9820: Altoids’ Curiously Racist Commercial.

This new Altoids commercial makes light of Dutch colonists offering Native Americans a box of mints in exchange for land. The colonist rescinds the offer, probably realizing it will be easier to simply seize the country by force.

9810: Museums Spotlight Civil Rights.

From The New York Times…

New Museums to Shine a Spotlight on Civil Rights Era

By Kim Severson

ATLANTA — Drive through any state in the Deep South and you will find a monument or a museum dedicated to civil rights.

A visitor can peer into the motel room in Memphis where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was staying when he was shot or stand near the lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where four young men began a sit-in that helped end segregation.

Other institutions are less dramatic, like the Tubman African American Museum in Macon, Ga., where Jim Crow-era toilet fixtures are on display alongside folk art.

But now, a second generation of bigger, bolder museums is about to emerge.

Atlanta; Jackson, Miss.; and Charleston, S.C., all have projects in the works. Coupled with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which breaks ground in Washington this week, they represent nearly $750 million worth of plans.

Collectively, they also signal an emerging era of scholarship and interest in the history of both civil rights and African-Americans that is to a younger generation what other major historical events were to their grandparents. “We’re at that stage where the civil rights movement is the new World War II,” said Doug Shipman, the chief executive officer for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, a $100 million project that is to break ground in Atlanta this summer and open in 2014.

“It’s a move to the next phase of telling this story,” he said.

The collection at the museum, which is to be set on two and half acres of prime downtown real estate donated by Coca-Cola, will include 10,000 documents and artifacts from Dr. King and a series of paintings based on the life of Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, by the artist Benny Andrews, who died in 2006.

Like many of the new museums, the Atlanta center aims higher than the first wave of monuments to the period. It will link the civil rights movement to global human rights, exploring how, for example, Dr. King’s speeches helped fuel the Arab Spring.

Although the momentum for the new museums is strong, the recession has shaved the size and shape of some projects, and raising money can be a challenge.

John Fleming, the director of International African American Museum planned for Charleston and a former president of the Association of African American Museums, points to the United States National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg, Va. That project, led by former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, was supposed to open on 38 acres in 2004. It recently went into bankruptcy, and people who donated money and artifacts are upset.

Although exactly what went wrong is still being debated, Mr. Fleming said that in part the project aimed too high and did not adjust as the economy softened. Mr. Fleming’s own project began as an $80 million, 70,000-square-foot museum. Now, it is smaller by $30 million and 20,000 square feet.

“Most black museums have difficulty raising funds,” Mr. Fleming said. “Being truthful, I don’t think people in the African-American community have stepped up to the plate in terms of making significant donations to these projects.”

Other directors disagree, saying a generation whose parents or grandparents lived through the 1950s and 1960s are now elected officials and on boards, where they have influence over where cultural dollars are spent.

“The folks who actually participated in the civil rights movement are getting to an age where legacy is important,” said Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the Smithsonian’s African-American museum.

The election of President Obama, Mr. Shipman said, “caps the civil rights era and opens up the next chapter. There is a distance that allows new questions to be asked.”

As with the Holocaust and other historical events that eventually moved from painful reality to memorials and then to museums and academic scholarship, the importance of the civil rights movement gets heightened as the last of the participants begin to die.

“In some ways, it’s very much like the old Civil War veterans passing from the scene. Suddenly, the Civil War became more important,” said Philip G. Freelon, the architect who has designed most of the major civil rights museums in the country, including the projects at the Smithsonian and in Atlanta and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, a long-stalled project that finally secured $20 million from the State Legislature last April after Gov. Haley Barbour spoke in its favor.

The package comes with an additional $18 million to build an adjacent state history museum.

“These museums throughout the South are really a sea change,” said William Ferris, a University of North Carolina folklorist who edited the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. “In Mississippi, to see a major civil rights museum is heartening in every sense.”

For some, however, there is concern that the movement to isolate the era in bigger and better museums helps people avoid meaningful conversations about racism that still expresses itself in everything from interactions at a grocery store to the presidential election.

“All of these efforts are important, but we still have not addressed the issue of race in America, and until we do, that hydra is going to keep raising its ugly head,” said Ayisha Cisse-Jeffries, vice president for global affairs and international policy at the African American Islamic Institute.

And then there is the question of attendance. With so many museums with similar themes, are there enough interested visitors?

Directors say the idea is to create a network of institutions that enhance one another rather than detract. And each place intends to have a specific focus. In Charleston, where fund-raising is beginning for a museum dedicated to slavery, visitors will be able to walk the ground where 40 percent of the Africans who would be sold as slaves arrived. The museum in Washington will be the most prominent. An estimated four million visitors are expected each year.

Its vast collection will be more archival, and will include the original “Soul Train” sign, the dress that Rosa Parks wore the day she refused to give up her seat on the bus and the gospel hymn book that belonged to Harriet Tubman.

As with many museums and collections dedicated to African-American history — there are more than 200 — the goal is to use black history as a lens on America.

“It is a new day, and the new day means this isn’t a time to remedy prior omissions,” Mr. Bunch said. “It really is a time to say this is how to understand who we are as Americans.”

9800: Black Icons, Black History.

From The Root…

When Beloved Icons Become Black History

By Madison Gray

The tragic irony of coping with the recent deaths of Whitney, Don and others during Black History Month.

In black culture, we do three rituals differently from other ethnic groups: get married, worship and bury our loved ones.

And in those three, we express ourselves more vociferously than in just about any other aspect of our lives. When we get married, we party hard. When we go to church, we see middle-aged women getting the “holy ghost” and when we hold a funeral, there’s always a chorus of wailing.

Then there are those times we mourn the passing of someone we all know, even if that person didn’t know each of us personally—that “family member,” in the larger sense, who found a way to bring something special into our lives, who connects us all. We become sad and we give condolences, then we slowly heal.

Sometimes, though, we are forced to bury such people more than once in a short period of time. And that has been a theme of the past few weeks in black pop culture. So far this Black History Month, we seem to have buried so many of our famous that it has become difficult to focus on the larger scope of black history.

So far we have mourned the passing of powerful R&B songstress Etta James, Soul Train impresario Don Cornelius, gospel prodigy David Peaston, opera pioneer Camilla Williams and, most recently and tragically, America’s most beloved diva, Whitney Houston.

In the cases of James and Williams, we know that they lived full lives, and it becomes easier to let them go with a tear and a flower. Cornelius lived an equally full life, but the apparent suicide of a man who brought so much joy to us every Saturday is difficult to grasp. Peaston’s death at 54, still young, serves as a reminder that maintaining our health is tantamount.

But losing Houston was the most unexpected of all. If it did not shock all of us, it certainly saddened us to know that her voice is now forever silenced.

And now the losses seem to become too much to bear.

The most difficult thing is that although these are pop-culture figures—simply famous people whom we have come to know over the years through their work—in our psyches they are family members. We have let these folks into our homes like cousins or aunts and uncles who bring gifts from faraway places.

As much as we complain about the lavish, decadent lives of the rich and famous—and in many cases they do warrant harsh criticism—there are those we lose who are like that brother we know was not perfect, but we loved him dearly despite his faults. We will never fully get over his loss. I can’t think of a better example than Michael Jackson.

So although we have to bury another loved one this week, another family member whose voice was the sound track of our youths, there is a lesson in this that echoes in a saying that our parents keep telling us year after year and generation after generation: “Give me my flowers while I can still smell them.”

We’ve heard that said in myriad ways, but the gist is that when we lose someone, we can let their children, their siblings or even their parents know how much we cared for them, but the truth is, the deceased won’t know if we fail to tell them before they are gone. The thing I love about black folks is that through everything, our culture dictates many ways of saying “I love you” to the people about whom we care most.

And in this unexpected season of multiple losses in black pop culture, we can take solace in the fact that, as fans, we managed to tell these people that we did love them. Each of them had to face their own personal challenges, and in some cases the pain was overwhelming, but we had the opportunity to let them know we loved what they did for us.

Now we have to take that lesson and bring it into our own lives: If you have someone about whom you care, don’t hesitate to tell them that you care. Find a way of showing it. We will all one day make that transition. Death is one of the few constants in life. But when we are told by someone, “Thank you for bringing a little joy into my life” while we are still breathing, it makes the inevitable easier to accept.

Madison Gray is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and Web journalist.

9770: Lowell Thompson, Adman And Author.

Just in time for Black History Month, Lowell Thompson has written a new book, African Americans in Chicago. Pick up your copy via Amazon.com or other booksellers.

9750: Riding Soul Train Memories.

From USA TODAY…

‘Soul Train’ laid the rails of a cultural revolution

By Marco R. della Cava and Steve Jones, USA TODAY

Armed with sharp suits and a mesmerizing voice, Don Cornelius set out in 1970 to entertain viewers of Chicago’s WCIU with a song-and-dance TV show called Soul Train. Turns out, America wanted in on the party.

Cornelius, 75, died Wednesday at his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif., from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said. The music maverick struck financial and cultural gold with Soul Train, whose 35 years on the air made it the longest first-run syndicated show in history, with an effect that crossed generations and races.

“Soul Train gave the black community reason to be proud,” says Kenneth Gamble, half of the fabled songwriting team Gamble & Huff, who wrote the show’s chugging theme song, known as T.S.O.P (The Sound of Philadelphia). “It was so rare at the time to see someone black doing anything like that.”

If Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was Saturday morning’s placid place to play, Soul Train, with its driving music and innovative dancers rooted in the urban scene, was the coolest party you could hope to crash. Its minimalist stage played host to everyone from the Jackson 5 to Elton John.

“That show was the centerpiece of my Saturdays,” says hip-hop artist Terius “The-Dream” Nash, who co-wrote the Beyoncé hit Single Ladies (Put A Ring on It) and performed on the program in 2005. “Don reminded me of my old band teacher. He could look you in the eye and you felt like he knew what you were going to be.”

Soul Train “had a substantial impact and was very much a part of contemporary music history,” says Clive Davis, chief creative officer of Sony Music Worldwide and the record mogul who nurtured the careers of Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston and Dionne Warwick. “His show reached a sizable and devoted audience, and every major artist of the time did it and did it willingly.”

The music industry mourns
News of Cornelius’ death rippled through the entertainment industry and the blogosphere, where fans famous and anonymous alike were eager to pay tribute to a man whose signature sign-off — “We wish you peace, love and soul!” — became as familiar as family.

“Don Cornelius! It’s so shocking and stunning,” Aretha Franklin said in a statement. “A young, progressive brother set the pace and worldwide standard for young aspiring African-American men.”

Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the basketball legend and chairman of Soul Train Holdings, recalled being glued to the television on Saturdays: “Soul Train taught the world to dance” and gave musicians and dancers “the ultimate platform to showcase their talents when no one else would.”

When Arash Shirazi came to the USA from Iran, he watched Soul Train to learn English and wound up going into show business as a booking agent. He tweeted his condolences, adding that the show “opened the door to R&B dance culture. … It shaped my musical tastes and added a visual element to a song.”

Actor Omar Epps thanked the man for “creating a platform which helped uplift me through my childhood,” and rapper MC Hammer wrote: “It meant more to me to perform on #SoulTrain than to win a Grammy … Loved U So Much Don.”

With his smooth, resonant baritone, Cornelius introduced hundreds of stars to the nation’s multicultural TV audience, including James Brown, Jerry Butler, Marvin Gaye, The O’Jays and Barry White. In the background were a colorful menagerie of partiers who influenced dance and fashion and opened a window onto black culture that had received scant media exposure.

“Back then, there was no targeted television and I just had the sense that television shouldn’t be that way,” Cornelius told USA TODAY in a rare interview in 2010, when the show was celebrated with a VH1 documentary. “The primary mission of the show was to provide TV exposure for people who would not get it otherwise. People who didn’t get invited to The Mike Douglas Show, or (Johnny) Carson. There was no ethnic television, just general-market television, which meant mostly white people.”

Soul Train’s role in pushing black culture into the mainstream cannot be underestimated, says Mark Anthony Neal, professor of black popular culture at Duke University.

“Motown had laid down the sonic groundwork, but Don Cornelius let you visualize it,” he says. “Black power was visible on Soul Train. It’s what led to the love affair between black and white culture, and why eventually you started seeing white musicians like Boz Scaggs on Don’s show. That show filled a gap.”

Read the full story here.

9744: Don Cornelius (1936-2012).

From The Los Angeles Times…

‘Soul Train’ creator Don Cornelius dead in apparent suicide

“Soul Train” creator Don Cornelius was found dead at his Sherman Oaks on home Wednesday morning.

Law enforcement sources said police arrived at Cornelius' home around 4 a.m. He apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

The sources said there was no sign of foul play, but the Los Angeles Police Department was investigating.

In a 2010 interview with The Times, he said he was excited about a movie project he was developing about “Soul Train.”

“We’ve been in discussions with several people about getting a movie off the ground. It wouldn’t be the ‘Soul Train’ dance show, it would be more of a biographical look at the project,” he said. “It’s going to be about some of the things that really happened on the show.”

According to a Times article, Cornelius’ “Soul Train” became the longest-running first-run nationally syndicated show in television history, bringing African American music and style to the world for 35 years.

Cornelius stopped hosting the show in 1993, and “Soul Train” ceased production in 2006.