Michelle Obama received loads of praise last month when, at an event for gay Democrats, the potential first lady said, “We are all only here because of those who marched and bled and died, from Selma to Stonewall, in the pursuit of a more perfect union.”

The “Selma” of which Mrs. Obama spoke refers to a 1965 march in Selma, Alabama, when police beat back civil rights activists trying to march to Montgomery as a protest to a black teenager’s shooting. The event immediately became known as Bloody Sunday. The “Stonewall” of which Mrs Obama spoke, of course, refers to the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, widely seen as the launch of the contemporary gay rights movement. With that geographical reference, Obama sought to - and succeeded in - linking the civil and gay rights movements. The crowd - and the press - went wild, but not everyone agrees with Obama’s optimism.

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When Disney announced last year that an feature-length animated with a black heroine was in the works, I was beyond thrilled. Growing up, I was a major Disney buff — like most children of the 80s, I presume — and although I still have a great amount of affection for the classics, as I grew older my disappointment in the company’s apparent lack of interest in including black characters in its animated films began to overshadow that childhood love. But now they’re making a black, animated Disney film! My future daughters will have their own animated heroine to look up to! Unfortunately, based on information from people in the know, I might have gotten excited too soon. Disney, a company with a racially-murky past that won’t stay in the vault no matter how hard execs try to keep it hidden, appears to be having quite a few problems coming up with a storyline that isn’t offensive. Fancy that.

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The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is paying homage to hip hop with an exhibit of new hip hop artifacts. The goods include Slick Rick’s eye patch, Adidas from Run DMC, Salt n’ Pepa clothing, and, as seen below, one of Flavor Flav’s infamous clocks, a leather Biggie jersey, a Queen Latifah performance outfit, and a Grandmaster Flash mixer.

The American Medical Association, in a rare move by a national organization, will issue a formal apology today for its past treatment of black doctors. Ronald M. Davis, a past president of the association, wrote in the July 16th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, “The medical profession, which is based on a boundless respect for human life, had an obligation to lead society away from disrespect of so many lives. The AMA failed to do so and has apologized for that failure.” The apology comes after a panel was put together to examine the historical failures of the AMA when it came to segregation and racism.

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Today is Juneteenth, the unofficial holiday that marks the day in 1865 — which happened to have been two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomatox — that slaves in Galveston, Tex., finally got the word that they were free. Celebrations ensued, then and more than 100 years later. I’ve never actually attended a Juneteenth celebration — my family and friends must have never been into it — but across the country, and particularly in Texas, the day (or the weekend before or after the day) is a cause for huge cookouts and parades that are defining events in the lives of many African Americans.

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Look! Black soldiers! In a World War II movie! Something tells me Clint Eastwood won’t be invited to the premiere. Luckily, Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna is coming out before George Lucas’s Tuskegee Airmen film.

Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood were once friendly enough to take this picture, but I doubt either of them would be too willing to pose together these days. A few weeks ago, Lee, who is coming out with a World War II movie this fall, criticized Clint Eastwood for not including any black soldiers in Flags of Our Fathers or Letters From Iwo Jima. Eastwood is clearly pissed.

“The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that,” Clint Eastwood told the UK’s Guardian. “If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go: ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate… A guy like [Spike Lee] should shut his face.”

A guy like Spike Lee is never going to shut his face. Just so Clint knows.

Despite getting a good amount of press, the eBay auction of Bill Cosby’s old Cosby Show sweaters, the proceeds from which will go to the Hello Friend/Ennis Cosby Foundation (a good cause!), was without a single bidder as of 8:45 this morning. It is because they are unspeakably ugly? Or maybe it’s that $5 grand minimum bid? Its a small price to pay for a piece of television history. The bidless auction gets put out of its misery on June 12. [NYM]

It might come as a surprise, but when the Democratic candidates began campaigning for the nomination more than a year ago, I was firmly in Hillary Clinton’s corner. Not so firmly that I didn’t like and respect a number of candidates, especially Barack Obama, but firmly enough there was little doubt in my mind that I would be voting for her in the primaries. When Stereohyped launched last April, I began the Obamarama feature, not as an outlet for my undying devotion for Barack Obama, but because he was a black, likeable candidate who had a chance (however minuscule at the time, it was at least better than Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton’s chances ever were) of becoming the nominee for president. Interestingly, the very first Obamarama was about how both Bill and Hillary Clinton received louder applause at Sharpton’s National Action Network Convention — a room full of black people — than Barack Obama did. For well-known reasons, that would be inconceivable now. I fully expected that I would have to retire Obamaramas by Super Tuesday, when he would go back to being a normal senator and Hillary Clinton would become the presumptive nominee. Obviously, I was wrong.

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These are trying times for the music industry. No one knows that better than Sony execs, who have recently begun to sell the classic photos taken by Columbia Records staff photographers in the 50s, 60s, and 70s to the highest bidder. The New York Times got its hands on a few, including one of Sly Stone in 1973, above, as well as a shot of Muhammad Ali recording “I Am The Greatest,” and in-studio shots of Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.

SO BARACK OBAMA MAY NOT BE THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT The web (and library shelves) are full of stories about U.S. presidents — six in particular — having some top secret black ancestry. For example, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s mom was rumored to have been part black. Uh, the photo doesn’t lie, does it?

Zelma Henderson was a beautician who lived in Topeka, Kansas, her entire life. When she died Tuesday at 88 of pancreatic cancer, so did the last living plaintiff in the historic Brown v. Board of Education case.

Henderson joined the case when the NAACP asked 13 local black parents (including Oliver Brown), whose children were being bused to an all-black school across town, to join the case. The rest is history. “None of us knew that this case would be so important and come to the magnitude it has,” Henderson told the Dallas Morning News in 1994. “What little bit I did, I feel I helped the whole nation.”

Today marks the day that Malcolm X would have turned 83 years old. To commemorate the event, The Root’s (and Princeton’s) Melissa Lace-Hartwell reflects upon the man, his flaws, and his legacy.

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They have names like “Jungle Jitters,” “Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves,” and “All This and Rabbit Stew (see left),” and feature cartoon images of blacks that would get an animator at the Disney Channel fired before you could say “Sambo” if he or she tried to produce them now. But these Warner Bros. shorts were made in the 30s and 40s and a part of a group of cartoons dubbed the Censored 11. None of us are supposed to be able to see them (hence, the Censored 11). Yet, many of them can be found on YouTube. What gives?

According to the New York Times, reps from Warner Bros. are sending out cease and desists as fast as they can, but it’s really hard to keep a video off of the internet once it’s already gone up. Does it matter, though? How harmful are these old, racist images in a modern world?

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