28 Days of Black History Makers

From President Barack Obama to jazz master Ellis Marsalis, Olympic gold medalist Diane Dixon to Academy Award winner Mo’Nique, Pulitzer Prize winner Maya Angelou to world heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield. These, and more, are the African American figures we've been honoring throughout the month with encore presentations of their most compelling interviews. And soon we’ll be capping off our 28 Days of Black History Makers series with a three-hour special, presented by AT&T. Hosted by Janice Malone and Darryl Williams, Day 28: Go Tell It Live gets under way Monday, Feb. 28 and 8 p.m. ET. During the live show, we’ll feature archival interviews with Americans who’ve left an indelible mark on our nation in the areas of music, sports, civil rights and comedy, including Billie Holiday, Jackie Robinson, Shirley Chisholm and Richard Pryor. Plus, highlights from our 28 Days series—including chats with Michelle Obama, Larry Fitzgerald, Wendy Williams, Sugar Ray Leonard, Stephanie Mills, Montel Williams—and a look back at African American milestones in government, literature, science, sports, film. And, of course, our hosts will be taking calls from across the nation. So be sure to Go Tell It Live!

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who came of age in St. Louis during the 40s, recalls her first experience overcoming racial barriers. “I was 15 and I had missed about four weeks of school. But I was ahead, so my mother said I didn’t have to go to school that semester—but I had to have a job,” she tells host Judy Joy Jones. “I’d seen women on the streetcar in their uniforms with their change belt… And they looked so cute. So I went down to apply for a job. And I didn’t notice there were no blacks. I just saw women. But no one would even offer me an application. So I went back to my mother and I was really devastated. She asked me, ‘Do you know why?’ I said, ‘Yes, because I’m a negro.’ She said, ‘Do you want the job?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Then go get it,’ she said. ‘You be there before the secretaries come in in the morning. And you stay there.’”

The two-time NBA champ, who went on to coach the New York Knicks and now coaches the Florida International University Panthers, talks NCAA versus pro hoops. “The preparation of the game is the same. The difference is that, in the NBA I coached against great athletes every night. Here in college, you may coach against one every 15 games,” he tells the Bottom Line Sports Show’s Gerald Brown. That’s how difficult it is to become an NBA player. And that’s how hard it is to win a basketball game in the NBA. People have no idea what really goes into trying to win that one basketball game.”

The man America once voted “the most important black leader” in an Associated Press poll gives stimulus-happy Uncle Sam a piece of his mind. “I was in Malaysia a month ago. And I went to the BMW plant, where workers—at max, $6,000 a year—are making BMWs that sell for $60,000. Massive profits,” he tells BlogTalkRadio. “Well, would you make a car in Detroit or make a car in Malaysia? I went to a place called Free Shell. They make computers and microchips. Workers there make $2,500 a year. So unless there's some plan to deal with balancing trade, we can't survive as a manufacturer.”

Though today she’s known for carrying on the tradition of such jazz masters Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn, it was a famed funk group that helped propel Denver resident Reeves to stardom. “When Earth Wind & Fire moved out to L.A. from Denver, they wanted to reach back into their communities and bring talent out there,” the diva tells host Joy Keys. “I didn’t know Philip Bailey then, I just knew who he was. But I knew friends of his, who told him, ‘You should get Dianne!’ So I ended up out in Los Angeles to start a group called Free Life that never got off the ground. But it got me to L.A.!”

The first African-American to win two Academy Awards in any category—which he did back-to-back for 1989’s Glory and 1990’s Dances with Wolves—discusses the inspiration for his success. “Even before I got into the business, the film that made me consider that there was work behind the scenes was 1967’s In the Heat of the Night,” he tells Keepin It Reel host Tim Gordon. “Not so much the great performance by Sidney Poitier, but I was paying attention to the Quincy Jones score, and people like Ray Charles, who not only did the theme, but played some background cues. And I said, ‘That’s interesting. African-Americans working behind the scenes.’”

Law & Order’s detective Kevin Bernard explains why he opted to become a spokesman for the Fearless African Americans Connected and Empowered Diabetes campaign. “You watch television and you see commercials, and when they talked about diabetes, I didn’t think any of those commercials were speaking to people like me,” he tells Film Festival Radio host Janice Malone. "You have Wilford Brimley. You have a former Miss America. You have Patti LaBelle. You have BB King. But no one was speaking to the young black youths. And here I was being diagnosed as a diabetic myself.”

Despite playing side-by-side once again with superstar guard LeBron James—making him part of the most buzzed-about team in the NBA—the Miami Heat virtuoso still puts education first, not only for himself, but his also family. “Sorry I was late,” D-Wade tells the Bottom Line Sports Show hosts Gerald Brown and Jonathan Foy upon calling in for his interview. “I had to talk to my son about school. He was slackin’. So I went over a little bit.”

America’s first-ever African-American commander in chief make a plea to congregations across the land for help in reforming health care. “Throughout our history, whenever we’ve sought to change this country for the better, whenever we’ve sought to promote justice, there have always been those who wanted to preserve the status quo,” he says. “And these struggles always boil down to a contest between hope and fear. That was true in the debate over Social Security, when FDR was accused of being a socialist. That was true when JFK and Lyndon Johnson tried to pass Medicare. And it’s true in this debate today.”

Thirty-eight years after he made Me and Mrs. Jones a No. 1 single, the Grammy-winning crooner offers advice to young artists looking to break into the music business. “I still deal with the rudiments—the foundation: the bass, the drum and the piano,” he tells WDKK Radio host Darryl Williams. “And that’s what a lot of the new artists are going back to. When you deal with an overload of electronics, it locks you in. And to a true artist, you can’t improvise. See, I was cat who sang with John Coltrane.”

The Baseball Hall of Famer fills us in on his work for MLB’s youth-training programs. “The most important thing this venue can offer kids is that they have to go to school, they have to get good grades,” he tells The Final Word hosts JayReelz and J.D. “The numbers are very low as far as African Americans staying in baseball today. They might be good players, but they’re not getting good grades, so they’re not able to go to college.”

The Queen of All Media reflects on winning the Thurgood Marshall Prestige Award. “It means a lot, as a woman, to be recognized in a leadership capacity, or a great example,” she tells host Ceslie Armstrong. “It’s nothing that I set out to do—be some sort of role model or something like that. But boy, oh, boy, is it nice when it happens!”

What has kept the most successful R&B group of all time together since 1988? Shawn tells Film Festival Radio host Janice Malone of fellow Boyz Nathan Morris and Wanya Morris, “With us, it’s our respect and love for each other—and for the music. That’s the first thing that got us together. It was just our love for the kind of music we do. And we couldn’t find it anywhere else. It’s like a relationship. You get something that’s rare, you hold onto it. And we found that within each other.”

The son of Baltimore's first African American fire chief chats about living with multiple sclerosis, and helping others do the same. “Over the last 10 years since my diagnosis, I’ve been on a journey to find as much information as I can, and share that information with the public about some of the ways to mitigate and reduce some of the symptoms from chronic illness,” he tells Living Smart & Well host Inez Bracy. “One of the symptoms of MS that 30 to 40 percent of us feel something called an ‘MS hug.’ That’s when the signal from the brain to the muscles in the extremities can be impaired and impeded… It happened to me in Las Vegas. The temperature outside was like 107 degrees and I got out of a car and thought I was going to die by the time I hit the door. I thought I was having a heart attack.”

The superstar Arizona Cardinals wide receiver recalls starting out as a ball boy for the Vikings, and how he perceived his various gratuities from the players. “When you’re 13 years old, if a dude hands you 5 dollars, that’s a come-up any way you look at it," he tells the Bottom Line Sports Show hosts Gerald Brown and Jonathan Foy. “I don’t remember who the worst tipper was. I always remember who the best ones were. If someone was going to ask you who the worst girlfriend you had, you never remember the worst girlfriend you had, you always remember the better ones, right?”