FIRST BLACK FORMULA 1 DRIVER AT TUSSAUDS: Lewis Hamilton wax figure unveiled Wednesday in London.

*A statue of race car standout Lewis Hamilton, the first black Formula 1 driver, was unveiled Wednesday at London's Madame Tussauds waxworks museum.

"He has undoubtedly won a place in the nation's hearts for his determination and single mindedness and a place at Madame Tussauds for an amazing track record," said a spokesperson for the attraction.

Hamilton became the youngest ever Formula One world champion last year in only his second season, beating Felipe Massa to the crown on the last corner of the last race.

His wax look-a-like has him in full racing kit and holding a replica of his race helmet. It took approximately six months to create and cost $ 210,000.

As previously reported, Hamilton was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) earlier this month.

New Black History: FIRST EVER COMMERCIAL FLIGHT WITH AN ALL BLACK FEMALE FLIGHT CREW!!!

Our African-American women continue to demonstrate professionalism, intelligence and unlimited potential as they contribute to our overall struggle for unlimited freedom, access and opportunity in America. The sisters on Flights 5202 and 5106 (a jet owned by Atlantic Southeast Airlines) have proven that African-American women can do anything if just given a fair opportunity.

Their aviation success is a very proud moment for us all.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm almost positive that we might have made history on Thursday, February 12, 2009. I was a part of an all African American female crew. I'm attaching the photos and you can pass them along to whomever. We were so excited!

We operated flight 5202 from Atlanta to Nashville and flight 5106 from Nashville back to Atlanta. The crew included CPT Rachelle Jones, FO Stephanie Grant, FA's Robin Rogers and Diana Galloway!


Proud moment indeed …

Man Who Beat Famed Civil Rights Leader NOW ASKS FOR FORGIVENESS

WASHINGTON — Elwin Wilson was an unabashed racist, the sort who once hung a black doll from a noose outside his home. John Lewis was a young civil rights leader bent on changing laws, if not hearts and minds, even if it cost him his life.

They faced each other at a South Carolina bus station during a protest in 1961. Wilson joined a white gang that jeered Lewis, attacked him and left him bloodied on the ground.

(enlarge photo) In this Feb. 21, 2005 file photo, then Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, walks with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., as they arrive for a tribute to Lewis celebrating his 65th birthday and paying tribute to the 1965 Bloody Sunday, clash in Selma, Ala., in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Amis, File)

Forty-eight years later, the men met again — this time so Wilson could apologize to Lewis and express regret for his hatred. Lewis, now a congressman from Atlanta, greeted his former tormentor at his Capitol Hill office.

"I just told him that I was sorry," Wilson, 72, said in a telephone interview Wednesday as he traveled home to Rock Hill, S.C. For years, he said, he tried to block the incident out of his mind "and couldn't do it."

Lewis said Wilson is the first person involved in the dozens of attacks against him during the civil rights era to step forward and apologize. When they met Tuesday, Lewis offered forgiveness without hesitation.

"I was very moved," said Lewis. "He was very, very sincere, and I think it takes a lot of raw courage to be willing to come forward the way he did. ... I think it will lead to a great deal of healing."

Wilson said he had felt an urge to voice his remorse for years. He talked about his past activities a few weeks ago with a friend, and the friend asked him where he thought he might go if he died.

"I said probably hell," Wilson said. "He said, 'Well, you don't have to.'"

Wilson's apology was first reported by The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald. After reading an article about local black civil rights leaders reacting to President Barack Obama's inauguration, he and another former segregationist called the paper saying they wanted to apologize.

The paper aired their comments and documented an emotional meeting with the local activists at a former whites-only lunch counter in downtown Rock Hill, where Wilson had antagonized demonstrators during a 1961 sit-in.

After meeting with the local activists, Wilson realized that Lewis must have been the young black man he had attacked at the bus station that same year, when a bus carrying two Freedom Riders rolled into town. The riders were Lewis, who is black, and the late Albert Bigelow, who was white. Neither pressed charges over the assault.

Wilson didn't know that Lewis, who was 21 at the time, had since become one of the most influential Democrats in Congress.

"I never dreamed that a man that I had assaulted, that he would ever be a congressman and that I'd ever see him again," Wilson said. "He and everybody up there in his office ... they were just good people, treated you right and all."

Lewis and Wilson said they hoped Wilson's quest for redemption will inspire others who took part in civil rights-era violence to come forward and help heal wounds from the struggle over integration.

"I said if just one person comes forward and gets the hate out of their heart, it's all worth it," Wilson said. "But I hope there will be a bunch of people. Life's short and we all go to the same place when we die."

What do you think?  Would you forgive him?

POLITICS: OBAMA MEETS WITH OTHER PRESIDENTS

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

On Wednesday, President-elect Barack Obama met with President George W. Bush, former Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.

“All the gentlemen here understand both the pressures and possibilities of this office. For me to have the opportunity to get advice, good counsel and fellowship with these individuals is extraordinary,” Obama said.

Bush added:

One message that I have and I think we all share is that we want you to succeed, whether we’re Democrat or Republican we care deeply about this country. All of us who have served in this office understand that the office itself transcends the individual.

GM Names 1st Black Female Design Director!

Congratulations to Crystal L. Windham, General Motors’ first black female Director of General Motors North American Passenger Car Design.
Ms. Windham will head the interior design for GM’s Global Midsize Car, Global Compact Car, and Global Small Car.
She was a lead designer on the 2008 award winning Chevy Malibu “Car of the Year.”
“A mentor guided me towards automotive design. Without guidance and support from family and co-workers, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I truly love my job- it’s creative, expressive - but it is not easy. Enjoying what you do, however, makes it all worthwhile. I hope other young women will look to what I have done and be inspired to consider automotive design,” she said.
There are so many careers to choose from in our ever expanding global market, but many young people aren’t aware of even half of them. Perhaps Ms. Windham also can inspire them to search beyond traditional careers to find the one that makes the best fit.
“As an interior designer,” she says, “I create solutions and appealing spaces for customers. As a leader it’s my job to foster creativity and ensure that creativity is represented in the final product.
Ms. Windham has a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from the Center for Creative Studies and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Detroit - Mercy.

BLACK HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: ELLEN JOHNSON-SIRLEAF

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (1938-) is President of Liberia and Africa’s first elected female head of state.

Born in Monrovia, Liberia, Johnson-Sirleaf is the descendant of original colonists of Liberia, AMERICO-LIBERIANS, formerly enslaved African-Americans who immigrated in the 1800s to Liberia.

She married James Sirleaf at the age of 17, and traveled to America in 1961 where she earned a B.B.A. in accounting at Madison Business College in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1964, an economics diploma from the University of Colorado in 1970, and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University in 1971.

In 1979, following her return to Liberia, Johnson-Sirleaf became involved in government as an Assistant Minister of Finance for PRESIDENT WILLIAM TOLBERT. She later resigned after getting into a disagreement about spending. The following year,MASTER SERGEANT SAMUEL DOE seized power in a military coup and Tolbert was executed with several members of his cabinet. Johnson-Sirleaf escaped and went into exile in Nairobi, Kenya. From 1983 to 1985, she served as director of Citibank in Nairobi. When Doe declared himself president, she decided to return home and run against him. She spoke out against the military regime and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. After a short period, though, she was released and went into exile once again.

She moved to Washington, D.C., and from 1992 to 1997, she worked as assistant administrator, then Director, of the UN Development Program Regional Bureau for Africa. By 1996, Samuel Doe had been killed and Liberia had been through four un-elected officials. West African peacekeepers were in Liberia, and elections were held which forced Johnson-Sirleaf to return. She lost the election to CHARLES TAYLOR in the 1997 election, and he charged her with treason.

Within the next two years, civil war had returned and Taylor handed power over to his deputy MOSES BLAH in 2003. The new interim government and rebel groups signed a historic peace accord and set about installing a new head of state. Johnson-Sirleaf was mentioned as a possible candidate, but CHARLES GYUDE BRYANT was ultimately selected. She served as head of the Governance Reform Commission and played an active role in the transitional government as the country prepared for the 2005 elections, in which she battled against GEORGE WEAH, a former football forward.

On November 23, 2005, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was declared the winner and became the first democratically elected female president in Africa. Her inauguration on January 16, 2006, included attendees First Lady Laura Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Governor General of Canada MICHAËLLE JEAN. On March 15, 2006, she addressed a joint meeting of the United States Congress, asking for support to help her country “become a brilliant beacon, an example to Africa and the world of what love of liberty can achieve”. Two days later, she submitted a request to Nigeria for the extradition of former president Charles Taylor.

On July 26, 2007, Liberia celebrated its 160th Independence Day under the theme “Liberia at 160: Reclaiming the Future.” President Johnson-Sirleaf took an unprecedented and symbolic move by asking 25-year-old Liberian activist KIMMIE WEEKS to serve as National Orator for the celebration. Weeks became Liberia’s youngest National Orator in over a hundred years and called for the government to prioritize education and health care. A few days later, President Johnson-Sirleaf issued an Executive Order making education free and compulsory for all elementary school-aged children.

Last month, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was named the 66th MOST POWERFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD. She is a divorced mother of four boys and grandmother to six children.

BLACK HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006) was the first black woman to gain popularity and critical acclaim as a major science fiction writer.
Born in Pasadena, California, Butler was the only living child her mother, Octavia M. Butler, was able to carry to term out of five pregnancies. Her father, Laurice, a shoe shiner, died when she was just a baby and her mother and grandmother raised her in a racially mixed neighborhood where her mother worked to support the family as a maid.
Butler was very shy in school, a daydreamer, and that made school very difficult for her—as did her dyslexia, which she later overcame. Nicknamed Junie, Butler began writing at 10 to escape boredom and loneliness. A couple of years later, she had become interested in science fiction. She told the Black Scholar, “I was writing my own little stories and when I was 12, I was watching a bad science fiction movie called Devil Girl from Mars and decided that I could write a better story than that. And I turned off the TV and proceeded to try, and I’ve been writing science fiction ever since.”
In 1968, she received an associate degree from Pasadena City College and then enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles and UCLA. Much of her success came about because of the Open Door Program of the Screenwriters Guild of America and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. Butler also spent time researching developments in biology, the physical sciences and genetics. While attending school, she held down a number of odd jobs, and her work experiences come through in the character of Dana in her novel Kindred.
Her first published story, “Crossover,” appeared in Clarion’s 1971 anthology. In her short fiction collection Bloodchild and Other Stories, Butler wrote “I thought I was on my way as a writer…In fact, I had five more years of rejections slips and horrible little jobs ahead of me before I sold another word.” In 1976, she published her first book, Patternmaster, though it became the fifth in the Patternist series. Most of the Patternmaster novels were written and published out of sequence.
Butler won her first award in 1980, a creative arts award from the Los Angeles YWCA. In 1984, she won a Hugo Award for her short story, “Speech Sounds”. The following year, she won another Hugo for her novella Bloodchild. It also won the 1984 Nebula Award. Other science fiction writers and fans decide on the Hugo and Nebula Awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant, which “is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential”.
Her novel, Parable of the Sower, was nominated for a Nebula in 1994 and five years later, she won the award for the sequel, Parable of the Talents. Butler had originally planned to write a third Parable novel, tentatively titled Parable of the Trickster, but encountered writer’s block and went seven years without publishing a new novel.
For her 2005 novel, Fledgling, she shifted her focus, and although Butler passed it off as a lark, the novel is connected to her other works through its exploration of race, sexuality and what it means to be a member of a community. Moreover, the novel continues the theme, raised explicitly in Parable of the Sower, that diversity is a biological imperative.
Butler has been quoted saying: “Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow…. Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”
She died outside of her home in Lake Forest Park, Washington, on February 24, 2006, at the age of 58. Some have stated she died of head injuries after falling and hitting her head on her sidewalk, while others report she suffered a stroke as a result of those injuries.
The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship was established in Butler’s memory in 2006 by the Carl Brandon Society. The scholarship enables writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops where Butler got her start.

BLACK HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: DR. SHIRLEY A. JACKSON

Dr. Shirley A. Jackson (1946-) is a physicist and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation’s oldest technological university.
Born to Beatrice and George Jackson in Washington, D.C., Jackson developed a passion for science at the age of 8, spurred by her father’s assistance with projects for her science classes. She joined the accelerated programs for math and science and graduated valedictorian from segregated Roosevelt High School in 1964. Later that year, she became one of the first black students to be accepted at MIT and the only one studying theoretical physics.
While working on her undergraduate degree, she volunteered at Boston City Hospital and tutored students at the Roxbury YMCA. In 1968, Jackson earned her B.S. and chose to stay at MIT for her doctoral work to encourage more black students to attend. She completed her Ph.D. in 1973 and became the first black woman to earn a doctorate degree from the institution.
Dr. Jackson became a research associate in theoretical physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in 1973 and served as a visiting science associate at the European Organization for Nuclear Research from 1974–1975. She then returned to Fermilab as a research associate in theoretical physics. Jackson spent 1976–1977 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Aspen Center for Physics. She also served on the technical staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories in theoretical physics from 1976 until 1978. That year, Dr. Jackson began working with the technical staff of the Scattering and Low Energy Physics Research Laboratory of Bell Telephone Laboratories.
In 1976, Dr. Jackson was appointed professor of physics at Rutgers University and served until 1991. From 1991 to 1995, she served as a consultant in semiconductor theory to AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed her Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, becoming the first woman and first black person to hold the position.
Jackson became the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on July 1, 1999. She was the first woman and first black person to hold this position, as well. In 2001, she was elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). In December of the following year, Jackson was elected president-elect (2003) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the science journal Science. In 2004, Science Spectrum Magazine and Career Communications Group, Inc. selected Dr. Jackson as one of the 50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science.
Jackson is the former president and chairman of the Board of the AAAS; a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, The American Philosophical Society, the Council on Foreign Relations; and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the AAAS. She serves on a number of boards, including the New York Stock Exchange, the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, IBM, FedEx, MIT and Georgetown University.
Dr. Jackson holds 43 honorary doctoral degrees and has been described as “a national treasure” by the National Science Board who, in 2007, selected Jackson as the recipient of the Vannevar Bush Award for “a lifetime of achievements in scientific research, education and senior statesman-like contributions to public policy”. Other honors include the CIBA-GEIGY Exceptional Black Scientist Award, the Thomas Alva Edison Science Award, the Martin Marietta Aircraft Company Scholarship and Fellowship, the Prince Hall Masons Scholarship, the National Science Foundation Traineeship, and a Ford Foundation Advanced Study Fellowship.
In 1998, Dr. Jackson was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame for “her significant contributions as a distinguished scientist and advocate for education, science and public policy”. She was also named one of the 50 Most Important Women in Science by Discover magazine. Jackson was recognized in a book published by Essence, titled 50 of The Most Inspiring African-Americans. In 2008, Jackson was honored with the L’Oreal USA For Women in Science Role Model Award, for raising awareness of the critical role that women play in the sciences.
Dr. Jackson is married to Dr. Morris A. Washington, a physics professor at Rensselaer, and the couple has one son, Alan, a graduate of Dartmouth College.

NEW BLACK HISTORY: FIRST SEIU BLACK FEMALE PRESIDENT

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000, the largest state employee union in California, recently elected Yvonne Walker as its president, the first black woman to hold the position.
Walker, a legal secretary at the Department of Justice, previously served as the 94,000-member union’s vice president for bargaining for three years.
She remarked, “We’ll continue to focus our energies to pass a responsible state budget, negotiate a new contract for our members, and build a union that wins for our members. This is an opportunity to bring everyone together…This was a tough and spirited election, but we all share the same goals.”
Elected with 44 percent of the vote, Walker will assume office on July 1.