Harold Eugene Ford, Jr. (born May 11, 1970) is an American politician and was the last chairman of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). He was a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee's 9th congressional district, centered in Memphis, from 1997 to 2007. Ford did not seek re-election to his House seat in 2006 when he unsuccessfully sought the Senate seat vacated by retiring Bill Frist.
Ford is the son of former Congressman Harold Ford, Sr. and Dorothy Bowles Ford. He has three brothers — Jake, Isaac, and Andrew — and one sister, Ava. His family has long been prominent in Memphis' African American community; their influence dates back to the late 19th century, when E.H. Crump, a prominent white Democrat, dominated city and state politics and befriended Harold Ford Sr.'s grandfather, N.J. Ford.
Ford was baptised at his church, Mt. Moriah-East Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. He attended Double Tree Elementary School, a public Montessori school in the Westwood neighborhood of South Memphis, and he graduated from the private St. Albans School for Boys, a prestigious university-preparatory school in Washington, D.C.. He received a B.A. in American history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. After graduation, he was a staff aide to the Senate Budget Committee, and in 1993 became special assistant at the United States Department of Commerce.
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States that have ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa.
African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States. However, some immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations, or their descendants, may be identified or self-identify with the term.
African-American history starts in the 16th century with African slaves who quickly rose up against the Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón and progresses to the present day, with Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there have been events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, including slavery, racism, Reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is an American Democratic Party politician who has been serving as the 36th Mayor of Newark, New Jersey since 2006. He is the third African-American mayor of Newark, and was formerly a Newark City Councilman, and practicing attorney. He is a graduate of Stanford University, the University of Oxford (where he was a Rhodes Scholar), and Yale Law School.
Booker was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the predominantly white, affluent town of Harrington Park, New Jersey, 20 miles north of Newark. His parents, Cary Alfred and Carolyn Rose (Jordan) Booker, were among the first black executives at IBM. In 2009, he told US News that he was raised in a religious household, and that he and his family attended a small, African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Jersey. Booker graduated from Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan. He was named to the USA Today All-USA high school football team in 1986.
He went on to Stanford University, receiving a B.A. in political science in 1991 and an M.A. in sociology the following year. While at Stanford, Booker played varsity football. He also made the All–Pacific Ten Academic team[citation needed] and was elected senior class president.. In addition, he ran The Bridge, a student-run crisis hotline and organized help for youth in East Palo Alto, from Stanford students. After Stanford, he attended The Queen's College, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, earning an honours degree in U.S. history in 1994. Booker received a J.D. in 1997 from Yale Law School, where he operated free legal clinics for low-income residents of New Haven. At Yale, he was a founding member of the Chai Society (now the Eliezer Society). He was also a Big Brother and was active in the Black Law Students Association. Booker lived in Newark during his final year at Yale. After graduation, Booker served as Staff Attorney for the Urban Justice Center in New York and Program Coordinator of the Newark Youth Project.
Barack Hussein Obama II (i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.
Johanna Cardona-Goldsmith (born September 25, 1979) is an American actress from Austin, Texas most widely known for her involvement in the Tennessee Senate election of 2006 when she appeared in the controversial "Call Me" political advertisement created by the Republican National Committee for Republican candidate and current Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee against his opponent Democrat Harold Ford. Goldsmith portrayed a young woman who claimed she "met Harold at the Playboy Party" and reminded him at the end of the advertisement with a wink, "Harold, call me."
As the commercial gained notoriety, it, and most particularly, Goldsmith became the top subjects on Larry King Live, The View, The O'Reilly Factor, Inside Edition, Real Time with Bill Maher, etc. The print world even featured Goldsmith in Time magazine and the front page of The New York Times.
In a post on the Houston Chronicle blog "Texas Politics" by Chronicle reporter Lisa Sandberg, Goldsmith admitted she was ignorant of who Harold Ford was at the time she shot the ad. Goldsmith said she did not view the ad as racist and that she herself was apolitical. She also expressed concerns that she would be typecast as a blonde bimbo due to all the attention over the commercial.
I threw my bike off the road
And lie in the grass
The hot winds blow
Promises I'll never know
Don't act twelve
With a delinquent mind
The sky turned yellow and blue
Like a week-old bruise
These days things loom above me
My head is empty
My tongue and lips
Threw my bike off the road
And lie in the grass
The hot winds blow
Promises I'll never know
Dumb at twelve
With a delinquent mind
The sky turned yellow-blue
Like a week-old bruise
These days things loom above me
My head is empty
My tongue and lips