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This page contains News, History, Articles, Interviews and much more that is hard to find in traditional media resources.
If you would like to contribute to this page, please email us with the understanding that not all content will be posted due to the discretion of our staff.

Our thoughts, prayers and deepest condolences go out to the family of Rock Dee. He was an amazing spirit, talented DJ and truly a great friend both personally and professionally. We will remember the support he gave TRUE Skool, the events he DJ'd and opportunities he provided for our organization and our students. You will always be remembered!

The Jena 6 Situation and "Revealing Racist Roots" Curriculum FREE Download...

Skateboarding and Hip Hop Culture are beginning to mesh more now than ever before...
Rob Owens is the hottest name in street skating and his life story is just as intriguing as his skills on a board.

Green Living
Learn what you can do to live "green".

BlackWall Street...Beyond The Label
Read the story of the real Black Wall Street in the early 1900s and why it is important to spread this untold history.

The Emmitt Till Story
See the New Documentary or request to have it shown in your city.

Payola
Check out the industry's dirty little secret and what is being done about it.

JENA 6
Please view this clip regarding the Jena 6 situation in Louisana. (Mos Def and Cornell West on The Bill Maher Show) and DOWNLOAD this teacher's curriculum "Revealing Racist Roots" to use in your classroom, workshops, and/or as a discussion tool.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Glfl-53tAds

The True Costs of Petroleum

No corner of the world is left untouched by the effects of petroleum extraction and use. Many negative effects are well documented, such as global warming, habitat destruction, and political conflicts over oil supplies. But the petroleum economy extends its often hidden reach into many other aspects of life on our planet. Petroleum, used for transportation, industry, and mechanized agriculture, is the backbone of globalization. Institutions of global trade, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), work hand in hand with oil companies, while militaries provide the armed backup to protect these interests. Examine this map to find the connections between worldwide militarization, environmental racism, and displacement of indigenous peoples, as well as the toxic consequences of extraction, use, and disposal of petrochemicals and plastics.
- www.ecologycenter.org

http://www.moles.org

For more information...
http://www.ecologycenter.org/erc/petroleum/world.html

What is Biodiesel?
Biodiesel is the name of a clean burning alternative fuel, produced from domestic, renewable resources. Biodiesel contains no petroleum, but it can be blended at any level with petroleum diesel to create a biodiesel blend. Biodiesel is made from a base stock of vegetable oil and requires no alterations to your vehicle. It is possible to run a diesel vehicle on straight, unaltered, vegetable oil, but a few minor alterations are necessary. Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have fully completed the health effects testing requirements of the Clean Air Act. A 1998 biodiesel lifecycle study, jointly sponsored by the US Department of Energy and the US Department of Agriculture, concluded biodiesel reduces net CO2 emissions by 78 percent compared to petroleum diesel. Biodiesel can be operated in any diesel engine with little or no modification to the engine or the fuel system.
-www.ecologycenter.org

Biodiesel Resources
For more information on purchasing biodiesel, producing your own biodiesel, or converting a vehicle to run on straight vegetable oil, read From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank: The Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel by Joshua Tickell (Tickell Energy Consulting, 2000) or visit the following websites.

For more information...
http://www.ecologycenter.org/erc/fact_sheets/biodiesel.html

Green Living
Following are great resources to learn how live "green".

Reduce Junk Mail
Green House Cleaning
Green Shopping
Greening Your Office
Sustainable Energy
Organic Food
Composting

For more information...
http://www.circleoflife.org/education/sustainable/

BlackWall Street...Beyond The Label

Black Wall Street: The True Story

Where did the word "picnic" come from?

It was typical to have a picnic on a Friday evening in Oklahoma. The
word was short for "pick a ni $$er" to lynch. They would lynch a Black
male and cut off body parts as souvenirs. This went on every weekend in
this country, and it was all across the county.

A Brief History.

If anyone truly believes that the attack on the federal building in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was the most tragic bombing ever to take place
on United States soil, next to 9/11, as the media has been widely
reporting, they're wrong -- plain and simple. That's because an even
deadlier bomb occurred in that same state nearly 75 years ago. Many
people in high places would like to forget that it ever happened.

Searching under the heading of "riots," "Oklahoma" and "Tulsa" in
current editions of the World Book Encyclopedia, there is conspicuously
no mention whatsoever of the Tulsa race riot of 1921, and this omission
is by no means a surprise, or a rare case. The fact is, one would also
be hard-pressed to find documentation of the incident, let alone and
accurate accounting of it, in any other "scholarly" reference or
American history book.

That's precisely the point that noted author, publisher and orator Ron
Wallace, a Tulsa native, sought to make nearly five years ago when he
began researching this riot, one of the worst incidents of violence ever
visited upon people of African descent. Ultimately joined on the project
by colleague Jay Wilson of Los Angeles, the duo found and compiled
indisputable evidence of what they now describe as "a Black holocaust in
America."

The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wallstreet," the name fittingly
given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was
bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites.
In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black
business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community
destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly
defused.

The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600
successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21
restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital,
a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen
private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the
impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort
with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.

In their self-published book, Black Wallstreet: A Lost Dream, and its
companion video documentary, Black Wallstreet: A Black Holocaust in
America!, the authors have chronicled for the very first time in the
words of area historians and elderly survivors what really happened
there on that fateful summer day in 1921 and why it happened. Wallace
similarly explained to me why this bloody event from the turn of the
century seems to have had a recurring effect that is being felt in
predominately Black neighborhoods even to this day.

The best description of Black Wallstreet, or Little Africa as it was
also known, would be liken it to a mini-Beverly Hills. It was the golden
door of the Black community during the early 1900s, and it proved that
African Americans had successful infrastructure. That's what Black
Wallstreet was all about.

The dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for
currency to leave the community. Now in 1995, a dollar leaves the Black
community in 15-minutes. As far as resources, there were Ph.D.'s
residing in Little Africa, Black attorneys and doctors. One doctor was
Dr. Berry who owned the bus system. His average income was $500 a day, a
hefty pocket change in 1910.

During that era, physicians owned medical schools. There were also pawn
shops everywhere, brothels, jewelry stores, 21 churches, 21 restaurants
and two movie theaters. It was a time when the entire state of Oklahoma
had only two airports, yet six Blacks owned their own planes. It was a
very fascinating community.

The area encompassed over 600 businesses and 36 square blocks with a
population of 15,000 African Americans. And when the lower-economic
Europeans looked over and saw what the Black community created, many of
them were jealous. When the average student went to school on Black
Wallstreet, he wore a suit and tie because of the morals and respect
they were taught at a young age.

The mainstay of the community was to educate every child. Nepotism was
the one word they believed in. And that's what we need to get back to in
1995. The main thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue, and it was intersected
by Archer and Pine Streets. From the first letters in each of those
three names, you get G.A.P., and that's where the renowned R and B music
group the Gap Band got its name. They're from Tulsa.

Black Wallstreet was a prime example of the typical Black community in
America that did businesses, but it was in an unusual location. You see,
at the time, Oklahoma was set aside to be a Black and Indian state.
There were over 28 Black townships there. One third of the people who
traveled in the terrifying "Trail of Tears" along side the Indians
between 1830 to 1842 were Black people.

The citizens of this proposed Indian and Black state chose a Black
governor, a treasurer from Kansas named McDade. But the Ku Klux Klan
said that if he assumed office that they would kill him within 48 hours.
A lot of Blacks owned farmland, and many of them had gone into the oil
business. The community was so tight and wealthy because they traded
dollars hand-to-hand, and because they were dependent upon one another
as a result of the Jim Crow laws.

It was not unusual that if a resident's home accidentally burned down,
it could be rebuilt within a few weeks by neighbors. This was the type
of scenario that was going on day- to-day on Black Wallstreet. When
Blacks intermarried into the Indian culture, some of them received their
promised '40 acres and a mule' and with that came whatever oil was later
found on the properties.

Just to show you how wealthy a lot of Black people were, there was a
banker in the neighboring town who had a wife named California Taylor.
Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the Mississippi [River].
When California shopped, she would take a cruise to Paris every three
months to have her clothes made.

There was also a man named Mason in nearby Wagner County who had the
largest potato farm west of the Mississippi. When he harvested, he would
fill 100 boxcars a day. Another brother not far away had the same thing
with a spinach farm. The typical family then was five children or more,
though the typical farm family would have 10 kids or more who made up
the nucleus of the labor.

On Black Wallstreet, a lot of global business was conducted. The
community flourished from the early 1900s until June 1, 1921. That's
when the largest massacre of non-military Americans in the history of
this country took place, and it was lead by the Ku Klux Klan. Imagine
walking out of your front door and seeing 1,500 homes being burned. It
must have been amazing.

Survivors we interviewed think that the whole thing was planned because
during the time that all of this was going on, white families with their
children stood around the borders of their community and watched the
massacre, the looting and everything--much in the same manner they would
watch a lynching.

TULSA BURNING

http://www.govsux.com/black_wall_street.htm

For more information...
http://www.tulsalibrary.org/aarc/riot/riot.htm
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com
http://www.seeingblack.com/x062901/411.shtml
http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/03/tulsa.riots.probe
http://www.tulsareparations.org

The Emmitt Till Story
Legendary Civil Rights Activist Rosa Parks said that the story of Emmett Till was the reason she would not give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala. bus in 1955 which is said to be single act that sparked the Civil Rights Era.

For more information...
http://www.emmetttillstory.com/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/
http://www.emmetttillmurder.com/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/21/60minutes/main650652.shtml
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-05-10-till-case_x.htm

Payola...the industry's dirty little secret

And you thought the "Request Line" determined what you heard on the radio!

“Payola is as old as radio. The legalities have also changed most
recently allowing legal loopholes. Legal loopholes created playola the
creation of corporate america to cash in legally.

For decades decision makers were individuals in each marketplace. Payola
comes in the way of cash,trips, appliances, drugs, sex and anything of
value for today's marketplace.

Payola is as American as prostitution. Radio programmers and Dj's hands
are shaped like cups. Everyone expects something since it is not coming
in your paycheck.

GM's don't ask questions while there PD's make the annual trip to
Brazil. Payola's the lapdance that everyone wants at work or in the
comfort at home.”
-Paul Porter-IndustryEars-

For more information...
http://www.daveyd.com/payolascandal.html (Read everything you need to know about payola here and speak you peace in the message board)
www.oag.state.ny.us/press...ayola2.pdf (actual documents that detail the whos and whats)
www.industryears.com
http://www.history-of-rock.com/payola.htm (history of payola)
http://www.civilrights.org/issues/communication/details.cfm?id=34505 (FCC Set to Probe Payola Scandal)