Feliz Cinco De Mayo
Month: May 2025
Book of the Quarter
An African American woman moved home to take care of her dying mother giving up the opportunity to experience a world beyond segregation. Zoraida Hughes Williams finds that some things have changed about her hometown of Fort Worth, Texas while some have stayed the same, like Hell’s Half Acre, an area where saloons, prostitution and gambling runs wild. Like most of the residents, she wants to keep her head down and stay away from trouble, but it comes in the unlikely form of an Anglo Baptist preacher. He messes up everything and almost gets them killed.
Available on Amazon.com or Books2read.com which include Barnes & Noble, Apple, Indigo and more.
TV Talk with the Sista
Today we will talk about how in 1976 the South African government declared a state of emergency. For 13 years the children of South African resisted. Often referred to as the Soweto Uprising, a musical was written called Sarafina.
It tells the story of how thousands of children were beaten and tortured. 8,000 children were in prison. This story is about South African teenagers fought against apartheid in the Soweto Uprising.
We first saw this story on Broadway. I remember because at the end there was a song Free Nelson Mandela. I can’t put into words what that experience was like, but WOW.
Beyond entertaining, the message of this movie moved me. Nelson Mandela has become one of my favorite people in life.
Listen Episode 5
Art of the Month
Nina Mae McKinney (June 12, 1912 – May 3, 1967) was an American actress who worked internationally during the 1930s and in the postwar period in theatre, film and television, after beginning her career on Broadway and in Hollywood. McKinney was born June 12, 1912, in Lancaster, South Carolina, to Georgia Crawford and Hal Napoleon McKinney. Shortly after McKinney’s birth, her mother often hid from her abusive husband in the house of Colonel Leroy Springs (of Springs Industries), for whom she worked as a domestic.
Her first job on stage was in the chorus line of Blackbirds of 1928 which starred Bill Robinson. She then had a role in the King Vidor’s movie, Hallelujah which led her getting a 5-year contract from MGM. She had a few roles with them, but none were leading roles.
She moved to Europe where she worked in nightclubs and theaters, doing an occasional movie. She toured playing nightclubs and worked on some Britishe films. But eventually moved back to the United States in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.
She played maids and sex workers because those were the roles offered to people of color during that time period. She would get an occasional role that was off that path. In 1949 she landed the role of the jealous girlfriend in Pinky starring Jean Crain, Ethel Barrymore and Ethel Waters.
In 1951, she performed her last role in summer stock. She moved back to New York City in 1960. She died in 1967.
Hello May
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