THANKS FOR BELIEVING IN ME-I would like to thank the (late-great) Roland Rogers for giving me an opportunity to cover the NFL, the NCAA, MLB, and the NBA from an African-American perspective as a young sports reporter and writer as well as giving my cartoon character Bobbee Bee "The Hater" global exposure on the Black Athlete Sports Network in Harlem, New York.If you didn't know-Roland Rogers, the son of Leonard and Adeline Rogers, was born and reared in Buffalo, NY, where his entrepreneurial family owned and operated a number of businesses that included a beverage distributorship, meat packing company and a popular nightclub.
As a four-lettered athlete in high school, he teamed with Assistant Commissioner of the NBA Bob Lanier to establish one of the elite basketball powers in New York State in the late 1960s.
Upon graduating, he attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he majored in communications and formed the first African American full service advertising and marketing agency in western New York.
One of his flagship projects was the creation of advertising strategy to market a minority small business association to raise needed capital. He also became very active in street level politics as a key strategist for a well-known politician in the area in his successful quest to gain the nomination in the primary for the Mayor of Buffalo.
Rogers also served as President and Chairman of the City of New York 350th Anniversary Committee Inc., which celebrated the City of New York’s long and rich heritage, that expanded awareness of its proud past, and built community pride in neighborhoods throughout the City. He promoted numerous special events and was instrumental in fostering cultural community commonality on a citywide basis.
During 1998, he served as a new business-marketing consultant for the Museum of American Financial History in the Wall Street District, where his associates, friends and admirers encouraged him to take on the challenge of becoming the third African American candidate for Mayor, which he successfully gaining recognition as one of the accredited Democratic candidates for Mayor of the City of New York in 1997 and appeared on the September 1997 citywide primary ballot. Rogers also made another unsuccessful run for the office of mayor in NYC in 2009 as well.
(Photo: (left to right) Arturo D. Modica, the famous sculptor of the Charging Bull, which is sometimes referred to as the Wall Street Bull or the Bowling Green Bull, stands with Roland Rogers in the Financial District in Manhattan, New York.)-This is the Evolution of an MC
