'42' Jackie Robinson Biopic Trailer Premieres

So the television trailer for 42, a biopic about Jackie Robinson, premiered a few days ago. (Well, that's when we first saw it so please forgive us if we are a little slow when it comes to t.v.) At first glance, we wondered what in the heck Jay-Z has to do with Jackie Robinson. But we forgive the soundtrack because the trailer looked pretty good. The costumes and sets looked great and the storyline did not look to be sugar-coated. The cast includes Chadwick Boseman as Robinson, Harrison Ford, and Christopher Meloni. And of course, who didn't love Nicole Beharie in American Violet? She will star as Robinson's wife, Rachel. The film is directed by Oscar winner Brian Helgeland and hits theaters on April 12. We're excited.

President Obama to Designate Harriet Tubman National Monument

President Obama will soon designate The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Monument as a National Park. Among the four other designations will be Ohio's Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument.

The White House reported: 

"The monument commemorates the life of the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad who was responsible for helping enslaved people escape from bondage to freedom.   The new national park, located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, includes large sections of landscapes that are significant to Tubman’s early life in Dorchester County and evocative of her life as a slave and conductor of the Underground Railroad.  The park includes Stewart’s Canal, dug by hand by free and enslaved people between 1810 and the 1830s and where Tubman learned important outdoor skills when she worked in the nearby timbering operations with her father.  Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and Refuge lands, although park of the new national park, will continue to be managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument also includes the home site of Jacob Jackson, a free black man who used coded letters to help Tubman communicate with family and others.  The monument will also partner with the State of Maryland’s Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park Visitor Center when it opens in 2015."

Read more here.

FBI Released Updated Hate Crimes Training Manual

The FBI released its new Hate Crimes Training Manual. This manual provides the most extensive listing of hate crime targets, investigations, and reporting guidelines.

Read more here.

View the manual here.

Neither Redface Nor Blackface are Acceptable Fashion Choices

Michelle Williams is on the cover of AnOther Magazine in a stereotypical Native American depiction. She is dressed in plaid and jeans with thick dark braids and a feather. The Native American themed photo is the alternative cover of the bi-annual AnOther Magazine.

The cover has a tag line of "there's no place like home." It might be an ode to her upcoming movie, "Oz the Great and Powerful," but ironically serves to highlight the Native Americans who were unceremoniously kicked out of them homes.

Lexi Nisita wrote on Refinery29.com, that they should have dressed her like Dorothy. We agree.

Read more here.

Age Ain't Nothing But a Number as Tina Turner Lands the Cover of Vogue at 73

Tina Turner may have renounced her U.S. citizenship, but she is looking fabulous at 73 on the cover of the April issue of German Vogue. She is indeed the oldest person to grace the cover of the fashion magazine.

It would be remiss to ignore that many of Tina's biggest musical successes came as she battled physical abuse with former husband and partner Ike Turner; however, she certainly stood on her own two feet with her Grammy-award winning song "What's Love Got to Do with It."

We salute Tina for kicking that abusive Ike to the curb. It is hard to think of her life and not see the parallel with the younger and not nearly as talented Rihanna and Chris Brown. Hopefully, Rihanna will see the error of her ways and become her own "Proud Mary."

Read more here.

Not Buying It: 'Keep Calm and Rape' Shirts on Sale

Keep Calm and Rape a Lot.
Keep Calm and Knife Her.
Keep Calm and Grope a Lot.
Keep Calm and Hit Her.
Keep Calm and Choke Her.  
   
Yes, these shirts were available on Amazon.com and produced by a company called Solid Gold Bomb. (Founder Michael Fowler actually pretended not to know the company was even selling the shirts.)

Hey, Solid Gold Bomb, #NotBuyingIt. #TwoPersonBoycott.

Read more here at the Good Men Project.

In Honor of Women's History Month - 100 Black Women You Should Know, But Might Not

 

Fannie Lou Hamer

Daisy Bates

Mamie Till

Mary McLeod Bethune

Marjorie Lee Browne

Shirley Chisholm

Dorothy Height

bell hooks

Mae C. Jemison

Ntozake Shange

Sojourner Truth

Maggie Lena Walker

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Elizabeth Key

Ella Baker

Ruby Bridges

Septima Clark

Harriet Tubman

Zora Neale Hurston

Bessie Coleman

Audre Lourde

Anne Moody

Barbara Johns

Annie Easley

Mary Louise Baldwin

Cheryl Shavers

May Edward Chinn

Maya Angelou

Marjorie Stewart Joyner

Drusilla Dunjee Houston

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander

Ella Fitzgerald

Shirley Ann Jackson

Dr. Mamie Clark

Ellen Smith Craft

Pearl Bailey

Edith Sampson

Gwendolyn Brooks

Octavia Butler

Lorraine Hansberry

June Bacon-Bearcey

Marian Anderson

Cicely Tyson

Cathay Williams

Billie Holiday

Mamie 'Peanut' Johnson

Sarah S. Goode

Barbara Jordan

Rosa Parks

Dorothy E. Davis

Frances Harper

Cinque

Catherine Burks-Brooks

Autherine Lucy

Linda Brown Smith

Melba Pattillo Beals

Glenda Gaither Davis

Mae Francis Moultrie

Effa Manley

Elizabeth Eckford

Gloria Ray Karlmark

Ethel Louise Belton Brown

Diane Nash

Connie Morgan

Bernice Johnson Reagon

Ruby Doris Smith Robinson

Nina Simone

Carlotta Walls Lanier

Unita Blackwell

Prathia Hall

Eleanor Holmes Norton

Kathleen Neal Cleaver

Dorothy Cotton

Angela Davis

June Jordan

Dorothy Geraldine Counts

Elizabeth Keckly

Toni Stone

Myrlie Evers Williams

Claudette Colvin

Rita Dove

Alice Walker

Minnijean Brown

Margaret Burroughs

Elaine Brown

Thelma Mothershed

Patricia Bath

Janet Emerson Bashen

Condoleeza Rice

Toni Morrison

Mari Evans

Carol Moseley Braun

Patricia Roberts Harris

Dorothy Dandridge

Ruby Dee

Gertrude Koen

Joyce Bryant

Lena Horn

Josephine Baker 

Charlotte E. Ray

Idris Elba to Star in Nelson Mandela Biopic

The Weinstein Company will release Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, a biopic about Nelson Mandela starring Idris Elba. Bond Girl, Naomie Harris, will play his wife, Winnie Mandela.

It was filmed in Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape and was completed a few months ago. It will detail Mandela's "early life, coming of age, education and 27 years in prison."  The film was produced by Anant Singh, who began communicating with Mandela while he was in prison, and will be based on his 1996 autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom.  

Read more here.