Celebrating the life of Cicely Tyson
Picture
Celebrating the life of Cicely Tyson
Picture
Receiving the Medal of Freedom in 2016
"... Her queenlike command never faltered, even at her most confiding. But I also gained insight into her singular talent: the ability to disappear into a role with startling thoroughness, while never losing the supreme self-possession that made her such a compelling force, on the stage and on screen. It had to do with her innate intuition, combined with an unerring sense of purpose and direction... 
"... Indeed, it must have been a supernatural force that made Tyson — who was not allowed to see movies outside her neighborhood church as a child — a movie star. And not just a star, but a powerful symbol of Black womanhood for a generation of Americans steeped in images that denigrated and dismissed people on the basis of their race and gender. From the early 1960s, when Tyson co-starred with Maya Angelou, James Earl Jones and Louis Gossett Jr. in the groundbreaking play “The Blacks,” and made films and television series like “Sounder,” “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “Roots,” Tyson’s regal sense of quiet confidence changed the iconography of Black womanhood on and off the screen. When she adopted a natural hairstyle for the TV show “East Side/West Side,” she received “bags and bags” of hate mail. But that move also started a cultural trend that symbolized liberation from Eurocentric, male-defined standards of beauty."      --Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, Jan. 29, 2021.
The world mourns the loss of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who not only changed the law, but transformed
​the roles of men and women in society.
​
May her memory be a blessing.
Picture
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Mar 15, 1933-Sep 18, 2020)
Let us pay tribute to the beloved RBG by seeking to honor her wish: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."
1.  Email and/or call our senators
     Bennet: https://www.bennet.senate.gov/public/
     Gardener: https://www.gardner.senate.gov/
Judiciary Committee: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members
2.  Donate time and/or money to support candidates and ideals in which we believe.
3.  VOTE!
4.  Encourage each other.
Robert Shearman Boyd passed on September 13, 2020. Our heart goes out to his wife,  Lynn, and children, Michael and Catherine.
 … May you know that absence is full of tender presence  
and that nothing is ever lost or forgotten. 
       -- John O’Donohue
We celebrate the life and legacy of Bob Boyd, a good friend to so many in the Cameron family. 

Honoring the Lives and Legacies of Freedom Fighters

July 17, 2020 - We join our nation in grieving the death of two civil rights icons: Rep. John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian.
We are deeply grateful for their embodied commitments to freedom, equality and justice for all human beings. To honor the lives and legacies of freedom fighters in our cloud of witnesses, let us pick up the mantle and answer the call to "good trouble" given to us by Rep. Lewis in 2019:  "When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to do something. Our children and their children will ask us, 'what did you do?' ... Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We have a mission and a mandate to be on the right side of history."
Let us heed these words of encouragement from John Lewis' final essay: "Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.”
John Lewis (1940--2020), a champion of the civil rights movement and one of its leading figures, died of pancreatic cancer on Friday, July 17, 2020. He was 80. "A son of sharecroppers and an apostle of nonviolence who was bloodied at Selma and across the Jim Crow South in the historic struggle for racial equality, carried a mantle of moral authority into Congress." [1]
In an interview on CBS Sunday Morning, in the midst of nationwide nonviolent protests over the murder of George Floyd, Representative Lewis asked, "How many more — how many more young, black men will be murdered? The madness must stop." He continued in his lifelong effort to lobby for change with, "It is my hope that we are on our way to greater change — to respect the dignity and the worth of every human being when it doesn’t matter their color or their background, or whether they are male or female, gay or straight. That it comes to a point where we are one people, we’re one family. We all live in the same house, not just the  American house, but the world house." [2]
Lewis was no stranger to protest. "He marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and was repeatedly beaten and arrested during nonviolent protests for racial equality." [2]  He was only 23 when he took the stage at the March on Washington, the National President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. "We must say, 'Wake up America! Wake up! For we cannot stop, and we will not stop ...."[3]  And John Lewis never stopped for the rest of his 80 years, becoming a leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death.
We join Vice President Joe Biden in saying to John Lewis, "March on, dear friend." [4]
C.T. Vivian (1924--2020), Martin Luther King’s Field General, died at 95 after serving a lifetime as a champion of racial justice. As all Freedom Fighters, Vivian was a disciplined advocate of nonviolence starting with his involvement on the front lines in the 1960s movement for racial justice. [5]
"We were deeply saddened to learn of Civil Rights icon Reverend C.T. Vivian's passing. An advocate of nonviolence, his strength, courage and passion for change helped shape history. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called him the "greatest preacher he ever heard." Rest In Power Reverend." [6]
1.   From The New York Times: John Lewis, Towering Figure of Civil Rights Era, Dies at 80. Images of his beating at Selma shocked the nation and led to swift passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was later called the conscience of the Congress.
2.  CBS Sunday Morning on June 4, 2020
3.  John Lewis' Pivotal "This Is It" Moment at the March on Washington | Oprah’s Master Class | OWN
4. Vice President Joe Biden's Tribute to John Lewis
5. From The New York Times: C.T. Vivian, Martin Luther King’s Field General, Dies at 95. A disciplined advocate of nonviolence, he was on the front lines in the 1960s movement for racial justice.
6. A Tribute to Reverend C.T. Vivian | Oprah Winfrey Network