#iraberlin

[4evahaka]

#AKAHistoryIsBlackHistory Wanda Yvette Sykes Writer, Actress & Comedian  Initiated into the #GammaTheta Chapter of #AlphaKappaAlpha at #HamptonUniversity.  Bachelor's Degree in Marketing from #Hampton in 1986. Mom, Marion Louise, worked as a #Banker, & her Dad, #ColonelHarryEllsworthSykes, was employed at the #Pentagon. Her family history was researched for an episode of the 2012 PBS genealogy program #FindingYourRoots With #DrHenryLouisGatesJr.  Her ancestry was traced back to a 1683 court case involving her ancestor, Elizabeth Banks, a free white woman and indentured servant, who gave birth to a biracial child, Mary Banks, fathered by a slave, who inherited her mother's free status. According to historian #IraBerlin, a specialist in the history of #Slavery, the Sykes family history is "the only such case that I know of in which it is possible to trace a black family rooted in freedom from the late 17th century to the present." Known for her ability to make us laugh, Soror Sykes shocked the nation when she announced her battle with #BreastCancer on the #EllenDeGeneresShow in 2011. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, Soror Sykes made a huge decision to get a #DoubleMascectomy. “I just wanted the best odds,”   “I made my decision because I love life.” Soror Sykes is a well-known face for breast cancer. Soror Sykes is one of many ladies of #AlphaKappaAlphaSororityInc who have had and BEAT breast cancer.  Soror Wanda has been nominated for fourteen #PrimetimeEmmys, with one win (in 1999) for "Outstanding Writing for a Variety or Music or Program."  2001, she won the American Comedy Award for "Funniest Female Stand-Up Comic."  She won a Comedy Central Commie Award for "Funniest TV Actress" in 2003. 2010 she won the #GLAAD Stephen F. Kolzak Award. 2015 she won the Activism in the Arts honor at the Triumph Awards. In May 2009, Sykes was the featured entertainer for the annual #WhiteHouseCorrespondents'Association dinner, becoming both the first African American woman and the first openly #LGBT person to get the role.  #CedricTheEntertainer (#KAPsi1911) had been the first African American to become the featured entertainer in 2005.  @iamwandasykes https://www.instagram.com/p/CoVRsQYvw6O/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thenapturalone]

My current situation- Slaves Without Masters #book #books #reading #SlavesWithoutMasters #IraBerlin #SummerReading SummerReadingList

[awesomebeasy]

...Enslavement stoked Northup's generalized hatred of the institution and activated his determination to strike a blow against it. Almost immediately after he regained his freedom, Northup - doubtless encouraged by the opponents of slavery - decided to make his story known, and within two years of his return, his book was in print. On page after page, Northup tells of the brutality of chattel bondage, the endless and often senseless beatings, the frequent, soul-crushing humiliations, the casual and callous destruction of family life - themes sure to raise the ire of white Northerners, even those who had little to no interest in the movement against slavery. He is especially attentive to the dangers slave women faced and to the seemingly endless sexual abuse they endured at the hands of white men of all classes...

12 Years a Slave, Ira Berlin's introduction

[awesomebeasy]

He then joined the mass of black humanity - some one million in number - that was forcibly transported south to reconstruct the plantation economy on new ground, and the center of American slavery shifted from the production of tobacco and rice in the seaboard states to that of cotton and sugar in the interior. In Louisiana, Northup labored as a slave for twelve years until, in 1853, a dramatic rescue returned him to freedom and his family in the North.

!2 Years a Slave, Ira Berlin's introduction