HOMAGE

“great respect and honor”

Homage means great respect and honor, or something done to honor a person or thing. 

In Middle English, homage specifically referred to respect for and loyalty to a feudal lord.

Obama tan suit controversy

On August 28, 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama held a live press conference on increasing the military response against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria while wearing a tan suit.

Obama’s appearance on television in the tan suit sparked significant attention and led to media and social media criticism. The issue remained prominent in the media for several days with the issue being particularly widely discussed on talk shows.

Foxy Brown

Foxy Brown a 1974 American blaxploitation film written and directed by Jack Hill. 

Stars Pam Grier as the title character who takes on a gang of white drug dealers who murdered her boyfriend.

The film was released by American International Pictures as a double feature with Truck Turner. The film uses Afrocentric references in clothing and hair. Grier starred in six blaxploitation films for American International Pictures.

1968 Olympics Black Power salute

During their medal ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, two African-American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each raised a black-gloved fist during the playing of the US national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”. 

While on the podium, Smith and Carlos, who had won gold and bronze medals respectively in the 200-meter running event of the 1968 Summer Olympics, turned to face the US flag and then kept their hands raised until the anthem had finished. In addition, Smith, Carlos, and Australian silver medalist Peter Norman all wore human-rights badges on their jackets.

In his autobiography, Silent Gesture, published nearly 30 years later, Smith revised his statement that the gesture was not a “Black Power” salute per se, but rather a “human rights” salute. The demonstration is regarded as one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the modern Olympics.”

Jackie Ormes

Jackie Ormes (August 1, 1911 – December 26, 1985) 

was an American cartoonist. She is known as the first African-American woman cartoonist and creator of the Torchy Brown comic strip and the Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger panel.

Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Benjamin Martin 

(February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012) 

was a 17-year-old African-American boy from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic American. Martin had accompanied his father to visit his father’s fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. 

On the evening of February 26, Martin was walking back to the fiancée’s house from a nearby convenience store. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the Sanford Police as suspicious. Several minutes later, an altercation happened and Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.”

Ruby Bridges

Ruby Nell Bridges Hall  (born September 8, 1954)

 is an American civil rights activist. She was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960.

She is the subject of a 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell.”

Cab Calloway

Cabell Calloway III  (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994)

 was an American jazz singer, songwriter, dancer, bandleader, conductor and actor. 

He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.

Donyale Luna

Peggy Ann Freeman  (August 31, 1945 – May 17, 1979)

known professionally as Donyale Luna, was an American supermodel and actress who gained popularity in Western Europe during the late 1960s. 

Generally cited as “the first black supermodel”, Luna was the first African-American model to appear on the cover of the British edition of Vogue, in March 1966. She entered modeling in a period that favored “white passing models” and has been described as “the first black model who really began to change things; to enable more diverse beauty paradigms to break through”. She is known to have been a covergirl 11 times between 1965 and 1975.

Chuck Berry

Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) 

was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the “Father of Rock and Roll”, he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as “Maybellene” (1955), “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958).

Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.

“WHEN YOU KNOW YOUR HISTORY, NOTHING IS AS SIMPLE AS IT SEEMS”

The Answer Man (Thaddeus Howze)