Chicago Defender

Beyonce, Carole King added to Keys' Black Ball

NEW YORK (AP) — Call it ladies night: Beyonce and Carole King are joining Oprah Winfrey and Alicia Keys at Keys' annual Black Ball event.

Beyonce and King will perform at the fundraising gala for Keys' charity Keep a Child Alive on Nov. 1 at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom. The night will honor Winfrey and Beninese singer Angélique Kidjo for their philanthropic efforts. Keys, Kidjo and rock group Alabama Shakes will also perform. Whoopi Goldberg will be the night's emcee.

In a statement Keys says King has "blazed the trail for women in the music industry," adding about the rest of the line-up: "women will be rocking the house this year."

Keep a Child Alive assists people affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. The R&B singer launched it in 2003.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

(AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

2 members of Tuskegee Airmen honored in Birmingham

Photo caption: U.S. Rep. Terri A. Sewell, D-Ala., right kisses Beatrice Price after Price was presented the Congressional Gold Medal for her service as support personnel to the Tuskegee Airmen, Sunday, Sept. 16, 2012, at 6th Ave. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/The Birmingham News,Bernard Troncale)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Two World War II veterans who served with the Tuskegee Airmen have received Congressional Gold Medals.

The Birmingham News reports that U.S. Rep. Terry Sewell presented the medals to Elijah James Oliver Jr. and Beatrice Muse Price during ceremonies Sunday in Birmingham. Oliver was a flight officer and Price was a nurse for the nation's first group of black fighter pilots.

Sewell said the battle that Oliver and Price fought against racial discrimination led to the opportunities that many enjoy today.

Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee Airmen as a group in 2007, but members of Congress can present bronze replicas to individuals in their districts who served in the group. Oliver, who's 87, called the award one of the greatest things that ever happened to him.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Wyclef Jean dishes on Fugees in autobiography

"Purpose: an Immigrant's Story" (It Books), by Wyclef Jean with Anthony Bozza

Hip-hop star Wyclef Jean opens his autobiography in his New York music studio, working on a rap for the alter ego he created to tell the gritty stories about life on Haiti's toughest streets. The music stops abruptly when he notices the headline crawling across the screen of a muted TV — a catastrophic earthquake had struck his Caribbean homeland.

In "Purpose," co-written with music journalist Anthony Bozza, the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that leveled Haiti's capital is one of two phenomena with the power to focus the ex-Fugees frontman's scattered energy.

The other is Lauryn Hill.

The Haiti-born, Brooklyn-raised Jean tells a familiar immigrant story about living in poverty and trying to fit into American culture. Rap was the language that gained him respect with the black Americans who mocked his Caribbean accent and parents' strict ways.

Episodes of rebellion, petty crime and diverse musical commitments build to Jean's introduction to Hill through Pras Michel and the birth of the Fugees. Their entanglements take up the bulk of the book, but neither the Fugees nor Jean and Hill's tumultuous relationship survived the success of their 1996 masterpiece, "The Score."

Jean skims over much of his post-Fugees recording career and work in Haiti, including an unsuccessful run for president there in 2010 and the financial scandals that plagued his Yele Haiti Foundation. The Grammy-winning multimillionaire's story is strongest when he's focused on his passions: music and serving as an inspiration for Haitians aspiring to follow his path from a hut to a mansion.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

(AP Photo/It Books)

Middle school's class taught through a wider lens

 
RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The students in Megan Williams' eighth-grade classroom at John F. Kennedy Middle are making history even as they learn it.

This year, the Riviera Beach middle school became one of the first in the state to offer an African and African-American history class to its students.

The course, district and school staff said, is not only part of an effort to teach students about this history. It's also being offered in hopes of better engaging the school's population by teaching them things relevant to their own lives.

"The population here at John F. Kennedy is primarily African-American, and the children here have historically struggled in terms of academics," Williams said. "If the children feel connected to academics in some sort of way, they'll want to learn more. Once they understand how they play into the creation of a lot of the world's achievements, it will cultivate more of an interest in learning."

The district has offered the African and African-American history course as an elective at several high schools for the past four years, but this is the first time the district is offering it to middle schoolers, district staff said. The eighth-graders taking it will receive a full high school course credit upon completion.

The first half of the class starts with African history, then shifts in the second semester to African-American history. The class is still planning guest speakers and field trips to such places as the Old Dillard Museum in Fort Lauderdale.

"Cousin, tell me where we left off last week," teacher Williams asked of one of her students during class on Tuesday.

"That everyone originated in Africa," the boy said.

"Wait, I'm confused. We ALL originated in Africa?" Williams said, feigning shock. "So you and I are 332nd cousins, or something like that?"

The young teens giggled at the thought. Then Williams was quickly launching into the "Noah's Ark" or "Out of Africa" theory and pointing to maps and walking about the room, and the students were entranced.

"It's good to learn about history," Niah Barton, 13, who is in Williams' class, said later. "It's good to know where you came from, because it helps you know what kind of person you are. . It was interesting learning about how everyone originated in Africa."

School board vice-chairwoman Debra Robinson has long pushed for schools to do more to integrate African and African-American history into the curriculum, and she applauded JFK Middle for adding this class.

"The principal (Corey Brooks) is really pushing to increase the rigor and relevance of the curriculum at Kennedy," Robinson said.

A state law passed in 1994 requires that all teachers in every subject include African and African-American history in their lessons, but critics say few county students know more than the country's history with slavery.

"We need to make sure we do whatever it is we need to do to get children to actively engage in their own education," Robinson said. "Part of that is to change their self-image. If you believe your history started with slavery, why would you work hard to try to become an orthopedic surgeon?"

Robinson said the elective classes in high school, and now this class at JFK Middle, are steps in the right direction. But she said she still believes classes are not including African and African-American history the way the law demands.

"We do lay the foundation in elementary school and as they go through the grades," said Shantey Kemp, an African and African-American Studies resource teacher for the district who has been helping with the class at JFK Middle.

She said she's seen students "light up" as they learn there's more to African-American history than just slavery.

"If students do not see themselves in their education, they phase out of their education," Kemp said.
    
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.