Im Just Here For The Vibes

Im just here for the vibes…

Believe it or not yall I used to have serious social media anxiety.

As a black male educator it was easier to just conform and keep a low profile by either leaving social media alone, or only posting sporadically the achievements of my students or my self.

While it was a part if me, it was never the real me. Certainly not the parts of me that are authentically artistic.

To get over this stigma that I had of posting I just started to record myself all the time as I attempted to create, engineer, record myself, etc.

Welp, while I have been able to overcome that obstacle by just posting consistently.

Now I want my message to be clearer. I want to reach more people with my art. I want to create art that will move people and that will be undeniable.

Simultaneously working on my music business and upping my social media game is mentally taxing for the mind.

Then there js the fact that I have to get your attention with a hook and I only got 3-seconds to do it like wtf 😳

Sometimes, ya just wann vibe ya know. I have to if I want to get into my creative flow state.

Track: IM GONNA MAKE IT produced and remixed by me, teach_or_trav

Andy Warhol

Cow, 1973

Jackie Ormes, the first Black American woman cartoonist

When the 14-year-old Black American boy Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, one cartoonist responded in a single-panel comic. It showed one Black girl telling another: “I don’t want to seem touchy on the subject… but that new little white tea-kettle just whistled at me!”

It may not seem radical today, but penning such a political cartoon was a bold and brave statement for its time — especially for the artist who was behind it. This cartoon was drawn by Jackie Ormes, the first syndicated Black American woman cartoonist to be published in a newspaper. Ormes, who grew up in Pittsburgh, got her first break as cartoonist as a teenager. She started working for the Pittsburgh Courier as a sports reporter, then editor, then cartoonist who penned her first comic, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, in 1937. It followed a Mississippi teen who becomes a famous singer at the famed Harlem jazz club, The Cotton Club.

In 1942, Ormes moved to Chicago, where she drew her most popular cartoon, Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger, which followed two sisters who made sharp political commentary on Black American life. 

In 1947, Ormes created the Patty-Jo doll, the first Black doll that wasn’t a mammy doll or a Topsy-Turvy doll. In production for a decade, it was a role model for young black girls. "The doll was a fashionable, beautiful character,“ says Daniel Schulman, who curated one of the dolls into a recent Chicago exhibition. “It had an extraordinary presence and power — they’re collected today and have important place in American doll-making in the U.S.”

In 1950, Ormes drew her final strip, Torchy in Heartbeats, which followed an independent, stylish black woman on the quest for love — who commented on racism in the South. “Torchy was adventurous, we never saw that with an Black American female figure,” says Beauchamp-Byrd. “And remember, this is the 1950s." Ormes was the first to portray black women as intellectual and socially-aware in a time when they were depicted in a derogatory way.

One common mistake that erased Ormes from history is mis-crediting Barbara Brandon-Croft as the first nationally syndicated Black American female cartoonist. "I’m just the first mainstream cartoonist, I’m not the first at all,” says Brandon-Croft, who published her cartoons in the Detroit Free Press in the 1990s. “So much of Black history has been ignored, it’s a reminder that Black history shouldn’t just be celebrated in February.”

Source

My positive thing to ask for Black History Month this year is to follow Black bloggers! Support Black artists, fic writers, original authors, photographers, craftspeople, gamers, cosplayers, models, political blogs, and more! We're here too, and we have a lot to give! 💕

Andy Warhol - Cologne Cathedral (Karten) 1985