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A mother and her long-lost daughter reunited after five decades in the most unusual way. Lisa Wright was good with going to her grave not knowing who her real mother was until her son’s curiosity to reveal her genetic makeup led her straight into the arms of her real mother.

Wright, who is now 54, said she grew up knowing her real mother gave birth to her when she was 18. Her adoption was a closed one, so her adoptive parents and biological mother never met.

“My (adoptive) mom told me, ‘Your mommy loved you, but she was really young, and she knew she couldn’t take care of you. I wanted the baby so bad, and that’s why your mom let me take care of you. You weren’t abandoned. This was just the best thing for you,'” Wright told Today in an exclusive.

Her son was curious about her genetic heritage and suggested she does a DNA test. Wright was not hesitant, and the results launched an avalanche of surprises that changed her life forever. “I get an alert, and it says, ‘This person is your uncle,'” Wright said. “So, I just reached out and said, ‘If you’re open to it, I would love to chat with you to see what all of this means.'”

She connected with her uncle immediately, who realized from the get-go when Wright revealed her birth date and the circumstances surrounding her adoption that she was the daughter of his sister who gave her up to pursue a career in Hollywood.

A few days later, Wright got the call she had been waiting for. After 50 years, she was finally speaking with her mother, actor Lynne Moody, who had given up all hope of ever reconnecting with her child. Interestingly, Moody never had another child after her.  

“When she was born, they covered my face, my eyes, so that I couldn’t see her,” Moody said. “But I could hear her cry. All I could say was ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry.’ As a mother, you never, ever, ever forget. During those 50 years, all I did was try to learn how to live with it. I didn’t know if she was hungry if she was alive if she was happy if she was adopted.”

Moody also turned out to be a character from Wright’s favorite sitcom from the mid-’70s. She starred in an ABC series ironically called “That’s My Mama.”

“I grew up watching my mother on TV and didn’t even know it,” Wright said. “‘That’s My Mama’ — that was our must-see TV. We all sat down and watched ‘That’s My Mama’ every week, and who knew? No idea. … And that’s my mama!”

Since then, Wright’s son has met his grandmother. Wright has also met her four sisters from her biological father’s side as well as more relatives from Moody’s family. Sadly, Wright’s adoptive parents did not get to witness this reunion because they had passed away.

Moody’s take home for everyone is that we “keep the faith” because “life is full of surprises sometimes.”

Reggae icon Robert Nesta Bob Marley did not die a poor man and his family escaped destitution, thanks to the wealth he left behind from his years of musical dexterity which shot him to global acclaim as one of the best musicians of all time.

Born on this day, February 6, 1945, Bob Marley lived a humble life as he promoted freedom for poor and oppressed people, social equality, and justice. However, his death on May 11, 1981, from cancer was followed by decades of lawsuits over his estate which was reported to be worth about $30 million when he died.

Bob Marley did not leave behind a will as per his Rastafari beliefs that characterize lawyers and legal documents as evil and tools of Babylon. His family could only depend on the Jamaican intestate law to decide on the distribution of his wealth.

His wife, Rita Marley, would have received 10% of his assets and would be entitled to another 45% throughout her life while his at least eleven children by seven different women would share the balance. This didn’t seem fair to some and it didn’t go down well.

Marley’s business attorney, David Steinberg, and an accountant, Marvin Zolt, convinced Rita to forge his name to a series of documents, and predate them to before he died. The plan was to transfer control of the large majority of Marley’s corporate holdings, along with much of his royalty rights and money, to her.

The scheme was uncovered by one of Marley’s former managers and it began a long series of legal battles which ended after the two accomplices were found guilty to fraud and other illegalities to the tune of $6 million.

Rita Marley also confessed and stated that she acted upon the advice of the attorney. She lost her administrative control of Bob Marley’s estate which she had since his death until 1986.

At the same time, other legal claims popped up from several children of Marley and their mothers; one from the Wailers, Marley’s eight bandmates at the time of his death; and another from Cayman Music, which claims to own some of Marley’s recordings.

Marley’s mother also moved to his $300,000 South Dade house in Miami in 1977 and Chris Blackwell, president of Island Records, Marley’s record label, wanted to include the property in an $8.2-million sale of Marley’s estate.

Blackwell would get royalty rights from Marley’s recordings, copyrights for his songs after 1976 and real estate including South Dade house if the deal sailed through. He expressed willingness to negotiate the sale of the house but Bob Marley’s mother contested the deal. The legal battle ended after a decade with both parties benefitting.

In another legal battle that ended in the early 90s, the Jamaican Supreme Court ruled that Rita Marley and Marley’s children had the exclusive right to use Marley’s name, likeness and image for commercial purposes.

This ruling prompted another lawsuit in 2011 when Rita Marley and nine of Bob’s children sued his half-brother, Richard Booker and two of his corporations. Booker was using Marley’s name and image to market the annual 9 Mile Music Festival in Miami and he owned a company which gives tours of the village where Marley was born and is now buried.

He was also trademarking the term “Mama Marley” for his line of fish products. Booker claimed that Bob Marley had given him permission to use the family name. After a year in court, the family reached a settlement agreement.

As of 2018, Bob Marley is the fifth top-earning dead celebrity, according to Forbes. His estate, now named House of Marley, is managed by four of his children, Rohan Marley, the brand officer of the estate; Cedella; Stephen and Ziggy, while the rest sit on a board and share the proceeds evenly.

The proceeds are derived from the sale of products in more than 48 countries, according to Forbes, which included headphones, Marley Natural cannabis, smoking accessories, Get Together portable speakers (which logged $6 million in sales in 2016) and Smile Jamaica earphones ($8.1 million).

There are also Uplift earphones; Marley Coffee (managed by Rohan) and Marley Natural (managed by Cedella) which sells herb-related products such as smoked-glass water pipe.

The Marley family have hired a team to help run House Marley and to deal with the unauthorized use of Bob’s name and likeness. Forbes estimates that unauthorized sales of Marley music and merchandise generate more than half a billion dollars a year, though the estate disputes this.

Colleagues of a Ghanaian medical student in Cuba who passed away on Friday say they believe his death “could have been prevented”.

Erasmus Klutse, a second-year student at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) in Cuba, died on May 7 in the Caribbean country’s capital, Havana, after joining his friends to play his most-liked sport, basketball.

Klutse was a medical student on Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) scholarship, and his colleagues say the harsh living conditions in Cuba led to his death.

The Ghanaian medical students in Cuba have since called on their government back home to come to their rescue, saying that the GNPC and the Ghana Scholarships Secretariat have delayed in sending their stipends for months now.

Eugene Oko Richman, a member of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) executive committee in Cuba, said in an interview with Ghanaian media Class FM that Klutse lost his life because the Cuban government failed to send an ambulance during a medical emergency.

“Just this last Friday, we lost a student of ours, a brother, Erasmus Klutse and one of the reasons why we lost him was because of the poor health treatment that we’ve been receiving,” Richman said. “And the issue that we have is that the mission here has made it very easy for the Cubans not to make us a priority when it comes to our health because if they had sent an ambulance to him, we feel that his death could have been prevented.”

“So, that’s the reason why we are agitated and we are calling that there should be measures put in place to that things like this could be prevented”, he added.

A statement by the student body said Klutse “was a joy to all who knew him”. Stressing that his death was “preventable”, the statement outlined key issues that have reportedly been overlooked by the stakeholders in charge of the welfare of the Ghanaian students in Cuba.

Meanwhile, the GNPC Foundation says stipends to the medical students in Cuba have delayed because there is a disagreement over the mode of payment. It said students want to be paid cash in hand, which is against financial protocols.

The remains of Klutse will be flown back to Ghana after an autopsy is done.

Thirty-four victims of racial lynching in Maryland dating between 1854 and 1933 were granted posthumous pardons by Gov. Larry Hogan on Saturday. Hogan signed the order during an event to memorialize Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old boy who was hanged outside the Towson jailhouse by a White mob in 1885.

“In the interest of equal justice under law, I have made the decision to grant a posthumous pardon today for Howard Cooper,” Hogan said during the outdoor ceremony in Towson. “And studying this case led me to dig deeper,” Hogan continued. “Today I am also granting pardons to all the 34 victims of racial lynchings in the state of Maryland which occurred between 1854 and 1933.”

This is a first-of-its-kind pardon by a governor of a U.S. state, the Associated Press reported. Hogan said the victims were denied legal due process.

Cooper was dragged from the Baltimore County Jail and hanged from a tree by a mob of White men in 1885. This was after an all-White jury had concluded within minutes that he was guilty of raping Katie Gray, a white teenager in Baltimore County. According to The Baltimore Sun, neither Gray nor Cooper testified that Gray was raped. Cooper was sentenced to death by hanging. And even before his attorneys could appeal his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, he was lynched in the early hours of July 13, 1885.

Students at the state’s Loch Raven Technical Academy and the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project had earlier this year petitioned the governor to pardon Cooper. Hogan, a Republican, then asked his staff to search for all of the available accounts of racial lynching in Maryland.

“My hope is that this action will at least in some way help to right these horrific wrongs and perhaps bring a measure of peace to the memories of these individuals and to their descendants and their loved ones,” Hogan said.

The governor on Saturday read the names of Cooper and the 33 others pardoned: David Thomas, Jim Wilson, Isaac Moore, Jim Quinn, Thomas Jurick, John Jones, John Henry Scott, John Simms, Michael Green, James Carroll, George Peck, John Diggs, George Briscoe, Townsend Cook, Charles Whitley, Benjamin Hance, John Biggus, Asbury Green, James Taylor, Isaac Kemp, Stephen Williams, Jacob Henson, James Bowens, Sidney Randolph, William Andrews, Garfield King, Wright Smith, Lewis Harris, Henry Davis, William Burns, King Johnson and George Armwood.

Frederick, a 13-year-old boy, is the final victim. His full name “was lost to history,” the governor said.

Hogan announced the pardons while at the location near where Cooper was lynched. He unveiled a new historical plaque at the event that says that Cooper’s body was left hanging from a sycamore tree “so angry white residents and local train passengers could see his corpse.”

“Howard’s mother, Henrietta, collected her child’s remains and buried him in an unmarked grave in Ruxton,” the plaque reads. “No one was ever held accountable for her son’s lynching.”

In the late 19th century, lynchings were the only latest form of racial terrorism against Black Americans after White plantation owners had used various forms of violence against the enslaved.

According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), tension had begun brewing throughout the late 19th century in the U.S., and this was mostly felt in the south, where people blamed their financial woes on the newly freed slaves that lived among them.

Whites resorted to lynching as a form of retaliation towards the freed Blacks. What mostly triggered these lynchings were claims of petty crime, rape, or any alleged sexual contact between black men and white women. Whites started lynching because they felt it was crucial to protect White women.

From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched, 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched, according to the NAACP, which was quick to add that not all of the lynchings were ever recorded.

Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched, that is, 27.3%. These whites were lynched for domestic crimes, helping the black or being against lynching.

“A typical lynching would involve criminal accusations, often dubious, against a black American, an arrest, and the assembly of a “lynch mob” intent on subverting the normal constitutional judicial process,” a report by The Guardian said.

It added that victims were seized and tortured, with many being hung from a tree and set on fire. Some were dismembered and their pieces of flesh and bone were taken by mob members as souvenirs.

Joshua Nelson is not the everyday scholarship recipient. He is the type of person who truly wants the growth of everyone in his circle while making great strides. Upon receiving a full-ride scholarship to his top college choice, Nelson decided to donate his savings towards college to another student in need.

The St Charles West High School student received the President’s Scholarship of $43,000 that will cover his entire stay in Southeast Missouri State. He will enter their pre-optometry program and major in biomedical sciences.

Nelson is a varsity basketball player and president of the school’s Multi-Cultural Achievement Committee. The 18-year-old has always been on top of his game and lives by the mission of the Multi-Cultural Achievement Committee which “is to encourage students of color to maximize their potential and to become college and career ready.”

He led different empowering workshops such as resume writing, interviewing skills, and strategies to ace college admissions tests.

A school counselor, Yoanda Curry, said everyone is proud of Nelson especially because “he just has a heart for people.”

Cultivating the habit of saving while in high school, Nelson saved more than $1,000 for college. Upon receiving the scholarship, he decided to set up a fund to help a student in need. The Joshua Nelson Leaders In Action Scholarship aims”to help multicultural students who are showing leadership, community service and just have great qualities in and out of the classroom.” Nelson hopes that others would donate to multiply his thousand dollars and make another student’s dream come true. 

Nelson admits he takes pride in helping others because he got help from the community and this is his way to give back. “I really thought it was important to give back to my community that poured in so much to me…Honestly, it makes me feel on top of the world. The fact that I can just help somebody a little bit makes me feel great, and I really want to see other people succeed,” said Nelson.

He has since earned the admiration of his peers. “I think he’s an inspiration to some of the other people at the school, especially students of color. I don’t even think he realizes that he’s doing that much for everyone else as well,” classmate Harmony Hudson said.

“We’re extremely proud of him,” Curry added.

Bahia’s treasured costume, Baiana de Acarajé, is an extravagant piece of clothing worn by the beautiful women of Bahia. This group of people is in Salvador, a town on the northeastern coast of Brazil. It is impossible to stroll through the streets without seeing a woman or a group of women in this special attire.

The Transatlantic slave trade has had so much influence on Brazilian pop culture. The clothing of the women of Bahia carries a piece of this history.

Their traditional dress is made up of the Camino (a type of white cotton trousers), worn underneath a long maxi skirt, made extra flowy, and which is usually white. The dress also comes with a bodice that sinches at the waist and drapes slightly over the top of the skirt.

Although most of the styles are similar, every woman is at liberty to make their style more unique and personalized. The style inspiration for the traditional dress is that of ancient European Baroque — white lace and tons of layers. The headwraps, which are made with white lace, can be traced to the dress’s Afro-Islamic roots. The accessories include colorful bead necklaces and rings stacked upon each other.

In other parts of Brazil, the traditional dresses come in different colors and patterns but when it comes to the Baiana de Acarajé traditional dress in Bahia, it is an all-white affair. This is because it pays tribute to the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomblé.

Candomblé was formed in the late 19th century in Bahia where most of the enslaved can be traced. People from Yorubaland, Dahomey kingdoms (present-day southwestern Nigeria and Benin), and Bantu Africa were the larger groups in the settlement at the time.

Yoruba and Ewe-Fon rituals have heavily influenced Candomblé from the language of incantations to their religious organization and their mythology. The Candomblé faithful believe in several deities referred to as orishas (orixás) that are sometimes even likened to Catholic saints.

The Baiana de Acarajé traditional dress is also worn by women in Bahia who sell Acarajé, a dish made from peeled beans formed into a ball and then deep-fried in palm oil or vegetable oil. The meal serves as both a religious offering to the gods in the Candomblé religion and as street food.

Aside from the Acarajé, which is variously made with fried beef, mutton, dried shrimp, pigweed, fufu Osun sauce, and coconut, the women wear the traditional attire to sell other tasty street foods as well. They stress that donning the Baianas de Acarajé traditional dress is an intricate part of their culture that warms the hearts of the locals and tourists alike.

At age three, Caesarion, the alleged love child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, was already co-king of Egypt. He became his mother’s co-ruler just months after his alleged father, Julius Caesar, had been assassinated. But his rule was short-lived.

Believed to be the only biological son of the most powerful man in Rome, Caesarion was seen as a threat to Rome’s greatness, thus, his adoptive brother had him killed, shortly after the death of his mom, Cleopatra. His death at age 17 ended the Ptolemaic line of rulers that had controlled Egypt since the time of Alexander the Great.

Here’s his story.

Full name Ptolemy Philopator Philometor Caesar, also called Ptolemy XV Caesar, Caesarion’s mother, Cleopatra, was the daughter of Ptolemy XII. When Cleopatra was 18, her father Ptolemy XII named her and her 10-year-old brother Ptolemy XIII, as co-heirs. According to one account, they would serve together under the guardianship of Rome since Egypt was a Roman protectorate.

When their father died in 51 B.C., Cleopatra married her 10-year-old brother and co-ruler, Ptolemy XIII, but there was no love between the two. What’s more, Cleopatra began competing with Ptolemy XIII to rule Egypt. Ptolemy III’s advisers subsequently initiated plans to make him the sole ruler.

At the same time the two were competing for the throne, there was also a battle in Rome over who would control its mighty empire. Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, two of Rome’s great military heroes, were engaged in a civil war  — the Battle of Pharsalus — and were in search of alliances. Pompey, who wanted Egypt to be on his side, threw his weight behind Ptolemy XIII over Cleopatra, who went into exile. She fled to Syria, set up her own base of operations and raised an army.

Julius Caesar would defeat Pompey in the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 B.C. Pompey fled to Alexandria but was executed by Ptolemy III, who presented his head to Julius Caesar while the latter was in Egypt. It was during this same period that Cleopatra sneaked into Alexandria, met with Julius Caesar, and managed to get his help in defeating her brother Ptolemy XIII.

After Ptolemy III’s death, Julius Caesar placed Cleopatra, who was then 21, on the throne. She co-ruled with a younger brother, Ptolemy XIV. At the same time, she took Julius Caesar as her lover and even invited the Roman general, who was 30 years older than she was, to stay in Egypt with her. Right after Julius Caesar left Egypt, Cleopatra was pregnant. She gave birth to Caesarion in 47 B.C. and made it known to all that Julius Caesar was the father. Sources say Julius Caesar invited Cleopatra and Caesarion over to Rome at the end of 46 B.C. There, Julius Caesar recognized Caesarion as his son, making him his only surviving child. But he didn’t acknowledge Caesarion as his heir. When he was killed in 44 B.C., his will stated that his great-nephew, Gaius Octavius (Octavian), was his heir.

Caesarion had spent the first two years of his life with his mom Cleopatra in Rome when Julius Caesar died. The two were forced to return to Egypt after his death as they feared for their lives.

Back in Alexandria, Cleopatra allegedly arranged the death of her younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, to pave the way for her son to ascend the throne. In 44 B.C., Caesarion, at just three years old, was declared Ptolemy XV, a co-king alongside his mother.

He would come to be appointed as “King of Kings” in 34 BC by Mark Antony. Antony, who was Julius Caesar’s lieutenant, had arrived in Egypt as Roman triumvir in charge of the eastern provinces. He started a love affair with Cleopatra and the two had three children. When he gave Caesarion the title “King of Kings”, he also formally recognized him as the legitimate son of Julius Caesar, incurring the wrath of the new leaders in Rome, including Octavian, who subsequently declared war on Cleopatra and Antony.

After Antony’s defeat at Actium in 31 B.C., Cleopatra sent Caesarion to Berenice, a seaport on the Red Sea coast of Upper Egypt. But while Caesarion was on his way, he learned that Roman troops had entered Alexandria and that his mother and Antony were both dead. He returned to Alexandria after his tutor suggested that he might be spared by Octavian and would be made to retake the throne. But upon his return, he was arrested and executed, following orders from Octavian.

And that was how the Ptolemaic rule in Egypt ended.

Tiffany Cartwright was an assistant attorney general and administrative law judge for the State of Michigan but she was laid off due to budget cuts in 2012. Cartwright returned to the bench in 2015 but released again in 2016. “I went from University of Michigan Law School, Assistant Attorney General and Administrative Law Judge to unemployed, no health insurance, no money, and a bridge card. I lost everything!,” Cartwright told The Bobby Pen.

For the next weeks and months, she went job-hunting but was unsuccessful. Many jobs felt uncomfortable hiring a former judge while others felt she was overqualified for the job she was applying for. As a result of her unemployment status, Cartwright decided to venture into entrepreneurship. She often created her own body scrubs to clear her daughter’s eczema and even gifted some to her neighbors and other family members. She turned her homemade remedy into her own line of body scrubs.

She founded Amarra Beauty Products and launched her G.L.A.M. body scrubs. The former judge took her product to Shark Tank, made it past auditions, and moved to the next round to pitch Amarra products to the Sharks. After pitching her product on Shark Tank, her business started recording success. She also took advantage of an initiative targeting Black businesses in the U.S. and successfully pitched her products at a 2018 Walmart Open Call.

She got a deal to get her product tested and that was how she landed a move to have her product on the shelves of Walmart. Her G.L.A.M. body scrubs sold out in stores. “When my buyer said yes, I literally cried. They had no idea what I went through just to get there,” Cartwright shared.

Aside from starting a business, Cartwright is also a certified minority and woman-owned small business. She is an author with three books to her credit. She is also a proud mother of two children.

Asked by the website Women Owned what she loved about being a business owner, she responded: “I love the freedom and flexibility afforded and the opportunity to work harder for yourself than any employer, as well as being in a position to bring real change.”

She also advised aspiring entrepreneurs to “never give up on your business, your dreams, your purpose or your vision.”

A White baseball coach at the Olathe North High School in Kansas has come under fire after he allegedly used a racially derogatory slur during a conversation with the only Black athlete on the team while they were preparing for a match.

In a Facebook post on Friday, the Black student-athlete’s father, Tony Banks, called on school authorities to dismiss coach Pete Flood, labeling him as a “racist.” Banks said his son and another athlete were playing rap music with speakers during pre-game batting practice on Thursday night when Flood came up to him and instructed him to turn off the “n***er music” he was playing.

“The head coach, Pete Flood, heard the music and came over,” Banks wrote. “He looked Nyle directly in his eyes and said, ‘We don’t play that Ni**er (the long nasty version) music over here.  We only play country and rock music’”.

The school district was informed about the incident and it immediately took action. In a statement on Friday, the district announced Flood has been placed on administrative leave and a “recommendation” for his “immediate termination has been submitted to the Board of Education”, NBC News reported.

“We are appalled by the remarks made by the Olathe North head baseball coach and have thoroughly investigated the situation,” the school district said in the statement. “The comments made are absolutely unacceptable,” it added. “In the Olathe Public Schools, our priority is the well-being of ALL our students. Racist and derogatory statements will never be tolerated. This is not who we are in Olathe. Our focus now is on the support and care of our students.”

In an interview with The Kansas City Star, Banks reiterated the White high school coach should be fired, adding that the alleged incident negatively impacted his son.

“To say something like that directly to a kid in the presence of other kids — this person does not need to be where he can influence or impact anybody, especially children,” he said. “My son was hurt through this.”

Other people also sided with Banks, saying Flood should not be allowed around children. “Absolutely disgusting and I am glad that this sad shell of a man is being held responsible for his discriminatory & ignorant actions,” a Facebook user commented on the post.

“This is not acceptable. I’ve coached both baseball, football, soccer, basketball, for years never did I or our coaching staff ever do anything like this,” another person commented. “He should be terminated and band [sic] from ever coaching again. It is truly distrustful and a stain on the team and more so on the game that we are working on keeping our kids off the streets.”

James Hunt is known as “The Celebrity Credit Guru.” The millionaire is a celebrity wealth management expert who is credited with helping some of America’s biggest athletes, entertainers, and scores of ordinary people with their credit cards and finances.

Originally from Chicago, Hunt was homeless when he was only eight years old. He would roam around the Buckhead community of Atlanta seeing luxury cars and dreaming of owning one in the future. The dream of driving a luxurious car urged him on to start his business.

Learning everything he could about credit, Hunt recalls starting his entrepreneurial journey with a ‘cheap laptop’ and operated in a Starbucks during the day and a local Fed Ex during the night. Things took off for Hunt when he got his first celebrity client and cleaned up that client’s entire family’s credit, he tells Global Millionaires. Today, some of his clients include Bruno Mars, Akon, Tank, Taraji P. Henson, Larenz Tate, Tichina Arnold, Tyrese, Usher, and Shaq.

Hunt has elevated himself from a homeless boy to becoming one of the most sought-after people in the credit repair industry. He has been able to do this through his credit and financial concierge company New Rich Productions, based in Atlanta, GA. His staff includes homeless or disadvantaged young Black men.

The wealth management expert is now focused on developing young Black entrepreneurs to become successful like him. He has established a new company called The Hunt to teach young Blacks about entrepreneurship. “I think that so often we are encouraging people to be entrepreneurs, but no one ever teaches you how to hunt and how to properly go after what you want,” he tells The Black Wall Street Times.

“Becoming a millionaire or becoming successful at all requires a certain mindset and unwavering focus. There are various techniques to hunting down success. I teach things like strategy, knowing how to approach clients, knowing when to pull the trigger, knowing when to lay and wait for your ‘prey’… knowing when to make your move and when to actually be silent. Many of our young black men aspire to live a luxury lifestyle, but no one teaches them how to actually achieve it. That is what I am doing with The Hunt.”

Hunt says his career as an entrepreneur has been motivated and driven by his knack for success and goal setting. “Taking on new ideas and accomplishing goals is something that I set out to do on a daily basis,” he says. “That daily challenge to get up and accomplish what you set out to accomplish for that day is literally what drives me that day.”

He also describes himself as relentless. For him, failure is not an option, and he has therefore been persistent in everything that he has accomplished. “For me, it is not enough to just be successful, and the goal is to reach the top. If there is one word to be described, it is being completely relentless in my pursuit of success.”

Per his own autobiography, the late Cameroonian businessman, Victor Fotso, made his way through the world as an enterprising youngster selling peanuts. It was one of the popular cash crops grown in the western Cameroonian town of Bandjoun.

Soon enough, Fotso became a trader who dealt in anything that sold off the shelves and quickly. He opened a shop in Mbalmayo in central Cameroon in 1947. The business was great because by 1960, while still under 40, Fotso diversified into commercial transportation. And then Pierre Castel, the founder of Caste Group, now France’s largest producer of wine, came to town after Cameroon gained independence.

Fotso became Castel’s chief partner in Cameroon, distributing Castel’s beverages. After a decade of his relationship with Castel and other French investors, Fotso was known to have had investments in agricultural produce, petrochemicals, hospitality and electric batteries. In 1997, he would open the first private Cameroonian-owned bank, Commercial Bank of Cameroon (CBC).

Between 1996 and 2020 when he died, Fotso was the mayor of his native Badjoun. He was respected as a self-made man and President Paul Biya could count on him for reasons political and more. Fotso also had as many as 25 women with whom he birthed 121 women, according to various reports. And so when he died at the ripe old age of 94 leaving behind more than $200 million, drama was very much expected.

It has been reported that Fotso may have allocated more than $3.5 million for his own funeral. That was the first point of the family fracas that has seen factions formed among the 146 heirs. Suspicions that some of Fotso’s heirs want to pocket the money for themselves have been stated. His eldest son, Roger, had to put out a press release reminding all his relatives that the departed patriarch was a respected man whose memory could not be denigrated over this issue.

Funeral funds are not the only thing splitting Fotso’s family. There are suspicions that his last will in testament could have been forged and that matter has ended them in court. Yet, it does seem to an outsider that some among Fotso’s living relations feel the need to be heard now lest they are lost when his largesse is shared. State investigators have been combing through his offices across the country for any and all relevant documents pertaining to his estates.

Other factions, led by Yves-Michel Fotso, a man who is supposed to be serving a life sentence in Cameroon but managed to find his way to Morocco, are desperate to get down to the extent of Fotso real estate holdings. This particular angle involves a former Cameroonian soccer star who married one of Fotso’s daughters and became an administrator of the businessman’s real estate holdings.

In the meantime, the funeral of Fotso has stalled as the legal battles rage on. In Cameroon and among many international observers, eyes are firmly fixed on the intrigue in the Fotso family.

June 18th, 1964, was a powerful yet little talked about moment in the history of the United States, and an especially important one in civil rights movement. 

On this day, a white hotel manager was photographed as he poured acid into a pool where white and black activists had integrated to protest segregation.

Together with the other protests and demonstrations in the summer of 1964  known as the St. Augustine Movement, this event at the pool in St. Augustine, Florida was so powerful that it changed the course of history, bringing more resolute action towards the plight of black people.

On June 11, 1964, a week before the event, civil rights icon, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested for trespassing at the Monson Motor Lodge after being asked to leave its segregated restaurant. According to historians, King used the “confrontation as an opportunity to publicize both the non-violent approach used by civil rights activists and the desperate discrimination against black people that persisted across the city”.

King’s arrest, his only time in the state of Florida, spurred a series of protests and confrontations between activists, police, and segregationists, one of which was a ‘swim-in’ demonstration. King and his two associated planned the ‘swim-in’ at the same lodge that refused to admit him at its restaurant. 

White activists paid for motel rooms and invited black people to join them as their guests in the “whites only” pool. The motel manager, Jimmy Brock, allegedly furious with King’s earlier protest and now the ‘swim-in’, poured a bottle of muriatic acid, an undiluted hydrochloric acid used to clean pools, into the pool, hoping the swimmers would become scared and leave.

Brock apparently exclaimed, “I’m cleaning [the] pool!” as he poured the acid, a move captured by journalists and photographers who had gotten word of the demonstration and were onsite.

NPR interviewed two of the “swim-in” protesters, J.T. Johnson and Al Lingo, when they were 76 and 78, respectively. The two recalled that the hotel manager, Brock had ‘lost it”.

“Everybody was kind of caught off guard,” J.T. said.

“The girls, they were most frightened, and we moved to the center of the pool,” Al added.

“I tried to calm the gang down. I knew that there was too much water for that acid to do anything,” J.T. said.

Historians say that one swimmer, who knew that the ratio of acid to pool water was too little to be a threat drank some of the pool water to calm the other swimmers’ fears. Though some of them were scared, they did not back out of their demonstration. In fact, a cop had to jump in to arrest the protesters.

“When they [dragged] us out in bathing suits and carried us out to the jail, they wouldn’t feed me because they said I didn’t have on any clothes. I said, ‘Well, that’s the way you locked me up!’,” J.T. explained.

The Aftermath Of The Swim-In

Historians say, “the aftermath of Dr. King’s arrest and the swim-in demonstration was both swift and powerful”. Once lawmakers and public officials saw images from the “swim-in” among other protest activities in the St. Augustine Movement, public outcry for action intensified and officials could no longer feign ignorance.

In fact, on the following day, the Civil Rights Act was approved, after an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate.

“That had not happened before in this country, that some man is pouring acid on people in the swimming pool,” J.T. said. “I’m not so sure the Civil Rights Act would have been passed had [there] not been a St. Augustine. It was a milestone. We was young, and we thought we’d done something — and we had.”

On July 1, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, effectively making “discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” unlawful.