursue her academic studies, she chose dance, gave up her graduate studies, and departed for Broadway andHollywood.[3] Dancer and choreographerEdit Katherine Dunham in 1940, by Carl Van Vechten In 1928, while still an undergraduate, Dunham began to study ballet with Ludmilla Speranzeva, a Russian dancer who had settled in Chicago, having come to the United States with the Franco-Russian vaudeville troupe Le Théâtre de la Chauve-Souris directed by impresario Nikita Balieff. She also studied ballet with Mark Turbyfill andRuth Page, who became prima ballerina of the Chicago Opera. Through her ballet teachers, she was also exposed to Spanish, East Indian, Javanese, and Balinese dance forms. In 1931, when she was only 21, Dunham formed a group called Ballets Nègres, one of the first black ballet companies in the United States. After a single, well-received performance in 1931, the group was disbanded. Encouraged by Speranzeva to focus on modern dance instead of ballet, Dunham opened her first real dance school in 1933 called the Negro Dance Group. It was a venue for Dunham to teach young black dancers about their African heritage. In 1934–36 Dunham performed as a guest artist with the ballet company of the Chicago Opera. Ruth Page had written a scenario and choreographedLa Guiablesse ("The Devil Woman"), based on a Martinican folk tale inLafcadio Hearn's Two Years in the French West Indies. It opened in Chicago in 1933, with a black cast and with Page dancing the title role. The next year it was repeated with Katherine Dunham in the lead and with students from Dunham's Negro Dance Group in the ensemble. Her dance career was then interrupted by her anthropological research in the Caribbean. Having completed her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and having made the decision to pursue a career as a dancer and choreographer rather than as an academic, Dunham revived her dance ensemble and in 1937 journeyed with them to New York to take part in "A Negro Dance Evening" organized by Edna Guy at the 92nd Street YMHA. The troupe performed a suite of West Indian dances in the first half of the program and a ballet entitledTropic Death, with Talley Beatty, in the second half. Upon returning to Chicago, the company performed at the Goodman Theater and at the Abraham Lincoln Center. Dunham's well-known works Rara Tonga and Woman with a Cigar were created at this time. With choreography characterized by exotic sexuality, both became signature works in the Dunham repertory. After successful performances of her company, Dunham was named dance director of the Chicago Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project. In this post, she choreographed the Chicago production of Run Li'l Chil'lun, performed at the Goodman Theater, and produced several other works of choreography including The Emperor Jones and Barrelhouse. At this time Dunham first became associated with designer John Pratt, whom she later married. Together, they produced the first version of her dance composition L'Ag'Ya, which premiered on January 27, 1938, as a part of the Federal Theater Project in Chicago. Based on her research in Martinique, this three-part performance integrated elements of a Martinique fighting dance into American ballet. In 1939, Dunham's company gave further performances in Chicago and Cincinnati and then went back to New York, where Dunham had been invited to stage a new number for the popular, long-running musical revue Pins and Needles 1940, produced by theInternational Ladies' Garment Workers Union. As this show continued its run at the Windsor Theater, Dunham booked her own company in the theater for a Sunday performance. This concert, billed as Tropics and Le Hot Jazz, included not only her favorite partners Archie Savage and Talley Beatty but her principal Haitian drummer, Papa Augustin. Initially scheduled for a single performance, the show was so popular that the troupe repeated it for another ten Sundays. This success led to the entire company being engaged in the Broadway production Cabin in the Sky, staged byGeorge Balanchine and starring Ethel Waters. With Dunham in the sultry role of temptress Georgia Brown, the show ran for 20 weeks in New York before moving to the West Coast for an extended run of performances there. The show created a minor controversy in the press. After the national tour of Cabin in the Sky, the Dunham company stayed in Los Angeles, where they appeared in the Warner Brothers short film Carnival of Rhythm (1941). The next year Dunham appeared in the Paramount musical filmStar Spangled Rhythm (1942) in a specialty number, "Sharp as a Tack," with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Other movies she appeared in during this period included the Abbott and Costellocomedy Pardon My Sarong (1942) and the famous break-through black musical Stormy Weather (1943).[5] Later that year, they returned to New York, and in September 1943, under the management of the renowned impresario Sol Hurok, her troupe opened in Tropical Review at the Martin Beck Theater. Featuring lively Latin American and Caribbean dances, plantation dances, and American social dances, the show was an immediate success. The original two-week engagement was extended by popular demand into a three-month run, after which the company embarked on an extensive tour of the United States and Canada. In Boston, the bastion of conservatism, the show was banned in 1944 after only one performance. Although it was well received by the audience, local censors feared that the revealing costumes and provocative dances might compromise public morals. After the tour, in 1945, the Dunham company appeared in the short-lived Blue Holiday at the Belasco Theater in New York and in the more successful Carib Song at the Adelphi Theatre. The finale to the first act of this show was Shango, a staged interpretation of a Vodun ritual that would become a permanent part of the company's repertory. In 1946, Dunham returned to Broadway for a revue entitled Bal Nègre, which received glowing notices from theater and dance critics. Early in 1947 Dunham choreographed the musical play Windy City, which premiered at the Great Northern Theater in Chicago, and later in the year she opened a cabaret show in Las Vegas, marking the first year that the city became a popular entertainment destination. Later that year she went with her troupe to Mexico, where their performances were so popular that they remained for more than two months. After Mexico, Dunham began touring in Europe, where she was an immediate sensation. In 1948 she opened A Caribbean Rhapsody first at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, then swept on to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. This was the beginning of more than 20 years of performing almost exclusively outside America. During these years, the Dunham company appeared in some 33 countries in Europe, North Africa, South America, Australia, and East Asia. Dunham continued to develop dozens of new productions during this period, and the company met with enthusiastic audiences wherever they went. Despite these successes, the company frequently ran into periods of financial difficulties, as Dunham was required to support all of the 30 to 40 dancers and musicians. In 1948, Dunham and her company appeared in the Hollywood movieCasbah, with Tony Martin, Yvonne de Carlo, and Peter Lorre, and in the Italian film Botta e Risposta, produced by Dino de Laurentiis. Also that year they appeared in the first ever hour-long American spectacular televised by NBCwhen television was first beginning to spread across America. This was followed by television spectaculars filmed in London, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney, and Mexico City. In 1950, Sol Hurok presented Katherine Dunham and Her Company in a dance revue at the Broadway Theater in New York, with a program composed of some of Dunham's best works. It closed after only 38 performances, and the company soon thereafter embarked on a tour of venues in South America, Europe, and North Africa. They had particular success in Denmark and France. In the mid-1950s, Dunham and her company appeared in three films:Mambo (1954), made in Italy; Die Grosse Starparade (1954), made in Germany; and Música en la Noche (1955), made in Mexico City. The Dunham company's international tours ended in Vienna in 1960, when it was stranded without money because of bad management by their impresario. Dunham saved the day by arranging for the company to appear in a German television special, Karibische Rhythmen, after which they returned to America. Dunham's last appearance on Broadway was in 1962 in Bamboche!, which included a few former Dunham dancers in the cast and a contingent of dancers and drummers from the Royal Troupe of Morocco. It was not a success, closing after only eight performances. A highlight of Dunham's later career was the invitation from New York'sMetropolitan Opera to stage dances for a new production of Aida starring Leontyne Price. Thus, in 1963, she became the first African-American to choreograph for the Met since Hemsley Winfield set the dances for The Emperor Jones in 1933. The critics acknowledged the historical research she did on dance in ancient Egypt but did not particularly care for the results they saw on the Met stage.[6]Subsequently, Dunham undertook various choreographic commissions at several venues in the United States and in Europe. In 1967 she officially retired after presenting a final show at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. Even in retirement Dunham continued to choreograph: one of her major works was directing Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha in 1972 at Morehouse College in Atlanta. In 1978 Dunham was featured in thePBS special, Divine Drumbeats: Katherine Dunham and Her People, narrated byJames Earl Jones, as part of the Dance in America series. Alvin Ailey later produced a tribute for her in 1987-88 with his American Dance Theater at Carnegie Hall entitled The Magic of Katherine Dunham

March 12, 2016

Florence mills Florence Mills (born Florence Winfrey; January 25, 1896 – November 1, 1927),[1] known as the "Queen of Happiness", was an African-Americancabaret singer, dancer, and comedian known for her effervescent stage presence, delicate voice, and winsome, wide-eyed beauty. Life and careerEdit A daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Nellie (Simon) and John Winfrey, she was born Florence Winfrey in 1896 in Washington, D.C.. She began performing as a child, when at the age of six she sang duets with her two older sisters. They eventually formed avaudeville act, calling themselves "The Mills Sisters".[2] The act did well, appearing in theaters up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Florence's sisters eventually quit performing, but Florence stayed with it, determined to pursue a career in show business. In time, she joined Ada Smith, Cora Green, and Carolyn Williams in a group called the "Panama Four," with which she had some success. She then joined a traveling black show known as the Tennessee Ten, where in 1917 she met dance director and acrobatic dancerUlysses "Slow Kid" Thompson (1888–1990), to whom she would be married from 1921 until her death.[3] whom she met in 1917 as the dancing conductor of a black jazz band known as the Tennessee Ten.[4][5] Mills became well known in New York as a result of her role in the successful Broadway musical Shuffle Along (1921) at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre (barely onBroadway), one of the events credited with beginning the Harlem Renaissance, as well as acclaimed reviews in London,Paris, Ostend, Liverpool, and otherEuropean venues. She told the press that despite her years in vaudeville, she credited Shuffle Along with launching her career.[2] After Shuffle Along Lew Leslie, a white promoter, hired Mills and Thompson to appear nightly at the Plantation Club. The revue featured Mills and a wide range of black talent including visiting performers such as Paul Robeson. In 1922, Leslie turned the nightclub acts into a Broadway show called The Plantation Revue. It opened at the Forty-eighth Street Theatre on July 22. English theatrical impresario Charles B. Cochran brought the Plantation company to London, and they appeared at the London Pavilion in spring 1923 in a show he devised called Dover Street to Dixie, with a local all-white cast in the first half and Mills starring with the all-black Plantation cast in the second half.[5][6] In 1924 she headlined at the Palace Theatre, the most prestigious booking in all of vaudeville, and became an international superstar with the hit showLew Leslie's Blackbirds (1926). Among her fans when she toured Europe was the Prince of Wales, who told the press that he had seen Blackbirds 11 times.[7] Many in the black press admired her popularity and saw her as a role model: not only was she a great entertainer but she was also able to serve as "an ambassador of good will from the blacks to the whites... a living example of the potentialities of the Negro of ability when given a chance to make good".[8] Mills was featured in national magazines, Vogue and Vanity Fair and photographed by Bassano's studios andEdward Steichen. She made a signature song from her biggest hit, "I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird"; another of her hit songs was "I'm Cravin' for that Kind of Love".

March 08, 2016

Ira Aldridge

February 22, 2016

Ira Frederick Aldridge (July 24, 1807 – August 7, 1867) was an American and later British stage actor and playwright who made his career after 1824 largely on the London stage and in Europe, especially in Shakespearean roles. Born in New York City, Aldridge is the only actor of African-American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage honored with bronze plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre atStratford-upon-Avon. He was especially popular in Prussia and Russia, where he received top honors from heads of state. He was married twice, once to an Englishwoman, once to a Swedish woman, and had a family in England. Two of his daughters became professional opera singers. Early life and careerEdit Aldridge was born in New York City to Reverend Daniel and Luranah Aldridge July 24, 1807. At age 13, Aldridge went to the African Free School in New York City, established by the New York Manumission Society for the children of free blacks and slaves. They were given a classical edu

Ester Jones

February 22, 2016

Esther Jones, known by her stage name "Baby Esther", was an African-Americansinger and entertainer of the late 1920s, known for her "baby" singing style. She performed regularly at the Cotton Clubin Harlem. Theatrical manager Lou Walton testified during the Fleischer v. Kane trial that Helen Kane saw Baby Esther's cabaret act in 1928 with him and appropriated Jones' style of singing, changing the interpolated words "boo-boo-boo" and "doo-doo-doo" to "boop-boop-a-doop" in a recording of "I Wanna Be Loved By You". Kane never publicly admitted this. Jones' style, as imitated by Kane, went on to become the inspiration for the voice of the cartoon character Betty Boop. When Kane attempted to sue Fleischer Studios for using her persona, the studios defended themselves by arguing that Kane herself had taken it from "Baby Esther" Jones. An early test sound film of Baby Esther's performance was used as eviden