During Jim Crow era...

Sidney Poitier with his first wife, Juanita Hardy, and their daughters.

Ruby Stevens in a publicity photo taken 

during her Broadway hoofer days.

Sophia Loren with mother during the premiere of "C'era Una Volta," 1967. 

TRIBUTE TO CLASSIC STYLES

actress Zoe Saldana walking outside supposedly without makeup. 

Black actor Percy Verwayne, best known for originating the role of 'Sporting Life' in the Broadway play Porgy.

"It would behoove you to look into the lives of people who've achieved in their lives. When you look around and within you will eventually see everyone has a short amount of time to practice living before they get it right. Status, wealth, poverty, instinctual abuse from others, privilege; all of these things can be plagues upon the soul. How they are to you is dependent upon the map, the semantics, the structure of your spirit and the intake your mind has received from inside and outside sources. In short, I am asking who you are, who you want to be and what will you do to be the vision you've got alive within you?"

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 12.16.13  

Halle Berry on crutches. 

ballerina Misty Copeland, now 31, is the 1st Black soloist at the American Ballet Theatre !!!!

Four Stories of Note.

These stories need to be embedded in our stories. It would change a lot of us steering us collectively towards the direction of excellence the stars, and artists of the 1940's were aiming towards. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories




actress Mildred Smith starred in such Broadway productions as Men to the Sea, Mamba’s Daughters, Beggar’s Holiday (as the love interest of Alfred Drake), Forward the Heart and A Long Way From Home, in the 1940's.

actor Clarence Muse was an actor, screenwriter, director, composer, and lawyer. He was inducted in the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1973. He appeared in more than 150 movies.

singer Muriel Rahman was a vocalist and actress. She is best known for her starring role in the original Broadway production of Carmen Jones.

Condoleezza Rice was nominated for Secretary of State by George W. Bush
on November 14, 2004, and assumed office on January 26, 2005!!!!

 

RACE to Evolve or CONTROL?

flag worn by Dolly Castro by Montoya Elduro

"It's an interesting dynamic this occult fetish called racism. This propensity to impute to skin negative projections and the possibility of unearned privileges and benefits in a social climate of abject corruption and dehumanising power relationships." - Mereana Taki 7.24.14

Black actor Rockne Tarkington, only Black actor with speaking part on the Andy Griffin Show

"Whether you do anything for anyone else on the planet is actually IRRELEVANT. I mean irrelevant in the sense, it's actually not up to any one of us what anyone else decides to extrapolate from our Spiritual unfoldment with its uneasy meaningscapes here in this vortex and the eternal play of infinite short stories, fairy tales and horror stories, suspense thrillers and romance novels." ~ Mereana Taki 7.24.14

skull make up Jordan Carver

MARRIED IN HOLLYWOOD

Lioness Daiba Sala

Will Smith and Jada Pickett-Smith
together are quite a force of union. 

Samuel L. Jackson interview

Playboy South Africa interviews Samuel L. Jackson


PLAYBOY: Do you think Lee has substantive issues with Tarantino and his movies?

JACKSON: Spike saying “I’m not going to see Django because it’s an insult to my ancestors”? It’s fine if you think that, but then you have nothing else to say about the movie, period, because you don’t know if Quentin insulted your ancestors or not. On the other hand, Louis Farrakhan, who these blackest of black people say speaks the truth and expresses the vitriol of the angry black man, can look at the movie and go, “Goddamn, that’s a great fucking movie. Quentin Tarantino told the truth.” Dick Gregory’s seen the movie 12 fucking times. I respect what they have to say more than anybody else, because they’ve been through it. They walked the walk with Dr King. Some of the bullshit criticisms about Django come from people who don’t understand the genre and who didn’t live through that era. They think they need to wave a flag of blackness that they don’t necessarily have the credentials to wave.



PLAYBOY: Do you have other specific people in mind when you say “these blackest of black people”?

JACKSON: W Kamau Bell’s FX show [Totally Biased With W Kamau Bell] had this whole segment where he was criticizing Django. He’s a young black man with nappy hair and very dark skin, but he also has a very white wife and an interracial child. You can’t tell me you know what people in the South did if you never spent time down there. He can say there had to be words Quentin could use other than nigger. Well, what are they? These 20-somethings can’t turn around and tell me the word nigger is fucked-up in  Django yet still listen to Jay Z or whoever else say “nigger, nigger, nigger” throughout the music they listen to. “Oh, that’s okay because that’s dope, that’s down, we all right with that.” Bullshit. You can’t have it one way and not the other. It’s art – you can’t not censor one thing and try to censor the other. Saying Tarantino said “nigger” too many times is like complaining they said “kike” too many times in a movie about Nazis.

South African Playmate

Playboy South Africa

It is not the norm to feature African women in the elegant style of Playboy. It is mostly the playground for the white women. Their appeal sales the concept, and the color is the color. Like any man Playboy has been an influence upon my thinking and a challenge to my beliefs. Playboy's founder, Hugh Hefner has reshaped women's freedoms, influenced the Civil Rights movement, and changed people's relationship with themselves, sex, and the human body. The writing staff is exceptional. The magazine's enormous impact upon American and global thought came by way of the interviews they published over the decades of people important to the social changes of the world.

I am reading the Playboy interview of actor, Samuel L. Jackson, now. It is eye opening. Jackson is as I thought: a profound man. Check this interview out: http://www.playboy.co.za/samuel-l-jackson/

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11.18.13

Samuel L. Jackson, actor

PLAYBOY: Living in a segregated environment, what were some other useful survival tools your family gave you?
JACKSON: There were certain things you necessarily had to be told as a child – things that would keep you alive and out of harm’s way. My family would point out this or that person as a Klansman or a grand wizard and tell me who specifically those men had killed and gotten away with it just because they’d said that black person was doing this or that. You could not look suspicious, because when people can accuse you of anything, there’s nothing you can say. They’d tell me not to get in a car with this or that policeman, saying, “I don’t care what happens, you run and run till you get here, and then we’ll deal with it here.”

PLAYBOY: Did movie-going influence your eventual decision to become an actor?
JACKSON: Before we even had a television, I listened to a lot of radio drama as a kid, hearing how people’s voices can tell stories. Every Saturday I spent all day in one of Chattanooga’s two black theaters, the Liberty and the Grand, seeing Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Lash LaRue, Westerns, Creature From  the Black Lagoon, Francis the Talking Mule.  Books had more to offer than movies. My mom’s rule was that for every five comic books I read, I had to read a classic. I read Shakespeare and Beowulf while other kids were learning how to diagram sentences and learning to conjugate so they could fill out job applications. My fantasies weren’t inspired by John Wayne but by Jules Verne’s 20,000  Leagues Under the Sea and Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. When I was in the room by myself reading, I would stand in front of the mirror pretending to be all those people in the books. I was acting for myself before I ever did it for anybody else.

PLAYBOY: Because of your involvement in the protest at school you were convicted for unlawful confinement. What did your family think of your evolving politics and budding involvement with the black power movement?
JACKSON: They actually got my militancy. They just didn’t want me to get killed running around, chanting with my fists in the air. But I was in Atlanta doing that anyway. One time, I had come home from school to Tennessee. From the time I was an infant, my grandmother had been buying all these bullshit life insurance and burial policies, and every week this insurance guy, Mr Venable, came to collect his nickel premiums. I had my hair braided and was sitting on the porch, and he walked up and said, “Hi, Sam, is Pearl here?” I said, “Motherfucker, why you calling my grandmother, a woman three times your age, Pearl?” I was cursing and yelling, babbling at him, and before I knew it, my grandmother was out the door and had me  by the hair, going, “What the hell is wrong with you?” It was the first time in his life Mr Venable thought he might have been wrong, and he felt bad, saying, “I don’t call anybody else older than me by their first name.” But my grandmother kicked my ass after he left. She still thought that he was going to call somebody and have me hanged.




Tersha Makwiya by Leah Hawker
Nov. 14, 2013


Tersha Makwiya - Playboy Playmate May 2013 is stunning, and probably has a lot going for her. But, she like others have decided to launch into nudity. Her reasons are hers. Always interested in why I would ask of her if I could.  Choices made reveal so much about us to us. www.playboy.co.za/playmates/tersha-makwiya/

Branded beast

Leopard

In 1992 a movie starring the great Laurence Fishburne came out. It was titled DEEP COVER. He played a dark role as an undercover cop embedded deep into the crime, the drugs and violence of higher level drug dealing. There was one penetrating line, a short verse have you, that spoke to the dark heart of the underworld he'd plunged into.

His character, John Hull, said, "The jungle creed says the strongest feed on any prey that it can. And I was branded beast at every feast before I ever became a man."

her eyes

"I've seen that faraway, pensive and potentially dangerous look in far too many women's eyes. A lot of us cats don't know what those looks mean..." - Dawn Wolf 2.24.13

DEEP COVER sayings...

Laurence Fishburne, actor

Quotes from the compelling movie, DEEP COVER, in 1992.

Laurence Fishburne Pictures

SLAVE TALK?

Nick Cannon wearing Links Collection watch chain by AVAKIAN GENEVE

YOUNG BLACK CATS

“Suit and watch chain remind me of my great-Grandfather, Pops. He wore a three-piece suit, brown, all the time. Moved so smooth being dap and all. Cool kinda ran in the style of them old cats, and trinkled down. Got lost amongst most of the young men. They into low esteem, and feeling sorry for they selves. Really believe the white man holding dim down. He is, but theys too much freedom of movement to keep a cat down a long time; less he like it like that. I guess.

Don't know if Jim Crow meant give up, but with all the benefits, and gifts of times passed left to 'dem kids you'd think they'd understand how easy it is to move around with all that freedom dey got. But no. They can't see too far, and it is in their dress, their walk.

Not this cat, Nick Cannon. He's alright. Believes in himself. It shows. In everything he does it shows. A lot of cats like that in towns cross the country, but they got it hard trying to be themselves while they own kind think being good, and clean, successful with dreams are for whites only.

It's sad, but lots a folks scared so they thinks like dat. Its duh truth; it is. It is their truth. Not mine. Not my kids. We NDNs, African NDNs!”   © Gregory E. Woods

BLACK ACHIEVEMENT: Idris Elba, actor

Understand how hard it is for people in pursuit of the development of high skill who live with a vision that requires a commitment to excellence. That calling leads to roads beyond mediocre, and most people are incapable of holding and sustaining that kind of energy for years upon years in the partnership of marriage and friendship. If Idris Elba has a white woman, or a woman from Argentina instead of a Black woman it doesn't mean his relationship with Black women is severed. It is enhanced constantly because of his relationships with Black women's energies from birth to the present is a potent force of reciprocation.

Many Black women, and men often underestimate the value of developmental work, and the value of owning a spiritual consciousness needing to elevate itself beyond belief into knowing. It ain't easy, but it is needed by men and women at certain levels of development and involvement with Life. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

BLACK ACTOR:Will Smith

black actor Will Smith

BLACK ACTOR: Jeffrey Wright

black actor Jeffrey Wright by Charley Gallay