Month: February 2019

POST SUPER BOWL THOUGHTS….The last time I watched an entire Super Bowl game was in 1998 when my son Will and I watched the Falcons lose to New England in 1998. But I didn’t watch last nights game and in fact didn’t know the outcome until just now…Monday morning 6:38 am..There were several reasons ..In December of 2016 I lost my beloved sister Mary..As the motorcade with her remains drove from one end of Atlanta to the other we passed by the Georgia Dome..and right next to it the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium at that time under construction..I have not lived in Atlanta since 1973…but as we drove past that site ..which is adjacent to the area we still called Vine City..I realized that both the site of the original “Free Breakfast program” originally opened by the Georgia Black Liberation Front in 1969 and taken over by me and that Black Panther Party in 1970 and moved to another church..as well as another location that ( according to current historians ) may have been the very first (1970) shelter for battered spouses if not in the country at least in the southern United States..It was also opened by the Atlanta Black Panther Party. Both sites were wiped out to build the Georgia World Congress Center Authority ..the site of both stadiums. If I had known this when the Georgia Dome broke ground in 1989 I probably would have tried to have some event to commemorate this. So I guess saying that here for Black History month will have to do. Back in June 2018 when I was in Atlanta for a week and lectured to three different audiences and got interviewed by several students and historians and journalists ..all these things were acknowledged and I made sure to mention the other people involved..I also didn’t watch because I was just a little mad at Gladys Knight…but I can’t stay mad at my “homegirl” for long..she not only went to my high school but .she has been making kids from Atlanta proud since she first gained national attention when she won a nation wide “talent search”.. Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour TV show contest at the age of seven in 1952..see the very “cute” Gladys in the picture..So while ya’ll were watching the Super Bowl I watched all of season one of Star Trek “Discovery” ..from what I’m reading today…it was a much better show.