Black History 365 | # 282 Zelda Wynn Valdes

Your royal flyness. Shoutout to Zelda Wynn Valdes, the fashion and costume designer from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Her designs were worn by numerous celebrities and entertainers, including Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Josephine Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, Mae West, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, and Sarah Vaughan. She studied her grandmother’s work as a seamstress and also worked in her uncle’s tailoring shop. Valdes began working as a stock girl at a high-end boutique around 1920 and worked her way up to become the boutique’s first Black sales clerk and tailor. In 1948, at the age of forty-seven, Valdes opened the first African-American-owned boutique in Manhattan with her sister, Mary Barbour, as her assistant. Located at Broadway and West 158th Street, she called her store Chez Zelda. In 1958, Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner hired Valdes to design the first Playboy Bunny costumes. Hefner commissioned Valdes to do this work on the recommendation of the magazine’s promotion director, Victor Lownes. Originally, the Valdes design had the ears taller, and the ensemble lacked the trademark bow tie, collar, and cuffs. First unveiled publicly in an early episode of Playboy’s Penthouse Magazine, the bunny costume made its formal debut at the opening of the first Playboy Club in Chicago, Illinois, on the evening of February 29, 1960. In 1970, Arthur Mitchell asked Valdes to design costumes for his new company, the Dance Theater of Harlem. Valdes continued to work with the Dance Theater of Harlem until her death on September 26, 2001, at age ninety-six. We been the ones responsible for the standard of excellence. Salute.

Black History 365 | # 281 Constance Baker Motley

With her appointment in 1966, Judge Constance Baker Motley became the first African American woman appointed to the federal judiciary. She became the chief judge in 1982, and assumed senior status in 1986. This was after nearly 20 years with the NAACP, when chose to serve on the New York State Senate. On her election to the New York State Senate in February of 1964, she became the first African-American woman to serve in that branch of the Legislature. She immediately began a campaign for the extension of civil rights legislation and for additional low and middle income housing. From 1945 to 1964, Judge Motley worked on all of the major school segregation cases supported by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She wrote the legal brief for the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case and helped strategize on other important legal precedents. Among the cases in which she played a prominent role were desegregation cases involving universities of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, and Georgia, and Clemson College in South Carolina. A real one in position. Historic. Shouts to her.

Black History 365 | # 280 Michael Eugene Archer

Rest in power to Michael Eugene Archer, better known as D’Angelo has passed away at age 51 due to pancreatic cancer. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his children and family right now. A four time grammy winner his music has been monumental in forming the genre and our tastes today. He changed rhythm and blues forever. Taking heavy influence from Prince by the time he dropped his second album he created with a style solely his own. We’re thankful for the Black Messiah album a timeless classic. PEACE.

Black History 365 | # 279 Omar Ibn Said

In the name of God, the merciful the gracious. God grant his blessing upon our Prophet Mohammed. Blessed be He in whose hands is the Kingdom and who is Almighty; who created death and life that he might test you; for he is exalted; he is the forgiver (of sins), who created seven heavens one above the other. Know the name Omar Ibn Said. His name is a testament to how important reading and writing is. Also a reminder of how evil one must be to outlaw reading and writing. To be found doing so would result whippings and even death. Omar Ibn Said wrote in Arabic his life before and during slavery. Born in a wealthy family in Futa Toro along the border of present-day Senegal and Mauritania. He was a member of the Fula ethnic group of West Africa who today number over 40 million people in the region extending from Senegal to Nigeria. Omar Ibn Said writes that as he grew older he sought knowledge in Bundu, an area in Senegal today that had historically been controlled by another ethnic group, the Mande people, until the Muslim Fulas conquered the region in the second half of the 17th century. In Bundu he studied under his own brother Sheikh Muhammad Said, as well as two other religious leaders and "continued seeking knowledge for twenty five years." He then returned to his own town and lived there for another six years, until a "big army" came "that killed many people," captured him and sold him to a man who took him "to the big ship in the big sea." After sailing for a month he arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was bought by a man called Johnson, who apparently was cruel to him. So he escaped, was captured and landed in jail in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he spent 16 days. That is where he began writing in Arabic on the walls of his jail, and where he was discovered and eventually taken into the household of Jim Owen and his brother John Owen, the Governor of North Carolina (1828-1830) with whom he remained until his death in his late eighties. THIS is a reminder to read and write. Never stop reading and writing. Bless.

Black History 365 | # 278 Dr. Mutulu Shakur

We must all acknowledge and treat the Shakur family as American royalty. This is Mutulu Shakur. Stepfather of Tupac Shakur — Dr. Mutulu Shakur was an acupuncturist, political theorist, & revolutionary. And after 37 years incarcerated as a political prisoner, Dr. Shakur spent just seven months free after his release in December of 2022 before he transitioned July 7th, 2023. As a part of several revolutionary movements, he became a target of the illegal Counterintelligence Program carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (COINTELPRO). This was a secret police strategy used in the U.S. starting in the 1960s to destroy and neutralize progressive and revolutionary organizations. Dr. Shakur has six biological children and several grandchildren who he maintains loving relationships with. He was an inspiration for many of the positive messages in his late adoptive son, Tupac’s, musical work. Dr. Shakur became a federal prisoner in 1986. The acts of which Dr. Shakur was convicted some thirty years ago were committed in the context of a movement seeking equal opportunities for Black people who, it is widely conceded, were suffering catastrophically from disenfranchisement, segregation, poverty and exclusion from many of the fundamental necessities that make life worth living. Dr. Shakur participated in civil rights, Black liberation and acupuncture healthcare all as part of movements of the late 1960s to the 1980s. Dr. Shakur received his tenth parole denial in March 2022. After being diagnosed with life-threatening bone cancer yet denied compassionate release, his lawsuit against the US Parole Commission and the Bureau of Prisons for unjust denials was expedited ultimately granting him a new hearing with the Parole Commission court-ordered to follow their own guidelines. He was finally released on parole on December 16, 2022. Rest in power.