Colman Domingo and Chris Rock Lead the Cast of ‘Rustin’ Biopic

Many heroes are lost to time, but legends never die. Bayard Rustin isn’t a name people know as well as Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X. But much like his fellow Freedom Riders and speakers for justice, that kind of notoriety probably wouldn’t have interested Rustin all that much. Nevertheless, it’s a name we’ll all hopefully be getting more familiar with thanks to a new biopic from the ingenious mind of George C. Wolfe.

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An MLK Exhibit Came to ‘Fortnite’ and We Had a Lot of Questions

Epic Games partnered with TIME Studios to bring players an exhibit commemorating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in Washington, D.C. The timed, 20-minute virtual experience takes place inside the sandbox builder Fortnite Creative and arrives in time for the 58th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The biggest question following the reveal of the event was, of all virtual spaces, why Fortnite?

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NOC Sundance Review: ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

While the details of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus Christ are debated, Judas goes down in history as one of the most infamous traitors — all over 30 pieces of silver. Maybe Judas didn’t like the fact that the people hailed Christ as a “Messiah” — a title the FBI used as code names for Black radical liberators in the 1960s to the late 1970s. One such “Messiah” is the young Black Panther activist and Chicago native Fred Hampton, mercilessly killed thanks to Black a panther Party (BPP) infiltrator and informant William O’Neal, FBI Agent Roy Mitchell, and J. Edgar Hoover.

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Give Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield Their Roses for ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

With regard to director Shaka King’s masterpiece, the aforementioned sentiment goes double for Kaluuya’s fellow cast members Dominique Fishback, Ashton Sanders, Algee Smith, Dominique Thorne, and Jesse Plemons. Judas and the Black Messiah follows the life and times, and tragic end, of Fred Hampton (played by Kaluuya), the Black Panther Party Chairman of the Illinois chapter in the late 1960s. Most importantly, the film lays bare the attempts of the FBI to infiltrate and destabilize Hampton’s civil rights campaigns through the aid of petty criminal William O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) after applying enough pressure on O’Neal to force him into working as their informant.

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Witnessing a Revolution Unfold (And How I Hope it Continues)

Originally posted at Just Add Color | Featured photo by munshots on Unsplash

The past few days have been a whirlwind, to say the least.

As we have all seen or heard at this point in time, George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police when former officer Derek Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s neck. Chauvin has since been arrested — initially on the charge of third-three murder, but the charge has since been raised to second-degree murder. The other three former officers, Thomas Kiernan Lane, Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao, have also been arrested on aiding and abetting Floyd’s murder.

The escalation of charges, however, didn’t come without a fight. For an entire week, people marched in Minneapolis, around the country, and around the world, for Floyd’s killer and accomplices to be brought to justice. Part of those protests included a riot that ended with Minneapolis’ third precinct police station being burned down.

Throughout the riots, protests, and general unrest, I went through a myriad of emotions, to the point where I felt unable to write for this site. I still haven’t watched the video of Floyd’s death because for me, reading about the details, including Floyd calling for his deceased mother, was enough. If I watched the video, I knew I would be haunted by it for the rest of my life. I am already haunted by the lives of so many Black people who have been needlessly killed, and their stories were already compelling me without having to see them get killed on camera. I didn’t want to see the video that would only add insult to injury — the insult being that no one would care.

Or so I thought.

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Let’s Make John Lewis’ March a #1 Seller on Amazon

President-elect Donald Trump has decided to go after Civil Rights movement icon — and national hero — Congressman John Lewis. The attack comes after Rep. Lewis told NBC’s Chuck Todd that he didn’t view Trump as a legitimate president due to Russia’s interference with the 2016 election. Lewis isn’t wrong, and it is more than hypocritical for the PEOTUS to lash out at people questioning his legitimacy since that’s what he has done to President Obama for the last five years. In the meantime, Twitter has clapped back at Trump, and many of Lewis’ colleagues in congress have pledged to boycott the inauguration. We want to help out by pointing our readers to Lewis’ award-winning graphic memoir trilogy, March. Let’s all pitch in to make his books #1 bestsellers on Amazon this Martin Luther King Day weekend.

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Days of Future Ferguson

Originally posted on Silva Culture

I finally saw X-Men: Days of Future Past at our local close-to-DVD-release cheap theater that we South Minneapolitans all love, The Riverview. I loved it. I knew a few of the main comics discrepancies beforehand, but they didn’t bother me. It was gripping, the effects were sick, and I for me personally, I’m not sure there’s a limit to great acting performances once Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender hit the screen in damn near everything they do. All of that said, once I was waiting for the credits and the usual Marvel post-flick teaser, I started thinking about something else: Ferguson, MO.

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Magneto Was Right

Quentin Quire

“The X-Men are hated, feared and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants. So what we have here, intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry and prejudice.”
—Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont, 1981

Call me Quentin Quire. Magneto was right.

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Wednesday Comics: Remembering the Dream

tumblr_inline_moaocfPiKw1qz4rgpLast week, we discussed a comic that won’t be in stores for another couple weeks. Today, I wanted to look at a book that actually hit stores two Wednesdays ago. Eventually, we’ll use the Wednesday Comics feature to talk about a comic that actually comes out on the same day as the column. But it would have been remiss of me to ignore the fact that today marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. In honor of this milestone anniversary, Top Shelf Productions recently published March: Book One, the first of a trilogy of graphic novel memoirs written by Congressman John Lewis in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell. After being released on August 13, the book has already reached #1 on the New York Times‘ list of best selling graphic novels.

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