Local News

       Black unity means standing together instead of tearing each other down. It means supporting Black-owned businesses, celebrating each other’s success, encouraging friends to chase their dreams, and protecting one another from negativity. Too often, young people are made to feel like they have to struggle alone. The truth is no one makes it alone. Strong communities are built when people help each other rise. It truly takes a village.

National News

In a classroom where students of all ages are singing instead of memorizing, math is starting to make sense. Niah Spriggs, an African American educator in Oklahoma City, is using music to transform how her students learn math with the release of a new album, “Multiply the Beats: Math That Moves,” on all platforms, including YouTube, Apple, and Amazon Music, to name a few. (Visit the YouTube page to see a sample.)

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Entertainment

Anyone conscious of Black progress during the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s clearly remembers songs like James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud,” Marvin Gay’s “What’s Going On?” and Stevie Wonder’s popular “Happy Birthday” song to the assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in pursuit of a national holiday in his honor.

     As much as any message that stirred the crowd and brought them to tears that day was “I’ve Been Buked and I’ve Been Scorned,” a slave lamentation first recorded as a Negro spiritual in the early 20th Century. Sang that day by the reputed, “Queen of Gospel Music,” Mahalia Jackson, upon special request from Dr. King, she rendered the song slowly and prayerfully in her deep, rich contralto just before he spoke.

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