Connect with us

Uncategorized

Henry “Champ” Winston, 84, Fought the Good Fights, Kept the Faith

Published

on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Barbara Fluhrer

 

From humble beginnings in Memphis, Tennessee, Henry Calvin Winston fought his way to the top of the world of sports and entertainment promotion.

 

During his storied career, he championed many causes, but he also worked with and promoted boxing and entertainment icons, including: James Brown, Jackson Five, Larry Holmes, Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, George Forman, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, Mike Tyson, The Ed- win Hawkins Singers and Don King.

<p> 

 

He was born in Memphis on Dec. 11, 1931 to John and Rose Ella Winston, who had five other children including: John Jr., Charles, Herbert, Peggy and Joyce.

 

In 1944, his family moved to California to join his uncle, Mr. Louis C. King, who owned the Kings Hotel at 1208 7th St. in West Oakland.

 

“When we moved to California, it was paradise for me, after my experiences in Memphis with racism and prejudice. I wasn’t a top student, but I knew what to do with money. My sisters and brothers got good educations and somehow or other I got left at the train station. My uncle wanted me to go to school and said he would set me up in business,” said Winston in a 2008 Post interview.

 

Winston was an avid churchgoer his entire life.

 

“In Memphis we went to Gospel Temple Baptist Church and my mom sang in the choir. My mother was a graduate of Jackson State University in Education and a psychology. She always knew when I was lying and she punished me for it as well.”

 

“My mother’s brothers owned King’s Hotel and a night club in Berkeley on Adeline, past Alcatraz, around the corner from DG Gibson’s home and Bryon Rumford’s Pharmacy on Sacramento, next to Tom Berkley’s newspaper building. As a kid I used to talk to them.”

 

“I attended Beth Eden while Rev. Dones was pastor, and Johnny Cochran was a church member there. I left Beth Eden to go to Evergreen and left there after Rev. J. L. Richard died and started going to Pastor Loggi’s Interdenominational Gospel Chapel before I joined the Market Street Seventh-day Adventist Church.”

 

He attended McClymonds High School, but “I refused to graduate with the class, because I thought I was too big-time. I opened the pool hall on 7th Street in the building my uncle owned, and we had a soda fountain.”

 

“Roosevelt Cobb, a regular customer, was a pretty good pool player for an old man; he never beat me, though; I was very good at pool. Cobb always wore a longshoreman’s coat with big pockets and a stevedore hook. The hustlers would try to hustle him, and he would always end up with their money. Ron Dellums’ uncle used to come to my pool hall for a shoe shine from Post publisher Paul Cobb,” said Winston.

 

Paul Cobb said Winston protected him and helped him establish a movable shoeshine stand, while selling out-of- town newspapers and Black magazines on Seventh Street in front of the historic nightclubs that Cobb was too young to enter.

 

“My love for newspapers grew from national papers given to me by the Pullman Porters that Henry introduced to our family,” said Cobb.

 

In the early 50s, Winston joined the Navy and was stationed in Hawaii.

He married Georgia “Tiger” Burkhardt and had four children; Lenet, Lamonte, Pamela and Kevin.

 

He made sure his children valued their education. His children are Lenet, who lives in Baltimore with two boys; Pamela, a lawyer who lives in Fairfield, specializing in Intellectual Properties Law, with two children; Lamonte is Director of Player Personnel for the Kansas City Chiefs, with two children.

 

Winston’s accomplishments as a businessman started with his restaurant named The Rosa Lenet. He also expanded the Winston East Bay Ambulance Company to five locations.

 

Henry “The Champ” championed many causes, but his love and passion for boxing took him to unbelievable heights, travelling around the world and working with boxing icons like Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, Muhammed Ali, George Foreman, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, Mike Tyson and Don King – just to name a few. He traveled Europe with The Edwin Hawkins Singers to launch their “O Happy Day” debut album.

 

Winston fought diabetes for more than 10 years. The City of Oakland will proclaim Dec. 5 as Henry Winston Day.

 

His funeral will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, at the Market Street SDA Church, 900 34th St., Oakland. His internment will be at 9:30 a.m., Monday, Dec. 7 at the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery, Dixon, California.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Arts and Culture

Rise East Project: Part 3

Between 1990 and 2020, Oakland lost nearly half of its Black population due to economic and social forces. East Oakland, once a middle-class community, is now home to mostly Black families living in poverty.

Published

on

CEO of Black Culture Zone Carolyn Johnson, a native from Deep East Oakland is making the change she wishes to see in her community and in her people. Black Culture Zone has created a power base of Black folks making a difference in Deep East Oakland. Photo by Kumi Rauf.
CEO of Black Culture Zone Carolyn Johnson, a native from Deep East Oakland is making the change she wishes to see in her community and in her people. Black Culture Zone has created a power base of Black folks making a difference in Deep East Oakland. Photo by Kumi Rauf.

The Black Cultural Zone’s Pivotal Role in Rebuilding Oakland’s Black Community

By Tanya Dennis

 

Between 1990 and 2020, Oakland lost nearly half of its Black population due to economic and social forces.  East Oakland, once a middle-class community, is now home to mostly Black families living in poverty.

 

In 2021, 314 Oakland residents died from COVID-19.  More than 100 of them, or about 33.8%, were Black, a high rate of death as Blacks constitute only 22.8% of Oakland’s population.

 

This troubling fact did not go unnoticed by City and County agencies, and the public-at-large, ultimately leading to the development of several community organizations determined to combat what many deemed an existential threat to Oakland’s African American residents.

 

Eastside Arts Alliance had already proposed that a Black Cultural Zone be established in Deep East Oakland in 2010, but 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic galvanized the community.

 

Demanding Black legacy preservation, the Black Cultural Zone (BCZ) called for East Oakland to be made an “unapologetically Black” business, commercial, economic development community.

 

Established initially as a welcoming space for Black art and culture, BCZ emerged into a a community development collective, and acquired the Eastmont police substation in Eastmont Town Center from the City of Oakland in 2020.

 

Once there, BCZ immediately began combating the COVID-19 pandemic with drive-thru PPE distribution and food giveaways. BCZ’s Akoma Market program allowed businesses to sell their products and wares safely in a COVID-compliant space during the COVID-19 shutdown.

 

Currently, Akoma Market is operated twice a month at 73rd and Foothill Boulevard and Akoma vendors ‘pop up’ throughout the state at festivals and community-centered events like health fairs.

 

“Before BCZ existed, East Oakland was a very depressing place to live,” said Ari Curry, BCZ’s chief experience officer and a resident of East Oakland. “There was a sense of hopelessness and not being seen. BCZ allows us to be seen by bringing in the best of our culture and positive change into some of our most depressed areas.”

 

The culture zone innovates, incubates, informs, and elevates the Black community and centers it in arts and culture, Curry went on.

 

“With the mission to center ourselves unapologetically in arts, culture, and economics, BCZ allows us to design, resource, and build on collective power within our community for transformation,” Curry concluded.

 

As a part of Oakland Thrives, another community collective, BCZ began working to secure $100 million to develop a ‘40 by 40’ block area that runs from Seminary Avenue to the Oakland-San Leandro border and from MacArthur Boulevard to the Bay.

The project would come to be known as Rise East.

 

Carolyn Johnson, CEO of BCZ says, “Our mission is to build a vibrant legacy where we thrive economically, anchored in Black art and commerce. The power to do this is being realized with the Rise East Project.

 

“With collective power, we are pushing for good health and self-determination, which is true freedom,” Johnson says. “BCZ’s purpose is to innovate, to change something already established; to incubate, optimizing growth and development, and boost businesses’ economic growth with our programs; we inform as we serve as a trusted source of information for resources to help people; and most important, we elevate, promoting and boosting Black folks up higher with the services we deliver with excellence.

 

“Rise East powers our work in economics, Black health, education, and power building. Rise East is the way to get people to focus on what BCZ has been doing. The funding for the 40 by 40 Rise East project is funding the Black Culture Zone,” Johnson said.

Continue Reading

Alameda County

Help Protect D.A. Pamela Price’s Victory

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price is asking supporters of the justice reform agenda that led her to victory last November to come to a Town Hall on public safety at Montclair Presbyterian Church on July 27.

Published

on

D.A. Pamela Price
D.A. Pamela Price

By Post Staff

 

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price is asking supporters of the justice reform agenda that led her to victory last November to come to a Town Hall on public safety at Montclair Presbyterian Church on July 27.

Price is facing a possible recall election just six months into her term by civic and business interests, some of whom will be at the in-person meeting from 6:00-9:00 p.m. at 5701 Thornhill Dr. in Oakland.

“We know that opponents of criminal justice reform plan to attend this meeting and use it as a forum against the policies that Alameda County voters mandated DA Price to deliver. We cannot let them succeed,” her campaign team’s email appeal said.

“That’s why I’m asking you to join us at the town hall,” the email continued.  “We need to show up in force and make sure that our voices are heard.”

Price’s campaign is also seeking donations to fight the effort to have her recalled.

Her history-making election as the first African American woman to hold the office had been a surprise to insiders who had expected that Terry Wiley, who served as assistant district attorney under outgoing D.A. Nancy O’Malley, would win.

Price campaigned as a progressive, making it clear to voters that she wanted to curb both pretrial detention and life-without-parole sentences among other things. She won, taking 53% of the vote.

Almost immediately, Price was challenged by some media outlets as well as business and civic groups who alleged, as she began to fulfill those campaign promises, that she was soft on crime.

On July 11, the recall committee called Save Alameda for Everyone (S.A.F.E.) filed paperwork with the county elections office to begin raising money for the next step toward Price’s ouster: gathering signatures of at least 10% of the electorate.

S.A.F.E. has its work cut out for them, but Price needs to be prepared to fight them to keep her office.

In a separate sponsored letter to voters, Price supporters wrote:

“We know that you supported DA Price because you believe in her vision for a more just and equitable Alameda County. We hope you share our belief that our criminal justice system has to be fair to everyone, regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or socioeconomic status.

“The Republican-endorsed effort is a blatant attempt to overturn the will of the voters and a waste of time and money. It is an attempt to silence the voices of those who want real justice. We cannot let these election deniers succeed.

Will you make a donation today to help us protect the win?

“Please watch this video and share it with your friends and family. We need to stand up to the sore losers and protect the win. Together, we can continue to make Alameda County a more just, safe and equitable place for everyone.”

For more information, go to the website: pamelaprice4da.com
or send an e-mail to info@pamelaprice4da.com

Continue Reading

Bay Area

Oakland Teachers Walk Out

After negotiating late into the night and months of fruitless bargaining with the Oakland Unified School District, Oakland teachers went out on strike Thursday morning. “Our (50-member) bargaining team has been working for seven months working, making meaningful proposals that will strengthen our schools for our students,” said Oakland Education Association (OEA) Interim President Ismael “Ish” Armendariz, speaking at press conference Monday afternoon.

Published

on

Gearing up for this week's strike, Oakland parents, students, educators and families at United for Success Academy held a press conference April 28 to explain why they are standing together for a safer building and stable and racially justified schools. Photo courtesy of Oakland Education Association.
Gearing up for this week's strike, Oakland parents, students, educators and families at United for Success Academy held a press conference April 28 to explain why they are standing together for a safer building and stable and racially justified schools. Photo courtesy of Oakland Education Association.

OEA calls unfair labor practices strike after 7 months of negotiations.

By Ken Epstein

After negotiating late into the night and months of fruitless bargaining with the Oakland Unified School District, Oakland teachers went out on strike Thursday morning.

“Our (50-member) bargaining team has been working for seven months working, making meaningful proposals that will strengthen our schools for our students,” said Oakland Education Association (OEA) Interim President Ismael “Ish” Armendariz, speaking at press conference Monday afternoon.

“OUSD has repeatedly canceled bargaining sessions, has failed to offer meaningful proposals or counterproposals at a majority of the bargaining sessions and has repeatedly failed to discuss certain items,” Armendariz said.

“The days (of bargaining) have been long, and after hours of waiting, the superintendent finally showed up on Sunday night at 11:00 p.m.to meet with our team (for the first time),” he said. “(But) the district continues to come to the table unprepared, and this is unacceptable.”

“This is illegal, and OEA has filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). Under California law, OEA has a right to strike over unfair labor practices,” he said.

OEA represents 3,000 teachers, counselors, psychologists, speech pathologists, early childhood educators, nurses, adult education instructors and substitute teachers, serving 35,000 Oakland public school students. Other labor groups representing school employees include SEIU 1021 and construction unions.

In a press statement released on Tuesday, OUSD said it has been trying to avert a strike.

“The district will remain ready to meet with the teachers’ union at any time and looks forward to continuing our efforts to reach an agreement with OEA … We will continue to do everything possible to avoid a work stoppage.”

“Our children’s education does not need to be interrupted by negotiations with our union, especially given the major offer the District made on Monday,” other district press statements said. “We are committed to continuing to work with our labor leaders to discuss their salaries and support services for our students without the need for a strike.

OUSD’s latest salary proposal, released this week, includes a 10% raise retroactive to Nov. 1, 2022, and a $5,000, one-time payment to all members.

OEA’s recent salary proposal asked for a 10% retroactive raise to all members, a one-time $10,000 payment to members who return for the 2023-2024 school year, and increases from $7,500 to $10,000 to salaries, based on years of experience.

In addition to pay demands, OEA is making “common good” proposals that serve families and the community, including protecting and enhancing special education programs, putting the brakes on closing schools in flatland neighborhoods, shared school leadership, safety, and support for students.

Continue Reading

Subscribe to receive news and updates from the Oakland Post

* indicates required

CHECK OUT THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE OAKLAND POST

ADVERTISEMENT

WORK FROM HOME

Home-based business with potential monthly income of $10K+ per month. A proven training system and website provided to maximize business effectiveness. Perfect job to earn side and primary income. Contact Lynne for more details: Lynne4npusa@gmail.com 800-334-0540

Facebook

Trending

Copyright ©2021 Post News Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.