Westerners get to work in developing countries without little experience and no one to hold them accountable. This seems to have been the case with Renee Bach, who started Serving His Children (SHC) in Uganda at 18 years old. The organization has been linked to several children's deaths. Bach's case has again highlighted the issue of medical "voluntourism" while raising questions of whether some charities in the developing world have a "white savior problem." In response, Uganda-based social workers Olivia Also and Kelsey Nielsen began the No White Saviors campaign to educate and advocate for better mission and development work practices. What do you think?
After suffering numerous miscarriages and failed IVF attempts, Keia Jones-Baldwin, and her husband, Ricardro Baldwin decided to pursue alternative options to expand their family. In addition to one biological child, they took part in fostering children as well as transracial adoption. Despite the joy from expanding their family, they also share the challenges they've encountered along the way with raising a multiracial family. They are constantly viewed differently in public and scrutinized for adopting white children. Do you think society should view them any differently for their choice?
Treka Engleman, a 32-year-old public school teacher from Cincinnati, Ohio, is a foster mum who has adopted three white children. However, she has faced massive trolling for this particular act. They criticize her choice to adopt white kids as a form of betrayal to the black community. The backlash is based on the idea that there are a lot of black kids that need homes. This is quite unfortunate as all kids deserve a chance to get home regardless of their race. Are we limited by race when seeking to expand families, as in Treka Engleman? Are the trolls depicting some form of double standards? What do you think?
Jumans just got out after serving 31 years in prison. He shares never-heard-before stories of what prison is like and how social influence in his life contributed to his experience in prison. For a long time, he thought he was never going back home. Now, he sees his release as a second chance and is ready to change his life. He expresses his concern over the number of black people in prison, showing how they have formed a community in there. The realness in his stories is unmatched. His opinion also shows that it is possible to live a fulfilling life after serving time. What do you think?
What follows is a fact sheet about Gloria Steinem’s operations against the various social and political movements in America, particularly her role in creating a hateful and virulent strain of Black feminism that attacks Black men while partnering with the white establishment.
Gloria Steinem first came across the radar of Black men in 1978 when Steinem put a book called “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman” on the cover of Ms. Magazine, the magazine which she controlled. The book was “written” by a Black “feminist” and “activist” named Micele Wallace who came out of nowhere. Wallace was in her early twenties at the time, yet she was being touted as the “leader” of Black feminism. In the book, Wallace called abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Sojouner Truth “ugly” and “stupid” for supporting Black men. She called Black Revolutionaries “chauvinist macho pigs” and advised Black women to “go it alone.” Gloria Steinem said that Wallace’s book would “define the future of Black relationships” and she pushed hard to make sure the book received massive publicity. Gloria Steinem’s work triggered a flood of “Hate Black Men” books and films that continues to this day. Needless to say, some were quite suspicious of Ms. Magazine and Gloria Steinem. Why was Steinem sticking her nose into the affairs of the Black community? So people started doing some research on Steinem. When it came out that Gloria Steinem was probably the ghost writer of the book with Michele Wallace’s name on it, Wallace had a nervous breakdown and went into hiding for two years. However, the damage was already done and the “Hate Black Men” movement was off and running. But the research into Gloria Steinem’s background continued. What follows is the findings of many different researchers.
BOTTOM LINE:The so-called “Black Feminist” movement was created and manipulated by the CIA from the very beginning. The only difference between Black Revolutionaries and Black Feminist on this issue is that the Black Revolutionaries KNOW they were infiltrated and manipulated—But Black Feminist are still unwilling to admit that they were infiltrated and manipulated, largely because they are highly invested in the hateful brand of Black feminism. As a result, the “Hate Black Men” movement has become MORE THAN just a political point a view: It is now a central part of the CULTURE of Black women and this fact has led to the destruction of the Black Revolution and the complete distortion of Black relationships. And the CIA had a direct hand in creating this situation.
The FACTS surrounding Gloria Steinem’s CIA operations follow:
FACT: Gloria Steinem is a CIA Agent and everything she has ever done throughout her adult life has been under the direction of the CIA.
FACT: Gloria Steinem was recruited into the CIA before she even graduated high school.
FACT: Gloria Steinem, who was from a poor and dysfunctional family and lived in a house without running water, was able to attend the elite and expensive Smith College. After she graduated she spent two years in India spying for the CIA. She received a “Chester Bowles Student Fellowship” to “study” in India. This was a Fellowship created by the CIA to cover Steinem’s expenses in India—no one has received a “Cheater Bowles Student Fellowship” either before or since Steinem received one.
FACT: One of Gloria Steinem’s first missions for the CIA was to manipulate the student movement (most people are STILL unaware that the National Student Association was created, funded and manipulated by the CIA). Steinem did this by organizing “student festivals” in Europe in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Steinem used the “student festivals” to spy on students for the CIA and she likely used the festivals to recruit new agents for the CIA. A second and more successful mission was to shift the orientation of the “woman’s movement” and splinter the Black Revolution of the 1960’s.
FACT: In 1958, Cord Meyer, head of the CIA’s International Organizations division (IO), had a plan. The Agency would provide discreet funding to an “informal group of activists” who would constitute themselves as an alternative American delegation to the festival. The CIA would not only pay their way but also assist them to distribute books and publish a newspaper in Vienna. Among other individuals, Meyer and his colleagues hired Gloria Steinem to work with them. Steinem had recently returned from a two-year stint in India.
FACT: In 1958, Steinem was recruited by CIA’s Cord Meyers to direct the “informal group of activists” now called the “Independent Research Service.” This was part of Meyer’s “Congress for Cultural Freedom,” which created magazines like “Encounter” and “Partisan Review” to promote a left-liberal chic to oppose Marxism. It was this operation that Steinem’s “student festivals” was a part of. Besides spying on students, Steinem also acted as an agent provocateur, helping to provoke riots.
FACT: Commenting on the CIA-controlled “student festivals” organized by Gloria Steinem, Sheila Tobias, an unwitting participant on one such trip (who later taught women’s studies at Cornell University), said the CIA: “was interested in spying on the American delegates to find out who in the United States was a Trotskyite or Communist. So we were a front, as it turned out.” (quoted by Marcia Cohen in the Sisterhood, 1988)
FACT: Further information of Steinem’s CIA operations: Working through C.D. Jackson and Cord Meyer, Steinem set up an organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts called the Independent Service for Information on the Vienna Youth Festival. She obtained tax-exempt status, and Jackson helped her raise contributions from various American corporations, including the American Express Company (a documented CIA money laundering operation). But most of the money came from the CIA, to be managed by Jackson in a “special account.” The entire operation cost in the range of $85,000, a considerable amount in those years.
FACT: Gloria Steinem was considered a CIA “whiz kid.” A CIA Operative named Samuel Walker, who made a career out of publishing and became president of Walker & Co. (a New York City publishing firm founded in the same year as the CIA funded Publications Development Corporation) worked well with Steinem.
Walker evaluated Gloria Steinem’s contribution to the CIA operations thusly:
“Gloria’s group continues to do yeoman service, distributing books etc. to the point where the cry has gone up ‘Never before have so many Young Republicans distributed so much Socialist literature with such zeal.’” Walker praised Steinem’s “female intuition” and wrote, “Gloria is all you said she was, and then some. She is operating on 16 synchronized cylinders and has charmed the natives….” (C.D. Jackson to Cord Meyer, 7/14/59, with attached Walker diary; Walker to Jackson, 7/31/59, DDE.) In other words, Gloria Steinem was NOT a naive dupe of the CIA, she was a highly motivated agent who took her own initiative to move against fellow students for the CIA.
FACT: Gloria Steinem’s name keeps showing up in projects associated with CIA operations. For example (From Kai Bird’s “The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment”, New York: Simon & Schuster, 199: pp. 483-84, 727): In the summer of 1959, just before McCloy took his family for an extended trip to Europe, C.D. Jackson wrote to remind McCloy that later that summer a World Youth Festival was scheduled to take place in Vienna. Jackson asked McCloy to contribute a propaganda article. The piece would appear in a daily newspaper to be published in Vienna in conjunction with the festival. McCloy agreed, and the article was published (in five languages) in a newspaper distributed by a twenty-five-year-old Smith graduate named Gloria Steinem.
**This is a “student” publication: How was it published in five languages? Well the CIA did it, of course!!
FACT: When this covert operation was revealed by Ramparts magazine in 1967, Steinem told The New York Times that she approved the Agency’s role. “I was happy to find some liberals in government in those days who were far-sighted and cared enough to get Americans of all political views to the Festival.” Steinem’s definition of a “liberal” then included such young men as Zbigniew Brzezinski, an assistant professor at Harvard. Steinem arranged to fund Brzezinski’s visit to the “student festival.” Brzezinki would later become the National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) and he was the man who invented the so-called “Bear Trap” which suckered the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan. Brzezinski was also the man who first organized and funded Osama Bin Laden’s “Jihad” against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Gloria Steinem also identified and targeted Alice Walker in the early 1960’s. She befriended Alice Walker and paid for Alice Walker to come to the CIA-manipulated “student festival” in Vienna. Alice Walker would later become the foremost writer of anti-Black male hate books— all of which were funded by money funneled to her publishers by the CIA.
FACT: Steinem has boasted in interviews with the NY Times and the Washington Post (in 1967) that her training with the CIA was “good journalistic training” because the CIA “taught you to be accurate.” This statement proves that Steinem was happy to collect money working for the CIA.
FACT: Gloria Steinem worked with Carlos Bringier, the anti-castro Cuban who staged the famous WDSU interview with Lee Harvey Oswald.
FACT: Gloria Steinem dated J. Stanley Pottinger for nine years. Pottinger was in charge of sabotaging civil rights enforcement at the Justice Department (he was assistant attorney general) under President Nixon and President Ford. According to Donald Freed & Fred Landis in their book “Death in Washington”, J Stanly Pottinger also helped to cover up the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Orlando Letelier. Pottinger also publicly defended Gloria Steinem against charges of CIA involvement—which Steinem had already admitted. Why would a “radical feminist” like Gloria Steinem be anywhere near a guy like Pottinger, unless she was a government employee herself?
FACT: Gloria Steinem dated Henry Kissinger—a international war criminal, establishment technocrat, and a long time CIA operative—for years. Why would a “radical feminist” date someone who was considered a mass murderer by EVERYONE in the movement? You be the judge.
FACT: One of the principle stockholders in Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine was Catherine Graham. In the book “Catherine The Great” by Deborah Davis, the longstanding involvement of Graham publishing empire (which includes The Washington Post and Newsweek) with the CIA was documented hat considerable length.
FACT: Gloria Steinem has lied often about her career and where she gets her money. For example: she received money to start Ms. Magazine from the right-wing millionaire publisher (he publishes the racist New York Daily News) and real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman. Steinem lied to Vanity Fair, claiming that Zuckerman’s provided no money for Ms. Magazine. But columnist Liz Smith revealed that Zuckerman had put $1.2 million into Ms. Magazine and sent his executives to help as well. Why did Steinem lie about this? Because her funding by racists, right wingers, and CIA agents would damage her “feminist credentials.” And there has NEVER been an adequate explanation of the original funding for Ms. Magazine nor for the rapid acceptance of feminist propaganda by the mass media in the early Seventies. No radical movement has ever spread with the speed of feminism, which went from little or no organization and acceptance to total domination in less than two years. Obviously, it did touch very deep frustrations in American women, but it is difficult to avoid the fact that the existing movement was manipulated very effectively to channel these frustrations to the benefit of the business community and the detriment of women, children, families and especially Black men.
FACT: Gloria Steinem’s fake literary career was conceived and executed by the CIA’s “Matrix Operatives.” One of Steinem’s CIA colleagues was Clay Felker. In the early 1960’s, he became an editor at Esquire and published articles by Steinem which established her as a leading voice for the CIA-manipulated “Feminist Movement.” In 1968, as publisher of New York Magazine, Felker hired Steinem as a contributing editor, and then editor of Ms. Magazine in 1971. Warner Communications (a known CIA front) put up almost all the money although it only took 25% of the stock. Ms. Magazine’s first publisher was Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a CIA-connected PR executive who planned John Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade route. Despite its anti establishment image, MS magazine attracted advertising from the cream of corporate America. It published ads for ITT (a CIA-supported corporation which helped engineer “Operation Chaos” in Chile which led to the CIA overthrow of a democratically elected government).
FACT: When N.Y. Times reporters confronted Steinem with documentation of her connections to the CIA and CIA funding of her various activities, Steinem remarked that she got caught because CIA wasn’t tricky enough. Hinting that CIA should have made better use of front companies, Steinem remarked:
“The CIA’s big mistake was not supplanting itself with private funds fast enough.” By the time Steinem founded Ms. Magazine, the CIA had learned how to funnel money through private individuals and corporations. That’s how Steinem was able to fund Ms. Magazine. Her CIA funding was so substantial, that Steinem was able to do the unprecedented: She stopped accepting advertising for Ms. Magazine. She didn’t need any more advertising: Because CIA money has been keeping her expensively produced magazine afloat from the very beginning.
FACT: Gloria Steinem had the (CIA) power to successfully censor three different publications (the book “The Feminist Revolution,” a “Village Voice” article, and a New York community newspaper article). All three’ publications documented Steinem’s involvement with the CIA. Nevertheless a story about Steinem’s CIA connections appeared in the “Village Voice” on May 21, 1979.
FACT: An organization of radical white feminists called “Red Stockings” outed Gloria Steinem as a CIA agent. When Red Stockings tried to publish a book called “Feminist Revolution” in 1979 with a chapter that detailed Steinem’s CIA connections, Steinem and her powerful CIA-connected friends forced Random House to delete the chapter on Steinem. Nevertheless the chapter on Steinem’s CIA connections appeared in the “Village Voice” on May 21, 1979, but only after the “Village Voice” had been threatened by Steinem’s lawyers. The book “Feminist Revolution” is still available. You can buy the censored version from Redstockings for $8.00. For $4.00 (or free if you buy “Feminist Revolution”), you get the censored section which contains detailed material on Steinem’s early work with the CIA, and an account of how this story was censored after originally being scheduled for publication. Who were the powerful people who put pressure on Random House, the “Village Voice” and Red Stockings on Steinem’s behalf? Catherine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post (Graham is a known CIA agent—see the book “Catherine the Great” by Deborah Davis), Franklyn (uncle) Thomas of the Ford Foundation (The Ford Foundation is a documented funnel for CIA funds), and Warner Communications (a Ms. Magazine stock holder and CIA propaganda company)
FACT: Since the middle of World War II, the U.S. intelligence establishment has spent billions of dollars researching mind control techniques and inventing mind control technology. Thousands of people were kidnapped, drugged, hypnotized and tortured as a part of the CIA’s mind control research and field testing. Many of these victims began surfacing in the 1980’s.
These victims were having strange dreams and flashbacks. This was dangerous for the CIA because their mind control operations could be exposed. So the CIA created, funded and controlled a number of organizations that floated the idea that these victims were suffering from strange dreams and flashbacks BECAUSE THEY HAD BEEN SEXUALLY ABUSED BY THEIR PARENTS AS CHILDREN AND HAD REPRESSED THOSE MEMORIES. This would become the perfect way of mis-directing the search for who really victimized these people. Strangely enough, Gloria Steinem teamed up with Ted Gunderson to forment the “Satanic child abuse” hysteria as a way to help cover-up the CIA’s mind control experiments on human beings. [Gunderson once bragged about being one of the top FBI COINTELPRO supervisors during the wipe out of the Black Panther Party in the ‘60s and ‘70s.] For the inside story on Steinem’s operations with Gunderson read “Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern Witch Hunt” by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker (1995).
FACT: In 1975 Gloria Steinem two important feminist leaders, Carol Hanisch and Kathie Sarachild, again accused Steinem of working for the CIA and directing the movement toward moderation and capitulation. Steinem ignored the accusations, hoping they would go away, but then noted feminist Betty Friedan implied that “a paralysis of leadership” in the movement “could be due to the CIA” and she demanded that Steinem respond. After three months, Steinem wrote a six-page letter to feminist publications describing her work with the CIA. “I naively thought then that the ultimate money source didn’t matter” wrote Steinem, aiming to dispel the charge that she was a government operative. However, the government WAS INDEED keeping tabs on the feminist movement through female informants paid by the FBI and CIA and Steinem was a part of that. See “THE WORLD SPLIT OPEN: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America” By Ruth Rosen.
FACT: Here’s a list of how the kind of feminism advocated by Gloria Steinem has actually BENEFITED the business community when it pushed women into the work place:
• Women work for less (and Black women work for A LOT LESS). • Women are more docile and less likely to deviate from company policies (and Black women are the most docile workers of all). • Women are less likely to join labor unions. • By increasing the size of the labor pool, women created more competition for jobs thus reducing wages. • More female workers means more pussy for the boss (Black female executives are notorious for being “passed around” among white executives—mainly because their low self-esteem makes them think that such “attention” is a compliment. Do you know any white male executives? Talk to them when you get a chance. They use the term “instant pussy” when referring to the Black female executives in their companies.). • In two-income families, one person is more likely to work part-time or as a temporary, such workers get paid less and they don’t get benefits. • Taking children away from their mothers at an early age tends to increase their anxiety levels and results in higher rates of tension-relieving consumption as they grow up (and Black folks have become SUPER consumers, especially Black women). • The loss of women’s household services increases purchases of various forms of fatty fast foods, which have higher profit levels than home-cooked meals (this has particularly affected Black women: their blubber index has skyrocketed).
Shared via wrongkindofgreen.org
For a photograph of Gloria Steinem and some of the people she suckered, go to the Internet address below (You will also see a report by one of Steinem’s organizations which proves that Steinem was spying on people for the CIA):
Vernon African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is located at 311 North Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Vernon is the only remaining edifice from the worst race massacre in American history in 1921 and the only black-owned structure from the Historic Black Wall Street era. It is also the oldest continuously-operating church in Oklahoma.
Vernon AME started in a one-room house located at 549 North Detroit Street in 1905 when African Methodism first arrived in Tulsa, which was then part of Indian Territory. Reverend J. E. Roy was the first pastor, followed by Reverend R. A. Devers in 1906. By that point worshippers met at Gurley Hall at 114 North Greenwood Avenue. The congregation grew from 8 to 16 members soon after and they moved to Barksdale Hall on East Archer. The congregation began its first building project at Hartford and Archer streets during Rev. Devers one-year tenure. The building project resulted in the construction of a small frame house which was completed under Reverend G. H. Burton and renamed Burton Chapel by the 71-member congregation in 1907.
The present site of Vernon was purchased in 1908 for the sum of $290.00, with a down payment of $100.00 made by the trustees. Voting to change the church’s name from Burton Chapel to Vernon AME Church in honor of Registrar of the Treasury, W. T. Vernon, who was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Additional land was purchased and by 1914 the old church structure was torn down and a new brick basement for a new church was constructed. However, the Tulsa Race Massacre on June 1, 1921 left black-owned homes, schools, and businesses destroyed and the new Vernon brick basement in ruins.
Vernon AME rapidly rebuilt after the Massacre. Immediately after the destruction of Greenwood Avenue and Black Wall Street, the Vernon congregation began growing a building fund of $1,100.00 to rebuild the structure. During that time, its membership doubled from 200 congregants to 400 congregants.
The rapid rebirth of Vernon became an iconic monument to the devastated community and gave a sense of normalcy after the tragic event. The church opened its doors to Tulsa’s Booker T. Washington high school students while their facility was being rebuilt. Vernon also became the site of various community events.
The main church building was finally completed in 1928. By 1940, the membership had grown to over 800 and a neon welcome sign was erected as a beacon of hope. One of the most notable pastors of Vernon was Reverend Ben H. Hill, who had an extensive experience in church and educational work. Hill took a group of youth from the church to the famous March on Washington in 1963 and under his leadership the Church took on many other notable projects.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in August 2018, Vernon remains a visual reminder of the reconstruction process after the Tulsa Massacre, a landmark and symbol of persistence.
On February 16, 1827, The Church Missionary Society (CMS) founded Fourah Bay College, the first college in West Africa. The first principal of the college was Rev. Edward Jones, an African American minister. It was located atop Mount Aureol in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.
Originally intended as an Anglican missionary school to train teachers in the promotion of education and Christianity, it became a degree granting institution in 1876, when it became affiliated with Durham University in England. As a result of the affiliation, students at Fourah Bay studied the same curriculum and took examinations identical to those administered to Durham University students. The curriculum of both institutions reflected the popular subjects of liberal arts institutions of the era: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, History, Natural Science, French, and German. Its most prominent 19th and early 20th Century graduates included Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church, J. E. Casely Hayford, an early advocate of education and self-rule for West Africans, and Henry Rawlingson Carr, a prominent Nigerian educator and administrator. As one of the few places in pre-Independence Africa to offer post-secondary education, Fourah Bay College attracted sons (and daughters) of elite Africans from across the continent. Its presence in Freetown allowed the city to tout itself as the Athens of West Africa.
During World War II, the British — the colonial government in Sierra Leone — took over Fourah Bay College because of its strategic location in Freetown and used the buildings as part of the war effort. The faculty, staff and students of the institution relocated forty miles away in temporary facilities in Mabang, Sierra Leone. After the war, Fourah Bay College returned to its location on Mount Aureol in Freetown.
Fourah Bay College continued its affiliation with Durham University until 1967, at which time the Sierra Leone government merged Fourah Bay College with Njala University College under a new federal system devised in 1966. Abioseh Nicol, a Sierra Leonean, became the first African president of the combined institution. The union, seen as temporary at first, is now permanent. In 2005, Fourah Bay College and Njala University are constituent colleges of the federal University of Sierra Leone. Fourah Bay University remains an active institution of higher education with approximately 3,500 students. As part of the University of Sierra Leone, it grants Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees.
In early 2020, when the covid-19 pandemic started in China, and its government promised it was containing the virus, there were multiple cases of racial discrimination reported within the country. Several Africans were being evicted from their homes and harassed while health workers tested for imported infections. There were no statistics to prove foreigners, let alone Africans brought the foreign cases. The Chinese government denied these allegations. However, videos circulating on social media proved otherwise as they showed hundreds of Africans thrown out in the streets. Some considered it a case of xenophobia, while others saw it as China doing its due diligence. What do you think?
In 1939 during the Jim Crow era, baritone Clarence Fountain, bass Johnny Fields, baritone and guitarist George Scott, baritone Ollice Thomas, and tenor Velma Trayler, all elementary school students attending the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind and singing in its glee club, formed an ensemble, The Blind Boys of Alabama. All of the members were blind except for Fountain, who was visually impaired. They were first called the “Happyland Jubilee Singers.”
In addition, to their required basic academics at the Institute, they were taught to read Braille, make brooms, chairs, and shelves. During their early teens, in 1944, they left school and began singing and making money in local churches and community activities. However, they did not record until 1948, releasing their debut single, “I can see everybody’s mother but mine,” on the Veejay label.
In 1953, Blind Boys of Alabama signed a contract with Art Rupe’s California-based Specialty Records. However, the relationship dissolved after five years as they refusal to sing secular music. After leaving Specialty Records in 1957, the group briefly signed with a few small labels before joining the Chicago-based Vee-Jay label. The group recorded extensively for the Vee-Jay label, coming out with “Can I get a witness” in 1964.
In 1982, they recorded the album I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord, with the Philadelphia producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff. And the following year, 1983, they received national acclaim for their performance in the Off-Broadway stage production of Gospel at Colonus, a contemporary musical adaptation of the Greek tragedy Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles but set in a black Pentecostal church. The production received two OBIE Awards and nominations for a Pulitzer Prize as well as a Tony Award.
In 1992, the Blind Boys received their first Grammy nomination for the album Deep River. A decade later, in 2001, The Blind Boys of Alabama released Spirit of the Century on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and won the first of their Grammy Award for Best Traditional Gospel Album. In addition, they won consecutive Grammys for “Higher Ground” in 2002, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” in 2003, and “There Will Be a Light” (a collaboration with Ben Harper) in 2004 which peaked at #81 on Billboard 200 and was six weeks on the chart.
In 2014 the Blind Boys released Talkin’ Christmas, a collaboration with Taj Mahal. Three years later in 2017 the Blind Boys released Almost Home on the band’s own BBOA Records label in collaboration with Amazon Music.
Velma Trayler died in 1947 at 24, George Scott died in 2005 at the age of 75. Johnny Fields died in 2009 at 82; Clarence Fountain died in 2018. He was 88. Ollice Thomas died in 2020 at 94.
The Blind Boys of Alabama, one of the most extended ongoing gospel groups, remains active with new members and relevant with its gospel legacy extending into 21st century music.
The Gondar College of Medical Sciences is located in Gondar in the northwestern part of Ethiopia. The college, founded in 1954, is the oldest health professional training institute in Ethiopia.
The medical college was located in Gondar in 1954 in part because of the malaria epidemic that devastated the region during 1952 and 1953. The college was designed to educate various health care workers in a manner that would allow them to address the particular health needs of rural Ethiopia. While most professional training institutions focus on preparing graduates to understand the disease processes as they affect individuals and especially on diagnosis and management, Gondar College has emphasized preventative medicine and focused on public health (community health) in its training, service, and research activities.
In 1961 the college was placed under the direction of the Haile Selassie I University, now known as Addis Ababa University. The college also offered for the first time a bachelor of science degree in Public Health. Over the next 20 years, the college played a prominent role in preparing over 1,100 professionals. In 1978 the institution was authorized to establish a medical school to train doctors, health officers, community nurses, and other health professionals. Since 1979 when the first class enrolled in the school’s medical program, the program has grown both in size and function. In 1994, the college was renamed the Gondar College of Medical Sciences (GCMS), and its mission was redefined to include the basic research in health sciences and to serve as a referral health center for the region.
The college is at present undertaking various projects for expansion of its activities including construction of a new library, a student dormitory, classrooms, and science laboratories. It increased its student enrollment by 30% with the 2009 school year.
Today GCMS has over 2,000 students enrolled in medical and health science fields ranging from nursing and public health to internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, radiology, dentistry, and orthopedics. The students are recruited from all regions of Ethiopia.
In 2004 GCMS became part of the University of Gondar. The entire university has 11,000 regular students and 6,000 extension students in 35 undergraduate programs and 8 graduate programs.
Human rights activist Sonia Pierre was born in Villa Altagracia, San Cristobal, Dominican Republic on July 4, 1963, and she died at forty-eight years old of a heart attack on December 4, 2011. Sonia was one of the most internationally-recognized activists working on behalf of the human and civil rights of Haitian immigrants and their Haitian-descended children in the Dominican Republic. Her mother came to the Dominican Republic from Haiti on a temporary work permit in 1957 and her father moved back-and-forth between the two countries for work. Pierre was one of eleven children who grew up in the bateys (migrant labor camps) for sugar workers in the Dominican Republic. Sonia Pierre was the mother of four children.
Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic has a long and troubled history rooted in the differences between Spanish colonialism in the Dominican Republic and French colonialism in Haiti. Tensions were also generated when newly-independent Haiti overran and controlled what was then the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo between 1801 and 1844. One legacy of these colonial histories is the anti-blackness discrimination directed toward Haitians and Haitian-descended Dominicans, which persists to this very day.
Haitians migrated to the Dominican Republic to work for sugar companies owned by the United States. At times, this migration was welcomed and encouraged by the Dominican Republic, such as during the 1950s when Sonia Pierre’s mother first arrived in the country. During other periods, such as the 1930s when the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo had tens of thousands of Haitian migrants slaughtered, the migrants became scapegoats for the country’s economic and social ills.
Against this background, at the age of thirteen, Sonia Pierre organized her first five-day rally to protest the poor living conditions in the bateys. She was arrested, but the public attention her actions brought ensured a wage increase for the sugar workers. In 1983, 20-year-old Pierre founded the Movimiento de Mujeres Dominco Haitianas (MUDHA, the Movement of Dominican Women of Haitian Descent). Initially, the organization focused upon women’s health, family planning, and educational opportunity. Later, it expanded to include fighting sexism and anti-Haitian prejudice more broadly. As Pierre’s political consciousness and activism grew, she began to emphasize citizenship rights, both legal and cultural, of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic and their children who, according to the constitution, were supposed to be citizens of the country.
Hoping that appealing to the international community would help her cause, in 2005, Pierre initiated a case brought before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights regarding two ethnic Haitian children who had been denied birth certificates in the Dominican Republic. She won the case but unfortunately Dominican government authorities refused to accept the ruling and proceeded to enact harsher laws invalidating the citizenship rights of her people.
Sonia Pierre’s dedication to activism was recognized: in 2003 she received an award from Amnesty International; in 2007 she received the Robert R. Kennedy Human Rights Award; in 2010 Haiti gave her the Order of Honour and Merit in the rank of Knight of the Republic; and in 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama presented her the International Women of Courage Award.