I define myself, we define ourselves.

Habari Gani,

It's my 41st celebration of Kwanzaa. My parents began celebrating our celebration in their church in 1970 in Brooklyn New York. As a child I knew nothing different. We celebrated with some Jewish friends during Channukah, we celebrated the birth of The Christ on December 25th and my father, Rev. Dr. Samuel Varner schooled' me early on that this was the day that most Christians celebrated his birth as it was set by early church leaders, but not the actual date of The Christ's birth. We looked at it as we did with our birthdays, while the date of birth may occur on a Thursday, we would celebrate it on Saturday. Then on December 26th we began celebrating the African aspect of the Americas. On New Years eve we had a Night Watch service to bring in the New Year worshiping before we went partying.

While in grade school I learned that Kwanzaa was a very niche celebration and I never expected all people of African descent to celebrate it. It was very underground. I truly enjoyed the festivities and congregagtion as we celebrated in New York and also in Columbus Ohio where the community was very vibrant in it's celebration. My dad and mom were frequently interviewed and I remember a number of debates over the celebration. While in Columbus my parents invited Maluna Ron Karenga to our racially mixed church and he spoke of Kwanzaa and the other activities the US organization was involved in. While he noted that Kwanzaa wasn't associated with any particular belief system, he reveled in meeting numerous Pastors who began adding elements of the celebration into their winter church activities. I fondly remember a public debate set-up by a major Black church in Columbus Ohio which pitted my father against the church's pastor on the topic "Should a Christian celebrate Kwanzaa ?" The moderator opened with "Kwanzaa or Christmas Dr. Varner ?" My father replied "Both. The more important celebration is one's personal walk and relationship with our Savior. That's something to celebrate. Then as you celebrate other great things in your life such as the 4th of July, your birthday, or a graduation add Jesus to your invitation list. It will make the celebration sweeter." He then gave a history lesson on Christmas and how the early Christian church debated and even outlawed the celebration at times. He ended by saying "I'm proud of my African heritage and I celebrate that, and I of course invite my Lord and Savior into all of my celebrations." The debating pastor then took the mike and said "Well then. It looks like there isn't anything to debate. Praise the Lord Church." We then went early into the social hall and fellowshipped together.

We never really discussed with my classmates our celebration of Kwanzaa. It was a special event that was shared amongst the like-minded. I revel in the performances of Tony West and Imani Dancers in the late 70s and early 80s. We gathered, we interacted, we broke bread, and then we partied. I persoanally loved meeting and flirting with the girls and listening to the DJs play this new Rap music along side Disco, Soul, and Oldies. There were no fights, no problems, and lots of supervising eyes.

In College in the late 80s I shared with anyone I saw who seemed to be a celebrant that I too celebrated, yet remained silent to anyone else. I learned that anyone who seemed to publically embrace Kwanzaa or seemed interested in other African centered information was labeled as a radical, a White-hater, and UnAmerican. I always found it interesting that my ancestry which included Irish, Indian, and African had all received difficulty in their interactions in America. To wear a badege that said "Kiss Me...I'm Irish" was cool, but to wear a badge which displayed the Red, Black, and Green colors would bring difficulty and discomfort.

In the 1990s I then began encountering people who demeaned the celebration by making sure I knew that "Karenga was a racist, a communist lover, was anti-American, and was abusive towards women." To them any association with Kwanzaa was foolish and perhaps even anti-Christian. The interesting aspect of these conversations was that they were normally initiated by other Blacks or people of African descent. Here in Hampton Roads Virginia things were even different in the Kwanzaa attendants. In Columbus Black Americans, Caribbean and Hispanic Blacks, and Blacks from Africa all came together for these celebrations. In Hampton Roads only a few native Africans participated, and the Caribbean/Latino community seemed unintrested at best.

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The Color of Cola - Black History & Pepsi Cola

The Color of Cola

By WARREN GOLDSTEIN

Published: February 4, 2007

History-making heroism, Stephanie Capparell means to demonstrate in this admiring account of the Pepsi-Cola Company’s pioneering — but largely unsung — “special-markets sales staff,” ought not to be measured solely by the fame it attracts. She’s right. Inconceivable without the giants of the ballpark and the ring, demonstrations and courtrooms, the movement for African-American civil rights depended even more on the mostly unknowable actions of millions, black and white, who created new ways of thinking and working and acting within and across racial lines.

Boyd Collection/From “The Real Pepsi Challenge”

The model for the young boy in this store display from the 1940s was Ron Brown, who became President Bill Clinton’s commerce secretary.

THE REAL PEPSI CHALLENGE

The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business.

By Stephanie Capparell.

Illustrated. 349 pp. Wall Street Journal Books/Free Press. $25. 

“The Real Pepsi Challenge” begins with a creative, dynamic white New York businessman, a politically connected, progressive Republican turnaround specialist named Walter S. Mack Jr., who took over Pepsi in 1938. Mack, in his own words “an unrepentant capitalist and a liberal” who enjoyed playing, as Capparell puts it, “scrappy David to the Goliath that was Coca-Cola” (Pepsi’s 1939 sales were under $5 million, compared with Coca-Cola’s $128 million), decided to strengthen Pepsi’s hold on the “Negro market.” Pepsi’s 12-ounce bottle, twice the size of a Coke, sold for the same nickel, which made it more popular among poorer people; according to Capparell, Pepsi had “survived the Depression by appealing to Negro consumers.”
Mack more or less invented the business internship in 1940, with a nationwide essay contest for college graduates. Two of the 13 winners were black; they traveled through 21 states and “thousands of miles by car, train and bus, selling Pepsi” and, by implication, Pepsi’s commitment to African-Americans. World War II interrupted the program, though not Walter Mack’s racial activism: Pepsi opened three integrated military canteens that served 29 million servicemen during and after the war, while “the government’s canteens — like the Army itself — were segregated.”
Capparell deftly portrays the optimism of the immediate postwar years, especially regarding what she calls the “dizzying number of firsts for African-Americans” — in business, education, politics, entertainment and, of course, baseball — in the banner year of 1947. That year Mack hired the 33-year-old Edward F. Boyd, a National Urban League staff member working on housing issues, with a promise that Boyd could hire a dozen African-American salesmen. A slump in the soft-drink market kept Boyd to just four hires at first; his staff grew to eight in 1950, and finally reached 12 a year later. The book mostly recounts the story of Boyd’s special-markets team — the employees’ backgrounds, how they sold the cola, the coverage they received in the black press — and Pepsi’s shifting fortunes in an often volatile market.
The “real Pepsi challenge” of the title lay in the efforts of Pepsi’s black salesmen in the 1940s and ’50s to establish both the importance and profitability of the “Negro market” and the reliability and competence of the men who could sell to it. These men faced the gritty, humiliating realities of Jim Crow as they traveled through the South hustling their cola at black churches, social clubs, schools and athletic events. Some of the first African-Americans working in national corporations — who didn’t carry a broom, that is — they became role models and minor celebrities.
With Mack’s backing, Boyd ran remarkable advertising campaigns in 1948, 1949 and 1951 in the black press. Called “Leaders in Their Fields,” the ads featured profiles of African-American professionals like the diplomat Ralph Bunche, the composer Walter Franklin Anderson, the journalist P. Bernard Young Jr. and the hat designer Mildred Blount. Capparell shows how the series, copies of which black schools and universities requested as educational materials, simultaneously pumped significant income into black publications, showcased black business and professional success, and helped cement black loyalty to Pepsi.
Without calling explicit attention to the alliance among black leaders, the black media and black businesses — an alliance that sprang into action when the president of the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company toasted Georgia’s segregationist governor in 1950, and helped inspire a Pepsi-supported boycott of Coke — Capparell establishes the importance of their mutual support in the overall struggle against racial discrimination. Just as black sportswriters played a key role as advocates for baseball’s integration, the black press, by promoting black consumers and businesses, served to strengthen itself and increase collective black political power. In 1951, Coke placed its first ads in black papers.
Capparell, an editor at The Wall Street Journal and a co-author of “Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons From the Great Antarctic Explorer,” interviewed six surviving members of the team. Through them she opens a window onto the frequently impressive, culturally conservative (and therefore often deprecated), “striving” lives of the respectable black middle class in the years before integration — men and women without whom the achievements of the civil rights years would have been impossible.
Take the story of the team member Jean Emmons: from DuSable High School on the South Side of Chicago to a steel mill in Gary, Ind.; from a junior college to an M.B.A. at the University of Chicago in 1948. Emmons received no serious business interviews until Pepsi hired him. He later earned a doctorate in education and retired in 1981 after six years as superintendent of public schools in Trenton, N.J.
More journalism than history, more inspiration than analysis, “The Real Pepsi Challenge” nevertheless deepens our appreciation not, as the author would have it, for the platitude “that diversity is good for business and that business should be good for diversity,” but for the persistence and courage of those willing to break barriers and risk the consequences.
Warren Goldstein, who teaches American history at the University of Hartford, is the author, most recently, of “William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/books/review/Goldstein.t.html
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Losing 19 - Judge Lynn Tolver

LOSING NINETEEN
B Y J U D G E L Y N N C . T O L E R

I lost Nineteen again today. Abandoning himself to that wasteland we offhandedly call ‘the system’, he just walked away - casually - like it was no big deal. Some claim I shouldn’t say I lost him, though, considering what I do. While I am a Black woman, I am also the person appointed to balance the books, which means, that, on this particular day, I am the one sending Nineteen to jail. I am a judge in an inner-ring suburb, a place where middle-class stability stands in the shadow of urban distractions. Here, Black, male and Nineteen is required to face the same dilemma every day; “Do I work and wait like momma said, or join the party down the street?” Forced to choose before the calm sets in, Nineteen picks the wrong one. Next thing you know, he’s standing before me, wondering what all the fuss is about.

It’s important to know that I am a municipal judge. Handling minor matters, I deal with assault, drug possession and carrying a concealed weapon charges. Unfortunately, the size of the cases I see occasionally confuses Nineteen. He views his mistake as a little thing that doesn’t warrant much concern. I, on the other hand, see it as a small down payment on an incredible cultural cost. “What’s with making me look for a job?” he asks. “Why do I have to go back to school in order to stay out of jail?” I’m fighting to keep the boy from becoming a statistic, and he doesn’t even care. So I plead, not for Nineteen to obey the law, but for him to do right by me. “You owe every Black woman who cares for you an obligation you won’t be able to repay if you’re working off some ill-gotten debt to a society you don’t owe,’ I tell him. Some listen. Most don’t. My successes are few; I decided to give up at least once a week. But I keep pressing because I don’t want to leave stranded the few I do manage to help. Those wins notwithstanding, my frustrations remain. Just yesterday, one asked me to stop bothering him. “You’re not my mother,” he said. “Why are you messing with me? Just let me do my time.” Lots of them, in fact, ask me to leave them alone. They tell me, “It ain’t no thing.” But, more often than not, the phrase that I hear is the chilling “I can jail.”

Of course, I know I only see the problems. Nineteen represents himself, well, in large numbers
everywhere. I have seven I claim outright, you know - not currently Nineteen - but Black and male. One I married; four came with him, and two I produced on my own. The older ones have already been Nineteen. They’ve had their troubles, but they’re all okay now. The ones I made myself, however, are still young; they have a lot to learn. Living well in a world that does not always see your clearly is a difficult thing to do. My boys must be able to ignore those who ridicule their efforts to do well in school while remaining strong even among those who find that strength intimidating. Tough lessons, these, but they must learn them if they are going to do Nineteen the right way. I don’t want them standing before some judge who may see them as
a statistic. If they mess around and get before the wrong guy, then where will they be? Jail, of course, is the answer to that question. The very same place that I wound up sending Nineteen
today. Frustrated because I can’t fix the world, and Nineteen won’t let me help him live better in it, I shake my head, but must move on. I have thirty more cases to hear.

“To jail or not to jail?” that is the question. How hard am I supposed to try without his help? Doesn’t he see how so much of the harm he causes lands right in some sister’s lap?
That is why I told Nineteen he owed me. “Consider the sisters in your life,” I say. “It isn’t always
about you”. Then I remind him that, whether or not he understands it, when you jail, we in jail too.

http://www.judgelynn.com/pdf/19losing.pdf

The video: http://youtu.be/zN8rXBNWnsg

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Colombian Music Festival Keeps Afro-Colombian Culture Alive

Colombian Music Festival Keeps Afro-Colombian Culture Alive

Written by William Lloyd George
Thursday, 08 September 2011
Cali, Colombia – At six-years-old, Noency Mosfuera Martinez, an Afro-Colombian leader, was forced to leave her homeland due to increased fighting between left-wing guerrillas and paramilitaries. She is one of over 5 million who are estimated to have been displaced in Colombia by one of the longest running conflicts in the world.

In 2002, Noency's hometown suffered a massacre when paramilitaries took control of the town and guerillas began to fire rockets indiscriminately. One hit the local church where hundreds of civilians were hiding. 119 civilians were killed, 98 injured.

“The whole town fled straight away, many moved to local cities, we lost everything over night,” says Noency.

Despite the risks, Noency, has worked tirelessly to pressure the government to rebuild the town and bring the people back. While acting as a leader, she has also formed a traditional band, which aims to empower the community to return and work to preserve their culture.

Afro-Colombian communities are some of the most susceptible to displacement. Their traditional homelands are often located in remote mountainous regions, which act as ideal hiding places for armed groups fighting over natural resources and drug-trafficking routes. The massive displacement numbers have worried Afro-Colombian leaders who fear they are losing their traditional culture.

Together with her band, 'Bongo De Bojaya', Noency traveled to the fifteenth Petronio Alverez music festival in Cali, Southern Colombia. The festival brings together Afro-Colombian communities from across the country, who come to dance, sing and celebrate their unique culture.

“We came to the festival because we want to tell the world about what happened in our town,” says Noency, whose lyrics tell the story. “We also want to encourage Afro-Colombian communities to protect their land and their culture.”

The festival went on for four days and was situated in one of Cali's football stadiums. Over 60 artists from across Colombia came to compete in the festival and win one of four main prizes. Along side the festival, conferences were held where experts discussed the preservation of Afro-Colombian culture.

According to Juana Alvarez, an organizer and daughter of composer Petronio Alvarez, whom the festival is named after, the purpose of the festival is to celebrate Afro-Colombian culture. “Our people had their culture taken away from them for so long, now we want to get it back.”

Standing outside the festival, Alvarez explained that up until 1991 Afro-Colombian people had no rights. Then, when the government introduced a law which gave the Afro-Colombian people the right to regain their culture, she got the idea for the festival.

She says that the government initially paid little interest in the festival but once it became popular they decided to back it. When the current mayor showed unprecedented interest and support for the festival, they handed it over, believing it would have a longer life.

“The festival is something that Afro-Colombians are extremely proud of,” says Alvarez. “It has become a space for multiculturalism, where everyone comes to celebrate our culture as if it were their own,”

According to Eliena Hinestroza, a Cali based Afro-Colombian leader, the festival is hope that Afro-Colombian culture will not be destroyed by the conflict. Along with the rest of her community she was forced to flee her town in rural Cauca three years ago when the fighting became unbearable.

Hinestroza says that the government is not doing enough to support Afro-Colombian communities. “They are trying, but more needs to be done. Budgets are being appointed for health and education but it just is not reaching us.”

She believes that if a peaceful solution is not found to the conflict, Afro-Colombia culture could disappear as more and more are being displaced to the cities. “We are not used to the cities,” says Hinestroza. “When we move we lose much of our culture and often live in dangerous conditions.”

One of the winning bands 'San Bata', who play traditional Chirimia music, came from one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Medillin. “If you are my age and you step into the wrong street, they will kill you. It is so territorial,” says Wilmer Bonib, the lead singer and at 21 the oldest member.

Bonib says many of the youth are losing a connection with their homeland as they grow up in distant areas, far from their parents homelands. The violence has also meant that many of the youth are caught up in gang culture rather than traditional culture.

“The best thing about winning the festival is that we will send a message to the youth,” says Bonib. “We hope they will now realize that there is other ways to become successful and they will be interested in traditional things again.”

Due to the mainstream media neglecting Afro-Colombia music, there has for some time been little interest in their culture. According to festival director, Alberto Seviliano, Afro-Colombian music is never played on the radio, even in Cali where most the people are Afro-Colombian. This, he says, the festival wants to change.

“We are making Afro-Colombian music popular again,” says Seviliano, sitting in the production headquarters. “Now it has been on the television and the radio, we think mainstream media will now pay more attention to this vibrant and important music.”

Also, for many of the musicians it is an opportunity for them to get their music known, which would otherwise be forgotten.

Jorge Eliecer Llanos, the lead singer of traditional band 'Son Del Tuno' told Upside Down World he believed that without the festival the music from his region would never be heard. Having traveled seventeen hours on boat to reach the festival, he says one of the best things is the cultural exchange with other communities he would never know about.

“We live isolated, far from anyone else, it would be easy for our style of music to die out but the festival keeps it alive,” says Llanos. “We have been invited to play in Bogota and other towns, allowing us to keep an interest in our particular style of music.”

Recognizing the ongoing marginalization of African descendants and their culture, UNESCO made 2011 the “International Year for People of African Descent.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, “People of African descent are among those most affected by racism. Too often, they face denial of basic rights such as access to quality health services and education. Such fundamental wrongs have a long and terrible history.”

Despite the urgency and importance of the festival for Afro-Colombian communities, the emphasis of the festival was recreation. Thousands crammed into the stadium adorning African symbols, waving handkerchiefs in the air, swigging local brews and dancing from start to finish.

Despite the light heartedness, a strong message was sent by most the artists and attendees there.

“We want everyone to know that Afro-Colombia culture is here to stay and it is only going to get bigger” Noency told Upside Down World before heading back to Bojaya. “No matter how much conflict there is, we'll keep struggling, and we will keep singing.”

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Frederick Alexander Meade on prison conditions in the United States - Press TV - 7/9/2011

Is B. Howard Michael Jackson's son?

Is B. Howard Michael Jackson's son? Interview.

Watch this exclusive interview with B. Howard and judge for yourself and hear his answer to that question and more

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Harvard Student Says Blacks Genetically Inferior
by Lavoisier Cornerstone

Ladies and Gentleman of Grow The Heck Up, I'd like to introduce to you, Stephanie Grace, the third-year Harvard Law student who recently came under fire for sending out a mass email emphatically asserting that black people were genetically inferior to white people. While out at dinner with friends one evening, a heated race debate ensued in which Ms. Grace took the position that blacks were genetically inferior and less intelligent than whites. After the dinner, Ms. Grace, wanting to clarify her position, sent out a mass email reaffirming her stance. This email made its way to a member of the Harvard Black Law Student Association (HBLSA), and in turn made its way to the media.

Here is the email in its entirety:
I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.
I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don't think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn't mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.

I also don't think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects. One example (courtesy of Randall Kennedy) is that some people, based on crime statistics, might think African Americans are genetically more likely to be violent, since income and other statistics cannot close the racial gap. In the slavery era, however, the stereotype was of a docile, childlike, African American, and they were, in fact, responsible for very little violence (which was why the handful of rebellions seriously shook white people up). Obviously group wide rates of violence could not fluctuate so dramatically in ten generations if the cause was genetic, and so although there are no quantifiable data currently available to "explain" away the racial discrepancy in violent crimes, it must be some nongenetic cultural shift. Of course, there are pro-genetic counterarguments, but if we assume we can control for all variables in the given time periods, the form of the argument is compelling.

In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.

Please don't pull a Larry Summers on me,
Stephanie

Hey, I never would have guessed it...she looks like a nice enough girl to me wouldn't ya say? I'm being facetious of course, but that's part of the reason that I posted this piece of news. This woman isn't wearing a white sheet with a pointy hat, and she's not from the backwoods of the South fighting for the right to fly a confederate flag down at the court house. She graduated from Princeton in 2007 with a degree in...Sociology (?), is on the Harvard Law Review, and will soon be headed to California for federal clerkship with Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski who had to recuse himself because he caught an obscenity case for having...cow...porn...on his personal website? (Alrightythen). I digress.

Oh but she's only one person right GTHU? Sure a few people think like that, but it's not REALLY that prevalent right? Wrong. In October of 2007, world renowned molecular biologist and Nobel Prize James Watson who co-discovered DNA and the double helix structure also asserted a similar belief. The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. This is the guy that discovered that twisty DNA thingy!

See most racists don't think that their racists....they just think that what they believe about other people is the truth. I tell you one thing though, for anyone who's not white, and not a Christian, evolution shouldn't even be something you consider as a possibility. Because according to those that make the science, everything they see tells them that you're inferior. The proof of your value as human being is only found in God,and who he says you are in his word. And for my white brothers and sisters who are Christians, I pray that God would break your heart for racism and those who are greatly hurt by it...not just some Ethiopian kid on a commercial that needs food, but for racism itself. That you would begin to be as outraged and offended by it just as much as any other evil. See, America (and satan) has spent much of its time convincing black people (and other races, but especially the former slaves who built this country) through legislation, media, propaganda, etc., that they are inferior. So while its not an excuse, many of us are just playing out the only role that many in America feel is the only one that we are able to...just ask the Academy, they only seem to only give out Oscars to black people for playing thugs (Denzel Washington in Training Day), whores (Halle Berry in Monsters Ball), and pimps (Three 6 Mafia for It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp). Can you understand to SOME degree why people were so excited about a Black President? Sheesh. And as for homegirl, Ms. Stephanie Grace, she needs to really Grow the Heck Up!

For a related topic, also check out the review on the book: Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots
THE DIRECT LINK:
http://www.growtheheckup.com/2010/04/harvard-student-says-blacks-genetically.html#more

The author of this article:
http://www.aomegamusic.com/fr_welcome.cfm

Frederick Alexander Meade - Mondays with Meade

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Apologize Oprah!

Oprah left someone pivotal to her success out of her finale. Find out who it is by visiting www.MichaelJacksonInsider.com

Does she owe an apology?

Emergency Update Regarding Michael Jackson and Oprah

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Ancestor “Brother” George Welch is honored

“Brother George” (1932-2011) Considered Friend And Mentor To Many In Hampton Roads
By Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter
New Journal and Guide
About Brother George

For more than two decades, “Brother” George Welch owned and operated the Self-Improvement and Educational Center on 35th Street in the Park Place section of Norfolk.

Welch, 79, died recently at Sentara Bayside Hospital, according to family members.

Known as “Brother George” by most of the people who knew him, he was born in the Liberty Park section of Norfolk. His father worked for the railroad and his mother was a housewife who raised eight children.

A graduate of Booker. T. Washington High School, he enlisted into the U.S. Air Force and served his country 22 years at various posts around the world, including Great Britain and a tour of duty in Vietnam.

After retiring in 1972, he then worked as a longshoreman as a member of Local Union 1248.

Welch opened the Self-Improvement and Educational Center in 1979, according to his daughter, Francisca Welch-Stidham of Virginia Beach. She described him as a quiet and thoughtful man and a strong believer of the Nation Of Islam (NOI).

“My father noticed that many of the people he encountered here did not know enough about themselves as Black people or their culture or history,” Welch-Spidham said. “Most people understood only what people had told them. He always believed that people should be given a chance to improve and elevate themselves to improve their outlook on themselves and their environment.”

The Self Improvement and Educational Censer was more than a bookstore filled with Afro-centric books and other educational and cultural materials.

It was also the cultural and social nerve center for many who lived in Park Place and all over the region.

Welch sold the center last year. But for the last few years, he ran the shop with the help of his now 11-year-old grandson, Malcolm Stidham, who “knew every book in the store, like his grandfather,” said his mother Welch-Spidham.

“Over the years and recently I have run across people who knew my father and they told me about how he inspired them,” she said. “He never talked about it, but he also shared knowledge and inspiration for countless people. He was also a mentor to many. Many people even defined him as the father they never knew.”

Angel Pye works at the St. Bride Correctional Censer and counsels at-risk youth. In 1994, while attending Norfolk State University, she was assigned to write a college paper comparing the practices of African American and White businesses. She interviewed George Welch and his wife on the subject.

“Brother George taught me about integrity,” said Pye. “If you gave him $5 to hold in 1995 ... in 2005 he would give that same $5 back to you ... because it was yours. How many people can you say have that much integrity? That was Brother George and his legacy.”

Farrell Watson, 26, met George Welch on his last day as an enlisted man in the military. Watson was born in Norfolk, too, and unknown to him, “Brother George” knew his entire family. Watson is now a graduate student at George Washington University and a social worker for the city of Hampton.

“He was an inspiration to me. He always gave me words of wisdom and some of the things he taught me kept me out of trouble,” said Watson. “I attended Old Dominion University, got my degree in political science. On the day I graduated, he could not attend because he was busy at the center. But after the ceremony, all of my 50 family members drove over to the center and saw him and we had a small celebration. I appreciated his being my inspiration. I will miss him.”

Mr. Welch was married to Mary Softly Welch, who now lives in Washington, D.C. He had three daughters, Francisca Welch-Stidham of Virginia Beach; Rosemary Omesietie of San Antonio; and Judieth Welch of Washington, D.C. Other survivors include four grandsons and a host of relatives, extended family and friends.

Mr. Welch’s funeral will be at 2 p.m. Saturday May 14 at the Metropolitan Chapel on Granby Street in Norfolk. It will be a cultural ceremony with Afrikan dancers and drummers. Yoruba priest Baba Orisa officiated at the burial.

This article was published in the New Journal & Guide.
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About the New Journal & Guide
The New Journal & Guide is Hampton Roads’ oldest, most widely read and most respected weekly source of information. Our paper is a broadsheet and is published each Thursday. We are especially proud of our 100-plus-year-old legacy as a Hampton Roads institution.

When you read our paper, you will know that this is a medium seeking to inform, enhance, encourage, and inspire the community we serve to move ahead, in spite of the odds. We place a special emphasis on local concerns and features. We are well aware of the competitive business environment. We believe advertisers should get the highest return possible on their advertising dollar when targeting Hampton Roads’ Black Consumer Market. The New Journal and Guide has a weekly circulation of approximately 15,000 and the paper stays in the home a full seven days. With the pass around factor, our paper is seen by an estimated 45,000 people each week.

We feature special editions and supplements to the New Journal and Guide throughout the year. We kick off the year with a special edition saluting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During February and March, we salute Black History Month and Black Press Month. Our Minority Business Supplement in October is also a popular edition designed to get our advertisers’ message to the target audience.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT: We take pride in being an active part of our community. We lend support to our organizations and provide a number of free services for our audiences, such as free publication of their church news, social news and area news hotline. Our newsroom staff volunteers during the summer to tutor reading and math to area children. We provide a Speaker’s Bureau which is available free of charge to community groups.

POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT: We take an active role in the political process. We encourage participation in the political process among our audiences, and try to present the issues in a manner that relates to their concerns with emphasis on how it affects them so they can make a clear decisions.

CHURCH AFFILIATION: The Black newspaper was born out of the Black Church. and gospel music has been the root of the Black experience, thus our very existence is connected into that of the church. Weekly, we have a religious page that encompasses the Southside as well as the Peninsula and features religious columns, news items and church services.

SOCIAL ISSUES: Major issues directly affecting the Black community are also of prime concern to us. What the social clubs, the civic and community groups and individuals are doing to support America’s system of freedom and justice is important to our readers. The motto of the New Journal and Guide is: “Dedicated to the cause of the people...no good cause shall lack a champion and evil shall not thrive unopposed.”

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Author and human rights activist Frederick Alexander Meade provides analysis on the prison industrial complex.  Follow the link to listen.   The Prison Industrial Complex - The Evening Rush 1290 AM - Mondays with Meade   An excerpt from the syndicated columnist's weekly two hour segment – Mondays with Meade - on WMCS 1290 AM - The Evening Rush hosted by Earl Ingram Jr.  (3:00 – 6:00 p.m. CST)    www.frederickmeade.com

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The "Black in Latin America" Series on PBS The series will air over four weeks on Tuesdays, April 19 and 26 and May 3 and 10, 2011, at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS stations. Check your local listings for time and channel. Here are PBS's descriptions of the series. Episode 1: Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided In Haiti, The Root Editor-in-Chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves' hard-fought liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire became a double-edged sword. In the Dominican Republic, Gates explores how race has been socially constructed in a society whose people reflect centuries of intermarriage, and how the country's troubled history with Haiti informs notions about racial classification. Episode 2: Cuba: The Next Revolution In Cuba, Gates finds out how the culture, religion, politics and music of this island are inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labor imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th-century sugar industry, and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1959. Episode 3: Brazil: A Racial Paradise? In Brazil, Gates delves behind the facade of Carnival to discover how this "rainbow nation" is waking up to its legacy as the world's largest slave economy. Episode 4: Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet In Mexico and Peru, Gates explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black people -- the two countries together received far more slaves than did the United States -- brought to these countries as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, and the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico, the Costa Chica region on the Pacific, and in and around Lima, Peru. http://www.theroot.com/views/features/black-latin-america-other-african-americans

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Getting married ? Visit http://www.happilyeverafter.be/

We got Books ! Positive Vibes Litterature 757-523-1399

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Author and human rights activist Frederick Alexander Meade provides analysis on the prison industrial complex. An excerpt from the syndicated columnist’s weekly two hour segment – Mondays with Meade - on WMCS 1290 AM, hosted by Earl Ingram Jr. (4:00 – 6:00 p.m. CST)


www.frederickmeade.com