An Oklahoma jail is on the hot seat after a former detainee is diagnosed with a severe facial rash and facial cellulitis.

Oklahoma woman Chandra Graham has filed a federal lawsuit against the Oklahoma County Detention Center (OCDC), alleging she suffered severe facial burns while in custody.

According to ABC News, the suit claims Graham was “subjected to inhuman conditions of confinement in the suicide watch wing” during her time at the detention center. The lawsuit names nine trustees representing the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority, the sheriff, the OCDC, and detention center officer Corporal McKinley.

After being taken into custody at an Oklahoma jail on March 24, 2021, Graham was reportedly detained in a suicide watch cell with no running water. The woman’s attorney, Peter Scimeca, said the water was off due to an overflow of feces and urine on the floor. The lawsuit stated that a mix of unknown chemicals and other substances splashed onto Graham’s face, and medical records show the woman was moved to a dry cell.

“She was crying out for help for hours, asking for a cup of water to clean her face,” said Scimeca. “[The corrections officers] let her scream in agony and pain instead of getting her an effing cup of water and her skin was burning. That’s how sorry those conditions are.”

Graham’s lawsuit was filed by Sebastian Van Coevorden, who said the woman was moved to a behavioral health unit where she was ignored for medical aid over 50 times.

“Time and time again, it comes from a lack of training, but also just an indifference to the conditions that Miss Graham had to deal with,” Van Coevorden said, adding that Graham’s family took her to the hospital following her release from the detention center.

“Even worse, when she’s finally released, and it’s so apparent that this girl has burnt her face off, they start trying to make excuses. And the excuse is she did it to herself,” Scimeca said.

The suit states that Graham was diagnosed by the hospital with chemical burns linked to a combination of urine and feces. Additionally, she was diagnosed with bacterial conjunctivitis in both eyes. 

Graham reportedly filed the lawsuit on March 27, 2023.

• News

by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton

April 19, 2023

Florida High School Baseball Team in Racist Text Scandal Has Season Canceled After Walkout

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A high school principal in Florida has canceled the rest of the baseball team’s season after the players walked out in protest after their coach was fired.

“After meeting with every varsity baseball family and evaluating our options for the rest of the season, I must inform you that I have made the decision to cancel the rest of our baseball regular season and district play,”  Fort Myers High School Robert Butz wrote in an email to parents, according to the Fort Myers News-Press.

“This was not an easy decision to make, but the current status of our team and coaching staff does not provide a viable path forward for the remainder of the season.”

Butz’s decision ends a season that featured tumult early on.

On February 14  Alex Carcioppolo, Fort Myers assistant baseball coach, posted a text message to the team group chat wishing the players a “Happy Valentine’s Day.” In the text, he ended the message with a racial slur.

After the message was discovered, Carcioppolo was removed from the school on February 16. On March 8, Fort Myers athletic director Steve Cato sent an email to the players’ parents that that a Title VI investigation had been opened regarding the team.

Fourth-year head coach Kyle Burchfield was terminated on April 5. No cause was given by the district, and members of the baseball team staged a walkout during its game against Estero High on April 6.

Fort Myers High School was fined $500 for unsportsmanlike conduct after Cato self-reported the incident.

In his report to the Florida High School Athletic Association, Cato said the players walked out of their dugout and left due to an “ongoing situation within the baseball program.”

“We are still trying to identify all of the players and coaches involved,” Cato wrote to the FHSAA. “We did have 5-6 players who remained on the field and in the dugout to play the game, but without enough to continue we had to forfeit the game.”

• News

by Booker Jones

April 19, 2023

2 Texas Cheerleaders Shot After Mistakenly Getting Into Wrong Car

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Two cheerleaders were shot after one of the women got into a man’s car, mistakenly thinking it was hers. 

According to WKYT, Heather Roth got out of her friend’s car and into a car she thought was hers. Seeing that a man was in the passenger seat, Roth got scared and rushed back to her friend’s car. However, the man exited the passenger seat of the car he was sitting in, approached Roth’s friend’s car, and shot Roth and her friend. 

A bullet grazed Roth while her friend and teammate, Payton Washington, was shot in the leg and back, according to WKYT. 

Roth was treated at the scene. Unfortunately, the outlet reports that Washington was flown to a hospital, where she is in critical condition, and had to have part of her spleen removed. 

Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, was arrested and charged with engaging in deadly conduct. 

Washington is a cheerleader at a high school in Round Rock, Texas, north of Austin. Lynne Shearer, the owner of Woodlands Elite Cheer Company, told WKYT that Washington was born with one lung yet was the star of the team and had already committed to Baylor University’s acrobatics and tumbling team. 

“She’s really a huge face in the all-star cheerleading world,” Shearer said. “She’s a mentor and role model to so many kids in this industry. She’s an amazing athlete, an amazing kid, so everybody knows her and everybody’s praying for her.”

Roth and Washington’s shooting comes after Kansas City, Missouri, teen Ralph Yarl, who is Black, was shot twice after going to the wrong address to pick up his siblings. Also, in upstate New York, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis, who is white, was fatally shot by 65-year-old Kevin Monahan after she turned into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house. 

• News

by Booker Jones

April 19, 2023

Black And Mexican Americans Displaced From Palm Springs, California, Neighborhood Seeking Reparations

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Lawrence W. McFarland grew up on a parcel of land on a Native American reservation in Palm Springs, California. One day, the family was told to leave their home. As a little boy, McFarland, his mother, and his brother packed their belongings and moved to Cabazon, California.

McFarland told The Associated Press that his childhood home had been burned down and destroyed. 

“We thought they were just cleaning up some of the old houses,” McFarland said to The AP. 

In 2021, Palm Springs City Council voted to apologize to former residents for the city’s decision to displace them during the 1960s. The Native American reservation known as Section 14 was the home of Black and Mexican families, the outlet reports. 

Former residents of Section 14 say they are owed more than $2.3 billion, about $1.2 million per family, for being displaced. According to The AP, Cheryl Grills, a member of California’s reparation task force, helped study the families’ proposals. 

Over the past few years, especially with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ engrossing essay, A Case for Reparations, Black families have been seeking payback for disparities in housing, education, and jobs and as descendants of slaves. 

“California’s statewide reparations task force is evaluating how the state can atone for policies like an eminent domain that allowed governments to seize property from Black homeowners and redlining that restricted what neighborhoods Black families could live in,” The AP reported.

Renee Brown, associate curator and archivist at Palm Springs Historical Society told The AP that Section 14 is complicated because the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians owned the land. According to Brown, the Agua Caliente wanted to lease Section 14 to developers, and the city helped clear the land. With this, the city of Palm Springs seems to have had permission to clear Section 14. 

Despite the complications mentioned by Brown, Lisa Middleton, former mayor of Palm Springs, said it was important that the city apologize for displacing families of Section 14.

• News

by Iman Milner

April 19, 2023

Morris Chestnut Joins Hulu’s ‘Reasonable Doubt’ For Season 2

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Morris Chestnut is heading back to our TVs, and honestly, everything feels right in the world again.

The hit Onyx Collective and Hulu series Reasonable Doubt has been renewed for a second season, and things are heating up between Chestnut’s character, Corey Cash, and the show’s main character Jacqueline “Jax” Stewart, played by actress Emayatzy Corinealdi.

According to Deadline, Chestnut’s Cash is “a charming, media-savvy defense attorney who often represents the underdogs.” Things go awry “when Jax brings in Corey to help on a new high-profile case” and “soon realizes that he’s more shine than substance and threatening her position at the firm.”

Interesting!

Chestnut follows his partner in “forever fine” Michael Ealy, as one of the show’s male leads as well as McKinley Freeman, Tim Jo, Angela Grovey, Aderinsola Olabode, and Thaddeus J. Mixson in the series. The show follows Corinealdi’s Stewart, a high-powered criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles, struggling with her past traumas, a failing marriage, motherhood, and a murder case, while trying to keep her life together.

Fans of the series have been vocal about whether or not the streaming service would renew the show that has become a cult favorite. Executive producer Kerry Washington shared news of the renewal via an Instagram post earlier this week and saw a flood of positive comments.

Chestnut reprised his role as Lance Sullivan in The Best Man: The Final Chapters on Peacock last year alongside the original cast, including Nia Long, Sanaa Lathan, Taye Diggs, Terrence Howard, and director Malcolm D. Lee. The series followed the success of the 2013 sequel The Best Man Holiday, which received rave reviews from fans and critics alike. Chestnut also recently appeared in the short-lived FOX series Our Kind of People, based on the best-selling novel by Lawrence Otis Graham.

Yung Miami and Diddy are no longer an item. The City Girls rapper has confirmed her split from the hip-hop mogul.

The “Caresha Please” host got candid in a new cover story for The Cut about choosing to go public with Diddy last year and the type of relationship they had.

“I felt like, it is what it is. Eventually, people was gonna find out because he is who he is. I am who I am,” she explained.

“We was just like, if we’re going to put it out there, we’re going to be the ones that talk. I don’t like anyone talking for me.”

When asked if they’re still dating, Yung Miami, real name Caresha Brownlee, said not and elaborated on where things stood.

“We’re still friends! We’re still good friends!” she added. “But we’re single. That’s not my man.”

“We had our own situation. I’m not gonna put a title on it,” she continued. “We were f–king with each other hard. We were together every day at one point. He supported me, I supported him. I’ll let the internet call it whatever they want to call it.”

The pair first fueled dating rumors in 2021 when they were spotted holding hands at Pierre “Pee” Thomas’s black-tie affair in Atlanta. By June 2022, Yung Miami became a viral sensation after holding up a “GO PAPI” sign during Diddy’s performance at the BET Awards.

However, in September, the “Act Up” rapper claimed she and Diddy were still “single” but also dating at the same time

“People don’t know what ‘dating’ means,” she told XXL.

“That’s what I mean when I say we go together. When we’re together, we’re together. We’re having the time of our lives, but we’re still single.”

“He see other people outside of me and I see people outside of him. I’m young. I’m dating. I’m, you know, having fun,” she added. “I’m doing me. He’s doing the same thing. I can’t speak for exactly what he doing or who he seeing, but we single and we dating. But we are dating each other, but we single. I think it just went over people’s heads, you know? People just like to take whatever they wanna take from.”

She came further under fire in December when Diddy surprised the public and announced the birth of his daughter, Love Sean Combs. Yung Miami said she already knew about the baby, which was born in October.

Male music artists continue to diminish the contributions of women in rap, including Ja Rule.

After a recent interview with media company The Shade Room, the rapper is feeling the heat for failing to name female rap pioneers like Lil Kim, Missy Elliott, Trina, and Eve amongst the women who shaped the genre with their music. When asked whether Nicki Minaj receives her just due for her role in hip-hop, Rule responded, “I think Nicki gets proper praise. Her place in the game is solidified. It’s solid. There were no female MCs out and about until Nicki came back out. Before her, the last one was, like, Lauryn Hill.”

Fans were enraged to see some of their favorite female MCs left off the list and took to the comments to let it be known.

“So he’s just gonna skip Lil Kim like she wasn’t dominating the industry as an iconic female rapper for years?” one fan responded.

“Love Nicki but I’m truly tired of the Lil Kim disrespect.”

Not to be confused with the longstanding feud between the fanbases of the two New York-born female rappers, people also chimed in about other artists they felt had been snubbed by Rule.

“Missy Elliott had the game on lock for long period as well let’s not forget”, another commenter posted.

This follows a trend of rappers and producers dimming the light on female rappers, like Grammy-Award winner Jermaine Dupri, who was forced to eat his words about the growing number of artists who have skyrocketed to fame over the last few years. When asked about who of the new crop of talent he was a personal fan of in an interview with PEOPLE, he stalled before offering, “The reason why I can’t say is because I feel like they’re all rapping about the same thing.”

He continued, “It’s like strippers rapping and as far as rap goes, I’m not getting who’s the best rapper. I’m getting like, ‘Ok, you got a story about you dancing in the club, you got a story about you dancing in the club, you got a story about you dancing in the club.’ Who’s going to be the rapper?”

Twitter and female rappers alike responded with a myriad of artists and tracks that were diverse in storyline and ability. According to Rolling Stone, even Issa Rae noted that Dupri’s disregard was a catalyst for her HBOMax series Rap Sh*t.

Being loud and wrong is still the chosen avenue of some men in the music industry.

• Celebrity News

by Stacy Jackson

April 19, 2023

Porsha Williams Treats Baby Pilar To Birthday Getaway In Costa Rica

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The gang was all there.

Former Real Housewives of Atlanta star Porsha Williams gathered her whole blended family in Costa Rica to celebrate daughter Pilar McKinley‘s fourth birthday.

Williams took to her Instagram to share a video of the family enjoying a fun-filled vacation in the tropical paradise. She and her daughter flaunted matching two-piece polka dot bikinis and headpieces with bows. The backyard was full of food, a bounce house, and the family members that joined them on the trip.

“🌴⭐️A Costa Rica Birthday Fit for a Princess @pilarjhena !!!” Williams captioned a video of the celebration.  “The Guobadia’s know how to have a good time! Fireworks at the house, family obstacle course, cookout and lots of love ❤️🙏🏾 We love you so much whittle munchkin!! 🇨🇷”

Williams hashtagged the words “PuraVida,” “MiniMe,” “ThisIs4,” and “FamilyFunPack.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Porsha Guobadia (@porsha4real)

The reality star also posted a carousel of photos from her daughter’s big day. In the photos and a video at the end, Williams showed off her hubby, Simon Guobadia.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Porsha Guobadia (@porsha4real)

People reported that Williams tied the knot with the Nigerian businessman in November 2022, where the couple blended their families. Williams shares her daughter with ex Dennis McKinley. Guobadia has five kids, Quentin, Nicole, Christian, Benjamin, and Ximena from previous marriages.

The couple is known for putting together unforgettable events.

Williams and Guobadia held two weddings last year, to honor each of their traditions. The first wedding reflected traditional Nigerian customs at the Four Seasons Hotel Atlanta, where 250 guests followed a traditional or formal Nigerian-inspired dress code to witness the matrimony. The couple continued with an American ceremony the following Saturday.

To Williams’ surprise, shortly after a return from a previous trip to Nigeria, a DNA test revealed she is 44 percent Nigerian.

Legendary jazz musician Ahmad Jamal died Sunday at his home in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts. He was 92. 

Jamal added to jazz’s original creativity with his spare piano style, which inspired several generations of jazz pianists, according to The New York Times. Jamal’s piano style stood out against the then-new bebop, which was taking over jazz when Jamal began his career during his teenage years in the 1940s.

“Bebop pianists, following the lead of Bud Powell, became known for their virtuosic flurries of notes. Mr. Jamal chose a different path, which proved equally influential,” The New York Times’ obituary. 

 

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A post shared by Ahmad Jamal (@ahmad.jamal.official)

Of course, this style proved fruitful for Jamal’s career and Black culture. Jamal racked up accolades such as the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, a lifetime achievement Grammy and induction into France’s Order of Arts and Letters. 

In fact, the late cultural critic Stanley Crouch, who built his career as an exceptional writer, original thinker, and harsh critic who noted that “nothing says I want to live more than Jazz,” wrote that Charlie Parker was the only musician more important to the development of fresh form in jazz than Ahmad Jamal. 

Jamal didn’t limit his musical tastes, either. He also enjoyed classical music. 

“We didn’t separate the two schools,” Jamal recalled during a 2021 interview with The New York Times.

“We studied Bach and Ellington, Mozart and Art Tatum. When you start at 3, what you hear you play. I heard all these things.”

Jamal’s debut album, Ahmad Jamal Plays, recorded with guitarist Ray Crawford and Israel Crosby, was released in 1955. The following year, Ahmad Jamal Plays was re-released and retitled Chamber Music of the New Jazz. 

According to The Guardian, Jamal was married and divorced three times—to Virginia Wilkins, Sharifah Frazier and Laura Hess-Hay. He is survived by his daughter Sumayah, from his second marriage and two grandchildren.

RELATED CONTENT: Jazz Music Pioneer Ben Tankard and Media Mogul Jerry Adams Joint Venture with Streaming Networks SMOOTH LIFE TV and VTV

Marques Houston is back in hot water for downplaying dating women his age because of the “baggage” and “kids” he believes they come with.

The 41-year-old R&B singer and actor has been facing criticism over the 19-year age gap he shares with his 22-year-old wife Miya Dickey. The pair married in 2020, when Houston was 38 and Dickey was just 19 years old.

They went on to welcome their daughter Zara in December 2021 and do a good job at keeping their family life private. But questions still linger with some on social media even accusing Houston of “grooming” his much younger wife.

The Sister Sister star has been defending his marriage in recent interviews, claiming he waited until Dickey was of age before asking her to be his wife. Now, he’s explaining why he never settled down with a woman his age.

“A red flag to me [was] always with a woman that had a kid,” Houston told Page Six in an interview published Tuesday.

“Nothing against single women, but single mothers with children are a red flag for me.”

Despite being a happily married father to his 1-year-old daughter, Houston said he never saw a future as a dad prior to meeting Dickey.

“I would talk to my dad a lot, and he would always tell me to have your own kids because you never know what the baby daddy‘s are about,” he said. “So if you’re gonna have kids, make sure it is with a woman that never had kids.”

Houston then dug himself into a deeper hole by calling out the “attitude” he feels some women have.

“So that was always my red flag… and a woman with an attitude. I don’t like women with funky attitudes,” he shared.

“I’m 41, she is 22. I could’ve married a 44-year-old woman, and it could’ve been disastrous,” the singer observed.

How “disastrous” you might ask? Well, according to the “Clubbin” singer, he could’ve ended up with a woman his age who is “independent” and unable to let him “provide for my wife.”

“Women that are my age…they kind of have a different outlook on life. Like a lot of women my age are very independent,” he explained. “They are very like, ‘I don’t need a man to do this for me ’cause I can do it for myself.’ I come from a generation that I love to provide for my wife.”

When it comes to dating women his age, Houston has issues.

“There’s a lot of women my age I’ve dated, they may have baggage. They may have kids, they may not,” Houston said.

“There’s so many different women I’ve been with throughout my life, and it just so happens to be that this one [Miya] caught my heart. Everything that I prayed for—and everything that I wanted in a woman—she came with. Although she was young, I’m young in spirit.”

The cherry on top of this telling interview would be the ’90s star recalling all the criticism he received during his days as the lead singer of Immature when he preferred to have “light-skinned” girls in the group’s videos.

“…People would question… ‘Why can’t you get a black girl?’ And then it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I only like light-skinned girls,” he said. “Then the plus-size girls will come and get me. I was like, ‘Man, I can’t catch a break.”

In response to the interview, Houston faced more backlash online over his nearly 20-year age gap with his wife, and the subtle contradictions he made in his statements.

“Yes, he wanted to be the FIRST to give a literal teenager “baggage” and kids,” one Twitter user wrote.

“I imagine most men his age come with kids and baggage too. It’s called mid-life. Does Marques know how old he is?” added someone else.

Oh, Roger……