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Page 2 The Skanner April 27, 2016 Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Arashi Young Reporter Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2015 MERIT AWARDS WINNER The Skanner has received 20 NNPA awards since 1998 The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com Opinion Prince: Unreconstructed, Free and Funky Artist I liked Prince as a teen but I grew to really appreciate him even more for his mu- sic, fashion, business sense, and artistic creativity, as I be- came an adult. He is without a doubt a heroic role model of our era. He never stopped trying new things and chal- lenging “tradition.” Undaunt- ed by norms, he was willing to be a daring, inventive, rad- ical, free, and unreconstruct- ed human being. The year is 1984 and the al- bum Purple Rain has dropped, along with the movie of the same name. I saw it twice within 24 hours. First I saw it with my boy Stephen and again the next day with my girlfriend. Prince suffered the misfortune of releasing the most dynamic album and film at the same time that Mi- chael Jackson took the music world by storm. In the face of stiff competition from the King of Pop, Prince developed an incredible following. When Prince came to St. Louis to perform in 1984, my cousin, who had followed him for at least three years prior to Purple Rain, went crazy. She and my older sister and their friends packed into her car and spent the night fol- lowing leads to “Prince sight- ings” in downtown St. Louis after attending the concert. Thabiti Lewis, Ph.D. Guest Columnist They got in trouble for stay- ing out too late, but did not care because they wanted a chance to glimpse or meet Prince. They loved him for being sassy, sexy, and cool and wanted to be with this dimin- utive fellow — enraging and baffling me because two of “ Prince exhibited carefree blackness,” which Dr. Bolden says, “is funk. In many ways [Prince] reflected the mean- ing of the word and the genre.” As an adult, I witnessed Prince’s funk live at his 2004 Musicology Concert in Port- land with my wife and three other couples. We loved Prince as teens and as young adults and his latest album reflected the dynamic funky sound that drew us all to him in our youth. As we en- tered it shocked me that we each received a copy of the album that we already had sic and who owned it. Tied to a contract that required him to release a fixed number of al- bums, Prince produced them feverishly to speed up the ex- ecution of the contract. After leaving Warner Brothers, he formed his own music compa- ny, NPG Records and released a triple album in 1996 — not coincidentally titled “Emanci- pation.” Always looking forward, he also was one of the first artists to utilize the Internet’s poten- tial. He released his double album Crystal Ball for $50, selling 500,000+ copies. He fa- mously told Larry King to, “do the math” when explaining the profit that he made from this un- conventional approach. Who can forget how he changed his name to a love symbol — a combination of the symbol for male and fe- male — during his epic battle with Warner Brothers as a statement against corporate greed and in support of artis- tic bodies. This move left War- ner with no “Prince” to sell, by abandoning that name and wresting control of his body and art. More than a symbolic gesture, he redefined himself without words. ‘Prince exhibited carefree blackness,’ which Dr. Bolden says, ‘is funk’ their girlfriends who gushed over Prince told me I was too short even though I stood four inches taller than Prince. Tony Bolden, professor of African American Studies at Kansas University and guest editor of “The Funk Issue” in American Studies Jour- nal (2013) sheds light on the meaning of funk and Prince. “Funky,” says Dr. Bolden, “is honesty of expression at our deepest emotions. The genre Funk is hybrid forms. And Prince is the exemplification of that. He rejected catego- ries, opting for Funk’s em- brace of multiplicity of forms. purchased. I smiled and ex- claimed, “Genius! This broth- er just flipped the script again on the suits.” By including the album into the price of a ticket, he jumped to the top of the billboard chart during his concert tour. It was a funky move. Throughout his career, Prince waged battle against the record executives who controlled artists economi- cally and creatively. Prince famously wrote the word “Slave” on his cheek during his battle in the 1990s with Warner Brothers over how often he could release his mu- Read the rest of this column at TheSkanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. ©2016 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar RSS feeds BE A PART OF THE CONVERSATION #SkNews Child Watch: Recognizing All of America’s Heroes E very day I wear a pair of medallions around my neck with portraits of two of my role models: Harriet Tubman and Sojourn- er Truth. As a child I read books about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. She and indomitable and elo- quent slave woman Sojourn- er Truth represent countless thousands of anonymous slave women whose bodies and minds were abused and whose voices were muted by slavery, Jim Crow, segrega- tion and confining gender roles throughout our nation’s history. Although Harriet Tubman could not read books, she could read the stars to find her way north to freedom. And she freed not only herself from slavery, but returned to slave country again and again through forests and streams and across mountains to lead other slaves to freedom at great personal danger. She was tough. She was de- termined. She was fearless. She was shrewd and she trust- ed God completely to deliver her, and other fleeing slaves, from pursuing captors who had placed a bounty on her life. “’Twa’nt me. ’Twas the Lord. I always told Him, I trust You. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect You Marian Wright Edelman Children’s Defense Fund to lead me. And He always did…On my underground railroad, I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger,” she was quoted as saying. No train, bus or air- “ all. Kudos to the Treasury Department which has an- nounced that Harriet Tub- man’s face will grace the front of the redesigned $20 bill, making her the first woman in more than a century and first African American ever to be represented on the face of an American paper note. And it’s wonderful that she will not be alone. For too long and for too many, money has been the most powerful symbol of nation’s profoundly crippling birth defects of slavery, Na- tive American genocide, and exclusion of all women and non-propertied men of all races from our electoral pro- cess and ensuring full partici- pation in our nation’s life. It is so important to make sure all of our children can see their ancestors pictured on some- thing as basic as the money used every day by countless millions and this will deepen the meaning of how we define success in America. And to Black children — who remain the poor- est group in America — I hope Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth become anchor re- minders of their great her- itage of strength, courage, faith and belief in the equality of women and people of every color. None of us must ever give up fighting for freedom and equality and human dig- nity however tough the road. I hope all of our children and all of us will be inspired anew by our diverse and rich heritages and cultures as Americans and renew our determination to build a level playing field in our nation for every child and help our na- tion shine a brighter beacon of hope in a world hungering for moral example. The new bills also will powerfully remind all Americans and teach our children and grandchildren that Black history and women’s history are American history line company can match this former slave woman’s safety record. And few of us could match her faithful partner- ship with God, determination to be free and willingness to help others to be free without thought about self-sacrifice. Now the entire nation will pay public homage to Harriet Tubman’s devotion to free- dom, and also honor Sojourn- er Truth and other great women and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who never stopped demanding and working to assure that America lives up to its declared creed of free- dom, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and equality for what we value as a nation. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Marian Anderson, El- eanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Su- san B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Martin Luther King, Jr. — their faces on American currency will send powerful messages about what – and who — we Americans are, val- ue and strive to become. The new bills also will pow- erfully remind all Americans and teach our children and grandchildren that Black history and women’s history are American history. They will take us a giant step for- ward towards healing our
