Academy Award Oscars So White Not At This School

First brand acceptance bedrock out to "Let's Go Crazy," anniversary their called atramentous icon, singer
-songwriter Prince.

For one day, kids at Milwaukee College Prep's 36th Street campus aren't cutting their uniforms. Instead, they're decked out in apparel and dresses for the first-ever Academy Awards of Excellence.

Office administrator, Tanya Griffin, plays paparazzi by snapping pictures of students, parents and agents as they footfall and echo in foreground of a gold backdrop.

"Who are you wearing?" Griffin asks parents as they accomplish their way down the red carpeting — artificial runners taped to the linoleum floor.

As the paparazzi clears, the awards army makes its way into the ballroom, the academy auditorium, for the show.

College Prep apprentice Troy Brumfield recites the poem, "Hey Atramentous Child" by Countee Cullen.

The 88th anniversary Academy Awards affectedness tonight and, again, the awards are getting criticized for defective diversity. That's why the kids at this school, area ninety-nine percent of the apprentice physique is African-American, absitively to date their own Oscars ceremony.

They're giving the Academy Award of Excellence to some atramentous associates of Hollywood, accomplished and present, who didn't get Oscar nominations, but arguably should have.

Third graders nod to Will Smith and accomplish a montage of scenes from his a lot of acclaimed movies including endure year's Concussion.

"Every time atramentous humans get nominated for a role, it seems like it's if we play a aspersing character," says 14-year-old apprentice Lanaya Greer. "But if we are in movies that lift us college like Straight Outta Compton and Creed, we don't absolutely get acceptance for that."

Lanaya says the affairs gives her and her classmates a adventitious to pay accolade to humans in pop ability who not alone attending like them, but aswell represent them.

But it's not just about the Oscars. Acceptance aswell accomplish as acclaimed African-Americans in history, like artist Langston Hughes, and abstracts of today, like President Barack Obama, giving acceptances speeches highlighting their contributions to atramentous ability in America.

A apprentice holds her Academy Award of Excellence statue.

One chic ceremoniousness ninety-one year old extra Cicely Tyson for her 1978 assuming of Harriet Tubman in A Woman Called Moses, and the honorees in every class accept a gold artificial bronze with an "E" on top, for "Excellence."

James Powell has two grandsons and three great-nieces assuming in the program. He says he'd heard about the Oscars altercation and is appreciative of the academy for acclamation the situation.

"It helps with our heritage," Powell says. "Not alone in the homes are we aggravating to advise our atramentous heritage, but it is starting to advance and appearance up actuality in the schools too, and that's a acceptable thing."