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Keyshia Cole’s Mother Dies From Drug Overdose On Her 61st Birthday
Korryn Gaines's Mother Fighting
For $38 Million Settlement 5 Years
After Her Daughter's Death
The family of R&B singer Keyshia Cole has been left grieving after her mother Frankie Lons succumbed to her battle with drug addic- tion on her 61st birthday.
Cole’s family confirmed Frankie passed away from an overdose after decades of battling with addiction, TMZ reports. Cole’s brother Sam shared how Frankie over- dosed at her Oakland home on Sunday. She was partying and celebrating her birthday when she apparently took drugs after relapsing on her journey to sobriety.
Frankie was best known for her appearances in Keyshia’s reality TV shows over the years and would be transparent about her sub-
It’s been five years since 23- year-old Korryn Gaines was shot and killed in her apartment by Baltimore County police. Since then, Gaines’s family have gone back and forth with the local judicial system. Ac- cording to WBALTV.com, a jury awarded Gaines’ surviving rel- atives, including her then 5- year-old son Kodi, $38 million in a wrongful death suit.
At the time of the incident, Kodi was also struck by a rico- cheting bullet but survived the injury. According to the judge- ment, Kodi would receive $32 million and the rest would be split among other family mem- bers.
Afterward, according to The Baltimore Sun, a Baltimore County judge overturned the verdict, stripping the money from the family.
But last July, The Sun re- ported, that judges found that the lower court “abused its dis- cretion” in throwing out the jury’s decision to award Gaines’s family with the money.
According to The Sun, Gaines’s mother, Rhanda Dormeus, is back in court, this time with Al Sharpton, in an attempt to remove Judge Mickey Norman from Kor- ryn’s case.
KORRYN GAINES AND KODI
They allege that as a former state trooper, Norman is bi- ased and should recuse himself.
Norman is the same judge who ruled that Royce Ruby, the officer who shot and killed Gaines while firing through a wall, should be entitled to qual- ified immunity. Qualified im- munity would protect him from liability of his actions under the defense that he was carrying out his duties as an officer.
Gaines was armed with a shotgun and refused commands to drop her weapon.
Her family’s lawyers have ar- gued that Gaines lived with a mental illness which may have caused her to detach from the reality of the situation. They also allege that she was afraid of the police.
Dormeus believes the county is stalling the legal battle in an attempt to avoid paying the settlement.
KEYSHIA COLE AND FRANKIE LONS
stance abuse issues. Cole has shared her rough upbringing over the course of her career. She was given up for adop- tion by Frankie and her bi- ological father, Virgil
Hunter.
After being raised by fam- ily friends, Cole was able to reunite with her birth parents as an adult after she gained fame and success in music.
‘Your Black Card Is Revoked’:
Cornel West Says In Resignation
On last Thursday, Netflix premiered a docuseries about award-winning tennis player Naomi Osaka. As with all celebrity documentaries, viewers were made privy to some of the uglier happen- ings that go on out of the public eye. For Osaka, it was apparently having her “Black card” revoked after she chose to play for Japan in the Olympics.
Osaka is biracial. Her mother is Japanese and her father is Haitian. She was born in Japan but raised in the United States. For some people, that meant that her loyalty should have been with the USA.
“I’ve been playing under the Japan flag since I was 14. It was never even a secret that I’m going to play for Japan for the Olympics,” Osaka said.
Osaka’s mother, Tamaki, told The Wall Street Journal that playing for Japan was the natural choice because although her children were raised to know both of their racial heritages, they resonated more with the Japanese side.
“Quite simply, Naomi and
Letter Over Tenure Dispute That
Harvard Is In ‘Decline And Decay’
Cornel West, considered one of the most prominent Black philosophers and pro- gressive activists in the country, announced Monday that he has resigned from his position at Harvard University’s Divinity School, saying the institution is in a state of “decline and decay” and “spiritual rot.”
In a resignation letter dated June 30 and posted to Twitter, West suggested that discrimi- nation at the university drove him to leave the Divinity School. The 68-year-old scholar said in March that he was abandoning his quest for tenure at Harvard to return to the Union Theological Semi- nary in New York, where he first taught more than four decades earlier.
“How sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay,” he wrote. “The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet
A Naomi Osaka Barbie Role Model doll was just released. Osaka will represent Japan in the Tokyo Olympics. The tennis star also received the Best Female Athlete award at 2021 ESPYS over the weekend.
Naomi Osaka Faces Harsh Criticism
Playing For Japan In Olympics
CORNEL WEST
deferential faculty, and the dis- orientation of precious stu- dents loom large.”
West, who added that Har- vard has become “market-dri- ven,” tweeted, “Let us bear witness against this spiritual rot!”
“The School has no comment on Dr. West’s letter,” Jonathan Beasley, a spokesman for the Divinity School, said Tuesday morning.
her sister Mari have always felt Japanese, so that was our only rationale,” her mother said.
Osaka revealed that peo- ple revoked her “Black card” but struggled with the logic of it and felt those individuals were confused about how Blackness transcends country of origin.
“I don’t know, I feel like people really don’t know the difference between national- ity and race because there’s a lot of Black people in Brazil, but they’re Brazilian,” she
said. She also noted that African-American is not the only presentation of Black- ness.
Despite the backlash, her star keeps rising. Naomi Osaka is the first Asian player to rank No. 1 in tennis singles categories.
On July 12, a Barbie doll modeled after Osaka sold out within hours of its re- lease. She has also begun working on a skincare line for ethnic skin tones called KINLÒ and opened a tennis workshop in Haiti.
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