Obama Not The Only Rising Star, Congrats' To Donna Edwards, Maryland's First Black Woman Elected To Congress

Yes, let breathe and take a break before the coronation of King Barack Obama and let's pay a little tribute to other African Americans breaking down barriers.

Lawyer and nonprofit executive Donna Edwards won a special election Tuesday for Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, becoming the state’s first black woman to be elected to Congress. Edwards, a Democrat, beat...

Republican Peter James in the race to serve the remainder of former Congressman Albert Wynn’s term. Wynn left office on May 31 to take a lobbying job in the capital after losing to Edwards in the February Democratic primary by 22 percentage points.

Edwards, 49, will hold the seat for the rest of the year. James also won his party’s primary in February, meaning he and Edwards will face each other again in November’s general election to determine who will serve when the next Congress begins in early 2009.

Mets Fire Black Manager Randolph, Bring in Hired Guns From New Orleans Minors

Just 17 months ago, Willie Randolph received a new multi-million dollar contract, a reward for invigorating a franchise and guiding the Mets to their first division title in 18 years and close to a victory in the World Series.

He has since presided over one of the greatest collapses in baseball history, from which this year’s team has yet to recover.

Nearly three months into another disappointing season, the Mets announced early Tuesday morning that they had fired Randolph, the first African-American to manage in New York, after three and a half years as manager, and replaced him with the bench coach Jerry Manuel.

They also gutted their coaching staff, firing the pitching coach Rick Peterson and the first-base coach Tom Nieto, while promoting three coaches from the minor leagues.

“I’m in shock,” said the catcher Ramon Castro, when stopped in the lobby of his hotel in nearby Costa Mesa. “I don’t know what to say.”

Dan Warthen, the Class AAA New Orleans pitching coach, will take over Peterson’s duties. Ken Oberkfell, the New Orleans manager and Luis Aguayo, the organization’s field coordinator, will also join the major league staff in roles to be determined.

More of this BEN SHPIGEL at New York Times.com

Black NY Times Editor Gerald Boyd Returns From The Grave, Haunting Writer Jason Blair And The White Bogeymen

The New York Times In Black & White

Gerald Boyd, former managing editor of The New York Times, died a year ago Thanksgiving Day from lung cancer. And to mark the occasion, New York Magazine has decided that they want to back up the hearse to his grave, dig the brotha up and burying him all over again.

African American scribe Les Payne breaks it down for us. The nearly 7,000-word article disinters the scandal that got the 58-year-old sacked along with the paper's top editor, Howell Raines. Writer Jeff Coplon was careful in crafting his report, which lands on target and manages to spatter blood. The story, however, lacks the virtue of coming clean about those at the Times who, however unwittingly, prepared Boyd for the fall that some considered as needless as it was inevitable.

Boyd rose higher than any known Black editor at the august newspaper. I say "known" because one of the earliest Black writers at the Times kept his racial identity a total secret. As with light-complexioned African-Americans who desegregated other institutions with stealth, Anatole Broyard, a former literary critic at the Times, reasoned, perhaps wisely, that his rise would be best served if the men running the paper thought that he was white like them. No such editor has been uncovered playing Broyard's skin game.

Still, it was disingenuous for Max Frankel, then the top editor, to set Boyd up on an executive track in 1990, telling him in so many words, as Coplon writes, that he would be the Times' Jackie Robinson. The Brooklyn Dodgers infielder broke baseball's lily-white barrier, while Boyd was preceded by others at the paper. Frankel reportedly "warned" Boyd that white colleagues would resent his promotion "because" he was black. By describing Frankel as having played Branch Rickey to Boyd's Robinson, Coplon imbues the Times' motivation with an enlightened sense of racial fair play.

The truth - which New York magazine completely omits - is that the Times was under court order to further desegregate its editorial staff. The paper settled the racial discrimination suit, Rosario et al. v. The New York Times, in 1980 for more than $1 million and a promise to do better. In the early 1980s, however, the court warned the Times in writing that A.M. Rosenthal, the editor later ousted to make way for Frankel, had failed to live up to the signed agreement.

So it was the Rosario consent decree that boosted Boyd, not goodwill from the Times or altruism on the part of Max Frankel. This is not to diminish Boyd's talent and hard work. For if Anatole Broyard's racial passing proves anything, it is that meritocracy works for blacks at the Times only when the bosses don't know you're African-American.

Frankel, as quoted by Cop-lon, admitted to selecting Boyd primarily for his "equanimity ... for white establishment settings," a curious qualification that's never required of white candidates. "He didn't bear some of the anger and hostility that were visible in other people."

Boyd had pushed more aggressively on racial matters at his hometown St. Louis paper, but corked his emotions to succeed at the Times. Here it was required that blacks grant white Times bosses their innocence on matters racial in exchange for personal advancement. The ambitious Boyd rocketed through the ranks as much for the specificity of his loyalty as for the generality of his race.

When reporter Jayson Blair defiled the Times with a blizzard of fabricated stories the paper published, Boyd was slandered - and sacked - as the alleged protector of this twisted little con artist, who happened to be black. Deserving African-American subordinates knew better, for Boyd had long prided himself in not being the brothers' keeper. Even after his firing, he boasted to the National Association of Black Journalists: "I was not the black managing editor. I was the managing editor."

With Boyd gone from his high perch, the Times has recovered from the affirmative effects of the Rosario consent decree. In a city nearly a third African-American, The New York Times, for example, covers the 75 percent black NFL and the 15 percent white NBA with a huge sports staff that among its editors, reporters and columnists fields only a single, black staffer, the columnist Bill Rhoden. There is a word that describes this pattern of coverage the Rosario suit addressed, but out of respect for Boyd's deep and unrequited love for the Times, I will not use the "r" word here. [Newsday]

It's Sunday Morning, And Barack Obama Doesn't Have A Prayer Without Your Support

Obama's Plan to Restore New Orleans

Networks Plan Katrina Anniversary Coverage

1st African American Kentucky High-Court Justice

Obama attends church service in NOLA

Speaking to Sunday church congregants in New Orleans, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama invoked Jesus' Sermon on the Mount days before the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Barack Co-signs On Republicans He Likes

Atlanta Declares War on Hip-Hop-Style Trousers

First Black Woman to Lead a GM Plant
Video: Soul Legend Mavis Staples

Barack Obama Criticizes Cuban Policy

Diddy Boosts Burger King's Bottom Line

Kanye West Trumpets Education in TV Spot
Spelman, Women’s Soccer Pushes Beyond Expectation

BLACK FOLKS SHOW UP IN SOME STRANGE PLACES: JAPANESE NATIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM

Former UCLA basketball player and 1995 national champion J.R. Henderson, is no longer J.R. Henderson.

You see, ever since being selected by the Grizzlies in the 2nd round of the 1998 draft, Henderson has moved on.

He left to play in Japan for the Aisin Seahorses (great name) in 2001, and has been balling in Japan ever since. J.R.’s been terrorizing the league, throwing in 21 ppg and 11 rpg last year. What’s all the fuss you ask?

J.R. Henderson is now the basketball player formerly known as J.R. Henderson. From now on, we refer to him as J.R. Sakuragi.

In fact, he has changed his name and acquired Japanese citizenship in order to participate on the Japan National Team for the FIBA Asia Championships.

I’ve heard of people changing their name over marriage, divorce, and religion change, but never citizenship. People were questioning the legitimacy of the citizenship grant, but rest assured, it has been in the works for quite some time (so say several Japanese officials). J.R. Henderson Sakuragi, man, we hardly knew ya bro.

Nods to Larry Brown Sports

CAN WHITE PEOPLE HANDLE A BLACK MAN AS PRESIDENT? OKAY, WHAT ABOUT A WOMAN?

Because it's not even an issue for Black folks, Newsweek has the story on exactly where some White folks are coming from!

YOUNG BLACK PILOT COMPLETES HISTORIC TRIP AROUND THE WORLD AND MAKES US PROUD!

Audacious Brother Is Youngest, First Black To Go Solo Globally

(AP) A 23-year-old aerospace student who built his plane from more than $300,000 in donated parts took off hoping to become the youngest person and first black pilot to fly around the globe alone.

Barrington Irving planned to arrive back at Opa-locka Executive Airport on April 30 in his single-engine Lancair Columbia 400. He was set to fly last year, but a lack of funding delayed his $1 million project.

Today, Irving glided into Miami after a three-month journey he hopes will be an inspiration to inner-city kids.

A crowd of about 2000 people erupted in cheers as Barrington Irving landed at Miami's Opa Locka airport after flying a few low passes over the tarmac.

“I'm home,” a jubilant Mr Irving said.

“The flight was a long flight that challenged me mentally and physically,” he said. Mr Irving had initially hoped to complete his voyage in about one month, but took three times as long as he braved sandstorms, snowstorms and a tropical storm.

He flew a single-engine Columbia 400, which he built with more than $US300,000 ($355,260) in donated components. The Jamaican-born aerospace student hopes the trip will be an inspiration to children in poor, urban neighbourhoods.

“I want to show them they can do more with their lives than resort to violence,” said Irving.

Irving was born in Jamaica and grew up in Miami. He said he saw little chance for success until he met a Jamaican-American pilot at his parents' Christian bookstore. The pilot, Gary Robinson, took Irving to see a Boeing 777.

The 15-year-old was mesmerized. He turned down college football scholarships to become a pilot. Irving is now studying at Florida Memorial University; he has private and commercial pilot licenses.

He also founded Experience Aviation, a Miami-based organization that encourages minority youths to pursue aviation careers.

"Even with the challenges, everything is starting to fall in place, " Irving said prior to launching his historical journey. "It's just my time."

We agree. Do yo' thang Black Man - Welcome Home!

SEX PLOT AGAINST FIRST BLACK MEMPHIS MAYOR TAKES NEW TWIST

It Started With An Alleged Plot To Set Da Mayor Up Marion Barry Style.

Now the sistah in the middle of the controversy has been arrested.

Gwendolyn Smith, 29, was taken in Friday for smoking weed while on probation for an unrelated 2004 forgery conviction.

A former Memphis strip club waitress, Smith has told police she was recruited by political enemies of Mayor Willie Herenton, 67, to seduce him and videotape their sexual encounter.

VIDEO OF DRAG RACING TRAGEDY IN TENNESSEE THAT KILLS SIX YOUNG SPECTATORS, AND LEAVES THREE CRITICAL

Vowing to run for re-election to a fifth term this October, the city's first elected black mayor has easily won re-election since his initial victory in 1991 in the closest mayor's race in Memphis history.

The Tennessee mayor held a news conference last week thanking Smith for exposing the alleged plot, but refused to name the critics he believes were behind it. He described them as a group of wealthy businessmen.

Smith surrendered for arrest Friday afternoon in Nashville, in the custody of two Memphis police officers, on a warrant.

Her parole was violated when she tested positive for marijuana, said Don Aaron, a spokesman for Nashville police.

Smith contends she was offered $150,000 to take part in the sex-scandal plot by Richard Fields, a well-known Memphis lawyer long involved in civil rights causes.

Fields, who represented Smith in connection with the Nashville forgery charge, denied the allegation and described her as a drug abuser and scam artist "desperate for money."

With Herenton calling on the Justice Department and the governor to investigate the matter, Memphis police are currently looking into the claim.

"Obviously, the mayor has made some enemies over the years...," said Marcus Pohlmann, a political scientist at Rhodes College of Memphis.

"But if there are wealthy individuals willing to go to those lengths to defeat him, it could help him and energize his base," Pohlmann said.

BLACK FOLKS SHOW UP IN SOME STRANGE PLACES: FORMULA ONE RACING

Lewis Hamilton wins the USGP to become the first black man to win a race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

"What an amazing trip," Hamilton said of winning both Sunday's and last week's Canadian Grand Prix. "It's been extremely intense."

And yes the equally handsome guy in the picture is his daddy and my favorite pix from yesterdays Father's Day. Hope your Father's Day was a good one.