Black history month. - The people that made a difference.

[Nantuko Joe]

Jackie Robinson

The first black male to play professional baseball, which until his time had been a white-only sport. Despite all of the hatred and bigotry that was thrown at him, Jackie pressed on and paved the way for other african americans to be integrated not only into baseball, but also into football and basketball.

[Sportschick155]

I CANT BELIEVE U PPL DIDNT EVEN MENTION...MARTIN LUTHER KING!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SolidSnake76]

sports, almost everyone in the world know who he is, besides, most of these pple here[the unintellengent one] would metion him like 10 times. put down sum1 u never heard of. my go....

oprah winfrey

a good role model and the santa clause to pple in need. the real america's sweetheart. born in 1954, she amused herself by performing for an audience of farm animals and corncob dolls, at an early age. she could read at age 3 and she recited speeches in church. after six years with her grandmother, her mother sent for her and oprahlived with her in a housing project in milwaukee, minesota. her mother was too busy to pay her any mind and she was abused by several men she trusted. oprah started a life of crime, nearly ending up in a detension hall. she went back to her father.

oprah was in nashville east high school when she entered broadcasting and read news for WVOL radio in nashville. she discovered the world of television in her sophmore year at tenesse state university where she majored in drama and speech. she was on WJZ-TV in baltimore after granduating. oprah then moved on to WLS-TV in chicago to host A.M. chicago, which became The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1985 and it went national. in that same year, she played sophie in The Color Purple and won both an golden globe and an academy award and formed her own production company: Harpo Production[that explains why her name is backwards when they show that after her show] to control her show and produce videos and flims for social importance.

oprah is the first black woman and the third woman in the U.S. to own a television and flim production studio. she also launched a television book club for her veiwers. i meet oprah once in the kings plaza mall in brooklyn, NYC[ma hometown] and this inspirational woman is a powerful one.

[Sportschick155]

i know but still! his still important!

[SolidSnake76]

this topic was an accident. no1 cares about this kind of stuff.

[EYO]

rosa parks:

i think she da one dat sat in the bus(front seat)....
and got sent 2 jail, den boycott da bus......and dey one 2...well i think dats her

[SolidSnake76]

eyo, research, more info.
sports, u do dr. king.

Thurgood Marshall

first black man on the United States Surpreme Court Justice. born in 1908, he grew up in baltimore and graduated from an all black high school at age 16.He attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the nation

[SolidSnake76]

Sammy Davis Jr

the decent micheal jackson of the mid 1900's[i do mean decent, no screwing up himself like jackson]. born in 1925, he started his career at age 3, prforming with his father and uncle: the will mastin trio. at 4, he made his movie debut 'rufus jones for president'.

Sammy Davis Jr lived from 1925 to 1990. Michael Heatley from Vox magazine gives a short biography.

In the over hyped world of popular music music, there are legends, and then there are Legends with a capital L. There's no doubting which category Sammy Davis Jr falls into. For a staggering 60 years, from his debut as a four year old child star in the late 1920's to his untimely death in 1990 at the age of 64, he more than justified his title of 'Mr Entertainment' and when he wasn't inspiring headlines on stage he was making news of it, as a founder member of the Rat Pack with fellow superstars Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.

It's impossible in the space allotted to do more than scratch the surface of one of showbiz's all time greats. Thankfully, Sammy Davis Jr left no fewer than three detailed accounts of life at the top. 'Yes I Can' (1965) and 'Life In A Suitcase' (1980) were followed by 'Why Me', published the year before his death. All are required reading.

He owed his early start to his parents, vaudeville star Sammy Davis Sr and Puerto Rican 'Baby Sanchez, who performed with the youngsters adopted uncle, Will Mastin, in his act 'Holiday In Dixieland'. But Sammy Jr soon became the star of the show as the newly rechristened 'Will Mastin's Gang, Featuring Little Sammy' acknowledged. When the authorities forbade him to appear, so legend has it his father shrugged his shoulders, gave his son a rubber cigar and billed him as a 'dancing midget'.

Whatever the truth, Sammy Davis jr's career was off to a flying start. He made his film debut in the 1932 short Rufus Jones For President, showing off the tap dancing skills taught by the legendary Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson. War service first brought Davis face to face with racial prejudice ('In show business we had our own protective system', he later remarked), but he survived to resume his career with the Will Mastin Trio (completed by his father), and while touring with Mickey Rooney in the late forties played a three week Manhattan residency with bill topper Frank Sinatra. It was the beginning of a close and lifelong friendship.
A near fatal car crash in 1954 en route to Los Angeles recording session saw Davis lose his left eye, but a gruelling rehabilitation schedule left little time for self-pity; he was back on stage within weeks, wisecracking about his newly acquired eye patch. That spell in hospital coincided with a religions conversion to the Jewish faith which, while sincerely held for almost the rest of his life, provided the material for yet more self-mockery of the type that endeared him to an ever growing audience.

Although Davis made his debut in 1956s Mr Wonderful, Broadway would be an occasional, enjoyable distraction from the bulk of his career. He returned in 1964 as boxer Joe Wellington in a musical adaptation of Clifford Odet's 1937 drama Golden Boy, both shows ran for over 400 performances.

Hollywood opened new doors for all-singing, all dancing Davis, his first notable role being Sportin'' Life in a 1959 version of Gershwins Porgy And Bess. If anything, he suffered through his notoriety, despite his undoubted ability, people found it difficult to accept him in character roles like the embittered jazz musician in 1966's A Man Called Adam. More successful perhaps were Rat Pack movies like Salt And Pepper (1968) and One More Time (1970) in which he simply played himself, while a brace of Cannonball Run films in the eighties afforded screen reunions with Dean Martin and others. Then in 1988, just two years before his death, he showed he could still dance by partnering Gregory Hines in the evocative Tap.

While Davis's success broke down racial barriers, there were inevitably cries of "sellout" notably when he endorsed Republican President Richard Nixon in 1972. (Even James Brown confided 'You're taking a lot of heat...I never got it this way'). Yet every black performer all the way to nineties superstars Michael Jackson and Eddie Murphy (whose TV production company funded Davis's last movie role in The Kid Who Loved Christmas) owe him a vote of thanks for his ground braking work both on and off camera.

'Long before there was a civil rights movement', he remarked in 1989, I was marching through the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria, of the Sands, the Fountainbleau, to a table at the Copa. I'd marched alone'. But it was his attitude to performance that broke barriers. Jolson had got the ball rolling, but too many taboos remained.'Dad said to me "You can't do impersonations of a white person," he once commented. 'He really believed that'. Davis's philosophy was a simple one. 'Just do what you're best at, he said in 1988, 'and when you can't do it any longer - stop'.

Sadly, the cancer that ended his life on 16th May 1990 made that decision for him, but he'd long since sung and danced his way into mortality. A final world tour in 1988/89 with Sinatra and Martin will long be remembered, even though Liza Minnelli had to take Dean's place when ill health forced him to drop out. But Davis sang and danced on. 'Sammy knew he was dying back then,' Sinatra later revealed, 'but you never expect it to come to that. We all think we'll live forever.'

Sadly, of course, that doesn't happen, but the magic of the music remains. The tracks selected for this compilation come from the classic hit-making period of the fifties on Decca when creativity coincided with commercial appeal. The highlights are many: 'Love Me Or Leave Me Alone' (from the film of the same name), 'Something's Gotta Give' ( his first British best-seller), a revival of the classic 'That Old Black Magic', written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer and also recorded by Billy Daniels, and 'Hey There', from 1954's The Pyjama Game were all big hits.

Three times married, Davis beat alcohol abuse, physical infirmity and the colour bar and admitted he'd thrown away four fortunes gambling in Vegas and living the good life.' Yet the musical legacy he left is priceless, and one that will surely endure for all time.

[note: most of that was copied and pasted, i didnt feel like typing and sumerizing everything.]

[DA_VIPA]

does it really matter what skin colour u are ?? from a famous but very twisted pop star these are his words

If u wanna be my brother , It dont matter if your black or whiitee!

i do understand that black ppl have taken a lot of $hit over the years and i never sed that theirs anythin wrong wit black history month tho it dont exist in this country( england) but ppl shouldnt be praised more for their skin colour but for the things they acheive but anywayz thats just me ....



Edited By DA_VIPA on Feb. 10 2003 at 20:35

[G_GUNDAM]

yo it was a big fight today in my school. it was between the red necks and the black people. some redneck yelled **why do we need black history anyway. stupid niggers always getting their way** thats when all hell broke loose. it was like a gang war. blacks against the rednecks. man i hate living in orlando. i miss the hood that i used to stay in.