1.
Denzel Washington
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Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, director, and producer. Tolson in The Great Debaters, and drug kingpin Frank Lucas in American Gangster and he has been a featured actor in the films produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and has been a frequent collaborator of directors Spike Lee, Antoine Fuqua and Tony Scott. In 2016, Washington was selected as the recipient for the Cecil B, deMille Lifetime Achievement Award at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards. In 2002, Washington made his debut with biographical film Antwone Fisher. His second directorial effort was The Great Debaters, released in 2007, Washingtons third directorial effort, Fences, starring himself and Viola Davis, was released on December 16,2016. Washington was born in Mount Vernon, New York and his mother, Lennis Lynne, was a beauty parlor owner and operator born in Georgia and partly raised in Harlem. Washington attended Pennington-Grimes Elementary School in Mount Vernon until 1968, when he was 14, his parents divorced, and his mother sent him to a private preparatory school, Oakland Military Academy in New Windsor, New York. That decision changed my life, Washington later said, because I wouldnt have survived in the direction I was going, the guys I was hanging out with at the time, my running buddies, have now done maybe 40 years combined in the penitentiary. They were nice guys, but the streets got them, after Oakland, Washington next attended Mainland High School, a public high school in Daytona Beach, Florida, from 1970 to 1971. He was interested in attending Texas Tech University, I grew up in the Boys Club in Mount Vernon, so when I was in high school, I wanted to go to Texas Tech in Lubbock just because they were called the Red Raiders and their uniforms looked like ours. Washington earned a B. A. in Drama and Journalism from Fordham University in 1977, at Fordham, he played collegiate basketball as a guard under coach P. J. Carlesimo. After a period of indecision on which major to study and taking a semester off, Washington worked as creative director at an overnight summer camp, Camp Sloane YMCA in Lakeville. He participated in a talent show for the campers and a colleague suggested he try acting. He then attended school at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Washington spent the summer of 1976 in St, shortly after graduating from Fordham, Washington made his screen acting debut in the 1977 made-for-television film Wilma, and his first Hollywood appearance in the 1981 film Carbon Copy. A major career break came when Washington starred as Dr. Phillip Chandler in NBCs television hospital drama St. Elsewhere and he was one of only a few African-American actors to appear on the series for its entire six-year run. He also appeared in television, motion picture and stage roles, such as the films A Soldiers Story, Hard Lessons. In 1989, Washington won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a defiant, in 1990, Washington starred as Bleek Gilliam in the Spike Lee film Mo Better Blues
2.
Halle Berry
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Halle Maria Berry is an American actress. She won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the romantic drama Monsters Ball, as of 2017, she is the only black woman to have won a Best Actress Academy Award. Berry was one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood during the 2000s and has involved in the production of several of the films in which she performed. She is also a Revlon spokesmodel, before becoming an actress, she started modeling and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the 1st runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant and coming in 6th place in the Miss World Pageant in 1986. She then appeared in the X-Men sequels, X2 and X-Men, in the 2010s, she appeared in movies such as the science fiction film Cloud Atlas, the crime thriller The Call and X-Men, Days of Future Past. Berry was formerly married to baseball player David Justice, and singer-songwriter Eric Benét and she has a daughter by model Gabriel Aubry, and a son by actor Olivier Martinez. Berry was born Maria Halle Berry, her name was changed to Halle Maria Berry at age five. Her parents selected her name from Halles Department Store, which was then a local landmark in her birthplace of Cleveland. Her mother, Judith Ann, who is of English and German ancestry, was a psychiatric nurse and her father, Jerome Jesse Berry, was an African-American hospital attendant in the psychiatric ward where her mother worked, he later became a bus driver. Berrys maternal grandmother, Nellie Dicken, was born in Sawley, Derbyshire, England, while her maternal grandfather, Berrys parents divorced when she was four years old, she and her older sister, Heidi Berry-Henderson, were raised exclusively by their mother. Berry has said in published reports that she has been estranged from her father since her childhood, noting in 1992 and her father was very abusive to her mother. Berry has recalled witnessing her mother being beaten daily, kicked down stairs, Berry graduated from Bedford High School where she was a cheerleader, honor student, editor of the school newspaper and prom queen. She worked in the department at Higbees Department store. She then studied at Cuyahoga Community College, in the 1980s, she entered several beauty contests, winning Miss Teen All American in 1985 and Miss Ohio USA in 1986. She was the 1986 Miss USA first runner-up to Christy Fichtner of Texas, in the Miss USA1986 pageant interview competition, she said she hoped to become an entertainer or to have something to do with the media. Her interview was awarded the highest score by the judges and she was the first African-American Miss World entrant in 1986, where she finished sixth and Trinidad and Tobagos Giselle Laronde was crowned Miss World. According to the Current Biography Yearbook, Berry. pursued a career in Chicago. Berrys first weeks in New York were less than auspicious, She slept in a homeless shelter, in 1989, Berry moved to New York City to pursue her acting ambitions
3.
Jamie Foxx
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Eric Marlon Bishop, known professionally by his stage name Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer, songwriter, record producer and comedian. The same year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the crime film Collateral, eric Marlon Bishop was born in Terrell, Texas on December 13,1967. He is the son of Darrell Bishop, who worked as a stockbroker. Shortly after his birth, Foxx was adopted and raised by his mothers parents, Esther Marie, a domestic worker and nursery operator, and Mark Talley. He has had contact with his birth parents, who were not part of his upbringing. Foxx was raised in the quarter of Terrell, which at the time was a racially segregated community. He has often acknowledged his grandmothers influence in his life as one of the greatest reasons for his success, Foxx began playing the piano when he was five years old. He had a strict Baptist upbringing, and as a teenager he was a part-time pianist and choir leader in Terrells New Hope Baptist Church. His natural talent for telling jokes was already in evidence as a third grader, Foxx attended Terrell High School, where he received top grades and played basketball and football. His ambition was to play for the Dallas Cowboys, and he was the first player in the history to pass for more than 1,000 yards. He also sang in a band called Leather and Lace, after completing high school, Foxx received a scholarship to United States International University, where he studied classical music and composition. Foxx first told jokes at a comedy clubs open mic night in 1989, when he found that female comedians were often called first to perform, he changed his name to Jamie Foxx, feeling that it was a name ambiguous enough to disallow any biases. He chose his surname as a tribute to the black comedian Redd Foxx, Foxx joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991, where his recurrent character Wanda also shared a name with Redds friend and co-worker, LaWanda Page. Following a recurring role in the comedy-drama sitcom Roc, Foxx went on to star in his own sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, Foxx made his film debut in the 1992 comedy Toys. His first dramatic role came in Oliver Stones 1999 film Any Given Sunday, in 1994, Foxx released an album entitled Peep This, which was not successful due to low album sales. In 2003, Foxx made a cameo in Benzinos music video for Would You, which features LisaRaye McCoy and Mario Winans. In 2003, Foxx featured on the rapper Twistas song, Slow Jamz, together with Kanye West, in 2005, Foxx featured on the single Georgia by Atlanta rappers Ludacris and Field Mob, which sampled Ray Charles hit Georgia on My Mind. Foxx would also portray Ray Charles in the biographical film Ray, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, Foxx is the second male in history to receive two acting Oscar nominations in the same year for two different movies, Collateral and Ray
4.
John H. Johnson
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For the Minor League Baseball exexutive, see John H. Johnson. John Harold Johnson was an American businessman and publisher and he was the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company. In 1982, he became the first African American to appear on the Forbes 400, Johnsons Ebony and Jet magazines were among the most influential African-American businesses in media in the second half of the twentieth century. Early years and education, Johnson was born in rural Arkansas City, Arkansas, when he was 6 years old, his father died in a sawmill accident and Johnson was raised by his mother and his step father. He attended an overcrowded and segregated elementary school, after a visit with his mother to Chicago Worlds Fair, they decided that opportunities in the North were more plentiful than in the South. Facing poverty on every side in Arkansas during the Great Depression, Johnson entered all-black DuSable High School while his mother and stepfather scoured the city for jobs during the day. He looked for work after school and during the summer as well and his mother was not even able to find any domestic work, which was generally available when all else failed. Johnson endured much teasing and taunting at his school for his ragged clothes and country ways, as he encountered something he never knew existed. At DuSable High School his classmates included Nat King Cole, Redd Foxx and this only fueled his already formidable determination to make something of himself. Johnsons high-school career was distinguished by the qualities he demonstrated as student council president and as editor of the school newspaper. He attended high school during the day and studied self-improvement books at night, because of his achievements in high school, Johnson was invited to speak at a dinner held by the Urban League. Johnson began as a boy at Supreme Life and within two years had become Paces assistant. His duties included preparing a monthly digest of newspaper articles, Johnson began to wonder if other people in the community might not enjoy the same type of service. He conceived of a publication patterned after Readers Digest and his work at Supreme Life also gave him the opportunity to see the day-to-day operations of a business owned by an African American and fostered his dream of starting a business of his own. Black Digest- Once the idea of occurred to him, it began to seem like a gold mine. He remained enthusiastic even though he was discouraged on all sides from doing so and he used this loan to publish the first edition of Negro Digest in 1942. Johnson had a problem with distribution until he teamed up with Joseph Levy, Levy provided valuable marketing tips and opened the doors that allowed the new digest to reach newsstands in other urban centers. Within six months circulation had reached 50,000 and this publication covered African-American history, literature, arts, and cultural issues
5.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
6.
International Standard Serial Number
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An International Standard Serial Number is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title, ISSN are used in ordering, cataloging, interlibrary loans, and other practices in connection with serial literature. The ISSN system was first drafted as an International Organization for Standardization international standard in 1971, ISO subcommittee TC 46/SC9 is responsible for maintaining the standard. When a serial with the content is published in more than one media type. For example, many serials are published both in print and electronic media, the ISSN system refers to these types as print ISSN and electronic ISSN, respectively. The format of the ISSN is an eight digit code, divided by a hyphen into two four-digit numbers, as an integer number, it can be represented by the first seven digits. The last code digit, which may be 0-9 or an X, is a check digit. Formally, the form of the ISSN code can be expressed as follows, NNNN-NNNC where N is in the set, a digit character. The ISSN of the journal Hearing Research, for example, is 0378-5955, where the final 5 is the check digit, for calculations, an upper case X in the check digit position indicates a check digit of 10. To confirm the check digit, calculate the sum of all eight digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, the modulus 11 of the sum must be 0. There is an online ISSN checker that can validate an ISSN, ISSN codes are assigned by a network of ISSN National Centres, usually located at national libraries and coordinated by the ISSN International Centre based in Paris. The International Centre is an organization created in 1974 through an agreement between UNESCO and the French government. The International Centre maintains a database of all ISSNs assigned worldwide, at the end of 2016, the ISSN Register contained records for 1,943,572 items. ISSN and ISBN codes are similar in concept, where ISBNs are assigned to individual books, an ISBN might be assigned for particular issues of a serial, in addition to the ISSN code for the serial as a whole. An ISSN, unlike the ISBN code, is an identifier associated with a serial title. For this reason a new ISSN is assigned to a serial each time it undergoes a major title change, separate ISSNs are needed for serials in different media. Thus, the print and electronic versions of a serial need separate ISSNs. Also, a CD-ROM version and a web version of a serial require different ISSNs since two different media are involved, however, the same ISSN can be used for different file formats of the same online serial
7.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor
8.
Jet (magazine)
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As an American weekly marketed toward African-American readers, it was founded in 1951 by John H. Johnson of the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, Illinois. Published in small digest-sized format from its inception in 1951, Jet printed in all or mostly black-and-white until its December 27,1999 issue, in 2009, Jets publishing format was changed, it was published every week with a double issue published once each month. Johnson Publishing Company published the final print issue, June 23,2014, in 2016, Johnson Publishing sold Jet and Ebony to private equity firm Clear View Group. The new publishing company will be known as Ebony Media Corporation, Jet magazine was started in 1951. Johnson called his magazine Jet because, as he said in the first issue, there is more news and far less time to read it. Redd Foxx called the magazine the Negro bible, Jet became nationally famous in 1955 with its shocking and graphic coverage of the murder of Emmett Till. Its ubiquity was enhanced by its coverage of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. In May 2014 the publication announced the print edition would be discontinued, in June 2016 after a 71-years Jet and its sister publication were sold by Johnson Publishing to Clear View Group, an Austin, Texas-based private equity firm, for an undisclosed amount. Jet contained fashion and beauty tips, entertainment news, dating advice, political coverage, health tips, the cover photo usually corresponds to the focus of the main story. Some examples of cover stories might be a wedding, Mothers Day. Many issues are given coverage to show the African-American community that if they want to reach a goal, Jet also claims to give young female adults confidence and strength because the women featured therein are strong and successful without the help of a man. Since 1952, Jet has had a feature called Beauty of the Week. This feature includes a photograph of an African-American woman in a swimsuit, along with her name, place of residence, profession, hobbies, many of the women are not professional models and submit their photographs for the magazines consideration. The purpose of the feature is to promote the beauty of African-American women, like the other leading black magazine, Essence, Jet routinely deplored racism in mainstream media, especially in the negative depictions of black men and women. However Hazell and Clarke report that Jet and Essence in 2003-4 themselves ran advertising that was pervaded with racism, farrell, journalist and member of the Los Angeles City Council, 1974–91, Jet correspondent Robert E. Johnson was Associate Publisher and Executive Editor of Jet Magazine. He joined the Jet staff in February 1953, two years after it was founded by Publisher John H. Johnson and he was one of the longest serving editors of Jet. Tracey Ferguson became Editor-in-Chief of Jet Magazine in 2017, JET official website Black History Seen Through Magazines John H. Johnson
9.
Johnson Publishing Company
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Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. is an American publishing company founded in November 1942 by businessman John H. Johnson. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, United States, led by its flagship publication, Ebony, Johnson Publishing is the largest African-American-owned publishing firm in the United States. Johnson Publishing Company also published Jet magazine, a magazine from November 1951 until June 2014. In 2016, Johnson announced the sale of its publications and the creation of a new publisher by the new owner called Ebony Media Corp, the specialty cosmetics business will be retained by Johnson. Johnson Publishing Company is privately held, and its chairman is the founders daughter Linda Johnson-Rice, Desiree Rogers serves as the chief executive officer since 2010. In January 2011, the company sold its headquarters of 39 years located at 820 S, michigan Avenue to Columbia College Chicago. Completed in 1972, the building was the first African-American owned in downtown Chicago, in July 2011, it was announced that JPMorgan was to become a partner in the company. CEO Desiree Rogers stated that they hold a minority stake and presence on the board, the company produced Ebony/Jet Celebrity Showcase, a spinoff television show from the two magazines that debuted in August 1982. It was eventually pulled off the air because Johnson H. Johnson was dissatisfied with the quality of the guests, after a one-year hiatus, it returned to syndication with a shortened title and an expanded format with segments on diet, fashion and health. Ebony/Jet Showcase, a weekly, nationally syndicated TV show hosted by Greg Gumbel, in addition, Johnson Publishing produces a line of hair care products and cosmetics marketed for African-American women. Each year it hosts the Ebony Fashion Fair, a fashion show started in 1958 by Eunice W. Johnson that raises money for scholarships and charities in cities across the US. Ebony – monthly general interest magazine, EbonyJet. com – branded web presence Ebony Jr. Johnson Publishing Company
10.
Life (magazine)
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Life was an American magazine that ran weekly from 1883 to 1936 as a humor magazine with limited circulation. Time owner Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936, solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name, Life was published weekly until 1972, as an intermittent special until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 to 2000. After 2000 Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special, Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007. The website life. com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc. s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC. On January 30,2012 the LIFE. com URL became a channel on Time. com. When Life was founded in 1883, it was developed as similar to the British magazine and it was published for 53 years as a general-interest light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes and social commentary. The Luce Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, the magazines role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Life was wildly successful for two generations before its prestige was diminished by economics and changing tastes, Life was founded January 4,1883, in a New York City artists studio at 1155 Broadway, as a partnership between John Ames Mitchell and Andrew Miller. Mitchell held a 75 per cent interest in the magazine with the remainder by Miller, both men retained their holdings until their deaths. Miller served as secretary-treasurer of the magazine and was very successful managing the side of the operation. Mitchell, a 37-year-old illustrator who used a $10,000 inheritance to invest in the weekly magazine, Mitchell created the first Life name-plate with cupids as mascots, he later drew its masthead of a knight leveling his lance at the posterior of a fleeing devil. Mitchell took advantage of a new printing process using zinc-coated plates. This edge helped because Life faced stiff competition from the humor magazines Judge and Puck. Edward Sandford Martin was brought on as Lifes first literary editor, the motto of the first issue of Life was, While theres Life, theres hope. The new magazine set forth its principles and policies to its readers and we shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world. The magazine was a success and soon attracted the leading contributors. Among the most important was Charles Dana Gibson, three years after the magazine was founded, the Massachusetts native first sold Life a drawing for $4, a dog outside his kennel howling at the moon. Encouraged by a publisher who was also an artist, Gibson was joined in Life early days by such illustrators as Palmer Cox
11.
Dorothy Dandridge
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Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American film and theatre actress, singer, and dancer. She is perhaps best known for being the first African-American actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1954 film Carmen Jones, Dandridge performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. During her early career, she performed as a part of The Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, in 1959 she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess. She is the subject of the 1999 HBO biographical film, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and she has been recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dandridge was married and divorced twice, first to dancer Harold Nicholas, Dandridge died under mysterious circumstances at age 42. Dorothy Dandridge was born on November 9,1922 in Cleveland, Ohio to aspiring entertainer Ruby Dandridge and Cyril Dandridge, a cabinetmaker and minister, who had separated just before her birth. Ruby created an act for her two young daughters, Vivian and Dorothy, under the name The Wonder Children, that was managed by Geneva Williams. The sisters toured the Southern United States almost nonstop for five years, during the Great Depression, work virtually dried up for the Dandridges, as it did for many Chitlin Circuit performers. Ruby moved to Hollywood, California, where she found work on radio. After that relocation in 1930, Dorothy attended McKinley Junior High School, the Wonder Children were renamed The Dandridge Sisters in 1934, and Dandridge and her sister were teamed with dance schoolmate Etta Jones. The Dandridge Sisters continued strong for years, and were booked in several high-profile nightclubs, including the Cotton Club. Dandridges first on-screen appearance was a part in an Our Gang comedy short. Although these appearances were relatively minor, Dandridge continued to earn recognition through continuing her nightclub performances nationwide, Dandridges first credited film role was in Four Shall Die. The race film cast her as a murderer and did little for her film career and she had small roles in Lady from Louisiana with John Wayne and Sundown with Gene Tierney. Dandridge appeared as part of a Specialty Number in the hit 1941 musical, the film marked the first time she performed with the Nicholas Brothers. And Mrs. Carpenters Rent Party among others and these films were noted not only for showcasing Dandridges singing and acting abilities, but also for featuring a strong emphasis on her physical attributes. She continued to occasionally in films and on the stage throughout the rest of the 1940s. In 1951, Dandridge appeared as Melmendi, Queen of the Ashuba in Tarzans Peril, starring Lex Barker, when the Motion Picture Production Code tut-tutted about the films blunt sexuality, Dandridge received considerable attention for wearing what was considered to be provocatively revealing clothing
12.
Mariah Carey
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Mariah Carey is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. In 1990, Carey rose to fame with the release of Vision of Love from her eponymous debut album, the album produced four chart-topping singles in the US and began what would become a string of commercially successful albums which solidified the singer as Columbias highest selling act. Carey and Boyz II Men spent a record sixteen weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 1995–1996 with One Sweet Day, following a contentious divorce from Sony Music head Tommy Mottola, Carey adopted a new image and traversed towards hip hop with the release of Butterfly. In 1998, she was honored as the worlds best-selling recording artist of the 1990s at the World Music Awards, Carey parted with Columbia in 2000, and signed a record-breaking $100 million recording contract with Virgin Records America. In the weeks prior to the release of her film Glitter and its soundtrack in 2001. The project was received and led to a general decline in the singers career. Careys recording contract was out for $50 million by Virgin. After a relatively unsuccessful period, she returned to the top of music charts with The Emancipation of Mimi, Carey once again ventured into film with a well-received supporting role in Precious, and was awarded the Breakthrough Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Throughout her career, Carey has sold more than 200 million records worldwide, according to the RIAA, she is the third-best-selling female artist in the United States, with 63.5 million certified albums. With the release of Touch My Body, Carey gained her 18th number-one single in the United States, in 2012, the singer was ranked second on VH1s list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music. Mariah Carey was born in Huntington, New York, to Patricia and her mother is of Irish descent, while her father had African-American and Afro-Venezuelan ancestry. The surname Carey was adopted by her Venezuelan grandfather, Francisco Núñez, Patricia was an occasional opera singer and vocal coach before she met Alfred in 1960. As he began earning a living as an engineer, the couple married later that year. After their elopement, Patricias family disowned her for marrying a black man, Carey later explained that she felt neglected by her maternal family while growing up, which affected her greatly. In the years between the births of Careys older sister Alison and herself, the Carey family struggled within the community due to their ethnicity, Careys name was derived from the song They Call the Wind Maria, originally from the 1951 Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon. When Carey was three, her parents divorced, after their separation, Alison moved in with her father, while the other two children, Mariah and brother Morgan, remained with their mother. Carey grew apart from her father and would stop seeing him altogether. By age four, she recalled that she had begun to sneak the radio under her covers at night, during elementary school, she excelled in subjects that she enjoyed, such as music, art, and literature, but did not find interest in others
13.
Diana Ross
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Diane Ernestine Earle Ross, known professionally as Diana Ross, is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer. As part of the Supremes, her success made it possible for future African-American R&B, Dianas high-pitched and bright lyric-soprano voice has been enjoyed and still is by fans around the world. The group released a record-setting twelve number-one hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100, including the hits Where Did Our Love Go, Baby Love, Come See About Me, Stop. In the Name of Love, You Cant Hurry Love, You Keep Me Hangin On, Love Child and she later released the album Touch Me in the Morning in 1973, its title track reached number 1, as her second solo hit. That same year, her album Lady Sings The Blues, which was the soundtrack of her film based on the life of jazz singer Billie Holiday. By 1975, the Mahogany soundtrack included her third number-one hit and her eponymous 1976 album included her fourth number-one hit, Love Hangover. In 1979, Ross released the album The Boss and her 1980 semi-eponymous album Diana reached number 2 on the US Billboard albums chart, and spawned the number-one hit Upside Down, and the international hit Im Coming Out. After leaving Motown, Ross achieved her sixth and final US number-one hit, Ross has also ventured into acting, with a Golden Globe Award and Academy Award-nominated performance for her performance in the film Lady Sings the Blues. She also starred in two films, Mahogany and The Wiz, later acting in the television films Out of Darkness, for which she also was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Ross was named the Female Entertainer of the Century by Billboard magazine, Ross has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, when her releases with the Supremes and as a solo artist are tallied. In 1988, Ross was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as member of the Supremes, alongside Mary Wilson and she was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. She is a 12-time Grammy nominee, never earning a competitive honor, in December 2016, Billboard magazine named her the 50th most successful dance artist of all time. Diane Ross was born at Hutzel Womens Hospital in Detroit on March 26,1944 and she was the second eldest child of Ernestine, a schoolteacher, and Fred Ross, Sr. a former Army soldier. Much has been made of whether her first name ends in an a or an e, according to Ross, her mother actually named her Diane but a clerical error resulted in her name being recorded as Diana on her birth certificate. She was listed as Diane during the first Supremes records, she introduced herself as Diane until early in the groups heyday and her friends and family still call her Diane. Rosss grandfather John E. Ross, a native of Gloucester County, Virginia, was born to Washington Ross, Virginia Baytops mother Francis Frankey Baytop was a former slave who had become a midwife after the Civil War. Ross and her family lived at Belmont Road in the North End section of Detroit, near Highland Park, MI. When Ross was seven, her mother contracted tuberculosis, causing her to seriously ill
14.
Michael Jackson
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Michael Joseph Jackson was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer, actor, and philanthropist. Called the King of Pop, his contributions to music, dance, the eighth child of the Jackson family, Michael made his professional debut in 1964 with his elder brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon as a member of the Jackson 5. He began his career in 1971. In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music, the popularity of these videos helped bring the television channel MTV to fame. Jacksons 1987 album Bad spawned the U. S and he continued to innovate with videos such as Black or White and Scream throughout the 1990s, and forged a reputation as a touring solo artist. Through stage and video performances, Jackson popularized a number of complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and his distinctive sound and style has influenced numerous artists of various music genres. Thriller is the album of all time, with estimated sales of 65 million copies worldwide. Jacksons other albums, including Off the Wall, Bad, Dangerous and he is recognized as the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time by Guinness World Records. Jackson won hundreds of awards, making him the most awarded recording artist in the history of popular music. He became the first artist in history to have a top ten single in the Billboard Hot 100 in five different decades when Love Never Felt So Good reached number nine on May 21,2014. Jackson traveled the world attending events honoring his humanitarianism, and, in 2000, aspects of Jacksons personal life, including his changing appearance, personal relationships, and behavior, generated controversy. In 1993, he was accused of sexual abuse, but the civil case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of child sexual abuse allegations. While preparing for his concert series, This Is It, Jackson died of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication on June 25,2009. The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled his death a homicide, and his personal physician, Jacksons death triggered a global outpouring of grief, and a live broadcast of his public memorial service was viewed around the world. Forbes ranks Jackson as the dead celebrity with earnings of $825 million in 2016. Michael Joseph Jackson was born on August 29,1958 and his mother, Katherine Esther Scruse, was a devout Jehovahs Witness. She played clarinet and piano and once aspired to be a country-and-western performer, michaels father, Joseph Walter Joe Jackson, a former boxer, was a steelworker at U. S. Steel
15.
United States Senate
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The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress which, along with the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, composes the legislature of the United States. The composition and powers of the Senate are established by Article One of the United States Constitution. S. From 1789 until 1913, Senators were appointed by the legislatures of the states represented, following the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. The Senate chamber is located in the wing of the Capitol, in Washington. It further has the responsibility of conducting trials of those impeached by the House, in the early 20th century, the practice of majority and minority parties electing their floor leaders began, although they are not constitutional officers. This idea of having one chamber represent people equally, while the other gives equal representation to states regardless of population, was known as the Connecticut Compromise, there was also a desire to have two Houses that could act as an internal check on each other. One was intended to be a Peoples House directly elected by the people, the other was intended to represent the states to such extent as they retained their sovereignty except for the powers expressly delegated to the national government. The Senate was thus not designed to serve the people of the United States equally, the Constitution provides that the approval of both chambers is necessary for the passage of legislation. First convened in 1789, the Senate of the United States was formed on the example of the ancient Roman Senate, the name is derived from the senatus, Latin for council of elders. James Madison made the comment about the Senate, In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people. An agrarian law would take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation, landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, the senate, therefore, ought to be this body, and to answer these purposes, the people ought to have permanency and stability. The Constitution stipulates that no constitutional amendment may be created to deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without that states consent, the District of Columbia and all other territories are not entitled to representation in either House of the Congress. The District of Columbia elects two senators, but they are officials of the D. C. city government. The United States has had 50 states since 1959, thus the Senate has had 100 senators since 1959. In 1787, Virginia had roughly ten times the population of Rhode Island, whereas today California has roughly 70 times the population of Wyoming and this means some citizens are effectively two orders of magnitude better represented in the Senate than those in other states. Seats in the House of Representatives are approximately proportionate to the population of each state, before the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, Senators were elected by the individual state legislatures
16.
Carol Moseley Braun
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Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun, is an American politician and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. She was the first female African-American Senator, the first African-American U. S, Senator for the Democratic Party, the first woman to defeat an incumbent U. S. Senator in an election, and the first female Senator from Illinois and she was the only female U. S. Senator from Illinois until Tammy Duckworth who became the U. S, Senator from Illinois in January 2017. From 1999 until 2001, she was the United States Ambassador to New Zealand and she was a candidate for the Democratic nomination during the 2004 U. S. presidential election. Following the public announcement by Richard M. Daley that he would not seek re-election, in November 2010, the former Senator placed fourth in a field of six candidates, losing the February 22,2011, election to Rahm Emanuel. Carol Elizabeth Moseley was born in Chicago, Illinois and she attended public and parochial schools. She attended Ruggles School for elementary school, and she attended Parker High School in Chicago and her father, Joseph J. Moseley, was a Chicago police officer and apple guard and her mother, Edna A. was a medical technician in a hospital. The family lived in a segregated middle-class neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago and her parents divorced when she was in her teens, and she lived with her grandmother. She began her studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She then majored in science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, graduating in 1969. As an attorney, Moseley Braun was a prosecutor in the United States Attorneys office in Chicago from 1973 to 1977, an Assistant United States Attorney, she worked primarily in the civil and appellate law areas. Her work in housing, health policy, and environmental law won her the Attorney Generals Special Achievement Award, Moseley Braun was first elected to public office in 1978, as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives. There, she rose to the post of assistant majority leader, as a State Representative, she became recognized as a champion for liberal social causes. As early as 1984, she proposed a moratorium on the application in Illinois of the death penalty, when she left the state legislature in 1987, her colleagues recognized her in a resolution as the conscience of the House. That same year, she was elected as Cook County, Illinois, Recorder of Deeds, in 1991, angered by incumbent Democratic senator Alan Dixons vote to confirm Clarence Thomas, Moseley Braun challenged him in the primary election. Candidate Albert Hofelds campaign ran many ads, and Moseley Braun won the Democratic primary. On November 3,1992, she became the first African-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate and her election marked the first time Illinois had elected a woman and the first time a black person was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate
17.
Illinois
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Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
18.
Michelle Obama
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Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American lawyer and writer who was First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama and she subsequently worked as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago and the Vice President for Community and External Affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Barack and Michelle married in 1992 and have two daughters, Obama campaigned for her husbands presidential bid throughout 2007 and 2008, delivering a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. As First Lady, Obama became an icon, a role model for women, and an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition, physical activity. Her mother was a homemaker until Michelle entered high school. The Robinson and Shields families trace their roots to pre-Civil War African Americans in the American South, on her fathers side, she is descended from the Gullah people of South Carolinas Low Country region. Her paternal great-great grandfather, Jim Robinson, was a slave on Friendfield Plantation in South Carolina and her grandfather Fraser Robinson, Jr. built his own house in South Carolina. He and his wife LaVaughn returned to the Low Country after retirement, among her maternal ancestors was her great-great-great-grandmother, Melvinia Shields, a slave on Henry Walls Shields 200-acre farm in Clayton County, Georgia. Melvinias first son, Dolphus T. Shields, was biracial, based on DNA and other evidence, in 2012 researchers said his father was likely 20-year-old Charles Marion Shields, son of her master. Melvinia did not talk to relatives about Dolphus father, Dolphus Shields moved to Birmingham, Alabama after the Civil War, and some of his children migrated to Cleveland, Ohio and Chicago. Her distant ancestry includes Irish and other European roots, in addition, a paternal first cousin once-removed is the African-American Jewish Rabbi Capers Funnye, son of her grandfathers sister. Robinson grew up in a bungalow on Euclid Avenue in Chicagos South Shore community area. Her parents rented an apartment on the second floor from her great-aunt. She was raised in what she describes as a home, with the mother at home. Her elementary school was down the street and they enjoyed playing games such as Monopoly, reading, and frequently saw extended family on both sides. She played piano, learning from her great-aunt who was a piano teacher, the Robinsons attended services at nearby South Shore United Methodist Church. They used to vacation in a cabin in White Cloud. She and her 21-month older brother, Craig, skipped the second grade and her father suffered from multiple sclerosis which had a profound emotional effect on her as she was growing up
19.
Tyrese Gibson
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Tyrese Darnell Gibson, also known mononymously as Tyrese, is an American Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, actor, author, television producer, former fashion model and MTV VJ. He is best known for his roles as Joseph Jody Summers in Baby Boy and as Roman Pearce in the Fast, after releasing several albums, he transitioned into films, with lead roles in several major Hollywood releases. Gibson was born and raised in Watts, Los Angeles, California and his mother, Priscilla Murray Gibson, raised him and his three older siblings as a single parent after Gibsons father, Tyrone Gibson, left. Gibsons career began when he auditioned for a Coca Cola commercial at the suggestion of his school music teacher. An appearance in a 1994 Coca-Cola advertisement, singing the phrase Always Coca-Cola and it led him to other appearances for Guess and Tommy Hilfiger. In early 1998, Gibson was signed as an artist to early RCA Records, afterwards, he released his debut single Nobody Else. It quickly rose on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at #36, on September 29,1998, he released his self-titled album Tyrese at the age of 19. It debuted on the Billboard charts at #17, in late 1998, Gibson became the new host of the weekday music video show MTV Jams on MTV and a host and VJ for the channel. Afterwards, he released the single from the album Lately. It made it to #56 on the Billboard charts, then, the albums third single and highest charting single Sweet Lady became the albums biggest hit, reaching #9 on the R&B charts. The single earned Gibson a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Male Vocal Performance, the album eventually went on to be certified Platinum. Gibson along with singers Ginuwine, RL of Next and Case were featured on the soundtrack of the The Best Man on the single The Best Man I Can Be, on May 22,2001, Gibson released his second studio album,2000 Watts. The first single off the album was I Like Them Girls, the album went on to be certified Gold, selling over 500,000 copies. The third single off the album, Just a Baby Boy, with Snoop Dogg and Mr. Tan, was featured on the soundtrack to the film Baby Boy, after RCA Records was disbanded Gibson went on to sign to J Records. There he released his studio album I Wanna Go There on December 10,2002. His first single from the album and arguably his most successful single to date How You Gonna Act Like That debuted on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at #7, on December 12,2006, Gibson released his fourth studio album Alter Ego, his first double disc album. It was also his first album in which he debuts his rapping persona, the first single off the album was One debuting on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at #26. The album itself is considered Gibsons lowest selling album to date, in 2007, Gibson, Ginuwine and Tank founded TGT
20.
Tyler Perry
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Tyler Perry is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, writer, and songwriter, specializing in the gospel genre. Perry wrote and produced stage plays during the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2011, Forbes named him the highest paid man in entertainment, Perry is known for both creating and performing as the Madea character, a tough elderly black woman. Perry also creates films, some produced as live recordings of stage plays, Perry is estimated to have earned around US$75 million by 2008. Many of Perrys stage-play films have been adapted as professional films. Perry has also created several shows, his most successful of which is Tyler Perrys House of Payne. On October 2,2012, Perry struck an exclusive partnership with Oprah Winfrey. The partnership was largely for the purposes of bringing scripted television to the OWN network, Perry has created multiple scripted series for the network, the most successful being The Haves and the Have Nots. As of 2014, The Haves and the Have Nots has given OWN its highest ratings to date. The series has also referred to as being one of OWNs biggest success stories with its weekly dose of soapy fun, filled with the typical betrayals, affairs, manipulations. Perrys work has earned enough serious attention to lead to the publishing of a book about him and his work. Perry was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, as Emmitt Perry Jr. the son of Willie Maxine Perry and Emmitt Perry, Perry once said his fathers answer to everything was to beat it out of you. As a child, Perry once went so far as to attempt suicide in an effort to escape his fathers beatings, in contrast to his father, his mother took him to church each week, where he sensed a certain refuge and contentment. At age 16, he had his first name legally changed from Emmitt to Tyler in an effort to distance himself from his father, a DNA test Perry took in the 2010s stated that Emmitt Sr. was not Perrys biological father. While Perry did not complete school, he earned a GED. This comment inspired him to himself to a career in writing. He soon started writing a series of letters to himself, which became the basis for the musical I Know Ive Been Changed. Around 1990, Perry moved to Atlanta, where two years later I Know Ive Been Changed was first performed at a community theater, financed by the 22-year-old Perrys $12,000 life savings
21.
Taraji P. Henson
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Taraji Penda Henson is an American actress and author. She studied acting at Howard University and began her Hollywood career in guest-roles on several shows before making her breakthrough in Baby Boy. In 2010, she appeared in the comedy Date Night and co-starred in the remake of The Karate Kid, Henson has also had an extensive career in television in series such as The Division, Boston Legal and Eli Stone. From 2011 to 2013, she co-starred as Detective Jocelyn Carter in the CBS drama Person of Interest, Henson went on to star in the ensemble film Think Like a Man and its 2014 sequel. She also won a Golden Globe Award, and was nominated for two Emmy Awards, in 2015 and 2016, in 2016, Time named Henson one of the 100 most influential people in the world on the annual Time 100 list. Henson also released a New York Times best selling autobiography titled Around the Way Girl, Henson has also executive produced some of her projects such as her 2014 film No Good Deed. In 2015 Henson teamed up with Empire co-star Terrence Howard to produce and host a variety special for Fox titled Taraji. The special returned again in 2016 but with just Henson alone, Henson has often spoken of the influence of her maternal grandmother, Patsy Ballard, who was her date to the Academy Awards the year she was nominated. Her first and middle names are of Swahili origin, with Taraji meaning hope, according to a mitochondrial DNA analysis, her matrilineal lineage can be traced to the Masa people of Cameroon. She has said that North Pole explorer Matthew Henson is the brother of my great-great grandfather, Henson graduated from Oxon Hill High School in Oxon Hill, Maryland, in 1988. She then attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University where she studied engineering before transferring to Howard University to study drama. To pay for college, she worked mornings as a secretary at The Pentagon and evenings as a waitress on a dinner-cruise ship. Henson received her SAG Card in the early 1990s for doing 3 extra roles and her breakthrough role was in the 2001 comedy drama film Baby Boy in which she portrayed Yvette, alongside singer Tyrese Gibson. In 2005, Henson was in the independent film Hustle & Flow as Shug, the love interest of Terrence Howard, the film was nominated for two Academy awards, winning one. In 2008, she appeared opposite Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Henson plays the role of Queenie, Benjamins mother, in a performance that led to an Academy award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She noted in an interview that, Queenie is the embodiment of unconditional love, Henson was in Tyler Perry films The Family That Preys in 2008 and I Can Do Bad All By Myself in 2009. In 2010, she appeared in the remake of The Karate Kid alongside Jaden Smith, the film was a commercial success. In 2011, she starred as Tiffany Rubin in the Lifetime Movie Network film Taken from Me, the film was based on true events of the life of a New York woman Tiffany Rubin, whose son Kobe was abducted by his biological father to South Korea
22.
Samuel L. Jackson
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Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American actor and film producer. With Jacksons permission, his likeness was used for the Ultimate version of the Marvel Comics character Nick Fury. He has also portrayed the character in the second and final episodes of the first season of the TV show Marvels Agents of S. H. I. E. L. D and he is married to LaTanya Richardson, with whom he has a daughter, Zoe. Samuel L. Jackson is ranked as the highest all-time box office star with over $4.9053 billion total box office gross, Jackson was born in Washington, D. C. the son of Elizabeth and Roy Henry Jackson. He grew up as a child in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His father lived away from the family in Kansas City, Missouri, Jackson only met his father twice during his life. Jackson was raised by his mother, who was a worker and later a supplies buyer for a mental institution. According to DNA tests, Jackson partially descends from the Benga people of Gabon, Jackson attended several segregated schools and graduated from Riverside High School in Chattanooga. Between the third and twelfth grades, he played the French horn, during childhood, he had a stuttering problem. While he eventually learned to pretend to be people who didnt stutter and use the curse word motherfucker as an affirmation word. Initially intent on pursuing a degree in biology, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta. After joining a local acting group to earn points in a class, Jackson found an interest in acting. Before graduating in 1972, he co-founded the Just Us Theatre, after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Jackson attended the funeral in Atlanta as one of the ushers. Jackson then flew to Memphis to join an equal rights protest march, in a Parade interview Jackson revealed, I was angry about the assassination, but I wasnt shocked by it. I knew that change was going to something different – not sit-ins. In 1969, Jackson and several other students held members of the Morehouse College board of trustees hostage on the campus, demanding reform in the schools curriculum and governance. The college eventually agreed to change its policy, but Jackson was charged with and eventually convicted of unlawful confinement, Jackson was then suspended for two years for his criminal record and his actions. He would later return to the college to earn his Bachelor of Arts in Drama in 1972, while he was suspended, Jackson was employed as a social worker in Los Angeles
23.
Usher (musician)
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Usher Raymond IV is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and actor. Born in Dallas, Texas but raised and lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee until moving to Atlanta, at the age of 12, his mother put him in local singing competitions, before catching the attention of a music A&R from LaFace Records. In 1994 he released his debut album, Usher. 8701 produced the number-one singles U Remind Me and U Got It Bad and it sold 8 million copies worldwide and won his first two Grammy Awards as Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 2002 and 2003. Confessions established him as one of the musical artists of the 2000s decade. Bolstered by its four consecutive Billboard Hot 100 number one singles, Burn, Confessions Part II, and My Boo, it has been certified Diamond by the RIAA. Here I Stand and Raymond v. Raymond, debuted atop of the Billboard 200, the EP, Versus, also produced the Hot 100 top-five single DJ Got Us Fallin in Love. Looking 4 Myself, also debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart, Raymond v. Raymond and Looking 4 Myself received Grammy Awards for R&B singles There Goes My Baby and Climax. Hard II Love peaked at five of the Billboard 200 albums chart. Usher has sold 23.8 million albums and 38.2 million digital songs in the United States, to date, his worldwide sales stand at 43 million albums and 75 million records overall, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Usher has won awards and accolades including 18 Billboard Music Awards and 8 Grammy Awards. Billboard also placed him at number 6 on their list of Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years, Usher has attained 9 US Hot 100 number-one singles. Considered an icon and sex symbol, he was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, in 2008, he started his own record label Raymond-Braun Media Group, a joint venture with talent manager Scooter Braun that includes Canadian singer Justin Bieber. Usher was born in Dallas, Texas, the son of Jonetta Patton, from Tennessee, Usher spent the majority of his young life in Chattanooga, his father left the family when Usher was a year old. Usher grew up with his mother, then-stepfather, and half-brother, while in Atlanta, Usher attended North Springs High School. At age 10, Usher joined an R&B local quintet called the NuBeginnings, Usher recorded 10 songs with the group in 1991, and the ensuing album, Nubeginning Featuring Usher Raymond IV, was only made available regionally and by mail order. However, Patton took him out because, according to her, the album was re-released nationally in April 2002 by Hip-O Records. At age 13, Usher would meet A. J, alexander at local talent show in Atlanta
24.
Mary J. Blige
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Mary Jane Blige is an American singer, songwriter, model, record producer and actress. My Life, in particular, is considered among the greatest albums ever recorded according to Rolling Stone, Time, for her part in combining hip hop and soul in the early 1990s and its subsequent commercial success, Blige received the Legends Award at the World Music Awards. Blige made Time magazines Time 100 list of individuals around the world in 2007. As of 2013, Blige has sold more than 50 million albums and 25 million singles worldwide, Billboard ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years. The magazine also lists her 2006 song Be Without You as the top R&B song of the 2000s, in 2011, VH1 ranked Blige as the 80th greatest artist of all time. Moreover, she is ranked number 100 on the list of 100 greatest singers of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, in 2012, VH1 ranked Blige at number 9 in The 100 Greatest Women in Music. Blige also earned high remarks for her work in film and she starred in the 2009 Tyler Perry box-office hit I Can Do Bad All By Myself and played a role in the film Rock of Ages. She received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her contribution to the film The Help. In partnership with the Home Shopping Network and Carols Daughter, Blige released her My Life perfume, the perfume broke HSN records by selling 65,000 bottles during its premiere. The scent went on to win two FiFi Awards, including the Fragrance Sales Breakthrough award, in 2017, she stars in the period drama film Mudbound directed by Dee Rees. Blige spent her years in Richmond Hill, Georgia, where she sang in a Pentecostal church. Blige later moved to Schlobohm Houses in Yonkers, New York, immediately north of New York City, Blige dropped out of high school in her junior year. Pursuing a musical career, Blige spent a period of time in a Yonkers band named Pride with band drummer Eddie DAprile. In early 1988, she recorded a cover of Anita Bakers Caught Up in the Rapture at a recording booth in the Galleria Mall in White Plains. Her mothers boyfriend at the later played the cassette for Jeff Redd. Redd sent it to the president and CEO of the label, Harrell met with Blige and in 1989 she was signed to the label, becoming the companys youngest and first female artist. After being signed to Uptown Records, Blige began working with record producer Puff Daddy and he became the executive producer and produced a majority of the album. Derived from Bliges past occupation as a 4-1-1 operator, it was also an indication by Blige of being the real deal, the music was described as revelatory on a frequent basis
25.
Nia Long
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Nitara Carlynn Nia Long is an American actress. And the sequels to the three films. Long was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Talita, a teacher and printmaker, and Doughtry Doc Long and her family is of Trinidadian, Grenadian, and Bajan descent. She has an older half-sister, the actress and comedian known as Sommore, Long was two years old when her parents divorced. She accompanied her mother when she moved to Iowa City, Iowa and her mother moved to South Los Angeles when Long was seven years old, as she planned to marry there. She and her fiance called off the wedding, but Talita chose to stay in Los Angeles, longs father resides in Trenton, New Jersey. Long attended the Roman Catholic school St. Marys Academy in Inglewood and she was bused from South Los Angeles to Paseo Del Rey Elementary School in Playa Del Rey from 3rd grade through 6th grade. In addition to her classes, she studied ballet, tap, jazz, gymnastics, guitar. She graduated from Westchester High School in Los Angeles in 1989, longs acting coach was Betty Bridges, better known as the mother of Diffrent Strokes star Todd Bridges. Her earliest role was in the Disney television movie, The B. R. A. T, patrol alongside Sean Astin, Tim Thomerson and Brian Keith. Her first notable role on television was a contract role as Kathryn Kat Speakes on the soap opera Guiding Light. Long portrayed Kat from 1991 to 1994, Long played Brandi in Boyz n the Hood. The film excited Long, who was doing her first real movie role and it helped Long build her confidence as an actress. It introduced me to the world in a way that it was okay for me to be who I am and still find success, I didn’t have to conform to anything. From 1994 –1995, she played Will Smiths girlfriend and fiancée Beulah Lisa Wilkes on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, jada Pinkett Smith was originally supposed to play Lisa, but was too short for the role, thus leaving Nia to take the part. In 2000, Long was offered the role of Alex Munday in Charlies Angels, but she turned it down, in 2003, she joined the cast of the drama Third Watch, where she played NYPD Officer Sasha Monroe, continuing until the series finale in 2005. In 2005 and 2006, Long appeared on Everwood, and appeared on Boston Legal during its 2006–2007 season, Long also starred in Big Shots from 2007–2008 alongside Michael Vartan and Dylan McDermott. In 2016, Long was cast in a role for the TV series Empire
26.
Marilyn Monroe
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Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Famous for playing comic dumb blonde characters, she one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s. Although she was an actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million by the time of her unexpected death in 1962. She continues to be considered a popular culture icon. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes, while working in a factory in 1944 as part of the war effort, she was introduced to a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career. The work led to short-lived film contracts with Twentieth Century-Fox and Columbia Pictures, after a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in 1951. Over the next two years, she became an actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for photos before becoming a star, but rather than damaging her career. Although she played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, she was disappointed at being typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project, when the studio was still reluctant to change her contract, Monroe founded a film production company in late 1954, she named it Marilyn Monroe Productions. She dedicated 1955 to building her company and began studying acting at the Actors Studio. In late 1955, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more control and a larger salary. After a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop and acting in the first independent production of MMP, The Prince and her last completed film was the drama The Misfits. Monroes troubled private life received much attention and she struggled with substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. She had two highly publicized marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, both of which ended in divorce and she died at the age of 36 on August 5,1962, from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Los Angeles. Although Monroes death was ruled a suicide, several conspiracy theories have been proposed in the decades following her death. Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1,1926, Gladys, the daughter of two poor Midwestern migrants to California, was a flapper and worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. When she was fifteen, Gladys married a man nine years her senior, John Newton Baker and she filed for divorce in 1921, and Baker took the children with him to his native Kentucky
27.
Blair Underwood
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Blair Erwin Underwood is an American television, film, and stage actor and director. He played headstrong attorney Jonathan Rollins on the NBC legal drama L. A. Law for seven years and he has received two Golden Globe Award nominations, three NAACP Image Awards and one Grammy Award. In recent years, he has appeared as Andrew Garner on Agents of S. H. I. E. L. D, the New Adventures of Old Christine, Dirty Sexy Money and In Treatment and was in NBCs The Event. Underwood was born in Tacoma, Washington, the son of Marilyn Ann Scales, an interior decorator, because of his fathers military career, Underwood lived on bases and Army Posts in the United States and Stuttgart, Germany, during his childhood. Blair attended Petersburg High School in Petersburg, Virginia and he went on to attend the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is an honorary member of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. A. Law, where he appeared from 1987 to 1994, in 1996 he was featured in the July issue of Playgirl. Blair also appeared in the 1987s TV series 21 Jump Street aside a young Johnny Depp on episode Gotta Finish the Riff, underwoods film career began with roles in Just Cause, Set It Off and Deep Impact. He also had a role as a geneticist in Gattaca. In 2000, he played the role in the short-lived television series City of Angels. In 2003, he guest starred in four episodes on the HBO series Sex, in 2004, he played the role of Roger De Souza opposite Heather Locklear in NBCs LAX. He gained acclaim as the grade school teacher in the CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus for two years. In 2007, he guest starred in an episode of the NBC series Law & Order and he played the character Alex in the first season of the HBO series In Treatment, for which he was nominated for best supporting actor at the 2009 Golden Globes. Underwood has received three NAACP Image Awards, for his work in Rules of Engagement, and his television work in L. A. Law, City of Angels, Murder in Mississippi. Underwood was voted one of People s 50 Most Beautiful People in 2000, in 2007, Underwood co-authored the novel Casanegra, A Tennyson Hardwick Novel with husband-and-wife team Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due. In 2010–2011, Underwood portrayed United States President Elias Martinez in the NBC drama series The Event, in 2012, he played the lead role of Stanley in the Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. In 2013, Underwood played the role of Robert Ironside in the remake of the successful 1960s television series, the show was cancelled after three episodes. In 2016, Underwood was cast in the ABC thriller series Quantico for the regular role of CIA officer. Underwood is a part of charitable organizations
28.
Omar Epps
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Omar Hashim Epps is an American actor, rapper, songwriter, and record producer. His film roles include Juice, Higher Learning, The Wood, In Too Deep, and Love and Basketball. His television work includes the role of Dr. Dennis Gant on the drama series ER, J. Martin Bellamy in Resurrection. Epps was born in Brooklyn, New York and his parents divorced during his childhood and he was raised by his mother, Bonnie Maria Epps, an elementary school principal. He lived in several neighborhoods while growing up, before he started acting, he belonged to a rap group called Wolfpack which he formed with his cousin in 1991. He began writing poetry, short stories and songs at the age of ten and attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art, early in Eppss career, he was most often cast in the roles of troubled teens and/or athletes. He made his film debut with rapper Tupac Shakur as the star of cinematographer Ernest Dickersons directorial film debut Juice. The film is the violent and tragic story of four young men growing up in Harlem, Epps followed up his performance in Juice as a running back in the college football drama The Program alongside James Caan. The following year, he switched to baseball as co-star of Major League II and his next athletic endeavor was playing a track and field star in John Singletons Higher Learning, a look at the politics and racial tensions of college life. Epps landed a role on the hit television drama ER for several episodes portraying Dr. Dennis Gant, also in 1997 Epps was the star of the fact-based HBO movie First Time Felon. In 1999 Epps was cast as Linc in The Mod Squad, while The Mod Squad proved a critical and box-office bust, Eppss later 1999 effort The Wood offered him a serious and multi-dimensional role. 1999 also saw him lens the 1950s set murder mystery When Willows Touch, with James Earl Jones, in 2000, Epps starred in Love & Basketball, featuring Alfre Woodard and Sanaa Lathan. He portrayed Quincy, the NBA hopeful who has a relationship with an equally adept female basketball star Monica. The actor held supporting roles in a series of films, including Dracula 2000, Big Trouble, in this year he also had a leading role as a gangster in Brother, a movie by acclaimed Japanese actor/director Takeshi Kitano. In 2004, Epps landed the role of drug-dealer-turned-prizefighter Luther Shaw, Epps was a character in the video game Def Jam Fight for NY in 2004. Also in 2004, Epps returned to medical drama with his role as Dr. Eric Foreman on the Fox television series House. The role earned him a NAACP Image Award in 2007,2008 and 2013 for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, in 2014, Epps took on the role of agent J. Martin Bellamy in the ABC television series, Resurrection. The series focuses on a number of individuals who return from the dead, in 1999 Epps began dating actress Sanaa Lathan
29.
National Public Radio
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NPR produces and distributes news and cultural programming. Individual public radio stations are not required to broadcast all NPR programs that are produced and its content is also available on-demand via the web, mobile, and podcasts. The organizations legal name is National Public Radio and its brand is NPR. Is NPR has been used by its hosts for many years. However, National Public Radio remains the name of the group. National Public Radio replaced the National Educational Radio Network on February 26,1970 and this act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which created the Public Broadcasting Service in addition to NPR. A CPB organizing committee under John Witherspoon first created a Board of Directors chaired by Bernard Mayes, the board then hired Donald Quayle to be the first president of NPR with 30 employees and 90 charter member stations, and studios in Washington, D. C. NPR aired its first broadcast in April 1971, covering United States Senate hearings on the Vietnam War, a month later, the afternoon drive-time newscast All Things Considered began, on May 3,1971, first hosted by Robert Conley. NPR was primarily a production and distribution organization until 1977, when it merged with the Association of Public Radio Stations, NPR suffered an almost fatal setback in 1983 when efforts to expand services created a deficit of nearly US$7 million. After a congressional investigation and the resignation of NPRs president, Frank Mankiewicz, NPR also agreed to turn its satellite service into a cooperative venture, making it possible for non-NPR shows to get national distribution. It took NPR approximately three years to pay off the debt, delano Lewis, the president of C&P Telephone, left that position to become NPRs CEO and president in January 1994. In November 1998, NPRs board of directors hired Kevin Klose, NPR spent nearly $13 million to acquire and equip a West Coast 25, 000-square-foot production facility, NPR West, which opened in Culver City, Los Angeles County, California, in November 2002. C. In November 2003, NPR received US$235 million from the estate of the late Joan B, Kroc, the widow of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds Corporation. This was the largest monetary gift ever to a cultural institution, in 2004 NPRs budget increased by over 50% to US$153 million due to the Kroc gift. US$34 million of the money was deposited in its endowment, the endowment fund before the gift totaled $35 million. NPR will use the interest from the bequest to expand its news staff, the 2005 budget was about US$120 million. In August 2005, NPR entered podcasting with a directory of over 170 programs created by NPR, by November of that year, users downloaded NPR and other public radio podcasts 5 million times
30.
Jay-Z
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Shawn Corey Carter, known professionally as Jay Z, is an American rapper, businessman, and investor. He is one of the musicians of all time, having sold more than 100 million records. MTV ranked him the Greatest MC of all time in 2006, Rolling Stone ranked three of his albums—Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint, and The Black Album —among the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2014, Forbes estimated his net worth at nearly $520 million, Jay Z co-owns the New York 40/40 Club sports bar, and is the co-creator of the clothing line Rocawear. He is the president of Def Jam Recordings, co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records. He also founded the sports agency Roc Nation Sports and is a certified NBA, as an artist, he holds the record for most number one albums by a solo artist on the Billboard 200 with 13. He has also had four number ones on the Billboard Hot 100, in 2009, he was ranked the tenth-most successful artist of the 2000s by Billboard as well as the fifth top solo male artist and fourth top rapper behind Eminem, Nelly, and 50 Cent. He was also ranked the 88th-greatest artist of all time by Rolling Stone, Jay Z married Singer-Songwriter Beyoncé in 2008. Shawn Carter was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Marcy Houses and he and his three siblings were raised by their mother, Gloria Carter after their father, Adness Reeves abandoned the family. Reeves would later meet and reconcile with Jay Z before dying from liver failure in 2003, Jay Z claims in his lyrics that in 1982, at the age of 12, he shot his older brother in the shoulder for stealing his jewelry. Along with future rapper AZ, Carter attended Eli Whitney High School in Brooklyn until it was closed down, according to his interviews and lyrics, during this period he sold crack cocaine and was shot at three times. According to his mother, Carter used to wake up his siblings at night banging out drum patterns on the kitchen table and she bought him a boom box for his birthday, sparking his interest in music. He began freestyling and writing lyrics, known as Jazzy around the neighborhood, Carter later adopted the showbiz/stage name Jay-Z in homage to his mentor Jaz-O. He would drop the hyphen in 2013, Jay Z can be briefly heard on several of Jaz-Os early recordings in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including The Originators and Hawaiian Sophie. Jay Z became embroiled in several battles with rapper LL Cool J in the early 1990s and he first became known to a wide audience on the posse cut Show and Prove on the 1994 Big Daddy Kane album Daddys Home. When I would leave the stage to go change outfits, I would bring out Jay Z and Positive K and let them freestyle until I came back to the stage. The young Jay Z appeared on a song by Big L, Da Graveyard, and on Mic Geronimos Time to Build. His first official rap single was called In My Lifetime, for which he released a music video, an unreleased music video was also produced for the B-side I Cant Get with That
31.
Barack Obama
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Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president and he previously served in the U. S. Senate representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, and in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, two years after the territory was admitted to the Union as the 50th state and he grew up mostly in Hawaii, but also spent one year of his childhood in Washington State and four years in Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, in 1988 Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he became a civil rights attorney and professor, Obama represented the 13th District for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, when he ran for the U. S. Senate. In 2008, Obama was nominated for president, a year after his campaign began and he was elected over Republican John McCain, and was inaugurated on January 20,2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, during his first two years in office, Obama signed more landmark legislation than any Democratic president since LBJs Great Society. Main reforms were the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, after a lengthy debate over the national debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control and the American Taxpayer Relief Acts. In foreign policy, Obama increased U. S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the U. S. -Russian New START treaty, and ended military involvement in the Iraq War. He ordered military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, after winning re-election over Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013. Obama also advocated gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning climate change and immigration. In foreign policy, Obama ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, Obama left office in January 2017 with a 60% approval rating. He currently resides in Washington, D. C and his presidential library will be built in Chicago. Obama was born on August 4,1961, at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu and he is the only President to have been born in Hawaii. He was born to a mother and a black father. His mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, of mostly English descent, with some German, Irish, Scottish, Swiss and his father, Barack Obama Sr. was a married Luo Kenyan man from Nyangoma Kogelo. Obamas parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the couple married in Wailuku, Hawaii on February 2,1961, six months before Obama was born. In late August 1961, Obamas mother moved him to the University of Washington in Seattle for a year
32.
Prince (musician)
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Prince Rogers Nelson was an American singer-songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, philanthropist, dancer and record producer. He was an innovator who was known for his eclectic work, flamboyant stage presence, extravagant dress and makeup. His music integrates a variety of styles, including funk, rock, R&B, new wave, soul, psychedelia. He has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the artists of all time. He won seven Grammy Awards, an American Music Award, a Golden Globe Award, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, his first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone ranked Prince at number 27 on its list of 100 Greatest Artists, Prince was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and developed an interest in music as a young child. He signed a contract with Warner Bros. at the age of 18. In 1984, he began referring to his band as the Revolution and released Purple Rain. It quickly became his most critically and commercially successful release, spending 24 consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200, after releasing the albums Around the World in a Day and Parade, The Revolution disbanded, and Prince released the double album Sign o the Times as a solo artist. He released three solo albums before debuting the New Power Generation band in 1991. He released five records between 1994 and 1996 before signing with Arista Records in 1998, in 2000, he began referring to himself as Prince again. He released 16 albums after that, including the platinum-selling Musicology and his final album, Hit n Run Phase Two, was first released on the Tidal streaming service on December 12,2015. Prince died from an overdose at his Paisley Park recording studio and home in Chanhassen, Minnesota, on April 21,2016. Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis, to Mattie Della and his parents were both African-American and his family ancestry is centered in Louisiana, all four of his grandparents came from that state. Princes father was a pianist and songwriter, and his mother was a jazz singer, Prince was given his fathers stage name, Prince Rogers, which his father used while performing with a jazz group called the Prince Rogers Trio. In 1991, Princes father told A Current Affair that I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do, Prince has said he was born epileptic and used to have seizures when he was young. He also said, My mother told me one day I walked in to her and said, Mom, Im not going to be sick anymore, Princes sister Tika Evene was born in 1960. Both siblings developed a keen interest in music, and this was encouraged by their father, Prince wrote his first tune, Funk Machine, on his fathers piano when he was seven
33.
Muhammad Ali
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Muhammad Ali was an American professional boxer and activist. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated figures of the 20th century. From early in his career, Ali was known as an inspiring, controversial, Cassius Clay was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and began training as an amateur boxer when he was 12 years old. At age 18, he won a medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. At age 22 in 1964, he won the WBA, WBC, Clay then converted to Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay, which he called his slave name, to Muhammad Ali. He set an example of pride for African Americans and resistance to white domination during the Civil Rights Movement. He was eventually arrested, found guilty of draft evasion charges, Alis actions as a conscientious objector to the war made him an icon for the larger counterculture generation. Ali is regarded as one of the leading heavyweight boxers of the 20th century and he remains the only three-time lineal heavyweight champion, having won the title in 1964,1974, and 1978. Between February 25 and September 19,1964, Ali reigned as the heavyweight champion. He is the boxer to be named The Ring magazine Fighter of the Year six times. Nicknamed The Greatest, he was involved in historic boxing matches. Notable among these were the first Liston fight, the Fight of the Century, Super Fight II, the Thrilla in Manila versus his rival Joe Frazier, and The Rumble in the Jungle versus George Foreman. At a time when most fighters let their managers do the talking, Ali thrived in and indeed craved the spotlight, as a musician, Ali recorded two spoken word albums and a rhythm and blues song, and received two Grammy Award nominations. As an actor, he performed in films and a Broadway musical. Additionally, Ali wrote two autobiographies, one during and one after his boxing career, as a Muslim, Ali was initially affiliated with Elijah Muhammads Nation of Islam and advocated their black separatist ideology. He later disavowed the NOI, adhering initially to Sunni Islam and later to Sufism, after retiring from boxing in 1981, Ali devoted his life to religious and charitable work. In 1984, Ali was diagnosed with Parkinsons syndrome, which his doctors attributed to boxing-related brain injuries, as the condition worsened, Ali made limited public appearances and was cared for by his family until his death on June 3,2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born on January 17,1942, in Louisville and he had a sister and four brothers
34.
Billy Dee Williams
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William December Billy Dee Williams Jr. is an American actor, artist, singer, and writer. Williams was born in New York, the son of Loretta Anne, a West Indian-born elevator operator from Montserrat and he has a twin sister, Loretta, and grew up in Harlem, where he was raised by his maternal grandmother while his parents worked at several jobs. Williams first appeared on Broadway in 1945 in The Firebrand of Florence and he returned to Broadway as an adult in 1960 in the adaptation of The Cool Word. He appeared in A Taste of Honey in 1961, a 1976 Broadway production, I Have a Dream, was directed by Robert Greenwald and starred Williams as Martin Luther King Jr. His most recent Broadway appearance was in August Wilsons Fences, as a replacement for James Earl Jones in the role of Troy Maxson in 1988. Williams made his debut in 1959 in The Last Angry Man, opposite Paul Muni. The film was so popular that it was given a theatrical release, both Williams and Caan were nominated for Emmy Awards for best actor for their performances. In 1972, he starred as Billie Holidays husband Louis McKay in Motown Productions Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, the film was a box office blockbuster, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of the year and received five Academy Award nominations. Diana Ross starred in Lady Sings the Blues opposite Williams, Motown paired the two of them three years later in the successful follow-up project Mahogany. The early 1980s brought Williams the role of Lando Calrissian, which he played in The Empire Strikes Back, Calrissians charm proved to be popular with audiences. Between his appearances in the Star Wars films, he starred alongside Sylvester Stallone as a cop in the 1981 thriller Nighthawks and he co-starred in 1989s Batman as district attorney Harvey Dent, a role that was planned to develop into Dents alter-ego, the villain Two-Face, in sequels. Unfortunately for Williams, that never came to pass, he was set to reprise the role in the sequel Batman Returns, but his character was deleted and replaced with villain Max Shreck. When Joel Schumacher stepped in to direct Batman Forever, where Two-Face was to be a secondary villain, Schumacher decided to hire Tommy Lee Jones for the role. There was a rumor that Schumacher had to pay Williams a fee in order to hire Jones, I had a two-picture deal with Star Wars. They paid me for that, but I only had a one deal for Batman. Williams eventually voiced Two-Face in the 2017 film The Lego Batman Movie, after The Walt Disney Company acquired ownership of Lucasfilm in 2012, plans for a sequel trilogy to the Star Wars films were announced. On April 29,2014, Disney announced a cast list for Star Wars Episode VII, the confirmed cast included the actors who portrayed Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker, along with Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2, but Calrissians character was omitted. Fans made their displeasure known on social networks immediately, Williamss television work included a recurring guest-starring role on the short-lived show Gideons Crossing
35.
Demi Moore
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Demi Gene Guynes, professionally known as Demi Moore, is an American actress, former songwriter, and model. Moore dropped out of school at age 16 to pursue an acting career. After making her debut later that year, she appeared on the soap opera General Hospital and subsequently gained recognition for her work in Blame It on Rio. Her first film to both a critical and commercial hit was About Last Night. Which established her as a Hollywood star, in 1990, Moore starred in Ghost, the highest-grossing film of that year, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. She had a string of additional successes in the early 1990s, including A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal. In 1996, Moore became the actress in film history when she was paid a then-unprecedented fee of $12.5 million to star in Striptease. Her next major role, G. I. Moore was born on November 11,1962 in Roswell and her biological father, Air Force airman Charles Harmon, Sr. left her mother, Virginia, after a two-month marriage, before Moore was born. When Moore was three months old, her mother married Dan Guynes, an advertising salesman who frequently changed jobs, as a result. Moore said in 1991, My dad was Dan Guynes, there is a man who would be considered my biological father who I dont really have a relationship with. Moore learned of him at age 13, when she found her mother and stepfathers marriage certificate, Dan Guynes committed suicide in October 1980 at age 37, two years after he separated from Moores mother. Charles Harmon appeared on Inside Edition in 1995, making an appeal to see his grandchildren, Virginia Guynes had a long record of arrests for crimes, including drunk driving and arson. Moore broke off contact with her in 1990, when Guynes walked away from a rehab stay Moore had paid for at the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota. Guynes posed nude for the magazine High Society in 1993, where she spoofed Moores Vanity Fair pregnancy and bodypaint covers, Moore and Guynes briefly reconciled shortly before Guynes died of cancer in July 1998 at age 54. Moore was cross-eyed as a child, this was corrected by two operations. She also suffered from kidney dysfunction, at age 15, Moore moved to West Hollywood, California, where her mother worked for a magazine-distribution company. Moore attended Fairfax High School there, and recalled, I moved out of my familys house when I was 16 and left high school in my junior year. In August 1979, three months before her 17th birthday, Moore met musician Freddy Moore who was married and at the leader of the band Boy
36.
Us Weekly
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Us Weekly is a weekly celebrity and entertainment magazine based in New York City. Us Weekly was founded in 1977 by The New York Times Company and it was acquired by Wenner Media in 1986. The publication covers topics ranging from celebrity relationships to the latest trends in fashion, beauty, along with Jann Wenner, the individuals currently in charge of Us Weekly are editor-in-chief Michael Steele and publisher Victoria Lasdon Rose. As of 2013, its circulation averaged over two million, the magazine currently features a sharply different style from its original 1977–2000 format. Originally a monthly news and review magazine along the lines of Premiere or Entertainment Weekly, it switched format in 2000 to its current themes of celebrity news. The web site Usmagazine. com was launched in fall 2006, in addition to features from the magazine, the site has a breaking celebrity news blog, exclusive photos, red carpet galleries from premieres and events, plus games, videos, quizzes and polls. Janet Jacksons May 26,2006 Us Weekly cover currently holds the record for the publications biggest selling issue in history, launched as a fortnightly publication in 1977, Us by the New York Times Company. The magazine lost money before turning its first profit in 1980 and it was sold later that year by Macfadden Media. It was acquired by Jan Wenner in 1985 and is a part of Wenner Media LLC, in 1991, Us became a monthly publication. In 1999, the announced plans to shift the Us publication schedule from monthly to weekly. The shift coincided with a change in style from industry news and reviews to a news magazine. The move was a response to market forces, including the success of Time, Inc. ’s Entertainment Weekly. Wenner expressed his intention to keep Us celebrity-friendly in contrast with the more gossipy character of its competitors and he told The New York Times, We will be nice to celebrities. A lot of my friends are in the entertainment business, the publication focuses on celebrity fashion as well as Hollywood gossip. Kelli Delaney, current New York designer for Members Only, formerly served as Fashion Director of the publication, the change took effect in March 2000. In February 2001, Wenner partnered with The Walt Disney Company, but, in August 2006, Wenner Media re-acquired Disneys 50 percent stake, making the publication once again fully owned and operated by Wenner Media. In July 2003, Janice Min took over as Editor in Chief with Victoria Lasdon Rose as Publisher, Steele took over for Min in 2009. Melanie Bromley served as the magazines West Coast bureau chief from 2007-2012, inspired by a regular Sesame Street feature about animals
37.
CNN
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The Cable News Network is an American basic cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner. It was founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner as a 24-hour cable news channel, upon its launch, CNN was the first television channel to provide 24-hour news coverage, and was the first all-news television channel in the United States. While the news channel has numerous affiliates, CNN primarily broadcasts from the Time Warner Center in New York City and its headquarters at the CNN Center in Atlanta is only used for weekend programming. CNN is sometimes referred to as CNN/U. S. to distinguish the American channel from its sister network. As of August 2010, CNN is available in over 100 million U. S. households, broadcast coverage of the U. S. channel extends to over 890,000 American hotel rooms, as well as carriage on cable and satellite providers throughout Canada. Globally, CNN programming airs through CNN International, which can be seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories, as of February 2015, CNN is available to about 96,289,000 cable, satellite, and telco television households in the United States. The Cable News Network was launched at 5,00 p. m. Eastern Time on June 1,1980, after an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the channels first newscast. Burt Reinhardt, the vice president of CNN at its launch, hired most of the channels first 200 employees, including the networks first news anchor. Since its debut, CNN has expanded its reach to a number of cable and satellite providers, several websites. The company has 36 bureaus, more than 900 affiliated local stations, the channels success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for conglomerate Time Warners eventual acquisition of the Turner Broadcasting System in 1996. A companion channel, CNN2, was launched on January 1,1982, on January 28,1986, CNN carried the only live television coverage of the launch and subsequent break-up of Space Shuttle Challenger, which killed all seven crew members on board. On October 14,1987, Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old toddler, fell down a well in Midland, CNN quickly reported on the story, and the event helped make its name. This was before correspondents reported live from the capital while American bombs were falling. Before Saddam Hussein held a press conference with a few of the hundreds of Americans he was holding hostage. Before the nation watched, riveted but powerless, as Los Angeles was looted and burned, before O. J. Simpson took a slow ride in a white Bronco, and before everyone close to his case had an agent and a book contract. This was uncharted territory just a time ago. The moment when bombing began was announced on CNN by Bernard Shaw on January 16,1991, as follows, lets describe to our viewers what were seeing. The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated, were seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky
38.
Multiracial
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Multiracial is defined as made up of or relating to people of many races. Many terms exist for people of multiracial backgrounds. While some of the used in the past are considered insulting and offensive. Individuals of multiracial backgrounds make up a significant portion of the population in parts of the world. In North America, studies have found that the population is continuing to grow. Because of a decline in racism, multiracial people no longer feel the need to hide their heritage, in many countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, mixed-race people make up the majority of the population. While defining race is controversial, race remains a commonly used term for categorization, insofar as race is defined differently in different cultures, perceptions of multiraciality will naturally be subjective. Some percentage of people who look black will possess genetic markers indicating the majority of their recent ancestors were European. The revised OMB standards identify a minimum of five categories, White, Black or African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian. Perhaps the most significant change for Census 2000 was that respondents were given the option to one or more races on the questionnaire to indicate their racial identity. Census 2000 race data are shown for people who reported a race either alone or in combination with one or more other races, in the English-speaking world, many terms for people of various multiracial backgrounds exist, some of which are pejorative or are no longer used. Mulato, zambo and mestizo are used in Spanish, mulato, caboclo, cafuzo, ainoko and mestiço in Portuguese and mulâtre and these terms are also in certain contexts used in the English-speaking world. In Canada, the Métis are an ethnic group of mixed European and First Nation descent. Half-breed is a term that referred to people of partial Native American ancestry, it is now considered pejorative. Mestee, once used, is now used mostly for members of historically mixed-race groups, such as Louisiana Creoles, Melungeons, Redbones. In South Africa, and much of English-speaking southern Africa, the term Coloured was used to describe a mixed-race person, while the term is socially accepted, it is becoming an outdated due to its association with the apartheid era. Charts and diagrams intended to explain the classifications were common, the well-known Casta paintings in Mexico and, to some extent, Peru, were illustrations of the different classifications. Most Brazilians of all groups are to some extent mixed-race according to genetic research
39.
Google
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Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph. D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares, and they incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4,1998. An initial public offering took place on August 19,2004, in August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabets leading subsidiary, will continue to be the company for Alphabets Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructure, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Googles core search engine. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, the new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, stated, a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience. Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier, alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google. com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites, including YouTube, Googles mission statement, from the outset, was to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful, and its unofficial slogan was Dont be evil. In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the phrase Do the right thing, Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. They called this new technology PageRank, it determined a websites relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine BackRub, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Originally, Google ran under Stanford Universitys website, with the domains google. stanford. edu, the domain name for Google was registered on September 15,1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4,1998. It was based in the garage of a friend in Menlo Park, craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee. The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. At least three other investors invested in 1998, Amazon. com founder Jeff Bezos, Stanford University computer science professor David Cheriton. Author Ken Auletta claims that each invested $250,000, early in 1999, Brin and Page decided they wanted to sell Google to Excite. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million, vinod Khosla, one of Excites venture capitalists, talked the duo down to $750,000, but Bell still rejected it. Googles initial public offering took place five years later, on August 19,2004, at that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024
40.
Google Books
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Books are provided either by publishers and authors, through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Googles library partners, through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of publishers to digitize their archives. The Publisher Program was first known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004, the Google Books Library Project, which scans works in the collections of library partners and adds them to the digital inventory, was announced in December 2004. But it has also criticized for potential copyright violations. As of October 2015, the number of scanned book titles was over 25 million, Google estimated in 2010 that there were about 130 million distinct titles in the world, and stated that it intended to scan all of them. Results from Google Books show up in both the universal Google Search as well as in the dedicated Google Books search website, if Google believes the book is still under copyright, a user sees snippets of text around the queried search terms. All instances of the terms in the book text appear with a yellow highlight. The four access levels used on Google Books are, Full view, Books in the domain are available for full view. In-print books acquired through the Partner Program are also available for full view if the publisher has given permission, usually, the publisher can set the percentage of the book available for preview. Users are restricted from copying, downloading or printing book previews, a watermark reading Copyrighted material appears at the bottom of pages. All books acquired through the Partner Program are available for preview and this could be because Google cannot identify the owner or the owner declined permission. If a search term appears many times in a book, Google displays no more than three snippets, thus preventing the user from viewing too much of the book. Also, Google does not display any snippets for certain reference books, such as dictionaries, Google maintains that no permission is required under copyright law to display the snippet view. No preview, Google also displays search results for books that have not been digitized, in effect, this is similar to an online library card catalog. Google also stated that it would not scan any in-copyright books between August and 1 November 2005, to provide the owners with the opportunity to decide which books to exclude from the Project. It can let Google scan the book under the Library Project and it can opt out of the Library Project, in which case Google will not scan the book. If the book has already been scanned, Google will reset its access level as No preview and this information is collated through automated methods, and sometimes data from third-party sources is used. This information provides an insight into the book, particularly useful when only a view is available
41.
Columbia College Chicago
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Founded in 1890, the school is located in the South Loop district of Chicago, Illinois. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, Columbia College Chicago is not affiliated with Columbia University, Columbia College Hollywood, or any other Columbia College in the United States. The university has added a School of Business & Entrepreneurship that will host majors like marketing. It also is home to research centers as well as to the Garment Collection. It is also home to one of the few undergraduate programs in cultural studies. Columbia College Chicago was founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory by Mary A, Blood and Ida Morey Riley, both graduates of the Monroe Conservatory of Oratory, in Boston, Massachusetts. Blood and Riley became the Colleges first co-presidents, until Riley died in 1901, the school ran as a sole proprietary business from 1890 to 1904 when the school became incorporated by the state of Illinois. On May 5,1904, the school incorporated itself again in order to change its name to the Columbia College of Expression, when Blood died in 1927, George L. Scherger assumed the office of presidency after serving as a former member on the Board of Directors. Under his leadership, Scherger signed the paperwork at the Board’s annual meeting on April 14,1928 to change the School’s name to the Mary A. However, by April 30,1928, the school reverted its name to the Columbia College of Expression by the Board of Directors, George L. Scherger, Herman H. Hegner, and Erme Rowe Hegner. Hegner served as the head, although due to illness, her son. By 1934, College curriculum also focused on the field of radio broadcasting. Herman Hofer Hegner hired Norman Alexandroff, a programmer, in 1934 to develop a radio curriculum for the Colleges as both institutions were suffering financially. When Bertha Hofer Hegner retired in 1936 due to health reasons, she was president emeritus of the institutions. However, the College was never incorporated under any of these names by the State of Illinois. As the radio program gained prominence, Alexandroff was named as the Vice President of the Columbia College of Expression, on February 5,1944, the College re-filed as a not for profit corporation and changed its name to Columbia College. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the college broadened its educational base to include television, journalism, marketing, and other mass-communication areas. Alexandroff also oversaw the development of the campuses of the School, Columbia College Pan-Americano in Mexico City, Mexico and Columbia Los Angeles in Los Angeles
42.
Essence (magazine)
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Essence, also known as The Magazine for Todays Black Woman, is a privately owned periodical, and most of its readers are black women. The topics the magazine range from celebrities, to fashion. Advertising salesman Jonathan Blount and insurance salesman Clarence Smith thought up Essence and its initial circulation was approximately 50,000 copies per month, subsequently growing to roughly 1.6 million. Gordon Parks served as its director during the first three years of its circulation. In 2000, Time Inc. purchased 49 percent of Essence Communication inc, in 2005 Time Inc. made a deal with Essence Communication Inc. to purchase the remaining 51 percent it did not already own. The deal placed the ownership of the 34-year-old Essence magazine, one of the United States leading magazines for women of color, Black male patriarchy was also furthered by owners and staff members in the Essence workplace and was similar to white male patriarchy. The magazine features sections called Celebrity, Fashion, Beauty, Hair, Love, the magazine has covered topics from family, to social issues in the African-American community, African-American women in the military, and being HIV positive. Celebrities including Michelle Obama and Whitney Houston have appeared on the cover and been featured in the magazine through interviews, originally launched primarily as a fashion magazine, Essence has grown to be a guideline for African-American women in many aspects of life. Frequent contributors, including current editor-in-chief Vanessa K. Bush, provide advice for the black woman. The section named Tanishas Tips, written by the senior editor of personal finance and careers, gives tips on workplace conduct. While 85 percent of the articles were written by women,15 percent of the stories were written by men. Male staff members mostly wrote about being a man and dealing with a relationship with a woman, the articles they wrote highlighted how men and women differed biologically and related socially. Heterosexual relationships and their importance in present and future black life occupied over 30 percent of the topics explored by male writers. The black male voice revealed more about the male to the black female reader. Male Essence authors dedicated about another 30 percent of their articles to criticism of their female counterparts. As a display of power, between their black-male and relationship-oriented pieces, male writers also ventured to outline how black women should act, in 2009, the number of pages of advertisements in the magazine had dwindled by 12 percent. The festival is an event, that includes cultural celebrations, empowerment seminars. Awards honoring prominent musicians in the African-American community is celebrated during the festival as well
43.
Wayback Machine
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The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can also be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers also respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It. Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing. The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
