By MESFIN FEKADU, AP Music Writer CLEVELAND (AP) — Bon Jovi, the Cars and four first-time nominees, including Nina Simone, will be inducted Saturday night as the 2018 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class. Dire Straits, The Moody Blues and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who died in 1973, will also earn the prestigious honor at […]
Category: ENTERTAINMENT
Posted inNational News
Mavis Staples to Receive Underground Railroad Museum Award
By The Associated Press CINCINNATI (AP) — The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati says it plans to celebrate the life of singer and activist Mavis Staples with one of the museum’s highest honors. Mavis Staples (Courtesy photo/www.mavisstaples.com) The center will present Staples with the Everyday Freedom Hero Award at a reception on Friday. […]
Posted inARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
CNN’s Don Lemon to Contributor: Be Honest
By The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — CNN’s Don Lemon apparently has his limits. The evening host shut down a former Donald Trump aide — and paid CNN contributor — on Thursday, telling him not to come on his show and lie to the American people. Lemon and Jason Miller were talking about special […]
Posted inNational News
How Kathleen Cleaver Conquered War With Love
By Tilesha Brown, Special to the AFRO Kathleen Neal started out as a painter, but by the time she graduated high school, she was on an entirely different path. She would enroll in Oberlin College in Ohio her freshman year, then Barnard College in New York before dropping out completely and joining the renowned Student […]
Posted inNational News
Constand Confronts Cosby, “For Justice
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, Associated Press NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Bill Cosby’s chief accuser took the witness stand Friday at his sexual assault retrial, declaring for a second jury that he knocked her out her with three blue pills and then sexually assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. “I was weak. I […]
Posted inARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Cenac’s Comedy Series Aims to Inform as Well as Entertain
By The Associated Press Wyatt Cenac, the latest entrant in late-night television comedy with a series that debuts Friday on HBO, took inspiration from John Oliver in his desire to inform along with being entertaining. Cenac’s “Problem Areas” is described as a comedy “docu-series,” and resembles Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” in how each episode has […]
Posted inARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Between the World and Me’ Comes to Life at the Kennedy Center
By Hamzat Sani, Special to the AFRO “And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a […]
Posted inARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Unreal’s Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman Champions LGBTQ Community in Television
By Nadine Matthews, Special to the AFRO Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman (“Unreal”) made the painful decision to leave acting a few years ago. “I was taking jobs for the wrong reasons and wasn’t really happy playing the characters I was playing,” he tells the AFRO. “Even if they were queer characters some of them were just not very […]
Posted inSports
Athlete Turned Photographer Hopes to Change Urban Perceptions
By Mark F. Gray, Special to the AFRO J.J. McQueen has spent most of his adult life looking at life through the prism of a camera’s lens. Whether he’s on assignment in the heat of the Freddy Gray aftermath or covering a sports event for Showtime, McQueen has traveled across the United States to chronicle an […]
Posted inWashington D.C. News
Star-Studded DC Emancipation Day Celebration Set
By Akil Wilson, Special to the AFRO This weekend Washington D.C. is preparing to celebrate the 156th anniversary of Emancipation Day, a day that commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862. “Its important to tell the story of the 3,100 enslaved African-Americans freed in the District […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
Accusers Confront Bill Cosby
By The Associated Press Women who say comedian Bill Cosby knocked them out with intoxicants and sexually assaulted them decades ago are finally getting a chance to confront him — and they aren’t holding back. Janice Baker-Kinney will return to the witness stand on Thursday after punctuating her first two hours of testimony at Cosby’s […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
Topless Protester Gets Close to Bill Cosby
By The Associated Press A topless protester with “Women’s Lives Matter” written on her body jumped a barricade and got within a few feet of Bill Cosby on Monday as the comedian walked into a suburban Philadelphia courthouse for the start of his sexual assault retrial. The woman ran in front of Cosby toward a […]