Scott Sisters Released From Prison

I attended the press conference at the Masonic Temple after the release of the Scott sisters on Friday, December 7, 2011.  The sisters are strong, optimistic and ready to face the challenges that lie ahead of them.  They want to be advocates for other women in prison and fully exonerate themselves from all charges.  They were not pardoned, they sentences were suspended with stipulations:
1. They have to leave the State of Mississippi within 24 hours of their release and they are not allowed to return.
2. Gladys Scott must donate one of her kidneys to Jamie Scott
3. The Suspension can be reversed if its conditions are not met
 Attorney Chokwe Lumumba, NAACP State President Derrick Johnson, NAACP CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous, MS Conference NAACP, Malcolm X Grassroots Organization, Attorney Jaribu Hill, Free the Scott Sisters Committee, MIRA, and many others worked diligently to get the Scott Sisters released.
But most of all the Scott Sisters' release is a testament to the strength and power of a mother's love, their mother Mrs. Evelyn Rasco never stopped believing in her daughters' innocence and with devoted persistence worked tirelessly for her daughters' release.  All the while raising Jamie's three children in Pensacola, Florida.  Jamie and Gladys Scott are moving to Pensacola, Florida to live with their mother.

For more information about the Scott sisters click on the link below:
http://www.victimsofthestate.org/MS/Scott.htm

SANKOFA Reading Group will meet Monday, January 31

   

SANKOFA Reading Group will meet
Monday, January 31, 2011
6:00 PM
Margaret Walker Center (Historic Ayer Hall on Jackson State University's campus)
Book of the Month: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

For more information please call: 601-982-3274 or email: astew44032@aol.com

LESSON PLAn for Things Fall Apart

http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/chinua-achebe%E2%80%99s-things-fall-apart-oral-and-literary-strategies-0

I want to post links to three discussions I caught on C-SPAN during the Thanksgiving break. The goal of this blog to help broaden horizions and empower people, especially high school and college students.  In addition to exploring great works of literature from Africa and the African Diaspora we will examine issues of
education, empowerment, spirituality, global affairs, economics, civic empowerment, community revitalization and public policy.

Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State, recalls her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960's and profiles her parents, John and Angelena. Ms. Rice discusses her memoir with her cousin Constance Rice, co-director of the Advancement Project at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Extraord

A group of emerging young professionals, including some from the Obama administration, talked about building successful careers in politics. This program was part of the 40th Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/EmergingPo

Angela Davis presents a critical edition of Frederick Douglass' memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave Written By Himself. Ms. Davis explores the abolitionists intellectual life and recalls the several other editions of Douglass' memoir. Angela Davis is joined in conversation with Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Toni Morrison at the New York Public Library in New York City.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/LifeofF

New York Times article on Chinua Achebe link

Books of The Times

Chinua Achebe’s Encounters With Many Hearts of Darkness

By DWIGHT GARNER

Published: December 15, 2009

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/books/16book.html

THINGS FALL APART: Why Chinua Achebe is still the Father of African Literature

THINGS FALL APART: Why Chinua Achebe is still the Father of African Literature

Chinua Achebe

  

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan. His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. From 1972 to 1976, and again in 1987 to 1988, Mr. Achebe was a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and also for one year at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Cited in the London Sunday Times as one of the 1,000 "Makers of the Twentieth Century," for defining "a modern African literature that was truly African" and thereby making "a major contribution to world literature," Mr. Achebe has published novels, short stories, essays, and children's books. His volume of poetry, Christmas in Biafra, written during the Biafran War, was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. His novel Arrow of God was winner of the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize in England. Often mentioned as a leading candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mr. Achebe holds an Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as more than twenty honorary doctorates from universities in England, Scotland, the U.S., Canada, and Nigeria. He is also the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award.