This 11-Year-Old Autistic Boy Launched His Own Lemonade Brand

Aubrie Greene, an 11-year-old boy living with autism in Richmond, Virginia, asked his mother, Ceydria McCray, for a lemon squeezer that was on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond. He wanted it so he could create his own lemonade recipe. “Aubrie ended up sending me a picture of a lemon squeezer,” McCray told ABC 8 News. “It was at Bed Bath & Beyond on sale for $19.99 and he asked me to grab it up and I did.”

The same day McCray bought Greene his squeezer he quickly went to work on his lemonade recipe; his mother happily took samples of her son’s drink to her office where they raved about the lemonade. “They requested gallons,” McCray said. “We ended up getting cups, from cups to pouches, pouches to jugs that I was getting at the dollar store and now we got sealed bottles.”

This was how Breezzy’s Lemonade was born.

Greene’s special lemonade caught the attention of the local The Market @ 25th, which offered to put his bottles on its shelves. “It’s a really fast-moving product and people want it. It was really impressive when it first came in and people were coming in asking where it was, but it was already gone,” said Derek Houston, business analyst at The Market @ 25th.

Since opening his lemonade company, Greene has added a variety of flavors, including Plain Jane, Grapeade, Tango Mago, Striker, and Dragonfruit.

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LeBron James: “I Ain’t Playing” If Coronavirus Bans Fans from Arena

The coronavirus is spreading in such a way that sports leagues, including the National Basketball Association (NBA), are contemplating having teams play the games with no fans in attendance. This proposal didn’t sit well with superstar LeBron James who said he will not playing if there are no fans to play for, according to the Associated Press.

There is the fear of the potentially deadly virus, COVID-19, also known as coronavirus, spreading more than it has recently. Sports leagues around the globe have taken precautions or are doing so to combat the risk of professional players, arena personnel, as well as sports fans contracting the virus. The NBA sent a memo last week to all of the teams asking them to prepare for the possibility of the teams playing in an empty arena to try to stop the spread of COVID-19. 

According to the memo obtained by the Associated Press, teams should also be prepared “for the possibility of implementing temperature checks on players, team staff, referees, and anyone else who is essential to conducting such a game in the team’s arena.” The NBA pointed out that teams should identify the staff necessary to conduct games and to communicate quickly with non-essential staff, as well as ticket holders and corporate partners.

When the media questioned him after the Lakers’ win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night, where James scored 37 points, about the possibility of having to play under that protocol, he let his thoughts be known.

“We play games without the fans? Nah, that’s impossible,” James told the reporters. “I ain’t playing if I ain’t got the fans in the crowd. That’s who I play for. I play for my teammates, and I play for the fans. That’s what it’s all about. So if I show up to an arena and there ain’t no fans in there, I ain’t playing. They can do what they want to do.”

 

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Zaya Wade Made Her Red Carpet Debut With Support From Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union

The Truth Awards were created to celebrate the accomplishments of the black LGBTQ+ community and its allies, and on Saturday night, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade’s show of support for their child Zaya Wade was a parade-worthy act, in and of itself.

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1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones wants Black people to know role they play in America’s democracy

New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones unveiled her life’s seminal work last fall, with the ground-breaking storytelling and informative reporting of the 1619 Project.

Released during the 400-year anniversary of the first time Africans were sold into slavery in the Virginia colonies, Jones argues 1619 is just as important to American history as Independence Day in 1776. 

“Through a series of essays, we really assess the ongoing legacy of slavery to show that across American life, nothing has been left untouched by that decision to purchase that first group of 20 to 30 Africans,” Hannah-Jones told theGrio.

READ MORE: Janelle Monáe stars in new NYT Oscars ad for ‘1619n Project’

While many Black folks have walked away feeling empowered and educated after reading the project, there are the occasional critics who have a hard time grappling with the truth of our country’s bloody history. 

“I think the thing in the project that made people the most upset was when I wrote that one of the reasons why the colonies decided that they wanted to start a revolution and form the United States was to preserve slavery. That was really shocking to a lot of people,” Hannah-Jones explained.

But the writer deals with the backlash by either ignoring it, or taking some of the haters to task via Twitter.

With the 2020 election just months away, the Iowa native wants the 1619 Project to reinforce the integral role Black people play in our democracy. 

“It is definitely going to be the most critical election of my lifetime and probably many of the people watching this lifetime,” the Peabody winner explained.

READ MORE: Sanders says Biden winning Black vote by ‘running with his ties to Obama’ 

“So we need to make sure that our voices are heard. But we also need to make sure that in making our voice heard in this democracy that we don’t have to keep compromising as Black folks for people who tell us not to raise our concerns and that our concerns will be gotten to later once we defeat a certain person who’s in the White House,” she said.

An alum of ProPublica, Hannah-Jones covered segregation and discrimination in housing and schools for years, winning several awards for her reporting on the government’s failure to enforce mandates of the landmark 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Prior to that, she reported for the Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, where she covered demographics and census data. Her work earned the recognition of her peers, winning the Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest Excellence in Journalism award three times, and the Gannett Foundation Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism.

Hannah-Jones describes Ida B. Wells as her journalism shero and founded the Ida B. Wells Society in her honor in 2016 to provide training and mentorships for future journalists of color.

 

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Black neighborhoods of North Nashville suffered tremendous storm damage

The tornado that hit Nashville, Tennessee last week was particularly devastating to the Black neighborhoods of North Nashville.

Ishvicka Howell said she’s been without electricity for several days and she welcomed the utility trucks when they came over the weekend.

READ MORE: Three die in the South after tornadoes, severe weather wreak havoc

“When I saw those blinking lights, it was like Christmas,” Howell told ABC News. “No power. No heat. We pioneering it. Grilling it and boiling water on the grill. We’re in survival mode.”

The deadly tornado claimed two lives across the city, but in North Nashville, a community already struggling for decades to get by, the devastation of the storm is hard to calculate. There are blocks of damage— roofs off of homes uprooted trees and downed electrical poles. Some areas in North Nashville were not hit as hard as others, but most residents spent days without electricity, ABC News reported.

In terms of the hardest-hit areas, people worry that Black families may be displaced for quite some time, even permanently.

“We are worried because we know developers are going to come in,” Cornelius A. Hill, pastor of Ephesian Primitive Baptist Church, told ABC News.

Still, Hill said he is thankful for the generosity of people who have come to North Nashville’s aid. His church went without power as donations poured in outside in the parking lot. The same scenario took place in neighborhoods across North Nashville on Friday. Volunteers handed out free water, barbecue, hot dogs, pizza, and practical items such as batteries, trash bags, and diapers, the network reported.

Volunteers also went to work, helping homeowners cover damaged roofs with tarps, cut down dangling trees and piling trash along the curb for public works trucks to haul away.

“This is a historic part of Nashville. Some of these homes have been here 40 or 50 years,” Jonathan Williamson with the community group Friends and Fam told ABC News. “It’s beautiful to see everyone come out and work together to get things fixed.”

Several historically Black colleges and universities are located in North Nashville, including Fisk University, Tennessee State University, and Meharry Medical College. Tennessee State University had significant damage to its agricultural research center, estimated to cost between $30 and $50 million to rebuild, ABC News reported. However, Fisk University and Meharry Medical College had very minimal damage.

Chandra Reddy, Tennessee State University’s College of Agriculture dean, said the damage comes as the HBCU has struggled for years to get funding from the state that is equal to what it gives the University of Tennessee. Reddy said the school has worked diligently to build up the agricultural program.

READ MORE: Searches resume after tornado kills 23 in Alabama

“This tornado is a double whammy for us. We were barely putting something up there, and then this comes and wipes it out,” Reddy told the channel. Reddy said Gov. Bill Lee surveyed the damage Tuesday morning and seemed committed to helping the school rebuild.

“If we want to produce top-class research, we need good facilities and good faculty,” Reddy added. “Those don’t come cheap.”

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