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Public to Have Access to Ebony Photos

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Consortium of Foundations Ponies Up $30 Million

Trump Insults Yamiche Alcindor as ‘Untruthful’

Reporting Helps Bring Down Puerto Rico Governor

CBS Puts Spotlight on Toxic ‘Cancer Alley’

Nostalgia for Days of the Chinese Exclusion Act?

News Outlets Revive Memories of ‘Red Summer’

50 Years Ago, the Puerto Ricans’ Young Lords

Ray Cook, Native Media Icon, Dies at 62

Jomay Steen Dies at 61, Storyteller and Food Writer

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A photo of Billie Holiday is part of the Ebony archives. (Credit: Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune)

Consortium of Foundations Ponies Up $30 Million

“A consortium of foundations led by the J. Paul Getty Trust is buying the historic Ebony photo archives for $30 million, with plans [to] donate the expansive collection and make it available for broad public access,” Robert Channick reported Thursday for the Chicago Tribune.

“The historic collection will go to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Getty Research Institute and other cultural institutions to ensure public access and use by scholars, researchers and journalists, according to a news release.

“The Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are listed as co-purchasers on the asset purchase agreement, filed late Wednesday in Chicago bankruptcy court.”

Two of those foundations are headed by African Americans: Elizabeth Alexander at the Mellon Foundation and Darren Walker at Ford.

 Walker said in an interview that the group began to form only last week,  Julie Bosman reported for the New York Times. “He said he was at the Prado Museum in Madrid last Tuesday when he read a news article about the impending auction on his phone.” Alexander “emailed Mr. Walker, suggesting — with a great deal of urgency — that they had to do something.

“ ‘The narrative that is held in that archive is central to the narrative of America in the second half of the 20th century,’ Mr. Walker said. ‘The concern was that it should be brought into the public domain.’

“Mr. Walker and Ms. Alexander talked to leaders of two more institutions and brought them on board. Each foundation promised between $5 million and $12.5 million. . . .”

Alexander said in the news release, “The preservation and accessibility of this singular and remarkable photographic archive exemplifies Mellon’s values and is of immeasurable service to picturing the vast and varied range of African American life.” The other organizations voiced similar sentiments, as did others with ties to Ebony, which is now owned by an African American private equity firm.

“ ‘This is great news and a relief to the black community,’ former Ebony editor-in-chief Harriette Cole told the Daily News,” Karu F. Daniels, one of the few black journalists to cover the story in the mainstream media, reported for the Daily News in New York.

“ ‘The community loves Ebony and Jet and what they have meant historically for [black] households for generations,’ Cole told The Daily News. ‘It is tragic to see these institutions gone from the horizon, at least as we knew them. When you lose your images, when you lose the vision of who you are as a people, that cultural loss is devastating.’

Daniels also wrote, ” ‘This does add to the detraction of John H. Johnson’s storied legacy,’ former Jet magazine editor Dr. Margena A. Christian told The Daily News.

“ ‘It detracts because there’s now a disconnect,’ she added. ‘Everything he worked for and owned has been sold. This is the real travesty coming from a man who once said, “I am not for sale.” Seeing his magazines sold, his building sold and now his archives sold, is a bitter pill to swallow.’ . . . It is dispiriting to see that better measures weren’t in place following his death to change onward and upward.”

“The purchase agreement is pending court approval Thursday afternoon,” Channick continued in the Chicago Tribune.

“The consortium emerged as the top bidder Wednesday in the weeklong Johnson Publishing bankruptcy auction. If the sale is approved by the bankruptcy judge, closing would take place Friday in Chicago, according to the agreement.

“California-based Getty operates a Los Angeles museum and other programs dedicated to art conservation and presentation. . . .”

Sarah Cascone added for Art News:

“Over the last month or so, the archives were transferred from the old Johnson offices to a warehouse on the West Side of Chicago, stored in vintage filing cabinets and [manila] folders. Few of the images have been digitized, or shown publicly, and there was widespread concern over whether they would end up in a public museum, or be snatched up by a private collector and promptly locked away.

“ ‘It keeps me up at night, thinking about the future of this archive,’ Tiffany M. Gill, associate professor of Africana studies and history at the University of Delaware, told the New York Times earlier this month. ‘You can’t really tell the story of black life in the 20th century without these images from the Johnson archive. So it’s important that whatever happens in this auction, that these images are preserved and made available to scholars, art lovers, and everyday folks.’ . . .”


(Credit: PBS)

Trump Insults Yamiche Alcindor as ‘Untruthful’

“President Donald Trump pushed back against Robert Mueller’s testimony that the president’s responses to the special counsel’s questioning during the Russia investigation were ‘generally’ untruthful,” the PBS NewsHour reported Wednesday.

“When asked by the PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor for a response to Mueller’s characterization, Trump said Alcindor was untruthful for asking the question. He went on to say Mueller’s aides were untruthful, and told Alcindor ‘if you were ever truthful, you’d be able to write the truth.’ ”

 

Staff members at the Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Reporting.

Reporting Helps Bring Down Puerto Rico Governor

“Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism has broken many, many stories in the past eleven years,” Brian Stelter reported Tuesday for CNN.

“But this month has been unlike any other in its history.

“Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans have been taking to the streets to demand the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. The extraordinary burst of outrage is due in part to a massive leak of private messages between Rosselló and his inner circle. The messages were posted on the web by the news outlet, known as CPI for short, on July 13.

“‘As soon as we scrolled through the documents,’ CPI’s executive director Carla Minet said, ‘we knew we had to publish.’ . . .”

Rosselló announced his resignation on Wednesday night.

Stelter also wrote, “Reporters have depicted the profane messages as a breaking point for Puerto Ricans who were already fed up with corruption across the island.

“The center has been reporting about that, as well.

“David Begnaud, a CBS News correspondent who has spent months in Puerto Rico, tweeted that CPI ‘has done great work exposing alleged corruption.’

“CPI was founded about eleven years ago. It is a nonprofit news organization that relies on donations from individual readers, foundations, and ticket sales for events.

“Minet said the site has 10 full-time staffers along with a stable of freelancers.

“CPI is essentially the ProPublica of Puerto Rico — calling to mind the New York-based nonprofit that produces investigative journalism.

“The center specializes in going to court to fight for documents — a tactic that proved especially important in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The deadly category 5 hurricane struck Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in September 2017.

“CPI has led the way in reporting on the direct and indirect death toll from Maria. . . .”

 

Robert Taylor, left, and Lydia Gerard, right, residents of St. John the Baptist Parish, La., with Ruhan Nagra, center, executive director of the University Network for Human Rights, in Tokyo. They tried to confront company executives over residents’ health issues. (Credit: Barang Phuk/University Network for Human Rights)

CBS Puts Spotlight on Toxic ‘Cancer Alley’

“In a Louisiana town of 10,000 people, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said there is some of the most toxic air in America,” Janet Shamlian reported Wednesday for CBS News. “More than 100 petrochemical plants and refineries dot the corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, often referred to as ‘cancer alley.’

“The town of Reserve is right in the middle of it, and the cancer risk there is almost 50 times the national average, according to the EPA.

“Robert Taylor has lived there most of his 78 years. Even his family cemetery is surrounded by a refinery. He said his mom, sister, uncle and nephew all died of cancer.

” ‘As I stand here, it’s overwhelming to me. All of my folks are here. I will eventually wind up here,’ he said.

“For decades, people in Reserve have had health problems ranging from dizziness and severe headaches to liver and lung cancer. Many believe a plant, hundreds of yards from some of their homes, is the source.

“The Denka Performance Elastomer plant, owned by DuPont until 2015, makes chloroprene, a chemical the EPA calls a ‘likely human carcinogen.’ Denka is the only plant in the country producing it.

“In a new study obtained first by CBS News, the University Network for Human Rights found actual cancer rates surrounding Denka are higher than expected. Those living in homes surveyed within a mile of the plant had cancer rates of nearly 7%. Go a half mile farther away and the cancer rate drops significantly, by almost 40%.

“Denka said it hasn’t had the opportunity to see the new study and cites a state tumor registry that does not show a cancer increase in Reserve. The company said the EPA’s chloroprene concerns are ‘based on faulty science,’ resulting in a ‘dramatically inflated risk factor.’

“Taylor said he’s concerned about children in the community. ‘What really drove us was the fact that we’ve got a school right here, with 400 to 500 black children in it, 1,500 feet from the fence line,’ Taylor said.

“Taylor is a lead plaintiff in a suit against Denka. He recently took his fight 7,000 miles to Denka’s headquarters in Tokyo. CBS News was there as his team tried to confront company executives. They were turned away. Denka later told them they couldn’t meet because of pending litigation. . . .”

Nostalgia for Days of the Chinese Exclusion Act?

“When Donald Trump first proclaimed ‘Make America Great Again,’ many white Americans focused on the slogan’s explicit appeal,” Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, wrote July 18 for the Washington Post.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Why wouldn’t we want America to be great again? But many of us who do not happen to be white understood the slogan’s subtext: Make America White Again. Immigrants, refugees and people of color have always recognized Trumpism for what it is — a politics of nostalgia for an era of unquestioned white superiority and power.

“Trump’s comments last weekend, that four congresswomen should ‘go back’ to their ancestors’ countries if they don’t like this one, were also an argument that immigrants of color should simply be grateful to be here. Increasingly, post-white Americans are refusing to perform what many white Americans expect of them: docile compliance, with the implicit sequel of servitude. Instead, these proud Americans, who don’t hesitate to call Trump out, are both thankful and critical. . . .”

Nguyen also wrote, “Still, Trump’s appeal to a core group of Americans speaks to an uncomfortable truth in American history, which is that this is a country founded on the white racism of colonization, genocide, slavery and immigrant exploitation, which many white people who are not white supremacists benefit from.

“While Trump and his supporters would probably refuse words like ‘genocide,’ they would still see the conquest of America by white people as a fact to be celebrated rather than apologized for. Trump’s vision of America is so explicitly racist that the 1950s can no longer be cited as the time period for which he might be nostalgic. The 1950s were the beginning of the end for government-sanctioned segregation and racist immigration laws that had kept out almost all nonwhite immigrants since the 1924 Immigration Act.

“What Trump wants is the America of the late 19th century, when Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first time it targeted a racial group for immigration exclusion. . . .”

Survey released Thursday

In a Fox News poll released Thursday, “The president’s lowest marks are on race relations (32-57 percent), where more voters disapprove than approve by 25 points,” Dana Blanton reported for Fox News.

“He was underwater by 22 points in October 2018 (35-57 percent). Over half, 57 percent, don’t believe Trump respects racial minorities, including 73 percent of non-whites.

“Majorities think that Trump went too far in tweets criticizing four minority Democratic Congresswomen, and believe telling a person of color to go back to the country they came from is a racist thing to say. . . .”

In addition, “Six in 10 voters are concerned about the treatment of migrants detained on the U.S.-Mexico border, including 31 percent who feel ‘extremely’ concerned. Most Democrats (82 percent) are concerned, while a majority of Republicans (58 percent) is not. . . .”

Meanwhile, some news organizations continued to debate whether journalists should label Trump’s tweets “racist” or only quote others saying so.


The Chicago Race Riot 1919 Commemoration Project, which includes numerous local organizations and institutions, has developed programming centered on the riots. A wide range of activities takes place Saturday. Discussing the events on WTTW-TV are Julius L. Jones of  the Chicago Historical Society and Franklin Cosey-Gay of the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention at the University of Chicago.

News Outlets Revive Memories of ‘Red Summer’

“America in the summer of 1919 ran red with blood from racial violence, and yet today, 100 years later, not many people know it even happened,” Jesse J. Holland wrote Tuesday for the Associated Press, one of several recollections of the events of that year.

“It flowed in small towns like Elaine, Arkansas, in medium-size places such as Annapolis, Maryland, and Syracuse, New York, and in big cities like Washington and Chicago. Hundreds of African American men, women and children were burned alive, shot, lynched or beaten to death by white mobs. Thousands saw their homes and businesses burned to the ground and were driven out, many never to return.

“It was branded ‘Red Summer’ because of the bloodshed and amounted to some of the worst white-on-black violence in U.S. history.

“Beyond the lives and family fortunes lost, it had far-reaching repercussions, contributing to generations of black distrust of white authority. But it also galvanized blacks to defend themselves and their neighborhoods with fists and guns; reinvigorated civil rights organizations like the NAACP and led to a new era of activism; gave rise to courageous reporting by black journalists; and influenced the generation of leaders who would take up the fight for racial equality decades later. . . .”

The Young Lords published their own newspaper. (Credit: libcom.org)

50 Years Ago, the Puerto Ricans’ Young Lords

“Well, as massive protests rock Puerto Rico and Governor Ricardo Rosselló is expected to resign today, we turn now to look back at the Young Lords, a radical group founded by Puerto Ricans, similar to the Black Panther Party,” Juan Gonzalez, a co-founder of the New York chapter and a former columnist for the Daily News in New York, declared Wednesday on “Democracy Now!” the daily show he co-hosts.

“The New York chapter began 50 years ago this week, when the group announced their formation at a rally in Tompkins Square Park to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Cuban revolution.

“Soon after, the group launched an effort to force the city of New York to increase garbage pickup in East Harlem. It was known as the Garbage Offensive. Members of the Young Lords cleaned the streets of the Barrio and then piled the garbage into the middle of Third Avenue and set it on fire.

“The Young Lords would go on to inspire activists across the country as they occupied churches and hospitals in an attempt to open the spaces to community projects. The group called for self-determination for all Puerto Ricans, independence for the island of Puerto Rico, community control of institutions and land, freedom for all political prisoners and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, Puerto Rico and other areas. . . .

Host Amy Goodman added, “On Friday, a number of former Young Lords will gather at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to kick off a series of events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the New York chapter. . . .”

“Democracy Now! plans to livestream the kickoff at 6 p.m. Eastern time.

Ray Cook, second from left, holds a handful of awards from the Native American Journalists Association as he stands with his former colleagues at Indian Country Media Network, now Indian Country Today. (Credit: Vincent Schilling)

Ray Cook, Native Media Icon, Dies at 62

“Many in the Native media world and in Indian Country were saddened to hear the news that journalist, radio producer, and Native media icon Ray Cook passed away at the young age of 62,” Alex Jacobs reported Sunday for Indian Country Today.

“Raymond J. ‘Wahniti:io’ Cook, 62, passed away on Sunday, July 14, 2019, at the Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital ,” in Plattsburgh, N.Y., “after what has been described as a brief illness, and complications due to PTSD from his service as a Marine Veteran and from complications of a vehicle accident in 2018.

“Ray Cook says his career in journalism began when he was just 12 when he delivered newspapers in Long Island New York. His reach in Native news and media would expand a hundredfold before he died at 62.

“Cook was a co-founder of the Native American Journalists Association, worked with Akwesasne Notes, was co-founder of the Mohawk publication Indian Time, founder of Akwesasne Freedom Radio, co-founder of Associated Indigenous Communications, and served as audio producer for the Indigenous Peoples Network, associate editor of the Northeast Indian Quarterly, and opinions editor for Indian Country Media Network. . . .”

Jomay Steen Dies at 61, Storyteller and Food Writer

Family, friends and colleagues were to gather last Saturday to celebrate the life of Jomay Steen, “a former Rapid City [S.D.] Journal reporter who is being remembered for her laughter, humor, kindness, and joy and skill as a storyteller,” Tanya Manus reported July 18 for the Journal.

Jomay Steen

“Steen, 61, died suddenly of unknown causes on July 10 while enjoying a day of sightseeing with family members. . . .”

Manus also wrote, “Jack Marsh recalls Steen’s path to journalism. Marsh was the executive editor of the Argus Leader from 1992 to 1998, a time when the newspaper was trying to provide opportunities for Native American journalists, he said. Richard Lee, head of SDSU’s journalism department, told Marsh about Steen, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe.

“’She was a nontraditional student and she wanted to try journalism. The Argus Leader awarded her a scholarship and then we got her into the Chips Quinn Scholars Program, the signature diversity program of the Freedom Forum,’ Marsh said.

“Steen was an intern at the Argus Leader and then worked full time at its Brookings bureau and in the Sioux Falls office from 1998 to 2003. She took additional training at the University of South Dakota’s American Indian Journalism Institute, Marsh said, and ultimately Steen became a mentor and teacher at the Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop, which gives high school and college students opportunities to learn fundamentals of journalism. . . . . Hundreds of Steen’s articles and food blog entries are still on the Rapid City Journal’s website. . . .”

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