Donovan X. Ramsey
About Me- My Resume
- Print Journalism
- Photojournalism
- Audio Reporting
- Audio Slideshows
- Connect On Twitter
- Contact Me
Loading,
0
% complete-
About Me
- Donovan X. Ramsey is a dedicated journalist, researcher and writer. His work has been featured in outlets including Diverse, MONEY, theGrio.com and Creative Loafing among others. The Columbus, Ohio native earned his M.S. in magazine journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and B.A. in psychology from Morehouse College. He currently resides in New York City.
-
Info
- Summary
Donovan X. Ramsey is a multimedia journalist who writes about all things social, political, cultural, financial and whimsical. His work has been featured in outlets including Ebony, JET, Diverse, MONEY, theGrio.com and Black Enterprise, among others. The Columbus, Ohio native earned his M.S. in magazine journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and B.A. in psychology from Morehouse College. He currently resides in New York City.
Experience- Sept 2012 - PresentFreelance Research Assistant / Multiple Clients
Report and write daily blog posts on issues within personal finance for the website of journalist Farnoosh Torabi. Conduct research and interviews for weekly Yahoo! Finance column. Transcribe semiweekly video content, edit and convert into print content for the web. Daily management of Torabi’s social media properties.
Conduct extensive research for “She’s Every Woman,” an upcoming history of black women in Pop music, by journalist and author Danyel Smith for It Books/Harper Collins. Secure interviews with nearly 100 sources for inclusion in the book. Manage correspondence for Smith. Identify relevant reference materials for book. Research popular music charts from 1960 to 2013.
- Aug 2012 - PresentIndependent Journalist / Various Outlets
Freelance writer, editor and photographer working across print and digital formats. Working in areas of politics, education, business, culture and the arts for outlets including: Ebony.com, JET magazine, Black Enterprise magazine, Diverse: Issue in Higher Education, NBC's theGrio.com, Money magazine, CNN/Money and the personal site of journalist Farnoosh Torabi.
- Jun 2012 - Aug 2012Editorial Assistant - Contracted / Time Inc.
Contracted editorial assistant at Time Inc.'s MONEY magazine. Wrote, fact-checked and researched articles on consumer-driven topics within personal finance. Assisted the managing editor.
- Dec 2011 - May 2012Editorial Intern / NBC News
Reported and wrote original content, daily, for the web in areas of politics, entertainment, business and culture for NBC's theGrio.com. I optimized content with SEO and multimedia elements, aggregated, on average, five news stories per day for the site.
- Jun 2011 - Aug 2011Editorial Intern / Columbia Journalism Review
Copyedited and fact-checked monthly features on significant issues within the journalism industry.
- Apr 2010 - May 2011Research Associate / Identity Orchestration Research Lab - Morehouse College
Analyzed statistical data • Conducted research and interviews for lab initiatives and case studies. Assisted lead researcher in conducting research, editing and writing for publication in scholarly journals.
- May 2009 - Nov 2009Marketing & Press Coordinator / Borders for Atlanta
Lisa Borders - 2009 candidate for mayor of Atlanta.
As the Marketing & Press Coordinator for the Borders for Atlanta Communications Team, my chief responsibility was to coordinate print advertising, press, and literature for the campaign.
My duties included:
Message/brand crafting
Graphic design
Writing
Copy editing
Research - 2008 - 2009Managing Editor- The Maroon Tiger Student Newspaper / Morehouse College
While as a student, at Morehouse College, I have had the privilege of contributing to The Maroon Tiger, Morehouse’s weekly newspaper founded in 1925. Joining the ranks of others like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I began with the Tiger in 2006 as a Contributing Writer. I later moved from that position to that of Staff Cartoonist, finally in 2008 being selected to serve as Managing Editor.
•Managed content and over 30 staff members for bi-weekly newspaper
•Expanded newspaper into news organization including website and video programming
•Generated advertising revenue amassing over $50,000 - Jun 2008 - Aug 2008Summer Intern / Hall, Booth, Smith & Slover, P.C.
• Served in support capacity for seven attorneys
• Copy edited major correspondences
• researched active cases in the areas of worker’s compensation, governmental affairs, and appellate groupsHall Booth Smith & Slover, named one of the Best Places to Work in Atlanta by Atlanta magazine
Education-
2011 - 2012Columbia University - Graduate School of JournalismMaster's of Science in Magazine Journalism
Activities: Columbia University Association of Black Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists -
2006 - 2010Morehouse CollegeBachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Psychology
Additional Information-
Websites:
-
Interests:Business, Personal Finance, Politics, Pop Culture, Fine Arts, Education, Research, Publishing
-
Posts
- Jun 15, 13
Amel Larrieux broke out onto the music scene back in 1995 as one-half of Groove Theory. Her effortless vocals and thoughtful songwriting, coupled with Bryce Wilson’s production produced hit songs like “Never Enough” and “Tell Me.”
Larrieux released four albums since Groove Theory disbanded in 1999—including her most recent, 2007’s Lovely Standards, a collection of classic jazz songs. She released "Afraid," her first single in five years this week (listen in below). ESSENCE.com spoke with Larrieux to discuss her five-year absence, what makes a song album-worthy and her forthcoming album, Ice Cream Every Day.
Read more at ESSENCE.com. - Jun 15, 13
A throng of people gathered in New York City’s Union Square Park on Saturday to touch black women’s hair.
It was all part of a two-day “interactive public art exhibit,” titled “You Can Touch My Hair,” during which people were encouraged to get up close and personal with various forms of black hair on live models. The event was put on by Un’ruly.com, a site focused on the black hair experience, and in it several black women allowed those gathered in the park to squeeze, tug and pet their hair.
Read more at theGrio.com - May 28, 13
This month, Autier Allen-Craft was elected to the position of regent in the Norwalk–Village Green chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Connecticut. Allen-Craft, a black woman, says the organization has come a long way since its years of controversy related to racial exclusion.
Allen-Craft rose up the ranks in the organization, serving as vice regent of her Connecticut chapter two years ago before being elected to her current, high-level position. Just a few decades prior, she began the search into her family tree that would eventually lead her to membership in DAR.
Read more at theGrio.com. - May 20, 13
Over the weekend, the first black President of the United States landed in, arguably, the capital of black America to speak at the commencement of the nation’s only institution of higher learning dedicated to educating black men. The occasion was a unique opportunity to address issues facing black males in America and was indeed a rousing call to action.I was a little nervous when President Obama was announced as Morehouse College’s commencement speaker this year. The college had long wanted the first black President to grace the campus - providing some connection between his legacy and the school’s mission of producing servant-leaders - but as an alumnus, my excitement for his visit was mixed with trepidation.WATCH THE SPEECH BELOW:The truth is: Obama doesn’t always get it right when speaking to black audiences. In fact, the President has made it a habit of missing the mark whenever he stands in front of mostly black crowds, so I held my breath waiting for what I just knewwould be a sermon on personal responsibility. It’s been B.O.’s M.O. for a few years now. It was there when he lecturedblack men on fatherhood, addressed the NAACP in 2008and again in 2009. Without follow-up speeches to the NAACP over the past two years, my biggest fear was that this moment would be his tour de force – a message to the white electorate through black Americans.As expected, President Obama launched into his black minister voice (the one he reserves for NAACP conventions and campaign stops at Baptist churches,) but what he offered, while neither perfect nor comprehensive, was decidedly different than past speeches and worth highlighting.With all the references to my alma mater aside, the speech felt personal. Perhaps it was the thunder and rain, punctuating the moment. Maybe the ministerial tone was finally getting to me, but I believed him. For a little over 30 minutes, Obama spoke on something meaningful and worth that special commencement moment - the weight of being a black man in America. He encouraged the new graduates to “stay hungry" and “keep hustling” with the sincerity of someone that we know has had to do both.
And it was a different message than the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” nonsense usually spouted at black men, words that would have amounted to singing to the choir at one of the nation’s best liberal arts colleges. Instead, Obama’s words were the kind shared between brothers across this country every day. He acknowledged the challenges ahead while encouraging those young men to hold steadfast to the will and connectedness that got them to that milestone – all the while pulling from shining examples among the graduates.News outlets are already framing the speech in terms of Obama’s admonishmentof excuses, his pep talk on family values. Those themes were in there but the most salient one was that the most recent graduates of Morehouse College are obligated to transform the broken society they’re entering- not despite expectations - but because, as educated black men, they’re uniquely qualified to do so.“Your experiences give you special insight that today’s leaders need,” Obama said. “If you tap into that experience, it should endow you with empathy -- the understanding of what it’s like to walk in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, to know what it’s like when you're not born on 3rd base, thinking you hit a triple. It should give you the ability to connect. It should give you a sense of compassion and what it means to overcome barriers.”But again, what gave Obama’s address to the 2013 graduating class of Morehouse College special resonance was its earnest encouragement. There were moments of connection that I don’t remember being present in his previous speeches to black audiences. For once, his testimony made his message tangible.
He said, “ I will tell you, Class of 2013, whatever success I have achieved, whatever positions of leadership I have held have depended less on Ivy League degrees or SAT scores or GPAs, and have instead been due to that sense of connection and empathy -- the special obligation I felt, as a black man like you, to help those who need it most, people who didn’t have the opportunities that I had -- because there but for the grace of God, go I -- I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family. And that motivates me.”The full transcript of Obama’s speech can be found here. - May 19, 13
Despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world, the United States does not top the list of country rankings when it comes to stopping preventable deaths.
Many of these untimely demises are the result of medical errors, such as the error that occurred when Lavern Wilkinson sought treatment for a cough two years ago. Although is not possible to determine conclusively that a medical error contributed to her death, the New York City woman died in March 2013 of lung cancer after what her aunt described as a missed opportunity for early diagnosis.
Read more at theGrio. - May 19, 13
This month, President Obama is planning to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College, one of the most prestigious of all historically black schools. Yet, at the beginning of the current school year, Morehouse was forced to furlough faculty and staff and make other budget cuts as the result of a sharp decline in enrollment.
In late 2011, the federal government implemented changes to the administration of one of its most popular student loan options, forcing black students to leave campuses as their loans were denied at alarming rates. More than a year later, critics of the changes have confirmed that the stricter credit requirements now enforced for Direct PLUS Loans are having devastating consequences for black students and threatening the future of historically black colleges and universities.
Read more at theGrio. - May 19, 13
Known for her fierce characters onscreen, Lynn Whitfield is now headed to the stage as another fiery figure in the new stage play, Rebirth! The Musical. Rebirth! will premiere at Atlanta’s Fox Theater on May 30. Along with Whitfield, the play stars Nephew Tommy of the Steve Harvey Morning Show and Q. Parker of the R&B group 112. The production is set in the year 2156, a post-apocalyptic California where chaos is held back by the rule of one woman: “Mia, Mother of the Earth,” played (naturally) by Whitfield.
“I love playing powerful women,” she says of the role. “I’ve explored a lot of characters, and the villains stick with people. People stop me all the time and ask me to repeat the ‘I vacation in Hell’ line from Madea’s Family Reunion.”
EBONY.COM spoke with Whitfield to discuss Rebirth!, her penchant for scary characters and the challenges of being a Black woman in Hollywood. Read more at Ebony.com - May 09, 13
The campuses of Morehouse College and Spelman College are especially close. In fact, they’re right next to each other. Proximity aside, there’s a special bond between the unofficial brother-sister institutions – one so close that students and alumni affectionately call the pair “SpelHouse.” Recent events, however, threaten to weaken that bond and illuminate old tensions between the schools."SpelHouse" buttons by clothier Kreemo.
Read more at theGrio. - Apr 29, 13Hailing a New York City cab while black may get a little easier in the coming days, if new technologies now being released have the expected impact.Racial discrimination by taxi drivers is a phenomenon that has long plagued New York City cab seekers of color, many longtime residents and visitors say.Read more at theGrio
- Apr 30, 13
This past week, Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network held its 15th annual convention in New York City. Convened over three days at spaces around the city, the convention featured panels, presentations, workshops and a “Keepers of the Dream” banquet where U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was the keynote speaker.
Holder wasn’t the only government official with a presence at the NAN banquet however. The dinner opened with a video address from President Barack Obama, who paid homage to the work of the organization. “When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was marching for change his vision was one of a country that lived up to the promise of its founding documents,” said Obama. “Today, 45 years to the day Dr. King was struck down, it’s a vision the National Action Network has carried on as your own.”
Read more at theGrio. - Feb 21, 13
If you’re in a tense situation and someone yells “World Star,” you should probably seek cover. Those two words have become a sort of warning shot for a generation steeped in violent media, and with new amateur videos of fistfights going up every day, the site that spurred the phrase shows no signs of slowing down.
WorldStarHipHop is a website that has become infamous for featuring surreptitiously-filmed violent altercations, but last week they wound up in hot water for hosting a video that Newark mayor Cory Booker called a “human tragedy.”
Read more at theGrio. - Apr 30, 13
The national president of the NAACP took to a Brooklyn pulpit Sunday to condemn the city’s “Stop and Frisk” policy and recent comments made in support of it by New York City’s mayor.
President Benjamin Todd Jealous chose Nazarene Congregational UCC (United Church of Christ) in Bedford-Stuyvesant as the site for a fiery speech, charging New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with using scare tactics to justify his use of the controversial policy. Before a modest congregation, Jealous laid out a case against the practice of questioning and searching anyone deemed suspicious.
Read more at theGrio. - Apr 30, 13
This past Election Day marked a sea change. Voters turned out in large numbers in support of new, progressive economic policies when they re-elected President Barack Obama. But they didn’t just stop there. In two states, voters also passed measures to legalize the possession of marijuana. Experts say more states will follow with the movement for legalization now at a critical mass and, if they are right, the implications for black Americans could be tremendous.
Read more at theGrio. - Jan 17, 13At 31 years old, Dr. Brian K. Lee has emerged as an innovative thinker within epidemiological research at one of the nation’s leading centers for autism epidemiology. With what those in his field describe as a rare mix of intellectual curiosity and methodological rigor, Lee’s work to improve the health of communities faced with disparities is yielding substantial findings.
Read more about Dr. Lee in this month's issue of Diverse and online. - Dec 30, 12
When I was very young, my family had a dog named Pluto. He was our first pet. We didn’t have him for very long though. My grandmother saw to that. “Anything with teeth can bite,” she’d say when people would tell her their pets didn’t. She generally distrusted animals - especially around children. So when she saw Pluto snap at me once, it wasn’t long before she was loading him into her mauve station wagon. They were taking a “trip.” Perhaps she took him to the pound. In the worst of all cases, she put him down with the small handgun she kept in her pocketbook. I don’t remember the ordeal well enough to confirm the details but most would be hurt at the very thought of what happened. Those people didn’t have a grandmother like mine. She told hard truths, made tough decisions and her love of family outweighed anything sentimental. My grandma, Margie Jean Ramsey, died last summer at 73 after decades of health challenges and having buried a husband and three children. Yes she was sweet, warm even, but she could also be as hard as granite. I learned from her that sometimes we have to be. Read more at the The New York Times. - Dec 28, 12
Django (Jamie Foxx) and Broomhilda (Keri Washington) in Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained.' With varying sensitivities to and understanding of the movie’s central character: slavery, Django Unchained was bound to stir up controversy. It was perhaps the film’s primary goal. But beyond stoking Spike Lee’s ire, Django’s, liberal use of brutality raises questions around what little is still off limits in the American psyche.Django follows Inglorious Basterds and Kill Bill in Quentin Tarantino’s series of bloody revenge films. It tells the story of a newly freed, former slave Django (Jamie Foxx) on a journey to rescue his wife Broomhilda from slavery. Django is purchased and freed by Dr. King Schultz, a German bounty hunter who trains him to be the “the fastest gun in the South” as they make their way from Texas to Mississippi collecting corpses.The first half of the plot unfolds like a 80s buddy film set to a Western backdrop, Lethal Weapon directed by Sergio Leone. It’s peppered with interesting performances, witty banter and satisfying scenes like when newly freed Django picks his own clothing for the first time, emerging in a blue satin Little Lord Fauntleroy getup. The audience also has a good laugh watching befuddled Klansmen stumble through the dark, unable to see through homemade hoods.The film takes a sharp turn into dangerous territory, however, just as the pair does. Entering Mississippi, Django, Shultz and Tarantino begin the film’s real work of grappling with the savagery of slavery. The characters manage to navigate their mission. Tarantino gets lost. Unlike Inglorious Basterds and Kill Bill, where the director practices a deft touch, he loses all restraint with the flesh-mangling institution of slavery, rolling around in its gore like a pig in shit."There is something sexy about gallows humor,” Tarantino told the Los Angeles Times. This is perhaps the attitude longtime Tarantino critic Spike Lee anticipated when refusing to see the film saying it would be "disrespectful”to his ancestors.
The New York Times’ review of the film proposes, “When you wipe away the blood and the anarchic humor, what you see in ‘Django Unchained’ is moral disgust with slavery, instinctive sympathy for the underdog and an affirmation (in the relationship between Django and Schultz) of what used to be called brotherhood.” But wiping away the blood is easier for some than others and what causes disgust is just as complicated.Samuel L. Jackson as "Stephen," the head house slave at the Candie Land Plantation. Sociomoral disgust, as defined by psychologist Carol Nemeroff, is a feeling of repulsion associated with the morally reprehensible and, like run-of-the-mill disgust, the sociomoral kind has the power to contaminate. “It is disgusting when there is a spiritual threat,” says Nemeroff. “A sense of horror at the idea of the evil person's stuff getting inside of you."What left me cringing were the scenes where Tarantino loses sight of the “revenge” in revenge flick. So while the audience is spared Nazi death camps in Inglorious Basterds and the wedding-day massacre of Kill Bill, we’re allowed a front-row seat to bone-cracking, skull-crushing “Mandingo fights” in Django. We get to witness the bodies of slaves torn apart by dogs and cooked in torture chambers. Ultimately, the film’s major selling point: watching bad guys get what’s coming to them is polluted as Tarantino exhausts the permission for carnage that slavery affords him.Understandably, it can be hard to determine the line when the film’s premise is a bloody romp through the Antebellum South but like pornography you know it when you see it.Luckily we’re spared some of the more debauched scenes from the script. Like one sequence where actress Keri Washington’s Broomhilda is auctioned, naked from the waist up, and sold to a young master who she eventually beguiles into a Jefferson/Hemmings relationship before being sold once more and subsequently chased naked by her new owner. In another, Django humiliates and beats Stephen, the evil head house slave, played by Samuel L. Jackson. I suppose someone had the taste to cut those scenes, keeping instead the film’s 100 plus utterances of “nigger,” but their stink still manages to linger in the celluloid.Ultimately, with Django Unchained, Tarantino toys with a magic he doesn’t understand: a blend of images, symbols, memories and suggestions so dangerous that we usually tuck them away like Pandora's box or precede them with trigger warnings. - Dec 13, 12
Ever since pictures surfaced of Willow Smith with a “teeny weeny afro,” critics have wanted to know why Jada Pinkett Smith “let” her daughter cut her hair. Pinkett Smith wanted them to know it was none of their business and with one social media post illustrated a shift in black parenting and images of black motherhood. This may have come to as a shock to some who see African-American women as uniformly rigid, and not positively so.
Click here to read more at theGrio. - Dec 01, 12
Eloise Hinds is a small woman, thin and short. Her face is gaunt. She described it as foxlike from her missing top row of teeth and apologizes profusely for being without them. When we met, she was headed out of her building to have a rent check photocopied. “Handling some business,” she said. Her hair was wrapped under a crisp white, linen scarf, over which she wore a black beret. Time had worn the hat in spots so parts that were once covered in velvet, were now bald like the coat of a sick dog. She cocked it to the right side of her face anyway.Hinds, circa 1952. From top to bottom, she wore black. First the beret, then a large jacket that gathered at her waist from the squeezing of a belt. Its gold buckle was placed on the last notch. Her sweatpants ballooned almost comically around what had to be twig-like legs. The look was complete with black Fila sneakers and a shock of white from the athletic socks that sprouted from them. She wore a beaded necklace that tangled up with a few others, one with a cross pendant and another a feather.You can smell her apartment from the hallway, a mixture of decay, dust and dog. Before allowing anyone in, Hinds takes a few minutes to rearrange boxes that block the doorway and begs pardon for the mess. A large oil painting of Jesus and a sweatshirt commemorating the election of President Barack Obama greet you behind the door. They hang on the wall side by side like gargoyles protecting the place.There’s a narrow entrance space that leads to a bedroom on the left and common areas to the right. The bedroom is completely inaccessible behind stacks of boxes. The only other option is down a cluttered hallway, past the bathroom where she keeps a dog. At the end is a large living room. Everywhere the eye lands in it are boxes and bags, their contents unclear. Hinds is a collector of purses. They’re like file cabinets for her, a habit she picked up working at Western Union. Ask her for anything and she’ll go shuffling through her stacks of purses. There’s a baby grand piano in the middle of the room that you could miss if Hinds didn’t point it out. It’s buried under fallen ceiling plaster and, of course, purses. “That’s the second piano I bought,” she said. “The other was ruined.”With no running water, she showers in her tub by using a small plastic container to pour water over herself. She eats dry foods, fruit and honey. A small beverage cooler is her refrigerator and she has a pasta dinner whenever she can bother to boil noodles, using her camping stove. To sleep, she rolls out a pallet onto the narrow hallway floor. “I don’t dwell on the past,” she said “And I don’t know what the future holds but my present stinks.”Eloise Hinds had a powerful voice that rose and fell with little effort back when she went by Lois. She was an R&B singer living in New York and recorded her biggest single, “Loving In Vain Again” for Okeh records. The October ‘52 issue of Billboard magazine described the song as a “rhythm opus” on “buck-beat backing” wrapped up in Hinds’ strong “warble.” Fifty-nine years later, she still lives in New York but has lost the voice that gave her a brush with fame so many years ago. Hinds live now in an uninhabitable Bronx apartment, where she fights with her landlord to make repairs. She spends most of her days sitting in the building’s hallway and sorting through a hoard of papers for evidence of money owed from former managers and record companies.Hinds won’t admit her age but will acknowledge that she was 20 at some point in the 1950s. After dodging the question of her birthdate, she offered that she’s 65. Her eyes darted mischievously to my notebook as she waited for me to write it down. When I didn’t, she said it again. I pointed out that she would have had to been six when her single was released. She managed to forget what we were talking about and asked me if I like to sing. “You never know what your vocal cords are capable of,” she said.She doesn’t like talking about her early years, saying only that she remembers a large market in her East New York neighborhood near an elevated subway platform. She said her mother was “overprotective” and her father abusive. Census records show that Eloise Simmons was born in 1925 to Robert and Eloise Simmons, making her now in her 80s. At the time of the 1930 census the family was living at 82 East 110th St. in Manhattan, a few blocks from Central Park and the elevated IRT Ninth Avenue line. Four-year-old Eloise appears on the record, along with her older brother Floyd.“My mother is very dear to me. She named me after her,” said Hinds. “But the man she married was not my actual father,” she said in a hushed tone. “He knew it but we didn’t. He would beat my brothers… I had an older brother that we never talk about. I remember he was a little taller than me. One day he got beat and I could see this vein in his head.” She held her first up to her head and simulated a pulsating vein. “Then he died and it was me and Floyd. We didn’t talk about it ever.”Hinds said that her mother kept her and Floyd busy with as many lessons as they could manage. Mrs. Simmons saved for Eloise to take ballet. She learned to dance en pointe but lost interest after starting piano lessons with a private teacher.“I wish I could remember her name,” said Eloise. “All of this was a long time ago. She had a lot of students. I wasn’t the only one but she liked me and I was good. She would put on recitals for all of us. I was shy but I performed with our class at a recital in Carnegie Hall.” Hinds continued to play through high school and began writing songs at Hunter College, from where she would graduate with a bachelor’s degree in languages. During this time she also met and married her husband, Walter Kennedy Hinds.She would write songs and sing them to herself, saying, “I had an idealistic and romantic idea of love.” She says she has written over 200 songs, mostly blues ballads steeped in gloom. One such song was “Please Tell Me Why.” Hinds wrote it around 1950 and gave it to a friend, Varetta Dillard, a popular Rhythm and Blues singer best known for her song “Mercy, Mr. Percy." Dillard made “Please Tell Me Why” a minor hit and began recording a number of songs penned by Hinds - almost all written about her troubled relationship with Walter.Eloise Hinds’ ballads were in demand. Packages of demos that would come back unopened before were being returned with contracts and checks. She sold songs to artists at Atlantic, Columbia and Capital. After selling a song to her idol Ruth Brown, Hinds had the confidence to finally record one of her own.She recorded “Loving In Vain Again” as a demo and sent the record to Lee Magid, Varetta Dillard’s manager. Within weeks, she received a call from Magid saying that he wanted to release the single and had a contract waiting for her from a subsidiary of Columbia Records, Okeh. The song was was released in 1952 with heavy promotion from Columbia records. That fall, Billboard magazine’s pages featured mentions of Eloise, who recorded as “Lois” Hinds, alongside artists like Doris Day and Tony Bennett.“The fist time I heard it was in a restaurant,” said Hinds. She smiled thinking, “I was with my husband and the people didn’t believe it was me so I sang along with the record.”Hinds said that she bought a house in Brooklyn with the money that she made from her recording, much to the chagrin of her husband. Conflict began in their marriage over her ambition to be a professional singer. Walter wanted a more traditional family and she wanted to sell songs. She said that he resented that she paid for their first home and things only got worse when she gave birth to their only child Waltdrina. Just a few years later, Walter left the family. Scared and with a daughter to support, Hinds was forced to put music aside for more steady work. She took a job at Western Union and sent her daughter to live with her mother until things were stable.Hinds tells the unfolding of her life without flinching. “It all happened so long ago that it seems like someone else’s life," she said. She lost her home and moved to an apartment. She'd visit her daughter at her mother’s at first but the visits became less frequent as she worked more. Just a few years old, Waltdrina barely recognized Eloise as her mother. She stopped visiting out of shame.In 1968, Hinds was mugged while on the job as a night teller for Western Union. She was dropping off money from her branch office at a nearby bank when a man ran up behind her and grabbed her neck with both hands. “I was too small to fight him off,” she said. “But he didn’t know the money wasn’t in my purse. It was in my waistband. He was going for the purse so I slid down and he lost his grip. I bit his hand and locked down. All he could do was scream and run off. I went to run the other way and saw another one of ‘em running past me. The two of them were going to rob me.”The robbers didn’t get any money that night but Hinds left with permanent damage. A neck injury caused her to retire early from her job at Western Union. She started collecting disability aid from the federal government and has survived off of that and her occasional royalty earnings for over 40 years.Hinds’ landlord wants to put her out, saying that the apartment is a firetrap. By any reasonable account, it is. Rather than clear the apartment, Hinds lives without electricity and the threat of an electrical fire. She said that the bill was too high anyway. Besides, all that she needs is her music. She puts fresh batteries in her portable radio everyday and listens to her favorite singers. She likes Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Sade. Beyoncé’s “Love on Top” was playing as she searched her bags for her rent check. Her landlord sends her a letter every month stating a zero balance for rent but Hinds pays him the $500 dollars agreed to on her lease. “I don’t like to brag but I’m pretty smart. I went to school on scholarship," she said. “He wants me to not pay my rent so he can kick me out.” Instead, she walks to the post office every month to buy a money order. Then she walks a few more blocks to have it photocopied. The photocopy goes into a purse that she files into the stack on the piano.Her neighbors think that the woman who sits in the hallway, listening to her radio is crazy. The kids run past her to get to their doors. Lois Hinds lives a life of isolation, except for a dog with which she shares her apartment. She believes her brother Floyd lives in New Jersey with a wife. She heard years ago that her daughter was married. She hasn’t seen Waltdrina in years. “I don’t want to think about all of that. My daughter could find me, if she wants to. My mother could find me.” On the topic of her mother, Hinds became stoic, saying with a still intensity, “If she’s gone, I don’t want to know it. I would rather not know it. I don’t know what I would do without my mother.” Social security records show that her mother, Eloise Simmons died 12 years ago.I played “Loving In Vain Again” for Hinds when our interview was over. I found the track on the Youtube channel of a rare record collector who converts old vinyl into digital formats. For the first time since I’d arrived, Hinds lowered the volume of her radio as I held out my cell phone. She leaned forward in her chair and smiled as the recording crackled softly. Finally, the sound of a crooning saxophone emerged and swept into Hinds’ powerful vocals. “Am I playing a losing game?” she warbled. “Am I crying for what was then? Am I loving in vain again?” Both hands went to her mouth as she covered her toothless grin. Then Hinds sang along to words that she wrote almost 60 years ago, words saturated with melancholy that she hadn’t yet earned. - Nov 28, 12Before most knew what an achievement gap was, Dr. Edmund W. Gordon was working to eliminate it. He is regarded as one of the foremost scholars on divergent learning styles and championed supplemental education long before it was popular. In fact, Gordon popularized the term. He was also an architect of the nation’s Head Start program in the 1960s. Today, however, at 91, Gordon is still beating the drum of education reform as loud as he did half a century ago with a historic commission to get to the bottom of assessment.
Read more here and the December issue of Diverse. - Nov 28, 12There’s perhaps a surprising connection between bikers and soldiers. In honor of the bond, for the fourth consecutive year, a New York motorcycle club hosted a fundraiser Saturday to support U.S. troops serving abroad and honor soldiers in their community.
On the eve of Veterans Day, Denise Chevere hurried around a Bronx nightclub, briefing volunteers and arranging items, in preparation for the Clutch Divaz MC 4th Annual Troops Fundraiser. Chevere is the founder of the small motorcycle club, creator of the fundraiser and practically the engine behind its execution. She says her inspiration for the event came from a conversation with her father, who served as a sniper during the Korean War.Read more at Black Enterprise. - Nov 22, 12It’s been heralded as an instant classic and for good reason. good kid, m.A.A.d. city is one of the most comprehensive Hip-Hop albums since Jay-Z and NaS captivated audiences with their major label debuts. In his, 25-year-old Kendrick Lamar displays a talent for storytelling and lyrical agility head and shoulders over his contemporaries. The kid is clearly talented, the city fucked up. What results when the two meet is a magnum opus that demands recognition.Dr. Dre produced the album, having signed the younger emcee to his Aftermath label. The rap legend is also featured on one of the song’s tracks, “Compton,” but this ode to the Los Angeles neighborhood that connects both men serves more as a co-sign than an assist. It’s the outlier of the composition, seemingly recorded to root Lamar in the tradition of West Coast rap that fueled Hip Hop in the early 90s. In its entirety, however, GKMC represents a leap forward in developing gritty narratives past the point of mere exposure. With the skill of a novelist, Lamar complicates the themes of sex, violence and ambition until they’re as real as the lives they touch.Like Reasonable Doubt and Illmatic before it, GKMC plays like the journal entries of a young man coming of age in urban America. The meaning of the acronym in the title, “my angry adolescence divided,” comes to life in the music but also the album’s cover art. A Polaroid from Lamar’s childhood, it shows him as a toddler on his uncle’s lap. Under the child’s left arm, his uncle flashes a gang sign. Lamar’s grandfather is seated on the right, another uncle on the left. On the table in front of them: a baby bottle beside a 40-ouce bottle of malt liquor. In 12 tracks - with no traces of convincing, explanation or boast- the young rapper takes listeners on a tour of this world, stopping in interludes that border on the anthropological.Lamar had complete creative control over the project and it shows. It could have featured a song he recorded with Lady Gaga but doesn’t. Gone from it are other telltale signs of compromised major-label releases that often leave Hip Hop heads cold when budding artists make the transition from mixtapes to iTunes. There is, “Poetic Justice,” a mellow banger featuring Drake. But instead of coming off as an attempt at a single (which it should be,) its sample of Janet Jackson’s “Any Time, Any Place” takes listeners out of the label’s boardroom and into a John Singleton love scene. The song even manages to remind us why we liked Drake before his “Pop That” days.From beginning to end, GKMC is glaringly authentic. It shines throughout, but especially in “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst," a 12-minute track where Lamar pairs monologues of a young man and woman caught up in the worst consequences of street life. Other titles including; "Money Trees," “good kid” and “The Art of Peer Pressure” stand out for the depth of their lyrical content – where Lamar’s slender voice and nimble flow dominate. At the same time, songs “m.A.A.d city,” featuring MC Eiht and “Backseat Freestyle” boast genre-pushing production. All of this helps to mark GKMC as much-needed sustenance in the world of Hip Hop today.
- Oct 06, 12Rev. Jamal Bryant, center, with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jacksonat a March rally for Trayvon Martin, calling for the arrest ofGeorge ZImmerman. (Twitter)Written for theGrio.comIt was Rev. Jamal Bryant's mission to register one million new black voters this Easter. He and a collection of other black ministers across the country set out to use one of the Church's highest attended days to bring their congregations into the political process in an effort they call the Empowerment Movement. While all the results aren't in, Bryant calls the Easter-day drive just the beginning. With the case of slain teen Trayvon Martin as a catalyst, he sees a future of increased political empowerment for young black Americans."I'm very excited about the momentum that the Empowerment Movement has built, said Bryant. "We're barely over 40 days old and we've registered 110,000 people to vote." While the number is just over a tenth of the organization's original goal, Bryant said he can rest well with the results. "Most civil rights organizations haven't done that in ayear," he added.Bryant stated in a March press release that there are an estimated 500,000 black churches in the United States and over five million unregistered black voters. The website for the Empowerment Movement states their official goal was registering one million voters on April 8, 2012, "making Guinness World Book history for democracy, by challenging every black church in the United States to register 20 people on that day."Click here to read more.
- Apr 13, 12
Emmett Till (left) and Trayvon Martin (right) Written for theGrio.comWhat we think of as hate crime legislation began with the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It said, in part, that anyone who injures, intimidates, or attempts to do either to another based on their race, color, religion or national origin "shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." It goes on to detail assaults, attempted assaults, threats, sexual abuse, kidnapping and murder as offenses with special consequences when motivated by bias -- those consequences ranging from something as small as a fine to as significant as a death sentence.Such laws did not exist throughout much of America's history of racial terrorism, intimidation and crime; these provisions, written into the Civil Rights Act, did not exist until 13 years after the murder of Emmett Till. They could possibly play a part if charges are brought in the death of Trayvon Martin, however.Notably, the legislation does specify that free speech and peaceful assembly are still protected by the Constitution, but not to the point that they aid or invite another to commit an act of violence upon someone.Despite the fact that the provisions set forth in legislation, like the Civil Rights Act, define the protection and limits of free speech, critics of hate crime laws say they put limitations on civil liberties.Click here to read more. - Apr 13, 12
(Photo by Yonhap News via Getty Images) Written for theGrio.comA new poll shows President Obama holding a double-digit lead against the Republican frontrunners. Other responses from the survey reveal voter frustration with the GOP primary contest, giving the president an advantage. Furthermore, disproportionate demographics of participants in the poll could possibly signal higher support for Obama.The Suffolk University Political Research Center poll was released Monday and was conducted with more than 1,000 participants between March 21st and 25th. It shows President Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 47 percent to 37 percent, and Rick Santorum 49 percent to 37 percent. There is a 3 percent margin of error. Other polls, including one also released Monday by Rasmussen, have Obama leading Romney but still in the single digits -- somewhere between 3 and 5 percent.Those polled illuminated interesting information about the current political landscape. Seventy-three percent of those polled believed that voters should have to present identification to vote. Most, 51 percent, thought Barack Obama would win re-election, regardless of their party affiliation. Twenty-eight percent believe Mitt Romney will win and 5 percent called it for Rick Santorum. A large number, 43 percent, said they are less likely to support a Republican candidate in the general election after the primary process.Click here to read more - Apr 15, 12Kenneth Herrera, a 17-year-old student at the Bronx Academy of Letters inNew York, in the library. Thursday, March 22, 2012. (theGrio/Donovan X. Ramsey)Written for theGrio.comThe death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin has saturated media coverage in recent days, with some commentators calling it a case of a modern-day Emmett Till. Details have emerged that suggest his shooter, George Zimmerman, may have been motivated by racial stereotypes of young black men.The debate over black male stereotypes, which has endured throughout America's troubled racial history, often resurfaces when events like Trayvon's death occur. While we still don't know all the details about what occurred that fateful night when Zimmerman and Trayvon's paths crossed, the tragic result of their encounter is felt by many black teens today."I kinda feel threatened too. Like what if this happens to me?," said Kenneth Herrera, a 17-year-old student at the Bronx Academy of Letters in New York. Kenneth explained how Trayvon's death struck him as "pure racism."Click here to read more.
-
Profile Photos
-
Tracks
-
VideosAug 30, 11" data-title="Black Ink">
-
Tweets
- RT @dreamhampton: I have. This Rick Ross thing aside, it's perfect. RT @ChristJanuary @dreamhampton have you heard magna carta holy grail???Jun 19, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- When I get this money, I'm gonna give so much of it to PBS. Like, y'all don't understand.Jun 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- My mama just made me miss a call from Quincy Jones' office. She needed to tell me that my third cousin's husband is writing a book...Jun 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Maya Angelou to Students: 'Be a Rainbow in Someone Else's Cloud' on #TrendingOnHulu http://t.co/v6le7xPRDE
- RT @bevysmith: If you admire Jay Z and Kanye's strategies try applying their principles to your own life! #GetOffTheSidelinesJun 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- I wore my new Js today. Mother Nature is a hater...
- I just finished up an interview with R&B Diva @Syleena_Johnson. Deep sister. Gave me a word on today.Jun 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @ColdSkrilla: Hey Everyone! If you've seen Bakari Pace (on the right) in the Last 18 hours please let me know! He… http://t.co/P7xCVuU…Jun 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- La Lupe!!! ♫ La Tirana – La Lupe http://t.co/zTMsdr3G1o #NowPlaying
- RT @marclamonthill: Lots of rappers have lyrics that are misogynistic, but when I hear Kanye I literally FEEL a visceral hate for women oth…Jun 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @marclamonthill: Finally (for real this time) I'm genuinely worried about Kanye. I don't know him. But as a fan and listener, I worry th…Jun 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Bidi bidi bom bomJun 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
