THE JOURNEY OF BLACK AMERICAN ATHLETES

**  Isaac Murphy  -  Most popular black jockey, an American Hall of Famer, winning 3 major

                                   Kentucky Derbies.

**  Major Taylor  -  2 Time world cycling champion, 

**  Jack Johnson  -  First black Heavyweight world boxing champion, winning the title

                                   against Tommy Burns. It was the first major upheaval of Black athletes
                                   to demean the white boxing supremacy. He made mincemeat of white
                                   pretenders to heavyweight championship belt until a combination of age,
                                   lack of discipline, boxing commission conspiracies, caused him to lose the
                                   title against James Willard tiring out in the 26th round.

**  Paul Robertson -  The first black football star.

**  Satchell Paige   -  The first legendary baseball pitcher leading the Black Baseball League
                                     in the 1920's and 1930's.

**  Jesse Owens and John Woodruff  -  The first Black athletic stars that won golds in the
                                    1936 Berlin Olympics.  Jesse Owens won gold medal in the 100-meter
                                    and 200-meter dash and another gold medal in the Long Jump.
                                    John Woodruff won the gold medal in the 800-meter run.

**  Joe Louis        -    More popularly known as the "Brown Bomber", just as to tone down
                                    the Black supremacy in boxing. He reigned for 12 years, defending the
                                    World Heavyweight Championship a record of 25 times that up to this
                                    day has remained unbroken. Said to have been paid a measly 10 percent
                                    of his purse by his white managers, he was saddled with financial
                                    difficulties until his death in 1981.

**  Jackie Robinson  -  The first Black professional baseball player.  His life was made into
                                    a movie titled, " 42 ", that showed his struggles to attain superstardom
                                    despite the discrimination and abuses he received, even signing a contract
                                    that specified that he could not fight back and smile when winning.

**  Andrea Gibson  -  The first Black American to win the Wimbledon Tennis Championship.
                                    Tolerated but not embraced, the white were not ready to accept a black
                                    tennis pro-star in their rank.

**  Charlie Simpkins  -  The first black professional golf player in 1959. Golf was then
                                    viewed as a game for the elite with the "Caucasian Clause" that states
                                    that the game of Golf was for " White people only. "

**  Wilma Rudolf  -  The first female Black athlete. She won 3 gold medals in the 1960 Rome
                                   Olympics for the 100-meter and 200-meter dash, and the 400-meter run.

**  Cassius Clay  -   The most iconic Black figure in sports, dubbed as " The Greatest ", won
                                   the gold medal in the Light-heavyweight boxing division. He was the
                                   most written about Black athlete of the 20th century, whose career was
                                   interrupted by almost 4 years hiatus when he refused to be drafted.
                                   He later embraced the Islam religion, and carried on a glorious boxing
                                   career at the same time stepping up for the Black advocacy.

**  Jim  Brown  -   The first Black Football superstar from 1957 to 1965, leading the NFL
                                in the yardage length runs. Like Ali, he stood for the Black freedom rights
                                retired from football at the peak of his career to pursue movie stardom.

**  Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russel  -  It can be said that their rivalry, Los Angeles Lakers
                               against the Boston Celtics paved the way for Black dominance in basketball
                               as well as in other sports like football, athletics and boxing.

 **  Tommy Smith and Juan Carlos -  200-meter gold and bronze medal winners in the 1968
                              Mexico Olympics who were better known for their Black power salute while
                              the American national anthem was being played. It was one of the most
                              overtly political statement in the history of the olympics.

**  Hank Aaron  -  The first Black Baseball superstar. He broke Babe Ruth's record run

**  O. J. Simpson  -  First man to break Jim Brown's record run, and considered as one of
                              the best Pro-Football player of all time. His was the face of Professional
                              Football in the 1970's, the fame which also brought him Hollywood fame.


**  Insights  :

Athleticism is probably the best gift of the Black race.  Whatever sports that requires strength, agility and stamina, the Blacks were able to dominate. Basketball and football is a brand of sports that almost always have Blacks dominating every aspect of the game. In the 1960's, you would never imagine an American basketball olympic team composed of Black athletes.

The Blacks may not be as dominant today in boxing compared to the 1960's to the 1990's but still a great part of boxing champions and contenders are blacks. History may not be that kind to them in the past but the present as well as the future reserves a lot of golden pages in achievements not only in the field of Sports, but also in Music, Arts and Hollywood awards.  

ROOTS : ALEX HALEY

**  ROOTS  :  THE SAGA OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY  :

**  ABC adapted the book as a television mini-series of the same name an aired it 1977 to record breaking audience of 130 million.  In the United States, the book and the mini-series raised the public awareness of Black history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history.

**  Quotes  :

----------------

**  Kunta Kinte - a Mandingo tribesman who was abducted by Spanish slave-traders and brought

                             to America to be sold as slave. Alex Haley traced his roots from 5 generation

                             and found his roots in Gambia, West Africa.

**  Griot   --  A tribal oral historian who was trained from childhood to memorize the history

                       of  the tribe.

**  "  The white man gives you nothing.  They just grab at the chance to get their money back."

**  "  You've got to let them go.  The truth is that  they don't always come back.  There'll come

          a time when the only thing they are left to remember is the sweet-bitter good-bye. "

**  "  I'm going back to my red-neck, nigger-hating country. "

**  "  You can grow up, you can grow old and still don't know who you are. "

**  "  I saw a nigger in a funny monkey suit ! "  -  Alex Haley

**  "  I've been called "nigger" so many times I thought it was my name. "

**  "  If you're white, you're all right,

          if you're brown, you can hang around,

          but if you're black ... stand back.  "

Insights :
-----------
All along I thought the white Americans were the good guys, watching all those "Cowboy-Indian movies" where the Indians has to be killed to keep them from raiding, raping and killing white settlers who wanted to civilize the wild, wild west.  And then, the "Tarzan, king of the jungle" movies where the white Tarzan have to save the usually white settlers against the black savages and cannibals.

Roots - the series, revealed something I never knew the whites were capable of doing - treating the Negroes worse than animals. It started my curiosity to look into the history of the Black people and then more into something we could relate too - our own Philippine history, our enslavement from our colonial masters, their abuses, the massacres, and more ... 

THE PEOPLE VS. O.J. SIMPSON

** THE O.J. SIMPSON TRIAL  :

                                           A TV Netflix series : The People vs. O.J. Simpson

**  CAST OF  CHARACTERS  :  Cuba Gooding, Jr. ..................O.J. Simpson

                                                        Sterling K. Brown  ................ Christopher Darden

                                                        Kenneth Choi  ....................... Judge Lance Ito

                                                        John Travolta  ....................... William Shapiro

                                                        Nathan Lane ......................... Lee Bailey

                                                        Christian Clemenson ............ William Hodgman

                                                        Bruce Greenwood ................  Gil Garcetti

                                                        David Schwimmer ............... David Kardashian

                                                        Courtney B. Vance ............... Johnny Cochran

                                                        Sarah Paulson ....................... Prosecutor Marcia Clark

**  Celebrated as the Trial of the Century, run through 10 episodes :

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**  Quotes  :

** Johnny Cochran  -- Senior O.J. Analyst against racism 

                                 -- assisted by Carl Douglas and Shawn Chapman

**  Esoteric  --  intended for  or  likely to be understood by only a small number of

                           people with a specialized  knowledge or interest.

**  Media  ---  Hardworking folks who try to profit from other people's unfortunate tragedy

**  Racism  --  "  A darker black man is more dangerous than a black man, darker is guiltier,

                            blacker is badder. "

                    --  "  LAPD has a systemic racial problem, racial insensitivities

**  Max Fullerman  --  Detective assigned to the case, discovered everything, and

                                     an admitted racist

**  Gil Garcetti  -- The District Attorney assigned Marcia Clark to be prosecutor

                                                                  assisted by Christopher Darden

**  "  Don't refer to the Blacks as "these people"  or "you people"

**  "  His remarks are deeply demeaning to African- Americans.  It is preposterous to say

          that African- Americans collectively are so emotionally unstable that they cannot hear

          offensive words without losing their moral sense of right or wrong.  They live with

          offensive words, offensive looks, offensive treatment everyday. "

**  "  Injustice anywhere is a threat everywhere. "  --  Martin Luther King, Jr.

**  "  Today we make the jury think the cops lie about little things.  So tomorrow we could

          make the jury think that the cops also lie about big things. "

**  Cynical  --  believing that people are motivated by self-interest,

                          distrustful of human integrity.

THE MESSIAH

**  MESSIAH  :

**                     --  An American thriller web television series produced by Michael Petroni.
                              Stars Michelle Monaghan as CIA Case Officer Eva Geller investigating
                              the case of a man claiming to be the Messiah ( Medhi Debhi).

**  Quotes       "  When you're in the trenches, you must know who your enemies are. "

                         "  The CIA is like a Holy Order.  Its a doctrine that you live by.  People's
                             lives depend on the the decision that we make, the actions that we take."

                         "  The primary axis of world conflict after the cold war would be along
                             cultural and religious lines. "
                                                                           -- Clash of Civilization, Samuel Huntington

                         "  Catchers in the rye  -  trying to catch the children before they fall. "

                         "  Acolate  --  a person assisting a celebrant in a religious service or
                                                procession - assistant, helper, servant "

                         "  Cultural Terrorists  --  hooked the stock exchange
                             Everybody worships.  The only choice is what we worship.  Some people
                             kneel to money, some to power, some to intellect.  And then he goes on to
                             question the society that we live in, and the society that is driven by the
                             world of greed and money and power.  He does go on to say that the only
                             way to combat this is to create a healthy confusion, that sparks the need
                             to question. "
                                                                --  Oscar Wallace, author of Clash of Civilization

                         "  Confusion causing fear, making us question everything in search of
                             some sense. "

**  Vagabond  -  a person who wanders from place to place without a home
                           itinerant, wanderer,  nomad

BURNING KENTUCKY

**  BURNING  KENTUCKY  :

                           --  In the hazy mountains of eastern Kentucky, a young woman searches

                                for the missing pieces in the mysterious event that killed her family.

                                When the truth is revealed, she must choose between the love of a 

                                man or vengeance for her family.

                           --  Stars Jhn Pyper- Ferguson, Nick McCallum and Augie Duke

**  Quotes :

                      "  People tell a lot of stories.  And sometimes, when you get good at telling

                          stories, you get bad at telling the truth, or knowing what the truth looks like,

                          or caring about which is which. "

                      "  There are parts of our story that only I hold. "

                      "  Bottom-feeders, trap-setting, trailer-dwelling, toothless, 

                          sister-fucking murderers. "

                      "  I hate you because you're more like me than anything else in this earth. "

                                                                                               --  Father to son.

AMERICAN CHAOS : THE TRUMP TRIUMPH

STORYLINE  :

--------------------

A man searches for answers to Donald Trump's widespread support before the 2016 US presidential election.  " Something felt very wrong and I needed to find out why. "

Enter stage and film director and film producer Jim Stern ... a self-described political junkie. Listening to people, regular folks ... voters ... providing insights into their viewpoints. Seeing tens of thousands not believing what he believes in, he begun to realize why voicing out things that you don't usually hear from the media and internet web sites.

Atticus Finch  --  " You'll never really understand a person until you consider things from

                                  his point of view. "

From a voter  --  " I don't know what kind of president Trump will make but I know what kind

                              of president Hilary will make. "

Bestselling campaign t-shirt  --  " Hillary sucks but not like Monica ! "

 **  Sociological Imagination  --  Sociologist, to be able to get it right, you have to be able to 

                                                        step out of your narrow existence, your own narrow 

                                                        experience and sort of occupy this broader perspective

                                                        that allow you to see the bigger patterns of society.

                                                                                                                    -- C. Wright Mills

**  Trump philosophy  --  " You put a lock into your home so only those you want to come in

                                             may enter. "  His slogan appeals to reach out to disaffected white 

                                             voters who felt that they are somehow losing out because of 

                                             encroaching minorities and immigrants.

**  Everything is racist  --  " scape-goating" , to make America great again, and create a story

                                             of this mythic American past that was great for everyone.

**  "  The US can't go back in time before globalization. US has 5 percent of the world's

          population and they have to fit into the rest of the world. "

**  Sentiment Analysis  --  Trump has created a white man's world.

                                             This is a huge deal that's gonna spiral out of control in terms of

                                             what you have coming toward you. And that may be linked stories

                                             but we know that those are highly subjected chosen and planted.

                                             So the fake news phenomenon is just a manifestation of something

                                             that always existed, but its much glaring because of how these 

                                             platforms function -  FB, Googles and so on, whose content is 

                                             actually served to you based on your biases.

**  Democracy  --  is fundamentally about acceptance of multiple viewpoints and the ability to

                                rationally experience a world that's wider than your self. Its about an

                                atomized set of bubbles that you don't even know is constructed around you. 

HOMELAND

HOMELAND is an American spy thriller television series produced by Howard Gordon and Alex Mansa based on the Israeli series Prisoners of War.  The story centers on the CIA officer, Carrie Mathison, suffering from bipolar disorder who believes the US Marine sniper, recently rescued as a prisoner of war in Afghanistan, is a spy for Al Queda.

Cast of Characters :   Claire Danes .......................CIA officer Carrie Mathison

                                      Damian Lewis ....................US Marine Nicholas Brody

                                      Mandy Patinkin ..................CIA Director Saul Berenson

                                      Rupert Friend .....................CIA agent Peter Quinn

                                      F. Murray Abraham ........... CIA Sr. Officer Dar Adal

Quotes  :

------------

**   Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarter  --  Langley, Virginia

**   "  You don't have to be a terrorist, all you have to do is to look like one. "

**   "  PTSD  --  Post Traumatic Syndrome Disease

**   "  Once a scalp-hunter, always a scalp-hunter. "

**   "  Our strength is our suffering, and you provided us with your endless supply. "

**   "  You are all humanitarians when someone else is on trial. "

**   "  He has two secrets  --  One he is willing to share and one he is willing to die for. "

**   "  He will do anything, he will say anything, to keep himself in power. "

**   "  The simple answer is usually the correct one. "

**   "  Earthbound ... you're either born with wings or not. "

**   "  Hampered by suspicion that never goes away. "

**   "  Presidents don't get chances ... they get tested. "

**   "  You break it, you own it, you don't quit and run. "

**   "  The Secret Service --  That they're the only real measure of the nation's political health. 

           The one true expression of its subconscious. "

**   

BARRY - The Barrack Obama Story

A 2016 American drama film directed by Vibram Gandhi about Barrack Obama's life at Columbia University in 1981.  It dealt with his struggles as a junior facing up to the demands of getting an education and leveling with the white-dominated society. It dramatized his hardships in staying connected with his mother, his estranged father, and classmates. 

It starred Devon Terrel as the young Barrack Obama, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Charlotte, his white college sweetheart. He studied Political Science, off-campus played street ball and once in a while smoked pot with friends. as a young Obama, confusion lurked as to where he really belong, black or white, and having a rich white girlfriend, made it more complicated

**  Quotes  :

        "  You take the baton from the one who has come before and carry it as far as you can

            before you pass it on. "

                                              - Quoted by a black scholar when asked by Barry how he was

                                                able to go through life despite the racism. 

TINKER, THE MOVIE

A hermit farmer discovers his father's secret journal containing plans to a magnetic powered machine that could changed the world. Borne out of Nikolai Tesla's Agrosonic theory , that gplant growth could be accelerated a hundred times when sound interacts with sounds. The plot thickens when he made guardian to 6-year old boy who has recently lost his mother.

** Metamorphosis - with the butterfly as symbol of rebirth

** Quotes  :

          "  He's a little bit hard heart right now.  He loved very hard and sometimes it

              callouses people. "

          "  Blood has nothing to do with being a father ... a real father.  "

          "  The only thing a man has is his world.  "

JOHNNY CASH AND COUNTRY MUSIC

FOLSON PRISON BLUES :

"  The chance to make up for all the times I messed up "

--  Johnny  Cash

Country Music  --  A PBS Documentary  (Check at Youtube.com)

                            --  The population media dividing the country into those who embrace the

                                 future and those who cling on to the past

                            --  It was marketed as a nostalgic product from the beginning - so called

                                 old music despite being new.

                            --  Country music is probably the white man's soul music

                            --  Country music is full of songs about log cabins people have never lived in

                                 and old country church that people never attended

                                                                                                        --- ( Bill Malone )

                            --  Country music spoke for a lot of people who being forgotten,

                                 or felt they are being forgotten.   --  ( Bill Malone )

Country Music Artists  --  Blanco Brown,  Lil Nash,  Miranda Lambert,  Maureen Morris

                                           Loretta Lynn,  Ray Charles,  Kasey Musgraves