February 17, 2018 - February 23, 2018, The Afro-American
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ARTS & CULTURE
Janeshia Adams-Ginyard
Stunt Woman Turned Actress Makes Feature Film Debut in ‘Black Panther’ By Nadine Matthews Special to the AFRO It was, essentially, a small thing. A pebble upon which Janeshia Adams-Ginyard stumbled as she reached a fork in the road. “Girl, my hair was eighteen inches long. When I was first told, I was trying toget out of it,” she tells the AFRO. It was a small thing but had potentially huge repercussions for the veteran Hollywood stunt woman and budding actress. She remembers, “I was like ‘Can we get some bald caps?’” The coordinator for the film was understanding but firmly communicated that was a not going to be a possibility. “So I called one of my friends and I was crying to her and she was like ‘Girl why are we crying over some hair?’” AdamsGinyard was somewhat reassured but hesitated once more. “Then I called my pastor. He said ‘Jesus sacrificed it all on the cross, you can’t sacrifice some hair? He said, ‘your sacrifice will never outweigh your reward.’” Adams-Ginyard started moving forward again. “My pastor kept it real.” She explains, “So my head was shaved for this movie. I was like ‘Bring on those clippers!’” Usually brimming with confidence, character, and optimism, stuntwoman and neophyte actress Janeshia AdamsGinyard had already stepped out on faith and auditioned for a part as a Dora Milaje in Marvel’s “Black Panther” in addition to auditioning to do stunt work, her main profession. Prior to that, in addition to stunt work, she did athletic modeling, and commercials. Adams-Ginyard slayed both audition processes. Overcoming the fear of flouting the usual Hollywood beauty standards however, was in some ways more daunting than auditioning for top director Ryan Coogler and film studio behemoth Disney. Yes, “Black Panther” was going to be a huge film but what about after that? The advice of her supporters and her own sense of honor and humility prevailed. “I was happy to be part of that chosen group,” she says, “Because they had looked all over the world for those girls.” Adams-Ginyard does double duty in “Black Panther,”
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Janeshia Adams-Ginyard went from being a background extra to a foreground actress in ‘Black Panther.’
SPORTS
Bowie State QB Earns Nation’s Top HBCU Football Honors Amir Hall Wins Deacon Jones and Doug Williams Awards
(Courtesy photo)
Bowie State QB Amir Hall won the Deacon Jones Award as National Black College Football Player of the Year presented by the National Black College Football Hall of Fame By Mark F. Gray Special to the AFRO For someone reluctant to embrace the spotlight and the history that he’s making with each passing game, Bowie State quarterback Amir Hall continues to solidify his place as the greatest football player in school history. Now he has established himself among the greats in HBCU football after winning the highest individual honors in the sport. Hall, a junior from Bowie, who played at Riverdale Baptist high school in Upper Marlboro, Maryland won the 2017 Deacon Jones Award as the national player of the year which is presented by the National Black College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.
The Deacon Jones Award is HBCU version of the Heisman Trophy and Hall is just the second recipient. Last year the inaugural honor went to current Chicago Bears running back Tarik Cohen for his exploits at North Carolina A&T. He also was named SBN Doug Williams Offensive Player of the Year as the top offensive player for 2017. “When I was younger I always dreamed of trying to win the Heisman Trophy and going to New York for that ceremony,” Hall told the {AFRO}. “This award is special to me because I grew up watching NFL Films and watched [Deacon Jones] play with the funny chin strap and old school swag so to win this award really means a lot.” However, when the list of finalists was first announced it seemed Hall would face an uphill challenge to win. Two other quarterbacks – Grambling’s Devante’ Kincade and Lamar Raynard from North Carolina A&T were players of the year from Division I conferences (SWAC and MEAC) respectively. Virginia State running back Trenton Cannon – the CIAA Player of the Year – rounded out the quintet. In two years as a starter Hall has already rewritten Bowie State’s record books and last year’s statistics were mind boggling. Hall led the Bulldogs to a 9-2 regular season record and a berth in the NCAA Division II playoffs where they hosted a game for the first time in school history. He passed for 3,519 yards and 41 touchdowns in 11 games despite being on the bench for long stretches when they had big leads in the second half. He completed 65 percent of his passes and threw only four interceptions playing in an aggressive passing attack. Bowie St. led Division II in total offense with Hall throwing for at least 300 yards seven times and 400 yards twice.
playing one of the elite Dora Milaje bodyguards (who all sport completely shaved heads) as well as working as the stunt double for Danai Gurira (“The Walking Dead,” “Avengers: Infinity War”) who plays Okoye, the leader of the Dora Milaje. After earning a degree in Linguistics from University of California at Berkeley and being a member of the U.S. Bobsled Team, she had originally planned on becoming an interpreter for deaf athletes and a sports commentator. AdamsGinyard has been an athlete all her life and has known sign language since the age of eight. Her family moved to an area with a high concentration of the hearing impaired and her mother mandated that the whole family learn sign language. Adams-Ginyard eventually changed her mind about her career path. ”I was watching this movie and there was this guy on there and he was just awful. I was like if this guy is doing stunts and he’s running like that then I can do stunts. I started putting it out there into the universe.” She started off doing background and extra work. She trained in tumbling. “It helps in knowing how your body moves when you’re in the air.” Martial arts training also helped. “I had a taekwondo background and I chose it because it’s eighty-percent kicks. In action films, nine time out of ten, somebody is getting kicked.” Being a Dora in “Black Panther” is her biggest acting role thus far. “It was grueling but I was gonna be a part of history. It is just a huge blessing to be a part of it. It was not the first movie I worked on but it was the first movie where there was a costume that was gonna be specifically made for me and the first time I was going to be on a movie from beginning to end so it was really big.” It wasn’t lost on Adams-Ginyard the impact that she and the other actresses might have on young dark-skinned girls who would be seeing the film. “It was like, ‘Hey, we are showing up and we are showing out.’ We are dark-skinned women and we are about to make this movie and this movie is about to be bomb and there are going to be little girls watching who are going to identify with us.“
In Memoriam
U.S. Chess Champion Dies at 79 By Aya Elamroussi Special to the AFRO In 43 states and the District of Columbia, Black students are more likely to get arrested at school, an analysis by Education Week Research Center found last year. Another study finds that Black students are suspended and expelled at higher rates than White students. And most recently, NPR reported that administrators at Ballou High School, a predominately Black school in Washington, D.C., were pressured to pass a senior class where the majority of students missed more than six weeks of school. But in the 1800s, Dunbar High School, the first public high school for Black students in the U.S., was so renowned for its academic excellence that Black parents moved to Washington so their children could attend it. Dunbar was also home to Kenneth R. Clayton, the first African-American, and probably the youngest at 24, U.S. Amateur Chess Champion. Clayton died in December at the age of 79. “He’s an individual who was given a chess set as a graduation present from high school at Dunbar. And within a year…had mastered the game to the point that he was member of the Harvard chess club,” Robert L. Clayton, Kenneth’s brother, told the AFRO. K. Clayton received his first chess set in 1955. By 1963, he was the U.S. Amateur Chess Champion. “Not only was he salutatorian of the class, Kenneth did not have to apply to an Ivy League college,” R. Clayton said. “He received a
telegram from the Ivy group indicating that he was admitted to the Ivy league school of his choice.” R. Clayton said his brother had a perfect SAT score and never saw a grade below A in high school. As an African American, R. Clayton said that his brother didn’t see any limitations to what he wanted to accomplish. “The driving influence of Kenneth was never to recognize that there was an obstacle to any level of his achievement based on him being African American,” R. Clayton added. “There never was a discussion about whether or not African Americans could achieve on standardized exams.” K. Clayton attended Harvard and studied Chemistry but went into the computer science field in 1963. And that was an unusual education track for African Americans at the time because they – R. Clayton were encouraged to study law, medicine or teaching, according to R. Clayton. “Kenneth was pursuing excellence in areas in which African Americans weren’t encouraged to be excellent and still achieving significantly in those areas… there may have been encouragement to be a professional baseball player… but there certainly wasn’t encouragement, even within the African American community, to achieve in the game of chess.” K. Clayton’s successes in the fields of computer science and chess, where there were no exemplars of successful African Americans at the time, should be beacon for African American youth today to achieve and excel, R. Clayton said.
“Kenneth was pursuing excellence in areas in which African Americans weren’t encouraged to be excellent…”
“We still know the sky’s the limit for the young man,” said Bowie State coach Damon Wilson. “There’s still room for him to grow. I think we’re only beginning to see what he is capable of. He’s a joy to have in your program, an excellent student athlete”. Hall’s prolific season had to pass the litmus test from three former NFL quarterbacks who comprise most of the selection committee that were groomed at HBCU’s. Former Baltimore Ravens personnel executive and the league’s first Black starting quarterback James Harris, fellow Grambling alumnus Doug Williams, the senior vice president of player personnel for Washington’s NFL franchise, and ESPN analyst Jay Walker of Howard voted on the award. Former {USA Today} sports writer and HBCU Sports historian Roscoe Nance and Ty Miller, sports director for SBN Sports rounded out the selection committee. “I’m just so happy to continue to lead the way for the next generation,” said Hall. “The first time I went to Atlanta I had the chance to spend a lot of time with James “Shack” Harris who talked to me as did Doug Williams and Jay Walker. They all told me what I need to help me get better and what I could do to help make the team better.”