Praying at the Temple of Traditional Jazz
For Ben Jaffe, the future is all about updating the past………………………………………….Jaffe was born into musical royalty. His parents, Allan and Sandra, founded New Orleans’s world-famous Preservation Hall in 1961, after they fell in love with the Crescent City while returning from their honeymoon in Mexico. They uprooted
Justice, Served: A Tennis Story
The backgrounds of tennis partners Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton were radically different. The daughter of share-croppers, Gibson was born in South Carolina and raised in New York City’s Harlem. British and Jewish, Buxton was the daughter of entertainment impresario Harry Buxton, who made his fortune by breaking the bank at a casino.
When a Long-Legged Jewish Girl Shamed Hitler
In 1931, when Germany was awarded the 1936 Olympics, Adolf Hitler hadn’t yet come to power. Two years later, after he became chancellor, he embraced the Olympic Games as an opportunity to show off his Aryan nation to the world.He faced one serious obstacle: himself. If word got out about Hitler’s discriminatory laws and policies, the rest of
The Most Politically Charged Event in Sports History
On June 22, 1938, when heavyweight champ Joe Louis entered the ring at Yankee Stadium to defend his title against Germany’s Max Schmeling, the approximately 70,000 fans in attendance — and the 70 million people tuned to their radios — knew that this was no ordinary bout. Occurring mere months after Germany annexed Austria, the fight was seen
Pro-Nazi Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, 101, Dies
Leni Riefenstahl always insisted that the two most famous films she directed, “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” were nothing more than straight-forward documentaries. Others have argued that they were nothing more than Nazi propaganda. What’s indisputable is that the controversy over Riefenstahl, who died this week at the age of
Meet the Man Who Brought Baseball Into the Strike Zone
Marvin Miller threw a curve ball into baseball history — and sports history — shifting the sport’s balance of power irrevocably. He made his entrée back in the days when baseball players were treated as chattel — making four-figure salaries, not eight — and labor unions had no place in sports. By the time he made his exit,
Calling for Forgiveness From Brooklyn Dodgers Fans
On October 8, 1957, Brooklyn Dodgers publicist Arthur “Red” Patterson shocked the baseball world when he announced that the team was moving to Los Angeles.Since that time, Brooklynites have clung to their hatred of then-owner Walter O’Malley. Some would go so far as to say that the Dodgers’ abrupt departure destroyed Brooklyn’s