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August 23, 2012

  • Lawsuit: Wet Seal Was Swimming in Racism

    Young women’s clothing retailer, The Wet Seal Inc., occasionally hires young black women to appear in its ads, but fires African-American store managers because they don’t fit the chain’s blue-eyed, blonde-haired image, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The lawsuit, titled Cogdell v.

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  • Obamas’ First Kiss is Solid as a Rock

    Obamas’ First Kiss is Solid as a Rock Most married couples have a hard time recalling the first time they kissed, but the Obamas are no ordinary couple, and they now have a big reminder of that moment. Really big.

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  • Business Leaders Say Obama Would Be Better for the Global Economy

    A survey by the Financial Times and the Economist of 1,740 business leaders in a variety of industries found that the majority supported President Barack Obama’s re-election because they said it would be better for the global economy.

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  • Forbes: Obama is the Smallest Government Spender

    Although Republican Mitt Romney and the Tea Party have painted President Barack Obama as a tax-and-spend Democrat, a recent issue of Forbes magazine, which bills itself as the capitalist tool, begs to differ.

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  • Condoleezza Rice Joins Augusta National

    Condoleezza Rice Joins Augusta National Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters Tournament, announced on Monday that it has admitted former U. S.

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  • Innocence Project Pushes Letter-Writing Campaign

    Innocence Project Pushes Letter-Writing Campaign The Innocence Project is urging supporters to write the Lake County, III., State’s Attorney’s Office to ask officials to vacate a battery conviction against Bennie Starks, who was exonerated of a 1986 rape conviction after DNA evidence showed he was not the perpetrator.

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  • Army Reports 11 Potential Suicides in July

    The U. S. Army reported in June that 11 active-duty soldiers were potential suicide victims. One soldier's death has been confirmed as a suicide and 10 others are under investigation.

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  • Cell Phone App Allows Voters to Register

    Cell Phone App Allows Voters to Register The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and four other groups concerned with voting rights have launched a free downloadable smartphone app that allows mobile phone owners to register to vote wirelessly, said Barbara Arnwine, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee. The application, Arwine said, is designed to meet the needs of voters in the digital age and to ensure they have the needed tools to participate fully in the nation’s democracy.

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  • Eugene Chen, China’s Black Foreign Minister

    Eugene Chen, China’s Black Foreign Minister In the annals of black history, Eugene Chen is one of its most-interesting characters. Chen, who was born in Trinidad, the West Indies, in 1878, to black and Chinese parents, served as China’s foreign minister on four separate occasions, according to his obituary in The New York Times on May 21, 1944.

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  • Bobby Brown Checks into Rehab

    Bobby Brown Checks into Rehab It was his prerogative, so singer Bobby Brown recently checked himself into a rehab center for treatment of alcoholism, four months after reaching a plea deal on charges of driving under the influence. Brown admitted himself for treatment at an undisclosed facility after concluding his honeymoon in Mexico with his bride, Alicia Etheridge, according to E! News. The singer pled no contest to a  March 26, 2012, misdemeanor charge of driving while under the influence in Los Angeles. He is scheduled to continue his solo and New Edition tour dates following his release.

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  • Court Strikes Down Limits on Early Voting in 5 Florida Counties

    Court Strikes Down Limits on Early Voting in 5 Florida Counties by Frederick H. Lowe The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has struck down part of Florida’s new law that limited early voting, a process in which African Americans voted at twice the rate of white voters in the 2008 presidential election.

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  • Romney Meets Regularly With Black Advisers, Aide Says

    Romney Meets Regularly With Black Advisers, Aide Says by Hazel Trice-Edney (TriceEdneyWire.com) – As the GOP prepares to meet in Tampa, Fla.

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  • FAMU Names Presidential Search Committee

    FAMU Names Presidential Search Committee Florida A&M University’s Board of Trustees last week named two of its members to co-chair a search committee that will screen candidates for the job of president at the Tallahassee-based school.

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  • Standoff Continues After Deadly Shootings at South African Mine

    Standoff Continues After Deadly Shootings at South African Mine TriceEdneyWire.com – Tension continues at a South African platinum mine where striking workers were shot to death last week during a protest for higher wages.

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  • Congress Earns 83% Disapproval Rating in Gallup Poll

    Congress Earns 83% Disapproval Rating in Gallup Poll Ten percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is doing its job, but 83 percent don’t, according to a Gallup telephone poll of 1,012 adults 18 years old and older in all 50 states.

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  • Arkansas Lab Rules Handcuffed Man Committed Suicide

    Arkansas Lab Rules Handcuffed Man Committed Suicide The Arkansas State Crime Laboratory has issued a report saying that a black man who was handcuffed behind his back in the backseat of a patrol car committed suicide.

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  • The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

    The NorthStar’s Week in Black History August 23 through August 29 August 23 1861 ----- James Stone, a fugitive slave, enlisted in the Union Army on this date, becoming the first African American to fight in the Civil War (1861-1865).

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  • Ethiopia's Prime Minister Dies

    Ethiopia's Prime Minister Dies Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia has died, the Ethiopian Government Portal announced in a one-sentence statement on Tuesday. “His Excellency Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has passed away,”  the statement read.

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  • Activism - Then and Now

    Activism - Then and Now by Julianne Malveaux (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Every time I see a march or rally, I think of the rally of all rallies, which was the 1963 March on Washington.

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  • Michael Strahan to Quarterback TV Show

    Michael Strahan to Quarterback TV Show Michael Strahan made a name for himself as a defensive back for the New York Giants. Now in a new life, Strahan will quarterback a live television show.

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Paul Williams
Paul  Williams

Black Architect Designed U. S. Nazi Compound

In the early 1930s when the Nazi Party’s American cousins were establishing a foothold in Southern California, they built a compound in Pacific Palisades called Murphy Ranch high in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The ranch, located between Will Rogers State Park and Sullivan Ridge, was built as a Nazi refuge by Winona and Norma Stephens and a mysterious character named Herr Schmidt.  

Inside the ranch, supporters, known as Silver Shirts, were waiting for the fall of the United States to the Nazis, which Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party and German chancellor, predicted would occur after Europe came under Germany’s boot.

Although Hitler espoused white supremacy, his California supporters hired a famed African-American architect, Paul Revere Williams, to design the entrance gate and the buildings for the 55-acre compound, which had  a 400,000-gallon water tank, a machine shed and power station with thick concrete walls. There were plans to construct a four-story mansion, but the Stephens, who spent $4 million funding the project, closed their checkbook. They later sold the property.

Before moving on, the Stephens hired Williams to draw up blueprints for the community after the original ones by Welton Becket, who would later design the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, were deemed insufficient, Randy Young, curator of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society, said in a 2009 interview.

Part of the graffiti-covered compound
Part of the graffiti-covered compound
Williams designed the compound’s ornate, wrought-iron gate, Young said during a recent interview on the Travel Channel’s Off Limits program, which investigates cities’ hidden secrets.  So why would Nazi supporters hire a black man to design their utopia?

“They may have been Nazis, but they were Nazi’s with taste,” Young said.

Work on the compound was never completed. In the late 1930s, the organization began to fall apart, and on Dec. 8, 1941, federal agents raided the compound and shut it down. The agents raided the ranch a day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, leading to U. S. entry into World War II.

Murphy Ranch became an artists’ colony in the 1960s and 1970s, but a fire destroyed many of the buildings.  Now, the property is a rubble of buildings. It is an artist’s colony of sorts. Graffiti artists have made their marks on all of the remaining structures.

The gate Paul Williams designed
The gate Paul Williams designed
Williams’ gate, however, remains standing and appears to be graffiti-free.

Williams became famous as the “Architect to the Hollywood Stars” because he designed homes for moviedom’s elite in Bel Air, Brentwood and Beverly Hills. He also designed 3,000 buildings.  In addition, Williams was a member of the joint-venture office for the Los Angeles International Airport, which opened in 1961.

In 1957, Williams became the first African American elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

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