The Men of the Tenth Inc. September 2011

THE MEN OF THE TENTH INC. Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is one of the leading hip-hop generation intellectuals in the country. His work, which covers topics such as culture, politics, and education, has appeared in numerous journals, magazines, books, and anthologies. Dr. Hill has lectured widely and provides regular commentary for media outlets like NPR, Washington Post, Essence Magazine, and the New York Times. He is the host of the nationally syndicated television show Our World With Black Enterprise, which airs Sunday mornings on TV One and broadcast markets around the country. He also provides regular commentary for CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel, where he was a political

contributor and regular guest on The O’Reilly Factor. An award-winning writer, Dr. Hill is a columnist and editor-at-large for the Philadelphia Daily News. Since 2009, Dr. Hill has been on the faculty of Columbia University as Associate Professor of Education at Teachers College. He also holds an affiliated faculty appointment in African American Studies at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University.

Since his days as a youth in Philadelphia, Dr. Hill has been a social justice activist and organizer. He is a founding board member of My5th, a non-profit organization devoted to educating youth about their legal rights and responsibilities. He is also a board member and organizer of the Philadelphia Student Union. Dr. Hill also works closely with the ACLU Drug Reform Project, focusing on drug informant policy. In addition to his political work, Dr. Hill continues to work directly with African American and Latino youth. In 2001, he started a literacy project that uses hip-hop culture to increase school engagement and reading skills among high school students. He also continues to organize and teach adult literacy courses for high school dropouts in Philadelphia and Camden. In 2005, Ebony Magazine named him one of America’s top 30 Black leaders under 30 years old. Dr. Hill is the author of Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity and co-editor of Media, Learning, and Sites of Possibility and The Anthropology of Education Reader. He is currently completing two manuscripts: Knowledge of Self: Race, Masculinity, and the Politics of Reading; and First Class Jails/Second Class Schools: Education in the Age of Incarceration. Trained as an anthropologist of education, Dr. Hill holds a Ph.D. (with distinction) from the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the intersections between culture, politics, and education. He is particularly interested in locating various sites of possibility for political resistance, identity work, and knowledge production outside of formal schooling contexts. Particular sites of inquiry include prisons, Black bookstores, and youth cultural production.

Who Is That Black Guy on The O’Rielly Factor?

The Men of the Tenth Inc. September 2011

2

Laurel J. Richie is the current

president of the Women's

National Basketball Association

(WNBA). Before the WNBA,

Richie served as Senior Vice

President and Chief Marketing

Officer for Girl Scouts of the USA.

Prior to working at the Girl

Scouts, Richie worked at Leo

Burnett Worldwide, an

advertising agency based in

Chicago, from 1981-1983, where

she worked on a host of Procter

and Gamble brands. In 1984, she

moved to Ogilvy and Mather,

where she spent more than two

decades building brands for blue

chip clients including American

Express, Pepperidge Farm and

Unilever, among others. She

continues to work with Ogilvy as

a founding member of its

Diversity Advisory Board,

supporting efforts to attract and

retain top talent.

Richie is a recipient of the YMCA

Black Achiever's Award and

Ebony magazine's Outstanding

Women in Marketing and

Communications. In April 2011,

Laurel Richie: If You Don’t Know, Now You Know

“Laurel is one woman who has broken the glass ceiling.”

By: Tupac Shakur

Did you hear about the rose that grew

from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature's law is wrong it

learned to walk with out having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams,

it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete

when no one else ever cared.

The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Continued on page 4

The Men of the Tenth Inc. September 2011

3

When you see or hear the word “Housewives” what image enters your mind? Is it one of loud and boisterous women who thrive in the midst of drama? Is it one of catfights, scandals and parties without a purpose? Or is it an image of Black women considered dignified and regarded as the cornerstone of the rise of Black economics? Ironically, the latter describes the original Housewives, affectionately known as the Housewives' League.

During the 1930s Great Depression, Northern Blacks organized and strategized “boycotting some businesses while favoring others.” The launch of the “Don't Buy Where You Can't Work” and “Spend Your Money Where You Can Work” campaigns demanded that White storeowners hire Black employees if they wanted patronage and profits from Black consumers. These consumer boycotts were a major strategy Blacks used in mass

The Real Housewives of Detroit By: Ebony S. Muhammad

protests against Jim Crow Laws in the South that forced many White-owned businesses into bankruptcy.

The Housewives' League of Detroit was founded in June of 1930 by Fannie B. Peck after she had been inspired by a lecture describing how Harlem housewives had supported local CMA stores (Black owned and operated). By 1935, the Detroit league grew to over 12,000 members who were divided into 16 neighborhood units. Members pledged to support Black businesses and professionals, buy Black-produced products, and help train Detroit's young people for careers in business.

The first Junior Unit of the Housewives' League of Detroit was organized in 1935. According to Mindfully.org, there were six Junior Units of

Continued…

The Men of the Tenth Inc. September 2011

4

children between the ages of 6 and 15. A High School and College Educational Unit of boys and girls between the ages of 15 and 21 was organized in 1946. These units helped to instill in the minds of our youth and young people progress through self-help and an appreciation of Black-owned and controlled businesses.

According to the Detroit Public Library, other chapters of the Housewives' League included Harlem, N.Y. (1,000 members by 1931), Baltimore, Md. (2,000 members), Chicago, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. In many of these places a mix of working- and middle-class members came together in a notable break with the middle-class-dominated Black women's club movement. Out of these local chapters a National Housewives' League of America was established in 1933 and promoted its own nationwide “Don't Buy Where You Can't Work” campaign.

Unfortunately, yet interestingly enough the “new chapters” of Housewives do not promote any of the above principles or unified front. My first impression of the Real Housewives reality show was shaped by the first season of the Atlanta segment that did showcase a couple of the women's professional involvements. The two that stood out the most were Lisa Wu Hartwell who owns her own real estate firm, Hartwell & Associates, a jewelry line called Wu Girls, a baby clothing line, Hart 2 Hart Baby along with DeShawn Snow who is the founder and operator of the DeShawn Snow Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on improving self-esteem in teenage girls. Ironically, and it's by no mistake, these two women were removed from the show, while the remaining three continue portraying the negative image described at the very beginning of this article.

It is evident that if we do not know our history, someone else can rewrite it and rename it. Why call the show the Real Housewives as if implying there was a previous group of women with the same name but with an obviously different

was named one of the 25 Influential Black Women in

Business by The Network Journal. Richie attended

Dartmouth College.

Laurel is one woman who has broken the glass ceiling

and we look forward to her continuing to improve the

quality and popularity of the WNBA.

(Continued)

If You Don’t Know, Now You Know (Continued…)

purpose? This imposter Housewives is not designed to inspire, motivate, unify, initiate, or promote change and economic growth in the Black community at all. If I had to describe its purpose it would be to humiliate, divide, enjoin viewers into senseless and less than dignified behavior, promote scandal and mischief, as well as keep the viewers distracted from the reality taking place around them. Are they teaching the young girls and women how to be business owners, economic producers, and supporters of like-minded professionals? Not at all.

The Housewives' Leagues affirmed, “We emphasize and declare it to be most desirable to own our own business and manage it ourselves, while we recognize as an act of fairness the employment of (so-called) Negroes in businesses owned and operated by other racial groups, yet we feel that the solution of our economic problem is the ownership of business, and to this end we shall confine our efforts.”

We are now being faced with similar circumstances and financial conditions that are forcing us to go and do for self as well as support and promote the businesses of our brothers and sisters. We must create our own jobs, source of wealth and means of exchange if we are to survive the fall of this country's economic system.

The Men of the Tenth Inc. September 2011

THe MeN of the Tenth Inc.

750 Faile Ave Suite 2E Bronx, New York, 10474

Life is an important function. It was given for the purpose of expression. The flower expresses itself through its rambling search in settling its own peculiar nature. The tree expresses itself in its smiling green leaves, shaking branches and sometimes hanging fruits. The lark expresses itself in its laughter and song.

The river expresses itself in its gentle meandering unto the sea and man expresses himself according to the idealistic visions of his nature. Man should have a purpose and that purpose he should always keep in view, with the hope of achieving it in the fullest satisfaction to himself.

How pitiful it is to see a man living without a programme without knowing how he is going to use his todays and his tomorrows. If you follow him long enough you will find him going down the ditch of failure, because he has been traveling without a programme.

Therefore, when the old man dies, the son inherits and when the son dies, the grandson inherits. Inherits what? That which the grandfather lived for. This should be the policy of every Negro, to live for something to hand down to a son, to a grandson, that they may have life a little easier than their fathers before them.

Life and Lessons From Marcus Garvey Living for Something

“How pitiful it is to see a man living without a programme”

Excerpt from “Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons,”1987.