Housing Discrimination

An advertisement that Soledad O'Brien's mother ran in their hometown newspaper in Smithtown, Long Island, NY when Soledad was very young. She wanted to make people aware of the racial discrimination that was present in housing and real estate in the area.

Estela O'Brien

Soledad O'Brien Mourns the Loss of Her Mother,

Soledad O'Brien announced the death of her mother, Estela, on Twitter this past week. Her father, Edward had died only 40 days earlier at age 85.

Estela, Cuba, 1940s

An immigrant from Cuba, she lived with the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore during college.

Estela (on left) in Cuba in the 1930s

As an immigrant to America, she learned two more languages fluently — English and French - and went on to Johns Hopkins University and became a teacher.

"My dad is Irish-Australian, my mom Afro-Cuban, and they got married in 1958. There was lots of overt hostility, to the point where they couldn't get served in restaurants together. People were intentional about keeping interracial couples apart. 

My older sisters were born in Maryland, which, like Virginia, was under an anti-miscegenation law, and my mom told me people would spit on them as they walked down the street. Even when my family moved to New York, where I was born, it was hard to get housing. But my parents never talked about that while we grew up. They didn't want that to frame how we thought about our community. They were quiet activists but felt they were on the right side of history."

Estela & Edward

Sadly, as Soledad conveyed in an interview, Edward died on February 6. and O’Brien’s mom Esetla, who had dementia, barely remembered.

“She would call me sometimes and say, ‘Did you hear the news about your dad? He passed away,’” O’Brien says. “She never really recovered.”
Estela had lost her ability to walk after falling in the bathroom about 10 years ago. “After being in bed for five days, she was transitioned to a wheelchair and then never walked again,” O’Brien says. “From there she got dementia and it got worse every year.”

Her parents lived together at an assisted living home in New York City and were close through their final days. When her father died, Soledad and her siblings "... knew it was going to be very difficult, if not impossible, for my mom to survive. When my dad died, I think my mom decided when she was done, she was done. She’d go join my dad, and that was that.”

Don't forget that Mother's Day is May 9th

 

Ask Questions To Soledad For TrueChild Event

Soledad O’Brien has her duties as a news anchor, but is also a mom to Sofia Elizabeth, 8 ½, Cecilia, 7, and twins Charlie and Jackson, 4 ½.

She says “the craziness of a career balances the craziness of family life!”

Soledad will talk about about motherhood and her work with TrueChild, a national organization helping all children reach their full potential as they kick off their second annual True Flavors Celebrity Cook-off at The Institute of Culinary Education in NYC on May 8, featuring a faceoff between celebrity moms Soledad and MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski.

The 2009 True Flavors Celebrity Cook-Offs feature two cooking teams competing against each other including a celebrity, local chef, and audience sous-chef (determined by live auction). Teams will have 35 minutes to make a specialty drink, appetizer, main course and dessert with secret ingredients they will only learn of moments before the contest. In addition to the celebrity cooking competition, the evening will feature raffles and a live auction, as well as a reception prior to the event.

You can post your questions for Soledad online.

Soledad On the New "Mom-in-Chief"

Diane Clehane writing in Vanity Fair about Michelle Obama dubbing herself "Mom-in-Chief," asked a few working TV news moms what they thought.

Here's what Soledad O'Brien answered:

"Working mothers will absolutely be watching her to see the decisions she'll make. She epitomizes the modern mom-a woman who is well educated and had an important job-and yet she is making that choice to step away from full-time work to be home with her girls because her husband is going to be president of the United States."

Soledad Chairs Advisory Board for BettyConfidential.com

Soledad O’Brien serves as chairman of the Advisory Board for BettyConfidential.com.

The site, which launched in March, provides a place for women ages 25 to 49 to connect, get inspired and talk about their lives.

“I am so proud that we are a primarily women-run business and that many of the women on our team have newborn and young children. I think we will prove to be a dynamic force for others looking to strike that balance between a fulfilling career and the pulls of motherhood,” says Deborah Perry Piscione, BettyConfidential.com’s co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief, who is the proud mom of 3-year-old twin boys and who just gave birth to a baby girl less than two weeks ago.

In addition to discussions on parenting, you’ll find tons of information on dating, careers, marriage, friendship, health, politics, style, travel and more. It has a “bettyTalk” discussion forum, polls and other interactive features. Women also have opportunities to ask questions of various experts.

The site was founded by Piscione, a bestselling author and television commentator, and Internet entrepreneur Shaun Marsh.

Soledad at Bakersfield Women's Business Conference

CNN correspondent Soledad O'Brien, keynote speaker at the 19th annual Bakersfield Women's Business Conference, was a little reluctant when a women's magazine recently asked her to pen a Mother's Day piece on the best advice her mother ever gave her.

Her mother was not "warm and fuzzy," but more of the "tough nut" variety, O'Brien told listeners at her luncheon address.

After a young, frustrated O'Brien told her mother a news director had refused to hire her because she wasn't dark enough for the lone reporter job he'd set aside for a black journalist, and another potential boss asked if she'd be willing to change her ethnic name, O'Brien's mother said: "Most people are idiots. Now go get another job."

Words to live by, O'Brien said, but "most people are idiots" isn't the stuff of Hallmark cards.

O'Brien did get another job, of course. After covering local news in San Francisco and Boston, she went on to MSNBC, NBC and later CNN, where she co-anchored the network's American Morning show for four years. She now works for CNN'S Special Investigations Unit, which produces documentary-style in-depth reports.

O'Brien's mother is a black, Cuban immigrant, and her father is a white, Australian immigrant of Irish descent. When her parents were dating, they had trouble finding restaurants willing to serve an interracial couple. Maryland, where they met, would not permit them to legally marry in 1958, so they had to drive to Washington, D.C., for their nuptuals. Afterward, people cautioned them against having children, sure that their offspring would never fit in.

"I'm the fifth of six children," O'Brien said. "Obviously, they didn't listen."

Moreover, the couple sent all six of their children to Harvard University.

"If people put out obstacles, step around them," O'Brien said. "Decide what you're going to do and go do it. It's that simple."

At a separate workshop for R.O.S.E. Mentors and their charges, O'Brien told girls to seek out advice from successful people -- whether they personally know them or not -- and to listen to what they have to say. If you get defensive, you can't learn from constructive criticism, she said.

And if you assume someone won't assist you merely because they're powerful and have achieved a lot, you could miss out. O'Brien recalled writing to a news anchor she'd never met when she was an up-and-coming reporter, and how pleased she was that the woman wrote her a long, single-spaced letter critiquing her work.

"I still have that letter," she said.

O'Brien added that she tries to pay back that debt by helping other young people coming along, and that many others she knows do the same. O'Brien said she's encouraged every day by the public's willingness to help strangers.

"If I go on TV and say so and so needs help, the next day I'll have 50,000 e-mails from people saying, 'What can I do? How can I help?'" she said. "I think that's amazing."

Via http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1389857/