Soledad O'Brien

Soledad O'Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN: Special Investigations Unit, reporting hour-long documentaries throughout the year and filing in-depth series on the most important ongoing and breaking news stories for all major CNN programs. She also covers political news as part of CNN's "Best Political Team on Television." Most recently, O'Brien has reported for CNN Presents: Black in America revealing the current state of Black America 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien was born September 19, 1966 in St. James, New York of Irish Australian and Black-Cuban heritage. She is most known for anchoring the CNN marquee morning newscast American Morning from July 2003 to April 3, 2007, with Miles O'Brien; their common surnames are coincidental.

O'Brien's parents, both immigrants, met at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland in 1958. Her mother was from Cuba and her father was from Australia. Both attended daily Mass at a church near campus. Every day her father would offer her mother a ride. Every day, she declined. Finally she said yes. One year later, the day after Christmas, the two of them were married. Her father was a mechanical engineering professor. Her mother was a French and English teacher. Soledad is the fifth of six children, who all graduated from Harvard University. Her siblings are law professor Maria (b. 1961); corporate lawyer Cecilia (b. 1962), Tony (b. 1963) who heads a documents company; eye surgeon Estela (b. 1964); and anesthesiologist Orestes (b. 1968).

At the time, interracial marriage in Maryland was illegal, so her parents married in Washington, D.C where marriage laws were less strict. Ms. O'Brien explained that in Spanish her full name means, "The Blessed Virgin Mary of Solitude." When she started working in TV, many people recommended that she change her name, but she refused.

Despite her partial Latina heritage, O'Brien doesn't speak Spanish fluently. Since 1995 O'Brien has been married to Bradley Raymond, co-head of investment banking at Thomas Weisel Partners. Together they have two daughters and twin sons: Sofia Elizabeth (born October 23, 2000); Cecilia (born March 20, 2002); and Charlie and Jackson on August 30, 2004.

She began her career as an associate producer and news writer at WBZ-TV, then the NBC affiliate in Boston. She joined NBC News in 1991, and was based in New York as a field producer for the Nightly News and Today. O'Brien then worked for three years as a local reporter and bureau chief for San Francisco NBC affiliate KRON. At KRON she was a reporter on "The Know Zone." O'Brien was featured on a regular segment of the Discovery Channel program The Next Step, holding the position of "Sun Microsystems Infogal." She then anchored MSNBC's weekend morning show and the cable network's award-winning technology program The Site, which aired weeknights from the Spring of 1996 to November 1997.

Ms. O'Brien co-anchored Weekend Today with David Bloom beginning July 1999. During that time, she contributed reports for the weekday Today Show and for weekend editions of NBC Nightly News, and covered such notable stories as John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane crash and the 1990s school shootings in Colorado and Oregon. In 2003, she covered the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and later anchored NBC's weekend coverage of the War in Iraq. In 2005, she covered the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in New Orleans. Soledad moved to CNN where she co-anchored their flagship morning program American Morning in July 2003.

O'Brien has just completed a documentary entitled, "Children of the Storm," directed by Spike Lee. She continues to work for CNN, hosting Special Investigations Unit and occasionally filling in for Anderson Cooper on Anderson Cooper 360. She also anchored exit poll coverage during CNN's coverage of the primaries and caucuses in the 2008 United States presidential race. She also has filled in for Paula Zahn on Paula Zahn Now.

O'Brien's work has received an Emmy for her work co-hosting the Discovery Channel's The Know Zone. She has been named to People's 50 Most Beautiful in 2001 and to People en Español's 50 Most Beautiful in 2004. She was named to Irish American Magazine's "Top 100 Irish Americans" on two occasions. She is also on Black Enterprise magazine's 2005 Hit List. Also in 2005, she was awarded "Groundbreaking Latina of the Year" award by Catalina magazine. Most recently she was awarded the 2007 NAACP President's Award.

In May 2007, O’Brien gave the keynote address at the undergraduate commencement at Bryant University and was presented with a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree. She was also the convocation speaker at Cornell University's Commencement on May 26, 2007. O'Brien was also invited to Stony Brook University to speak as part of the university's School of Journalism's 'My Life as...' series. Her section is titled, 'My Life As a CNN Anchor'. O'Brien also spoke at the Binghamton University commencement in December 2007 and received a standing ovation after her speech detailing her disbelief in advice. O'Brien served as the keynote speaker for the 2008 annual National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) Conference in Boston, MA in March 2008.

O'Brien joined CNN in July 2003 as the co-anchor of the network's flagship morning program, American Morning, and distinguished herself by reporting from the scene on the transformational stories that broke on her watch. Her efforts following Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in Phuket, Thailand, have earned her numerous awards and critical acclaim.

O'Brien was part of the coverage teams that earned CNN a George Foster Peabody award for its Katrina coverage and an Alfred I. duPont Award for its coverage of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. In 2006, the National Urban League awarded her its Women of Power award. O'Brien was also included in Crain's Business Reports' "40 under 40", Essence magazine's "40 under 40" and Black Enterprise "40 Under 40." O'Brien earned the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award from the National Association of Minorities in Cable in 2006 and has received honorary degrees from Siena College and Mercy College.

She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She serves on the board of directors of The Harlem School of the Arts. O'Brien is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in English and American literature.

Marian Anderson: The Voice that Challenged a Nation

Acclaimed opera singer Marian Anderson is perhaps best remembered for her performance on Resurrection Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 27, 1897, (Marian Anderson always claimed she was born on 17 February 1902, however her birth certificate is reported to give her birth date as 27 February 1897). Marian Anderson was the oldest of three daughters born to John and Anna Anderson. Her two sisters, Alice (aka Alyce) and Ethel, also became singers. Ethel Anderson was mother to world renowned orchestra leader James DePreist.

Marian Anderson joined a junior church choir at the age of six. Before long, she was nicknamed “The Baby Contralto.” When she was eight, her father bought a piano from his brother, but they could not afford any lessons so Marian taught herself. She applied to a White music school after her graduation from high school in 1921, but was turned away because she was Black. The woman working the admissions counter replied, "We don't take colored" when she tried to apply. She continued her singing studies with a private teacher. Four years later she debuted with the New York Philharmonic on August 26, 1925 and scored an immediate success. In 1928, she sang for the first time at Carnegie Hall. She spent 1934 and almost all of 1935 touring Europe with great success. She visited Eastern European capitals and Russia and returned again to Scandina, where "Marian fever" had spread to small towns and villages where she had thousands of fans.

The famed conductor Arturo Toscanini told her she had a voice "heard once in a hundred years." In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Marian Anderson to sing in Constitution Hall which they owned. The District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a White public high school. As a result of the ensuing furor, thousands of DAR members, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned. The Roosevelts, with Walter White, then-executive secretary of the NAACP, and Anderson's manager, Sol Hurok, then persuaded Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange an open air Marian Anderson concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On April 9, 1939, she performed the historic concert which became a landmark in civil rights history, The concert, commencing with a dignified and stirring rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" attracted a crowd of more 75,000 of all colors and was a sensation with a national radio audience of millions. Several weeks later, Marian gave a private concert at the White House, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt was entertaining King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Britain.

In 1943, Marian performed at Constitution Hall, at a benefit for Chinese relief. She insisted the DAR suspend its segregated seating policy for the concert. The federal government continued to bar her from using the high school auditorium in the nation’s capitol. In July 1943, Marian married Orpheus H. Fisher, a Delaware architect she had known since childhood. The couple purchased a 100 acre farm in Danbury, Connecticut three years earlier in 1940 after an exhaustive search throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Many purchases were attempted but thwarted by property sellers due to racial discrimination. The Danbury property transaction was initially disputed by the seller as well, after he discovered the couple was Black. Through the years Fisher built many outbuildings on the property that became known as Marianna Farm, including an acoustic rehearsal studio he designed for his wife. The compound remained Anderson & Fisher's home for over 50 years. Ms. Anderson symbolized the civil rights movement with dignity and grace: In Europe, she was welcomed into the finest hotels and restaurants, but in the U.S., she was shifted to third- or fourth-class accommodations. In the South, she often stayed with friends. Simple tasks as arranging for laundry, taking a train, or eating at a restaurant were often difficult. She would take meals in her room and traveled in drawing rooms on night trains. Early on, she insisted on “vertical” seating in segregated cities; meaning black audience members would be allotted seats in all parts of the auditorium. Many times, it was the first time blacks would sit in the orchestra section. By 1950, she would refuse to sing where the audience was segregated.

QUOTE:
[On prejudice]: Sometimes, it's like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.
-- Marian Anderson

On January 7, 1955, Marian Anderson became the first Black American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera. 1958 she was officially designated delegate to the United Nations, a formalization of her role as "goodwill ambassador" of the U.S. she played earlier, and in 1972 she was awarded the UN Peace Prize. She sang at the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957, as well as President John F. Kennedy’s in 1961. In 1963, she sang at the March on Washington for Job and Freedom. On April 19, 1965, Resurrection Sunday, Marian gave her final concert at Carnegie Hall, following a year-long farewell tour.

However, she continued to appear publicly, narrating Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, including a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1976. Her achievements were recognized and honored with many prizes, including the Springarn Medal in 1939, given annually to a Black American who “shall have made the highest achievement during the preceding year or years in any honorable field of endeavor.” In 1941, she received the Bok award, given annually to an outstanding Philadelphia citizen. She used the $10,000 prize money to found the Marian Anderson Scholarships; the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978 and a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991. In 2001, the 1939 documentary film, Marian Anderson: the Lincoln Memorial Concert was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 1963 she was one of the original 31 recipients of the newly reinstituted Presidential Medal of Freedom (which is awarded for "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interest of the United States, World Peace or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors"), and in 1965 she christened the nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine, USS George Washington Carver. On January 27, 2005, a commemorative U.S. postage stamp honored Marian Anderson as part of the Black Heritage series. Anderson is also pictured on the U.S. $5,000 Series I United States Savings Bond. She is a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America. In 1980, the U.S. Treasury Department coined a half-ounce gold commemorative medal with her likeness. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan presented her with the National Medal of Arts.

She was the first Black person to be named a permanent member of Metropolitan Opera Company and was a frequent performer at the White House. During the World War II and the Korean War, Marian Anderson participated by entertaining the troops in hospitals and bases. By 1956 she had performed over one thousand times. Marian Anderson died in 1993 at the age of 96 in Portland, Oregon at the home of her nephew, conductor James DePreist.

The Marian Anderson Award is given to an artist who exhibits leadership in a humanitarian area. The award was first given in 1998. Recipients include: Harry Belafonte, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Quincy Jones, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Sidney Poitier.

Cookie Joins HIV/AIDS Fight

Los Angeles Lakers basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s wife, Cookie, has joined in his effort to cut rising HIV rates among Black Americans. Cookie Johnson, who stood by his side when he called a news conference 16 years ago to announce he had been infected with HIV, has taken an active role in her husband’s “I Stand With Magic” campaign, a five-year, $60 million effort financed by the drug firm Abbott. Their goal is to cut AIDS rates among Black Americans by 50%.

For a woman who has long avoided the spotlight, this marks a major turning point. Mrs. Johnson said that she does not like getting out in front of people, but when she heard that HIV rates among Black women were 20 times those of White women she felt she really needed to get out and speak. As a woman who lives with someone who has the disease, maybe someone will listen to what she has to say or use her as an example. Maybe that will save some lives.

AIDS remains the leading cause of death of Blacks ages 25 to 44, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Blacks make up only 13% of the U.S. population, but account for 49% of all cases of HIV. Black women account for 64% of all women with HIV. The effect of the disease is most evident in Washington, D.C, where about one of every 50 people has HIV. And although Blacks account for 57% of the city’s population, they account for 81% of new HIV cases. More than 37% of the cases were spread through heterosexual sex.

In the past year Magic has traveled to 16 cities around the country with large Black populations. “The number one thing we have to do is change the mind-set and attitude in Black America,” said Magic. “I Stand With Magic” is part on a national Black mobilization by leaders who have made a commitment to end the epidemic in Black America in five years. The NAACP, Urban League, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and RainbowPUSH Coalition have been joined by Black mayors, legislators and entertainers such as LL Cool J, Common and Queen Latifah.

Cookie wants to awaken women to the realities of living in communities where a virus is being spread stealthily by people who may not know they’re infected. The way to fight back, she says, is to get an HIV test. Early detection saves lives. Her time as a wife of a celebrity dealing with HIV gives her an opportunity to reach millions of women with a message they don’t often hear: “You can live with someone who has HIV/AIDS and have a normal life.” She says her husband is healthy. He takes his medication every day. They eat healthy and exercise. They have a normal relationship. They keep their date night every Friday night.

Let’s get the word out people. Protect yourself, get tested, Please.

NAACP Image Awards

Actor Hill Harper, winner of the NAACP Image Award for his role on CSI: NY, expressed my sentiments exactly (The Nubian Epistle focus: presenting positive images of Black people without bringing others down) when he stated, It's called an Image Award and I believe they're not just looking at acting, but they're looking at the image you portray and how you live your life. I'm very proud to win it, because I try to lift up and break stereotypes about the African-American male, and I'm proud of my work. It's not just about acting."

Other winners included Actor Denzel Washington, who won for his roll in the movie The Great Debaters, which won for best movie. He said, "I'm happy for everybody up here," who also directed the film. "I'm very grateful for this award and particularly just happy that some of these young people got recognized. Denzel sported a shaved head, for his upcoming movie, The Taking of Pelham 123. The Great Debaters also produced other winners including younger actors Jurnee Smollett and Denzel Whitaker. Alicia Keys won four awards in the music category -- album, song, music video and female artist.

Senator Barack Obama didn't earn any trophies at this year's NAACP Image Awards, but he was a winner even though his name was not mentioned. Many stars such as actor/director Tyler Perry just dropped campaign catch phases such as “Yes we can.” Perry, whose House of Payne TV series picked up three awards and is known for playing multiple characters, joked, "I'm voting three times: one as myself, one as Madea and one as Joe." House of Payne's additional wins were for its stars LaVan Davis and Lance Gross.

Hill Harper, who is a member of Senator Obama campaign finance committee, revealed, "Barack Obama and I have known each other for 20 years. We went to Harvard Law School together." The timing of the writers strike was perfect for Harper to hit the campaign trail in support of Obama; he's due back on the set the day after the March 4 primaries. Other winners were less partial to a specific candidate, but did point to politics:

Stevie Wonder, inducted into the NAACP Hall of Fame, used his time onstage to praise the 99-year-old organization, saying "it's through this organization that we now have two (presidential) candidates, one a female and the other an African-American. … I say let them both win so that we can have a strong, united people of the United States. I'm very, very excited about the possibility." Ugly Betty's Vanessa Williams, supporting actress in a comedy series winner, said: "This is such an exciting time in our lives. We can all feel the change happening and we all have the power. Vote." And Regina Taylor, who won an acting award for her role on CBS' The Unit, said the trophy was a great honor, partly because "when we're looking at the news and seeing a woman running for president and a Black man running for president, you have to look back and see how we got here, and the NAACP is the organization that was in the center of it."

Special honors went to veteran Oscar-nominated actress Ruby Dee and to singer Aretha Franklin. Aretha said she had attended the NAACP ceremony since the early days, "when the sets were falling down and cue cards were being written in the wings just before the artists walked on stage," she said. "This is the icing on the cake for me."

Obama-related works actually did win awards: a TVOne interview and a biography by David Mendell.