The 44 Percent: Black Pepper Food Festival, hate crime in Jacksonville & Rick Ross class
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
South Florida’s Black restaurant food festival, Black Pepper Food Festival, held its third iteration Aug. 26 and the celebration didn’t disappoint. Think of a family reunion but all the dishes are from professional chefs.
There was a little bit of everything. Succulent pulled pork sandwiches with a gold barbecue drizzle from Smokey Bear’s BBQ. Refreshing carrot juice from Sir Vin Delights. Mouth-watering lobster rolls with a touch of Cajun seasoning from The Trap 954. Even a bit of line dancing.
That the festival had to move from Florida International University to Overtown was a blessing in disguise. The atmosphere was even more congenial. More upbeat. More like home.
“To be able to showcase our Black neighborhood in a positive light was a beautiful thing,” said Alexis Brown, the co-founder of the Black Pepper Food Festival. “It was very intergenerational, which was one of our goals. We had people as young as couple months old up to 93 years and there’s not a lot of spaces in Black Miami that have that.”
INSIDE THE 305
State Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried’s ‘Take Back Florida’ stops in North Miami:
Florida’s Democratic Party leaders are determined to improve their chances in future elections.
The “Take Back Florida” tour – which found State Party Chair Nikki Fried traveling throughout Florida – was the first step.
“We are here,” Fried said to a crowd of more than 50 people at The Katz Restaurant and Lounge. “We are listening. We are showing up early. And it is my complete promise that we are going to invest. We are going to invest in the people on the ground, to invest in the communities that are doing the work.”
Launched Aug. 2, the tour has taken Fried across the state where she has, among many other things, championed the Florida Democratic Party’s $1 million investment into improving voter registration inside the party. Local parties, Fried said, will provide input about how to use the money so it’s spent wisely.
“We got to get our voter registration numbers up,” she added. “That is a must.”
Heat legend Udonis Haslem raising his real estate game with $85M housing development:
UD doesn’t waste much time huh?
Fresh off his NBA retirement, the Miami native partnered with Magellan Housing and Royal American Construction & Development to build a combination of affordable and workforce housing in North Miami. The future complex – located at Northeast Sixth Avenue and Northeast 135th Street – will feature 174 rental apartments and 26 townhomes with price caps.
“It’s going to preserve the fabric of the community. It’s going to put a dent in the gentrification and displacement happening across Miami-Dade,” said Maybelyn Rodríguez Laureano, executive director South Florida Community Development Coalition. “It’ll help stabilize a lot of families, so they can focus on other priorities and building wealth, like saving for school. It’ll be an economic driver. Once people secure affordable and permanent housing like homeownership, it changes a lot of dynamics for any community.”
Construction should be completed by late 2025, according to Royal American President Joey Chapman.
OUTSIDE THE 305
Racist shooting in Jacksonville killed mother, teenager and 4-year-old girl’s father:
A racist gunman killed three people – 52-year-old Angela Carr, 29-year-old Jerrald Gallion and 19-year-old Anolt Laguerre – in Jacksonville Saturday. The murders are already being investigated as a federal hate crime.
Amid the gravity of the situation, much about the individuals’ lives is lost. So I decided to compile a list of how each victim will be remembered by their respective families, courtesy of CNN, as well as links to their GoFundMe pages.
“I knew I could always count on her, and now she’s gone,” Ashley Carr said. “My mom is and will always be the best woman in the world to me.”
“She loved her daddy, and her daddy loved her,” said Sabrina Rozier, a grandmother of Gallion’s child.
Rozier later added: “A father-daughter dance was coming up in February. He was so excited about it – talking about the colors they was going to wear and all. And he was robbed of that. And so was my granddaughter.”
“AJ’s life was marked by resilience and positivity, even in the face of adversity,” Quantavious Laguerre wrote on his brother’s GoFundMe page. “We lost our mother on January 10, 2009, when AJ was just five years old. Despite this immense loss at such a young age, AJ remained positive and strong for all of us, supporting us through the challenging times that followed our mother’s passing.”
HIGH CULTURE
New photo exhibit captures South Florida neighborhoods experiencing gentrification:
In 2022, Smith Durogene won an Ellie Award for his project “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” which documents neighborhoods like Liberty City and Brownsville amid gentrification.
That project will debut Thursday evening and run for the next week in Liberty City. For Durogene, a West Palm Beach native who has lived throughout South Florida, this project was very personal.
“I grew up in these communities,” Durogene said. “That’s probably why I feel so much when you start to see these things disappearing and what not. It’s a part of me being taken away. And if I feel like this, I can only imagine what the people that are still residing in some of these communities are feeling right now.”
This Miami rapper’s life will be the subject of a new law class at Georgia State University
“I’m not a businessman/ I’m a business, man.”
That might be a Jay Z line but it’s difficult not to also think of Rick Ross considering the amount of Wingstops, Checkers and even the record label all in his name. This is why Georgia State University professor Moraima Ivory will lead a class that explores the business side of the Biggest Boss.
“You get an opportunity to see how he has built this empire that he has amassed,” said Ivory, professor of practice and director of the Entertainment, Sports & Media Law Initiative at the George State University’s College of Law in Atlanta, “whether it’s in music, real estate, in brand partnerships, equity, positioning – he has done it.”
Where does “The 44 Percent” name come from? Click here to find out how Miami history influenced the newsletter’s title.
