Month: June 2019

By: NINA BURLEIGH

As President Donald Trump and his family trooped into Buckingham Palace for a state banquet with Queen Elizabeth II on Monday night, royal watchers, palace protocol chiefs and journalists were on the alert. Consider, even before Trump landed, he had labeled Meghan Markle “nasty” and the London mayor “a stone cold loser.”

For Trump, however, this royal dinner was clearly more than the usual state visit, as the New York Times pointed out on Tuesday. While Trump has worked hard to build his life into a glittering, eponymous brand, there has long been a royal-specific yearning in the Trump family. What is less known is that this desire arguably dates back to Trump’s mother, an immigrant maid who came to America almost 100 years ago and bequeathed to her fourth child the notion that all that glitters really is gold.

While Trump has worked hard to build his life into a glittering, eponymous brand, there has long been a royal-specific yearning in the Trump family.

Unlike his mother’s origins, Trump’s obsession with the royals — the human epitome of his old go-to word, “classy” — is hardly a secret. Besides all the gold T’s and his gilded Versailles triplex in Trump Tower, there’s the family crest that Trump essentially stole from the socialite who built Mar-a-Lago, modifying it to remove the word “Integritas” but keeping the three rampant lions.

Indeed, Trump has a long history of seeking royal stardust. In 1981, he made up a story about Prince Charles and Princess Diana planning to shell out $5 million for a Trump Tower condo. In 1994, he claimed that Prince Charles and Princess Diana had sent in $50,000 checks to become charter members of the Florida Mar-a-Lago club, a Trumpian whopper that a palace spokesman sniffed was “complete nonsense.” Trump even tried (and failed) to date post-divorce Diana, who reportedly said he gave her “the creeps.” Prince Charles reportedly declined an invitation to Trump’s 2005 wedding to Melania.

Pundits like historian Doug Brinkley have blamed Trump’s obsession on his autocratic political bent — he wanted to be “King Donald.” Or simply a penchant for outrageous marketing strategies. But the true source is likely a far more personal inheritance: A Trump family secret is that his mother worked as a maid in the household of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.

Mary Anne McLeod was the 10th child of a fisherman, born into muck boots and peat smoke on a remote Scottish island. She grew up in a two-room cottage and probably got no more than an eighth-grade education before she left the Isle of Lewis in the 1920s, following older sisters who had nestled into a community of nannies, butlers and maids from the British Isles who worked for the robber barons of New York.

Trump has long claimed his mother came to America on a holiday. But the truth can be found in the 1930 U.S. Census, where McLeod is listed at the bottom of a lengthy retinue of butlers, footmen, chauffeurs, cooks and maids working for Louise Carnegie.

It’s not clear how long McLeod held that position, because the Trump family has never acknowledged it. But in 1936, she married Fred Trump, Donald’s father, and moved to Queens. As Fred Trump got richer, Mary Anne modeled herself as a Queens Louise Carnegie — dressing in furs, her blonde hair coiffed into a now-familiar confection, as she was reportedly chauffeured in a Rolls Royce to, some stories say, collect the change from the laundromats at her husband’s growing middle-class apartment building empire.

Mary Anne’s affinity for royal pomp was so deep that she reportedly couldn’t be dragged away from the television set during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

Mary Anne’s affinity for royal pomp was so deep that she reportedly couldn’t be dragged away from the television set during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, even as her thrifty German husband and her even thriftier German mother-in-law scorned her for it.

Donald seems to have inherited that yearning whole — along with his father’s scorn when he moved to Manhattan and put up his glass tower. Trump admits in “The Art of the Deal” that Fred Trump told him that Trump Tower could have been built of cheaper brick for pennies on the dollar.

Late in life, Mary Anne Trump finally did get to spend a small fortune decorating her own mini-palace in one of the Trump Tower condos. But, according to a family member who spoke to me for my book, she never spent a night in it, because her husband, by then enfeebled and suffering from Alzheimer’s, wouldn’t or couldn’t live there.

Donald Trump’s abiding sense of being an outsider is also likely owed to his mother — the girl looking in at the castle window in Scotland, the teen maid peeking down a polished banister into the candle-lit Carnegie dining hall. Donald, born and raised in an outer borough, was rich — but not to the Manhattan manner born.

Trump’s children, however, were born to rich celebrities in Manhattan — and in America, that means they can play at being royal issue. Ivanka writes in her first book, “The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life,” that her last name is synonymous with class and luxury. Via Instagram, she assiduously curated her family’s arrival in the White House to look like the Camelot of the Kennedys. Meanwhile, her nickname inside the White House was at least initially a pejorative “princess royal,” according to Vanity Fair.

Many American political families would have celebrated the remarkable ancestral story of a royals-struck maid from the British Isles who gave birth to a son who became president of the United States — and who walked into Buckingham Palace Monday to present that woman’s grandchildren to the Queen of England.

But not the Trump clan. For one thing, to admit that they are living out the culmination of that immigrant woman’s dream would be to acknowledge the possibilities that America offers to other men and women.

By: KYLE EUSTICE

Beastie Boys fourth Hip Hop album, 1994’s Ill Communication, turns 25 on Friday (May 31).

To commemorate the occasion, the surviving members of the iconic New York rap outfit – Mike “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “King Ad-Rock” Horvitz — have unleashed a 14-minute documentary on their career and the making of the album.

The doc includes interviews with Mike D and Ad-Rock conducted by Amazon Music’s Nathan Brackett at the 2019 SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas earlier this year.

It also features archival footage and commentary from collaborators Mario Caldato Jr. and “Money” Mark Nishita.

Ill Communication debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart upon its release and has since been certified triple platinum by the RIAA. It served as the trio’s second No. 1 album, following 1986’s License To Ill.

Contributions to the project came from Money Mark, Eric Bobo and Amery “AWOL” Smith, Q-Tip and Biz Markie.

The video for “Sabotage,” one of the album’s lead singles, was nominated for Video of the Year, Best Group Video, Breakthrough Video, Best Direction in a Video, and Viewer’s Choice at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards. However, it lost all five categories, prompting the late Adam “MCA” Yauch to crash Michael Stipe’s acceptance speech as his Nathanial Hornblower alter ego.

By: KYLE EUSTICE

NEW YORK, NY – EPMD is back in business. After seven albums and over 30 years of pumping out authentic, boom bap Hip Hop, Parish Smith and Erick Sermon have announced its first album in 11 years.

Smith confirmed the news and revealed they’ve thrown three titles in the ring — All Business, Major Business and Big Business. The iconic duo has recently returned from a trip to Africa, where Smith says they performed after being commissioned by the African government. Now that they’re back in the States, it’s — yep! — business as usual.ADVERTISING

“The demand from the Hip Hop community, the previous dope shows we did like at The Apollo and the trip to Africa really made us want to do the album,” Smith says. “It’s just time. Everything just comes back around. Like ‘Business As Usual,’ we gots to give the people what they want.

“It’s more or less being out in Hip hop and listening to what people are seeing. They want a real album like Strictly Business, Unfinished Business, Business As Usual or Business Never Personal.”

When asked if he and Sermon are on the same page, he says, “Yes, we are really on a good page. It’s less about us and more about what the fans already did for us. Not many people have a career that span over 32 years.

“You have to put yourself aside and listen to what the people are saying. If shows are sold out and they’re wanting more, then it all makes sense.”

Production-wise, Sermon and Smith are going to handle a lot of it on their own, but they’re open to working with other capable beatsmiths.

“Naturally me and E is going to do the production,” he explains. “Also, we’re open-minded to great producers who grew up on us and have the respect for us to help us out on the production.

“It’s great that we’re good producers, but when you have fans that went on to have a tremendous amount of success and grew up on you, that person is going to hand you a monster track and that’s dope. The pressures not all on you.”

Smith says they started working on the album roughly two months ago and are three or four songs deep into the project.

“I already dropped my vocals,” he says. “Now, we’re getting back into it. There’s been a little adjustment after Africa. Without us rushing, if we can’t get it out this year, it’s a 2020 situation. The beauty for us now is Hip Hop seems to be doing a full circle. So many people are into hearing that 90s music and 90s sound.”

The forthcoming album will serve as the follow-up to 2008’s We Mean Business. The two New Yorkers kicked off their storied career with the 1988 classic, Strictly Business. Despite many breakups and makeups, they’ve continued to tour over the past three decades.

Sermon has also embarked on several business endeavors as well, including Def Rugs. He dropped his latest solo album, Vernia, last month.

DJ Scratch, who joined the duo around 1989 for EPMD’s second album, officially left in 2017

By: JAE JONES

World War I was coming to an end, and many African-Americans wanted to know what the end of the war meant for them. So, activist and author James Weldon Johnson raised the issue that everyone was thinking: Would the African-American’s support for the war effort, on the battlefields of Europe and throughout the many factories in the United States mean improvement in the “status of the Negro as an American citizen? During this time Black people were considered second class—and many worse. It was very little that African-Americans were allowed to do during this time. Blacks could not vote, they were usually sharecropping, and not allowed access to workplaces such as their counterparts, White Americans. Black people were subject to be harassed, violently beat and left for death, and some even murdered.

There were some things that did change for Black Americans over the course of the war. Many southern Blacks had migrated to the North and found jobs in industrial workplaces. Doors that had been closed to Blacks but employed Whites, were no opened to Black workers because of labor shortages. People began talking about the “New Negro” which appeared in print, and people were discussing among themselves. Black people thought after the war they would finally get some type of respect. As much to be expected during this time, the White Americans grew weary and tired of hearing of the talk of the “New Negro.” The southern states began to crack down on any Black protest organizations.

By the summer of 1919,  race riots and lynchings were taking place over the country. The Black people were angry that the White Americans were not acknowledging the fact that they had served in the military and that the White Americans were going back to the pre-war status for Blacks. From April to October, American cities were explosive in violence. There were extensive amounts of bloodshed and thus Johnson named it the “#Red Summer.” It is believed that over 25 major riots erupted during this time and at least 52 Black people were lynched. It is possible that it could have been more because there was no complete and accurate records that could be kept during the time.

Hundreds of people—most of them black—were killed and thousands more were injured. Tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes.” “In Washington, daily newspapers fanned the flames with lurid, exaggerated, or even fabricated accounts of black crime. In Chicago, postwar unemployment, labor conflicts, housing shortages, and heat provided the context for the massive violence that followed the stoning death of a young black swimmer who crossed an invisible line separating whites from blacks in Lake Michigan. Whites in Omaha, Neb., physically attacked their mayor before destroying the local courthouse to seize and then lynch a black man accused of assaulting a white woman. In Phillips County, Ark., black sharecroppers’ efforts to organize a union to secure fair end-of-year settlements precipitated what one contemporary called “a crusade of death” that left hundreds dead.” (Chicago Tribune, 2011) During this time the riots were getting a significant amount of coverage by the media, and this was just making matters extremely worse. Making no secret of their opposition to black rights, white southern politicians blamed black sharecroppers and called the NAACP “an association for the promotion of revolution.

The war had changed Black Americans who were in the war, as well as the Blacks who stayed back at home. Their mindset know was to protect their homes and families with everything they had inside them. They would fight to the finish, they thought of ways to be ready and waiting for the White Americans before they invaded their territory. Black America woke up to other things happening in the country politically, socially, and artistically as well. Read more of the Red Summer.

By: JOHN VIBES

More than 300 innocent people were killed when police assisted a racist mob in the burning and looting of the most affluent African American neighborhood in the United States.

On June 1, 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a horrific act of racial terrorism took place, and the perpetrators were actually assisted by the local police and the national guard. The site of the attack was a region of Tulsa known as “Black Wall Street” in a neighborhood called “Greenwood,” which was a thriving center of culture and commerce for African Americans.

At the time, the community was a symbol of black success in America, which unfortunately made it the target of constant hostility from media, politicians and local racists who saw it as an economic threat. The attacks on the community were sparked by an accusation that a black man attempted to rape a white woman. Although the man accused of the crime was arrested and awaiting judgment, a mob of angry racists did not want to wait for the suspect to see a fair trial, and instead wanted the whole black community to pay for the alleged crimes of this one man.

At the courthouse, innocent black bystanders were attacked by a mob and forced to retreat back to Greenwood. The mob then descended on “Black Wall Street,” setting fires to buildings and shooting people indiscriminately, creating a night of terror throughout the city. Airplanes circled the sky dropping kerosene and nitroglycerin on the buildings and people below, according to survivors of the attack.

Authorities did nothing to stop the violence, and in fact, they actually assisted the mob by only arresting blacks, and some reports have even indicated that they also engaged in violence, possibly even flying some of the planes that were responsible for the bombings. These events came to be known as the “Tulsa Race Riots,” but as many survivors have pointed out, calling them “riots” just serves to take responsibility from the mob and the police that protected them.

As author Linda Christenson pointed out in her piece “Burning Tulsa: The Legacy of Black Dispossession“:

THE TERM “RACE RIOT” DOES NOT ADEQUATELY DESCRIBE THE EVENTS OF MAY 31—JUNE 1, 1921, IN GREENWOOD… IN FACT, THE TERM ITSELF IMPLIES THAT BOTH BLACKS AND WHITES MIGHT BE EQUALLY TO BLAME FOR THE LAWLESSNESS AND VIOLENCE. THE HISTORICAL RECORD DOCUMENTS A SUSTAINED AND MURDEROUS ASSAULT ON BLACK LIVES AND PROPERTY. THIS ASSAULT WAS MET BY A BRAVE BUT UNSUCCESSFUL ARMED DEFENSE OF THEIR COMMUNITY BY SOME BLACK WORLD WAR I VETERANS AND OTHERS.

DURING THE NIGHT AND DAY OF THE RIOT, DEPUTIZED WHITES KILLED MORE THAN 300 AFRICAN AMERICANS. THEY LOOTED AND BURNED TO THE GROUND 40 SQUARE BLOCKS OF 1,265 AFRICAN AMERICAN HOMES, INCLUDING HOSPITALS, SCHOOLS, AND CHURCHES, AND DESTROYED 150 BUSINESSES. WHITE DEPUTIES AND MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL GUARD ARRESTED AND DETAINED 6,000 BLACK TULSANS WHO WERE RELEASED ONLY UPON BEING VOUCHED FOR BY A WHITE EMPLOYER OR OTHER WHITE CITIZEN. NINE THOUSAND AFRICAN AMERICANS WERE LEFT HOMELESS AND LIVED IN TENTS WELL INTO THE WINTER OF 1921.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Black Wall Street was left in ruins and many of its residents were left homeless and destitute. Instead of helping, the local government attempted to make it impossible for them to rebuild by placing impossible building regulations on the area and then attempting to take their land. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics attempted to downplay the deadly nature of the attacks and officially recorded 39 dead. However, the American Red Cross, who was on the ground at the time, estimated the actual death toll to be 300.

While the attacks may have been sparked by the rape accusations, it was the culmination of years of hostility that was directed towards the community. Many poor and middle-class whites resented the fact that they had affluent African-American neighbors, and this envy was instigated by the establishment media and politicians of the day.

Race relations have come a long way in the past century, but sadly many of the same conditions that led to the violence on Black Wall Street in 1921 are still prevalent today. In modern times, politicians and media outlets build their careers by stoking division between races and social groups, often using fear of economic hardship to sow distrust.

By: KYLE EUSTICE

One of America’s most notorious drug lords, Frank Lucas, has reportedly passed away from natural causes. TMZ reports Lucas was en route to a New Jersey hospital to be treated for an unknown condition but died before he could get there. He was 88.

Lucas has been a part of pop culture for decades. Denzel Washington played the infamous heroin dealer in the 2007 movie, American Gangster, while JAY-Z’s American Gangster album was inspired by the same film about Lucas’ life.

The former Harlem resident is heralded as the puppet master behind the “Golden Triangle” gambit of the early 70s. The “Golden Triangle” was coined by the CIA and refers to the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong Rivers, one of the most extensive opium-producing areas of Asia.

He claimed that the incident that sparked his motivation to embark on a life of crime was having witnessed his 12-year-old cousin’s murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, for apparently “reckless eyeballing” (looking at) a Caucasian woman, in Greensboro. 

Lucas claimed to have imported the heroin — which he often called “Blue Magic” — from Southeast Asia in the coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam.

“Who the hell is gonna look in a dead soldier’s coffin,” Lucas told New York Magazine in 2000. “We had him make up 28 copies of the government coffins . . . except we fixed them up with false bottoms, big enough to load up with six, maybe eight kilos.”

Lucas was arrested by the mid-70s. When the DEA raided his Jersey home in 1975, they discovered over $584,000 in cash. He was ultimately convicted of federal and state drug violations and sentenced to 70 years behind bars. However, Lucas cooperated with the feds and became an informant. He and his family entered a witness protection program.

Following fiver years in prison, Lucas’ sentence was reduced to time served plus lifetime parole. But old habits die hard. He was later busted for drug dealing again and served another seven years. He was released in 1991.

Lucas leaves behind seven children.