Latest news with #AmericanBlack
Scroll.in
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Start the week with a film: In ‘One of Them Days', two women go to hilarious lengths to pay the rent
Strange things happen on the first day of every month, it is said. And strange indeed is the day that awaits a waitress and her artist roommate. Dreux (Keke Palmer) shares her apartment in Los Angeles with her close friend Alyssa (SZA) and Alyssa's feckless boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua Neal). The ceiling is threatening to fall off and the air-conditioning doesn't work, but it is all the women can afford. Keshawn fritters away the money set aside for the rent, giving Dreux and Alyssa until nightfall to find a solution. Worse still, Keshawn is cheating on Alyssa with Berniece (Aziza Scott). One of Them Days was released in January in the United States to box office success. After a limited run in India, the film can be rented from BookMyShow Stream, YouTube Movies, Google Play and Apple TV+. Lawrence Lamont's female buddy comedy, based on a superb script by Syreeta Singleton, is the kind of culture-specific movie that is also universal. The travails of Dreux and Alyssa, who get increasingly desperate to gather the money needed to prevent eviction, are hilarious in an absurdist way while also being rooted in the American Black experience. Keke Palmer – the lovely actor from Jordan Peele's Nope (2022) – and SZA – the singer making her acting debut – are in perfect sync as the hapless heroines trying to make it through the longest day of their lives. The dynamic between Dreux and Alyssa is relatable, touching and always zany. The friends who are in peril of falling out with each other are accompanied on their adventures by an equally nutty bunch of characters. Berniece is as foxy as she is frightening. Patrick Cage plays the hunky Maniac, who distracts an always loquacious Dreux. Stand-up comedian Katt Williams has a cameo as a doomsday prophet. The movie's centrepiece revolves around an extended sequence in which Dreux and Alyssa apply for a loan with credit scores so low that the staffer splits her sides. As a viewer, it is impossible not to join in. Play 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi' is an ode to personal and political passions
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
U.S. Navy's newest replenishment oiler to honor Black civil rights activist Sojourner Truth
April 25 (UPI) -- The U.S. Navy on Saturday plans to christen the future Sojourner Truth, a John Lewis-class fleet replenishment oiler that honors the famous American Black woman, in San Diego. The ship is named in honor of Sojourner Truth, a 19th-century civil rights abolitionist and activist from New York. "This ship honors the legacy of a woman of great character and determination and the ship will bring the critical capacity needed to the fleet in often rapidly changing environments," John Lighthammer, program manager, said in June 2024 when the keel was laid. The ceremony will be livestreamed and is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. PDT. Ship sponsor Barbara Allen, a sixth-generation descendant of the ship's namesake, will christen the ship by breaking a bottle of sparkling wine across the bow. Isabella Baumfree gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave New York and go into the countryside. She was born into slavery in Swartekill, N.Y., in 1797, and escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. She became the first Black woman to win such a case against a White man in 1828. She died in 1883 at age 86. There is an exhibit about her at the Smithsonian National Women's History Museum in Virginia. It is part of the Smithsonian. Brett Seidle, the under secretary of the Navy, will deliver the principal address, followed by remarks from Vice Adm. John Wade, commander, U.S. Third Fleet; Capt. Micah Murphy, commander of Military Sealift Command in the Pacific; and Dave Carver, president of General Dynamics NASSCO. The U.S. Navy in 2016 announced T-AO 210 would be named after her. Construction on the future ship began on March 27, 2023. The replenishment oilers are operated by Military Sealift Command and feature oil as well as significant dry cargo capacity. In May 2024, the U.S. Navy took delivery of the first fleet replenishment oiler, USNS Earl Warren, named after the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice. Three are under construction in San Diego by General Dynamics and two others are planned. They are a cornerstone of the Navy's fuel delivery system and "essential to sustaining contested logistics, enabling lethality even in sea-denied environments," according to a news release. In addition, they have aviation capability and provide additional capacity to the Navy's Combat Logistics Force. A Block Buy contract was issued in September 2024 for the detail design and construction of T-AO 214-221.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Black farmers' heirs challenge USDA payments at federal appeals court in Cincinnati
CINCINNATI — When Johnny Gray was born in 1952, his family expected he'd grow up and become a farmer just like his dad. But things didn't work out that way. It wasn't that Gray didn't want to stay in the family business. He'd grown up working alongside his father, Joseph, on a 40-acre plot his grandparents owned in Phillips County, Arkansas, where his dad cultivated cotton. 'He was such a good farmer,' Johnny Gray said of his late dad. 'But every time he would apply for a loan, he would go in and they would tell him, 'It's not come in yet, it's not come in yet.'' Because he never got support, Joseph Gray eventually lost the family land and his son lost his dream. It's a familiar story among families of American Black farmers, who endured more than a century of systemic discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Many were denied USDA low-interest loans and grants afforded to white farmers. Under former President Joe Biden, the agency launched the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program to provide monetary help to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners who were discriminated against prior to 2021. Gray and hundreds of others expected the program to help people like him – the heirs of late farmers who'd been discriminated against – but they've hit a snag: The USDA insists that only people still alive can apply for the program. This doesn't sit well with people like Thomas Burrell, president of the Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association, who said discriminatory practices denied farmers' heirs generational wealth. 'What is the purpose of saying on one hand, we're going to go back and cover discrimination that happened 20, 30, 40 years ago but not pay the heirs?' Burrell said. Burrell and more than a dozen farmers, many of whom traveled from out of state to attend what they deemed an historic hearing, gathered at the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse, where the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on the matter Thursday. Percy Squire, a Columbus-based attorney representing the farmers, centered his argument on 'legacy claims.' 'You have people who were farming in the '50s and the '40s and the '30s who were discriminated against, who had to sell their farms, had to sell land in order to survive, and those people's estates should be eligible for financial assistance because their heirs would have benefited from that,' Squire told The Enquirer. He said similar USDA programs have allowed for heirs of other minorities to at least apply for relief. 'They wouldn't even accept the applications' from Black farmers' heirs, he said. 'They could have accepted them and denied them, but they wouldn't even accept them.' The government's attorney, Jack Starcher, argued to the appellate court's three-judge panel that the program applications were only open to 'living farmers, the actual people who experienced discrimination.' Those blocked from submitting applications could still choose to sue the government, Starcher said. The appellate panel heard arguments from both sides and peppered the lawyers with questions. "How can you provide an assistance to someone that's deceased," asked Judge Andre Mathis, who's weighing the case alongside judges Chad Readler and Helene White. Squire acknowledged that the assistance would go to the dead farmers' heirs, but he said assisting still-living-yet-elderly applicants would also benefit heirs. The federal program in question was passed in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, through which Congress allocated $2.2 billion. In August, the Biden administration announced it had issued payments to 43,000 people in all 50 states, in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $500,000. "No matter how it is sliced, the $2.2 billion in payouts is historic," John Boyd, president of the Black Farmers Association, said at the time. People gathered for Thursday's arguments still applauded those payouts while arguing that the USDA was wrong to prohibit heirs from applying for them. "We are here because our parents died before they got anything," said Shirley Frierson, 70, whose mother, Beatrice McIntosh, farmed land as a sharecropper in Lexa, Arkansas. The panel isn't expected to render a decision for months. If it sides with the Black farmers, the program would have to reopen applications, which closed last January. 'I came here to stand behind what is right,' said Nimon Willis, a former farmer from Memphis who attended the hearing with his wife, Mary, the daughter of sharecroppers. 'I know they really don't want to give us anything, but we're here to make a stand.' According to USDA data, there were nearly 47,000 producers who identified as Black in the U.S. in 2022. Texas had the highest number, at about 11,500. Ohio's number of Black farmers has dwindled from about 2,000 at the turn of the 20th century to fewer than 350 today, according to The Nature Conservancy. Kentucky numbers were slightly higher at about 430 Black farmers, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Heirs of Black farmers challenge USDA in federal court hearing
