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August 23, 2012

  • Black Architect Designed U. S. Nazi Compound

    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.

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  • 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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  • 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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Eugene Chen
Eugene Chen

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.

Chen was 65 years old when he died of a chronic heart ailment, according to the Times, although others said his death occurred under mysterious circumstances.

Before his death, Chen, who was born Eugene Barnard Acham, served as foreign minister for four Chinese governments.

Sun Yat Sen, a Chinese revolutionary and first president and founding father of the Republic of China, named Chen foreign minister, and he served in that capacity until Sun Yat Sen’s death in 1925. Time magazine called Chen “the brains of the Chinese Revolution.”

He was named foreign minister in 1931 for China’s insurgent government, which was located in Canton. In December of that year, he was named foreign minister of the national government when Lin Sen succeeded Chiang Kai-shek as titular president.

Chen also served as foreign minister of the Russian-dominated Hankow government, which collapsed around July 21,1927, according to newspaper clippings from that  time. Chen fled to Russia.

Chen with Madam Sun Yat Sen in Moscow in 1927
Chen with Madam Sun Yat Sen in Moscow in 1927
As a delegate to the 1919 Versailles Conference or the Paris Peace Conference, Chen said that China wanted independence from all foreign powers, paving the way for China becoming an independent nation, not a puppet government.

In the early 1920s, Chen led a boycott against British commercial interests, which eventually resulted in Britain conceding and signing "The Chen-O’Malley Agreement," allowing for Hong Kong to be returned finally to China, in 1997.

Chen was often arrested and jailed for his newspapers’ denouncement of the German, French and British control over China, according to Zena Martin, a British blogger. Chen owned The Peking Gazette, and he was editor of The Shanghai Gazette.

In addition to being a politician, Chen was a lawyer, who graduated from law school in England and practiced in Trinidad, according to the book, Black History Makers by C. Cabell Carter. Chen’s two sons, David and Percy, were educated in England, according to The New York Times.

Chen is buried at The Mountain of Eight Treasures Revolutionary Martyr Cemetery in Beijing.

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