Homeless Teen Graduates Valedictorian & Will Enter Spelman As A Junior

AFRICANGLOBE – Homeless teenChelsea Pearce is the type of girl who’s tragic, yet triumphant life is the thing tear-jerking movies are made of. Spending most of her teen years living in her mother’s car, Chelsea has managed to do the damn near impossible–graduate from high school…at the top of her class.

That’s not all! The impressive Charles Drew High School senior will be going to college at Spelman College, where she will bypass freshman and sophomore year to start as a junior!

Fearce spent her last two high school years taking college courses and her 1900 SAT score made her an academic star at her school.

How does one do this, especially under the circumstances of poverty Fearce faced? With a 4.466 GPA in her grasp, Fearce simply states, “I just did what I had to do.”

Fearce is a part of a family of five and there were many times where they would have a place to live, but those times were few and far between. Fearce’s mother, Reenita Shepherd says they “ended up back in another shelter because I got laid off from my job maybe about four or five times.”

Reenita may be facing poverty head on, but her children are over-achievers! Pearce’s sister is graduating from George Washington Carver High School as salutatorian. Shepherd attributes their academic achievements to the amount of reading she would do for them growing up.

As if this story couldn’t get any more heart-warming, Fearce offers some motivational words to those who come from her similar situation, “Don’t give up. Do what you have to do right now so that you can have the future that you want.”

http://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/homeless-teen-graduates-valedictorian-enter-spelman-junior/

In 1875, Oliver Lewis became the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby, America’s longest continuous sporting event. Lewis was born in 1856 in Fayette Country, Kentucky, to his parents Goodson and Eleanor Lewis. Lewis was born free, but there is little known about his parents or family.

Lewis was only 19 years old when he entered the first Kentucky Derby. The race was held at what was then the Louisville Jockey Club on May 17, 1875, but is now known as Churchill Downs. Ten thousand spectators watched this first race. Lewis rode a horse named Aristide, which was one of two colts entered by their owner, H. Price McGrath of Jessamine, Kentucky. The other horse, Chesapeake, was ridden by William Henry. Although the same owner entered both horses, Chesapeake was favored to win the $2,850 purse, and Lewis was told that his job was to lead most of the race to tire out the other horses. Out of the fifteen jockeys in the field, at this first Kentucky Derby, thirteen of them were African American. Aristide’s trainer, Ansel Williamson, was also an African American. 

Oliver Lewis followed his instructions and was pushing most of the field while trailing a horse named Volcano for most of the race. However, in the last stretch, Chesapeake was unexpectedly far back in the pack while Aristide and Volcano were running neck and neck for first place. Lewis and Aristide pulled away near the finish line and won the race by two lengths. With that victory Lewis became the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. Later that season, Lewis came in second in the Belmont Stakes in New York and won three more races at the Louisville Jockey Club, riding Aristide in all of them. He would never ride in the Kentucky Derby again, however, and would retire after that racing season for unknown reasons.

After retiring, Lewis worked for a short time as a day laborer, but then began providing handicapping tables and racing forms to bookies. He later became a bookie himself which was legal in Kentucky at that time. 

Lewis married although his wife’s name is unknown. The couple had six children including James who inherited his lucrative bookmaking business. Oliver Lewis died in Lexington, Kentucky in 1924 at the age of 68.

“Let me tell you the story of Right Hand, Left Hand. It’s a tale of good and evil. Hate: it was with this hand that Cane iced his brother. Love: these five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man. The right hand: the hand of love. The story of life is this: static. One hand is always fighting the other hand, and the left hand is kicking much ass. I mean, it looks like the right hand, Love, is finished. But hold on, stop the presses, the right hand is coming back. Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes, now, that’s right. Ooh, it’s a devastating right and Hate is hurt, he’s down. Left-Hand Hate KOed by Love.“ 

-Radio Raheem

Do the Right Thing

HEISMAN TROPHY SYRACUSE DAVIS

Ernie Davis, halfback for Syracuse, holds the Heisman Memorial Trophy prior to official presentation to him in New York City on Dec. 6, 1961. Davis is the first black athlete to receive the nation’s outstanding college football player award.

Died on May 18, 1962 of leukemia before playing a pro game.

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Courtesy of:
Kia Speaks

This picture of Morehouse graduates drenched in rain yesterday has surprisingly caused quite a stir. Many are saying it’s indicative of Morehouse not having the money or common decency to implement a rain plan. If you see that when you look at this picture, I’m going to politely take the liberty to call you a cynic. To me this picture symbolizes the journey that so many black men endure everyday of their lives as they face countless obstacles yet continue to pursue success with unwavering determination. It is cynical to ignore the fortitude and thirst for knowledge in these men’s eyes for an opportunity to knock/shade/read Morehouse. Rain can’t stop the House, & life’s obstacles won’t stop these men.

Mary Jane Patterson

Mary Jane Patterson was born September 12, 1840, in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was the first African American woman to receive a B.A degree. She was the oldest of Henry Irving Patterson and Emeline Eliza (Taylor) Patterson’s children. There is conflicting data on how many siblings she had, but most sources cite between seven and ten. Henry Patterson worked as a bricklayer and plasterer who gained his freedom, after Mary was born, in 1852. After this, he moved his family north to Ohio. The Pattersons settled in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1856. Oberlin had a large community of black families, some were freed slaves and some were fugitive slaves. Oberlin was popular because it had a racially integrated Co-ed college. Henry Patterson worked as a master mason, and for many years the family boarded large numbers of Black students in their home.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Lorraine Vivian Hansberry

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930– January 12, 1965) was an African-American playwright and writer. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, was inspired by her family’s battle against racial segregation in Chicago.Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children of Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise Perry who was a school teacher. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago,violating a restrictive covenant and incurring the wrath of many neighbors. The latter’s legal efforts to force the Hansberrys out culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1940 decision in Hansberry v. Lee holding the restrictive covenant in the case contestable, though not inherently invalid.

In 1959, her play debuted becoming the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.