Terrence howard autobiography definition

After it debuted last January on Fox, Empire quickly became one of the most talked-about shows on television. Its Shakespearean portrayal of family life, its stylized window onto the hip-hop industry, and its Timbaland-produced soundtrack helped it earn millions of passionate fans (and more than a few critics).

To celebrate the premiere of season 2—which airs tonight on Fox at 9 p.m. ET (8 p.m. CT)—we asked four scholars of race, new media, and pop culture to weigh in on the phenomenon that is Empire.

Once more unto the breach!

—Gayle Wald: Empire and Entrepreneurship
—Stephen Best: Black Camp
—Erica R. Edwards:
—Eric Darnell Pritchard: Fashioning Empire

“EMPIRE” AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Gayle Wald

While watching the first season of Empire, I thought a lot about Madam C. J. Walker. Sarah Breedlove was toiling for $1.50 a day as a widowed washerwoman and laundress in 1905 when she jumped at the chance to become a sales agent for a successful manufacturer of scalp and hair treatments for African Americans. Within a decade, the enterprising daughter of Louisiana slaves had reinvented herself as Madam C. J. Walker (a name suggested by her second husband, Charles Joseph Walker) and was at the helm of a multinational hair-care business that spanned manufacturing, sales, and training schools for budding “hair culturists.” By the time of her death in 1919, Walker was thought to be the wealthiest black woman in America. She had also established herself as a political activist, philanthropist, and mentor to budding black female entrepreneurs. Lacking the advantages of whiteness and maleness, let alone access to formal education or inherited wealth, Walker saw self-improvement and self-promotion as keys to black women’s advancement. As she was fond of saying, “I got my start by giving myself a start.”

If Walker is still celebrated in black popular memory, it is not merel

2012 war film directed by Anthony Hemingway

This article is about the 2012 film. For the African-American fighter pilots who were nicknamed "Red Tails", see Tuskegee Airmen. For other uses, see Red tail.

Red Tails is a 2012 American war film directed by Anthony Hemingway in his feature directorial debut, and starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. The film is about the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African-AmericanUnited States Army Air Forces (USAAF) servicemen during World War II. The characters in the film are fictional, although based on real individuals. The film was produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. and released by 20th Century Fox, and would be the last film Lucasfilm released before being purchased by The Walt Disney Company nine months later. This was Cuba Gooding Jr.'s first theatrically released film in five years since his starring role in 2007's Daddy Day Camp.

John Ridley wrote the screenplay. Additional material was shot the following year with executive producer George Lucas as director and Aaron McGruder as writer of the reshoots. It was filmed in March and July 2009. Red Tails was a personal project for Lucas, one that he had originally conceived in 1988. It is the first Lucasfilm production since the 1994 film Radioland Murders that is not associated with the Indiana Jones or Star Wars franchises. Terrence Howard had previously portrayed a Tuskegee pilot in Hart's War (2002), and Cuba Gooding Jr. had previously starred in The Tuskegee Airmen (1995), an HBO made-for-television film about the same group of pilots.

Plot

In 1944, as the air war over Europe enters a deadly phase with increasing losses of Allied bombers, the 332d Fighter Group (the Tuskegee Airmen) consisting of young African-American USAAF fighter pilots, after enduring racism throughout their recruitment and training in the Tuskegee training program, are sent into combat in Italy. Flying worn-o

1969–

Actor, producer

The professional recognition that had long been due actor Terrence Howard finally arrived when his portrayal of an aspiring musician in 2005's Hustle & Flow earned him an Academy Award nomination. The gritty tale of a Memphis pimp who dreams of rap stardom, Hustle & Flow was a hit with critics and earned comparisons to some classic underdog tales in film history such as Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, and 8 Mile. Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman singled out Howard's lead as "the single most powerful performance I've seen this year," and went on to assert that the actor "inhabits this character with a casual mastery that makes him a world unto himself; we're in touch with his ambition and sadness, his rage and longing, as if they were our own."

Howard was born in 1969 in Chicago, Illinois, and spent the first years of his life in Cleveland, Ohio. His mixed-race father, Tyrone, went to prison for a year when Howard was three years old on a manslaughter charge that made national newspaper headlines as Cleveland's "Santa Line Slaying" during the Christmas season of 1971. Tyrone and Howard's mother Anita had taken their three young sons, including Terrance, age two—to see Santa Claus at a downtown Cleveland department store. The line was a long one, and tensions escalated. Another parent voiced objections when Howard's mother—two months pregnant at the time—returned with his youngest brother to their place in line after sitting down for a time. That man, Jack Fitzgerald, was waiting in line with his own three children, and the argument between him and Howard's father turned into a physical confrontation. Fitzgerald began choking Tyrone Howard, who then brandished a nail file and stabbed Fitzgerald, which he claimed was in self-defense. "All I remember is my father standing over him, screaming, 'Please don't die,'" the Cleveland Plain Dealer quoted the actor as saying years later.

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