#30DayBlogChallenge - Day 1 – Your Blog's Name

Day 1: Your Blog's Name!
For more info on this 30 Day Blog Challenge, click here!

BACK STORY: Circa 1999, I was working on a magazine with some friends and we needed some filler articles and content. At the time, I considered myself, something of an Advice Guru, and we decided to include a column called... you guessed it... Ask Willie Stylez!

Fast forward a few years, and I started my website and BBS forum, where I answered questions from folks about whatever topics they wanted. I got more Tech, than personal advice, questions but it was still fun offering help! Later on, I ceased receiving questions (didn't get many anyway) and just started writing all about my life, thoughts and randomness! Since I already felt I had a well established online presence as Willie Stylez, I just continued to run with that them, opening not only a Blog, but an online radio station and several other ventures! Today, only the blog version of the online station, StylezRadio.com, and the regular blog, AskWillieStylez.com, remain. But because I still feel writing and sharing are my best outlets, I will continue to be here ... for you to Ask Willie Stylez!!!

WHAT STYLEZ THINKS ABOUT => Moments In Black History (via Spoken Words & Thoughts - @spknwrdthts)

So What Does Stylez Think?

 

After reading this, it still surprises me and I realize sometimes, you forget how manipulative the customs and then laws were, in order to "keep us under control"! And how far we've come to fight and change those laws! But how far we still need to go to get people to turn from these attitudes!

MOMENTS IN BLACK HISTORY

1857
Richmond, Virginia, passes a comprehensive slave code that, among other stipulations, prohibits self-hiring by slaves, restricts blacks from entering certain parts of the city, specifies street etiquette, and forbids slaves from smoking, carrying canes, standing on the sidewalk, and using provocative language.

via Moments In Black History | Spoken Words & Thoughts

Powerful reminder, huh!?



That is what Stylez thinks! What do you think? Leave it in the comments!

WHAT STYLEZ THINKS ABOUT => #TodayInBlackHistory #Feb1 A SuperFreak is born & a Dinner Pail patent

So What Does Stylez Think?

As you may well know, February 1st marks the start of a celebration and memorial of Black accomplishment throughout history. It was originally called "Negro History Week", when started in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson. Then in 1976, it was extended to a full month and renamed Black History Month, and is now recognized throughout the country as a time to remember and reflect. For 2014, I have decided not to focus only on well known civil rights leaders and groups. I have, instead, decided to dedicate my blog, to other Black people and newsmakers in history, lesser known events, little known facts and causes that have made an impact on the world, society and pop culture. I want to remember not only the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. but also the impact of those like Ida Wells. Welcome to #TodayInBlackHistory on blog.AskWillieStylez.com! Today, Willie Stylez Remembers... Rick James and John Robinson!

Rick James – Singer
http://www.rickjames.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_James

On February 1st in 1948, a Super Freak was born! James Ambrose Johnson Jr. was born in Buffalo, New York, with music, and R&B royalty, already coursing through his vein, courtesy of his uncle Melvin Franklin of The Temptations. After forming several Rock, Soul and R&B bands, and serving as a staff songwriter for Motown Records, Rick James became a solo artist, in 1977. His 1978 debut, "Come Get It! (w/ the Stone city Band), released on the Motown imprint Gordy, included such classic hits as "You and I" and "Mary Jane". In 1981, Rick saw even greater success with his fifth studio album, "Street Songs", which turned out hits such as "Give It to Me, Baby" and "Super Freak"! It also featued a much loved duet with Teena Marie, "Fire and Desire".

After years of writing, touring and releasing music that was a "fusion of funk groove and rock attitude" Rick James succumbed to the perils of endless days, drugs, partying and even jail time. In 1997, while on a comeback tour, Rick suffered a stroke that kept him out of music, pretty much for good. However, he continued to see his music impact and form the foundation for many artists and millions of fans! Unfortunately, and much to soon, this "Whale" of a star, was found dead on August 6th in 2004, of an enlarged heart.

John Robinson - Inventor
http://www.google.com/patents/US356852

On February 1st in 1887, after waiting 7 years since filing, John Robinson of Coal Valley in West Virginia, was granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for the invention of an improvement to the Dinner Pail! Mr. Robinson described this invention, as a "an improvement in dinnerpails for workmen; and it consists in the peculiar construction and combination of devices" to allow food and drink to be stored, kept warm and dispensed. Mr. Robinson is another in a long line of great Black inventors, who improved life and made things better for others around them.

Other important events of February 1st:

1997 - BET Movie/Starz launches, becoming the first 24-hour Black movie channel

1990 - Ida Wells, a Black reformer who compiled records on lynching, is immortalized on a United States Postal Service stamp

1974 - "Good Times", a situation comedy starring an all-Black cast, premieres on CBS

1967 - Langston Hughes, poet, dies

1937 - Garrett Morris, actor and comedian, is born in New Orleans, Louisiana

1834 - Henry McNeal Turner, reverend and elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, Morris Brown College's First President and commissioned by President Abraham Lincoln as the first Negro Chaplain in the United States Army, was born. Read his amazing story of defiance and determination here, here and here.

Little Known Moment In Black History - Henrietta Lacks, Unwitting Heroine of Modern Medical Science

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On Feb. 1, 1951, Henrietta Lacks--mother of five, native of rural southern Virginia, resident of the Turner Station neighborhood in Dundalk--went to Johns Hopkins Hospital with a worrisome symptom: spotting on her underwear. She was quickly diagnosed with cervical cancer. Eight months later, despite surgery and radiation treatment, the Sparrows Point shipyard worker's wife died at age 31 as she lay in the hospital's segregated ward for blacks.

Not all of Henrietta Lacks died that October morning, though. She unwittingly left behind a piece of herself that still lives today.

While she was in Hopkins' care, researchers took a fragment of Lacks' tumor and sliced it into little cubes, which they bathed in nutrients and placed in an incubator. The cells, dubbed "HeLa" for Henrietta Lacks, multiplied as no other cells outside the human body had before, doubling their numbers daily. Their dogged growth spawned a breakthrough in cell research; never before could investigators reliably experiment on such cell cultures because they would weaken and die before meaningful results could be obtained. On the day of Henrietta's death, the head of Hopkins' tissue-culture research lab, Dr. George Gey, went before TV cameras, held up a tube of HeLa cells, and announced that a new age of medical research had begun--one that, someday, could produce a cure for cancer.

When he discovered HeLa could survive even shipping via U.S. mail, Gey sent his prize culture to colleagues around the country. They allowed HeLa to grow a little, and then sent some to their colleagues. Demand quickly rose, so the cells were put into mass production and traveled around the globe--even into space, on an unmanned satellite to determine whether human tissues could survive zero gravity.

In the half-century since Henrietta Lacks' death, her tumor cells--whose combined mass is probably much larger than Lacks was when she was alive--have continually been used for research into cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, gene mapping, and countless other scientific pursuits. Dr. Jonas Salk used HeLa to help develop his polio vaccine in the early '50s. The cells are so hardy that they took over other tissue cultures, researchers discovered in the 1970s, leading to reforms in how such cultures are handled. In the biomedical world, HeLa cells are as famous as lab rats and petri dishes.

Yet Henrietta Lacks herself remains shrouded in obscurity. Gey, of course, knew HeLa's origins, but he believed confidentiality was paramount--so for years, Henrietta's family didn't know her cells still lived, much less how important they had become. After Gey died in 1970, the secret came out. But it was not until 1975, when a scientifically savvy fellow dinner-party guest asked family members if they were related to the mother of the HeLa cell, that Lacks' descendants came to understand her critical role in medical research.

The concept was mind-blowing--in a sense, it seemed to Lacks' family, she was being kept alive in the service of science. "It just kills me," says Henrietta's daughter, Deborah Lacks-Pullum, now 52 and still living in Baltimore, "to know my mother's cells are all over the world."

In the 27 years since the Lacks family serendipitously learned of Henrietta's unwitting contribution, little has been done to honor her. "Henrietta Lacks Day" is celebrated in Turner Station each year on Feb. 1. In 1996, prompted by Atlanta's Morehouse College, that city's mayor proclaimed Oct. 11 Henrietta Lacks Day. The following year, Congress passed a resolution in her memory sponsored by Rep. Robert Ehrlich (R-Md.), whose 2nd District includes Turner Station, and the British Broadcasting Corp. produced a documentary on her remarkable story. Beyond that, however, virtually nothing has been done to celebrate Lacks' contribution--not even by Hopkins, which gained immeasurable prestige from Gey's work with her cells.

Lacks-Pullum is bitter about this. "We never knew they took her cells, and people done got filthy rich [from HeLa-based research], but we don't get a dime," she says. The family can't afford a reputable lawyer to press its case for some financial stake in the work. She says she has appealed to Hopkins for help, and "all they do is pat me on my shoulder and put me out the door."

Hopkins spokesperson Gary Stephenson is quick to point out that Hopkins never sold HeLa, so it didn't make money from Henrietta's contribution. Still, he says, "there are people here who would like something done, and I'm hoping that at some point something will be done in a formal way to note her very, very important contribution."

Lacks-Pullum shares those hopes, but she is pessimistic. "Hopkins," she says, "they don't care."

Lost in the acrimony over ethical and financial issues stemming from Henrietta Lacks' cells, though, is Henrietta Lacks herself. A descendant of slaves and slaveholders, she grew up farming the same land on which her forebears toiled--and that her relatives still farm today. As part of an aspiring black middle class with rural roots, she left her childhood home to join a migration to Baltimore, where Bethlehem Steel was eager to hire hard workers from the country. She was in the midst of realizing an American dream when her life was cut short. And her cells helped realize society's larger dreams for health and knowledge. As such, she's been called a hero, a martyr, even a saint. But during her life, as Ehrlich said to his colleagues in Congress, Henrietta Lacks "was known as pleasant and smiling, and always willing the lend a helping hand." That she did, in more ways than she ever knew.

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Email Van Smith

via citypaper.com

I found this story to be quite interesting and very extraordinary! I think this is something that everyone should know about, but it is another great moment in Black History as well. Please share this with your family and friends. Let's make everyday, a great moment in Black History!

Would you like to share your Little Known Moment In Black History, please feel free to pass it along to stylez@askwilliestylez.com!

Posted via web from Willie Stylez's posterous

Little known moments in Black History - Red Lobster & Olive Garden

The CEO of Red Lobster and Olive Garden     Each week tens of thousands of diners eat at an Olive Garden or Red Lobster restaurant. Few of these diners know that the CEO heading these large restaurant chains is a black man. Clarence Otis Jr. Is the CEO of Darden Restaurants Inc., the largest casual dining operator in the nation. The firm operates nearly 1,400 company-owned restaurants coast to coast serving 300 million meals annually. Darden employs 150,000 workers and has annual revenues of $6 billion. Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Otis moved to Los Angeles when he was 6 years old. His father was a high school dropout who worked as a janitor. The family lived in Watts at the time of the 1965 riots. In the post-Watts period, Otis recalls being stopped and questioned by police several times a year because of the color of his skin. A high school guidance counselor recommended him for a scholarship at Williams College, the highly selective liberal arts institution in Massachusetts. Otis graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams and went on to earn a law degree at Stanford.   Otis landed on Wall Street as a merger and acquisitions attorney for J.P. Morgan Securities. He joined Darden Restaurants in 1995 as corporate treasurer. He became CEO in 2004.   Would you like to share your Little Known Moment In Black History, please feel free to pass it along to stylez@askwilliestylez.com!

Posted via email from Willie Stylez's posterous