Summer Eleven

MOMS!!!!! This is a GREAT film to watch WITH your daughters!

Four inseparable 11-year-old girls share the last summer before middle school in this charming coming of age story. Vanessa (Alice Ziolkoski in her award-winning performance) is an aspiring actress up for her first feature film. Lizzie (Meaghan Hughes) tries to help her brother adjust to life at home after he returns from the war. Jess (Sarah Butterworth) struggles to cope with her parents’ separation.Peri (Sydney Fox), the new girl, hides a desperate secret. But as the summer unfolds, each girl finds the strength to face each challenge kno wing that best friends are always there for you…no matter what. Emmy-winners Adam Arkin and Valerie Mahaffey (Northern Exposure) costar in this uplifting film the Heartland Film Festival hailed as “Incredible…inspiring…excellent for families.”

BookPicks: The Friends Trilogy by Rosa Guy

The Friends, published in 1973, is the first in a trilogy of young adult novels portraying the interconnected relationship between two families, the Cathays and the Jacksons. Ruby (1978) and Edith Jackson (1979) complete the series. All three of the novels have received an American Library Association citation. Each is told from the perspective of the title character and focuses on different problems young black adolescents faced growing up in the 1960s.

The Friends

Everyone needs a friend. Phyllisia needs one when she first comes from the West Indies to live in New York. She can't pick and choose, though. She's an outsider. No one is very keen to befriend her. In fact they soon start to bully her because she's different.  Edith is the one girl who is prepared to befriend Phyllisia, but Phyllisia does not like Edith because Edith is "poor."   The two girls eventually become friends, but after a series of ups and downs Phyllisia recognizes that her own selfish pride rather created the gulf between her and her best friend.

Ruby

Ruby Cathy is 18, beautiful, and desperately lonely. Transplanted from her warm, sunny home in the West Indies to crowded, urban Harlem, she is forced to live under her father's stern, unyielding rule after her mother's death, Ruby feels left without friends, without comfort and without love. Then she meets Daphne Duprey, who is "cool, calm, cultured, sophisticated and refined" - everything Ruby is not. Together, Ruby and Daphne build a relationship that gives each young woman a new understanding of strength, friendship and love.

Edith Jackson

At seventeen, Edith's only wish is to get a job and make a home for her three younger sisters, and when social services finally separates them, she must make a decision that will change the course of her life.

Today in Women's History: Barbara Jordan

(born Feb. 21, 1936, Houston, Texas, U.S.—died Jan. 17, 1996, Austin, Texas) American lawyer, educator, and politician who served as U.S. congressional representative from Texas (1972–78). She was the first African American congresswoman to come from the Deep South.

Jordan was the youngest of three daughters in a close-knit family. As a high school student, she became a skilled public speaker, winning a national debate contest in 1952. She attended Texas Southern University in Houston, becoming a member of the debate team that tied Harvard University in a debate—one of her proudest college moments. Following graduation (magna cum laude in 1956), she attended Boston University Law School, where she was one of only two women—both African Americans from Houston—to graduate. She passed the Massachusetts bar exam but moved to Tuskegee Institute (later renamed Tuskegee University) in Alabama and taught there for one year before returning to Texas and gaining admittance to the bar there.

Jordan was an effective campaigner for the Democrats during the 1960 presidential election, and this experience propelled her into politics. In 1962 and 1964 she was an unsuccessful candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, but she was elected in 1966 to the Texas Senate, the first African American member since 1883 and the first woman ever elected to that legislative body.

Jordan's success in Texas politics came from her knowledge of and adherence to the rules of the political process. She went to great lengths to fit in and sought advice on committee assignments. Her own legislative work focused on the environment, antidiscrimination clauses in state business contracts, and urban legislation, the last being a political challenge in a state dominated by rural interests. She captured the attention of President Lyndon Johnson, who invited her to the White House for a preview of his 1967 civil rights message.

Jordan remained in the Texas Senate until 1972, when she was elected to U.S. House of Representatives from Texas' 18th district. In the House, Jordan advocated legislation to improve the lives of minorities, the poor, and the disenfranchised and sponsored bills that expanded workers' compensation and strengthened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to cover Mexican Americans in the Southwest.

Although she acquired a reputation as an effective legislator, Jordan did not become a national figure until 1974, when her participation in the hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon was televised nationwide. Her keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention confirmed her reputation as one of the most commanding and articulate public speakers of her era.

Jordan decided not to seek a fourth term and retired from Congress in 1979. In that year also she published Barbara Jordan, a Self-Portrait. She then accepted a position at the University of Texas, Austin, where she taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs until her death. Despite her absence from Washington, D.C., she remained influential in political affairs. In the 1990s she served as an adviser on ethics in government for Texas governor Ann Richards and also was chairman for the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. In 1992 she again gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.

Source: Biography.com

Bring MOOZ-Lum to Jackson

“Forget what you think you know... This film will open the minds and hearts of all people to a side of something that most here don’t understand”

MOOZ-lum is the story of a black family within the first large generation of Muslims born and raised in this country and the trials and tribulations faced while practicing Islamic faith in American Society.

The story is told through the eyes of Tariq Mahdi, a young man born and raised in a Muslim household along with his younger sister Taqua by their father Hassan and mother Safiyah. Hassan is determined to send Tariq to an Islamic school to learn the Quran, which Safiyah strongly objects to. When Hassan’s strict beliefs become too much for Safiyah’s liberal nature, she decides that she wants a divorce. Little do Tariq and Taqua know, the terms of the divorce are Tariq is to live with their father and Taqua with their mother. After the divorce, Hassan fulfills his plans for Tariq and sends him off to an Islamic boarding school.

Six years later, Tariq is a freshman in college living back in the area he grew up. Having been at the Islamic boarding school and under the strict environment laid out by his father, Tariq wants nothing to do with his Islamic past. Since the divorce, Taqua has not seen Tariq very often and their relationship has drifted apart. She decides to reach out to him and attempt to rebuild their once strong relationship. Upon reuniting, she realizes that Tariq’s attitude about Islam has been heavily affected by his time at the school and with their father, so she tries to open him up to different ways of viewing his beliefs and incorporating his faith into society.

Unknown to Tariq, his college experience is going to be beyond just academic enrichment. Taqua starts spending time with him on campus and opening him up to new experiences. His roommate, Hamza, is an Arab Muslim who also tries to reach out and connect with him but Tariq constantly tries to avoid him. He also has interactions with a professor who challenges the students to think broadly about religion and world views, but the professor has to deal with the political ramifications from the dean of the department who is constantly trying to hold him down.

Just as Tariq begins to grow as a person and open up to new ideas about his faith, the attacks on the World Trade Center take place. Immediately, the view of Muslims in America changes and some people begin to act on their anti-Islamic feelings. Their campus becomes an environment surrounded by violence and hate crimes.

At that moment, Tariq must make many critical decisions with his life, from dealing with a Muslim/Christian relationship he has with a young lady named Ayanna, trying to deal with the views of Islam that he knows while separating it from the ones created by 9/11, all while trying to protect Taqua from the dangers building on campus due to that tragic day.

Source: MOOZ-lum the Movie

Today in Women's History: Rosa Park

“I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”

Rosa Parks
February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005

Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1, 1955. That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This brave woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States. The school's philosophy of self-worth was consistent with Leona McCauley's advice to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were."

Opportunities were few indeed. "Back then," Mrs. Parks recalled in an interview, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down." In the same interview, she cited her lifelong acquaintance with fear as the reason for her relative fearlessness in deciding to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott. "I didn't have any special fear," she said. "It was more of a relief to know that I wasn't alone."

After attending Alabama State Teachers College, the young Rosa settled in Montgomery, with her husband, Raymond Parks. The couple joined the local chapter of the NAACP and worked quietly for many years to improve the lot of African-Americans in the segregated south.

"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP," Mrs. Parks recalled, "but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn't seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens."

The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause to the attention of the world. A Supreme Court Decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.

In 1957, Mrs. Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan where Mrs. Parks served on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor.

After the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. President Clinton presented Rosa Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

When asked if she was happy living in retirement, Rosa Parks replied, "I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is any such thing as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet."

Mrs. Parks spent her last years living quietly in Detroit, where she died in 2005 at the age of 92. After her death, her casket was placed in the rotunda of the United States Capitol for two days, so the nation could pay its respects to the woman whose courage had changed the lives of so many. She is the only woman and second African American in American history to lie in state at the Capitol, an honor usually reserved for Presidents of the United States.

Source: Academy of Achievement