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Model Creates Doll Line To Fill Void
Family Of Man Killed By Ohio College Cop Gets $4.85M In Settlement
New Book Claims FBI Was Behind Dr. King’s Assassination And Its Cover-Up
Dr. King minutes before being assassinated in April, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King stepped out of his room to speak to some of his supporters in the parking lot. As he turned to walk back inside his room at the Lorraine Hotel, he was fatally shot in the neck. James Earl Ray was arrested for his death, however a high ranking KKK member, Tommy Tarrants’ is being mentioned in new book about the conspiracy with the FBI.
St. Lucian model and doll collector, Mala Bryan and her dolls, Maisha, Mala B, Malina and Mhina.
Meet Maisha, Mala B, Malina and Mhina. Four so- phisticated Black women with big Afros and personality to match.
This new doll line, created by St. Lucian model Mala Bryan, features Afro- Caribbean-inspired dolls who serve Black girl fierceness with various skin tones, hair tex- tures and style.
Bryan created Malaville Toys after not seeing more rea- sonably priced Black dolls. In an email chat with Huffington Post, Bryan explained, “I made the decision to go ahead with the dolls because I could not find affordable kinky or curly haired black/brown dolls to add to my Barbie collec- tion.”
Right now there are about six companies with a Black doll line. With the blowout sale of the now-famous Ava Bar- bie, more Black mothers and
fathers are gravitating toward Black-inspired toys for their children. Bryan’s dolls retail at $20.
“There are lots of adult doll collectors that would reroot black Barbie dolls with more natural hair but they are usu- ally quite expensive... I no- tice[d] that there was a high demand for them so that was one of the main things I noted,” Bryan said.
The international model decorate dolls in St. Lucia, but became flustered when the dolls she used were white. Last year, Bryan opened Malaville Toys. It took nearly eight months to produce the four friends while she also created a Malaville world for the dolls to live in. While they’re out liv- ing their busy lives you can keep up with the girls, their jobs and their travels via their Instagram.
Samuel DuBose, top, was fatally shot by former Univ. of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing. Tensing was charged with the shooting and is out on $1M bond.
CLEVELAND -- The family of a black Ohio man killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer during a traffic stop will receive $4.85 million and free college tuition for his 12 chil- dren in a settlement, attorneys said Monday.
Body camera video of the traffic stop showed Samuel DuBose, 43, was shot in the head by Officer Ray Tensing in July last year after he was pulled over for a missing front license plate on his vehicle.
DuBose attempted to pre- vent the officer from opening the car door before the car started slowly rolling forward. Tensing, who is white, pulled his gun and fired once.
Attorneys for the family said in a statement that the settle- ment, including the free tuition, is worth about $5.3 million. The agreement must be ap- proved by the Hamilton County Probate Court before it is final- ized.
The agreement includes an apology to the family from the school president Santa Ono. The University will work with the family to establish a memo- rial on campus commemorat- ing DuBose, the statement said.
Tensing, who is white, has pleaded not guilty to murder and voluntary manslaughter charges and is free on $1 mil- lion bond. No trial date has been set. If convicted Tensing faces a possible life sentence.
An independent report on the shooting released in September called it "entirely preventable.”
As the nation celebrated what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King’s 87th birthday on January 15, some questions have often come up like: What role did the FBI play in Dr. King’s assassination? What did they know, and what role did the agency play in cov- ering up the truth about his murder?
It is no surprise that J. Edgar Hoover, the founder and head of the FBI until his timely departure in 1972, waged a war against Black America, civil rights leadership and Black nationalist organiza- tions with his COINTELPRO program. As a result of the program — its role to “prevent the rise of a Black messiah”— Black leadership ended up murdered and imprisoned, and its institutions compromised and decimated.
At one point Hoover called Dr. King “the most notorious liar in the country,” as the FBI monitored the civil rights leader, bugged his hotel rooms, and even sent him a letter en- couraging him to commit sui- cide.
Two authors believe the agency did even more, having a direct role in his assassination through FBI informants.
In their book, Killing King: The Multi-Year Effort to Mur- der MLK, Stuart Wexler and co-author, Larry Han- cock delve into the notion of a cover-up into the King assassi- nation.
Specifically, they allege that the FBI under Clarence Kelly, Hoover’s successor, misled Congress by destroying files related to the murder of Dr. King.
Wexler says the bureau dis- obeyed a direct order to pre- serve all materials, destroying files in two field offices on Tommy Tarrants, a high- ranking Ku Klux Klan member from Mississippi, in 1977. This came as a new Congressional committee was established to investigate the assassination of Dr. King and President Kennedy.
The authors claim there was something about Tarrants that made the FBI upgrade him from an obscure racist to a major player in the assassina- tion. Wexler said that, accord- ing to his research, in 1977 the MURKIN (murder of King) files were destroyed from the FBI field offices in Miami and Mobile, Alabama.
Crucially, both had informa- tion on Tommy Tarrants, a former high ranking Klan member from Mississippi.
“I have no doubt this was done deliberately. They are not destroying everybody’s files, they are selectively destroying files,” Wexler told the Daily Mail. “They wanted Tarrants to give evidence to the commit- tee; they didn’t want him to be a suspect.”
Children’s Book That Depicts Slaves As ‘Joyful And Happy’ Causes Outrage
A children’s book published by Scholastic depicting “happy and joyful” enslaved people has stirred outrage amongst both parents and educators.
A Birthday Cake for George Washington by Ramin Ganeshram and Vanessa Brantly-Newton is the story of Hercules, the President’s head chef, as he attempts to bake Washington a cake for his birthday celebration. The story, as told by Hercules’ daughter Delia, takes a turn for the worse as Hercules discovers there is no sugar in the cupboard.
The front flap of the book states: This story, told in the voice of Delia, Hercules’s young daughter, is based on real events and underscores the loving exchange between a very determined father and eager daughter, who are faced with an unspoken, bittersweet reality. No matter how deli- cious the president’s cake turns out to be, Delia and Papa don’t have the seethes of freedom.
Book by Scholastic has caused an outrage by educa- tors and parents.
Hercules was not in fact a “happy or joyful” enslaved per- son, he actually escaped to freedom on February 22, 1797 – Washington’s 65th birth- day – which the president cel- ebrated in Philadelphia. According to a diary entry of Louis-Philippe, the future king of the French.
The contents of the book be- came viral on Facebook as ed- ucators and parents criticized the revisionist history.
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