“JAZZ LEGEND: DONALD BYRD” Guest Donald Byrd shares his jazz career with Tony Brown and a live studio audience. As a sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was known as one of the only bebop jazz musicians who successfully pioneered the funk and soul genres while remaining a jazz artist. As…
TBJ #2205 – “LEGENDS OF SPORTS” Arthur Ashe, Wilma Rudolph, Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown, and John Thompson are all legends in the sports world. These renowned athletes are among the personalities profiled in this edition for their “winning spirit.” Tony Brown’s Journal Streaming Service Presents … “Legends of Sports” Arthur Ashe, Wilma Rudolph, Jackie Robinson, Jim…
Who reached the North Pole first? Robert Peary or Matthew Alexander Henson? There is much controversy surrounding who was the first person to reach the North Pole. Normative history books tell us that Admiral Robert Peary was the man who “discovered” the North Pole. Is that accurate? Or did Matthew Henson step foot first on…
It’s 1983 and Sammy Davis reflects on his television interview with me in 1971. Sammy Davis responded, “I’ve survived where other cats would have been down the tubes. A lot of people don’t like themselves. I’ve stopped trying to adjust because its uncomfortable, let me be the best me I can be.” Tony Brown offers…
The great debate between Black psychiatrist Dr. Frances Welsing (who believes Whites are genetically inferior) and Nobel Prize winner Dr. William Shockley (who believes Blacks are genetically inferior). Back in the 1970s, a man named Dr. William Shockley embarked upon the mission of proving to the world that Black people were genetically inferior, without the…
Circumstances surrounding the trial, the assassination itself, accounts in the Press and subsequent official actions were peculiar, and to this day, the question of who killed Malcolm is still with us. In 1981, in an intimate talk, I interviewed Talmadge Hayer from his prison cell. Hayer explained in 1981 what his and his co-conspirators’ motivations…
Decades before Hollywood discovered this Academy Award winner, his 1982 performance on Tony Brown’s Journal as Malcolm X (the physical resemblance is stunning) marked the striving-actor young Denzel Washington’s place in history. It was his first performance before a national audience, thanks to stage producer Woodie King, Jr. The New York Off-Broadway play produced by…
The Black Valentino: Lorenzo Tucker … Lorenzo Tucker, a Race Movie superstar of the 30’s, was often billed as the “Black Valentino” or the “Colored John Gilbert.” In 1924, lured by the taste for show business, Tucker withdrew from his studies at Temple University where he had contemplated medicine, and moved to Atlantic City in…
Black Hollywood: Part 3 — The Middle Years: Part 3 of this examination of the history of independently produced Black movies and the establishment of a Black film era, “The Middle Years,” picks up during the Depression years as independent filmmakers struggle for survival. The exclusion of Blacks from the motion picture industry and the…
TBJ SHOW #618 – BLACK HOLLYWOOD: PART 2 — FADING IN: Part 2, “Fading In,” the second installment of the Black Hollywood four-part series, begins with the decision by the NAACP to answer D.W. Griffith’s racist epic, “The Birth of a Nation,” by producing a film that would highlight and celebrate Black progress. “The Birth…
