Carry on Community Development Corp. There's No Greater Love

Happy Second Chance Month
You may know of Steve Wonder but have "wondered" who was is Mother? Introducing Ms Lula Mae Hardaway...she was a songwriter and the mother of musical genius 'Stevie Wonder. She co-wrote many of Stevie's songs during the early years of his career. She was co-nominated for the 1970 Grammy Award for Best R&B Song for co-writing 'Signed, Sealed, Delivered.
—Lula was born Jan 11th 1930 in Eufaula, Alabama but spent her early adult life in Saginaw, Michigan before moving to Los Angeles in 1975 where she remained until her passing on May 31st 2006.
She co-wrote several of her son's songs, including "I Was Made To Love Her", "Signed Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours", "You Met Your Match" and "I Don't Know Why I Love You". Two of these tracks also appeared on Stevie's 1968 album "For Once In My Life" and another two, ""I Wanna Make Her Love Me" and "Ain't No Lovin'", were also co-penned by Lula.
For co-writing "Signed, Sealed, Delivered", she was co-nominated for the 1970 Grammy Award For Best R&B Song.

Happy Women’s History Month and Happy 102nd birthday to Agnes Keleti, the world's oldest living Olympic champion!

This Holocaust survivor from Hungary won a total of ten gymnastics medals, including five golds, at the 1952 Helsinki Games and the 1956 Melbourne Games. Keleti survived WWII thanks to working as a maid under a false identity but many of her family members were among the 550,000 Hungarian Jews killed during the Holocaust. After the war, she resumed her gymnastics training and secured her Olympic medals at the ages of 31 and 35. Today, the energetic centenarian still prefers to look forward, asserting: "The past? Let’s talk about the future. That’s what should be beautiful. The past is past but there is still a future."

Happy Women’s History Month. Introducing to some presenting to others Madam C.J. Walker first female self-made millionaire!!!

Happy Woman’s History Month. Introducing Queen Mother Mrs. Tessie E. Ailes (Feb 18, 1915 - Jun 2001) here is the Queen Mother posing in her stylish hat made of money during her retirement celebration from Newark Board of Education Custodian. Born to Frank Tank Flanagan, Head Deacon of Abyssinian Baptist Church Newark and Lena Freeman-Flanagan Queen Mother was chauffeured to Central High School where she graduated and went off to attend Shaw University, HBCU, for nursing. While at Shaw she thrived only for her nursing education to be cut short within two years as she was forced to return home nurse, and care for her ailing mother. This was also the time when she met and married Emery Staton Ailes. From this Union 7 children were born; Nadine, Emery Jr, (my dad) Richard, Patricia, Judith, William, Rodney, and grandson Emery III. She lived and raised her family by the Grace of God on Badger Avenue, then to Dayton St, through two depressions, and a world war, worked two jobs for ten years, raising all 7 of her own plus a loving grandson before, during, and after Newark riots. Every one of us graduated and finished school. She was famous for wise sayings like: “That Circle Has Got to Turn” and “when you find your hand in the lions mouth, ease it out”. She also served faithfully as Deacon of Calvary Gospel Church in Newark NJ. Not only was she a loving daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother, but everyday her house was the place to be for all children on Dayton Street especially on Sundays when she’d cook fried chicken and feed all the kids in the neighborhood who would find their way, somehow someway to 368 3-E. On many plenty occasion the house looked like the United Nations. lol

Happy Women’s History Month

Queen Mother Tessie E. Ailes Rest In Power!!!

Happy Women’s History Month. Introducing Ida B. Wells. Ida B Wells great American suffragist dies on 25th March 1931. Ida working to emancipate all women . Another Iconic woman working against a background of Jim Crow Laws to campaign for women’s rights to be recognised as full American citizens. We pay tribute to all women, often lone voices , fighting for all women’s s*x based rights.

Happy Women’s History Mother!!!!
Introducing the oldest Black woman living in America. "Houston, we have a celebration!”

At 114-years-old a Black woman living in Houston, has just become the oldest living person in America and fifth-oldest person on Earth, according to LongeviQuest and the Gerontology Research Group
TGBTG

Women's History Is Now— The Oldest Living American Is Now A Black Woman | Essence Born in 1909, Elizabeth Francis is also the fifth-oldest person in the world. She has survived both World Wars, two pandemics, and lived through segregation to see our nation’s first Black president.

Happy Women’s History Month. This one is a bit mind boggling that leaves one with more questions than answers. Nevertheless, introducing the youngest mother in the world Ms Lina Medina. Doctors discovered she was pregnant at the tender age of Five.

Happy Woens History Month. Here’s are two female historical figures to be reckoned Bette Davis with Hattie McDaniel.

Davis was the only white member of McDaniel’s troupe of performers to perform for black servicemen during WWII. McDaniel was the Chairman of the Negro Division of the Hollywood Victory Committee. She formed the troupe.

Happy Women's History Month!!!! Introducing Mezzo-soprano Muriel Burrell Smith who was born on February 23, 1923, in Harlem, New York City, to Sigourney Burrell Smith and Olive Gilmore Smith. At age 14, Smith got an artistic boost when she appeared on The Major Bowes Amateur Hour that aired live every Thursday evening from 9 to 10 p.m. on the CBS Radio Theater in New York City.
In 1939, Smith was admitted for study to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a private conservatory for some of the world’s most talented young musicians. Smith was the first African American to study at Curtis, where no tuition is charged for students enrolled in the institution. She graduated in 1946, in the same class as conductor Leonard Bernstein.
Smith made her début on Broadway in December 1943 in the title role of Carmen Jones, a version of Bizet’s Carmen with an African American cast. Smith performed in the play for 14 months while she was still a student at Curtis.
In 1949, Smith moved to London, England, where she starred in South Pacific and The King and I. She was known for being the uncredited ghost singer for Zsa Zsa Gabor in Moulin Rouge, the 1952 film biography of the painter Toulouse-Lautrec. In 1953, Smith’s single “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” was released on the Phillips Label. It did not chart in the United States, but it rose to No. 3 in the United Kingdom. And in 1954, theater critics in the U.K. ranked her among the leading recitalists and theatrical singers in the country.
The following year, 1955, she returned to the United States, where her work included dubbing for actresses in films. One year later, when Smith was back in the U.K. researching the opera Carmen at the Royal Opera House in London, she refused an offer by Samuel Goldwyn to star in a film version of Porgy and Bess, explaining that “It doesn’t do the right thing for my people.” In 1957, Smith left the stage to join Moral Re-Armament, a project devoted to creating a world community based on Christian values.
In 1960, Smith made The Crowning Experience, a film about the life of the African American educator Mary McLeod Bethune. The film, one of the first with a multiracial cast of equal billing, was credited with helping to integrate theaters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Fourteen years later, in 1974, Smith relocated to Richmond, Virginia, to care for her aging mother. While in the city, she taught voice performance pedagogy at Virginia Union University. She also returned to the stage, appearing in several productions, including Equus at Theatre IV on Broad Street in Richmond in 1984 and the world premiere of Sojourner Truth … Ain’t I a Woman? a year later at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. In 1985, Smith received the National Council of Negro Women’s award for women in the arts.
Muriel Burrell Smith, an international artist, died of cancer on September 13, 1985, in Richmond, Virginia. She was 62.

Happy Women’s History Month

African American sculptor, teacher, and advocate for black artists Augusta Savage was born Augusta Christine Fell in Green Cove Springs, Florida on February 29, 1892.

After moving to Harlem in New York in 1921, Savage studied art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art where she finished the four-year program in three years. She was recommended by Harlem librarian Sadie Peterson (later Delaney), for a commission of a bust of W.E.B. DuBois. The sculpture was well received and she began sculpting busts of other African American leaders, including Marcus Garvey.

While rising to the rank of 3rd degree Black Belt in Tai Chi martial arts my uncle Grand Master Teacher Richard Ailes impressed upon all us made it a prerequisite to study Master Lee whom he knew personally.

Bruce Lee, Master the legendary martial artist, whose groundbreaking techniques revolutionized the world of martial arts, has admitted that even he had limits when it came to facing off against opponents. One of those opponents he believed he couldn't beat was none other than the charismatic and skilled boxer, Muhammad Ali. Despite Lee's confidence in his own kung fu skills, he recognized the immense talent and prowess Ali possessed in the boxing ring. This acknowledgment of Ali's superiority showcases Lee's humility and respect for another great fighter, emphasizing that even martial arts icons have their perceived weaknesses when it comes to facing off against the best in their respective disciplines.

The more you know!

"Betty Boop: A complex history hidden in black and white. Stolen from Cotton Club singer Esther Jones, known as 'Baby Esther,' who never regained the rights to the character inspired by her."

The Owls Club was a Black women's softball team formed in the late 1930s in Seattle. The Owls won the first women's Washington State Softball Championship in 1938, playing at Sick's Stadium which went on to become the site of Rainier Avenue Lowe's.

The team, renamed the Brown Bombers, won the Championship again in 1939. Left handed pitcher Lillian Brown struck out 12 batters on the Manette team in the Championship game at the Civic Field which went on to become the site of Memorial Stadium.

Info from The Historical Negro League Baseball Site.

26 year old Langston Hughes at Lincoln University in 1927 (he attended 1926-1929) Born in Joplin, Missouri February 1, 1901 James Mercer Langston Hughes had already spent two years in Paris working as a busboy in a Montmartre restaurant owned by WWI pilot Eugene Jacques Bullard. It was in that club he first heard the music of Black American jazz greats who fled to France following the war. One of the earliest innovators of “jazz poetry”, Hughes is best known as the Poet Lauréat of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes died May 22, 1967 in NYC.

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Here we go Facebook family. For those who are old enough to remember, Elvis Presley released “Hound Dog” in 1956, his biggest worldwide hit record. Few recall that Big Mama Thornton (pictured here) released the song first in 1953. People also remember Chubby Checker introducing the Twist dance craze with his 1960 recording. Few know that Hank Ballard and the Midnighters first released the song in 1959. Hear their versions as well as Wilson Pickett, Fats Waller, Adelaide Hall, and Sonny Charles and the Checkmates with their 1969 hit, “Black Pearl,” all on the home page of https://www.blackpast.org/ as we continue to celebrate 15 Centuries of Black Music.

Habaree Gani!!! What’s the Word??? Umoja!!!

Wishing a happy first day of to everyone celebrating!

Today we’re focusing on , or unity. 🕯️

Did you know ???

Berry Gordy's sisters, were all key executives in his Motown empire.
(l to r) Esther Gordy Edwards: director of Motown's artist management division International Talent Management, Inc. (ITMI)
Anna Gordy Gaye: director of Motown's Artist Development department, their Mother Bertha, Gwen Gordy Fuqua: was the associate director of Motown's Artist Development department, and Loucye Gordy Wakefield: was the director of Motown's manufacturing division, and later Jobete Music, its song publishing division.

Great examples