BLACK HISTORY

On July 29 the House of Representatives issued a formal apology to African Americans for the atrocities committed against them and their ancestors during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and Jim Crow segregation laws.

Legendary collective Rock Steady Crew (RSC) will celebrate 31 years of preserving Hip-Hop culture during its annual anniversary celebration.

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday after months of ill health. He was 79.

Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., spokeswoman Susan Clary said. He had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he had returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Diddley appreciated the honors he received, "but it didn't put no figures in my checkbook."

The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago, he said in a 1999 interview.

"I don't know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name," he said, adding that he liked it so it became his stage name.

Other times, he gave somewhat differing stories on where he got the name. Some experts believe a possible source for the name is a one-string instrument used in traditional blues music called a diddley bow.

His first single, "Bo Diddley," introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as "shave and a haircut, two bits." The B side, "I'm a Man," with its slightly humorous take on macho pride, also became a rock standard.

The company that issued his early songs was Chess-Checkers records, the storied Chicago-based labels that also recorded Chuck Berry and other stars. Howard Kramer, assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, said in 2006 that Diddley's Chess recordings "stand among the best singular recordings of the 20th century."

Diddley's other major songs included, "Say Man," "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover," "Shave and a Haircut," "Uncle John," "Who Do You Love?" and "The Mule."

Diddley's influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. Buddy Holly borrowed the bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp rhythm for his song "Not Fade Away." The Rolling Stones' bluesy remake of that Holly song gave them their first chart single in the United States, in 1964. The following year, another British band, the Yardbirds, had a Top 20 hit in the U.S. with their version of "I'm a Man."

Diddley was also one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, adding reverb and tremelo effects. He even rigged some of his guitars himself.

"He treats it like it was a drum, very rhythmic," E. Michael Harrington, professor of music theory and composition at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., said in 2006.

Many other artists, including the Who, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello copied aspects of Diddley's style.

Growing up, Diddley said he had no musical idols, and he wasn't entirely pleased that others drew on his innovations.

"I don't like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it," he said. "I don't have any idols I copied after."

"They copied everything I did, upgraded it, messed it up. It seems to me that nobody can come up with their own thing, they have to put a little bit of Bo Diddley there," he said.

Despite his success, Diddley claimed he only received a small portion of the money he made during his career. Partly as a result, he continued to tour and record music until his stroke. Between tours, he made his home near Gainesville in north Florida.

"Seventy ain't nothing but a damn number," he told The Associated Press in 1999. "I'm writing and creating new stuff and putting together new different things. Trying to stay out there and roll with the punches. I ain't quit yet."

Diddley, like other artists of his generations, was paid a flat fee for his recordings and said he received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances.

"I am owed. I've never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."

In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music, "Jungle Music." It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll."

Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat."

Diddley won attention from a new generation in 1989 when he took part in the "Bo Knows" ad campaign for Nike, built around football and baseball star Bo Jackson. Commenting on Jackson's guitar skills, Diddley turned to the camera and said, "He don't know Diddley."

"I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked," Diddley said. "I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube."

Born as Ellas Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss., Diddley was later adopted by his mother's cousin and took on the name Ellis McDaniel, which his wife always called him.

When he was 5, his family moved to Chicago, where he learned the violin at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He learned guitar at 10 and entertained passers-by on street corners. By his early teens, Diddley was playing Chicago's Maxwell Street.

"I came out of school and made something out of myself. I am known all over the globe, all over the world. There are guys who have done a lot of things that don't have the same impact that I had," he said.

As the hours wind down to Super Bowl XLI, all the talk is surrounding the game’s unofficial nickname -- Soul Bowl 2007.

Sure, black athletes have had an overwhelming presence in the National Football League, accounting for approximately 70 percent of the nearly 1,700 players. And black players have excelled in the biggest game in professional sports, earning six of the last 10 Super Bowl Most Valuable Player honors.

But this year, black Americans have several reasons to do the Super Bowl Slide on Sunday, from the historic presence of black head coaches holding fort on the sidelines to a number of HBCU alums giving all they’ve got to win one of professional sports most hallowed championships.

For the first time in its 41-year history, a black man will be the Super Bowl-winning coach since black men -- Chicago Bears’ Lovie Smith and Indianapolis Colts’ Tony Dungy -- will be at the helm of both competing squads. Until now, no Super Bowl team had been coached by a black man.Smith and Dungy are more than successful NFL head coaches, said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who several years ago publicly criticized the NFL for a lack of diversity amongst the league’s head coaches. The accomplishments of the two coaches, Jackson said, speak volumes to the struggles endured by those who bravely fought for equality during the civil rights era.

“The civil rights’ mission was to open closed doors and create an even playing field,” Jackson told BlackAmericaWeb.com, stressing that successful black coaches are not a new phenomenon.

“We all know the accomplishments of (former Florida A&M coach) Jake Gaither and (former Grambling coach) Eddie Robinson,” Jackson said of the two black college football legends. “We’ve always had the capability to coach, but we just weren’t given super opportunities.”

Because of the Rooney Rule, in which teams seeking head coaches must interview a minority candidate before making a hire, more and more black men are getting closer to having their own super opportunity. When the 2006 season started last September, there were seven black coaches in the 32-team league.

In January, two of those coaches -- Arizona’s Dennis Green and Oakland’s Art Shell -- were fired after lackluster seasons. Ironically, Shell, a Hall of Fame player with the Raiders for 14 seasons, became the first black head coach in the NFL’s modern era when the Raiders hired him in 1990, the first of two stints as head coach of the team.

Fritz Pollard holds the distinction of being the NFL's first black coach. Inducted into the NFL’s Hall of Fame posthumously in 2005, Pollard was a player/coach for the NFL’s Akron Pros in 1921. And as Dungy and Smith vie for NFL history in becoming the first black coach to win a Super Bowl, the sports world is still abuzz with news of the latest brother in the black head coaches fraternity -- Mike Tomlin, the former Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator, who was hired to become the Pittsburgh Steelers’ first black coach in the team’s 74-year history.

Black America certainly has reason to be proud this weekend, said Garry Howard, sports editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.“Obviously, this is a great day for black America because both Dungy and Smith have broken the color line,” Howard, one of six black sports editors of major U.S. daily newspapers, told BlackAmericaWeb.com, adding that many people had doubts about a black man’s capability to coach an NFL team, similar to the doubts that haunted many blacks attempting to make it as NFL quarterbacks.

“(Black coaches) have faced the same questions that black quarterbacks have faced in terms of their ability because a coach is a position of unequivocal leadership,” Howard told BlackAmericaWeb.com, adding that society at large is generally more accepting today.

“But I think we’re better off than we were when Doug played in the Super Bowl,” Howard said. “With these two men coaching in the Super Bowl, it says that (blacks) can get the job done if given the opportunity.” What Dungy and Smith are doing for black coaches, Colts strong safety Antoine Bethea could do for alumni of HBCUs. The rookie was a sixth-round pick out of Howard University, but emerged as one of the Colts’ surprise standouts. A starter since the preseason, Bethea racked up 64 tackles and one interception in the regular season. He also snatched an interception in the Colts’ decisive win over the Kansas City Chiefs in the first round of the playoffs last month.

Bethea is one of four HBCU grads on the Colts roster and has definitely done his part to show black college athletes are just as talented as players from predominantly white institutions, said Ed Hill, the sports information director at Howard University.

“In his mind, he always knew he was going to play, but we didn’t know he was going to play this well this soon,” Hill told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “He is a motivation and provides incentive for a lot of (black college players) who sometimes don’t get the recognition or publicity of a Division I program.”

This Super Bowl may be the game where the value of opportunities is truly conveyed, says Jackson, himself a former quarterback at North Carolina A&T. From Doug Williams’ -- a Grambling State graduate -- being the first black Super Bowl quarterback in 1987 to this weekend’s big contest between good friends Smith and Dungy, chances to be on a level playing field can make all the difference.

“There’s really nothing that we can’t do,” Jackson said, adding that it only takes one black to excel in science, the arts, politics or sports, to demonstrate to the world all that we can do.

“We’ve excelled in so much,” Jackson said, “but all we need is for the playing field to be even. Then we can show just how we can make anything happen.”