Shop These Black-Owned Beauty Brands For A Flawless Look

Rihanna turned the beauty industry on its heels with the debut of Fenty Beauty. According to Forbes, the Bajan mogul has racked in over $570 million in revenue since its launch. With an array of 40 shades to complement a range of complexions for women of color who are often underserved in the market, Fenty was something refreshingly new that the makeup industry desperately needed. Black women spend an estimated $7.5 billion every year on beauty products; 80% is spent on cosmetics and black shoppers spend twice as much on skincare than non-black shoppers.

With Fenty encouraging the industry to recognize the needs of black women, more and more black-owned beauty entrepreneurs have hit the ground running with various ventures that focus on our beauty needs from nails, lips, and hair. Here are a couple of fabulous black-owned companies to help complete your flawless look.

 

Nails: Pear Nova

Source: Instagram

Blending fashion-forward hues fresh off the runway with a vegan, five-free formulation, Pear Nova’s colorful line of polishes quickly gained devoted fans with nude tones to complete darker complexions and colorful shades. Founder Rachel James, one of the stars of VH1’s Black Ink Chicago, used her background in fashion merchandising to launch the brand in 2012 with the aim of uniting her diverse expertise in beauty and fashion.

 

Lips: The Lip Bar

The perfect pout can highlight any outfit. In 2012, Melissa Butler wanted to help black women find their perfect lip color, so she opened Lip Bar, a cruelty-free, vegan lipstick brand to work with their skin tones. Her colorful lipsticks were featured on black Muslim model Ashley Blevins in the #ThisIsBeauty campaign, where consumers on Instagram were encouraged to take photos wearing their favorite Lip Bar product.

 

Just for Men: Bevel

Source: Instagram

Women aren’t the only ones driving the beauty industry. Men’s skincare is also on the rise and Bevel caters to black men who are looking to upgrade their daily look.

 

Hair: Taliah Waajid

Source: Instagram

New York-based Taliah Waajid wanted to create a collection of hair products that would help manage her kinky coils. After years of making hair formulas in her home, she decided to open her own natural hair business. It is now sold in stores across the country.

 

Skincare: Base Butter

Source: Instagram

Base Butter was a company She’Neil Johnson created for women who wanted simple, natural remedies for better skin. Today, her company sells a wide variety of skincare products with organic ingredients for perfectly healthy, smooth skin.

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Years after his murder, House finally passes Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill

Lynching grew one step closer to becoming a federal crime yesterday after the House passed the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act. The House bill, introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), would add lynching to the United States Criminal Code and make it a hate crime.

READ MORE: House to vote on 120-year-old long overdue anti-lynching bill

Last year, the Senate unanimously passed an anti-lynching bill that was put forth by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Now all that remains is for the two bills to be merged into one and sent to President Trump to sign into law, which he is expected to do, The New York Times is reporting.

This moment is historic because, for at least 120 years, the House and Senate have tried to pass an anti-lynching law to make the abominable evil a federal crime. But each time, anti-lynching bills were blocked, put on hold or ignored, until now. Even though the move is considered more of a symbolic gesture in today’s time, it is still needed, legislators said.

“Today brings us one step closer to finally reconciling a dark chapter in our nation’s history,” Booker said in a statement about the approved House bill.

“We are one step closer to finally outlawing this heinous practice and achieving justice for over 4,000 victims of lynching,” Mr. Rush said in a statement when the House vote was announced last week.

Emmett Till was just 14 when white men tortured and killed him in 1955 after a then 21-year-old white woman named Carolyn Bryant said he grabbed her by the waist and whistled at her in a Mississippi grocery store. Many years after Till’s murder, Bryant admitted that she lied in her testimony. Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, chose to have an open-casket funeral so photographers could capture it and the whole world could see what they did to her son.

Bryant’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his brother, J.W. Milam, were charged with killing Emmett but were acquitted by an all-white jury, which was typically the outcome in such cases.

But on Wednesday, the House sought to acknowledge the wrong by adding lynching to the United States Criminal Code. And while its timing is late, it is still important to have an anti-lynching law on the books, particularly with a surge in racist acts that the United States has experienced in recent years – from the nine Black parishioners killed in a Charleston, South Carolina church while attending Bible study in 2015 to the brutal killing of James Byrd Jr., a Black man who was tied to a pickup truck and dragged for several miles by three white supremacists in Jasper, Texas in 1998.

“The importance of this bill cannot be overstated,” Mr. Rush said in his statement, according to The New York Times.

READ MORE: WATCH | The evil history of lynching and why President Trump&’s tweet was disrespectful

“From Charlottesville to El Paso, we are still being confronted with the same violent racism and hatred that took the life of Emmett and so many others,” he said, referring to the violent white supremacist rally that occurred in Virginia in 2017 as well as a mass shooting in Texas in 2019 where Latinos were targeted. “The passage of this bill will send a strong and clear message to the nation that we will not tolerate this bigotry.”

The post Years after his murder, House finally passes Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill appeared first on TheGrio.

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Louisiana judge apologizes for using the n-word, says she won’t step down

A white, Louisiana district court judge admitted that she used a racial slur in a text message exchange to describe a Black sheriff’s deputy and Black law clerk.

The 23^rd Judicial District Judge Jessie LeBlanc told WAFB that she sent a heated text message to her one-time lover, Bruce Prejean, the former Chief Deputy in Assumption Parish, Louisiana. Both LeBlanc and Prejean were married at the time of the affair. Prejean has seen been demoted by Sheriff Leland Falcon after he admitted to the affair last year.

READ MORE: Judge allows discrimination case related to Bill Maher’s use of n-word to move forward

LeBlanc told the station after she ended the affair with Prejean, someone left an anonymous note on her door with the “n-word” scrawled on it, and someone sent a package to her office with Prejean’s phone records. She claims the phone records included the phone number of another judge’s female law clerk, which led her to believe that Prejean and the Black law clerk had been seeing each other.

“From there, I did lash out at him,” the judge told WAFB on Sunday. “And, in lashing out at him, in those text messages, I lashed out at two of his African-American friends. One of them being that law clerk. I did call them that name (n-word). They do not deserve that. They deserve an apology from me. And, I sincerely apologize to both of them for using that word. While I may have been upset, angry, scared, it does not excuse my actions.”

“I admit that I used that word,” LeBlanc added. “I profusely apologize for that. I should have never said it. It was uncalled for. I was angry. I was upset. But, it’s no excuse.”

When the WAFB reporter asked the judge if she ever used the offensive slur before, she appeared to stutter. “Not in a – no – not – no – not in a – no – I have not used that racial slur in the past,” LeBlanc told the station. “This was in a moment of a heated exchange that was private between Bruce and one I that I never dreamed would have come out to the public.

Now Baton Rouge NAACP President Eugene Collins is calling for LeBlanc to step down and threatens demonstrations if she fails to do so.

“She should be removed from the bench,” Collins told WAFB. “This is about creating a fair and impartial system.”

Also, District Attorney Ricky Babin and the district’s lead public defender have filed a motion asking that LeBlanc remove herself from criminal cases in Assumption Parish or have the court force her to do so.

LeBlanc’s attorney, Jill Craft said the slur was horrible but cautioned as to the widespread implication if LeBlanc is forced out.

“It’s terrible and there’s no excuse – zero excuse – for anyone using that word and that language,” Craft said. “My concern globally is one of where do you draw the line? Does that mean that every judge in the state has to sign an affidavit under oath that they’ve not used the n-word or they’ve not referred to women as the c-word or the b-word or gay people in a derogatory fashion and, if they have, are they automatically disqualified from cases involving women, African Americans, Hispanics, or gay people?”

READ MORE: A Chicago judge removed from the bench after claims of making insensitive racial statements

As for LeBlanc, she said she won’t be stepping down.

“I know in my heart that I have done my job to the very best of my ability,” she told the station.

The post Louisiana judge apologizes for using the n-word, says she won’t step down appeared first on TheGrio.

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Black Developer Terrica Smith Went from Homeless to Building Affordable Housing

As a black woman in her mid-30s, Terrica Smith has cleared many hurdles to accomplish a number of major feats. She is the owner of Cachet Real Estate and a managing partner for Salt Capital Equity Group. Smith is also bringing her dream to life with the Madeline Cove project, a housing development that will provide 30 affordable homes, 60 townhouses, a 50-unit senior complex, and a retail building, according to The Acadiana Advocate.

The purpose of the project is to satisfy the housing needs of New Orleans’s north side. This project, backed by a local bank, already has a waiting list of more than 300 people. According to The Acadiana Advocate, the structure will include “the senior center, featuring 50 living units that will each be 500-600 square feet” and a “retail center, which will feature up to five spaces for light retail, a coffee shop or maybe a grocery store.”

Smith’s journey was a difficult one. She was a foster child who ended up aging out of the foster care system when she turned 16. Afterward, she was homeless on the streets of New Orleans.

“My mentor was being homeless,” Smith said. “It was the scariest moment of my life because people are pulling on you, trying to attack you. It’s not safe. You can’t sleep. I made a promise to my son under that bridge: As long as I had air in my lungs, I would never be homeless again.”

But Smith turned her life around, taking a leap of faith from living under the Claiborne overpass to visiting the White House, where along with other leaders and various business officials, she spoke about New Orleans’s progress with the project and Opportunity Zone program.

from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/2Pvk8L4

Black Developer Terrica Smith Went from Homeless to Building Affordable Housing

As a black woman in her mid-30s, Terrica Smith has cleared many hurdles to accomplish a number of major feats. She is the owner of Cachet Real Estate and a managing partner for Salt Capital Equity Group. Smith is also bringing her dream to life with the Madeline Cove project, a housing development that will provide 30 affordable homes, 60 townhouses, a 50-unit senior complex, and a retail building, according to The Acadiana Advocate.

The purpose of the project is to satisfy the housing needs of New Orleans’s north side. This project, backed by a local bank, already has a waiting list of more than 300 people. According to The Acadiana Advocate, the structure will include “the senior center, featuring 50 living units that will each be 500-600 square feet” and a “retail center, which will feature up to five spaces for light retail, a coffee shop or maybe a grocery store.”

Smith’s journey was a difficult one. She was a foster child who ended up aging out of the foster care system when she turned 16. Afterward, she was homeless on the streets of New Orleans.

“My mentor was being homeless,” Smith said. “It was the scariest moment of my life because people are pulling on you, trying to attack you. It’s not safe. You can’t sleep. I made a promise to my son under that bridge: As long as I had air in my lungs, I would never be homeless again.”

But Smith turned her life around, taking a leap of faith from living under the Claiborne overpass to visiting the White House, where along with other leaders and various business officials, she spoke about New Orleans’s progress with the project and Opportunity Zone program.

from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/2Pvk8L4