Falling Black in Love Magazine: The BCU Edition

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In Loving Memory Of Kristopher D’Angelo Gibson

Yo!

So two hours before the release of this magazine, everything that could’ve possibly went wrong did just that. But myself, along with my team, kept on pushing.

I sincerely hope that this magazine is everything you would hope it to be. I dedicate this magazine to my wonderful team: Geoffrey, Secret, Prisca, Octavia, Jabari, Dre, My Trill of All Trades Tylisa, Tiarrah, Sabrina, Jeremy, Totiana, Ricardo, and Leah. To all of the contributors, and supporters; to those who sowed a financial seed in me early on: Tauheedah, Ashley N., Sidney, Dr. Christopher Collins, Shayla Demps, The Angelica Washington, and Maggs; to my parents, and siblings; to all my cousins; to all of my friends and supporters; this first issue is for you.

To my friend, mentee, homie, and brother Kristopher Gibson, who gave me the mission to Fall Black in Love; to my grandfather whom I laid to rest just two weeks ago; This is for you. There is no table of contents. Cuz that’s how I roll. I love you.

Eric Troy Wright, Jr

“God can dream a bigger dream for you than you could ever dream for yourself.” -Oprah Winfrey

EVERYDAY IS A HUSTLE

Ar tw or k co ur tesy of Storck Gary blkwom enart. com

By TyLisa Johnson, Jill of All Trades

THE REAL n a m o r e d W n o W

DID YOU KNOW? In 1976, Aretha Franklin was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Bethune Cookman College.

It would go on to become one of her most treasured accomplishments.

MARKETING: IN A NUTSHELL

By Demetria Wright

e

You already have your elevator pitch. Start small and keep things simple by taking the key points of your pitch and using each point to develop blog topics, social media posts, infographics and other materials. It’s all about engagement. In today’s consumer-driven world, work to satisfy the customer’s constant need for more information and you’ll slowly begin to see yourself become a credible and sought-after industry leader.

How are you going to move them to action (that is, actually buy your product)? You can make significant strides to achieving this by taking the time to populate your social accounts, website and collateral materials (flyers, landing pages, newsletters, etc.) with content they can use. Give them something to relate to. t Sounds hard, but not really.

TAKING OUR

image black Where Hip-Hop, Entrepreneurship, and the Black Experience Meet

Story by Totiana Ussery Entrepreneurship is a topic many may not find themselves speaking about regularly, and while most of us want to do what we love and impact our communities in some way, life, bills and our own insecurities often get in the way. Jay Sweet, director and producer for the up and coming feature film, Chain Music, has not allowed any of these things to spoil his quest.

The movie pulls no punches as it tells the story of how Hip-Hop has been used as a weapon against Black youth. I had the opportunity to speak at length with Jay Sweet about Chain Music, the influence of Hip-Hop, and his intentions with the film.

HOW

SEAN

BECAME

TRANS FORM

YOUR life

by Nick shannon

“You don’t have to look far to make big changes in your life.” uccess is accomplished when you know your purpose and accomplish things you were put on this earth to do. The question that is often asked, how does one find themselves or what am I put on this earth to do? Well do not feel alone for most have no clue what they were put on this earth to do. Some people are trying to conform to what they see around them, but it takes a transformation to understand who you are and what you were put on this earth to do. It is like a caterpillar that is about to break out of its cocoon, ‘hey there I have wings in here. Put in the right atmosphere, I can transform into a butterfly.”

k c i non Nhan S

FALLING

BLACK

CONSULTING -

HBCU CRISIS MANAGEMENT SMALL BUSINESS BRANDING AND STARTUP SUPPORT PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

COMING SOON

PRESENTS

At the Feet

Of the Elders COMING SOON

by angelica washington

Donald Jones conquered fear a long time ago growing up in the projects of northern Philadelphia. However, his lack of fear is not the biggest contribution to his success.

“100 percent of my business is referrals,” said Jones, the founder and president of one of the largest African-American consulting firms, D.A. Jones & Associates. Jones has built a career that’s 30 years strong on the basis of creating and maintaining st relationships, and success gives proof to the clichéd saying: “it’s who you know not what you know.” Jones was already politically aware at an early age witnessing the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

His got his political start at nine years old handing out buttons for Hubert Humphrey in the late 60s. When Jones got serious about having a career in politics he began helping with smaller and local elections for African Americans. Once he proved himself to be affective he began advising candidates in congressional and senate races. When Jesse Jackson decided to run for president his career took off. Jones was able to work in fields all over the country, and since then worked during every presidential election until Obama’s first election win. “When you start doing local politics for a particular city you get stuck,” said Jones. “I decided to do it on a bigger scale and become an advisor because it allows you to work with many people, which is worth much more.” Jones started D.A. Jones and Associates in 1985 and the business has become a leader in business development, government de relations and political campaign consulting, especially for the black community. Jones works with a small group of people he considers to be a team rather than employees, who constantly research political and business related issues throughout the world.

This research and Jones’s high sense of awareness is another advantage he considers in being successful. “I watch the news like people watch soap operas,” he said. Jones spends a lot of time reading from international news outlets like BBC and has his TV almost permanently set on news stations. He uses the media to find problems all over the world that he can insert himself himsel in as a consultant, whether it’s a trade problem between countries or pushing leaders to utilize black-owned businesses in large projects. “I don’t ever see myself retiring,” Jones said. “When I see something going on, there’s always an angle and an opportunity.”

On top of consulting leaders all over the world, Jones has continued to follow his childhood dream of being a jazz musician. At the age of 8 he began playing the drums and eventually grew to love the sound of the beat many of us ignore. “When you start playing an instrument you don’t listen to the music; you listen to the instrument,” he said.

Starting at the age of 14 Jones spent his summers touring with some of the greatest jazz musicians and eventually quit school just a couple of years before receiving his high school diploma. Jones has worked with many talented artists and jazz musicians including Sun Ra, Sonny Stitt, Pharoah Sanders, Monnette Sudler, Gloria Gaynor, Bo Diddley and more. Unfortunately, the reality of being a jazz musician wasn’t what he dreamed it to be.

“I don’t take orders well, the money was crap, I had to take a lot of crap and I couldn’t help people in any way shape or form,” he said. On the other hand, Jones said the great thing he was able to get out of it was traveling and meeting a lot of people. Little did he know was that the relationships he built were going to help in his career.

Jones received his GED and enrolled at the community college that his father taught at. The next year Jones received a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania where he majored in American Studies and Civilization.

Taking the knowledge from college and the relationships he had built, Jones hopped on the political trail and headed toward a path that he probably never dreamed of.

Don Jones has traveled to places and met people that others dream of, and all of this success has resulted from valuing his relationships. He takes the time to understand different cultures, remains honest and always produces the results people need. “The biggest thing they always say is that you can trust him,” he said. Jones wants all of our readers to know that talent and intelligence is very important, but developing a reputation of integrity will impo take you very far.

THE

DON JONES STORY by secret hunter

ESHU FUNK

BY JABARI LUKMAN

I was born in Detroit, Michigan on October 1st, 1992. I have always been into creating my own things, and art has been the thing I have loved most. I am an artist by nature; I draw, write, do graphic design, illustrate, and dance. When I was a kid growing up, drawing was my therapy, and I knew that I wanted to create a business where I could just create day in and day out. At first I was mostly inspired by super heroes. I wanted to have the powers they possessed, and be someone that cities loved.

As I got older, super heroes became too small, and I knew I wanted to create art that allowed people to sit and think.When I was 19 I decided that I wanted to give the world what mainstream art has been missing since the Harlem Renaissance; thought provoking concepts.

I began to study astronomy outside of school, and read authors who put a lot of their own stories into their works.

When I got more into depth with reading and studying the cosmos, I realized that art could lead the minds to feel like everything around us is limiting us, and that we could be much larger. So I thought about what would make people feel large. What would make a person feel as big as a planet, a star, sta or a universe? My answer was to write a story that is about human emotions, and experiences, but as if a star was telling you the narrative.

TWITTER:@CRONIANBOHEMIAN INSTAGRAM:@ESHUFUNK

That’s how I got Birth of a Solar System. But I needed a brand. I wanted a name that would be as big as I see God. Not the Christian God, or Allah, but the God that I feel. The God is so incomprehensible that I couldn’t limit it to the religions I have studied. I also wanted it to connect with Africa, because I was at a point, and still am, where I want to learn where my people came from before the slave sla trade. I came up with Eshu Funk.

Who is Eshu? An African deity who communicates between the living and the dead. This name was chosen because the earliest people believed no one was born a creative, or a genius, but was guided by the souls of their ancestors to make great things. The spirits of the dead held your hand and guided you to greatness.

What is Funk? The sweat that comes from dancing and sex or the sweat of creation. Why was Funk chosen? Funk is a spiritual thing. Music that is funky connects to your soul, sex brings about new life, and dancing connects you to the souls and the rhythms that bring about joy and enlightenment. movement; art is my medium. Eshu Eshu Funk is a spiritual mo Funk is a program that will be a foundation for future black and brown creators. Not a brand, but an umbrella for creators to use in order to push their material as far as it can be pushed. It was created in April of 2014, by me, Jabari Lukman. I created this in order to support and push artists who want to become entrepreneurs but do not have the resources to. t

This is so we create a culture of community entrepreneurship.

This is the foundation of a completely Black and Brown publishing and distributing industry for the young creative who are more focused on creating a culture of innovators, than making money that funds someone else’s dream. While doing that, I also plan on creating projects of my own. Eshu Funk’s first ventures have been graphic art. art is something I love, I personally want to be a g While graphic graphic novelist. So I have been writing short stories, screenplays, and what I call a visual mixtape that will begin debuting in 2015. Eshu Funk’s productions will have conscious, and universal themes, with heavy influence from interstellar space, Sun Ra, and many musicians/authors from the psychedelic era. I have a great appreciation for the psychedelic era o the philosophy and the incorporation of blues and because of jazz combinations. So I like to think of my works as visual music, because it is what I see when I truly feel the music that has inspired me for so long. My projects, like blues and jazz, bring a lot of raw elements together, and have a structure that I feel has not been used by many artist before. I feel it is boundless because it is youthful and refreshing. I like to mix in poetry, and in order to make the mind “dance” like I to storytelling together, would if I was listening to the a live concert.

Projects to look forward to from Eshu Funk include: Birth of a Solar System (December 2014) The Escape (2015) Ides of October (TBA) Starring the Illustrious (TBA)

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MAKING THE CASE FOR

WALL STREET

I

BY ANDRE HAYES @BLACKTOTHEBONES

was talking to a friend the other day and she mentioned the Mike Brown incident. I asked her how she felt about it and she replied “it’s sad.”

Not to say that the situation isn’t sad, but in my opinion it really isn’t. What the family is going through is the sad part. As well as how far Blacks have to be pushed before they realize what’s really going on. It’s sad that the only time Black people come together on a wide scale is when stuff like this happens. There is a genocide occurring right here in America. They are trying to get rid of us. So my question for you beautiful Black people out there is “what are you gonna do?”

Question: Is slavery over?

Answer: No The cause of the civil war wasn’t over the abolishment of slavery; it was over the spread and containment of slavery. The South wanted slavery to spread to the new territories out west, the North wanted to keep slavery in the southern states that it had already exited in.

The South obviously didn’t like that and so they seceded. Since the end of the Civil War, the South hasn’t tried to secede and it’s because they had already come up with a new form of slavery.

Newly freed slaves had nowhere to go, no education, no jobs, no home, so in turn, they returned to their former masters or went to work on someone else’s land. The South had a way to keep Blacks working for them.

Now look at this in modern day terms. Blacks do own their own businesses, but they still have to pay the White man in some form or fashion. So in a sense, they have become such an expert in their field that they don’t have to go work for someone that’s in the same field, but if they have a building that they provide their goods and services out of, they have to pay bills. The electric company is owned by a White man. The White man has created a system where he will always benefit off of Blacks.

Hayes with the family of Oscar Grant, a 2009 victim of police brutality.

Question: Why won’t they leave us alone if they still benefit off our labor? Answer: They like to be in complete control. They also don’t benefit as much as they would like to because most of the profit would go to us, and they hate to see us doing better than them.

White people have noticed this and have taken full advantage of it by owning the products that they use and we use to either kill each other or “better” our lives. If you don’t believe me, take a look at Black Wall Street. Black Wall Street, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America. It was said that the dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community. Money was spent in black neighborhoods, at black-owned businesses for black- made products and services. We didn’t have to go to any other ethnicity for anything. Now, the dollar leaves the Black community every 10 to 15 minutes.

Now that’s sad. Black Wall Street can be viewed as a mini Beverly Hills.

“It was the golden door of opportunity for the Black community during the early 1900s, and it proved that African Americans could create a successful infrastructure”. That’s what Black Wall Street was all about.

A lesson that was taught to the children of this community and one that was practiced among the adults was nepotism. Nepotism is the “unfair” practice by a powerful person of giving jobs and other favors to relatives. It taught the children how to stick together and look out for one another; it was essentially a lesson of unity. This was what kept Black Wall Street thriving.

The community was so tight and wealthy because they traded dollars hand to hand and because they were dependent upon one another as a result of the Jim Crow laws. It was not unusual that if a resident’s home accidentally burned down, it could be rebuilt within a few weeks by neighbors. This was the type of scenario that was going on day to day on Bla Wall Street. When Blacks intermarried into the Black Indian culture, some of them received their promised “40 acres and a mule” and with that came whatever oil was later found on the properties. On Black Wall Street, a lot of global business was conducted.

-(What Happened to Black Wall Street?, 2011) Black Wall Street prospered from the early 1900s until June 1, 1921. On this day, the largest massacre of nonmilitary Americans took place. This massacre was led by the Ku Klux Klan. The night’s carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. Truckloads of Whites set fires and shot Blacks on sight. When the smoke lifted the next day, more than 1,400 homes and businesses in Tulsa’s Greenwood District, a prosperous area known as the “Black Wall Street,” lay in ruins. kn Today, only a single block of the original buildings remains standing in the area.

Question: Are we able to create another Black Wall Street?

Answer: Yes. Tumblr: Blacktothebones.tumblr.com SOURCE: http://sfbayview.com/2011/02/what-happened-to-black-wall-street-on-june-1-1921/

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FALLING

BLACK COLLEGIATE COMING SOON

By Marcus E.B.DuKing X @ MEBDKX INSTAGRAM x TWITTER

Who is Generation Flex?

-------------------------------Genration Flex is Will Smith. Queen Latifah. Martin Lawrence. Eddie Murphy.

Gen Tisha Campbell. Kid-N -Play. Tichina Arnold. Vivica A. Fox. Jasmine Guy. Kadeem Hardison. Spike Lee. Cree Summer. Alfonso Ribeiro. Dr. Dre. Chris Rock.

Dem Wayans...All of em. Mary J. Blidge. Sistah Souljah . Halle Berry. Angela Bassett.Janet Jackson. Toni Braxton. Karen Parsons. TLC. Tevin Campbell. Denzel Washington. Samuel L. Jackson. Arsenio Hall. WuTang.

They are that generation. This was the generation that I grew up on. Not really a gene-ration in the sense of agebecause they were frozen in time. They were a wave of freedom; they were a fresh voice in a new era; they were here and they were real. They were Generation Flex. They were Toni Braxton and Grant Hill. They were Boys II Men and Mary J. Blige. Generation Flex were those 20-30’s somethings who were not afraid to conquer the world; to live freely and chase their dreams. But that wasn’t what made this generation special; this generation, were the children of Malcolm X. These were X’s kids. These were the Children of X, Birth by a fiery revolution, Generation FleX was unleased. They took their place in history by making it about them, rooting themselves in projects that were seeped in Blackness, proudly wearing Malcolm X or HBCU gear on their television sitcoms; sitcoms that they starred in, and executive pr produced. In there 20’s. They were bosses. They created their own rules; walking paths unchartered, while paying respect to those who had come before them: Tina Turner. Eartha Kitt. Red Foxx. Richard Pryor. Diahnn Carrol. Billy D. Williams. Beverly Johnson. They were the generation that made Black schools cool. With each semester at Hillman University, they th induced me into a love affair with the HBCU. They brought Detroit, and Philly, and Brooklyn to me.

They showed me that a Black college graduate could leave Howard University, found her own magazine and, justsohappen to live across the street from her best friend who was the partner of a law firm by the age of 26. They were vice-presidents of advertising firms. They were college graduates. And well versed on African art.

And unabashed ambassadors of soul. When Mary opened her mouth, she reminded you that Aretha, and Natalie, and Chaka, and Mahalia had once occupied this space – but it was now her time to reign supreme. And Baby…did she reign.

This was the generation that gave us Kidd-N-Play and TLC; Sean P. Diddy Combs and the Notorious BIG.; Outkast , Kriss Kross and Goodie Mob; the young, fly, and unbossed. They lived life on their own terms.

They were the last real class of the Josephine Baker, Gregory Hines, Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, Dorothy Dandridge School of the Triple Threat. Jasmine Guy. Tisha Campbell. Tachina Arnold. They were our big brothers and extended families. They were Malcolm Jamal Warner and Flex Alexander and Leon and EnVogue. Love Jones. Nia Long. Larenz Tate: the closest thing to a real life Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. They are bitter sweet memories, etched in my conscious til I can no longer remember.

These were Bae Bae’s Kids.

Remember?

Remember that time Gina rolled up on Ms. Trinidad with a gym bag and vaseline? Or how about that time Eddie was pulled over by the police and Daddy Winslow had to get some straightening?

Remember the weddings?

Martin and Gina. Sinclaire and Obie. Whitley and Dwayne. They were our Soul Food and Dead Presidents; Booty Call and Rosewood; The Inkwell and Juice. They were the Crooklyns and Original Gangsters. Did we ever figure out exactly Why Do Fools Fall in Love? What does love have to do with it?

This is who they were. This is who they are. And because of them, I am. I got a thing for Tisha Campbell.

PHOTO CREDIT: PEREIRA/OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY

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