Happy Birthday Spike Lee

“It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are” - Spike Lee

(Spike Lee)

Spike Lee was born as Shelton Lee on March 20th, 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. As a child his family moved to Brooklyn, NY. He then got the nickname “Spike” as a child.

(Lee in high school)

Lee attended Morehouse college in Atlanta, GA. He graduated with a BA from Morehouse in Mass Communication. In 1985 Lee began on his 1st feature film She’s Gotta Have It. The film released in 1986 and earned $7 million at the US box office.

(Lee in She’s Gotta Have It (1986))

In 1989 Lee’s film Do the Right Thing (1989) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

(Lee in Do the Right Thing(1989))

In 1990 Lee’s film Mo’ Better Blues was accused of antisemitism by the Anti-Defamation League and several film critics. Lee denied the charges, Lee said that he would not release an anti semitic film because Jews run Hollywood. In 1991 Lee taught a course at Harvard about filmmaking. In 1993 Lee began to teach at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In the mid 90’s Lee produced TV commercials for Levi’s jeans. Also Spike Lee joined with Michael Jordan to promote Air Jordan sneakers.

(Michael Jordan (Left) and Lee (Right))

In 1997 Lee’s film 4 Little Girls was nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award. In 2007 Spike Lee was honored with the San Francisco Film Society's Directing Award. In 2008 he received the Wexner Prize. In 2012 after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Spike Lee was one of many people who used Twitter to circulate a message which claimed to give the home address of the shooter George Zimmerman.

(Lee in 2012)

In 2013 Lee won The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. In 2015 Lee received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his contributions to film. Lee is the director, writer, and producer of the MyCareer story mode in the video game NBA 2K16.

(Lee in 2015)

Today is his 60th birthday and we would all like to say happy birthday Spike Lee.

Spike Lee’s filmography

• Joe’s Bed Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983)
• She’s Gotta Have It (1986)
• School Daze (1988)
• Do the Right Thing (1989)
• Mo’ Better Blues (1990)
• Jungle Fever (1991)
• Malcolm X (1992)
• Crooklyn (1994)
• Clockers (1995)
• Lumiere and Company (1995)
• Girl 6 (1996)
• Get on the Bus (1996)
• 4 Little Girls (1997)
• He Got Game (1998)
• Freak (1998)
• Pavarotti and Friends for the Children of Liberia (1998)
• Summer of Sam (1999)
• Pavarotti and Friends for the Guatemala and Kosovo (1999)
• The Original Kings of Comedy (2000)
• Bamboozled (2000)
• A Huey P. Newton Story (2001)
• The Concert for New York City (2001)
• 25th Hour (2002)
• Jim Brown: All American (2002)
• Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002)
• She Hate Me (2004)
• Sucker Free City (2004)
• Inside Man (2006)
• When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006)
• Miracle at St. Anna (2008)
• Passing Strange (2008)
• Kobe Doin’ Work (2009)
• If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise (2010)
• Red Hook Summer (2012)
• Bad 25 (2012)
• Oldboy (2013)
• Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth (2013)
• Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)
• Katt Williams: Priceless: Afterlife (2014)
• Jerrod Carmichael: Love at the Store (2014)
• Chi-Raq (2015)
• Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall (2016)

Videos of Spike Lee

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muc7xqdHudI  “DO THE RIGHT THING - Trailer - HQ”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd9oTGr_1DA  “She'S Gotta Have It - Trailer”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLT3Qu76-bw  “School Daze TRAILER”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx4sEvhYeVE  “Malcolm X (1992) Official Trailer - Denzel Washington Movie HD”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njLUPZr4DeU  “He got Game Trailer”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMZ6zp-3oGY  “Spike Lee's Bamboozled Trailer”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGTuuj-aTJs  “Chi-Raq Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Wesley Snipes, Teyonah Parris Movie HD”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNpI-VIlONw  “Spike Lee Interview: "Do The Right Thing" 25 Years Later”

Happy Independence Day Ghana

“Two men in a burning house must not stop to argue” - Ghana Proverb

(Flag of Ghana (1957-Present))

Ghana is located in West Africa.

(Map of where Ghana is in Africa)

It’s capital is Accra. Its largest city is Kumasi. Its official language is English. The country is 92,099 square miles. 98.4% of the population is African while 1.6% is other races. 71.2% of Ghana practices Christianity, and 17.6% practice Islam. The total population of Ghana is about 27 million people. There are 2 seasons in Ghana the wet and dry season, since it is a tropical country. Ghana has a Unitary presidential constitutional republic.

(Accra, Ghana’s capital)

Ghana’s food consists of an assortment of soups and stews with varied seafoods and most Ghanaian soups are prepared with vegetables, meat, poultry or fish. The dish, Banku is a common Ghanaian starchy food made from ground corn, and cornmeal based staples, dokonu  and banku are usually accompanied by some form of fried fish or grilled tilapia and a very spicy condiment made from raw red and green chillies, onions and tomatoes.

(Ghanaian cuisine)

The Ghanaian national literature radio programme and accompanying publication Voices of Ghana was one of the earliest on the African continent. The most well known type of clothing in Ghana is the Kente cloth. Kente is a ceremonial cloth hand woven on a horizontal treadle loom and strips measuring about 4 inches wide are sewn together into larger pieces of cloths.

(Kente cloth)

Ghanaian music incorporates several distinct types of musical instruments such as the talking drum ensembles, Akan Drum, goje fiddle and koloko lute, court music, including the Akan Seperewa, the Akan atumpan, the Ga kpanlogo styles, and log xylophones used in asonko music. In Ghana Association soccer is the most spectated sport. The national men's football team is known as the Black Stars.

(Ghana’s national soccer team)

From the 5th to 15th centuries Ghana was inhabited and ruled by several different kingdoms. Such as the Ashanti Empire, the Akwamu, the Bonoman, the Denkyira, and the Mankessim Kingdom.

(Ashanti people of Ghana)

In the 15th century the Akan people in Ghana, made contact with the Portuguese and started to trade with them. In 1598 the Dutch joined the Portuguese with trade with the people of Ghana. Other European countries joined in with the trading. More than 30 forts and castles were set up by these European invaders in Ghana, and they brought the slave trade into Ghana. In 1874 the British took control of Ghana, now known as the Gold Coast.

(Flag of The Gold Coast (1821-1957))

There were several wars between the British and the Ashanti tribe of the Gold Coast. These wars lasted from 1824 to 1901.

(Queen Yaa Asantewaa, leader of the Ashanti tribe)

In 1946 Kwame Nkrumah became the first Prime Minister of the Gold Coast and formed the Convention People's Party (CPP). On March 6th 1957 The Gold Coast declared its independence from Great Britain and changed its name to Ghana.

(Flag of Ghana (1957-Present))

The flag of Ghana, consisting of the colors red, gold, green, and a black star, became the new flag in 1957. The flag was designed by Theodosia Salome Okoh. The red represents the blood that was shed towards independence, the gold represents the industrial minerals wealth of Ghana, the green symbolises the rich grasslands of Ghana, and the black star is the symbol of the Ghanaian people and African emancipation.

(Theodosia Okoh, Designer of the Ghana flag)

In 1960 Kwame Nkrumah was declared the first President of Ghana.

(Kwame Nkrumah)

Nkrumah was the 1st African head of state to promote Pan-Africanism.Nkrumah merged the teachings of Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr. and  W.E.B. Du Bois into the formation of 1960’s Ghana.

(Nkrumah (Left) and Dr. King (Right))

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and his government was overthrown by a GAF military operation codenamed "Operation Cold Chop" coup while Nkrumah was abroad with Zhou Enlai in the People's Republic of China for a fruitless mission to Hanoi in Vietnam to help end the Vietnam War on 24 February 1966. There was a series of alternating military and civilian governments from 1966 to 1981. Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) gained power in 1981.

(Jerry John Rawlings)

The economy suffered a severe decline soon after. A new Constitution of Ghana restoring multi-party system politics was promulgated in the Ghanaian presidential election in 1992. Rawlings was elected president in 1992 and again in 1996. John Agyekum Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was sworn into office as president of Ghana on 7 January 2001.

(John Agyekum Kufuor)

He won again in 2004. John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) became the Ghanaian presidential in 2008. John Dramani Mahama became president on July 24th 2012.

(John Dramani Mahama)

In 2017 Nana Akufo-Addo became president of Ghana.

(Nana Akufo-Addo)

Today marks the 60th anniversary of Ghana’s independence and we would like to say happy independence day Ghana.

Videos of Ghana’s Independence

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOEdJDdz690  “Ghana's independence 6th March 1957”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72NvcHLVDUE  “Prez Nana Addo Full Speech At Ghana 60th Independence Day 2017”

Happy Birthday Spike Lee

“It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are” - Spike Lee

(Spike Lee)

Spike Lee was born as Shelton Lee on March 20th, 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. As a child his family moved to Brooklyn, NY. He then got the nickname “Spike” as a child.

(Spike Lee)

Lee attended Morehouse college in Atlanta, GA. He graduated with a BA from Morehouse in Mass Communication. In 1985 Lee began on his 1st feature film She’s Gotta Have It. The film released in 1986 and earned $7 million at the US box office.

(Lee in his movie She’s Gotta Have It (1986))

In 1989 Lee’s film Do the Right Thing (1989) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

(Lee in his movie Do the Right Thing (1989))

In 1990 Lee’s film Mo’ Better Blues was accused of antisemitism by the Anti-Defamation League and several film critics. Lee denied the charges, Lee said that he would not release an anti semitic film because Jews run Hollywood. In 1991 Lee taught a course at Harvard about filmmaking. In 1993 Lee began to teach at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In the mid 90’s Lee produced TV commercials for Levi’s jeans. Also Spike Lee joined with Michael Jordan to promote Air Jordan sneakers.

(Michael Jordan (Left) and Spike Lee (Right))

In 1997 Lee’s film 4 Little Girls was nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award. In 2007 Spike Lee was honored with the San Francisco Film Society's Directing Award. In 2008 he received the Wexner Prize. In 2012 after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Spike Lee was one of many people who used Twitter to circulate a message which claimed to give the home address of the shooter George Zimmerman.

(Lee in 2012)

In 2013 Lee won The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. In 2015 Lee received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his contributions to film. Lee is the director, writer, and producer of the MyCareer story mode in the video game NBA 2K16.

(Lee at a NY Knicks basketball game)

Today is his 59th birthday and we would all like to say happy birthday Spike Lee.

Spike Lee’s filmography

• Joe’s Bed Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983)
• She’s Gotta Have It (1986)
• School Daze (1988)
• Do the Right Thing (1989)
• Mo’ Better Blues (1990)
• Jungle Fever (1991)
• Malcolm X (1992)
• Crooklyn (1994)
• Clockers (1995)
• Lumiere and Company (1995)
• Girl 6 (1996)
• Get on the Bus (1996)
• 4 Little Girls (1997)
• He Got Game (1998)
• Freak (1998)
• Pavarotti and Friends for the Children of Liberia (1998)
• Summer of Sam (1999)
• Pavarotti and Friends for the Guatemala and Kosovo (1999)
• The Original Kings of Comedy (2000)
• Bamboozled (2000)
• A Huey P. Newton Story (2001)
• The Concert for New York City (2001)
• 25th Hour (2002)
• Jim Brown: All American (2002)
• Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002)
• She Hate Me (2004)
• Sucker Free City (2004)
• Inside Man (2006)
• When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006)
• Miracle at St. Anna (2008)
• Passing Strange (2008)
• Kobe Doin’ Work (2009)
• If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise (2010)
• Red Hook Summer (2012)
• Bad 25 (2012)
• Oldboy (2013)
• Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth (2013)
• Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)
• Katt Williams: Priceless: Afterlife (2014)
• Jerrod Carmichael: Love at the Store (2014)
• Chi-Raq (2015)
• Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall (2016)

Videos of Spike Lee

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muc7xqdHudI  “DO THE RIGHT THING - Trailer - HQ”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd9oTGr_1DA  “She'S Gotta Have It - Trailer”