Wednesday, April 8, 2015

A00443 - Willie Barrow, Civil Rights Activist and PUSH Executive Director





Rev. Willie T. Barrow, a Fighter for Civil Rights, Dies at 90

By 






The Rev. Willie T. Barrow, with the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. in 1986, was a past chairwoman of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Sun-Times Media, via Associated Press

The Rev. Willie T. Barrow, who championed civil rights for minorities, women, gay people and consumers; opposed the war in Vietnam and apartheid; and mentored generations of community organizers, including a young Chicagoan named Barack Obama, died on Thursday at her home in Chicago. She was 90.
Her death was confirmed by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the alliance of two groups founded by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., of which she was chairwoman for a decade.
Ms. Barrow organized her first civil rights demonstration when she was 12, protesting the fact that she and her fellow black students had to walk to school in her hometown in Texas while whites could ride the school bus. She went on to conduct sit-ins and boycotts with luminaries of the movement, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, and joined in the 1963 March on Washington and the protests two years later in Selma, Ala. More recently she voiced concern over gun violence and dilution of the Voting Rights Act.
Willie Beatrice Taplin was born in Burton, Tex., on Dec. 7, 1924, to Nelson and Octava Taplin. Her father was a farmer and a Church of God minister. When she was 16 she moved to Oregon, where she studied theology, organized a Church of God group and worked as a welder in a shipyard, where she met Clyde Barrow, a fellow shipyard worker. They married and moved to Chicago in 1945.
In the early 1970s, she helped Mr. Jackson found Operation PUSH (the letters originally stood for People United to Save Humanity, later changed to Serve Humanity) and succeeded him as executive director when he sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s. She later served as chairwoman.
She was a fiery advocate and fierce adversary, as the organization pursued its civil rights goals. It encouraged young people to study and stay in school. And, with mixed success, it pressed major corporations to hire more black workers and executives under threat of boycotts. Mr. Jackson merged PUSH with his National Rainbow Coalition in 1996.
Ms. Barrow was a mentor and self-described godmother to young activists, including the future President Obama. The president said in a statement, “I was proud to count myself among the more than 100 men and women she called her ‘godchildren,’ and worked hard to live up to her example.”
The Rev. Calvin S. Morris, the retired executive director of the Community Renewal Society in Chicago and her friend for 48 years, described her as “an old-fashioned schoolmarm of the civil rights movement.”
After her son, Keith, announced that he was gay, she publicly embraced gay rights. He died of AIDS in 1983. Her husband died in 1998. No immediate family members survive.
Married for 56 years, she was inspired to write a book, “How to Get Married ... and Stay Married.” Among her sage prescriptions: “Don’t try and make your mate over. It cannot be done.”
While Ms. Barrow mentored men and women alike, she was an unabashed feminist.
She learned by opening her home “to all of the powerful women in the movement — Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Height, Addie Wyatt,” she told The Chicago Sun-Times in 2012. “We have to teach this generation, train more Corettas, more Addies, more Dorothys.
“If these youth don’t know whose shoulders they stand on, they’ll take us back to slavery. And I believe that’s why the Lord is still keeping me here.”

__________________________________________________

Willie Beatrice Barrow (née Taplin; December 7, 1924 – March 12, 2015) was an American civil rights activist and minister. She was the co-founder of Operation PUSH, which was named Operation Breadbasket at the time of it's creation alongside Rev. Jesse Jackson. In 1984, she became the first woman executive director of a civil rights organization, serving as Push's CEO. Barrow was the godmother of President Barack Obama.[4]

Biography[edit]

Born Willie Beatrice Taplin in Burton, Texas, to Nelson, a minister, and Octavia Taplin, one of seven children. When she was 12, she organized a demonstration with fellow students to protest that white students were allowed to ride the bus, but black students had to walk to school. Barrow confronted the bus driver and demanded that he let her fellow students ride.[5] When the bus driver confronted her about it she said "Y'all can kill me if you want to. But I'm tired."[6] When Barrow turned 16, she moved to Portland, Oregon, to study at the Warner Pacific Theological Seminary (now Warner Pacific College). While still a student, Barrow and a group of black residents helped build one of the first black Churches of God in the city; she was ordained as a minister after graduation.[7] She started working as a welder during World War II at theKaiser Shipyards in Swan Island, Washington, where she met Clyde Barrow, whom she married in 1945 in Washington state. [8]
The couple moved to Chicago in the early 1940s, and Barrow attended the Moody Bible Institute to further her call to service. They lived on the South Side, and Barrow ran the youth choir at Langley Avenue Church of God. According to Barrow, she was approached by the minister to do some additional organizing for civil rights movement actions.[9] Barrow campaigned for Harold Washington who became the first Black Mayor of Chicago in 1983. In 1984 and 1988 she worked for Jesse Jackson's Presidential campaign. [10]

Awards and achievements[edit]

  • 2014 Champion of Freedom Award[11]
  • 2012 Bill Berry Award[12]
  • Woman of the Year of Chicago 1969[13]
  • Image award from League of Black Women
  • Christian Women's Conference History Makers Award
  • Doctor of Divinity Degree from Monrovia.
  • Libreria and Leadership Certificate from Harvard University
  • Indo-American Democratic Organization's Humanitarian of the Year Award
  • C.F. Stradford Award for her lifelong work on the front lines of the civil rights movement.[14]
  • 2006 Black Heritage Awardee[15]

Organizing[edit]

In the 1950s she worked with Martin Luther King and other Chicago ministers and activists as a field organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.[16] In the 1960s she helped organize the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket with Rev. Jesse Jackson.[17] She opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and led a delegation to North Vietnam in 1968.[5][18] She joined the National Urban League in 1943 and the National Council of Negro Women in 1945.[19][20] She was the godmother of President Barack Obama.[21] In 1973 she protested social services cuts by the Nixon administration. [13]

Intersectional activism[edit]

Barrow additionally was an activist for the LGBT community, which included fighting for HIV/AIDS victims. She also advocated for fair labor practices, took an anti-Vietnam war stance, and was vocal about women's rights. In a 1987 interview on Chicago Tonight she said, "You see ministers, they would rather have a minister who could not articulate and perhaps may not have even been called ... than to have an articulate woman that knows something about the rebirth of Christ and knows about the natural birth and the new birth. They would rather try to have a man articulate than a woman. ... As Jesse [Jackson] grew, his vision grew. Anytime that there was a committee was formed, it would be all men. I'd say 'Jesse, you haven an unbalanced committee. You've got to have some women.' ... He kept putting women on committees, kept making them managers ... then it became a habit, a part of his vision."

Significant events attended[edit]

Later years/Death[edit]

Each Saturday she would participate in demonstrations and she participated weekly in Rainbow/PUSH's events. She helped many people by writing checks to cover college tuition for them. She mentored over a hundred people in PUSH, helping them to move on to the next stage of the movement. Barrow was co-pastor of the Vernon Park Church of God in Chicago. She helped raise money for assisted living development in the south and to fund after school programs. [7] She had focused on gun violence in Chicago and changes to the Voting Rights Act that were taking away rights that the Selma marches helped create.[27] Barrow died of respiratory failure on March 12, 2015 at age 90 in Chicago. Following her passing, A tribute to her life was held at Operation PUSH headquarters ; Her funeral at her church Vernon Park Church of God.

__________________________________________________________________

Willie T. Barrow (Willie Beatrice Taplin) (b. December 7, 1924, Burton, Texas - d. March 12, 2015, Chicago, Illinois) was a civil rights activist who devoted her life to championing the rights of African Americans and working to improve their circumstances, both on the front lines of public demonstrations and as a mentor to generations of young activists.  Barrow engaged in her first act of protest as a child, when she sought to change the rule that required African American children to walk to school while European American children rode on school buses.  When she was 16 years old, she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she worked as a shipyard welder and attended Pacific Bible College (since 1959 Warner Pacific College).  She also organized and led an African American Church of God congregation.  Barrow relocated (in 1945) to Chicago and attended Moody Bible Institute.  By the 1950s, she had become a civil rights filed organizer for such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  She participated in such campaigns as the March on Washington (1963) and the Selma March (1965).  In the mid-1960s, she helped found the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket, which focused on increasing the hiring and promotion of African Americans.  Barrow worked with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson when he founded Operation PUSH (which also had the goal of economic empowerment in black communities), and she later served as the organization's executive director.  After the 1996 merger that created the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, she headed that group's governing board for 10 years.  In addition, Barrow was a vocal feminist and a supporter of gay rights.
__________________________________________________________________

Willie T. Barrow (Willie Beatrice Taplin),   (born Dec. 7, 1924, Burton, Texas—died March 12, 2015, Chicago, Ill.), American civil rights activist who devoted her life to championing the rights of African Americans and working to improve their circumstances, both on the front lines of public demonstrations and as a mentor to generations of young activists. Barrow engaged in her first act of protest as a child, when she sought to change the rule that required black children to walk to school while white children rode on school buses. When she was 16 years old, she moved to Portland, Ore., where she worked as a shipyard welder and attended Pacific Bible College (since 1959 Warner Pacific College); she also organized and led an African American Church of God congregation. Barrow relocated (1945) to Chicago and attended Moody Bible Institute. By the 1950s she had become a civil rights field organizer for such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She participated in such campaigns as the March on Washington (1963) and the Selma March (1965). In the mid-1960s she helped found the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket, which focused on increasing the hiring and promotion of African Americans. Barrow worked with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson when he founded Operation PUSH (which also had the goal of economic empowerment in black communities), and she later served as the organization’s executive director. After the 1996 merger that created the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, she headed that group’s governing board for 10 years. In addition, Barrow was a vocal feminist and a supporter of gay rights.
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A00442 - Brian Sutton-Smith, Scholar of Fun


Brian Sutton-Smith, Scholar of What’s Fun, Dies at 90

By 



Brian Sutton-Smith in the 1970s. He wrote books on playing.

Brian Sutton-Smith, a developmental psychologist whose work — prolific, scholarly and precedent-setting — was quite literally child’s play, died on March 7 in White River Junction, Vt. He was 90.
His death, at a nursing home, was from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, his daughter Emily Sutton-Smith said.
Professor Sutton-Smith was one of the first people to bring the study of play into the academic arena, and for more than half a century he was considered the field’s foremost scholar. He was the author of a spate of books, including “Toys as Culture” (1986) and “The Ambiguity of Play”(1997); a consultant to toy makers and children’s television programs; and a regular presence in the news media, which quoted him on subjects including the inclination of modern-day schools to abolish recess (a trend he deplored) and helicopter parents (ditto).
A resident most recently of Sarasota, Fla., Professor Sutton-Smith was at his death an emeritus professor in the graduate school of education at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. He also had a foot planted in folklore and as a result cast a wide scholarly net, taking in jokes, riddles, stories and street games as well as toys, board games, organized sports, computer gaming and even daydreaming.
Although play has existed since the dawn of mankind, scholars long disdained it as a fit subject for inquiry. But as Professor Sutton-Smith’s work from the 1950s onward showed, there is much to be learned about the human condition from studying play’s cultural wellsprings, developmental trajectory, psychological import and myriad variations.
“Games are rites of passage,” he told The Toronto Star in 1991. “The player performs a task, gains acceptance of his comrades and experiences success. It’s playing out an analogy of life.”
Though Professor Sutton-Smith’s work was concerned in particular with the spontaneous play of children, it also examined the larger forces that underpinned play of all kinds — “what a child’s make-believe, a mother’s crossword puzzles and a father’s endless rounds of golf” might have in common, as he wrote in a 2008 article.
Throughout his career, he sought to answer a set of fundamental questions: What is play? Why do human beings engage in it? What psychological, cognitive and cultural functions does it serve?
The answer, he concluded after six decades of study, was one that befit his quicksilver quarry: No single definition could contain it.
“Something about the nature of play itself frustrates fixed meaning,” Professor Sutton-Smith wrote in 2008. “Just as some scholars spend their lives consumed by the metaphysics of literature or history or philosophy or theology — you name it — I came to spend mine in search of the metaphysics of play.”
Brian Sutton Smith was born, without a hyphen to his name, in Wellington, New Zealand, on July 15, 1924. His father, Ernest James Smith, was Wellington’s chief postmaster. Because there were several Brian Smiths in his neighborhood, Brian was known from an early age by his full name; as an adult he reinforced its solidity by adding the hyphen.
As a youth, he studied education at Wellington Teachers College. (Mindful even then of the human hunger for play, he chose the school because it gave pupils Wednesday afternoons off for sports.) He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Victoria University of Wellington, followed by a master’s in educational psychology there. In the late 1940s he taught at a primary school in a Wellington suburb.
Traveling to the United States as a Fulbright scholar in 1952, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked elsewhere with the psychologists Bruno Bettelheim and Fritz Redl. Returning home, he completed a 900-page dissertation on the play of New Zealand children and received a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of New Zealand in 1954.
In 1956, Professor Sutton-Smith moved permanently to the United States. He taught at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and Columbia University Teachers College before joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1977.
His years as a schoolteacher also gave rise to three novels for young people, written for his pupils and rooted in his own rough-and-tumble childhood. As he realized, few works of fiction reflected the experiences of New Zealand’s children, who were weaned on a literary diet of British imports, many with a lingering Victorian flavor.
In the late 1940s, when Professor Sutton-Smith’s novels first appeared in serialized form, they caused a furor among New Zealand parents, educators and public officials. At issue was their generous use of slang and vivid depictions of street life. (Children adored the books, published in full as “Our Street,” “Smitty Does a Bunk” and “The Cobbers.”)
“The major effect the fuss had on me, perhaps,” Professor Sutton-Smith wrote in 2008, “was that I came to spend the rest of my scholarly life defensively.”
He was called on to defend himself again in the mid-1970s, when a federal judge enjoined the sale of “Child Psychology,” a 1973 textbook offered by Prentice-Hall. The book had been written by a team of ghostwriters, with Professor Sutton-Smith as its named author, a practice not unknown among textbook publishers of the period.
In a case that received significant coverage in the news media, Harper & Row, which had published a competing textbook, “Child Development and Personality” (written by Paul Henry Mussen, John Janeway Conger and Jerome Kagan and first issued in 1956), contended that some 400 passages in Professor Sutton-Smith’s book closely resembled parts of theirs.
While court documents indicate that Professor Sutton-Smith was uninvolved in writing his book’s first draft — and that he had warned his publisher against following the Harper & Row book too closely — the court held that “Child Psychology” infringed on the earlier book’s copyright and permanently barred its sale.
Professor Sutton-Smith’s wife, the former Shirley L. Hicks, died in 2002; a son, Mark, died in 2013. Besides his daughter Emily, his survivors include his companion, Deborah Thurber; three other daughters, Katherine Moyer, Leslie Sutton-Smith and Mary Sutton-Smith; and 10 grandchildren.
His other books include “Child’s Play” (1971, with R. E. Herron), “The Study of Games” (1971, with Elliott M. Avedon) and “How to Play With Your Children (and When Not To),” a parenting guide written with his wife, published in 1974.
Professor Sutton-Smith, who helped found what is now the Association for the Study of Play, received lifetime achievement awards from that organization and from the American Folklore Society. His vast archive of research materials on play is now part of the Strong Museum, a national museum of play in Rochester, where he was a scholar in residence.
Despite the academic respectability he had almost single-handedly conferred on play, interviewers persisted in asking Professor Sutton-Smith why he spent his life on the subject.
“Why do we study play?” he replied on one occasion. “We study play because life is crap. Life is crap, and it’s full of pain and suffering, and the only thing that makes it worth living — the only thing that makes it possible to get up in the morning and go on living — is play.”
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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

A00441 - Dell Williams, Sex Boutique Founder

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A00440 - Jimmy Greenspoon, Keyboardist for Three Dog Night

Jimmy Greenspoon, Keyboardist for Three Dog Night, Dies at 67

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jimmy Greenspoon in 2014.Steve Spatafore/Three Dog Night, via Associated Press
Jimmy Greenspoon, the longtime keyboardist for the rock band Three Dog Night, died on Wednesday at his home in North Potomac, Md. He was 67.    
The cause was cancer, said his agent, Chris Burke.    
Mr. Greenspoon had been with Three Dog Night since its formation in 1968 and worked with the band until October 2014, when he took a leave of absence to pursue treatment for metastatic melanoma.    
Three Dog Night had three No. 1 singles between 1969 and 1971: “Mama Told Me (Not to Come),” written by Randy Newman; “Joy to the World,” written by Hoyt Axton; and “Black and White,” a song about racial equality written in 1954 by Earl Robinson and David Arkin. Twenty-one of the group’s singles reached the Billboard Top 40.
The band broke up in 1976 but reunited a few years later.
Unlike most other bands of the era, Three Dog Night had three lead singers. Mr. Greenspoon was not one of them, but his keyboards were an integral part of the band’s sound.
Mr. Greenspoon also performed or recorded with Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, the Beach Boys and many other music acts.
He is survived by his wife, Susie; a daughter, Heather Miller; and two granddaughters.

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