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![Single Mother Gets The Surprise Of A Lifetime From Her Bank [VIDEO]](https://ronerickeysmileymorningshow.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/14598741859395.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=560&h=320&crop=1)
A 30-year-old nurse and single mother with $150,000 in student loan debt received an absolutely life-changing surprise on Wednesday. [...]
The Florida Supreme Court ruled unanimously to extend the Stand Your Ground law protections to the state's police officers. [...]
Spelman College just received a huge blessing! The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports the institution got a $30 million donation from Spelman trustee Ronda Stryker and her husband, William Johnston. [...]
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — Police say an armored truck spilled cash on a New Jersey highway, causing multiple crashes as motorists stopped to grab the money. Police Capt. Phil Taormina says it looks [...]
It only took a Michigan jury nine minutes to clear the man who blasted N.W.A’s F*ck Tha Police at a cop who pulled over a Black driver. According to M Live, James Webb, who is a white man, stopped at [...]
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — White police officers in a Washington, D.C., suburb have used racist slurs, circulated text messages expressing a desire to “reinstitute lynching” and put a black face and Afr [...]
A 16-year-old pleaded guilty Wednesday to two charges of murder for fatally shooting his father in their home and a 6-year-old boy at the South Carolina elementary school he once attended. Jesse Osbor [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Barack Obama was honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award at a gala in midtown Manhattan Wednesday evening. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard, [...]
Police are staying mum about the details and possible motive behind 36-year-old Kelly Stough's tragic shooting death. [...]
Charles Toney was beaten so severely he suffered a collapsed lung. [...]
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina social club’s decision to deny membership to a doctor who would have been its first black member has prompted several local groups to cut ties with it. Militar [...]
BOSTON (AP) — Dozens of retired state and federal judges called Wednesday on U.S. immigration officials to stop making arrests at courthouses of people suspected of being in the country illegally, say [...]
DECATUR, Tenn. (AP) — Engineers are inspecting the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Tennessee as a precaution after a magnitude 4.4 earthquake struck nearby. The U.S. Geological Survey says the earthquake s [...]
The explosion in online shopping has led to porch pirates and stoop surfers swiping holiday packages from unsuspecting residents. The cops in one New Jersey city are trying to catch the thieves with s [...]
Newly minted University of Arizona graduate Bakari Henderson, traveled to Greece in 2017 to launch his clothing line Bakari Luxury Sportswear. Instead, he was the victim of a fatal beating that left h [...]
The FBI joined a hate crimes investigation of neo-Nazis who assaulted a Black DJ in Lynnwood, Washington. [...]
McKenzie Adams' grandmother found the fourth grader at their home after she hung herself on Dec 3. [...]
GREENWOOD, Ind. (AP) — An apparent Grinch was spotted on surveillance video plowing through a Christmas display outside a suburban Indianapolis home and tips are being sought to find the man. WRTV bro [...]
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Vanderbilt has hired NBA G League President Malcolm Turner as its new athletic director, opting for a business executive over candidates with experience in college athletic adm [...]
In May 4-year-old Sir Romeo was playing in his apartment as any child would, when suddenly gunfire broke out. “He’s just standing there and falls to his knees and falls backwards,” Loriann Milam, Sir [...]
Miles Davis
Miles Davis
What is cool? At its very essence, cool is all about what’s happening next. In popular culture, what’s happening next is a kaleidoscope encompassing past, present and future: that which is about to happen may be cool, and that which happened in the distant past may also be cool. This timeless quality, when it applies to music, allows minimalist debate – with few exceptions, that which has been cool will always be cool.
For nearly six decades, Miles Davis has embodied all that is cool – in his music (and most especially jazz), in his art, fashion, romance, and in his international, if not intergalactic, presence that looms strong as ever today. Continue reading
Benjamin S. Carson, Sr.
Benjamin S. Carson, Sr.
Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, Sr. is a pioneer in brain surgical techniques; however, he is best known for leading the first surgical team that successfully separated a pair of Siamese twins joined at the head. Despite struggling with school as a child, he won a scholarship to Yale and received a bachelor’s degree.
He became the first black person accepted into the residency program at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and after spending a year in Australia, Carson was promoted to Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins in 1984. At 31, he was the youngest doctor to hold such a position.
Carson has been the recipient of numerous awards for his pioneering role and development of brain surgery techniques.
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first African American nurse to study and work professionally in the United States. She was also a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) with Adah B. Thoms.
Mahoney was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1845 (her exact birthday is unknown), to Charles and Mary Jane Sterwart Mahoney. She grew up with her parents, a sister and one brother in Boston, Massachusetts where her interest in nursing began as a teenager. Continue reading
W.C. Handy
W.C. Handy
1873-1958Â b. Florence, Ala. William Christopher Handy was largely self-taught, Handy began his career as a cornet player in a minstrel show in 1896, and later organized various small bands.
He was among the first to set down the blues, and with his Memphis Blues (1912), originally entitled Mr. Crump (1909), he rose to prominence. His songs, such as St. Louis Blues (1914) and Beale Street Blues (1917), are the classic examples of their type.
In 1918 he moved from Memphis to New York City and remained active as a writer and publisher of music, in spite of growing blindness, until shortly before his death. Continue reading
Redd Foxx
Redd Foxx
1922-1991. Born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri, Foxx made his mark in the TV smash Sanford and Son (1972?77) after many years of odd jobs and short stretches on the night club circuit, including a kitchen job with Malcolm Little who would later be known as Malcolm X.
Foxx hit it big in Las Vegas in 1968, but didn’t make the celluloid jump until the 1970 film Cotton Comes to Harlem. The role brought him to the attention of producers Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear who decided to cast Foxx in Sanford and Son, his first major success. The show was followed by others, including The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour (1977-78) and the Redd Foxx Show (1986).
He later co-edited The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Black Humor (1977).
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat
b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Born into a middle-class Haitian and Puerto Rican family, he was a 1980s art star whose rise and fall were rapid and dramatic. A rebel, high school dropout, and part of the downtown New York scene, he was influenced by the violence of street life and by the life and work of Andy Warhol, who became his mentor.
Basquiat started as a graffiti artist, making images and writing slogans on the walls of buildings, and also produced painted T-shirts, found-object assemblages, and paintings.
In the early 1980s he was ‘discovered’ by the art establishment, and his works in paint and crayon on unprimed canvas, featuring crude, angry, and rawly powerful figures and graffiti-like written messages, were much sought after by collectors.
Basquiat’s art focused on “suggestive dichotomies,” such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. Basquiat appropriated poetry, drawing and painting, and married text and image, abstraction and figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. Continue reading
Cheyney University of Pennsylvania
Cheyney University of Pennsylvania
Founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania is known as the first institution for higher learning for African Americans.  The founding of Cheyney University was made possible by Richard Humphreys, a Quaker philanthropist who bequeathed $10,000, one tenth of his estate, to design and establish a school to educate the descendents of the African race.
Born on a plantation in the West Indies, Richard Humphreys came to Philadelphia in 1764. Having witnessed the struggles of African Americans competing unsuccessfully for jobs due to the influx of immigrants, he became interested in their plight. In 1829, race riots heightened and it was that year Richard Humphreys wrote his will and charged thirteen fellow Quakers to design an institution: “…to instruct the descendents of the African Race in school learning, in the various branches of the mechanic Arts, trades and Agriculture, in order to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers….” Continue reading