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Thursday, February 14, 2013

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott


Okay...so today is February 14. And, apparently it's a day that is supposed to be about true love and devotion, when in reality, it's all about making sure that you buy jewelry, roses, and chocolate hearts filled with Reese's Peanut Butter.

But, in today's blog, I want to do my Thursday Diary Entry on somebody incredibly special. Someone whose face has been associated with the modern civil rights movement. Someone who stood up for her rights, and ended up changing the course of history forever.

And, if I ever fell in love with someone who had the same strong determination for what she believed in...I could consider myself lucky.

February 14, 2013

It has been quite a long time since I have boarded a bus. Do you know that?

Of course, I currently live in a small community where bus service runs for a limited amount of time (I can't say for certain, but I'm probably not wrong in saying that buses in town rarely run past seven o'clock in the evening on weekdays). And besides, in my town, I can get to almost anywhere I want to go in as little as half an hour by walking.

Back in the days when I used to live in Ottawa, Ontario (circa 2001), I would ride OC Transpo nearly every day to get to where I wanted to go. It was a really easy system to navigate back in those days (though I am sure that there will be some who will disagree with me). You would give the bus driver your bus fare (or bus pass if you owned one), and you would get a ticket. That ticket doubled as a bus transfer pass, so that if you needed to change bus routes during your trip, you could within a two-hour window.

Some people in Ottawa really hated taking the bus, and you could definitely see it in their faces as they squeezed into the available seats. I can understand, having been one who frequently had to stand in the aisles of the bus because there weren't enough seats available. But the thing is that I didn't mind. It was cool to look around the bus and see people of all different backgrounds chatting away.

It just seems so hard to believe that there was once a time in history in which that wasn't always the case.

Take the city of Montgomery, Alabama for example in...oh, let's go with 1955. Back in those days, the ugliness known as segregation was rearing its ugly head. Kids who were white could ride the bus to their schools while black kids had to walk. There were separate eating establishments and boutiques for people depending on what colour their skin was. Believe it or not, even drinking fountains were segregated. It was not a great time period in history, and I can't even begin to imagine how hard it was for people who were of African-American descent back in those days.

Even seats on buses were assigned according to race. In most cases, the front seats of the bus were reserved for white people, while people of colour were seated at the back of the bus. Most of the times, this went without incident, but if more white passengers were on the bus at the time, then the sign that divided the seats was pushed back by the bus driver in order to accommodate the white riders. If you happened to be black, you did not get the same treatment. In fact, black passengers had to enter the bus through the rear door instead of the side door! It seems absolutely crazy to picture passengers boarding a bus from the rear, but back in the 1950s, it was normal. It was unfortunately also normal for black passengers to be thrown off the bus if the bus was overcrowded.

And, this was the case until December 1, 1955, when one woman decided that she wasn't going to take it anymore.



Mind you, this was not the first instance in which Rosa Parks fought back against the unjust laws surrounding the public transit system and its laws in Montgomery, Alabama. Twelve years earlier, in 1943, a thirty-year-old Parks boarded the bus, paid her fare, and sat down in the section reserved for black passengers. However, she had entered through the side door of the bus instead of the rear entrance, and the bus driver on duty, James F. Blake, told her to follow the city rules. Parks left the bus and approached the back of the bus...only for the bus to pull away before she could get back inside. She ended up having to walk home in the rain. Nice, huh?

Well, wouldn't you know it? A dozen years later, and she found herself once again on a bus driven by James F. Blake. And, this time around, she was not going to let him walk all over her.

On that fateful December day in 1955, Parks once more paid her fare and sat down in the row that was directly behind the “whites-only” section of the bus. During the course of the ride, the seats that were reserved for white passengers filled up very quickly, and by the time that the bus pulled up for its third stop of the route, there was a problem.

The bus driver had noticed that the entire white section of the bus was filled, and that two or three white passengers were left standing in the aisle of the bus. So, Blake got up once the bus was stopped, moved the “Coloured People Only” sign back a row (the same row that Parks was seated in), and ordered the four black passengers in the row to give up their seats so that the white passengers could sit down, keeping in mind that if any of the black passengers refused to give up their seats, they could be arrested and sent to jail.

With the threat of an arrest record, three of the four passengers immediately forfeited their seats. Wanna take a stab as to which one didn't move?

Rosa Parks had just worked a super long day. She was not about to give up her seat as quickly as the others. If anything, she moved to a window seat so that it would make it harder to get out! Blake was furious, and practically ordered Parks to give up her seat, but she was not going to. She was tired of being pushed around, and she was tired of having to settle for second-best because of the colour of her skin. She wanted equality for everyone.

Blake even threatened to call the police on Parks if she didn't move. And when Parks held firm on her stance, that's exactly what Blake did. She later explained in her autobiography “My Story” that the reason she chose not to give up her seat wasn't because she was physically tired. She was tired of giving in to the social stigma that seemed to be present throughout the Southern states during the mid-1950s.



Parks was charged with a violation of the segregation law of the Montgomery city code (even though she technically didn't break a law as she was sitting in a seat reserved for a black person before the bus driver moved the sign), and you can see her mugshot above.

But if you think the story ends here...you're mistaken.



The arrest of Rosa Parks prompted the event known as the “Montgomery Bus Boycott”.

The plans for the boycott began preparations on December 4, 1955 (three days after Parks was arrested). Jo Ann Robinson (a member of the Women's Political Council) mimeographed several thousand copies of the paper announcing the boycott, and the paper was distributed around black churches. The announcement also made the pages of “The Montgomery Advertiser”, and the people who lead the boycott made it clear that it would continue until black bus drivers were hired, and until seating was given on a first come, first serve basis.

On December 5, 1955 (the same day as Rosa's trial), the boycott officially began, and although there was a bad rainstorm that day, African-American passengers stayed off the buses. Some carpooled, some took cabs, but the majority of the people opted to use their feet. Some people even walked to their destinations for miles and miles, just to support Rosa Parks!

And, do you know just how long that boycott lasted? Three hundred and eighty-one days! That's just a little over one year! Can you imagine just how much money that system lost because of this? Kind of makes one rethink the whole idea of segregation, doesn't it?



In the end, the boycott was well worth it. On December 21, 1956, a new law was passed, which allowed Montgomery's public transit system to become completely integrated. Of course, while Rosa Parks' standoff on the bus kickstarted the movement, it was helped along by the Montgomery Improvement Association, which among others had a future civil rights activist on its team...Martin Luther King Jr.



As for Parks...well, she was charged with disorderly conduct, and violating a local ordinance, and after a trial that lasted a mere half hour, she was fined ten dollars, plus an additional four more for the trial cost. But her arrest also helped integrate an entire city's transportation system. So, I suppose it was a nice tradeoff.

Now, Rosa and her husband had to leave Montgomery in 1957 after they both lost their jobs because of the case...but they eventually settled in Detroit, Michigan, where Parks lived the rest of her life. She suffered a lot of hardships during her time in Michigan (including losing her husband, brother, and mother all died within a very short period), but she was always a crusader for the civil rights movement. She worked for an African-American United States Representative named John Conyers as his secretary until the 1980s, and co-founded the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation in 1980. She was a co-founder of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in 1987, and published two memoirs in 1992 and 1995, detailing her life and times. I would actually encourage everyone to read both books, because she was one interesting lady.

Perhaps one of the coolest stories that I remember hearing happened in 1994, when the Ku Klux Klan wanted to purchase a stretch of Interstate 55 for clean-up. The state government of Missouri couldn't refuse the KKK's sponsorship...but they could decide what to name the stretch of road. And, so, the stretch of highway was renamed “Rosa Parks Highway”!

How's that for irony?

Rosa Parks passed away of natural causes in Detroit, Michigan on October 24, 2005 at the age of 92. And, in those ninety-two years, she helped change the face of the world forever simply by refusing to give up her seat on a bus fifty years earlier. I only wish that I could do something half as memorable if I ever live that long.

This past February 4, Rosa Parks would have turned one hundred years old. And, because of that, several places all over the world held 100th birthday celebrations in memory of Rosa and her contributions. But, I'm sure that if Rosa were still alive today, she'd probably act all embarrassed by the honour. After all, she never did what she did for the fame, or the money, or the personal karma. She did it to make it easier for people of all races to enjoy life and live life, and not have to worry about who they were any longer.



Rosa Parks...I salute you.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Potato Chips - Good To The Last "Crum"


I have a feeling that before this entry is out, I will be looking at a particular snack food a lot differently. And, I also have a feeling that when it comes to the story behind the invention of said item, it may open up some discussion about who “really” came up with the idea. From the various amount of sources that I have found, many seem to point to one man in general, and it is enough reason for me to spotlight this tasty treat as part of our special look at “Black History Month”, though some people have tried to dispute that claim.

And, yes, I will be talking more about that as we proceed.

I know that this is the day in which I am supposed to be featuring a toy, a game, or a book in this space. But, I was also thinking to myself that it has been a really long time since I put a food item in the blog as a spotlight. I almost considered making one of the days of the week a food themed day, but I didn't think I would have enough topics to make it last. However, I will say that today's topic was inspired by a Facebook application/contest that I decided to enter on a whim. Heck, the grand prize is cash if your entry is selected, so what do I have to lose right?



Today's entry is all about the snack treat (and sometimes food) known as the potato chip.

Now, I won't link to this contest that inspired the selection of topic for today (mainly because I don't want any competition), but the contest allows you to create your own brand new flavour of potato chip. If you come up with the most creative flavour, they will not only give you money for the idea, but they will also manufacture the flavour and have it be readily available for public consumption.

As far as I know, you can enter as many flavours as you want, so I decided to submit a couple of entries. One was Canadian Pizza, and the other one was Spaghetti and Meatballs. As far as I know, they do not have either one of those flavours in any chip form, so I think that it would be interesting to try and replicate it.

But even if my flavours are not selected as the winning entry, at least I tried. These days, you can find potato chips in almost every flavour underneath the sun. Of course, the most basic flavour is original, but I've seen Barbecue, Sour Cream and Onion, Cheddar, Dill Pickle, Salt and Vinegar, Au Gratin, Roasted Chicken, Guacamole, Jalapeno, Sea Salt and Pepper, and Ketchup.

And, that's not even counting tortilla chips, corn chips, pretzel chips, and Ritz Chips.



These days, I really don't eat that many potato chips. When I was a child, I loved them a little too much. You know that slogan that Lay's had? The one that went “betcha can't eat just one”? That was true with me...only in my case, that slogan was amended to “betcha can't eat just one bag”!



But considering that I am trying my best to avoid junk food, I have limited myself to only eating Baked Lay's Dill Pickle chips. They might not be the most healthiest option out there, but at least they're slightly better than the full fat potato chips.

And, yes, I am totally justifying my stance on Baked Lay's.  

So, this leads to the question...how did the potato chip come to be?

Well, I believe that I have found an answer. It's the one that appeared the most in all of the sources that I have come across...and just to verify it as being mostly true, I logged onto snopes.com to make sure that it wasn't an urban legend. It seems to be a mostly true encounter, so I'm going with it.

We're going to go back to the summer of 1853 for this tale, which takes place inside of a restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York.



The restaurant was located inside the Moon's Lake House, and the head chef at the time was African-American George Crum.

On one particular August day in 1853, it began normally, and it was business as usual...until Crum had an encounter with a rather unhappy customer. The diner had ordered a plate of french fries with his meal, but when Crum served them, the customer was angered at the quality of the fries, stating that they were cut too thick and that they were much too soggy. The customer was insistent that Crum take them back and prepare them differently.

Now, I don't know about you, but one of the last things that I would do is send back a meal if it wasn't cooked properly. Because depending on the attitude of the chef cooking the meal, I would probably be afraid that they would spit on the food, drop it on the floor, or sabotage it in a way that I would be eating something disgusting, and I would never know the difference. Of course I am not suggesting that all chefs would do this...but I've heard of examples where this is the case.

The reason why I bring this up is because George Crum did not take too kindly to the customer sending back his food. And, George decided that he was so angry at the customer that he would send him out a treat that he would never forget.

Since the customer wanted his fries to be cut a lot thinner than what he was given, George obliged in a huge way, cutting them paper thin in thickness. He then over-fried them purposely so that the potato would appear incredibly crispy. No soggy mess that way! To top it all off, George liberally seasoned them with approximately twice as much salt as to what he would normally use, in order to make them especially unappetizing.

Or, so he thought.

When Crum brought out his newest culinary condition to the disgruntled diner, he believed that he had executed the perfect payback against the person who dared insult his cooking. He waited with baited breath expecting the customer to exclaim that his dish was the worst thing ever.

However, to Crum's shock, the minute he tried one, he responded with a smile. He thought that they were the most delicious things that he had ever tasted, and promptly finished the rest of them.

So, Crum decided to take his new creation and profit off of them. After all, if they had the power to turn a constant complainer into a satisfied customer, they just had to be worth trying to make a living off of, right?



Marketing his new creation as “Saratoga Chips” (named after the geographic location where they were made), they quickly became a popular item on the menu, and the resulting profits were enough for Crum to open up his own restaurant in the 1860s.

Saratoga Chips remained popular throughout the Prohibition Era (I suppose substituting the vice of liquor with the vice of junk food is one way to deal with it). Soon after, an entrepreneur by the name of Herman Lay decided to market the product in the Southwest United States, and soon after, the product became well known as a global snack food. Why else do you think that the Frito-Lay company is one of the largest manufacturers of potato chips today?

Of course, as the snopes.com entry on the potato chip reads, every true story leaves some room for embellishment. And sure enough, there have been several urban legends that have been associated with this factual account, such as the following.



01- Saratoga/Potato Chips were once marketed as being an aphrodisiac. Now, I have no idea how truthful this was because I was not alive during the Prohibition era. However, I cannot recall ever being put in the mood because I happened to come across a bag of Lay's Sour Cream and Onion potato chips. Especially since Sour Cream and Onion potato chips cause you to require half a package of Tic Tacs to get rid of the aftertaste!



02- According to some legends, the cranky customer that cranked Crum's chain all those years ago was a famous face...railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. While it would have been a fascinating angle to an already fascinating account, it is sadly not true. In all likelihood, that cranky customer was just an average Joe. The kind that you might see at the Target customer service desk trying to explain how the item he was trying to return was brand new despite the fact that 8-track tapes have been out of style since the 1970s.

03- There have even been reports that Crum was not the actual founder of potato chips. There are some sources that state that it was actually his sister who created the dish, while others report that the Crum family had no ties to the discovery at all, with the potato chip being reportedly created long before the Saratoga Chip came to be. But, I'm going to give Crum the benefit of the doubt and name him as the sole creator. I found more evidence to support Crum than refute him while researching this blog entry.

So the next time you find yourself eating a potato chip, thank George Crum. Certainly a detail of “Black History Month” that can make your mouth water.

And, since we're talking about chips, how about some more facts about them to close this entry off?

  • Americans reportedly eat more than 1.2 billion potato chips each year!
  • March 14 is known as “National Potato Chip Day”!
  • The first potato chip factory was built by Cleveland's William Tappenden in 1895.
  • It takes nearly a thousand pounds of potatoes to make 350 pounds of chips.
  • While Canada and the United States call potato chips “chips”, in the UK and Australia, they are known as crisps (mainly because those countries refer to french fries as chips).
  • Apparently Canada isn't the only country to have unique flavours of chips. You can apparently buy them in paprika, mint (India), Kebab (Egypt), and mayonnaise (Japan) flavours.
  • Engineering professor William Lee actually holds a patent in potato chip technology!



  • Have you wondered how Pringles were made? They're actually dehydrated mashed potatoes that have been reconstituted into a dough!

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

February 12, 1946


Sometimes in order to appreciate what we have in the present, we have to take a trip back to a time in which things weren’t always so nice and diplomatic.  Such is the case with our look back on February 12.  And, since you already know that this is the special “Black History Month” that the blog is observing all month long, you know that it has something to do with that.

Before we begin that discussion though, we have some other things to get out of the way first.  I hope you will all join me in wishing the following famous faces a happy February 12 birthday.  Happy birthday to Franco Zeffirelli, Joe Garagiola, Charles Van Doren, Maurice Filion, Annette Crosbie, Bill Russell, Joe Don Baker, Judy Blume, Ray Manzarek (The Doors), Moe Bandy, Maud Adams, Cliff DeYoung, Ray Kurzweil, Mike Robitaille, Michael Ironside, Steve Hackett (Genesis), Michael McDonald, Joanna Kerns, Nabil Shaban, Robin Thomas, Bill Laswell, Chet Lemon, Arsenio Hall, Brian Robertson (Thin Lizzy), Bobby Smith, Larry Nance, Sigrid Thornton, George Gray, Ed Lover, Jacqueline Woodson, Michel Petit, Ruben Amaro Jr., Christine Elise, John Michael Higgins, David Westlake, Josh Brolin, Gregory Charles, Chynna Phillips, Meja, Brad Werenka, Jim Creeggan (Barenaked Ladies), Scott Menville, Ajay Naidu, Tara Strong, Scot Pollard, Jimmy Conrad, Jesse Spencer, Sarah Lancaster, Christina Ricci, Carlton Brewster, Brad Keselowski, Peter Vanderkaay, Saskia Burmeister, Mike Posner, and Jennifer Stone.

And, here’s a list of some of the events that happened throughout world history today.

1541 – The city of Santiago, Chile is founded by Pedro de Valdivia

1554 – Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason just one year after claiming the throne of England – for a total of nine days

1733 – James Oglethorpe founds the colony of Georgia (the last of the Thirteen Colonies), and also founds the first city in Georgia (Savannah)

1771 – Gustav III becomes the King of Sweden

1809 – English naturalist Charles Darwin and future American President Abraham Lincoln are both born on this date

1816 – The oldest working opera house in Europe (The Teatro di San Carlo) is destroyed by fire

1832 – Ecuador annexes the Galapagos Islands

1851 – Edward Hargreaves announces that he has found gold in Bathurst, Australia, kicking off the Australian gold rush

1855 – Michigan State University is founded

1894 – Anarchist Emile Henry throws a bomb inside Paris, France’s “Cafe Terminus”, killing one and injuring twenty

1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded

1914 – The first stone of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. is placed

1934 – The Austrian Civil War begins

1935 – USS Macon crashes into Pacific Ocean and sinks

1947 – A meteor crashes into the Soviet Union near Sikhote-Alin, leaving a large crater behind

1968 – Phong Nhi and Phong Nhat massacre

1974 – The 1970 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, is exiled from the Soviet Union

1976 – Actor Sal Mineo is stabbed in West Hollywood, and dies of his stab wounds at the age of 37

1990 – Carmen Lawrence becomes the first female Premier in Australian history

1994 – A group of four men break into the National Gallery of Norway and make off with Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”

1999 – Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial

2000 – Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz passes away in Santa Rosa, California at the age of 77, just one day before his final Peanuts strip runs

2002 – The trial of Slobodan Milosevic begins

2004 – San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom directs the city to begin granting licenses for same-sex marriages

2009 – Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashes into a house in Clarence Center, New York, killing one on the ground and all passengers aboard

2011 – The writer of this blog undergoes a critical surgery which saw him lose his entire gall bladder and one-quarter of his liver

(Hey, it’s important to me...why wouldn’t I celebrate it?  J )

2012 – A primary election is held in Venezuela to choose the opponent of Hugo Chavez

So, as you can see, that is a lot of history associated with the 12th of February.  But there’s one more event that I really want to talk about in greater detail.  And, this look back in the Tuesday Timeline this week is a story that is not a pleasant one to hear.  But as I talked about at the beginning of this blog entry...sometimes you have to look at some of the most disgusting events of our past in order to truly embrace the things that we all have now.



We’re going back to February 12, 1946 in this look back through time.  And this story begins in the state of South Carolina, where a young man named Isaac Woodard was making his way on a Greyhound bus to visit relatives in North Carolina.  He had boarded the bus from Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, and aside from an argument with the bus driver in which he requested to use a restroom the bus ride wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

That is, until the bus made a trip through the area now known as Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina, and an incident happened that would change Woodard’s life forever.

The bus driver had contacted the local police (which at that time included Chief of Police Linwood Shull), and the police boarded the bus with the purpose of forcibly removing Woodard from the bus.  The police had insisted on seeing Woodard’s discharge papers, as Woodard had been given an honorable discharge from the United States Army.

Just to backtrack a little bit before I continue with the story, Isaac Woodard served in the armed forces between 1942 and 1946, where he served as a longshoreman in a labor battalion.  During his time in the forces, he was bestowed several honours which included a battle star, a Good Conduct Medal, a Service Medal, and a World War II Victory Medal.  So, we have a real war hero in our tale.

So, how was this veteran treated by the police force back in 1946?  Well, once he was escorted off the bus, he was taken into an alleyway, repeatedly beaten with the nightsticks of the policemen, and arrested on the alleged charge of drinking beer in the back of the bus with other soldiers.


There were no reports of any provocation by Woodard to justify the amount of force that was used against him by the police officers who beat him, but one thing remained clear.  The attack caused Woodard enough damage that he was left with only mild recollections of what really happened that day.  What was worse, the attack left Woodard permanently blinded, due to the damage that was caused to his eyes after being repeatedly beaten.

The morning after the attack, Woodard was brought into the judge’s chambers, where he was fined fifty dollars after the judge ruled that he was guilty.  Still in rough shape, Woodard asked to see a doctor, and he eventually did...two days later!  He eventually did get some treatment at a South Carolina hospital, but by then, it was too late to reverse the damage caused to his eyes.

It actually took twenty-one days before any of Woodard’s relatives discovered him at the hospital, and was rushed immediately to an Army hospital to recover.

But this was one case that refused to die.  And with Woodard’s case being covered extensively in the media, and the NAACP campaigning for the state of South Carolina to address the issue, the public outcry began to grow from a whisper to a shout.


Woodard’s story became so huge that even broadcaster/filmmaker Orson Welles voiced his displeasure, openly calling for punishment against those who perpetrated the assault against Woodard, and also criticized the reaction of the Governor of South Carolina for attempting to sweep the case under the rug. 


Seven months after the attack on Woodard, on September 19, 1946, NAACP Executive Secretary Walter Francis White met with President Harry S Truman at the White House to discuss the case, and Truman reportedly exploded in a rage after he found out that the government of South Carolina did nothing to aid Woodard.  One day after that meeting, Truman composed a letter to Attorney General Tom C. Clark demanding that action be taken to address the state’s reluctance to take the case to trial, and less than a week later directed the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation on the case.

The case took a twist on October 2, 1946, when Shull and his officers were indicted in U.S. District Court in the city of Charleston, South Carolina.  Because the beating has occurred at a bus stop on federal property, and because Woodard was in uniform when the beating happened, the courts felt that there was enough reason to start up a trial. 

Unfortunately, the trial was a failure of epic proportions.

The trial (which was presided by Judge Julius Waties Waring) featured a local U.S. Attorney failing to interview any witnesses (aside from the bus driver who drove the bus that fateful February day in 1946).  This decision alone earned the wrath of Waring, who was a civil rights proponent.  In fact, Waring was later noted as making a statement that he was “disgusted by the hypocrisy of the government”.

The defense attorneys were no better in the case, with one even going so far as uttering racial slurs at Woodard...something that Judge Waring put a stop to almost immediately, and making comments to the jury that if they ruled against Shull, that South Carolina should secede from the union.

Shull, for his part, denied any wrongdoing after hearing Woodard testify as to what happened on February 12, 1946.  He claimed that Woodard had threatened to shoot him, and that was what provoked the attack.  He also admitted to repeatedly striking Woodard in his eyes.

Sounds open and shut, right?

The jury deliberated for thirty minutes before coming back with a “not guilty” verdict for Shull, despite his admission that he was responsible for blinding Woodard.  The failure to convict Shull was seen as a failure on the part of the Truman administration, and frankly, I would imagine that the verdict left behind a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths.  Though Truman would end up getting re-elected (barely) in 1948, he was still challenged because of his fight for civil rights, and his approval rating plummeted.

However, the case did inspire a couple of positive changes.


Truman promulgated Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, which was put in place to ban racial discrimination against soldiers of African-American descent in the Armed Forces.  The case of Isaac Woodard inspired Welles to make a film based on the events, 1958’s “Touch of Evil”.  And, Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded a song entitled “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard”, which he performed to a crowd of 36,000 people at Lewisohn Stadium, which netted him the loudest applause he had ever gotten in his whole career!

As for the key players in the case, Linwood Shull remained in Batesburg, South Carolina and died at the age of 95 in December 1997.  Isaac Woodard relocated to New York City shortly after the trial to live out the rest of his days.  He died on September 23, 1992 in The Bronx, New York at the age of 73.  He was buried with military honours at the Calverton National Cemetery in Calverton, New York.

What happened to Isaac Woodard in February 1946 was unimaginable, and incredibly unjust.  But what was most horrifying about the whole situation was that back then, this was considered to be absolutely normal!  Do any of you think that this would have happened had Woodard been white?  I have a hard time swallowing that one.

However, it was because of this incident that the Civil Rights Movement began to find its voice and make themselves heard.  And though it was too late to help Woodard, I’m sure that over the years that have passed since, there have been great steps to ensure that these events happen a lot less frequently.

Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world, and there are still cases of people being discriminated against because of the colour of their skin, or their sexuality, or something else that they have no control over.  But thanks to what happened with Isaac Woodard, people no longer have to suffer in silence.

I guess if you want to look at it this way, Woodard gave up his sight, so that others could find their voices.

And, that’s what happened on February 12, 1946.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?


Hello, everyone! Are you ready to kick off another week?

I know, I know...some of you already have the Monday doldrums. I know what you're saying. Some of you hate Mondays so much that you actually make Garfield the cat look pleasant.

To be truthful, I don't mind Mondays all that much. Although my schedule at the job that I actually make money with can be kind of unpredictable at times, I can always count on the fact that I have almost every single Monday off (unless I have Sunday off, in which case I usually have to come in...as such the case today. But, I'm rambling, never mind).

And, besides...Mondays are lots of fun in this blog because we get to examine a movie in greater detail.

Now, because we're smack dab in the middle of “Black History Month”, today's movie is going to be linked with the theme of the month. And, although the movie that I have chosen has a predominantly Caucasian cast, it does feature a storyline that was deemed extremely controversial for its time.

These days, when one mentions the words “interracial relationship”, I would think that most of us would not think that it is a big deal. I am one of those people who does not select a mate based on skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, or clothing colour. When it comes to dating, I would date anybody who was interested in me regardless of what their background is. But five decades earlier, would you believe that interracial dating was so frowned upon that in 1967, it was still considered an illegal act in seventeen states? Well, at least until Loving vs. Virginia invalidated those laws in June 1967.

You know, being born in the early 1980s, I sometimes have no idea just how much racism existed back in the childhoods of my parents and grandparents. In many ways, I would have loved to have gone back in time to experience things for the first time...and then there are times in which I don't want to revisit the past because for some people, it was a living hell because of the skin colour they were born with.

But sometimes it's good to look back on the bad and the ugly within our history books so that we can appreciate the good moments even more.

And, today's film takes a look at what happens when a woman gets involved in a relationship with someone of a different racial background, as well as the frustrations that can come from having family members who vehemently oppose the union.



Today's film study is the 1967 film “Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?”. The film starred Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, and in his final film appearance before his death, Spencer Tracy.



Directed by Stanley Kramer and written by William Rose, the film debuted on December 12, 1967...six months after Tracy passed away of a heart attack in June 1967 at the age of 67. This movie was not the first time that Tracy and Hepburn had worked together...this was actually their ninth and final movie together. It was a film that Katharine Hepburn was never able to see after it was completed due to the painful memories that were associated with the making of the movie. When Hepburn herself passed away in 2003 at the age of 96, at last report, she still had not seen it. And, I'll get into why that was the case further down in the blog entry.

I'll just go into the basic plot of the movie very quickly, mainly because I don't want to give too much away. The story begins as we are introduced to a woman by the name of Joanna “Joey” Drayton (who was played by the niece of Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton). Joey is young, beautiful, smart, and very Caucasian. And, while she was on a vacation in Hawaii, she gets involved in a whirlwind romance with Dr. John Prentice (Poitier), who is intelligent, skilled, idealistic, financially stable, and very African-American.



But Joey seems to believe that this won't matter to her parents. She was raised in a very liberal household by her parents Matt and Christina (Tracy and Hepburn). Matt is a newspaper publisher, and Christina runs a small art gallery in San Francisco, California, and Joey grew up in an upper class environment. Why, surely the colour of Dr. Prentice's skin wouldn't make a difference. He was young, successful, and a doctor! What parent wouldn't like that in a prospective son-in-law?

Well, apparently Matt and Christina don't.



Despite Joey's best intentions, and despite her arguments that John is the perfect man for her, Matt and Christina don't seem convinced. And, this is quite surprising when we discover that Joey was raised in an environment where she was encouraged to treat black people and people of other races as equals.

It basically comes across as this. They're fine with being kind and nice to people of a different race, but when the possibility of one of them getting engaged to their only daughter arises, they are suddenly opposed to it. Seems a slight bit hypocritical, doesn't it?

And, lest you think that Joey's parents are the only set of parents uncomfortable with the arrangement, there is another surprise. John's parents (Roy E. Glenn and Bea Richards) are also invited to dinner at the Drayton household, and they were going to San Francisco without any knowledge that Joey is white...and once they find out, they act no better than the Draytons! Only a friend of Matt's, Monsignor Ryan (Cecil Kellaway) acts as the voice of reason between the two feuding families.

So, will Johnny and Joey march down the aisle and become husband and wife or not? Well, that's not for me to answer. As I do with every Monday Matinee entry, I encourage all of you to watch the film for yourselves. It really is a fantastic film to watch. Very insightful and a perfect film to showcase this month for sure.

Now, here's the bits that happened behind the scenes that you didn't know.

01 – The screenplay for the film was written in just five weeks.

02 – When it came time to cast the actors for the film, it was reported that several of the actors committed to the project before seeing the script because they believed so strongly in the message that the film set out to give.



03 – Spencer Tracy was in very poor health while he was filming “Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?”...in fact, his health was so poor that insurance companies refused to cover him. The problem was solved by having both Tracy and Hepburn put their salaries into escrow. If Tracy passed away during filming, it could be completed with a different actor.

04 – Because of Tracy's health, he was unable to put in a full day of work. He only worked for two or three hours at a time before noon in order to give him time to rest in between work days. In some cases, stand-ins were brought in to substitute for Tracy when other characters had close-ups with him in the scene.

05 – Spencer Tracy completed his last scene on May 26, 1967. He passed away June 10, 1967. The film was released December 1967. Now you have a bit of understanding as to why Hepburn had a difficult time watching the whole movie in full.



06 – Sidney Poitier was so star-struck by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn that he had difficulty saying his lines. The problem was solved in a rather ingenious way. Poitier recited his lines in front of a couple of empty chairs, with producers reading out the lines spoken by Tracy and Hepburn to Poitier off-camera. The scenes were then spliced together in editing.

07 – In the scene where Sidney Poitier is on the telephone, a bust of Spencer Tracy sculpted by Katharine Hepburn is substituting for Tracy himself!

08 – It took twenty years for the film to be released on home video, finally coming out on VHS December 12, 1987.



09 – Does the maid in the movie look familiar? She should. She was played by Isabel Sanford...otherwise known as Weezie Jefferson from “The Jeffersons”.

10 – Stanley Kramer directed the made-for-television remake of this movie in 1975.

11 – The verdict for “Loving vs. Virginia” was made on June 12, 1967...two days after Spencer Tracy passed away. This decision also made a film line spoken by Roy Glenn to Sidney Poitier erroneous (the line about breaking the law in sixteen or seventeen states).

12 – Look closely at the glasses that Spencer Tracy wore in the movie. Notice that they have no glare? That's because the glasses did not have lenses.

13 – There was originally a reference to Martin Luther King Jr. included in the film when it was first released. After his 1968 assassination, cinemas all over the United States edited the line out of the film. It has since been restored in home video releases.

14 – Katharine Hepburn won an Academy Award for her performance in “Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?”, and Spencer Tracy received a posthumous nomination.

15 – When Spencer Tracy gives his memorable soliloquy in the film, look closely at Katharine Hepburn. Those tears she was crying were real.

16 – Though Katharine Houghton made her film debut in this movie, other people that were considered for the role of Joey were Mariette Hartley and Samantha Eggar.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814


This week on the Sunday Jukebox, I’m featuring an artist that not only is a perfect representative of “Black History Month”, but whose biggest selling album is also a perfect representation of “Black History Month” as well.

Yes, it’s time for another album spotlight.

If you are a regular reader of “A Pop Culture Addict’s Guide To Life”, you will know that I typically don’t do album spotlights on a frequent basis (usually every two to three months).  There are a couple of reasons why I will do an album spotlight instead of just one song.  The album will either have a lot of singles released, have a lot of number one hits, or on a purely superficial level, it happens to have an artist or band that I absolutely love.

Fortunately for this album, all three are true.  Seven singles were released commercially – all seven becoming Top 5 hits, four became number one hits, and I’ll be the first to admit that this album is my all-time favourite by today’s featured artist.

So, who is today’s blog topic about?  And, which album am I spotlighting?  Well, she happens to be the little sister of one of the biggest family groups in music history.  She acted in such television shows as “Good Times” and “Diff’rent Strokes”.  Her older brother happened to have one of the biggest selling albums of 1983 AND 1984, and she ended up being the one to coin the phrase “wardrobe malfunction” alongside Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl a few years ago.

Janet Damita Jackson, born May 16, 1966, is the featured artist of the day.  And, the album is her fourth solo record, released September 19, 1989.  It was a little record that had a rather unusual title, but it also boasted over an hour of songs that dealt with social commentary, standing up for what one believed in, and some of the most infectious dance tunes to hit the radio airwaves as the 1980s transitioned into the 1990s.

It was an album that kicked off Janet’s first world tour - a tour that cost almost two million dollars to produce.  A tour that sold out completely before its debut concert took place in March 1990.  A tour that sold out the Tokyo Dome in just a little over seven minutes!

And, as far as the album itself, in 2012, it placed on Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” at #277.  It was the first album to have seven Top 5 Billboard hits, and it was the only album to have singles hitting the #1 position in three different years (one #1 hit in 1989, two in 1990, and one in 1991).


Is it any wonder why I wanted to do a spotlight on “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” this week?

Now, I suppose some of you were wondering what the 1814 at the end of the title meant.  I admit that when I first bought the album, I too was confused.  But the explanation actually has a double meaning.  The obvious meaning is easy if you look at the alphabet in a numerical manner.  The initials of Rhythm Nation are R.N., and if you numbered each letter in the alphabet from one to twenty-six, well, R=18 and N=14.

Get it?  1814?

There’s also another meaning to it that is a little more subtle...and I’ll bring it up when we get to the single that inspired the double entendre.

For now, we can’t really talk about an album without listening to some of the songs.  And, in this blog entry, I’ll be talking about all seven songs that charted within the Top 5 on the Billboard Charts.  We’ll talk about the story behind the songs, how well they did on the charts, if the video won any awards, and other facts of trivia that might be of interest.


To begin, we’ll go in chronological order...and just a month before “Rhythm Nation 1814” was available to the public, this single became the first release.


MISS YOU MUCH
DATE RELEASED:  August 22, 1989
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #1 for 4 weeks

To say that “Rhythm Nation” kicked off on a high note would be like saying that the sky is blue.  “Miss You Much” became Janet Jackson’s second #1 hit (after 1986’s “When I Think Of You” from her “Control” album), and the single alone sold over four million copies overall.  And, I can see why that is.  “Miss You Much” was one of the most powerful songs on the whole album.  In some ways, it could be a nice title to describe the fans reaction to Janet.  After all, it had been three years since her previous album release.  Why wouldn’t her fans miss her?

The song was written by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (as a lot of the other songs on “Rhythm Nation 1814” were).  The song was also responsible for helping Janet Jackson add some more awards to her collection, including two American Music Awards, and a Soul Train Music Award.  A remixed version by Shep Pettibone also helped the song make its way to the top of the dance charts in late 1989.  But don’t think that this song was a one-trick pony.  It was only the beginning.


RHYTHM NATION
DATE RELEASED: October 24, 1989
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #2

This song just barely missed the top of the charts (it was held off by Phil Collins’ “Another Day In Paradise”), but I don’t think Janet minded all that much.  After all, the choreography in the music video helped Janet earn an MTV Video Music Award in 1990.

It is this single that actually inspired the second meaning behind the mysterious 1814 number.  Back when the recording and writing sessions for the album were taking place, Janet was kidding around about the song, telling the producers in the room that the song could have been considered the national anthem for the 1990s.  Well, this got Janet to wondering about the American national anthem “The Star Spangled Banner”, and she thought it would be cool to do some research on the exact date that Francis Scott Key penned the lyrics for the anthem.  The date was September 14, 1814!  Coincidence?  Perhaps.  But you have to admit that the more subtle meaning does have a cool back story.

Back to “Rhythm Nation”, this song could very well be the one that has the most social commentary within it.  The song encourages people to look at the world without colour lines, and how the people of the world today are looking for a better way of life.  It was a single that wanted to do its part in stopping social injustice and looking for racial unity and harmony.  Is it any wonder why I wanted to spotlight this album this February?

Plus, the video is one of the best music videos that I have ever seen.



ESCAPADE
DATE RELEASED:  January 18, 1990
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #1 for 3 weeks

This song was Janet Jackson’s first release of the 1990s, as well as the second of four #1 hits from the “Rhythm Nation” album.  And here’s a little bit of interesting trivia for you.  “Escapade” was a song that was sort of inspired by another song...a song that Janet almost covered and included within the album.

Do any of you remember a group known as “Martha and the Vandellas”?  Well, in 1965, they recorded a single called “Nowhere to Run” (if you click on the title, it will link you to the song).  If you listen to both, you might notice some minor similarities.  That’s because Janet was set to record her own version of the song for the album.  She was talked out of it by Jimmy Jam when he made the suggestion that she try to record a new song with a similar feel. 

Upon retrospect, I think she made a great choice...even if some of the imagery within the video seemed a little bit bizarre.


ALRIGHT
DATE RELEASED: March 4, 1990
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #4

Okay, so “Alright” was the worst performing single on the Billboard charts from the album.  If her worst performing single was at #4, that’s nothing to be ashamed about!  Besides, the song was Janet’s fourth consecutive #1 dance hit, which temporarily helped Jackson break a record previously set by Madonna.  The song earned a Grammy Award nomination in 1991.


This video is rather special as it contains one of the last on-screen appearances of legendary jazz singer Cab Calloway before his death in 1994.  The video also featured the Nicholas Brothers and Cyd Charisse.  The video is a bit lengthy (though not nearly as long as the full-length video for “Rhythm Nation” or some of the videos that Michael Jackson released in his heyday, but you have to watch it...it’s on a very special level of creativity and originality.  And it also has lots of bright colours and imagery...things that some of our current music videos are sadly lacking.


COME BACK TO ME
DATE RELEASED: June 18, 1990
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #2

For some reason, I couldn’t recall this song at all.  I thought that I had known what songs were released from “Rhythm Nation 1814”, but this one was drawing a blank.

That is until I watched the video, and I was like...oh yeah, I remember that song now!  I hear it at work all the time...but because the fans inside the walk-in-coolers are always emitting a loud whirring noise, I couldn’t make out the vocals.  I had always assumed that someone else had sung the song because I don’t usually associate Janet Jackson with ballads.  But with this single, it became clear that she could still have a hit whether she sped it up or slowed it down.

Here’s a couple of interesting facts about the video.  First, the video was directed by Domenic Sena (who previously directed the videos for “Miss You Much” and “Rhythm Nation”).  The video itself was entirely shot in a city long associated with love and romance – Paris, France.  The song itself is about Janet coming to terms with the fact that her lover has left her, and how she remembers the good times that they shared together. 


Ironically enough, the role of Janet’s “lover” in the video was assumed by a man named Rene Elizondo Jr.  Rene and Janet would marry each other in 1991, and the marriage would be one of the biggest kept secrets in the music industry, until it was revealed after the couple had split in the late 1990s!  And, here’s another bit of trivia.  You know that stunning cover of “Rolling Stone” where an unknown person has their hands over Janet’s breasts?  That was Elizondo.


BLACK CAT
DATE RELEASED: August 28, 1990
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #1 for 1 week

I’ll admit that I was a bit shocked to learn that this song had become Janet’s third #1 hit from “Rhythm Nation”, but not overly surprised.  “Black Cat” was a song that got a person up on their feet with the guitar riffs and rock and roll beat.  It was also a song that was personally special for Janet, as she wrote the lyrics to the song completely solo.

The video for this song is also a departure from her heavily choreographed videos with stunning settings.  The video was actually filmed in April 1990 at a concert stop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, directed by Wayne Isham.

And, well, that’s about all that I have to say about “Black Cat”.  It may have been a number one hit, but there was surprisingly little information on it.  The final single of “Rhythm Nation 1814” on the other hand...


LOVE WILL NEVER DO (WITHOUT YOU)
DATE RELEASED: October 2, 1990
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #1 for 1 week

When this single hit the top of the Billboard charts the week of January 19, 1991, it helped Janet achieve a milestone.  She had #1 singles in three different calendar years from the same album.  I can’t think of another person who ever reached that same milestone (for some reason I think that Katy Perry achieved that goal in 2012, but I would have to look that up).  And considering that her seventh single was released fourteen months after the first single from “Rhythm Nation 1814” hit the charts, and still made the top of the charts?  That’s incredible.

If the video (which is the only one I can't seem to link to) sort of looks similar to an ad for Calvin Klein fashions, it’s because some of the people in the video were closely linked to the Calvin Klein brand.  Djimon Hounson and Antonio Sabato Jr were underwear models for Calvin Klein at the time they were both cast as the men who danced along with Janet Jackson in the video.  Personally speaking, while the song is fantastic, I wasn’t as wowed by the video as I’m sure millions of females were...gee...I can’t imagine why that would be the case.  J

The video itself was directed by famous fashion photographer, the late Herb Ritts, who had previously directed the videos for Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” and Madonna’s “Cherish”.  And, while most people have seen the black and white version of the video, a colourized version exists as well.  I believe that both are included in the video compilation “Design of a Decade 1986/1996”. 

Oh, and there is a reason why the first verse of the song is sung by Jackson in a low, low voice.  When the song was written for Jackson by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, it was intended as a DUET!  They toyed with the idea of getting a male vocalist to sing alongside Janet for the single, and some of the ideas that they had for singers included Prince, Johnny Gill, or Ralph Tresvant.  But for whatever reason, the plans never materialized.  The producers instructed Janet to “sing it low, like some guy would sing it” on the first verse, and when she did, they liked what they heard so much that they kept it.

One more piece of trivia.  The song was the last single to hit the Billboard charts, but was one of the first songs recorded for the album (background vocals were recorded in late 1988, main vocals recorded in early 1989).


And, those are the seven singles that helped catapult Janet Jackson to super stardom...Janet Jackson’s “Thriller”, if you will.  And, while certainly her other releases (1993’s janet, 1997’s “The Velvet Rope”, 2001’s “All For You”) had varying levels of success and more #1 songs to add to her discography, there’s no comparing the success that “Rhythm Nation 1814” brought to Janet Jackson.  It was an album that promoted social commentary, helped bridge the gap between races, and got people dancing all over the world.

It was the album that made Janet Jackson a household name.