Friday, April 24, 2015

Johnny Kemp, Bahamian "Just Got Paid" Singer


Johnny Kemp, Bahamian Singer, Dies at 55

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS





Johnny Kemp.Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Johnny Kemp, a Bahamian R&B singer best known for the 1988 hit song “Just Got Paid,” was found dead on April 16 in Montego Bay, Jamaica. He was 55.
The police said that his body was found floating at a beach and was believed to have drowned but provided no other details.
Reach Media, the parent company of “The Tom Joyner Morning Show,” said that Mr. Kemp had been scheduled to be on a Caribbean cruise sponsored by the Tom Joyner Foundation. He had not yet boarded the ship, the company said. Mr. Kemp was nominated for a Grammy Award for “Just Got Paid,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 10 on the pop chart. He had been performing around the United States in recent years.
He was born in the Bahamas on Aug. 2, 1959, and began singing in nightclubs there at 13. He moved to New York City in 1979, lived in Harlem and worked as a session vocalist and songwriter before landing a solo contract with Columbia Records, according to online biographies.
“Just Got Paid” appeared on his second album for Columbia, “Secrets of Flying.”
He is survived by his wife, Deirdre Fisher-Kemp, and their two sons.
___________________________________________________
Jonathan "Johnny" Kemp (August 2, 1959 – April 2015) was a Bahamian singer.

Career[edit]

Kemp began singing in nightclubs in the Bahamas at 13. He moved to New York in 1979 with the band Kinky Fox. His self-titled debut album came out in 1986, and he scored a minor hit with Just Another Lover. True success came the following year, however, with the release of his Secrets of Flying album, which contained a pair of Top 40 hits on the US Billboard R&B chart, "Dancin' with Myself" and "Just Got Paid", the latter hitting #1.
"Just Got Paid" hit the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988,[1] and sold over a million singles in the United States. It went to top the Hot Dance Music/Club Play, and provided his only UK Singles Chart entry, peaking at #68 in August 1988.[2] His only other Hot 100 entry was "Birthday Suit", a tune from the soundtrack to the movie, Singwhich climbed to #36 in 1989.[citation needed]
Kemp appeared on the 2007 DVD release by Keith Sweat entitled Sweat Hotel Live. The DVD featured live performances by Sweat in a sort of reunion with other R&B/new jack swing era pioneers of the late 1980s, including Teddy Riley. Kemp appeared on the final track, an "all-star finale" rendition of "Just Got Paid", originally recorded at a February 2006 concert in Atlanta, Georgia. Incidentally, Sweat had initially passed on the instrumental track that would eventually become "Just Got Paid", when it was first offered to him in the mid-1980s. Kemp listened to it, added his own lyrics to the melody, and "Just Got Paid" was born.[3]
Kemp was the featured performer (singing "Just Got Paid") at the NJS4E[4] event in New York on September 8, 2007. As the name implied, the show celebrated and commemorated 20 years of new jack swing, and took place at Ashford & Simpson's Sugar Bar.[citation needed]

Family[edit]

Kemp was married and the father of two sons.[citation needed]

Death[edit]

According to news reports, Johnny Kemp died during the week of April 16, 2015. On Thursday morning, April 16, 2015, his body was found floating in the water of Montego Bay, Jamaica, according to Jamaica police.[5] The cause or exact date of death has not yet been determined. He was 55 years old.[6][7][8]
While he was scheduled to be on the Tom Joyner Foundation-hosted annual Fantastic Voyage cruise as a performer when his body was found, reports state he did not board the ship.[9][10]

Discography[edit]


_________________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan "Johnny" Kemp (August 2, 1959 – April 2015) was a Bahamian singer. 
Kemp began singing in nightclubs in the Bahamas at 13. He moved to New York in 1979 with the band Kinky Fox. His self-titled debut album came out in 1986, and he scored a minor hit with Just Another Lover. True success came the following year, however, with the release of his Secrets of Flying album, which contained a pair of Top 40 hits on the US Billboard R&B chart, "Dancin' with Myself" and "Just Got Paid", the latter hitting #1.
"Just Got Paid" hit the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988, and sold over a million singles in the United States. It went to top the Hot Dance Music/Club Play, and provided his only UK Singles Chart entry, peaking at #68 in August 1988. His only other Hot 100 entry was "Birthday Suit", a tune from the soundtrack to the movie, Sing which climbed to #36 in 1989.
Kemp appeared on the 2007 DVD release by Keith Sweat entitled Sweat Hotel Live. The DVD featured live performances by Sweat in a sort of reunion with other R&B/new jack swing era pioneers of the late 1980s, including Teddy Riley. Kemp appeared on the final track, an "all-star finale" rendition of "Just Got Paid", originally recorded at a February 2006 concert in Atlanta, Georgia.  Incidentally, Sweat had initially passed on the instrumental track that would eventually become "Just Got Paid", when it was first offered to him in the mid-1980s. Kemp listened to it, added his own lyrics to the melody, and "Just Got Paid" was born.
Kemp was the featured performer (singing "Just Got Paid") at the NJS4E event in New York on September 8, 2007. As the name implied, the show celebrated and commemorated 20 years of new jack swing, and took place at Ashford & Simpson's Sugar Bar.
Kemp was married and the father of two sons.
According to news reports, Johnny Kemp died during the week of April 16, 2015. On Thursday morning, April 16, 2015, his body was found floating in the water of Montego Bay, Jamaica, according to Jamaica police. The cause or exact date of death has not yet been determined. He was 55 years old.
While he was scheduled to be on the Tom Joyner Foundation-hosted annual Fantastic Voyage cruise as a performer when his body was found, reports state he did not board the ship.


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Friday, April 17, 2015

Ibn Badis, Author of Staff of the Scribes


Ibn Badis
Ibn Badis (Al- Muʻizz ibn Bādīs) (Arabic:  المعز بن باديس‎); 1008–1062) was the fourth ruler of the Zirids in Ifriqiya, reigning from 1016 to 1062.
Al-Muizz ascended the throne as a minor following the death of his father Badis ibn Mansur,  with his aunt acting as regent. In 1016 there was a bloody revolt in Ifriqiya in which the Fatimid residence Al-Mansuriya was completely destroyed and 20,000 Shiites were massacred. The unrest forced a ceasefire in the conflict with the Hammadids of Algeria, and their independence was finally recognized in 1018.
Al-Muizz took over the government in 1022 following the overthrow of his aunt. The relationship with the Fatimids was strained, when in 1027 they supported a revolt of the Zanatas in Tripolitania which resulted in permanent loss of control of the region. His son Abdallah shortly ruled Sicily in 1038-1040, after intervening with a Zirid army in the civil war that broke out in the island.
The political turmoil notwithstanding, the general economic well-being initially made possible an extensive building program. However, the kingdom found itself in economic crisis in the 1040s, reflected in currency devaluation, epidemic and famine. This may have been related to the high level of tribute which the Zirids were compelled to pay annually to the Fatimids (one million gold dinars a year).
When al-Muizz (under the influence of Sunni jurists in Kairouan, growing Sunni public pressure in his realm and a violent backlash against the Shi'ite minority) recognized the Abbasids in Baghdad as rightful Caliphs in 1045 and adopted Sunni orthodoxy, the break with the Fatimids was complete. He even denounced the Fatimids and their followers as heretics in newly minted coinage.
The Fatimids then deported the Bedouin tribes of the Banu Hilal and the Banu Sulaym fromEgypt to Ifriqiya. The invasion of the Bedouin (1051–1052) led to great hardship after the defeat at Jabal Haydaran, severely impacting agriculture in Ifriqiya. The conquest of Kairouan in 1057 resulted in further anarchy. The Zirids lost control over the hinterland and were only able to retain the coastal areas, the capital being moved to Mahdia. With the growth of Bedouin Emirates and the continuing insecurity inland, the economy of Ifriqiya looked increasingly towards the Mediterranean, with the result the coastal cities grew in importance through maritime trade and piracy.
Al-Muizz was succeeded by his son Tamim ibn Muizz. 
Al-Muizz ibn Badis is usually thought to be the author of the famous Kitab `umdat al-kuttab wa `uddat dhawi al-albab (Staff of the Scribes). It is divided in twelve chapters.  Al-Muizz wrote on (amongst others) on the excellence of the pen, on the preparation of types of inks, the preparation of colored inks, metallic inks (including ones prepared from silver filings and alcohol), the coloring of dyes and mixtures, secret writing, the making of paper and the Arabic gum and glue. 

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Phyllis Klotman, Archivist of African American Films

Phyllis R. Klotman, Archivist of African-American Cinema, Dies at 90

By 
Phyllis Klotman, right, with Frances Stubbs and Gloria Gibson at the Black Film Center/Archive in 1986. Indiana University Black Film Center/Archive
Phyllis R. Klotman, a film scholar who helped unearth lost treasures of African-American cinema and established a major archive devoted to their preservation and study, died on March 30 at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.
Her daughter, Janet K. Cutler, confirmed the death.
At her death, Professor Klotman was an emeritus professor in the department of African- American and African diaspora studies atIndiana University in Bloomington. There, in 1981, she created the Black Film Center/Archive, the first significant repository of its kind in the United States.
Professor Klotman, who wrote and lectured widely about black cinema, founded what became the journal Black Camera. She convened symposiums and screenings, and championed the work of contemporary black filmmakers.
“She was one of the first to preserve black independent films, and in doing that, she encouraged us,” Charles Burnett, one of the most acclaimed black independent filmmakers of the postwar period, said in a telephone interview. “One of the first forums that we had was at her school. And for many of us, it was the first time that we had some exposure on this level, in a university setting.”
One of her department’s few white members, Professor Klotman became interested in black film history in the 1960s, while writing her doctoral dissertation on African-American literature at what is now Case Western Reserve University.
Seeking visual representations of black people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she learned of the existence of a body of work — long scattered, little known and unpreserved — by early black filmmakers.
She traveled the country, scouring attics and cellars and museum vaults, assembling a collection of films by and about African-Americans. Many had survived only in fragments.
“They were technically very poor: poorly lighted, bad sound quality, made in people’s houses to save money,” Professor Klotman told The Associated Press in 1981. “But they were a picture of the black experience.”
Among the films she amassed over the years were several made in response to “The Birth of a Nation,” D. W. Griffith’s unrepentantly racist Civil War film of 1915. These included “The Birth of a Race” (1918), directed by John W. Noble, which sought to overturn the stereotypes of African-Americans that Griffith promulgated.
There were also films by Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951), the country’s most famous early black auteur, whose work includes “The Symbol of the Unconquered” (1920) and “Murder in Harlem” (1935).
“The movies were called ‘race films’ the way jazz records with black artists were called ‘race records,’ ” Professor Klotman explained in the same interview. “It was a kind of buzzword.”
Today, the archive she founded comprises more than 3,000 films, spanning the silent era to the present day, along with photographs, posters and oral histories.
Phyllis Helen Rauch was born on Sept. 9, 1924, in Galveston, Tex. Her father was a door-to-door salesman and quite possibly a numbers runner, Professor Klotman’s daughter said. She married Robert Klotman, a violinist and music educator, in 1943. They later divorced but afterward remarried, and remained married until his death in 2012.
Combining a university education with motherhood, Phyllis Klotman earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Western Reserve University, as it was then known, in the early 1960s, followed by a doctorate there. She joined the Indiana faculty in 1970 and later served as the university’s dean for women’s affairs.
After retiring in 1999, she moved with her husband to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Besides her daughter, a professor of film studies at Montclair State University, Professor Klotman is survived by a son, Paul; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Another son, Eric, died at 2 of Tay-Sachs disease, a recessive genetic disorder prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews. After his death, Professor Klotman became an outspoken advocate of genetic screening to identify carriers of the disease.
Professor Klotman’s books include “Another Man Gone: The Black Runner in Contemporary Afro-American Literature” (1977); “Frame by Frame: A Black Filmography” (1979); and “Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video” (1999), an anthology she edited with her daughter.
As recently as the 1980s, Mr. Burnett said, many African-American filmmakers felt they had to expatriate themselves to find an audience for their work.
“We felt that we were back in the days when people would go to Paris, like Josephine Baker, and get recognized over there,” he said. “In Europe, there was advertising in the papers about what we did. At that point, here, there was nothing — except for that little island at Indiana.”
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Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Willie Barrow, Civil Rights Activist and PUSH Executive Director



Rev. Willie T. Barrow, a Fighter for Civil Rights, Dies at 90

By 






The Rev. Willie T. Barrow, with the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. in 1986, was a past chairwoman of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Sun-Times Media, via Associated Press

The Rev. Willie T. Barrow, who championed civil rights for minorities, women, gay people and consumers; opposed the war in Vietnam and apartheid; and mentored generations of community organizers, including a young Chicagoan named Barack Obama, died on Thursday at her home in Chicago. She was 90.
Her death was confirmed by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the alliance of two groups founded by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., of which she was chairwoman for a decade.
Ms. Barrow organized her first civil rights demonstration when she was 12, protesting the fact that she and her fellow black students had to walk to school in her hometown in Texas while whites could ride the school bus. She went on to conduct sit-ins and boycotts with luminaries of the movement, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, and joined in the 1963 March on Washington and the protests two years later in Selma, Ala. More recently she voiced concern over gun violence and dilution of the Voting Rights Act.
Willie Beatrice Taplin was born in Burton, Tex., on Dec. 7, 1924, to Nelson and Octava Taplin. Her father was a farmer and a Church of God minister. When she was 16 she moved to Oregon, where she studied theology, organized a Church of God group and worked as a welder in a shipyard, where she met Clyde Barrow, a fellow shipyard worker. They married and moved to Chicago in 1945.
In the early 1970s, she helped Mr. Jackson found Operation PUSH (the letters originally stood for People United to Save Humanity, later changed to Serve Humanity) and succeeded him as executive director when he sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s. She later served as chairwoman.
She was a fiery advocate and fierce adversary, as the organization pursued its civil rights goals. It encouraged young people to study and stay in school. And, with mixed success, it pressed major corporations to hire more black workers and executives under threat of boycotts. Mr. Jackson merged PUSH with his National Rainbow Coalition in 1996.
Ms. Barrow was a mentor and self-described godmother to young activists, including the future President Obama. The president said in a statement, “I was proud to count myself among the more than 100 men and women she called her ‘godchildren,’ and worked hard to live up to her example.”
The Rev. Calvin S. Morris, the retired executive director of the Community Renewal Society in Chicago and her friend for 48 years, described her as “an old-fashioned schoolmarm of the civil rights movement.”
After her son, Keith, announced that he was gay, she publicly embraced gay rights. He died of AIDS in 1983. Her husband died in 1998. No immediate family members survive.
Married for 56 years, she was inspired to write a book, “How to Get Married ... and Stay Married.” Among her sage prescriptions: “Don’t try and make your mate over. It cannot be done.”
While Ms. Barrow mentored men and women alike, she was an unabashed feminist.
She learned by opening her home “to all of the powerful women in the movement — Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Height, Addie Wyatt,” she told The Chicago Sun-Times in 2012. “We have to teach this generation, train more Corettas, more Addies, more Dorothys.
“If these youth don’t know whose shoulders they stand on, they’ll take us back to slavery. And I believe that’s why the Lord is still keeping me here.”

__________________________________________________

Willie Beatrice Barrow (née Taplin; December 7, 1924 – March 12, 2015) was an American civil rights activist and minister. She was the co-founder of Operation PUSH, which was named Operation Breadbasket at the time of it's creation alongside Rev. Jesse Jackson. In 1984, she became the first woman executive director of a civil rights organization, serving as Push's CEO. Barrow was the godmother of President Barack Obama.[4]

Biography[edit]

Born Willie Beatrice Taplin in Burton, Texas, to Nelson, a minister, and Octavia Taplin, one of seven children. When she was 12, she organized a demonstration with fellow students to protest that white students were allowed to ride the bus, but black students had to walk to school. Barrow confronted the bus driver and demanded that he let her fellow students ride.[5] When the bus driver confronted her about it she said "Y'all can kill me if you want to. But I'm tired."[6] When Barrow turned 16, she moved to Portland, Oregon, to study at the Warner Pacific Theological Seminary (now Warner Pacific College). While still a student, Barrow and a group of black residents helped build one of the first black Churches of God in the city; she was ordained as a minister after graduation.[7] She started working as a welder during World War II at theKaiser Shipyards in Swan Island, Washington, where she met Clyde Barrow, whom she married in 1945 in Washington state. [8]
The couple moved to Chicago in the early 1940s, and Barrow attended the Moody Bible Institute to further her call to service. They lived on the South Side, and Barrow ran the youth choir at Langley Avenue Church of God. According to Barrow, she was approached by the minister to do some additional organizing for civil rights movement actions.[9] Barrow campaigned for Harold Washington who became the first Black Mayor of Chicago in 1983. In 1984 and 1988 she worked for Jesse Jackson's Presidential campaign. [10]

Awards and achievements[edit]

  • 2014 Champion of Freedom Award[11]
  • 2012 Bill Berry Award[12]
  • Woman of the Year of Chicago 1969[13]
  • Image award from League of Black Women
  • Christian Women's Conference History Makers Award
  • Doctor of Divinity Degree from Monrovia.
  • Libreria and Leadership Certificate from Harvard University
  • Indo-American Democratic Organization's Humanitarian of the Year Award
  • C.F. Stradford Award for her lifelong work on the front lines of the civil rights movement.[14]
  • 2006 Black Heritage Awardee[15]

Organizing[edit]

In the 1950s she worked with Martin Luther King and other Chicago ministers and activists as a field organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.[16] In the 1960s she helped organize the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket with Rev. Jesse Jackson.[17] She opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and led a delegation to North Vietnam in 1968.[5][18] She joined the National Urban League in 1943 and the National Council of Negro Women in 1945.[19][20] She was the godmother of President Barack Obama.[21] In 1973 she protested social services cuts by the Nixon administration. [13]

Intersectional activism[edit]

Barrow additionally was an activist for the LGBT community, which included fighting for HIV/AIDS victims. She also advocated for fair labor practices, took an anti-Vietnam war stance, and was vocal about women's rights. In a 1987 interview on Chicago Tonight she said, "You see ministers, they would rather have a minister who could not articulate and perhaps may not have even been called ... than to have an articulate woman that knows something about the rebirth of Christ and knows about the natural birth and the new birth. They would rather try to have a man articulate than a woman. ... As Jesse [Jackson] grew, his vision grew. Anytime that there was a committee was formed, it would be all men. I'd say 'Jesse, you haven an unbalanced committee. You've got to have some women.' ... He kept putting women on committees, kept making them managers ... then it became a habit, a part of his vision."

Significant events attended[edit]

Later years/Death[edit]

Each Saturday she would participate in demonstrations and she participated weekly in Rainbow/PUSH's events. She helped many people by writing checks to cover college tuition for them. She mentored over a hundred people in PUSH, helping them to move on to the next stage of the movement. Barrow was co-pastor of the Vernon Park Church of God in Chicago. She helped raise money for assisted living development in the south and to fund after school programs. [7] She had focused on gun violence in Chicago and changes to the Voting Rights Act that were taking away rights that the Selma marches helped create.[27] Barrow died of respiratory failure on March 12, 2015 at age 90 in Chicago. Following her passing, A tribute to her life was held at Operation PUSH headquarters ; Her funeral at her church Vernon Park Church of God.

__________________________________________________________________

Willie T. Barrow (Willie Beatrice Taplin) (b. December 7, 1924, Burton, Texas - d. March 12, 2015, Chicago, Illinois) was a civil rights activist who devoted her life to championing the rights of African Americans and working to improve their circumstances, both on the front lines of public demonstrations and as a mentor to generations of young activists.  Barrow engaged in her first act of protest as a child, when she sought to change the rule that required African American children to walk to school while European American children rode on school buses.  When she was 16 years old, she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she worked as a shipyard welder and attended Pacific Bible College (since 1959 Warner Pacific College).  She also organized and led an African American Church of God congregation.  Barrow relocated (in 1945) to Chicago and attended Moody Bible Institute.  By the 1950s, she had become a civil rights filed organizer for such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  She participated in such campaigns as the March on Washington (1963) and the Selma March (1965).  In the mid-1960s, she helped found the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket, which focused on increasing the hiring and promotion of African Americans.  Barrow worked with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson when he founded Operation PUSH (which also had the goal of economic empowerment in black communities), and she later served as the organization's executive director.  After the 1996 merger that created the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, she headed that group's governing board for 10 years.  In addition, Barrow was a vocal feminist and a supporter of gay rights.
__________________________________________________________________

Willie T. Barrow (Willie Beatrice Taplin),   (born Dec. 7, 1924, Burton, Texas—died March 12, 2015, Chicago, Ill.), American civil rights activist who devoted her life to championing the rights of African Americans and working to improve their circumstances, both on the front lines of public demonstrations and as a mentor to generations of young activists. Barrow engaged in her first act of protest as a child, when she sought to change the rule that required black children to walk to school while white children rode on school buses. When she was 16 years old, she moved to Portland, Ore., where she worked as a shipyard welder and attended Pacific Bible College (since 1959 Warner Pacific College); she also organized and led an African American Church of God congregation. Barrow relocated (1945) to Chicago and attended Moody Bible Institute. By the 1950s she had become a civil rights field organizer for such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She participated in such campaigns as the March on Washington (1963) and the Selma March (1965). In the mid-1960s she helped found the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket, which focused on increasing the hiring and promotion of African Americans. Barrow worked with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson when he founded Operation PUSH (which also had the goal of economic empowerment in black communities), and she later served as the organization’s executive director. After the 1996 merger that created the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, she headed that group’s governing board for 10 years. In addition, Barrow was a vocal feminist and a supporter of gay rights.
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