Day: August 28, 2018

On a recent afternoon, tour guide Justin Bates pointed to the spot where historic Jamestown’s legislature first convened in July 1619. He then gestured toward another nearby spot where some of the first slaves in English North America arrived a few weeks later.

“Freedom over there,” Bates told visitors near the banks of Virginia’s sprawling James River. “Slavery over here.”

Jamestown has long been associated with the legend of Pocahontas and more recently as a place where a harsh winter turned some colonists into cannibals. But the historic site is now offering a regular tour that encourages visitors to consider the beginnings of American slavery.

The “First Africans” tour is the first of its kind at the historic site. But it’s part of a much larger reckoning over slavery, an institution that took root in England’s first permanent colony 12 years after its founding.

In January, President Donald Trump signed into a law the “400 Years of African-American History Commission Act.” It requires a commission to develop programs that acknowledge the Africans’ arrival in 1619 and slavery’s impact.

Meanwhile, Virginia has launched its 2019 commemoration, American Evolution. It recognizes the first English-style legislature in North America in Jamestown and other historical milestones from four centuries ago, including the Africans’ arrival.

In 1619, the Africans came on two ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer, that had recently raided what’s believed to have been a Spanish slave vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Sailing into the Chesapeake Bay to what is now Hampton, Virginia, the ships traded more than 30 Africans for food and supplies.

From modern-day Angola

English colonists took the Africans, who came from what is now Angola, to properties along the James River, including Jamestown.

A visitors center and monument are planned for the landing site in Hampton. Known then as “Point Comfort,” the area is now part of Fort Monroe, a former U.S. military base owned by the National Park Service.

“It’s a difficult story,” said Terry E. Brown, the first black superintendent of the Fort Monroe National Monument. “But I want the nation to understand this is an American story.”

Recognition of the enslaved Africans’ arrival also provides a counternarrative to the claims of white nationalists that America’s roots are white.

“It was not a white society with people of color as interlopers, playing bit parts,” said James Horn, president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, which oversees archaeological digs there.

One ongoing excavation focuses on an African woman who was taken to Jamestown in 1619. She had been given the name Angela, likely by the Spanish before her arrival, and lived in the house of Captain William Pierce, a wealthy merchant and planter.

The structure no longer exists. But archaeologists with the National Park Service and Jamestown Rediscovery have uncovered its brick floor and located the kitchen area where Angela likely worked.

The “First Africans” tour includes the excavation site as well as a spot on the river where Angela likely first stepped off a boat into Jamestown.

“Think about what that must have felt like,” Bates recently told a group of visitors.

“Scary,” a woman said.

Kym Hall, the National Park Service’s superintendent of Colonial National Historical Park, which includes Jamestown, said tears have been shed at the excavation site. Some of those tears were her own.

“We hope to bring some empathy and connection and understanding about these stories of origin,” she said.

Just a ‘blip’

Some historians are wary of focusing too much on 1619. Davidson College professor Michael Guasco has written that the Africans’ arrival in Virginia was just a “blip on the radar screen” in the larger context of slavery.

More than 500,000 enslaved Africans had already crossed the Atlantic to other European colonies, including places that later became part of the United States.

Guasco warned that too narrow a focus on 1619 risks the implication that the Africans entered an established white society. Jamestown’s inhabitants were living “on death’s doorstep on the wisp of America.”

“Virginia was still Tsenacommacah, Europeans were the non-native species, and the English were the illegal aliens,” he wrote in September for Black Perspectives, a blog for the African American Intellectual History Society. Tsenacommacah was the Powhatan people’s name for Tidewater Virginia and parts of the Eastern Shore. 

Those working at Jamestown have sought to address such concerns, emphasizing its shared racial history. 

Bates, the tour guide, charts the history of the European slave trade and the growth of American slavery. He also details the evolution of colonial laws, many passed in Jamestown, that created a race-based system of enslavement.

Jill Williams, a black woman who recently visited the excavation site with her husband and son, said she was unaware of Angela’s story until she arrived in Jamestown.

“It’s nice to go somewhere and know there’s a story about your people. That doesn’t always happen,” said Williams, 52, of Hempstead, New York.

“It’s a tough history to grapple with,” she said of the Africans who arrived in 1619. “But they came here and survived. They took care of people. They raised people.”
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When Ryan Gosling gets off the boat at Venice Lido this week, it will be one small step for the Hollywood actor, but potentially another leap for the

world’s oldest film festival.

Gosling’s First Man, in which he plays pioneering astronaut Neil Armstrong, opens a festival that has recovered from a period of decline and is increasingly seen as the first showcase of the season for potential Oscar winners.

That prestige — in addition to Netflix’s decision to boycott the Cannes festival in May over a dispute about streaming versus theatrical distribution — has lured an array of A-list actors and directors to Venice.

“The number of talents and stars is so huge that it’s impossible to remember all their names now,” said artistic director Alberto Barbera.

He has rebuilt the festival’s reputation in recent years by screening a raft of Hollywood arthouse pictures, such as Gravity, The Shape of Water and La La Land, that went from Venice to Oscars glory.

“Now the Mostra is back again as much as it was in the past,” Barbera told Reuters, using the Italian name for the festival.

The Mostra opens Wednesday with First Man, which reunites Gosling with Damien Chazelle, who won Best Director for La La Land, the musical that was initially awarded Best Picture in the notorious mix-up during the 2017 Oscars ceremony. The actual winner was Moonlight.

Chazelle, 33, has said his new film is “about the moon and the kitchen” — aiming to show the personal side of the epic space adventure that saw Armstrong, as a member of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, become the first person to walk on the moon.

First Man will be one of 21 movies from Europe, Japan, Australia and the Americas competing for the Golden Lion, Venice’s top prize.

Garland, Streisand, Gaga

Lady Gaga brings pop glamour as the leading lady in A Star Is Born, acting opposite first-time director Bradley Cooper in a film premiering out-of-competition.

In her first major film, Gaga follows movie-music giants Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand — who played in the 1954 and 1976 versions — in the role of an aspiring singer mentored by an older performer as his own career crumbles.

Netflix, which snubbed Cannes because of French rules that ban simultaneous streaming of films shown in movie theaters, brings six movies to Venice, some of them front-runners for prizes.

Alfonso Cuaron, whose last film, Gravity, won him the Best Director Oscar, has made a Spanish-language, black-and-white autobiographical drama, Roma, set in his native Mexico — something he has said traditional Hollywood studios were unlikely to fund.

The Coen brothers, who initially planned to make The Ballad of Buster Scruggs as a Netflix series, have instead produced it as a movie anthology of Western stories, with Liam Neeson and Tom Waits among the cast.

Paul Greengrass, director of the Jason Bourne action movies, returns to the real-life terror of his 9/11 film United 93 with a drama about the attack by Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik on teenagers at a summer camp in 2011.

And if three living A-list directors were not enough for Netflix, it is bringing back one from the dead with The Other Side of the Wind, a completed version of a film Orson Welles began in the 1970s but had not finished by the time of his death in 1985.

The only female director with a film in the main competition is Australian Jennifer Kent, following up her 2014 psychological horror The Babadook with grisly drama The Nightingale.

Horror fans are also looking forward to a remake of the cult 1977 gore-fest Suspiria.

With a jury headed by The Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro, the Venice Film Festival will run from Wednesday through September 8.
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Chris Stapleton topped the list of finalists Tuesday with five nominations for the 52nd annual Country Music Association Awards.

Stapleton is vying for entertainer of the year, male vocalist of the year, single of the year for “Broken Halos,” album of the year for “From A Room: Volume 2″ and song of the year for “Broken Halos.” It was his third nomination for entertainer of the year and fourth consecutive for male vocalist.

Producer and musician Dann Huff received four nominations, including musician of the year, single of the year for “Drinkin’ Problem,” album of the year for “Graffiti U,” and album of the year for “Life Changes.” Huff has won musician of the year three other times.

Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Dan + Shay, Florida Georgia Line, Chris Janson, Miranda Lambert, Midland, Thomas Rhett and Keith Urban each received three nominations. This is Urban’s 14th nomination for male vocalist of the year.

The year’s biggest country song, “Meant To Be,” by pop-country crossover artist Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line was nominated for single of the year. Other nominees in that category were Stapleton’s “Broken Halos,” ″Drinkin’ Problem” by Midland, Aldean’s “Drowns the Whiskey” featuring Miranda Lambert, and D + Shay’s “Tequila.”

Lauren Alaina, Luke Combs, Chris Janson, Midland and Brett Young were nominated for new artist.

The nominations were announced from entertainer Luke Bryan’s restaurant and bar in Nashville on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“Anytime you’re nominated for entertainer of the year, it’s so rewarding,” Bryan said. “You get to share it with your fans.”

Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood will host the show on Nov. 14.
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Mourning fans lined up for a last glimpse of the Queen of Soul on Tuesday as singer Aretha Franklin’s hits played from loudspeakers outside the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, where her body will lay in repose ahead of her funeral.

Franklin died last week at the age of 76 from pancreatic cancer in Detroit, where she began her career as a child singing gospel in the New Bethel Baptist Church choir. Her soaring voice, seared with emotion, would become the inspirational standard for other singers to match.

“Aretha made a lot of women look at themselves differently and changed how a lot of men looked at women,” Alma Riley, 67, said after waiting in line outside the visitation for nearly three hours. “That is particularly important today when we see such a lack of respect.”

Franklin’s body was displayed in an open casket, dressed in red shoes and a red dress, according to fans who emerged.

The preacher’s daughter first topped the charts in 1967 with “Respect,” her no-nonsense reworking of a modest hit for Otis Redding into an enduring anthem for feminism and the civil rights movement.

Chaka Khan, Jennifer Hudson, Ronald Isley and Stevie Wonder, among others, are due to sing at her funeral on Friday at Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who had Franklin sing at his 1993 inauguration celebrations, will be among the speakers. She also sang at former President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.

Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, but moved to Detroit as a small child as the city became a refuge for black Americans in the mid-20th century escaping racist Jim Crow segregation laws in southern states.

The city, which would become synonymous with the secular outgrowth of gospel music known as soul, is treating Franklin’s death as the passing of royalty, with a week of mourning, including a free tribute concert at a park on Thursday evening.

While Friday’s funeral is closed to the public, the streets outside are to be lined with dozens of pink Cadillacs, the Detroit-built luxury cars. Franklin sang of cruising through the city in a pink Cadillac in her 1985 hit “Freeway of Love,” which earned her one of her 18 Grammy Awards.
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Argentinean basketball star Manu Ginobili is retiring after a stellar 23-year career, 16 of them with the National Basketball Association’s San Antonio Spurs, where he won four championship rings.

The 41-year-old Ginobili announced his retirement Monday in a brief message on Twitter: “IMMENSE GRATITUDE to everyone (family, friends, teammates, coaches, staff, fans) involved in my life in the last 23 years. It’s been a fabulous journey. Way beyond my wildest dreams.”

Ginobili joined the Spurs in 2002 after eight years playing in his native Argentina and in Italy, and led the franchise to NBA titles in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014 alongside teammates Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, known affectionately as the “Big Three.” Ginobili also led Argentina to a gold medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Duncan retired in 2016, while Parker joined the Charlotte Hornets in the off-season as a free agent. 

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver led the outpouring of tributes to Ginobili Monday, calling him a “pioneer who helped globalize the NBA” and “one of basketball’s greatest ambassadors.”
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