Hi! I’m stoked to present my thesis comic, If This Be Sin, based on the life of Gladys Bentley. It’s for sale on Gumroad! You can download the 16 page full-color PDF for $2.
Gladys Bentley, was a blues singer, piano player, and drag king who performed bawdy tunes in Harlem nightclubs throughout the 1920s and ’30s. Despite the social obstacles she faced as a black, openly queer woman, her outrageous and energetic act became a mainstay of the Harlem cabaret. In 1952, under the oppressive social conditions of the McCarthy era, Bentley publicly renounced her previous identity and claimed to have found happiness as a feminine housewife.
Gumroad is super simple to use, you just have to enter your credit card number and you’ll be sent a direct download, plus Gumroad will email you a link to re-download it if you ever lose track of the file.
FOR EVERY 100 NOTES, I’LL GIVE AWAY A DIGITAL COMIC TO A RANDOM TUMBLR USER so please share if you can! (Within each 100 notes, only people who reblog are eligible for a free copy.)
One thing that happened to me that was magic when I was leaving Africa, was that I was sitting in the hotel lobby, and a voice said, “What do you see? Look around.” And I looked around, and I saw people of all colors and shapes, and the voice said, “You see any niggers?” I said, “No.” It said, ‘You know why? ‘Cause there aren’t any.’ There aint no niggers in Africa! Cause by then, I’d been there three weeks and hadn’t said the word nigger once. And it started making me cry, man. All that shit. All the acts I’ve been doing, as an artist, as a comedian, speaking and trying to say something & I been saying that. And that’s a devastating fucking word. That has nothing to do with us. We are from a place where they first started people, in Africa. In Kenya, Dr. Leakey, a white anthropologist ‘I have to say that so that white people will believe me, ‘Well that could be true! White? Yeah, that’s good!’ I mean he found remains of man five million years ago, that stood up and walked on the Earth. You know that motherfucker didn’t speak French. I mean, Black people, we are the first motherfuckers on the planet. What else I found out is, the fact that aside from us being from the original people, so are the white people that we so call that. Cause we all family, that’s it jack. And fuck all that other shit, cause it don’t mean nothing, except about some cash. Cause the Black man was the first motherfucker to stand on the Earth and say ‘Where in the fuck am I? And how do you get to Detroit?’ - Richard Pryor
Maya Angelou wrote the essay for Michelle Obama, in which she included this: ” She has remained herself, with her grace, her gentleness and her sense of humor. That she would dare to wear clothes off the rack. Or go out and garden. Or have a grandmother in the White House. She knows how to be a public creature without being separate from her family.”
Nancy Pelosi wrote the essay for Kamala Harris, in which she included this: “As a child, Kamala accompanied her parents to civil rights marches in Oakland. She’s been making strides for justice — and breaking down barriers — ever since.”
Baz Lurhman wrote the essay for Beyoncé, in which he included this: “No one has that voice, no one moves the way she moves, no one can hold an audience the way she does. And she keeps growing and evolving in the ways that she expresses herself as a singer, as a performer and now as a mother.”
Richard Corliss wrote the essay for Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, in which he included this: “Nollywood enthralls millions more who come for the thrills, the uplift and the artful agitations of Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde — the Queen of Nollywood.”
Oprah Winfrey wrote the essay for Shonda Rhimes, in which she included this: “Gay, straight, single, divorced, lost, searching — everybody gets a seat at Shonda’s table. She creates an assemblage of worldly foibles and aspirations. She understands that every dream is valuable and every identity deserves inspection through the looking glass of television.”
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (President of Liberia) wrote the essay for Joyce Banda, in which she included this: “President Banda is committed to using her position to improve the lives of women across the continent, not just in Malawi. She has great strength. I am delighted that I’m not alone in Africa anymore.”
The linked names in the first paragraph leads to each respective essay.
Jay-Z and President Obama made the Time 100 List as well; thus there are two Black couples on the list.
Ashley Del Valle is a transgender woman from New York who was arrested in Georgia for indecent exposure after she allegedly showed her breasts, but then was housed in an all-male jail.
I just.
You arrest her because her top is too sheer and shows her nipples, something that is only a crime for women.
And then you jail her as a man.
Fucking fuck.
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻.
So done with the world.
‘But when deputies booked Ashley Del Valle, 38, she says a nurse examined her genitals, and determined that she was “technically a male.”’
What in the holy? And what are supposed to be the legal justifications for a fuckin genital examination?
New De La Soul - Get Away (feat. The Spirit of the Wu)
“I’ve always loved the ‘Intro’ on Disc Two of Wu-Tang Forever– this erie sample with no beat, that they only talked over,” De La Soul’s Posdnuos tells Rolling Stone. “I stumbled on the original sample while crate digging one day, took it straight to the lab and added drums. The feel is definitely gritty, hard and sounds like a Wu record, so out of inspirational respect, we included featuring ‘The Spirit of the Wu’ in the song title.” - Rolling Stone
Here are some awesome signs of love and support for Boston from Brooklyn on Lafayette Avenue in New York. The NYC Light Brigade and The Illuminator “a political art project that emerged out of Occupy Wall Street,” are using light projectors and the exterior of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’sPeter Jay Sharp building to send positive vibes to Beantown.
The messages projected read: “Peace and Love,” “It shouldn’t take a tragedy for us to come together,” “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that” (a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote), and NY ♥ B (in the Red Sox font).
All right, I’m returning to this (with statistics!) because I’m so fucking pissed.
Donald Glover,
One in six American women will experience attempted rape or rape in their lifetime. One in thirty-three American men will. Recently, you did a sold-out show on my campus, in an auditorium that holds about 750 students. I’m not going to do the numbers for you, but you can bet your ass that there was at least one survivor in that venue. Actually, there was definitely more than one. Guess what? You just made a joke out of one of the most terrifying, violating, and heinous experiences of his or her life. Feel like a comedian now?
Did you know that 60% of sexual assaults go unreported, and that only one in sixteen rapists will ever face jail time?
Every time you make a joke about rape, you make a joke of the people who have experienced it. You give them reason not to report their assault, because it’s a fucking joke to you, so it probably is to everyone else too, right? The fact that it’s acceptable to joke about rape is the reason why so many rapists walk free. Because low-lifes like you think it’s okay to trivialize it - oh, hey, it’s no big deal, we can all laugh about it. Even worse, by joking about rape, you make any rapist sitting in the audience think that his actions are okay. That they’re not such a big deal. Most rapists don’t attack strangers. So there could be a guy sitting in your audience who hears your joke and thinks hey, when I gave that girl a few too many drinks last weekend and then had sex with her while she was drunk out of her mind, that was no big deal. Maybe I’ll do it again next weekend. No big! It’s funny! Comedians think it’s funny!
You, Donald Glover, when you make light of rape, both trigger survivors in the audience and legitimize perpetrators who hear your jokes. You also act like a complete fucking douchebag. Be a responsible adult and think before you joke next time, okay? Some things are off-limits.
A 17-year veteran of the New York City Police Department pled not guilty Thursday to charges that he supplied police paraphernalia and weapons to a stickup crew, which then used the equipment to rob drug dealers.
Officer Jose Tejada is accused of involvement in a string of 2006 and 2007 robberies in which he is alleged to have provided NYPD badges, uniforms and even police vehicles to a group of thieves. Tejada, 45, who had been assigned to police Harlem, was in uniform and on duty at the time of at least one of his alleged crimes.
He’s been connected to three of the more than one hundred robberies the crew is supposedly behind, with some dating back to 2001. Tejada is charged with conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to distribute drugs including heroin, cocaine, MDMA, and marijuana, as well as an unlawful use of a firearm charge, according to local NY1 news.
Prosecutors say Tejada was caught in an “ongoing Internal Affairs Bureau investigation” and has been suspended from the department after holding a family of three at gunpoint while his colleagues searched their home.
He also is accused of checking the legal status of other robbers in the gang and letting them know when it was safe to flee then reenter the United States.
“Obviously it is sad and disappointing anytime a police officer is arrested,” said NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly.
Tejada is the second officer to be charged as part of the robbery crew, which began in 2001 and has “netted more than 250 kilograms of cocaine and $1 million in narcotics proceeds,” prosecutors told the Times.
Emmanuel Tavarez, an eight-year veteran of the force, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in May 2012 after being convicted for aiding the gang. Twenty other members have been implicated in the years-long investigation.
The next time you see someone with jewelry that says “trust no man,” don’t judge them for their “man hating” or “bougie” ways. Rather, commend them for their superb taste in music.
“Trust no man” is actually a reference to a reference to a 1926 song of the same name by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, a Georgian and African-American pioneer of blues music.
I want all you women to listen to me
Don’t trust your man no further than your eyes can see
I trusted my man with my best friend
But that was a bad bargain in the end
A feminist before there was really a term for it, Rainey was also notorious for getting into trouble with small-town authorities over her “women-only parties.” She was a brazen lady-lovin’ badass well-worthy of a 21st century signal boost.
3308
![tastefullyoffensive:
[macklemore]
Y’all…](http://25.media.tumblr.com/c4ce1f7b4819edcffd4e71c162c271d8/tumblr_ml23muwb8b1qewacoo1_500.png)
