For African-Americans Interested In The Online Space, This Is Your Urban New Media Wrap-Up For January 2011

The Game’ Is a Winner, Helped by BET Loyalists

“The Game,” a sitcom about pro football players’ relationships with women, puttered along in obscurity for three years on the CW network. The season it was canceled, it attracted only 1.9 million viewers an episode. Then it was resurrected with two new episodes last Tuesday on the cable channel BET, which picked up the program and resumed production as part of an effort to add scripted shows to its schedule. The response from BET viewers was “jaw-dropping.” The first two episodes of the new season averaged 7.7 million viewers, making it the most-watched sitcom ever on cable television.

The 30-year-old channel had never had such high ratings for a series. “Just over the moon” is how Debra L. Lee, the chief executive and chairwoman of BET Networks, described her reaction. “It proves that cable is competitive,” she said. How does a show quadruple its audience? Ms. Lee credits a smart marketing plan, fan bases on Facebook and Twitter, and frequent showings on BET of repeat episodes in the past year, which ginned up interest in the new episodes.

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For Minorities, New 'Digital Divide' Seen

When the personal computer revolution began decades ago, Latinos and blacks were much less likely to use one of the marvelous new machines. Then, when the Internet began to change life as we know it, these groups had less access to the Web and slower online connections — placing them on the wrong side of the "digital divide."

Today, as mobile technology puts computers in our pockets, Latinos and blacks are more likely than the general population to access the Web by cellular phones, and they use their phones more often to do more things.

But now some see a new "digital divide" emerging — with Latinos and blacks being challenged by more, not less, access to technology. It's tough to fill out a job application on a cellphone, for example. Researchers have noticed signs of segregation online that perpetuate divisions in the physical world. And blacks and Latinos may be using their increased Web access more for entertainment than empowerment.

Continue...

Dr. King's Facebook Page Vandalized With Racist Images

A Facebook page that appears to be run by the Martin Luther King Center has been vandalized by individuals or a group of people who are determined to populate the page with disturbing racial imagery. Images using the N-word are displayed all over the page, along with other hurtful pictures, including a black man having sex with a bucket of chicken.

It is not clear who is responsible for maintaining the page or moderating the images, but the KingCenter.org website is listed as the group that owns the page.

Details...

Will The Strings Attached To Comcast/NBC Deal Be Effective?

Both the FCC and the Justice Department have effectively cleared the way for Comcast (aka, that cable company from Philadelphia) to own a majority of NBC Universal, but the regulators did so with several strings attached to the deal. Among the regulations outlined by the FCC and the Justice Dept., are:

*Comcast/NBC must license its programming to online distributors that have obtained distribution agreements with one of NBCU's peers.

*Comcast can't do anything that would unduly limit content owners' abilities to freely negotiate creative arrangements with Comcast competitors.

*The Comcast/NBC Voltron is not allowed to "retaliate against any broadcast network, affiliate, cable programmer, production studio or content provider for licensing content to Comcast competitors."

*Comcast must relinquish its management rights in Hulu, which is a joint venture of NBC, Fox and ABC, "so Comcast cannot use NBCU's partial ownership of Hulu to diminish its competitive significance."

Keep Reading...

If You’re Not Networking, You’re Not Social

Social media isn't isolating us as we tap on our laptops, smartphones and tablets; rather, we're becoming "hypersocial" in our virtual, avatar-populated environment, suggests researcher and author S. Craig Watkins. Rather than gathering in, say, the bowling alleys that were social hubs in the 1950s, we Wii-bowl with companions nearly anywhere on the globe.

Author of "The Young and The Digital," a book about today's so-called digital natives, Watkins rejects some researchers' laments that technology isolates us, noting that multiplayer online games cultivate friendships across long distances, and Facebook helps childhood friends keep in content when they move geographically. "There's nowhere we can't connect to our friends and our network," he says.

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Black People And The Internet - What's Up?

African Americans are more likely than whites to access the Internet by mobile phone, and they are twice as likely to use Twitter. Mobile devices have expanded access to the Internet, but they also limit the experience. NPR's Renee Montagne talks with IT consultant Anjuan Simmons about Internet trends among blacks.

Listen Here...

Isidra Person-Lynn Relaunches 'Sunday Morning Live' On Blogtalkradio

Media expert Isidra Person-Lynn has taken to the Internet to provide news, information and entertainment from a African American perspective on her new online Blogtalkradio show 'Sunday Morning Live'. Person-Lynn, a University of Southern California graduate who went on to become a celebrated public affairs radio personality on Los Angeles station 103.9 FM KACE, has also created a frequently updated blog for the weekly program.

Person-Lynn is clearly filling a void in the talk arena, as traditional black radio broadcast stations are opting to play more music and reducing their focus on spotlighting local issues in African American populated communities.

Check It Out...

MLK Day = Community Service... A Text Message From The President Elect Obama

Help President elect Obama renew America w/ service projects around the Inauguration.

Text SERVE to 56333 for info. For Inauguration updates txt HISTORY to 56333

MLK DAY, Millions Arrive In Washington. Some Travelers Forced To Sleep With The Dead

The subject is travel, and with high unemployment and even higher fuel cost it has made it increasingly difficult to travel by car. But these are economic barriers. Recently a young couple talked of the surprising lack of humanity and hospitality by fellow Americans as they completed a recent car trip through the south. Starting in Richmond Virginia with an ultimate destination of San Antonio Texas, husband and wife Andrew and Georgie Foster report finding many restaurants not willing to seat or serve African Americans ...


and being forced to go to the back of some establishments to pick up a cold sandwich for lunch. Later that day this same dining experience is repeated in another town for dinner. In these modern times sleeping accommodations for African Americans are still nonexistent in southern towns in states like the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee. Each night this same couple, now tired from the days travels, is surprised like another famous couple , that "there is no room for them in the inn". In this updated version we are talking about the Holiday Inn and the reason they are being turned away is for having black skin.

Given the afore Biblical example Andrew and Georgie are in a fix as there is a definite shortage of local "mangers." So what is the African American couple to do? Well in the south the beacon of light, the oasis in the desert comes from a very unlikely place ; the local Black funeral director. That's right, Andrew and Georgie will actually be sleeping good tonight, as the generous undertaker allows the couple to sleep among the caskets; some empty some occupied.

Andrew and Georgie are my parents and this is just one of the many stories I like to hear them tell as normal life in the 1950's and 60's.

Every year each of us has virtually the same experience when it comes to Martin Luther King Day. Meaning, each year there is an endless barrage of dated film clips on the television, a parade or special church service the day before and if energy permits someones special program either live or back to the television, live from Washington D.C. It's easy to get complacent and matter of fact about the whole day. Unless we share. 1960 Martin Luther King at Durham North Carolina Woolworth Lunch Counter
Meaning , you or someone you know might remember actual events of that turbulent time we lived. Personal incidents that involved you are the best memories to share with a young person or just anyone. If it is not your memory, then ask someone about their memory. Take that memory and share it with someone who might not know or needs a touch of sensitivity. We all have someone who could use a bit of sensitivity. As we get older our family and relatives are getting older, forget and die. We need to go back to what we did as Africans; that is, commit to an oral history of our ancestry. Keep the word and the stories alive for future generations.

Wells Fargo Utah Don't Give A Damn About Martin Luther King Day

MLK Day is a national and state Holiday, period. When A bank, in this case Wells Fargo Utah, decides they are going to be open for business and not observe Martin Luther King Day they are being disrespectfully to King, His memory and all he stood for. There is only one logical reason I could possibly buy into, to work on King day and that is ...

if you are working on King Day to be off of work... for the Obama Inauguration the very next day. In the mean time here is the lame excuse Wells Fargo Utah issued.

The bank said the decision to open on the national and state holiday was made "in the interest of serving our customers when, where and how they want to be served."

"Our decision to be open on Martin Luther King Day in no way diminishes our admiration and respect for Dr. King and his accomplishments," the bank said in a news release. "Rather, it was made out of our desire to best serve our customers."

The branches will be open for regular business hours.

Tribune Staff

King Family Takes The Game Family Feud To A New Level

One of the unexpected surprises of attending Morehouse Collge was going to classes with two of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's four children.

I remember always seeing Marty (noone called him Martin) out and about in the city. Then there were those student government meetings with Bernice, who was elected ASB vice-president at Spelman. And Dexter, who resembled King but had a reputation for never going to class, was just one of several "famous brothers" on campus who happened to smoke a pipe and snag this fine sister named Susan from South Carolina. My, times have changed!

Bernice King and Martin Luther King III filed a lawsuit Thursday in county court to force Dexter King to open the books of their father’s estate.

The lawsuit claims that Dexter King, the estate’s administrator, is refusing to provide his two siblings with documents concerning the estate’s operations. That includes financial records, contracts, financial affairs and other documents, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit claims that Dexter King and the estate “converted substantial funds from the estate’s financial account … for their own use” on June 20 without notifying his siblings. The lawsuit also claims that Dexter King may have taken assets from the firm “for his own benefit” and that the assets may have been “misapplied or wasted.” Source

40 Year Anniversary of The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Hillary, Obama and McCain...Pimping Kings Death and Legacy

It has been 40 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is an election year, so today every politician whose even thinking about running for office in November, will be out in full view pimping the "King Legacy", to captive audiences all over the country. The audiences are captive, because not listening to anyone say nice things about King on this anniversary day of all days, would be sacrilegious. Hillary, Obama and McCain are "pimping" because they talk the King Talk but out the other side of their mouth they say, "where's my vote" and "Bi*** better bring me my money," (to win this campaign) People, stop the war, everyone gets free medical care, feed, train and educate the people. Don't' say it is too expensive because all the money in Iraq was not part of any budget. This is King's Legacy.

Soledad O'Brien Premiere's CNN's Black in America Series: First Up, Eyewitness to Murder - The King Assassination

We ALL Need To Watch This Family!

Sanding on the Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis where it happened, Reverend Billy Kyles still looks struck.“And the shot rang out: a-payow!” Recalling the dreadful evening that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. “It was loud,” he says, “real loud.”

Retelling the horror of the event with Soledad O’Brien, this is the first installment of CNN’s six hour series about Black folks in America.

The first installment, “Eyewitness to Murder: The King Assassination.”

The show traces the events that brought King and James Earl Ray together on 4 April 1968, and presents doubts about the official explanation. “Years later, questions still linger and fester,” says the biracial news anchor at the very beginning.

While much of the show remembers King’s career, the familiar landmarks as well as some details that aren’t so typically recounted, like King’s joking about his death with his “inner circle,” all understanding the risks he took. Andrew Young remembers that he was stabbed in Harlem at a book signing: just after a brief look at a black and white photo of King looking caught off guard in his hospital bed, Young smiles, “When they removed the knife, they left a scar in the shape of a cross.” Though King talked about being killed, Young says, “He never let us get nervous about it, and he was never nervous about it.” Instead, he took on extra engagements—speeches, meetings, and marches—as needs arose.

Over footage of clashes in city streets, O’Brien narrates, “His nonviolent protests brought out the worst in white America, police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham in 1963, Alabama state troopers beating back protestors on the bridge in Selma in 1965. And their violence would strike a flint on the nation’s conscience.”

It’s not clear just what that “strike” was, or how the “nation” had a conscience. Certainly, violence against Civil Rights workers and demonstrators persisted, even as it was exposed on television and moved President Johnson to push through legislation that granted voting rights and equal education to black Americans, at least in theory. King continued to press for other changes, having to do with economic and educational systems, arguing that poverty oppresses populations insidiously, like racism. As King was injured and arrested during his work—illustrated here in news photos—he made use of the media, print and TV, to promote the cause. The more sensational the official response, the more sympathetic the demonstrators appeared.

As the movement grew, the official response became more surreptitious—though hardly secret. As O’Brien reports here, the Attorney General’s office (Robert Kennedy) signed off on wiretaps in October 1963, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI took up the mission with a vengeance. Young recalls that King and his followers found listening devices in motel rooms and once, Ralph Abernathy found one in a church, at which point he spoke directly to “Little Doohickey”: “I want you to tell President Johnson, and I want you to tell J. Edgar Hoover, and I want you to tell George Wallace, I want you to tell everybody that no matter what they think, we are going to be free.”


Famously, of course, the surveillance did pick up sounds of a sex act in a hotel room, and Hoover became obsessed with King’s deviance and sexual behavior. David Garrow, author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, notes that the FBI also began leaking stories concerning what the agency and Hoover perceived as movement leaders’ associations with the “Red Menace” to “discredit” King. He began receiving missives from the Bureau, at least one suggesting that he kill himself out of shame: “You are an evil abnormal beast,” the typed letter reads, “Satan could not do more. King, you are done.” Such “official” activities suggest that Hoover’s fixation was pathological. As John Lewis laments, Hoover “saw Dr. King as a threat to the order of American society.”

Along with the Bureau’s ongoing activities, “Eyewitness to Murder” tracks Ray’s route to Memphis, it allows the case that has circulated for years since the assassination, that Ray was not the killer, or at the least, he was supported by a greater organization, though whether it is the FBI or the mafia, some ugly combination of the two or some other group with money and planning capacities, is not entirely resolved. Highlighting documents, inexplicable events, conflicting witness accounts, and Ray’s own changing stories (when captured, he pled guilty, and then, once he was in prison for life, recanted), the show focuses on those lingering and festering questions.

A career and decidedly smalltime criminal, Ray had escaped from a prison in Missouri in 1967, just three weeks after King made his historic and provocative anti-war speech at the Riverside Church. Ray made his way to Montreal, where, he later told William Bradford Huie (who published He Slew the Dreamer in 1978), he met the mysterious “Raoul.” According to Ray, after he performed a series of jobs for Raoul (smuggling “something” over the border into Detroit, for instance), he was instructed to rent a room in Memphis “for three or four days.” (Here O’Brien looks at Ray’s boarding house room, now encased in glass at the National Civil Rights Museum, headed by Beverly Robinson, who recounts that other boarders heard him moving furniture on the day of the assassination.)

“Eyewitness to Murder” doesn’t make only one case; rather, it includes interviews with men who knew Dr. King, researchers with a range of experiences, and people with questions. Black Memphis policemen and firemen remember that the security for King that day was reduced, compared to previous visits to the city, and that black firefighters were reassigned to other areas, away from the Lorraine Motel. None of this information is categorical. But some of it was left unaddressed in conventional accounts. According to William Pepper, who became Ray’s lawyer following his conviction, there remain doubts that Ray acted alone. A clip of King’s son Dexter meeting with Ray illustrates the historical turn, when the family publicly took a stand in favor of further investigation and in support of Ray’s assertions that the case was more complex than the official version. “Eyewitness to Murder” provides various accounts of the event and the case against Ray, some from eyewitnesses.

That it doesn’t reach a definitive conclusion speaks elliptically and effectively to the experience of being “black in America.” by Cynthia Fuchs

Martin Luther King Against The War? America Are You Listening?

President Johnson tires of King, and King tires of the War.
We absolutely must learn form history.

KING DAY BLACK HISTORY

This young girl was the first African American to attend an integrated school in Charlotte. Since white parents wouldn't allow their children to ride school buses with African American classmates, the girl rode to school by herself. Courtesy of the Charlotte Observer. More stories and thrilling pictures? Check out the North Carolina Museum of History .

Martin Luther King Day: Blacks Forced to Sleep with the Dead

The subject is travel, and with high unemployment and even higher fuel cost it has made it increasingly difficult to travel by car. But these are economic barriers. Recently a young couple talked of the surprising lack of humanity and hospitality by fellow Americans as they completed a recent car trip through the south. Starting in Richmond Virginia with an ultimate destination of San Antonio Texas, husband and wife Andrew and Georgie Foster report finding many restaurants not willing to seat or serve African Americans ...


and being forced to go to the back of some establishments to pick up a cold sandwich for lunch. Later that day this same dining experience is repeated in another town for dinner. In these modern times sleeping accommodations for African Americans are still nonexistent in southern towns in states like the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee. Each night this same couple, now tired from the days travels, is surprised like another famous couple , that "there is no room for them in the inn". In this updated version we are talking about the Holiday Inn and the reason they are being turned away is for having black skin.

Given the afore Biblical example Andrew and Georgie are in a fix as there is a definite shortage of local "mangers." So what is the African American couple to do? Well in the south the beacon of light, the oasis in the desert comes from a very unlikely place ; the local Black funeral director. That's right, Andrew and Georgie will actually be sleeping good tonight, as the generous undertaker allows the couple to sleep among the caskets; some empty some occupied.

Andrew and Georgie are my parents and this is just one of the many stories I like to hear them tell as normal life in the 1950's and 60's.

Every year each of us has virtually the same experience when it comes to Martin Luther King Day. Meaning, each year there is an endless barrage of dated film clips on the television, a parade or special church service the day before and if energy permits someones special program either live or back to the television, live from Washington D.C. It's easy to get complacent and matter of fact about the whole day. Unless we share. 1960 Martin Luther King at Durham North Carolina Woolworth Lunch Counter
Meaning , you or someone you know might remember actual events of that turbulent time we lived. Personal incidents that involved you are the best memories to share with a young person or just anyone. If it is not your memory, then ask someone about their memory. Take that memory and share it with someone who might not know or needs a touch of sensitivity. We all have someone who could use a bit of sensitivity. As we get older our family and relatives are getting older, forget and die. We need to go back to what we did as Africans; that is, commit to an oral history of our ancestry. Keep the word and the stories alive for future generations.

Folks Who Get It: Happy Birthday To Ya' ML!!!

Dr. King, you were and continue to be the man. Enough said!

DO YOU KNOW THIS GREAT MAN?

IF NOT, YOU SHOULD! Benjamin Elijah Mays is perhaps best known as the longtime president of Morehouse College in Atlanta. He was also a significant mentor to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and was among the most articulate and outspoken critics of segregation before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the United States. And it was also his birthday, yesterday. He was born August 1, 1895.

HAPPY, er belated, BIRTHDAY to a great man.

“Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done.” -- Benjamin Mays

If you want to learn more about Benjamin Elijah Mays, click here.