BAVUAL The African Heritage Magazine Spring 2022

SPECIAL ISSUE SPRING 2022 $10

2020S: The Decade of the African Woman

PRO & CON Is “Wokeness” Helping or Hurting?

Why We Fall for scams

ISSN 2769-9110

9 772769 911002

“ I DEFINITELY DIDN’T DO IT ALONE.” If you’re thinking of finishing your high school diploma, you have more support than you realize. Find teachers and free adult education classes near you at FinishYourDiploma.org.

CONTENTS

PRO & CON

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Is “Wokeness” Helping or Hurting?

ON THE COVER The cover illustration is by Angie Braun. www.facebook.com/ARTbyAngieBraun

MY TAKE/THE DRIFT

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For Mom at 99/The Rent Is Too Damn High

BUILDING HISTORY

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Caribbean Blacks Built the Panama Canal

FAMOUS SPRINGS

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The First Juneteenth, 1865

DESTINATIONS

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Barbados, Island in the Sun

TRUE GRIT

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Isaac Wright, Vindicated Ex-Con

THE TIMES

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Blessed Are the Peacemakers

THE NEXT 10 YEARS

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The Decade of the African Queen

Photo credit: Geeno Mizelli

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CONTENTS EDUCATE YOURSELF

BLACK HISTORY QUIZ 64

THE HUSTLE

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AFRICAN FACES OF THE WORLD

Why We Fall for Scams

THE CULTURE

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On Black Women

Kerry Washington Rising

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Black Female Fortune 500 CEOs Show Who’s the Boss

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The Moors

Photo credit: Giovanni Rufino Courtesy: Alamy

PAST, MEET PRESENT

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History in Cartoons

AFROCENTRIC ART Jacob Lawrence Rules Much of the 20th Century

JUST THE FACTS

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ROLL OF HONOR

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Flowers in Spring

BENEDICTION Mothers of Black Boys Don’t Exhale

Photo credit: Anna-Marie Kellen/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Countries Led by Africans

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Editor and Publisher Editorial Muses Executive Editor Contributing Editors

Earl A. Birkett Bavual Adisa, Nkiru Adisa Rick D. Bowers Kristen Jones

Lorraine Jones Special Editor Editorial Advisor Art Director Illustrator Advertising Accounts, Circulation and Media

Stephen G. Hall, Ph.D .

Myeshia C. Babers, Ph.D. June Padgett Debasish Sarma Multitrends International, 212-419-5831

Editorial Office 42 Broadway, Suite 12-278, New York, NY 10004 212-419-5831 | eab@bavual.com BAVUAL is published quarterly (4 issues per year)

by Vantage Point Planet, Inc., a division of Birkett Communications, Inc. President/CEO: Earl A. Birkett

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MY TAKE From the Editor and Publisher

For Mom at 99 This special issue of BAVUAL is inspired by my mother, Queenie Birkett, who turns 99 on May 20th. She embodies the 20th century black woman—a person who has struggled and sacrificed above and beyond to raise and protect her family and community.

Her friends know her as “Queen B” or “Gamma Sugar.” This remarkable woman, born in 1923, went from poverty in the Virginia countryside during Jim Crow to a split-level home on suburban Long Island and prosperity. Raised in a one room shack by her mother Mammy, a widow with 11 children, Queen Luana Taylor overcame immense adversity to become the mother of five children, the grandmother of three, the great-grandmother of eight and the great-great-grandmother of five. The wife of pioneering inventor and businessman Earl Birkett, who passed away in 2014, she was a well-known civic leader in our community of Lakeview, West Hempstead, responsible among many other things for the paving of the main thoroughfare (and our street) Pinebrook Avenue and serving as a hostess par excellence, a den mother in the Cub Scouts and a businesswoman in her own right, as owner of Queen B’s Fashion & Beauty Shop in Lakeview.

Truly a great lady. Hat’s off to you, Mom, and to all our great black women.

The Birkett family, c. 1973: Earl, Mother Queenie, Dad Earl, Sister Erlanda

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THE DRIFT

The Rent Is Too Damn High People tend to forget that middleclass wealth is a relatively new phenomenon in history, a byproduct of union organization beginning in the 1930s combined with the prosperity created by World War II and the economic boom of the 1950s through 1970s.

Equally forgettable is how easily that wealth can be lost due to the twin evils of inflation and unfair government policies. It has been said euphemistically that when all Americans get an economic cold, black people get the flu.

How true. The Reagan-era tax cuts of the 1980s produced a record number of mega-billionaires and hit hard people in the middleclass, who must work twice as hard for increasingly less money in a labor pool shrinking through foreign competition and automation.

Jimmy McMillan, a long-time gadfly in New York politics, got the public’s attention during the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial debate when he complained (repeatedly): “The rent [in New York City specifically] is too damn high.” He was right, and it has only gotten worse since.

The median monthly rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in the United States is $1,100. Given the real estate rule of thumb for assessing affordability of rent, that one needs to earn 40 times the monthly rent, that means one needs an annual income of $44,000 to afford to pay that rent.

The average annual household income in the U.S. is $64,530, or $51,330 for all other expenses.

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Jimmy McMillan Photo credit: Maria Rocha-Buschel

Not too bad, but get this: Black Americans’ average annual household income is $45,000, which leaves just $31,800, or under $612 per week before taxes, after you pay the landlord. And many households have much lower incomes than this. With inflation at a 40-year high, social cohesion is not sustainable.

The solution is obvious.

Government must step in to do two things: 1) cap the rent, and 2) raise the minimum wage. Rent should never exceed 25 percent of annual household income; that should be written into law.

Adjusted for inflation, the average hourly minimum wage should be $22 (average hourly wage overall is $27.06). The federal minimum

wage is currently $7.25, although the de facto wage nationally and in many locales is closer to $15.

What can you, Mr. and Ms. Citizen, do to make it happen?

To start with, vote for the politicians who promise to limit your rent and raise your wages.

If you work, make sure you join a union, and make sure that union is working to provide you a living wage. Any union leader should be replaced if they aren’t currently doing so, and you should refuse your valuable time to cash-rich employers who make you work on the cheap. That is the whole point of the postpandemic Great Resignation, where 4.5 million workers have decided to do just that.

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BUILDING HISTORY

Photo credit: ACP

Caribbean Blacks Built the Panama Canal

By Kristen Jones

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The African Heritage Magazine

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

In 1904, construction began on the Panama Canal, which was completed in 1914. The brainchild of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who engineered a revolution to create the country of Panama in order to accomplish the feat, it connected the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, saving sailors about 8,000 miles of travel. The canal was intended to reduce the distance, cost and time for ships to transport cargo between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Before its existence, ships would have to go around nearly the entire continent of South America and through the Strait of Magellan in Argentina and Chile.

Black labor was used to complete the daunting task because of the endurance shown by Afro-West Indians in the construction of railroads and other projects in Bocas del Toro, Panama, and Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. According to Panamanian author Francisco Marrero Lobinot, many of the West Indians who arrived in Panama during these years were from the French Antilles of Martinique and

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Guadeloupe. Between 1906-1907, Panama received more than 2,800 workers from Martinique and about 2,000 from Guadeloupe. An estimated 50,000 Guadeloupeans and Martinicans participated in the construction of the Panama Canal between 1904 and 1914.

In 2014, it was estimated that there were between 60,000 and 70,000 descendants of these West Indians living in Panama.

Workers on the canal were paid through a segregated gold and silver payroll system, which gave certain workers advantages over other workers. While some Canal Zone officials compared employees on the gold and silver rolls to military officers and enlisted men, the characteristic that determined on which roll an employee was placed was race. With very few exceptions, American and Northern European whites were placed on the superior gold roll and blacks and Southern European whites on the silver roll. Until 1918, when all employees began to be paid in U.S. dollars,

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Photo credit: George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

Aerial view of the Bridge of the Americas at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal with Panama City in the background.

gold roll employees received payments in gold coins, in American currency, while their silver roll counterparts received payments in silver coins, initially Colombian pesos. During the canal construction years, silver roll workers were paid with coins from various nations; in several years, American coins were imported due to shortages in local coins.

In its finished form, the canal represented the emergence of America as a world power and cost $375 million to construct.

In addition to the economic cost, the human cost for the workers was staggeringly high. According to History.com, “Many people died building the Panama Canal: Of the 56,000 workers employed between 1904 and 1913, roughly 5,600 were reportedly killed.”

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FAMOUS SPRINGS The First Juneteenth

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Why We Continue to Celebrate Emancipation Day

By Earl A. Birkett

What was Texas like in June 1865 if you were black? The American Civil War ended two months prior, in April, yet no one bothered to inform you until June 19 that, since the Confederacy lost the war, you were no longer considered chattel.

People of color have suffered under the yoke of racism and exploitation ever since the first permanent European settlers arrived in the New World in the late 15th century. Indigenous tribes throughout the Americas were the first to be targeted, first by the Spanish, then by the French. These enslavers were soon joined by the Dutch and the British, who kidnapped Africans and brought them to the Virginia colony in 1619, first in indentured servitude, then in bondage.

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What followed was 346 more years of Africans separated from their homeland and culture, consigned to the status of property, stripped of their humanity, forbidden in most cases to read or have intact families, beaten, even killed at will, their women raped, their children sold off, and provided with the barest of subsistence, while their white English Southern colonial and early American masters engorged themselves on obscene wealth and privilege, all the result of having invented perhaps the greatest ruse in history: “Christian”-justified white supremacy. Known henceforth as racism.

While technically it was the Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, that outlawed slavery in the Southern Confederate states—largely as a means to garner allegiance from enslaved blacks behind the lines of the Confederacy—it took another two years of fighting before that proclamation could be fulfilled. Freedom, sadly, had been purchased with the blood of both blacks and whites.

It was one thing to proclaim the end of slavery in the South but quite another to enforce it. Union troops, preoccupied with fighting the war elsewhere, were slow to reach Texas, the most remote Confederate state, where slavery had expanded the most, even when the war ended.

Slavery was still allowed in Union states until the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed chattel slavery in 1865 and treaties ended it in the Indian Territories (namely the Choctaw) in 1866.

So it was that the wellspring of joy sprung up when slaves in Galveston, Texas, were informed of General Order Number 3, issued by Union Army Major

General Order Number 3, freeing all Texas slaves, issued June 19, 1865

Texas slaves were informed that they were free on June 19, 1865.

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Modern-day Juneteenth celebration Photo credit: John Minchillo/AP

General Gordon Granger, which proclaimed them free in the last Confederate state to be liberated from human bondage. The celebrations began immediately, more formally in 1866, and have endured ever since. Yet, in celebration, there remained hardship; Reconstruction would give way to Jim Crow, then the Civil Rights Movement, and finally black empowerment.

Annette Gordon-Reed, a Harvard-based historian and law professor, said it well: The fear of the Black imagination was strong all throughout slavery.

That was one of the reasons free African Americans posed such a problem and was one of the reasons the Texas Constitution prevented the immigration of free Black people into the republic. Seeing that Black people could exist outside of legal slavery put the lie to the idea that Blacks were born to be slaves.

Making life as hard as possible for free African Americans, impairing

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President Biden signs legislation, June 17, 2021, to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Photo credit: Evan Vucci/AP

their movement and economic prospects—even if that meant the state would forgo the economic benefits of talented people who wanted to work—was designed to prove that Blacks could not operate outside of slavery.

Juneteenth celebrations originally centered, as most things, around Texas churches where blacks congregated and then spread to the rest of the

South. The Great Migration of the early 1900s, when many blacks relocated to the Northern, Midwestern and Western states, brought the observance nationwide. Food festivals were a staple. Official recognition of that day gathered steam in the 1970s, with Texas (fittingly and ironically) being the first state to legislate it as a holiday in 1979; it was subsequently joined by the

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Band playing for a Juneteenth celebration, Austin, Texas, 1900 other 49 states and the District of Columbia. Observance has also spread to parts of Mexico, where the Mascogos— black Seminoles from Florida and Oklahoma— escaped from slavery in 1852 and settled in Coahuila, Mexico. On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law, creating America’s newest federal holiday, celebrated for the first time two days later.

There is a segment that considers Juneteenth more significant than Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday on January 15 and Black History Month, celebrated in February. The day is a time for traditions, including public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation; singing the black “national anthem,” “Lift Every Voice and

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Gloriously commemorating Juneteenth, Anita Blanch Mays and her royal attendants ruled this annual celebration one summer in the 1920s.

Courtesy of the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History, Alclair Pleasant Collection.

Sing,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”; inspirational readings from noted African American writers such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou; and festive parties, family reunions, rodeos, historical reenactments and Miss Juneteenth contests.

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It is clear that Juneteenth has taken on an added meaning beyond its post-Civil War origins.

All people in bondage have come to commemorate this day as an enduring symbol of the human desire to be free from all oppression wherever it exists in the world.

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TRUE GRIT Triumph in Adversity

ISAAC WRIGHT, VINDICATED EX-CON

By Kristen Jones Despite false allegations against him, Isaac Wright was sentenced to life in prison for being a drug kingpin. For most, that would be where their story would end.

Most people who receive this sentence never have the chance to see the “outside world” again, but Wright is different. During his trial and incarceration, he set out not only to prove his innocence, but also to wage war against the criminal justice system that condemned him.

In 1991, Wright was tried and convicted in a Somerset County courtroom under New Jersey’s drug kingpin law. Wright represented himself at trial, and while he was serving a life sentence in prison (he was also sentenced to 72 years on other charges), he continued to study the law and oversee his own appeal. During the next several years, Wright also worked as a prison paralegal, winning freedom or reduced sentences for over 20 inmates, many of them serving life sentences. Some of his legal arguments formed the basis for laws that courts follow and lawyers argue today.

Wright’s own case was reinvestigated by the state attorney general, who uncovered police corruption and false testimony perpetrated by the prosecutor, Nicholas L. Bissell, who committed suicide rather than face arrest. Wright was released from prison in 1996, and his convictions were vacated and all charges were dismissed two years later.

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Photo credit: Shutterstock

After his release from prison, Wright earned a Bachelor of Science degree in human services from Thomas Edison State University in 2002 and a law degree from St. Thomas University in 2007. In 2017, Curtis Jackson (aka 50 Cent) signed a deal to produce an ABC TV series, For Life, inspired by Wright’s life. It gives insight into Wright’s time in prison and the events that shaped him there.

As of 2021, Wright is an attorney at a full-service law

firm, Hunt, Hamlin & Ridley, in Newark, N.J. In December 2020, Wright announced that he would run for mayor of New York City as a Democrat. Although he didn’t win, he set the stage for what he called a fight to address the racial, economic, environmental and educational injustices that plague the city’s institutions. A man with true character, grit and determination, he is a living example of constantly fighting in a time when so many things are going wrong.

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THE TIMES Blessed Are the Peacemakers

African Masters of Statecraft

By Stephen G. Hall, Ph.D. The recent events in Ukraine demonstrate the impact of globalization and diplomacy. The Russian invasion of a former East European satellite state has sparked a worldwide hot and Cold War. While Russia engages in a hot war against Ukraine, Western Europe, the European Union, NATO and the United States are using diplomacy and Cold War strategies to blunt the impact of the invasion and weaken the Russian economy. Throughout this conflict, diplomacy has been at the forefront.

The 21st century is a vast departure from the 20th. Today, more blacks and women are firmly ensconced in the upper echelons of U.S. foreign policy, from Avril Haines at Intelligence and Lloyd Austin at Defense to Thomas-Greenfield as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. While their presence is pathbreaking, it is not new. Blacks have long played a role in setting the diplomatic imperatives of the nation.

Indeed, other than the military, diplomacy is one area in American life and in the world where blacks have found many opportunities for advancement. Diplomat Ralph Bunche encouraged this after World War II: “There are going to be all kinds of jobs [in the United Nations’ set-up] and Negroes should attempt to get jobs on all levels.”

Roots of Diplomacy

If we travel back to the 19th century, black diplomats were few and far between, but they existed. Well-known African American abolitionists, lawyers and college-trained individuals served in diplomatic capacities.

Four of the early ministers and consuls were John Mercer Langston, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass and Richard Greener.

Richard Theodore Greener , U.S. Diplomat

John Mercer Langston, U.S. Minister to Haiti Courtesy of the Everett Collection

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Henry Highland Garnet, U.S. Minister to Liberia

James Weldon Johnson, U.S. Diplomat

William Henry Hunt, U.S. Consular Agent

story later captivated abolitionist audiences. He became a newspaper editor, abolitionist speaker, and subsequently one of the most prominent black leaders of the 19th century.

After playing a leading role in publicizing and politicizing the abolitionist movement, he then turned his energies to direct action to abolish slavery. He took an active, albeit clandestine, role in supporting John Brown’s failed attempt to take over the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859. After the Civil War began,

Douglass worked to pressure Lincoln to enlist black support in the war effort. He simultaneously pushed for the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation and the involvement of African Americans in the Civil War and was successful on both counts.

In 1889, Douglass became the minister resident and consul general to Haiti and chargé d’affaires for Santo Domingo.

Although Haiti achieved its independence in 1804, it was not recognized by the United States until 1864.

Photo credit: James U. Stead

One of the earliest diplomats, Langston was an abolitionist, lawyer, and college dean and president, who held undergraduate and graduate degrees from Oberlin College in Ohio. Denied admission to law school, he read law under Philemon Bliss and became the first black admitted to the bar in Ohio. He later became the founding dean of the law school at Howard University and went on to become president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University). Shortly after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Langston U.S. minister to Haiti. He also served as chargé d’affaires to the Dominican Republic.

Garnet was a prominent black abolitionist in the antebellum period (1830-1861) and a staunch supporter of emigration. He advocated for African Americans to emigrate to Mexico, the Caribbean or Liberia, although his efforts were cut short by the Civil War. He was appointed U.S. minister to Liberia in 1881 but died less than two months after arriving in the country.

One of the best-known diplomats, Frederick Douglass, was an escaped slave whose

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Current Wars, 2022 Graphic credit: defconlevel.com

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Ralph Bunche, U.S. Statesman

Andrew Young, UN Ambassador

Kofi Annan

Photo credit: Chuck Fishman/Getty Images

Douglass’ service to the nation was followed by that of Richard Greener. Greener was the first African American to graduate from Harvard University in 1870. After graduating from the University of South Carolina Law School, he was admitted to the bar in South Carolina. In addition to his role as a teacher and activist, Greener enjoyed brief success as a diplomat, having been appointed

by President William McKinley as general consul at Bombay, India, in 1898. He later accepted a post as United States commercial agent in Vladivostok, Russia, a post in which he played a major role as an American representative in negotiating an end to the RussoJapanese War in 1905.

The 20th century opened up more opportunities for African

Americans to participate in diplomacy. One of the most well-known diplomats was James Weldon Johnson. Johnson was a graduate of Atlanta University and was admitted to the Florida bar. He never practiced law but instead worked as principal at the Stanton School, a high school for African Americans in Jacksonville, Fla. He is best known for his work with his brother Rosamond on the Negro national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” In 1906, Johnson became consul to Puerto Cabello in Venezuela. He later served as consular agent in Corinto, Nicaragua. While in Nicaragua, Johnson wrote his iconic novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Sherman, French & Co., 1912). During the 1920s, he

North Africa and the Middle East, a flashpoint of world conflict

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became the first black executive secretaryof the NAACP. William Henry Hunt, an exslave born in Tennessee, rose to become the longest serving black consular agent in the first half of the 20th century. Closely associated with Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a judge and state legislator from Arkansas (Hunt married Gibbs’ daughter Ida Alexander Gibbs in 1904), Hunt served as clerk and assistant and then vice consul in Antananarivo, Madagascar, to Gibbs. Selected

by Theodore Roosevelt to replace Gibbs in August 1901, Hunt went on to become consul to SaintÉtienne, France, and remained in the position until 1927. He assumed additional consular assignments in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, the Azores off of Morocco, and later Monrovia, Liberia. He retired in 1932.

By virtually any measure, the giant of 20th century statecraft was Ralph Bunche. A political scientist by profession, the native of Detroit and Ohio was educated at UCLA and Harvard and began his career teaching at Howard University, where he also served as dean of its political science department and conducted extensive research on the concept of race. His successful efforts to decolonize Africa and the

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Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State (2001-05)

Caribbean from European rule began during his World War II service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Alger Hiss, an American State Department official, recruited him for planning what became the United Nations in 1945. In the UN’s early years, Bunche was its highest-profile representative, setting up the trusteeship program that would lead to independence for many African and Caribbean nations over the next 20-odd years and negotiating the first Arab-Israeli conflict that surrounded the creation of Israel (formerly Palestine) in 1948. Bunche’s efforts at negotiating a ceasefire earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. An activist and enduring symbol for civil rights at home and human rights abroad, he had more prestige than the U.S. secretary of state or ambassador to the UN, both positions he could have easily filled in a less race-centered society. According to the United Nations document, Ralph Bunche: Visionary for Peace, during his 25 years of service to the UN, “[Bunche] championed

the principle of equal rights for everyone, regardless of race or creed. He believed in ‘the essential goodness of all people, and that no problem in human relations is insoluble.”

Following in Bunche’s wake, Andrew Young, chief aide to Martin Luther King Jr. and a former Georgia congressman, had some big shoes to fill when President Jimmy Carter appointed him as U.S. ambassador to the UN in 1977, the highest diplomatic post ever achieved by an African American. His brief two-year tenure was bathed in controversy, from his remark in 1978 that U.S. prisons held hundreds of political prisoners, which led to a failed congressional vote to impeach him, to his support for Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo in the formation of Zimbabwe (formerly apartheid Rhodesia), and finally his ill-advised meeting with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in violation of U.S. policy that no contact with the PLO would be made until it recognized Israel’s right to exist.

Young resigned over the incident.

He went on to serve two successful terms as mayor of Atlanta before

Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State (2005-09) Photo credit: David Cannon/Getty Images

Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the UN (2009-13)

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running a losing campaign for Georgia governor in 1990.

The legacy of African diplomatic achievement at the UN continued in 1997, when Kofi Atta Annan, a Ghanaian diplomat, ascended to the position of secretary-general, the first African black to hold the UN’s top post, culminating a 15year career at that organization.

During his tenure, Annan concentrated on the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa and founded the UN Global Compact, which encouraged corporate social responsibility. His efforts won the Nobel Peace Prize for himself and the UN in 2001. Annan’s tenure as secretary-general ended in 2006, after which he served as founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation and chairman of The Elders, an international group founded by Nelson Mandela.

The U.S. State Department has been one of the few areas of the American government that has been inviting to senior black leadership at the top.

The department can cite two African Americans as secretary of state, Colin Luther Powell (2001-2005) and Condoleezza Rice (2005-2009), both of whom had controversial tenures during ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, outgrowths of the domestic and global War on Terror during the George W. Bush presidency. During the Obama Administration, Susan Rice would continue the tradition of black representation by becoming the first female African American to serve as UN ambassador.

The current American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, comes from a storied 35-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, culminating in her service as assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 2013 to 2017. Appointed to her current post in 2021 by newly

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Linda Thomas-Greenfield Photo credit: John Penney

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WTO Director-General

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS

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The United Nations, New York City

John William Ashe, Antigua-Barbuda Diplomat

Phakiso Mochochoko, ICC Court Co-Founder

Johnny Young, U.S. Ambassador Photo credit: Bethesda Rotary Club

inaugurated President Joe Biden, Thomas-Greenfield has thus far been preoccupied by the ending of the 20-year U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan in 2021 and the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, the first such act on the European continent since World War II. Her statement of the U.S. position: “[Ukrainian] President Zelenskyy, I want you to know that [the U.S. and the U.N.] stand with the people of Ukraine

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as you face down this brutal attack on your sovereignty, on your democracy, and on your freedom.” She has also criticized the People’s Republic of China for committing genocide against Uyghurs and detaining them in internment camps.

Thomas-Greenfield is not the lone African deciding matters of war and peace in the world.

Other prominent figures, not quite as well-known to the general public, made or make

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their contributions daily, past and present. Among them: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian American, is the first woman and first African to hold the top post of director-general at the World Trade Organization (WTO), an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, that regulates international trade between nations. The largest of its kind, the WTO regulates trade among 164 member states,

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The U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C.

Haile Menkerios, UN Under-Secretary-General

Diallo Telli, OAU Secretary-General

Edem Kodjo

comprising 98 percent of world GDP. Okonjo-Iweala was trained as an economist at Harvard and MIT and rose through the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and the Nigerian government, where she was finance minister and minister of foreign affairs, to her current position, begun in 2021.

Winnie Byanyima attained the executive directorship of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), which seeks to combat the worldwide HIV/

AIDS pandemic, in 2019. The Uganda native has a background in aeronautical engineering and distinguished herself in Ugandan politics, human rights, feminism and diplomacy and as executive director of Oxfam International, the British charitable organization dedicated to alleviating poverty.

John William Ashe’s status in international diplomacy was unfortunately marred by corruption. The Antiguan

politician and diplomat rose to dizzying heights, serving as president of the 68th UN General Assembly, 2013-14, president of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Board in 2012, and Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the UN from 1995 to 2004. Ashe’s downfall came in 2015, when he was indicted by the U.S. for influence peddling over an illicit Antiguan real estate investment deal. He died in 2016 before the case went to trial.

Photo credit: La Nouvelle Tribune

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Caribbean islands under British rule have achieved their independence from the Crown since the 1960s.

Phakiso Mochochoko, a Lesotho lawyer, earned distinction in a variety of diplomatic roles, including Lesotho’s ambassador to the UN (1994), chairman of the Sixth Committee (Legal) of the UN (1999), and a founder of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the war crimes tribunal sitting at The Hague, Netherlands, established in 2002.

The ICC is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Distinct from the UN’s International Court of Justice, aka the World Court, the ICC’s most controversial activity has been to investigate abuses by the U.S. in the war in Afghanistan, an action that was vigorously opposed by the Trump Administration.

Johnny Young, a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador,

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led the U.S. embassies in Slovenia, Bahrain, Sierra Leone and Togo under three presidents: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The native Georgian was raised in poverty in Philadelphia and earned his B.S. magna cum laude from Temple University in 1966. He died in 2021.

Haile Menkerios, an Eritrean diplomat, served as the head of the United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU) and as special representative to the African Union at the level of under-secretary-general from 2013 until 2018. Educated at Brandeis and Harvard, Menkerios was appointed by UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon, whom he also served as special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan. He was also assistant secretary-general for political affairs.

Diallo Telli, a Guinean diplomat and politician, helped found the Organisation of African

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Unity (OAU) and was the first secretary-general of the OAU between 1964 and 1972.

After serving as minister of justice in Guinea (1972-76) he was executed by starvation by the regime of Ahmed Sékou Touré at Camp Boiro in 1977.

Telli was a widely respected international diplomat known for his dignity and good nature, and his execution contributed to growing international awareness of the abuses of the Touré regime.

Edem Kodjo, a Togolese politician and diplomat, served as secretary-general of the OAU from 1978 to 1983 and as prime minister of Togo (1994-96, 200506). Educated in France, Kodjo rose through Togo politics to become minister of finance and minister of foreign affairs before his ascension to secretary-general at the OAU. Known as a “brilliant academic,” he died in Paris in 2020.

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SO CAN YOU.

THE NEXT 10 YEARS

The Decade of the African Woman Despite the Obstacles, Still She Rises

By Lorraine Jones

The resilience of black women is unmatched. As Malcom X once said, “The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.” They take so much hate but are now among the most influential people in the world, leading us into the future. Despite being historically discriminated against and disenfranchised, African women are also the most determined and are today at the forefront of the political, economic and cultural evolution in the United States. Often deemed too confident or too ambitious, black women aren’t afraid to occupy space and keep pushing. If there isn’t a seat at the table, they will bring their own. So many people are threatened by the mere presence of a black woman because they are aware of the potential of their impact.

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The dual-minority status of black women places them in a vulnerable position for further marginalization. As Indiana State Rep. Vanessa Summers said, “Sometimes it’s exhausting being a black woman. It’s exhausting being a woman, but it’s really exhausting being a black woman.”

The social stigma and negative stereotypes black women face are deep-rooted in American culture, originating with chattel slavery in the U.S. The standardized narrative and oversimplified opinion is that black women are too confident, loud, aggressive, ill-tempered, overly sexual, overbearing and hostile. In professional settings, the stereotype of the angry black woman or the strong black woman often makes the glass ceiling even more impenetrable for this group.

In the 1800s and 1900s, black women were portrayed in popular culture as “Sassy Mammies.” This depiction was later carried out in the radio show Amos ‘n’ Andy, which aired from 1928 to 1960 and featured a sassy and aggressive black woman, perpetuating this stereotype for nearly a century.

Current victims of this stereotype are Serena Williams, Michelle Obama, Jemele Hill and Shonda Rhimes, among many others.

Economic inequality compounded for being both black and female has resulted in black women being paid 63 percent of what non-Hispanic white men were paid in 2019, according to the U.S. Census. Therefore, the average black woman must work 19 months to be paid what the average white man makes in merely 12 months. According to a Goldman Sachs report, black women also experience a 90 percent wealth gap compared to white men. Economic gaps

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While at least six nations boast an African female head of state or head of government, that has yet to happen in the United States. are created from lower rates of upward mobility, discrimination in the labor market, and disparities in access to quality education, which make it harder to generate economic stability.

A modern-day occupational segregation tends to occur among women of color. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of black women who hold a full-time minimumwage job is much greater than that of any other racial group.

Black women are more likely to be employed in lower-paying service occupations such as food service, domestic work and healthcare assistance than any other industry.

Black women, even those who are college-educated, often endure unfairness in employment. Today, undergraduate degrees aren’t always a wealth generator for many African Americans.

Households headed by black college graduates are statistically less wealthy than less-educated white households. Collegeeducated African Americans are most likely to work in predominately white work environments and are commonly subjected to microaggressions in the workplace.

Another harsh reality for many black women is the prevalence of domestic violence. According to M4BL, black women are three times more likely to lose their lives because of domestic violence than white women. The

black community experiences many social factors that may lead to domestic violence such as poverty, which can make it difficult to seek safety after abuse has occurred. Lowincome women face more of the consequences of domestic violence than women with a higher economic standing.

The narrative of a black single mother has been embedded in the family system of black communities. The problematic invisibility of black fathers creates long-lasting effects. At least 70 percent of all black children today are born to an unmarried mother, a continuously increasing rate since the 1960s.

Black women have been referred to as “welfare queens,” a phrase used by former President Ronald Reagan to disparage low-income black mothers who are thought of as “ghetto baby mamas.”

Black females as a group, despite their historic prevalence in Democratic party voting, experience political powerlessness. African American women have voted more during the past two elections than all other races, and in spite of this, they have remained underrepresented at federal and state levels as well as within the policies themselves. While at least six nations boast an African female head of state or head of government, that has yet to happen in the United States.

And still they rise. Their dual identities as black women motivate them to push for social justice and fight for the needs and well-being of their families and communities. To strategically overcome the many obstacles they face, many of these women make education an equalizer to fuel their passion.

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A Shared Heritage

13 women who impressed us enough to believe that they embody the spirit of their foresisters and represent the future

Amanda Gorman Photo credit: Naima Green

Amanda Gorman One of the youngest and most fearless African American women who unapologetically owns the space she’s in is Amanda Gorman. This 24-year-old poet overflows with a confidence and optimism that makes you feel that the youth of our community and the future generation of this nation is in good hands.

Gorman has suffered a speech impediment since early childhood, but instead of succumbing to it, she turned it into one of her greatest strengths.

Because of the difficulty she had pronouncing certain letters, she used the spoken action of songs and poetry to overcome it.

As the daughter of a Los Angeles middle school English teacher, Gorman was exposed to literature at a young age.

She saw firsthand the role of literature in the lives of students of color, and at the age of 15, she

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began teaching creative writing workshops at the public school where her mother taught. By the age of 17, she was the youth delegate for the United Nations, the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles, and had published The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough.

In an interview, Gorman revealed how intimidating public speaking is as a black woman.

“Just coming onstage with my dark skin and my hair and my race—that in itself is inviting a type of people that have not often been welcomed or celebrated in the public sphere.”

When she was a student at Harvard University where she studied sociology, a white male classmate in her sophomore year poetry workshop told her that her voice was “too confident.” In our modern patriarchy, a confident male is often considered a natural leader or sure of himself, while a woman, especially a black woman, is considered too

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confident or arrogant. Many people are threatened by a strong confident black woman, but she needs that self-assurance to endure all the criticism she faces. Because of her race and disability, Gorman often receives comments and underlying microaggression on how well she speaks. Before every poetry reading, she reassures herself by reciting a mantra in ode to her black ancestry, grounding herself to her roots and in remembrance of those she is fighting for: “I’m the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.”

On Jan. 20, 2021, at the age of 22, Gorman became the sixth and the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history when she recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ swearing-in ceremony. John F. Kennedy was the first president to initiate this tradition when he chose Robert Frost to perform at his inauguration in 1961. In 1993, Bill Clinton chose Maya Angelou, and now Gorman has been added to this historic roster of literary greats.

After the horrific violence that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, just weeks before the ceremony, Gorman altered her poem to instill a message of unity that our country so desperately needed amidst a period of immense division in our country.

Her voice called for unity, and while she acknowledged the racial history of this country, she

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spoke of an aspiration for a better future.

Gorman uses her words to create positive social change in an outlet as peaceful and beautiful as poetry. “Poetry is always at the pulse of the most dangerous and most daring questions that a nation or world might face,” said Gorman. Poetry was historicallyused by activists in the Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Movements of the 60s and 70s, and now this poised and professional young lady is reviving this underappreciated oral tradition and bringing it into the mainstream.

In February 2021, Gorman recited her original poem “Chorus of the Captains” at the Super Bowl LV pre-show, bringing her to a whole new audience. As the first poet to ever recite at this event, Gorman used her performance to honor three people who demonstrated outstanding character during the pandemic: Trimaine Davis, a Los Angeles teacher who acquired laptops for his students to participate in remote schooling; Suzie Dorner, a nurse assigned to the COVID-19 intensive care unit; and James Martin, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who supports veterans, high school athletes, and young people in his community.

Gorman’s words know no bounds as she calls for social change through the seeds of ideas she scatters. In addition to her many other notable accomplishments, she graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 2020 with a degree in sociology; has written for The New York Times; published the books The Hill We Climb and Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem with Penguin Random House with a first printing of 1 million copies each; co-chaired the 2021 Met Gala; and became the first

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Tamika Mallory Photo credit: Geeno Mizelli

poet to grace the cover of Vogue.

Gorman has also declared that in 2036 she will run for president of the United States, a dream she has carried with her since she was 11.

Tamika Mallory Tamika Mallory section is written by Stephen G. Hall, Ph.D. Every generation produces memorable leaders. This is not a result of fate or otherworldly factors; it is part of concerted effort by activists and leaders in earlier generations to cultivate individuals with special talents and gifts in another generation.

It is no doubt true that “every generation carries the light of freedom.” If this well-known dictum in the American community is true, then Tamika Mallory is its embodiment.

Mallory was born in Harlem in 1980 but moved to the Bronx when she was 14. Raised in an activist home, at age 11, Mallory became involved in the National Action Network (NAN), which was founded by the Reverend Al Sharpton in 1991. Both of her parents were active in the organization, and Mallory

became a staff organizer at 15 and executive director in 2009. She is the single mother of Tarique, whose father, Jason Ryans, was murdered in 2001.

Mallory, no doubt, exemplifies many of the traits of an exemplary leader. She grew up in an activist family. She was a prodigy of sorts and rose quickly through the ranks at NAN. She navigated the challenges of single motherhood and lost her partner to violence.

All of these experiences have honed her sense of passion and urgency around the problems and challenges facing African Americans in the social, political and economic spheres. Her tenacity in addressing these issues has won her both supporters and detractors. Unafraid of controversy, a fearless advocate, and a tireless champion for social justice, she has come to embody the face of 21st century social activism.

While her activism began at an early age, Mallory became widely known in 2017 as one of the four co-organizers of the 2017 Women’s March, which drew its name from the March on Washington. With this highprofile event, Mallory burst into the national and international

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spotlight along with Carmen Pérez, a Chicana American activist; Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist; and Bob Bland, a women’s fashion designer.

The idea for the march originated with Teresa Shook, a retired grandmother in Hawaii who created a Facebook page and invited 40 friends. Overnight the meeting had over 10,000 people who had clicked the attend button. Simultaneously, Bob Bland was organizing a similar event. Using “The Nasty Woman” and “Bad Hombre”’ T-shirts, she raised $20,000 in support of Planned Parenthood.

Mallory brought her activism with NAN as a civil rights activist and gun control advocate to the mix. Bland connected with Sarsour and Mallory to ensure that the march was inclusive and intersectional, aligned with the idea that injustice impacts a multiplicity of groups in unique and varied ways but which must be considered in relationship to one another to be understood and appreciated. The leaders were therefore careful not to replicate the problematic policies of earlier marches by either disregarding blacks and women or relegating them to the back of the line.

The 2017 Women’s March was unprecedented in scale and represented herculean efforts at several different levels. It was a global protest of the election of Donald J. Trump, who, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, had made several statements that were perceived as sexist and anti-woman. The march drew a crowd of approximately 500,000 in Washington, D.C., which was the largest single-day number since the protests of the 1960s. Globally, more than 4.6 million people participated.

Volunteers worked to organize

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the effort, overcoming logistics and fundraising challenges to bring the march to fruition.

Some of the largest marches occurred in New York (400,000); Los Angeles (500,000-750,000); Chicago (250,000); and Seattle (120,000-175,000). Solidarity marches also sprung up in San Francisco, Park City, Raleigh, Shreveport, Albuquerque, Paris Accra and Warsaw. More than 616 marches occurred around the world. Mallory described the effort as essential to “ensuring that the voices of women across this country, women of color, that their voices are heard and that we are the mouthpiece to be able to speak on their behalf, and to ensure that this movement looks like what it means to be a woman in this country.”

Although Mallory was honored

by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People that year and her involvement in the march catapulted her to national and international recognition, it was not without controversy and contestation.

Mallory’s time in the spotlight was short-lived. Less than a year after the success of the 2017 Women’s March, the 2018 Women’s March occurred under a cloud of controversy. Mallory and some other organizers were accused of being antiSemitic. According to news reports, Mallory and Pérez were accused of making inappropriate comments at a planning meeting in November 2016. Participants in the meeting said they “asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people.” Additionally, it was alleged that Mallory confronted Vanessa Wruble, an activist and Jewish participant, regarding her Jewish identity at a January 2017 meeting. This account was confirmed by Wruble. However,

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Cassady Fendlay, communication director of the Women’s March, who was present at both meetings said both accusations were false.

Accusations continued to swirl after Mallory’s appearance at the Nation of Islam’s Saviour’s Day event. She later posted a message on Twitter describing Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time). Mallory later defended her work with Farrakhan citing his work with incarcerated black men. Undeterred by criticism and opposing views, Mallory refused to disassociate herself from Farrakhan. Both Mallory and Sarsour stated that they worked in communities that have great respect for Farrakhan. By September 2019, the criticism and controversy surrounding it had taken its toll. Sarsour, Bland and Mallory decided to resign from the board.

Mallory’s resignation from the Women’s March leadership was not an end, but a beginning. It inaugurated another and more powerful chapter of activism for the young activist. Her leadership skills, large following, and ability to galvanize people around a cause and garner local and national media attention made her an ideal leader for another cause. Mallory immediately leveraged her popularity and skill sets by co-founding, along with Mysonne Linen, Angelo Pinto, Esq., and Sarsour, a social advocacy and civil rights organization called Until Freedom. The organization is “an intersectional social justice organization rooted in the leadership of diverse people of color to address systematic and racial injustice.” Serving as a clearinghouse for a wide range of social justice activists, the organization accomplishes it goals through campaign development, rapid response

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and triage, training and resource development, media advocacy, partnerships with influencers, and faith-based outreach and engagement.

The founding of Until Freedom occurred shortly before the March 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor by Louisville, Ky., police officers. The tragedy occurred at the height of the pandemic, and the full details surrounding it didn’t come out until several months later. The story is shocking but reflects the ongoing struggle to address police brutality against African Americans.

Taylor’s death was a case of mistaken identity during a police raid based on a no-knock warrant, which did not require them to announce their presence.

Officers obtained a warrant but battered down Taylor’s door based on faulty information.

Her boyfriend responded to the incident by firing at police whom he thought were burglars. In the ensuing hail of gunfire, Taylor was struck several times as she slept. The protests following her killing and the effort to formally indict the officers for murder became the subject of national and international media attention.

One of the signature projects of Until Freedom is the Justice for Breonna Taylor campaign.

Until Freedom, with Mallory as the most vocal and visible activist, played a central role in publicizing the case. Mallory launched an aggressive campaign to demand justice for Taylor, which meant firing the officers involved in her shooting and banning no-knock warrants.

At one point, Mallory vowed to stay in the streets of Louisville until Taylor received justice.

She also worked to increase public awareness of the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, a bill

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introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Rand Paul to end no-knock warrants.

In the midst of Until Freedom’s campaign for Breonna Taylor, the George Floyd murder occurred in Minneapolis, Minn. Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin, who placed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes and 29 seconds. This act led to Floyd’s death. Chauvin was subsequently convicted of Floyd’s murder and received a sentence of 22.5 years in jail. In May 2020, Mallory gave a powerful speech in Minneapolis in which she outlined the struggles African Americans face in the struggle for social justice and civil rights.

She also criticized the media’s portrayal of demonstrators as looters. She argued that looting was an outgrowth of the frustration generated by inaction on social justice issues.

The speech went viral and was characterized by numerous commentators as the “speech of a new generation of activists.”

Floyd’s murder gave added momentum to the fight to achieve justice for Taylor, and Mallory worked tirelessly to heighten media awareness and increase public attention regarding her case. Through a series of marches in the streets of Louisville and constant pressure on local authorities, she achieved tangible results. In June 2020, the Louisville City Council unanimously endorsed Breonna’s Law. Until Freedom also released a video with a detailed action plan on how ordinary citizens can impact the political process to effect change.

Despite the decision of Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general, not to charge the officers involved in the Breonna Taylor killing with murder, the fight for justice continued.

In September 2020, the city of

Louisville agreed to institute significant reforms and to pay Taylor’s family $12 million—at the time the largest payout of a municipality to the family of a victim of police brutality or misconduct. Reforms included officer credits for living in the districts where they work, the requirement that high-ranking commanders approve search warrant requests, increased involvement of social workers to address non-life-threatening events, and additional drug testing for officers.

Mallory’s visibility on issues related to police brutality once again generated negative press.

This time the critics were the mothers of children impacted by police misconduct. Following a performance by Mallory with Lil Baby at the Grammy’s in 2021, Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice, and Lisa Simpson, the mother of 18-year old Richard Risher, who was killed by Los Angeles police officers in 2016, criticized her activist style. The mothers demanded Mallory and a host of other activists “step down, stand back and stop monopolizing and capitalizing our fight for justice and human rights.” In an official statement released to the media by Rice and Simpson, they stated their grievances: “We never hired them to be the representatives in the fight for justice for our dead loved ones murdered by the police. The ‘activists’ have events in our cities and have not given us anything substantial for using our loved ones’ images and names on their flyers. …We don’t want or need y’all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals, etc. off the death of our loved ones, while the families and communities are left clueless and broken. Don’t say our loved ones’ names period!

That’s our truth!”

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Although no doubt stung by the criticism, Mallory took it in stride. She responded to Rice’s comment by pointing out her desire to speak directly as a fellow mother and acknowledge Rice’s pain and trauma and support her feelings. Mallory also went on to say that “We all failed her.”

However, she also pointed out that Until Freedom had not used images of Tamir Rice, nor had she ever met Samaria Rice. She also promised not to use Rice’s name in any campaigns and to respect her wishes regarding the use of her son’s name and image in fundraising or activist work.

Mallory also clarified comments made about “clout-chasing.”

“If you actually talk to families that I have worked with for 25 years,” she said, “you will not hear sentiments like we are cloutchasing or that we used their children.”

Tamika Mallory is a leader for our times. Defying the stereotypical leadership styles of the past, which were often rooted in a singular male figure who essentially was the face and voice of a particular cause, Mallory offers what she terms a “leaderfull” approach. This leadership style draws on the collective talents of various leaders, activists and organizers to build movements. These leaders work to accomplish goals collectively.

This style of leadership is reflected in her pioneering work with the Women’s March and Until Freedom. Mallory’s work has made her the pulse of black activism. She has been active in establishing important grassroots organizations; building a large public platform for her work; publishing an important book, titled State of Emergency, on black struggle and liberation; advocating for the importance of highlighting the experience of black victims; and responding to

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Stacey Abrams Photo credit: Paul R. Giunta/Getty Images

criticism in the public spotlight.

All of her unique skills and experiences make her a 21st century leader dedicated to using strategies that harness the collective powers of individuals and groups to effect change.

Stacey Abrams Stacey Abrams has lived up to her reputation as one of the most powerful women in the world.

Abrams is a black woman activist who represents a long line of radical democratic political leaders. Born in Madison, Wis., in 1973, Abrams has lived to become one of the most prominent women in history as she is the first woman and first African American woman to hold various positions in politics.

Abrams attended Spelman College, an all-women’s HBCU, where she led a protest against the unsettling Rodney King

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verdict in 1992. During her time at Spelman, she also worked as a research assistant in the youth service department for Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor.

In 1995, she graduated from Spelman magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies, and in 1998, she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs with a master’s degree in public affairs. After also earning a law degree from Yale, at the age of 29, she was appointed deputy city attorney for Atlanta.

In 2006, Abrams, a Democrat, was elected to represent the 89th district in the Georgia House of Representatives, where she served from 2007 to 2017. In 2010, she became the first black person to lead in the Georgia House of Representatives when she was elected the minority leader. In

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2018, Abrams was one to watch when she ran for governor of Georgia against Republican Brian Kemp. Although her run was unsuccessful, Abrams solidified herself as the first black woman in the U.S. to be a major party’s nominee for governor. She also became the first black woman and first Georgian to deliver a Response to the State of the Union.

In 2014, Abrams established the New Georgia Project with the purpose of registering and civilly engaging citizens in Georgia.

Through this organization, Abrams managed to facilitate the registration of more than 100,000 voters in one year. Because of the reach of her influence, the name Stacey Abrams has become synonymous with voting accessibility and voter turnout.

She was also influenced to create Fair Fight Action after she lost the election for governor in 2018 to help eradicate racially biased voter suppression. Fair Fight Action promotes voter engagement, encourages eligible citizens to register to vote, educates voters, and aims to establish fair elections in not only Georgia but around the country. The progress of this organization demonstrated that voter engagement isn’t an issue of interest but of systematic disenfranchisement.

Abrams made it her mission to advocate for people of color through the political process.

She was instrumental in the voter registration of more than 800,000 new voters for the 2020 election. This was a major contributing factor in Georgia voting for its first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 in this past election.

Her tactics have created a successful blueprint for Democratic campaigns in historically red states, and she

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has been credited with the huge success of Democrats in the 2020 election. Black voters also made their presence known as they showed up in record numbers for Georgia’s crucial Senate runoff elections.

Abrams continues to uplift her community through literature.

Under her own name and the alias Selena Montgomery, Abrams has established herself as a renowned nonfiction and fiction author, who has been featured twice on the New York Times best-seller list. Since she was first published in 2001, it has been her aspiration to write novels that portray black women as just as adventurous and attractive as white women, not only for young black girls but for herself as well.

After being told again and again that women don’t read spy novels and that men would refuse to buy spy novels written by women, she remained determined to change that narrative. She also published a children’s book, Stacey’s Extraordinary Words, in 2021.

As a young girl herself, Abrams was fearless in using her voice.

In the 1980s, when Abrams was selected to represent Mississippi at a Girl Scout conference in Arizona, she was met with disdain by those who were displeased that a black Girl Scout was chosen.

Opponents attempted to prevent her from going, but Abrams was unfazed and, recalling the event, later said, “There are gonna be a lot of people who try to stop you from getting on that plane. … There are a lot of people organizing themselves to make sure I land at the wrong destination. Some folks don’t think it’s time for a black woman to be governor of any state, let alone a state in the Deep South.

But there’s no wrong time for a black woman to be in charge.”

Abrams’ platform promotes economic security, increased

educational opportunity, and criminal justice reform. She has earned many awards for her service such as the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award in 2012 and the Friend of Labor Award from the Georgia AFLCIO, and she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.

Abrams is known for her efforts to dismantle systems that enable voter suppression by fighting to protect fair and free elections, not only in the U.S. but around the world.

Beyoncé Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter is a cultural phenomenon who brings her identity as a black woman into all her endeavors.

Born in Houston, Texas, in 1981, she was destined to be a star. When she was 7, she began competing in singing and dance competitions, making the stage her safe space.

As she was often the only African American girl in the competitions, she knew she had to work that much harder if she wanted to win. She harnessed the struggles she faced as a young black performer to improve her craft.

“I want to continue to work to dismantle systemic imbalances,” she said. “I want to continue to turn these industries upside down.” As a black feminist, she sets a precedent for how black women establish their own unmatchable value.

She now uses the platform she has created for herself to draw attention to issues of sexism and racism and to invite other black women to the table. “Not enough black women had a seat at the table, so I had to go and chop down that wood and build my own table,” she said. “Then I had to invite the best there was to have a seat.”

The star brought attention to an issue that disproportionately

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Beyoncé Photo credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

affects African American women when she herself experienced potentially fatal complications during her pregnancy with twins Rumi and Sir in 2017.

Much like the life-threatening circumstances tennis star Serena Williams experienced during her delivery, Beyoncé had an emergency C-section due to preeclampsia, pregnancy-related hypertension that occurs more commonly in and leads to more deaths among black women than any other race.

She uses her status to advocate for black women and promote black feminism. Her 2016 album Lemonade honors her Southern regionalism and portrays a strong matriarchal line. The album visually conveys the authentic pain and triumph of all black women through Beyoncé’s perspective.

In the music video for her song “Formation,” the singer highlights police brutality, Hurricane Katrina and Southern/ Creole culture. In the song, she celebrates her heritage

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and honors black women’s vibrance and beauty as a political statement. The song features a voiceover of Messy Mya, a 22-yearold social media personality who was fatally shot in an unsolved transphobic murder in 2010, and Big Freedia, a queer New Orleans native and Queen of Bounce.

When Beyoncé performed this single during the Super Bowl in 2018, she showcased references to Hurricane Katrina and Black Lives Matter protests. She sang, “My daddy Alabama, momma Louisiana. You mix that negro with that Creole, make a Texas Bama,” expressing her perspective as a part of the African diaspora in America.

Instead of using violent militant tactics to combat racial injustice, Beyoncé instructs her fans to get in formation and show our worth because we refuse to accept the hand we’ve been given.

Authorities interpreted the video as anti-police because of the references to police-involved shootings and a sinking cop car in post-Hurricane Katrina

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New Orleans. This led to officers enforcing a “Boycott Beyonce” initiative and refusing to work security for her shows on the tour.

Beyoncé’s presence resonates with the black community because of her authenticity and her unapologetic love for herself and her heritage. She makes black women proud of their struggle and history.

As a natural performer, Beyoncé’s presence speaks to her audience in a way that words cannot. When she stepped on the Coachella stage in 2018 and became the first black woman to headline the show, she let fans know “I see you” and “You are unstoppable.” She recounted that when she decided to do the show, instead of pulling out a flower crown, it was more important to bring her culture to Coachella.

Beyoncé’s Netflix documentary Homecoming is a celebration of African American culture through the lens of historically black colleges and universities.

The film showcases voices from

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Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, reflecting on the strength and beauty of the black community and the richness of our struggle for equity. Education has always been of the utmost importance in black culture in America.

In her song Brown Skin Girl, released in 2019, Beyoncé uplifts dark-skinned girls in a society that associates beauty with proximity to whiteness. She speaks directly to her daughter and all brown skin girls when she sings over the African-infused beat, “Your skin is not only dark, it shines and it tells your story.”

She encourages black girls to love their melanin in an effort to instill self-love and confidence in the next generation of black women. She features prominent dark-skinned black women such as Kelly Rowland, Naomi Campbell and Lupita Nyong’o in the music video as examples of black excellence. She reclaims terms like “nappy,” a derogatory term synonymous with ugliness and inferiority, and phrases like “too dark” in a positive way when she says, “Melanin too dark to throw her shade.”

Oprah Winfrey When you think of the most successful people in the world, you most likely think of Oprah Winfrey and her media empire.

Winfrey became the first black female billionaire in 2003, setting a precedent of black excellence across a generational audience.

The media mogul was born in Mississippi in 1954 to a teenage mother but was raised by her harsh grandmother.

When Winfrey was just 9 years old, she was sexually assaulted by her 19-year-old cousin and continuously raped by other family members up until the age of 14 when she got pregnant. Her baby died several weeks after birth.

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Oprah Winfrey Photo credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

After her grandmother died, Winfrey was sent to live with her mother in Milwaukee. Her mother was a boarder in a light-skinned or white-passing woman’s home, and the woman instantly disliked Winfrey for her dark skin. Winfrey wasn’t allowed in the house and was forced to sleep on a porch foyer exposed to the street. “She was not going to have this ‘nappy-headed dark

child,’ as she said, stay in the house,” Winfrey recalled.

At the age of 17, Winfrey won the title of Miss Black Tennessee and caught the attention of the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her parttime. Winfrey also received a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, the only state-funded historically black university in Tennessee, where she studied

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communications and performing arts. At the age of 19, Winfrey became the first black woman to anchor an evening news program in Nashville.

In 1985, Winfrey starred in The Color Purple, a movie adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prizewinning novel The Color Purple.

Walker was the first black female recipient of the award for fiction, and Winfrey received Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for her debut as Sofia. This cultural staple resonates with the black community because of its view through the lens of a black woman as she endures racism and sexism and finds the value of sisterhood and self-worth.

In 2013, Winfrey appeared in another heart-wrenching role: Lee Daniel’s The Butler. Starring Forest Whitaker and Winfrey as Cecil Gaines and Gloria Gaines, The Butler unfolds the progression of the Civil Rights Movement through an integral unsung historical servant, a White House butler. The film tells the story of the African American Gaines family as they experience racism throughout eight presidencies, the Black Power struggles of the late 1960s, the apartheid protests in South Africa, and the election of the first black president of the U.S., Barack Obama.

Winfrey also helped tell the tragic story of Henrietta Lacks in the 2017 film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks when she played the role of Deborah Lacks.

U.S. history had long neglected Henrietta Lacks, the woman who made numerous scientific and medical discoveries possible through the unauthorized use of her bodily cells. After the fatal death of Henrietta due to cervical cancer, her body lies in an unmarked grave in Clover, Va., nearly 60 years later while her

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immortal cells are continuously being sold by the billions. Lacks’ story is just one in a long line of medical experimentation on and exploitation of African Americans, whose names have been forgotten to history.

In 1986, Winfrey obtained her own talk show and became the first black woman to host a nationally syndicated daily talk show. The Oprah Winfrey Show soon became the highestrated talk show in TV history.

The impact this show had on its viewers and mainstream media was astounding. She instilled in her audience the knowledge and perspective to make a difference in their lives and the lives of those around them when she revolutionized addressing uncomfortable but necessary topics. She facilitated inclusive conversations about such topics as race, sexuality, abuse, culture and history, allowing the studio audience to chime in.

During a pivotal episode in 1986, she featured victims and their molesters during a soulbaring conversation in which Winfrey herself conveyed to the audience that she was also a victim of sexual assault. Her long-lasting trauma from her childhood abuse influenced Winfrey to lobby for the creation of the National Child Protection Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in December 1993. Influenced by the teachers who supported her during her childhood abuse, Winfrey created the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in 2007 because of her firsthand experience with the value of education.

The Oprah Winfrey Show remained on the air for 25 years, influencing and uplifting a whole generation of women. Winfrey gave the black community hope

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by demonstrating the capability of going from abject poverty to immense success. At the start of Winfrey’s career, African Americans, let alone dark-skinned African American women, weren’t seen as marketable. She contributed to the change of this racial dynamic early in her career by using her platform of media and communications to open doors for other members of the black community.

Winfrey has become the ultimate businesswoman. In 2003, the empire she built for herself solidified her as one of only two African Americans to appear on the Forbes billionaire list and the only black woman ever to do so. In 2018, when Winfrey became the first black woman to receive the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. deMille Award for lifetime achievement, she gave a heartfelt and empowering speech focusing on the history of oppression through racism, supporting the #MeToo movement, and asserting that “a new day is on the horizon!”

In 2018, Winfrey—one of the most trusted and popular communicators in history—was honored with her own exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The temporary exhibit featured iconic artifacts such as her costume from The Color Purple and the red suit she wore on the episode of her talk show in which she gave everyone in the studio audience a car.

Zain Asher Zain Asher is a modern muckraker, uncovering major stories and giving the world a closer look at global catastrophes.

As an anchor for CNN International, Asher has reported

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Zain Asher Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan

on events such as police-brutality protests in Nigeria, the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, and the abduction of more than 200 Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram militants in 2014, earning a Peabody Award for her coverage.

Asher was raised by her strict Nigerian mother after her father died in a car crash in 1988 when she was 5. She is of Nigerian descent, was raised in London, and now resides in America.

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Asher has grown to become one of the most competent reporters of color in New York City and has also worked at local channels in Nigeria, France and Mexico, giving her a unique perspective on global issues. She is socially aware of the connective tissue that transcends countries and cultures.

Before making contributions to numerous acclaimed networks, Asher graduated from Oxford with a degree in French and Spanish in 2005 and then

proceeded to earn a degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Before she joined CNN, Asher wrote personal finance articles full time at Money magazine. When she was first hired at CNN, she was a business correspondent reporting on topics such as the New York Stock Exchange and U.S. Federal Reserve monetary policy.

As Asher revealed in her TEDx Talk in 2015, her hard work didn’t automatically guarantee success at first. In her talk, “Trust Your Struggle,” which went viral and received nearly 2.2 million views, Asher speaks about overcoming adversity through her own experiences. She believes that the difficult circumstances she was given have prepared her for what is to come. As she discusses in the presentation, she previously worked as a receptionist—a position that was stagnant with little or no chance for advancement within the company despite the hard work she consistently put in. She explains to viewers how her success wasn’t always a straight line.

The CNN correspondent hosted a special as part of its Freedom Project in 2017 that shined a light on human trafficking and measures to eradicate it. In her career, she has hosted numerous discussions at the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Asher is currently hosting One World with Zain Asher live from New York on weekdays.

This new program encompasses crucial conversations that go far beyond American headlines. It offers a diverse range of voices dissecting the daily challenges and successes in Africa and around the world. By creating this inclusive platform, the show allows viewers to gain cultural awareness and have a stake in international conversations.

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Susan Rice Susan Rice is best known for making international policy at the highest level. As a prominent member of the Democratic Party, Rice has had an immense impact as she became the first black woman to serve as a U.S. representative to the United Nations when she became the 27th U.S. ambassador under the Obama administration in 2009.

Born in Washington, D.C., Rice grew up to become one of the most influential women in the city.

After graduating from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in history, instead of going to law school, she decided to continue her studies at Oxford University where she earned a Ph.D. in international relations.

In 1997, Rice served as the assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Clinton administration. At the time, Rice was one of the youngest assistant

secretaries ever, leaving her to face adversity from male elder politicians who insisted that she was unable to handle negotiating with older male leaders.

When she was nominated to be the United States permanent representative to the United Nations after Obama won the election in 2008, the senate confirmed her by a unanimous vote. After she began the position in 2009, Rice pursued a human rights and anti-poverty policy, prioritized queer and women’s rights issues, and committed the U.S. to the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

In 2013, when Rice became the 24th U.S. national security advisor, she led the National Security Council staff, gave the president daily national security briefings, and was responsible for not only the administration’s foreign and national security

policy but intelligence and military efforts as well.

She took a break from government in 2018 when she joined Netflix’s board of directors.

In 2019, she released her New York Times best-selling memoir Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For. In the book, Rice recounts her formative years and the plethora of national security challenges she faced during her career such as the war against ISIS, Edward Snowden’s leaks, Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and the drastic transition to the Trump administration.

In December 2020, Rice was appointed the domestic policy advisor and director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Biden administration. In her new position, she facilitates all aspects of President Biden’s domestic policy agenda such as plans to improve economic mobility, racial equity, healthcare and immigration.

Susan Rice Photo credit: Annie Leibovitz for Vogue

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Condoleezza Rice Diplomat Condoleezza Rice made history when she became the first African American woman and the second woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State when she was appointed to the position in 2005

by President George W. Bush.

Rice was born in Birmingham, Ala., to a schoolteacher mother and a guidance counselor father.

She grew up in a segregated neighborhood during times of immense violence and racial discrimination in the South.

In 1974, Rice graduated from the University of Denver with a degree in political science. In 1975, she received a master’s degree in political science from University of Notre Dame and then proceeded to earn a doctorate from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.

Upon graduation, Rice acquired a job as a political science professor at Stanford University.

In 1987, Rice became an advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then went on to become the director of Soviet and East European affairs on the National Security Council in 1989. Rice served as a national security advisor from 2001 until 2005, and then in 2005, she was appointed to be the 66th U.S. secretary of state.

Once her position ended in 2009, she resumed her career at Stanford University and became a political science professor, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, and the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Rice has also published two best-selling books: Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me for young adults and

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Condoleezza Rice Photo credit: Shutterstock

Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, an adapted version for adults.

Rice set another precedent in 2012 when she became one of the first female members admitted to Augusta National Golf Club, an organization that previously excluded women for 80 years.

Ursula Burns Ursula Burns is a corporate America veteran most notably known for being the first African American woman to serve as a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Burns spent her formative years in low-income housing in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

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Cathy Hughes

Ursula Burns

Her single mother of three, Olga Burns, ran an at-home daycare and juggled ironing and cleaning jobs to pay Burns’ way through school. In 1980, Burns graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University with a degree in mechanical engineering. Later that year, Burns enrolled in a master’s program at Columbia University and began a summer internship at Xerox through its graduate engineering program for minorities, which financially supported a portion of her educational expenses Once she obtained her degree, Burns joined Xerox as a full-time employee and quickly rose within the ranks. In 2007, she became the president of Xerox, two years later she became CEO, and then she went on to become chairman of the board. While CEO, Burns turned what was once a strictly paper copy business into a lucrative enterprise. After she accepted this position, she made

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it her mission to transform Xerox by switching its focus from products to services. In 2015, she generated $18 billion in revenue for the brand.

Burns is also a founding member of Change the Equation, a nonprofit organization launched by former U.S. president Barack Obama that encourages STEM education.

In 2009, President Obama appointed her to lead the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition, which strives to increase student participation and improve overall performance in these subject areas through legislative advocacy.

After she stepped down from her positions, Burns published her memoir, Where You Are Is Not Who You Are, in 2021. Burns has been at the forefront of the corporate evolution, serving on the boards of Xerox, ExxonMobil, Uber and VEON.

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Entrepreneur, media mogul and radio personality Cathy Hughes made a tremendous impact on black media, cementing herself as one of the most prominent names in radio.

Hughes’ radio career began in 1969 when she was hired at KOWH (AM), a black-owned local radio station in her hometown, Omaha, Neb. In 1971, Hughes became a lecturer at the School of Communications at Howard University. During her time at this HBCU, Hughes also served as the general sales manager at WHUR, a university station.

In 1975, she was promoted and became the first female vice president and general manager of a station in Washington, D.C. While in this role, Hughes originated “Quiet Storm,” a new radio format and genre of modern R&B that revolutionized urban radio and managed to increase the station’s revenue from about $250,000 to more than $3 million. In 1978, she joined WYCB Radio, where she served as vice president and general manager.

In 1979, Hughes desired to own her own radio station, so she and her husband at the time, Dewey Hughes, went from bank to bank seeking a loan and faced numerous rejections. After 32 noes, they finally found a lender.

With this newly acquired loan, they started Radio One in 1980 and purchased WOL-AM, a small Washington, D.C., station where she originated another radio format, “24-Hour Talk from a Black Perspective.”

After her divorce, Hughes struggled to make ends meet as a single mother and ultimately was forced to move into the station with her son Alfred. This media pioneer was able to turn the station around, and in 1999, she

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Cathy Hughes Photo credit: Paras Griffin/Getty

became the first female to own a top-ranked station in a major market as well as the first African American woman to chair a publicly traded corporation when Radio One joined the NASDAQ Stock Market.

Radio One, now known as Urban One, has earned the title of the largest African American owned and operated broadcast company in the U.S., as the company now owns 65 stations across genres and across the nation. In 2004, Hughes launched her new television network, TV One, specifically curated for African Americans. Hughes’ network accurately reflects the community it serves, and her unprecedented success from her original content and formats in television, radio and digital media have made her one of the wealthiest African American women in the country.

Venus Williams and Serena Williams Powerhouse sisters Venus and Serena Williams have revolutionized tennis through

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their historic athletic careers.

During their early years in East Compton, Calif., the two perfected their craft on the courts in Los Angeles’ East Compton Park. At the mere age of 4, Venus, the elder of the two, first picked up a racket, trained by their father, a self-taught tennis fanatic.

In 1991, the sisters enrolled in Rick Macci’s Delray Beach Tennis Academy in Florida, vigorously training for six hours a day, six days a week. The two’s talent and achievements quickly turned them into professional tennis stars.

In 1999, at her first appearance in a major’s final, Serena won the U.S. Open at the age of 17. She became the first black woman to earn a Grand Slam singles title since 1958 when Althea Gibson won the title. The following year, Venus proceeded to win the Open in 2000 and again in 2001.

Venus and Serena also won the doubles at their major’s event in 1999, and thus began the long-

lasting winning streak of these two tenacious black women.

The triumphant two teamed up throughout their athletic careers, winning 14 Grand Slam doubles.

They also won gold medals at the 2000 Olympic Games in the doubles event.

In 2002, Serena won the French Open, the U.S. Open and Wimbledon, surpassing others in the sport, including her sister. In 2003, Serena won the Australian Open, obtaining all four of the slam’s component tournament titles. Her powerful technique allowed Williams to dominate the sport and win 23 Grand Slams, more than any other man or woman in the history of the Open. In 2012, after Serena earned her fifth Wimbledon singles title, she then proceeded to win a gold medal in the singles event at the London Olympic Games. This historic event made Serena the second woman to win a career Golden Slam.

Venus Williams and Serena Williams Photo credit: Manny Millan

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Ketanji Brown Jackson Photo credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

In 2017, Serena won her 23rd Grand Slam singles title while eight weeks pregnant, determined to defend her title.

When she delivered her baby girl in 2018, Serena faced a life-threatening delivery and experience afterwards. After having an emergency C-section, she developed blood clots in her lungs due to a pulmonary embolism, a condition the athlete has a history of. Serena caught the early signs of these sudden health complications herself and warned a nurse.

The new mother pleaded with doctors to administer a CT scan that revealed clots that had been previously missed. After this incident, Serena spoke out about an issue that plagues black women everywhere as they are almost four times more likely

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to die during childbirth than other races. She encourages black women to advocate for themselves like she did.

Venus and Serena Williams are icons that transcend the sport of tennis. They inspired diversity in tennis and hope in young African Americans. The two gave back to their community by investing time and finances in efforts to establish a tennis center in Washington, D.C. These accomplished women have influenced athletics all over the world, diversifying a sport that was predominately white in the 1950s.

Ketanji Brown Jackson Federal attorney Ketanji Brown Jackson made well-deserved history when she was appointed

by President Joe Biden to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court in

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April 2022, making her the sixth woman and first black woman to attain such a position.

In 1992, Jackson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in government, and in 1996, she received a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Jackson has an extensive history in law from her three federal clerkships to her time at four prestigious law firms, her experience as a public defender, and two terms served with the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

In 1996, Jackson became a clerk to Massachusetts U.S. District Judge Patti Saris. In 1997, she acquired another clerkship with Judge Bruce Selya, serving in this position until 1998. After her time at private firms, Jackson became an assistant federal

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public defender in Washington, D.C., in 2005. In 2010, Jackson served as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission after she received a nomination from former President Barack Obama and unanimous consent from the Senate. In 2012, President Obama nominated Jackson to serve as a U.S. district judge in Washington, D.C., but the Senate did not act on her nomination. Obama tried again to appoint Jackson for this position in 2013, and the Senate finally confirmed her by a voice vote in March of that year.

Jackson served as a U.S. district judge from 2013 until 2021.

During her eight years on the D.C. District Court, she ruled on over 550 cases, participating in numerous high-profile rulings on federal environmental law, the methodical approach to ensuring equal justice under the law on reproductive rights, workers rights, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the 232 years the Supreme Court has been in existence, it has never had a black woman sit on the bench until now.

Jackson is not only a nominee of extraordinary qualifications, but her historic presence makes this influential and integral aspect of our democracy more reflective of our current America.

Jackson brings a wide range of experiences to the position.

She is the first former public defender. The last justice with any significant experience representing criminal defendants was Thurgood Marshall, who retired in 1991. Her experience advocating for working people will hopefully bring muchneeded criminal justice reform at such a high level, and her perspective as a black woman will shape how she approaches cases and how majority and minority views will be framed and argued.

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Those Who Came Before Real-life women who set the table for things to come Josephine Baker The original heroine American-born French singer and dancer, Freda Josephine McDonald, became a symbol for African American beauty and culture as she established her career as a performer. Born in St. Louis, Mo., in 1906, Baker grew up in poverty and was forced to leave school at the age of 12 to help with family finances. She took babysitting jobs and cleaned

houses for wealthy white families, one of which burned Baker’s hands as punishment for using excessive soap in the laundry.

In her early teens, Baker became a dresser and eventually a chorus line girl for the Dixie Steppers in a traveling dance show. While in New York, Baker developed her distinctive dance style, contributing to the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance and participating in the celebration of black art and culture. Baker auditioned

Josephine Baker Photo credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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for Shuffle Along, one of the first black shows on Broadway, but was rejected for being “too skinny and too dark” before later being accepted on the show. In 1924, she joined the Sissle and Blake show that was later renamed The Chocolate Dandies.

In 1925, when she traveled to Paris to play a leading role in an all-black production La Revue Nègre, she took the city by storm and became an entertainment sensation. She hit the peak of her career and became one of the most popular performers in Europe.

In France of 1927, Baker became the first black woman to star in a motion picture when she was cast in the silent film Siren of the Tropics. She was also the first African American to perform with an integrated cast at the American concert hall and one of the first black performers to achieve fame in both film and on the stage.

Baker’s eccentric costumes and dance moves made her performances among the first times that black was viewed as beautiful for many people during that period. She became famous for her banana dance, during which she would descend from a palm tree onto the stage and dance in her famous skirt made of 16 artificial bananas.

In 1936, when Baker returned to the U.S.to perform in the Ziegfeld Follies, she was met with hostility by American audiences despite her European stardom. Americans hated the idea of a black woman with such sophistication and standing. The New York Times even referred to her as a “Negro wench,” causing Baker to flee to Europe.

In 1953, during her tour in the Far East, she adopted two orphans, a Korean and a Japanese, the first of the 12 children she would ultimately

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adopt of different nationalities, referring to them as her “Rainbow Tribe.”

Baker used her platform as an entertainer to fight fascism in Europe during WWII, end racism and promote peace. She joined the French Resistance during WWII, using her performances as a front to spy on Nazi activities.

Her refusal to perform in front of segregated audiences often forced venue owners to integrate.

Her activism was recognized by the NAACP, and in 1963, she was one of the few women selected to speak at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Mary McLeod Bethune A woman before her time Born in South Carolina, Bethune and her 16 siblings helped their parents in the cotton fields until her mother could buy the land from their former slave owner.

Bethune was the only child in her family that was able to go to school when a missionary opened a school nearby for black children. She developed the belief that education was the key to racial advancement and thus grew to become one of the most important black educators of the 20th century.

She received a scholarship and graduated from the Scotia Seminary, a boarding school in North Carolina, in 1894. She then furthered her education at Dwight L. Moody’s Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago, Ill., but was unable to find a church to sponsor her as a missionary, so she returned to the South to become an educator.

In 1904, Bethune founded a school that would later become the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona, Fla. In 1923,

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Mary McLeod Bethune Photo credit: Collections of the National Museum of American History

the school merged with the all-male Cookman Institute and later became BethuneCookman College, which began to issue degrees in 1943. She set a precedent for educational standards for modern black universities.

Bethune also became an active and influential feminist and political leader. She was president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs in 1924 and a founding president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. In 1942, when she became a member of the advisory board that established the Women’s Army Corps, she made it her mission to ensure that it was racially integrated.

Bethune became an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a leader in his unofficial “Black Cabinet.” In 1937, she hosted a conference on the Problems of the Negro and Negro Youth in efforts to end racial discrimination and the lynching of African Americans.

She became vice president of the NAACP in 1940 and held this role until her death in 1955. In 1945, she was the only woman of color who attended the founding conference of the United Nations.

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Coretta Scott King Photo credit: Robin Nelson/ZUMA Press/Newscom

Fannie Lou Hamer after being beaten in jail, June 1963 FBI photo

Coretta Scott King Modern mother of social change The wife of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King also established her own legacy of social justice during her husband’s time and after his death.

Born in Heiberger, Ala., near Marion, she experienced racial violence throughout her formative years. When she was a mere teenager, her family’s sawmill was burned to the ground by whites who were upset that the family had achieved economic independence.

Coretta developed an interest in music at an early age, following in the footsteps of her parents.

She received a scholarship to pursue her music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Mass., where she worked toward a degree in music education. While in Boston, she met a young doctoral student, Martin Luther King Jr., who attended Boston University.

After the two married in 1953, they settled down in Montgomery,

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Ala., where Martin took a position as a pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Coretta worked side by side with her husband as they fought discrimination, and both Kings played decisive roles in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. About eight weeks after the beginning of the boycott, the Kings’ house was bombed with Coretta and their 10-weekold child inside. Both escaped unharmed.

Coretta helped tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement through her musical expertise. She performed recitals throughout the South and organized a series of Freedom Concerts to help fundraise for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

After her husband’s death, Coretta remained active in the fight for equity. In 1969, she became the first woman to preach in a statutory service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. That same year, she published her memoir, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., sharing her experiences.

In 1983, she assembled more than 800 human rights groups to form the Coalition of Conscience, which sponsored

the 20th Anniversary March on Washington with the primary object of establishing a national holiday for King.

For decades, she was a strong spokeswoman and advocate for ending apartheid in South Africa.

Coretta, her daughter Bernice, and her son Martin III were all arrested for protesting in front of the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Fannie Lou Hamer Fearless fighter who made a difference Born in Montgomery County, Miss., Fannie Lou Hamer joined her sharecropper parents in the fields at the age of 6. Her experiences growing up in the South motivated the depth of her fearless activism.

In 1961, while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor, Hamer, who wanted to have children, received an unwanted hysterectomy without her consent by a white doctor, sterilizing her. This common practice known as a “Mississippi appendectomy” was a tactic to

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reduce the black population.

Later that year, Hamer participated in a meeting held by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights group influential in facilitating and encouraging blacks to vote, eventually becoming a SNCC organizer herself. During this time, only 5 percent of Mississippi’s 450,000 black residents were registered to vote, and Hamer did everything in her power to change that. In 1962, she led 17 blacks to a Mississippi courthouse to register to vote, but they were denied due to an unfair literacy test.

In 1963, while traveling with other activists to a voter rights workshop in South Carolina, Hamer and several other black women were arrested for sitting in a white-only restaurant in Winona, Miss. Once at the jail, Hamer and the other women were brutally beaten and prodded for information about the SNCC project. The inhumane beatings lasted four days, leaving Hamer with irreparable damage.

Hamer developed a blood clot in her eye, leaving her with minimal vision in that eye, kidney damage from repeated blows to the back, leg damage, and an abundance of permanent scars.

In 1964, Hamer helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, challenging Mississippi’s all-white delegation to that year’s Democratic convention. Hamer delivered a moving speech at the convention, calling for mandatory integrated state delegations and recounting the incessant violence she had suffered during the Winona jailhouse incident that left her with permanent injuries.

In 1964, Hamer also ran for Congress as a member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party but was unsuccessful.

Still, Hamer shaped local, state

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Angela Davis Photo credit: Djeneba Aduayom for TIME

and national politics with her political leadership. Her determination and persistent activism transformed the nation.

Angela Davis Symbol of the emerging modern black woman With signature afro, Angela Davis is known for her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement as a political activist, academic and author. Born in Birmingham, Ala., in a neighborhood known as “Dynamite Hill” for the numerous houses that were frequently targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, Davis was motivated to join the Black Panthers and an all-black branch of the

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Communist Party at a young age.

She believed in their devotion to civil rights and Black Power but didn’t agree with their gender divisions.

In 1965, Davis graduated from Brandeis University where she pursued a degree in philosophy.

She also earned a master’s degree from the University of California, San Diego, in 1968 and later pursued a Ph.D. from Humboldt University in Germany.

She became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, but once officials learned of her political affiliations, they fired her. But Davis fought back, taking her situation to The Supreme Court of California, which ruled that she couldn’t be banned for party affiliation.

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Harriet Tubman Photo credit: Library of Congress

Later that year, Davis became involved with the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee, a group that organized fundraisers and raised awareness for three black inmates at Soledad Prison who were charged with the murder of a white prison guard.

Davis became close with one of the three, George Jackson. During the trial of another prisoner in 1970, Jackson’s brother Jonathan held up the courtroom and attempted to free prisoners including George. During this escape attempt, the Marin County judge and others, including Jonathan, were killed. After this event, Davis was accused of being an accomplice and charged with murder when evidence revealed that the gun was registered to her and rumors surfaced that she was in love with Jackson, which was later proven untrue.

Davis’ imprisonment garnered a national response, resulting in the “Free Angela Davis” campaign, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s song “Angela,” and the Rolling Stones’ song “Sweet Black Angel.” After enduring 18 months in jail, Davis was acquitted of all charges in 1972. During her incarceration, she wrote If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance.

After she was released, Davis was even more motivated to fight for equality. She persisted in efforts to fight against the oppression of blacks, women

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Ella Baker Photo credit: George Ballis Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Ida B. Wells Photo credit: Library of Congress

Phyllis Wheatley

Sojourner Truth

Illustration by Scipio Moorhead

Photo credit: Library of Congress

and the LGBTQ community. (In 1997, she disclosed that she was a lesbian in an interview with Out magazine.)

Davis eventually returned to teaching and is a history of consciousness professor emerita of the University of California, Santa Cruz. As one of the only surviving heroes of the global African diaspora, Davis continues to fight for black liberation.

Honorable Mention Harriet Tubman, black female Moses

Tubman freed 70 enslaved black people through the Underground Railroad, fought for the Union Army during the Civil War, and pioneered women’s suffrage.

That’s earned her a place on the 20-dollar bill, supplanting Andrew Jackson.

Ella Baker, the woman behind the black man If you protest for your rights, you owe it largely to this tireless organizer for civil and human rights from the 1950s until her death in 1986. She also mentored virtually every major black leader of note and helped spawn the “black power” movement.

Ida B. Wells, crusader The most famous female African American of her time, Wells, an educator, author and newspaper publisher, helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), documented the atrocity of Southern lynching, and stoop up for the rights of the oppressed, especially black women.

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Phyllis Wheatley, the first African American poet Born in West Africa and sold into slavery in North America as a child, she had her freedom purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who encouraged her literary interests. It paid off: Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), was the first published book of poetry by an African American. Her work was praised by many, including George Washington. She died at age 31.

Sojourner Truth, early feminist and abolitionist An escaped slave from New York, Sojourner (she gave herself that name) in 1828 was able to obtain legal custody of her son from a white man, the first to do so, and spent the remaining 55 years of her life fighting for the rights of black people and women. As her biographer Nell Irvin Painter wrote, “At a time when most Americans thought of slaves as male and women as white, Truth embodied a fact that still bears repeating: Among the blacks are women; among the women, there are blacks.”

American Gothic, Washington, D.C. (1942) by photographer Gordon Parks perfectly depicts reality for the black woman throughout much of American history. It is an image that persists among many whites to this day.

The new reality: Parker Curry, 2, stands in awe of the National Portrait Gallery painting of Michelle Obama.

Photo credit: Ben Hines

What the Future Holds These incredible women have shown the world that black women are limitless. This country and the history of the United States is yet to be written, with these women helping to fill in the pages. Amanda Gorman once said that this is a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

Black history is American history, and it is still in the making. All these successful women are Black with a capital B, unapologetic and destined for greatness.

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The African Heritage Magazine

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Pro & Con

Is “Wokeness” Helping or Hurting?

By Lorraine Jones

Throughout the history of the American language, black people have used rhetoric as a tool to adapt and survive the harsh reality of this country. The words we use are often reflective of our current culture and political situation. We have used language to combat injustice, establish respect for our community, and push for social and political equality.

The recent heightened political division and racial tensions in America have brought immense media criticism and struggle for power through our choice of language. Identifying systems of oppression or words that perpetuate hate led to subverting and dismantling them. Many are reevaluating the rhetoric they use and the racial and discriminatory implications. A word that was once used freely and in mundane conversation is now seen for its harmful implications.

The racialized language of American history stretches as far back as the 1500s. One label referring to people of African descent first appeared in English literature in 1577 in The Nigers of Aethiop. Descending from the Latin word for black,

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1906

1918

“niger”—which was commonly used to refer to Africans—began as a neutral descriptor when it was first introduced to the English language. During the 1700s, the word appeared in what the dictionary describes as “dignified argumentation.” The term “negro” was originally used without derogatory intention in reference to free blacks in the South.

The word “colored” was commonly used and preferred by blacks in the U.S. until W.E.B. Du Bois advocated to transition to “negro” in the 1920s. After they fought in World War I, there was a social shift in blacks’ self-identification. As black empowerment began to reveal itself and prominent black figures demanded to be regarded with dignity and respect, the word “nigger” began its transition from a neutral term to a derogation that was deliberately demeaning and intended to put black Americans in their place. The term “nigger” wasn’t uttered in 1960s films, despite having been written in books they were adapted from, such as Gone With the Wind.

Up until the 1960s when the slow decline of this colloquialism started, “negro” was simply how blacks referred to themselves and others. At a civil rights rally in 1966, Stokely Carmichael first coined the phrase “Black Power.”

In 1967, Carmichael publicly argued that the term “negro” implied black inferiority.

In efforts by blacks to redefine their identity and take back control, “nigger” became a term of comradery by descendants of those who endured the depth of its origin. In The Jeffersons, a television sitcom in the 1970s portraying an upper-class black family in Manhattan, businessman George Jefferson would use “nigger” to refer to other black people both with and without endearment.

In the 1970s, as “black” became the majority racial indicator, organizations such as The Associated Press and The New York Times abandoned the word “negro” altogether. It took a while for lifestyles and institutions to adapt to these language switches. Although the NAACP, first established in 1909, rejected Du Bois’ advocacy for the name switch, the organization did however stop using the term in all contexts. What was once Negro History Week in 1926 switched to Black History Month in 1976.

There is ultimately no killing this word because it takes on a life of its own in various environments. Despite being sprinkled in rap and R&B

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African Americans’ imagery has transitioned through the centuries, from Little Black Sambo, to colored, to negro and, since the late 1960s, black. lyrics or used to appropriate black culture, the word is still inextricably linked with violence and brutality in the black psyche.

No amount of appropriation can remove the generational pain and blood-soaked history behind the racial slur. The venom behind this word is so powerful that it is referred to as the “n-word” instead of using the actual term in most modern conversations.

In the right context, this term can be the ultimate insult or dagger to the generations of African Americans that have suffered its wrath.

Unlike the n-word, the concept of blackface was always considered offensive by the black community. Civil rights organizations have always condemned blackface because of how it dehumanizes African Americans. Frederick Douglass denounced blackface performers as “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money

The African Heritage Magazine

| Spring 2022

Today

“ I want us to cancel the idea of feeling that we don’t want anyone to laugh because if we don’t laugh, we cry. And I don’t believe that was God’s intention—ever.” ­—Stevie Wonder

and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens.”

In the United States, blackface may have first appeared on stages in the 18th century. Worn by white men, women and even children, blackface was used to mock the appearance of blacks for profit and to introduce and reinforce racial stereotypes.

Performers would darken their faces with burnt cork to create caricatures of black people that exaggerated large lips and eyes with skin as black as coal.

Blackface entertainers would sing songs, dance and act out skits portraying black men and women as hypersexual, superstitious, lazy, cowards and thieves.

The popularity of blackface made it one of the most successful genres of public entertainment. White viewers saw it as a fun and harmless representation of African Americans, and these foolish and animalistic portrayals of blackness melted into national culture. Shows included characters such as the clownish slave Jim Crow; the maternal Mammy; the hypersexualized wench Lucy Long; the lazy, childish Sambo; and many others. White working-class audiences enjoyed this form of cheap entertainment because of how it escalated a sense of racial superiority.

The more cognizant people

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are of their role in the social context, the greater the need people, predominantly younger liberals, find to rectify injustices and the systems that perpetuate them. Terms such as political correctness, wokeness and cancel culture have thus entered our language, revealing polarized sides of our society based on a spectrum of progressive thinking and the use of language.

The label for being socially aware of marginalized groups, coined as “woke,” stems from a collection of aphorisms going as far back as 1923 when Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican philosopher and activist, called black people to be more socially and politically aware when he said, “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” This concept resurfaced in 1938 in the song “Scottsboro Boys,” by Huddie Ledbetter. The ballad was the singer’s form of protest and referred to nine black teenagers who were accused of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Ala., in 1931. The musician advises black Americans to “stay woke” to the reality of white racism.

In 1962, William Melvin Kelley, a black novelist, wrote a New York Times essay titled “If You’re Woke You Dig It.” In this opinion piece, Kelley discussed how white Americans continuously appropriated the black vernacular, referencing language such as “cool” and “dig”

that originated with black jazz musicians.

This term has been historically associated with black consciousness and awareness of racial dynamics; it evolved to become a survival tactic in 2014 after the death of Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police. “Stay woke” became a common cautionary term used by activists who kept watch for police brutality during the Black Lives Matter movement. The hashtag #StayWoke has furthered a sense of community by uniting black Americans with a shared experience of discrimination, perspective and persistence while enduring the long fight for racial equity.

Now shortened to just “woke,” the word refers to attempts to indict the status quo. With the hope and intention of waking Americans from the slumber of passive acceptance and comfortable ignorance, wokeness calls attention to the systemic and pervasive systems that marginalized groups suffer from in America. The concept of wokeness appeals to people with legitimate complaints against social norms or institutional discrimination.

The evolution of language and ideology has moved in a progressive direction as we become more aware and conscious of many groups within

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Corporate America finds out what time it is for repackaging old stereotypes. this country, but there is debate whether society has taken this to an extreme. Often considered a leftist political ideology, wokeness focuses on social justice issues and rectifying discriminatory policies. Many liberals have pushed for issues such as affirmative action, the use of correct pronouns, equal opportunities for minority groups, etc.

“Woke” has undergone massive shifts in meaning and function as people attempt to prove their woke status. At times, this creates performative and disingenuous attempts at wokeness. The 2017 Pepsi commercial featuring model and reality star Kendall Jenner, the 2018 Nike social justice ad, and the Gillette “toxic masculinity” ad were all considered insulting to blacks or others. People began to commodify a social injustice issue in efforts to fit a popularized narrative. In the American R&B singer H.E.R.’s 2020 song “I Can’t Breathe,” she sings “Because you think your so-called ‘black friend’ / Validates your wokeness and erases your racism,” highlighting this newfound phony appearance of activism, which reduces legitimate political arguments to something trivial.

Wokeness soon evolved to

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become interchangeable with “cancel culture.” During social justice movements and social media campaigns such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, cancel culture helped to enable prosecutions for Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.

Cancel culture, another concept that isn’t new, only newly resurfaced, first attracted media attention in 1981 in Nile Rodgers’ single “Your Love Is Cancelled.”

In 1991, the concept of canceling a person arose in the movie New Jack City when the character Nino Brown told his girlfriend she was canceled after they broke up.

Multiple references to this term circulated in the media in years to follow, such as Lil Wayne’s 2010 song “I’m Single” in which he stated “Yeah, I’m single / n***a had to cancel that bitch like Nino” and in 2014 in an episode of VH1’s reality show Love & Hip Hop New York when Cisco Rosado yelled to Diamond Strawberry during an altercation, “You’re canceled.” Rosado admitted to quoting the film in this pivotal episode that ignited Black Twitter.

Many companies have been canceled or forced to rebrand because of public pressure.

False but profitable narratives that inspired the mascots of

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Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s and Mrs. Butterworth’s survived over a century until now. These stereotypical myths depicted happy and loyal black servitude, allowing white consumers to perpetuate the fantasy that black Americans are submissive, selfeffacing and ready to serve.

The character of Aunt Jemima was first depicted by a formerly enslaved woman named Nancy Green, who was born in Kentucky in 1834. Green modeled and embodied Aunt Jemima until her death in 1923.

When the creator of the pancake company, Chris Rutt, saw a blackface performer wearing a bandana and an apron sing a slave song, “Old Aunt Jemima,” at a vaudeville show in 1889, he was inspired to create the real-life advertisement. After 130 years of the Aunt Jemima character perpetuating the mammy trope, the brand changed its name to the Pearl Milling Company in 2021. The company chose this new name to “future-proof” the trademark, eliminating the potential of creating another controversy.

The label Uncle Ben’s originated from a black Texas farmer known for his high-quality rice. Frank Brown, a waiter for a Chicago restaurant, posed for the

The African Heritage Magazine

| Spring 2022

logo on the company’s package in 1946. Similar to Uncle Ben’s original branding, the brand Cream of Wheat featured the image of a smiling black man in chef’s attire—in this case, Frank L. White, a Barbados-born chef— on its merchandise. During this time, referring to a black man as “Uncle” was done deliberately to avoid giving him the respect of using the title “Mister.” Despite being inaccurate, such terms served as acceptable forms of representation for decades, shaping how we see other races and cultures.

There is a constant cycle of labeling ideas and opinions as too woke or not woke enough spilling over into politics and mainstream media. Cancel culture was originally intended to hold society accountable, but many conservatives have argued that the rise of social justice movements have created a slippery slope leading to cancel culture. Cancel culture is an attempt to cancel or take away someone’s status or platform over openly expressing opinions that create controversy.

Often used in a sarcastic or a mocking manner, cancel culture refers to what some view as a false sense of accountability. Rightwing critics (seemingly without irony) believe that by publicly shaming those who oppose their views, often resulting in loss of jobs or career opportunities, liberals have too much power.

They argue that cancel culture is being weaponized by some leftists.

These sorts of collectivized demands are thought of as “mob rule.” Cancel culture has essentially become “political correctness” gone awry. The phrase “politically correct” emerged in the 1930s when it was used to mock American Communist publications. (It

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Dave Chappelle has sparked controversy for his politically incorrect comments.

was also used by Joseph Stalin against his enemies in the USSR.) In the 1960s and 70s,it was more commonly used to ridicule those who read too deeply into things.

At this time, the phrase would label someone as self-righteous, calling attention to the potential of dogmatism. By strategically framing these progressives as hypersensitive, it delegitimizes leftist ideologies.

Those who are resistant to woke ideology are often labeled as “canceled” or fall victim to what has become “cancel culture.” Critics of cancel culture deem it as a policing of language. Former President Donald Trump, who has been at the enforcing and receiving end of the term, has stated, “The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated and driven from society as we know it.”

Wokeness and cancel culture have the potential to weaken comedic freedom and destroy careers. In some circumstances, cancel culture can eliminate the free exchange of ideas.

Dave Chappelle, a black comedian known for a sense of humor that dances with controversial scenarios, was threatened to be canceled after his Netflix documentary The Closer aired in October 2021. After Chappelle made remarks regarding white gays, the #MeToo movement, lesbians and transgender women, the reactions to his jokes and opinionated statements were explosive. Organizations such as LGBT nonprofit groups, GLAAD, and the National Black Justice Coalition, as well as allies of the trans community, have demanded that Netflix cancel the show. NPR said that transphobia isn’t excused simply because Chappelle is black.

However, Stevie Wonder came

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Roseanne Barr’s racist remarks got her “canceled” from Roseanne.

to Chappelle’s defense, saying what we should really focus on is canceling fear and hate. Said Wonder: “I want us to cancel the idea of feeling that we don’t want anyone to laugh because if we don’t laugh, we cry. And I don’t believe that was God’s intention—ever.”

Another comedian, Kevin Hart, also faced the wrath of cancel culture after homophobic comments he made resurfaced in 2018. Hart believes that cancel culture is censoring comedians.

“You’re thinking that things you say will come back and bite you on the ass,” said Hart.

He apologized for his offensive remarks and preached that real growth comes from mistakes.

“It’s like jail,” he said. “People get locked up so they can be taught a lesson. When they get out, they are supposed to be better. But if they come out and people go, ‘I’m not giving you a job because you were in jail’—

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then what the fuck did I go to jail for? That was my punishment— how do you not give those people a shot? They’re saying that all life should be over because of a mistake? Your life should end and there should be no opportunity to change? What are you talking about? And who are you to make that decision?”

On issues of race, gender and other marginalizations, no disagreement is tolerated.

American actress and comedian Roseanne Barr was officially “canceled” from the reboot of her sitcom Roseanne after the star posted a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a black senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, that said Jarrett was the baby of the Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes. ABC Entertainment’s president, Channing Dungey, the first black entertainment president of a major broadcast

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television network, was influential in the decision to reprimand Barr for her repugnant comment, stating that it was “inconsistent with our values.” The company didn’t want to jeopardize the recent progress in efforts to combat racial stereotypes through representations such as Doc McStuffins, a Disney Channel cartoon about a young black girl who wants to be a doctor; How to Get Away With Murder, a role that allowed Viola Davis to become the first black woman to win a lead-actress Emmy; and Black Panther, which demonstrated that a film with a basis in black culture and a mostly black cast has the potential to become a global blockbuster.

Like most reforms of manners, there are always those who perceive this course of action as taking things too far. Many conservatives—not without hypocrisy or irony—frame wokeness as progressive politics run amok. They believe that the idea of wokeness injures American exceptionalism, the concept that embraces the image of Americans as inherently good, and that its hyperbolic language ideology makes it akin to a religious cult. It is perhaps partly this view that drives many red states to pass laws to outlaw talk of critical race theory and sex.

In 2017, the satirical show Saturday Night Live mocked the term woke, labeling the progressive movement as being label-driven and superficial.

In 2018, an NPR commentator begged leftists to retire the word, claiming it was a false show of progressive activism that had taken hold on the right.

Wokeness is now criticized as being a performative pandering by liberals that has become a pejorative for hypersensitivity.

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Two Contrasting Views CON: Excerpts from an open letter by Africa Brooke, a Zimbabwean-born, London-based writer, on why she “left the cult of wokeness”: What I’m truly afraid of is existing in a world that forces me to submit to an ideology without question, otherwise I’m to be shamed (or pressured to shame myself) and cast out of the community.

A world that tells me that because I inhabit a black body; I will forever be oppressed and at the mercy of some omnipresent monster called “whiteness.” That because of the color of my skin; I am a victim of an inherently racist system by default – and me rejecting the narrative of oppression means that I am in fact, in denial. How empowering!

As someone who comes from Zimbabwe, a country where the general population is truly oppressed, it perplexes me that oppression is now being worn as an identity piece in most parts of the West, especially by those who claim to be “progressive.”

What I’m truly afraid of is existing in a world that forces me to consider the color of my skin and my gender (and that of others) at every f***ing turn, instead of living

by Martin Luther King’s teachings and prioritizing the content of mine and other people’s character.

I dread the prospect of a world where context, nuance, critical thinking, meritocracy, mathematics, science, and rationality are considered tools of “white supremacy,” and the rule is that you’re not allowed to question or argue this senseless statement – especially if you’re white. A world that is conditioning you and I to believe that we will always be trapped in some weird hierarchy because of our race, our genitals, our physical abilities, our neurodiversity, our sexuality, and our politics.

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And that if we do not agree on every single thing, it’s a sign that we are interacting with an enemy – or at the very least, someone to be wildly suspicious and judgmental of…instead of another complex human being worthy of being seen and heard. I wish this world I’m speaking of was just a figment of my imagination, but we are already inside it. Our suitcases have been unpacked here for quite some time.

This absolutist, authoritarian world is being fiercely crafted under the guise of “social justice,” and I want no parts in this. I AM OUT. ……

I can no longer be an active participant in any culture or movement that encourages groupthink, outrage on demand, fear and violence, revamped segregation, fabricating history, cancellations masked as accountability, self-centredness…. normalization of racism towards white people, the disempowerment of black people masked as social justice, the constant redefining of existing language, ignoring self-responsibility, constant pathologizing, oppressed vs. oppressor mentality, and the pressure to conform and comply…

It’s exhausting. And honestly, I have better things to do with my time. Not to mention, it’s killing us. …….

This is also why I do not identify as a feminist. Just like everything else I’ve spoken about so far; the current wave of commodified feminism is so far removed from my core values; honesty, respect, interconnection, equality, individuality, etc. There’s

Africa Brooke Photo credit: Ste Marques

a lot of self-righteousness, virtue signalling, self-centeredness, and a lack of empathy in most of what I see being presented today as feminism – and again; it seems to be about revenge, superiority, and personal branding. ….

IT’S TIRING, and I wish more people knew that you can still believe in and advocate for equality and fairness without wearing a label like a badge of honour. My mission isn’t to be superior to anyone, nor do I want to see the demise of any gender.

I believe that we should all have equal rights and opportunities, and I’m also realistic about the differences we have as human beings – I celebrate those differences. In a world obsessed with labels and titles, I would rather let my values and actions speak for themselves. I was raised to not judge people based on the color of their skin, gender, class etc – no matter what. And that’s what I’ll continue to do.

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PRO: Excerpts from “In Defense of Wokeness,” an essay by Tomiwa Owolade, a UK-based writer and critic and contributing editor to UnHerd.com, first published on that website:

Tomiwa Owolade Many people, like Oliver Dowden, the chairman of the Conservative Party, think that the culture wars in Britain are between the woke Left and the conservative Right. This is only partially correct. They are also between the liberal-Left and the woke Left; they are also civil wars.

Dowden made a speech a couple of weeks ago at an American think-tank called the Heritage Foundation. It wasn’t exactly Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, but it made a splash. Dowden denounced woke ideology as a terrifying force: “a social media mob,” he said, “can cancel you merely because you have dared to challenge one of the Left’s fashionable nostrums.”

Dowden’s analysis of woke politics is slightly misplaced. … It is now fashionable among a certain type of Left-liberal or centrist to say ‘woke’ is a meaningless term. It is certainly true that it is much abused. Some newspaper columnists relish going after ‘woke snowflakes’ with the zeal of

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indiscriminate big-game hunters.

I can see why one would want to remove themselves from that. It’s all so vulgar, and disavowing the term ‘woke’ thus seems like a cleaner choice.

But there is no point denying that there are conflicts around the issues of gender, free speech, race and culture. And that these conflicts are not only waged by the Right-wing press, but are in fact found within many institutions largely staffed by liberal-Left people.

The culture wars, which are often derided as fake and drummed up by the Right, are real. They are an extension of politics — and politics is by its very nature oppositional.

Woke also has a sharp AngloSaxon sting; it’s a name that sticks.

“Social Justice Warriors” is too long and its acronymic version SJW is dull. Progressive is too loose and airy. Woke gets straight to the point, and is useful in conveying, in its aggressive consonantal force, the internecine nature of this conflict. …

Claiming that certain figures from the past who were racist were not in fact racist is an extreme view; but so is denying that some of these racist people should not be considered heroic or virtuous or praiseworthy in other respects.

In English departments, many academics do not want to be labelled as racists, so they publicly acquiesce to calls to decolonise the curriculum, but many of them are, again, quietly sceptical. They value the principle of diversity; they also subscribe to a humanist approach to literature that affirms great books can’t be wholly reduced to politics. They love equality. But they also love pluralism and honest intellectual discussion.

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They know these things should not conflict with each other — we can consider the politics of a text without viewing that text entirely through the lens of politics; we can value both diversity and frank intellectual debate. But they live in an atmosphere in which they are in conflict. And so they do nothing about it because they don’t want to face a backlash.

This is why saying and using ‘woke’ is important. It brings what is obscure into the open. It allows the debate to be had within the liberal-Left, where it needs to be had. It is clarifying.

But many argue that cancel culture doesn’t really exist. It’s just a Right-wing talking point.

To which I would respond: how do you know? There is so much selfcensorship going on that people are not being honest about what they believe about certain sensitive issues. They don’t have the wealth or power of J.K. Rowling; they are scared of losing their jobs. That is cancel culture. …

Of course, people have complex views. One might support taking the knee, believe statues of certain slave traders like Edward Colston should be taken down, and believe that we should learn more about slavery and colonialism at school, but such people might still be critical of other aspects of woke ideology. This is why they would be reluctant to describe themselves as anti-woke. To do so might imply opposition to all those things. But they could also describe themselves as non-woke or woke-sceptical; the fact that wokeness can be ambiguous does not mean it is a meaningless term. It just means it can be ambiguous.

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Wokeness has a family resemblance to other progressive ideologies — but it is also distinct.

Many socialists are non-woke; their analysis is rooted in class politics rather than identity. I also think it’s lazy to simply describe wokeness as liberalism. It is often profoundly illiberal. If woke-deniers think the Right is often misusing the term, they should take ownership of it. Simply saying ‘woke’ is a meaningless term, without offering a more attractive alternative, is a form of evasion.

One reason why this matters on the liberal-Left is because the vast majority of 18-24 year olds now back liberal-Left parties. There is an old adage that people become more conservative as they get older. But if the changes in people’s lives which lead them to become conservative, such as owning property and having kids, are becoming increasingly rare, then that transition to conservatism might not come to pass for many young people. This is why the

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battle between the woke Left and the non-woke or woke-sceptical Left is especially salient. It has repercussions for all of us.

Questions such as: what is a woman, how should we examine our past, how we should think about race in an increasingly diverse society, and how we should think about free speech and

tolerance are all absolutely key for trying to make sense of the nature of public discourse today and in the future. They ultimately boil down to the question of who we are, and what we should do about it.

This conflict will not disappear.

Woke is here to stay; even if you flinch at using the word. We have to adjust ourselves to this reality.

#MeToo, the current rallying cry for the woke movement

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DESTINATIONS

BARBADOS Storied Island in the Sun

By Lorraine Jones

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The island of Barbados has a diverse cultural history that is influenced by the Caribbean, Britain and West Africa.

Celebrated for its highly anticipated Barbados Food and Rum Festival and notable citizens such as Rihanna, who was appointed an official ambassador for culture and youth in 2018, Barbados is a well-known island in the southeastern Caribbean Sea. Although its people are free today and live in an independent parliamentary republic, this beautiful nation has a long history of slavery and colonial brutality.

Barbados is considered one of the most beautiful islands in the world.

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Under British Rule Barbados was first visited by the British in 1625 and became one of the earliest English colonies.

Before then, the island had been inhabited by Amerindian tribes and then for a few years by the Spanish and the Portuguese.

Although it is known today for its people’s social amiability and enchanting landscape, the island was also the birthplace of Britain’s ruthless black slave society.

Soon after their arrival in the 17th century, the British established their first slave site in Barbados, branding it the most systemically violent and racially inhumane society of its time. It served as a popular slave-trade center where numerous enslaved people were transported from regions in Africa. By accelerating the rate of mass enslavement of Africans, it transformed the island’s economy and redefined its social dynamics.

This new economic system also required the establishment of strict and harsh rules to control the majority black enslaved population and maintain minority white economic and ethnic dominance.

The Barbados Parliament thus passed the Barbados Slave Code, or “An Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes,” in 1661. It was an especially brutal system that left enslaved people almost under the total will of their owners for nearly two centuries.

Although slaves did revolt against this brutality from time to time, the revolts were brutally put down by the British. Fortunately, even though these slaves failed to gain their freedom at the time, the brutality of the colonial government was so repulsive that it may have helped fuel the abolitionist movement and end the evil institution once and for all.

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TOP: Traditional colorful houses abound in Barbados.

BOTTOM: Promenade at the waterfront of Bridgetown, the capitol city.

With the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, the United Kingdom finally eliminated the institution of slavery, but white planters still prevailed in their independent sugar plantation operations, abusing laborers and compensating them with unlivable wages. These sugar plantations made fortunes from the exploitation of a disposable workforce and secured Britain’s status as an imperial superpower.

Beginning in the 1930s, the majority black population slowly began to secure economic and political freedoms. In 1937, the Barbados Riots broke out after the deportation of Clement Payne, a black Barbadian leader who championed the formation of trade unions.

These riots were pivotal in the fight for equality and contributed to the reforms that led to the island’s independence in 1966 when the British parliament passed the Barbados Independence Act.

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Statue of Bussa, who led the largest slave revolt in Barbadian history Photo credit: maskconsortium.com

Independence and Its Aftermath While Barbados’ economy was historically dependent on sugarcane cultivation, especially during slavery, its economy has recently evolved and diversified into a light industry and tourism economy. Today, its flourishing tourism industry has become the driving force of its economy.

Recognized as an international destination for tourism, it prides itself as one of the top tourist destinations in the world. With English as the nation’s official language, it is easy for visitors to immerse themselves in the island’s culture.

In addition to tourism, the country provides offshore finance and information services, which are an important source of income. As a result, Barbados is one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the eastern Caribbean.

Unfortunately, Barbados’ economy also has an institutional impact on racial inequality. As an offshore financial center, the island contributes to the continuous disparity in Western

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The planned slavery museum Rendering by Adjaye Associates

Europe and the United States by enabling wealthy foreigners to shift income and wealth into a low-tax jurisdiction.

Barbados also experiences underlying issues of wide and widening inequalities of income, wealth and power within. Although the population is predominantly black with 92.4 percent of its citizens being of African descent, 3.1 percent of its people are mixed race, 2.7 percent are white, and 1.3 percent are South Asian. Since slavery was abolished and independence was gained from Britain, the black majority has made economic and political progress, yet Barbados continues to struggle with a long history of deep-rooted racial disparities.

Trading the Queen for a Parliamentary Republic In 2021, Barbados officially removed a final vestige of its colonial past by removing Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom as its head of state and replacing her with a Barbadian. This decision made

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TOP: Rihanna, Barbados’ most famous homegirl Photo credit: SIGMA, Wikimedia Commons

TOP: Sugarcane harvesting, the key industry Photo credit: loopnews.com

BOTTOM: Cou-cou, a popular dish

BOTTOM: Kensington Oval, “Mecca of Cricket,” the national sport Barbados the first country to remove the queen since 1992.

By putting a formal end to the country’s 400-year relationship with the British monarchy and establishing itself as a parliamentary republic, Barbados displayed a sign of confidence and nationalism as it severed ties to the evils of its colonial history.

Over the years, powerful women such as Sandra Mason, the new republic’s first president, and Mia Amor Mottley, its first prime minister, have led the country as it reclaimed civil rights for its citizens.

Prime Minister Mottley has lived a career of many firsts for the country. She is notable for being the first female leader of the Barbados Labour Party

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Photo credit: blog.thecrane.com

and the Opposition, the first female attorney general, and the youngest ever admitted to the Queen’s Counsel in Barbados. In 1994, at age 29, she became one of the youngest Barbadians assigned a ministerial portfolio. In 2018, she became the eighth prime minister of Barbados and the first woman to hold this title.

It was Prime Minister Mottley who nominated Sandra Mason to be Barbados’ first president after she delivered a powerful speech at the UN General Assembly regarding climate change. Mason said that she doesn’t see gender as an angle or handicap. She chooses instead to focus on the issues concerning the island.

Once the British monarchy relinquished its hold on the

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country, its citizens fought to replace the queen with a Bajan leader. Mason was elected the nation’s first president by the country’s two houses of Parliament after securing twothirds of the votes, and she took office on November 30, 2021, the 55th anniversary of Barbados’ independence. With a Barbadian as the Barbados head of state, the Barbadian people are conveying to the rest of the world confidence in their identity as a country and what they are capable of.

President Mason is more than capable of guiding the country through this political shift. In 1975, she became the first Bajan woman admitted to the Barbados bar, and in 2008, she became the first woman to serve on the

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Barbados Court of Appeals. In 2014, she became the first Barbadian to be appointed as a member of the Commonwealth Secretariat Arbitral Tribunal.

As the nation celebrated its transition to become an independent republic, the island also declared another woman—the singer and makeup mogul Rihanna— a national hero.

Robyn Rihanna Fenty was born and raised in the nation’s capital of Bridgetown and unapologetically represents her Barbados roots and culture. The island’s star speaks confidently with her Bajan accent, a variation of English spoken by Bajan locals, and remains connected to her Caribbean heritage in her music and lifestyle.

The Past Must Not Be Forgotten To commemorate the nation’s revolutionary transition and to mark its first anniversary of becoming an independent republic, Barbados also began plans to build a transatlantic slavery museum.

The Barbados Heritage District will establish the largest collection of British slave records outside of the United Kingdom to recount the historic cultural impact of slavery on Barbados. The museum will be located next to the Newton Enslaved Burial Ground Memorial on the site of a former sugar plantation where the remains of 570 West African slaves were uncovered. This memorial will transform this location into a place of remembrance by spotlighting the tragedies of bondage.

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TOP LEFT: Queen Elizabeth II ceded British control in 2021.

Photo credit: Steve Parsons – WPA Pool/Getty Images

TOP RIGHT: Barbados’ president, Sandra Mason, one of two black women running a single government on the planet. Photo credit: loopnews.com BOTTOM: Mia Amor Mottley, Barbados’ Prime Minister This remarkable nation has demonstrated great resilience in the face of terrible adversity. Now, with two prominent Barbadian women at the helm of this new republic, it enters a new era of global economic development and race relations.

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EDUCATE YOURSELF

Why We Fall For

By Kristen Jones

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Have you ever received a robocall that sounded suspicious? Has someone asked you to load money onto a gift card and send it to them? If so, you are not alone. Scammers around the world are learning how to gain your trust in order to take what you have. Unfortunately, black people lose money to these criminals more than any other group and are more likely to get ripped off by phone scammers and government imposters.

The institutional racism that has existed throughout America’s history has created such a huge wealth gap that various con artists and pyramid-scheme promoters can sell the hope of economic prosperity to people who have long been shut out of systems that favor whites. As a result, the possibility of being scammed is something that many black Americans face on a daily basis.

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Origins of the Con With the American people, the concept of getting something for nothing has never been lost.

There are records of people being scammed as far back as the 1300s.

To chart the world history of fraud, we need to go back as far as 300 BCE. After the Greek merchant Hegestratos took out an insurance policy against his ship and its cargo, he then attempted the earliest recorded first-party fraud by planning to sink his empty ship, sell the corn it was supposed to transport, keep the money he’d borrowed for the shipment, and claim the insurance. Unfortunately for him, his scheme backfired, and he drowned trying to escape his crew once they discovered his scheme.

Fast forward around 500 years to the Roman Empire. The Praetorian Guard—a group of soldiers loyal to the emperor Pertinax—assassinated the emperor and launched an auction to sell the Roman Empire to the highest bidder.

Around 1300 hundred years later, in the first half of the 1800s, General Gregor MacGregor served in the British Army and later in the revolutionary Venezuelan Army. Among his impressive war achievements was that he conquered a small island and became its “cazique” or prince, which he was also proud of. In this instance, however, the country, which he called Poyais, was completely made up. Using numerous false documents and his impressive charm, he was able to fool many people into believing his con and made a fortune through selling land, positions and titles in the fictitious country, where perhaps 150 duped and abandoned investors would later die. Some consider him the most successful conman in history.

About a hundred years later, in 1911, an Argentinean named

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Eduardo de Valfierno is said to have paid an employee of the Louvre to steal Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the world’s most famous painting. The real painting was never wanted by Eduardo, however. Instead, he needed people to know it was missing so that he could sell his fakes to underground collectors.

Grift in the Digital Age In the current digital age, it is easier for criminals to get away with crimes that they would have never been able to pull off in previous years. Many services that are designed to make one’s life better are in fact the very reason black Americans are being targeted and victimized. Online banking services, online apps and social media are just a few examples of web services that were originally designed for good but have turned into something harmful. Sometimes it isn’t easy to tell if the request or company is legitimate or not. Crooks have been known to adopt the names of familiar organizations and pose as staff from financial institutions. Phishing emails meant to get you to enter your financial details into an online form are looking more realistic all the time.

Over the decades, there have been many get-rich-quick schemes, but one of the most widely known is the Ponzi scheme, which is named after Charles Ponzi, a 1920s swindler.

Here are 14 notorious scams.

If you fall for them, they are guaranteed to lighten your wallet and wound your pride.

“The Nigerian Prince” Also known as advance-fee fraud or 419 fraud, a Nigerian letter scam involves a sender requesting assistance with the illegal transfer of money. The scam letters come from a fictional Nigerian official

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who promises millions in an African bank account but requests help moving the money to safety.

In fact, the letter is a fraud, and there are no funds in any African bank accounts.

COVID-19 Abuses Communities of color are not only targeted by well-known types of predatory lenders, but new forms of fraud seek to exploit consumers in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. An alleged pyramid scheme targeting African Americans is the subject of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement action filed in federal court. The FTC alleges that the defendants advertised and operated “Blessings in No Time,” which they claimed was an investment club promising substantial financial returns to participants. In another scam, when in-person prison visits were on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic, prison calling companies offered unlimited minutes to people to contact their loved ones in prison, billed them, and then failed to provide the promised minutes. The FTC is cracking down on these marketers and will keep fighting illegal activity targeting inmates and their loved ones.

Scam Callers In this common scam, you get a phone call from someone claiming to be with the “Internal Revenue Service” and that you will go to jail immediately if you do not pay off your back taxes over the phone with a credit card.

Scared witless, many recipients pay without realizing that this is not the way the real IRS does business. Other variations include bill collectors demanding payment of a nonexistent debt.

Predatory Lenders Banks and credit card companies will often target people of color

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for predatory lending practices.

These practices include high interest rates, hidden fees and a lack of transparency in loan terms. A recent study found that blacks have only 22 percent of the wealth owned by whites. What you might not know is that this gap is largely due to predatory lending. Black consumers are more likely to purchase relief programs and payday loans, but the top two complaints filed by black consumers with the FTC were related to credit bureaus (21 percent) and impersonator scams (12.5 percent).

Payday loans are short-term, high-interest loans that are typically paid back between paychecks. The average $375 loan costs $520 in interest (139 percent) and takes a borrower an average of five months to pay off.

The majority of consumers paid more in fees than the amount

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they borrowed for multiple loans.

African Americans were 105 percent more likely than other groups to use payday loans.

Multi-Level Marketing It doesn’t matter what the product is—vitamin supplements, weight-loss pills, etc.—the object is to find a person who will bring in two more people, who will in turn bring in two more, and so on, who will all purchase the inventory and kick money to the person above them in a classic pyramid. Who wins? The handful of people at the top.

“Make Money in Bitcoin” Is cryptocurrency the classic grift? Buying into a useless product (it does not replace paper currency) without value and creating artificial demand merely by buying and selling digital tokens that may or may not be

redeemable seems like a loser’s bet—and it often is.

Medical Waste, Fraud and Abuse These scams can run the gamut: doctors and hospitals overcharging Medicare, Medicaid and patients for unnecessary testing and treatment, outrageously priced medicine, and workmen’s comp goldbricking. The cost? Anywhere from $68 billion* to $230 billion annually, or 3 percent - 10 percent of annual healthcare expenditures of $2.25 trillion. (*National Health Care AntiFraud Association) For-Profit Schools Do you want to improve your life by learning a trade, such as computer programming or HVAC repair? Private vocational schools are an alternative to nonprofit colleges and universities, but

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beware the school’s quality and placement track record. You may be paying off a student loan for years to come for an unmarketable skill.

Dishonest Car Dealers and Auto Repair Shops The discrimination against black, Latino and Native American car buyers is rampant. They are overcharged for their loans, forced to pay higher interest rates on average than white borrowers, and sold poorly maintained and defective vehicles and unneeded accessories (e.g., the notorious clear coat). Auto repair shops are well-known to overcharge for repairs that are either unnecessary or never made, thus insuring repeated trips back for more repairs.

Real Estate Red Flags If you see real estate advertised with “no money down,” it is best to run away. Unscrupulous banks and mortgage lenders will offer black homebuyers usurious interest rates and “teaser” loans, where they pay only the interest for a couple of years before their payments jump to prohibitively high premium plus interest payments, which more often than not results in foreclosure. Other traps: the elderly unwittingly signing away their homes in reverse mortgages or through confusing paperwork and victims being sold homes or rented apartments that are actually either occupied or nonexistent.

“Save Money on Your Utility Bill” In the winter of 2021, Texans found out the hard way about letting private utility brokers provide them with their energy needs. These providers claim to save the user money over the public utility through methods that turn out to be dubious at

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best and false at worst, resulting in sky-high utility bills and substandard service.

“Home Improvement” Home-improvement contractors prey particularly on the elderly, offering home repairs for either a down or full payment upfront— then usually disappearing and leaving the job undone.

“Low-Cost” Gym Membership Getting in shape is a worthy goal, but going into debt at a gym to do so is not. The come-on is the gym contract, where the out-of-shape mark is teased with a free or low introductory rate and locked into an onerous multiyear fee that can rival an auto loan in its cost and difficulty to cancel.

“Sou Sou” “Sou sou” is another scam commonly used by fraudsters.

A type of informal savings club that’s widely known in West Africa and the Caribbean, a socalled sou sou is an arrangement between a trusted group of family and friends. In a sou sou, members contribute an equal amount of money into a common fund. The money is then distributed to the members in accordance with an agreedupon schedule (weekly, bi-weekly or monthly). Unfortunately, scammers have been using the word sou sou to lure consumers into illegal pyramid schemes.

They are targeting older and more trusting people with the promise of making more money than all of the members’ total contributions, especially if they recruit others. The pyramid scheme is a fraudulent business model that recruits participants through the promise of payments or services based primarily on the recruitment of other participants rather than any real investment or legitimate profit opportunity.

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Charles Ponzi and David Hampton, Legendary Fraudsters The 19th-century showman P.T. Barnum—no slouch himself in the area of the con—is often quoted as saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Whether Barnum actually said “sucker” or the quote at all is still disputed, and Barnum himself never so much bilked people out of their money while giving nothing in return as he exaggerated his claims and exploited others, the saying aptly describes the gullible public that grifters have been taking advantage of ever since someone offered a nonexistent first-class seat on Noah’s ark or sold Pharaoh’s pyramid several times over.

While scammers have entertained us for years in such popular movies as The Sting and The Wolf of Wall Street, the misdeeds of the deviously clever can have very cruel consequences if you happen to be their victim. Two cases in point:

Charles Ponzi

Although he was not the inventor of the “Ponzi” or pyramid scheme named after him, Ponzi was its most flamboyant early purveyor. Born and raised in Italy, he came to the United States in 1903, at age 21, with only $2.50 (having gambled away his funds on the ocean voyage) and began a lucrative life of white-collar larceny. Various illegitimate schemes in banking and check forgery combined with a few failures with legitimate businesses prepared Ponzi for his big score: the formation in 1920 of the Securities Exchange Company. Ponzi’s original plan was to trade International Reply Coupons (IRCs), a service that allowed a person in one country to pay for the postage of a reply to a correspondent in another country (similar to business reply mail). It was simple and legal. Stamps could be bought in one country and exchanged for stamps in the redeeming country; if there was a positive difference in price, you made a profit. Where he went wrong was to simply take money from his investors, from struggling working-class types to the ultra-rich, and pocket it for himself to support his lavish lifestyle. He did it by “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” or paying off his early investors with funds from his later ones. The scheme soon led to $20 million ($280 million in 2022) in losses to his investors and lengthy federal and state prison sentences for Ponzi. Deported to Italy in 1934, he died penniless in 1949, his name forever synonymous with get-rich-quick fraud.

David Hampton

If you cannot achieve success on your own, the next best thing is to leech off of someone else’s. David Hampton took this maxim to the extreme. The Buffalo, N.Y.-born attorney’s son began his elaborate rip-off in 1983, when the 19-year-old attempted to gain admission to Manhattan’s exclusive Studio 54—then the place to be seen if you wanted to hobnob with celebrities—by claiming to be “David Poitier,” son of acting legend Sidney Poitier. The ruse worked so well that he expanded on it, using it to gain free meals at New York City restaurants and persuading some well-off New Yorkers, among them Melanie Griffith, Gary Sinise, Calvin Klein and Leonard Bernstein, to furnish lodging and money. Hampton was arrested later that year, convicted of fraud, and sentenced to 18 months to 4 years in prison, after refusing to repay $4,469 to his various victims.

He died of AIDS-related complications in 2003. Though his grift was relatively small, it remains a notable example of a betrayal of trust and inspired a long-running Broadway play, Six Degrees of Separation, which was later made into a successful film starring Will Smith as Hampton.

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Easiest Marks: The Elderly

Although there are many differences in the ways that people respond to scams, studies suggest that some people may be more vulnerable to being scammed because of their age, race or gender.

Financial fraud and scams disproportionately affect older adults, who are the most likely to be targeted since they tend to have more available wealth than younger people, who may not yet be financially independent.

Scam victimization is a growing problem, which may have serious health consequences. It is important to understand the factors that can protect older adults from scam victimization and its potential negative consequences. Although there is some research on cybercrime victim characteristics and their susceptibility, it has been conducted primarily on older white adults and, in some cases, with younger adults.

More research on older black adults is needed to help develop tailored interventions to reduce susceptibility and victimization since older blacks are more likely to be victims of financial exploitation than older whites.

This finding may reflect racial differences in economic resources and social isolation, as well as race-based differences in the willingness to report abuse.

Ways to Fight Back

There are many kinds of scams and methods to deploy them, but you’ll notice some common threads. The only way to combat the consequences that come with being scammed is to be aware of these scams, stay educated on ways to prevent being scammed, and whenever possible share information with others who may fall victim. Here are some

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ways to avoid being conned: If you or someone you know has become a victim of any of these scams, report it if possible. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), state attorneys general, local prosecutors, the police and consumer protection agencies exist for this purpose.

In addition to a lack of information, watch out for requests to pay up front to claim a prize or apply for a job or to pay using an unsecure method such as cash or a money order. Also, be wary if you’re asked for personal or financial information you shouldn’t give out, such as your social security number or passwords.

Other red flags: high-pressure sales tactics, overly emotional appeals and too-good-to-be-true offers, such as high pay for a job that requires no skills or experience.

While it used to be fairly safe to go online, today there are many more dangers to look out for.

Thankfully, there are also many things you can do to prevent online scams and fraud.

No matter how much you think you know someone online, if it isn’t someone that you know in real life, then they have a high probability of being a scammer.

It’s better to be overcautious than to not be cautious at all.

If needed, don’t be afraid to research the offer at hand, the company, and the validity of what you are being told. The worst thing that you can do is take someone’s word at face value without taking the time to do your own homework to see if what they are saying is true. When something is found to be fraudulent, it is vital that the information be shared with others to prevent more victims.

It is up to black Americans to stay updated on what is going on when it comes to scams to ensure that they or someone they love doesn’t become a victim.

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IDENTITY

PASSWORD

BANK ACCOUNT

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Do Not Send Money to Anyone for Any Reason Unless You Do Not Want it Back!

ROMANCE

YOU WON

USERNAME

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THE CULTURE The New Face of Activism in Hollywood

Sister Kerry Washington Rising

By Lorraine Jones

Actress and producer Kerry Washington is a reallife gladiator in a suit. This prominent star uses her reach to amplify the voices of political activists and shed a light on the causes she vehemently believes in. Washington utilizes her microphone in the most effective way she can, by handing it to political leaders, marginalized people and women. This Emmy Award-winning heroine uses her relevance to lend the spotlight to fellow activists, provide necessary funds, lend her high-profile resources and connections, and share her expertise in visual storytelling.

Washington uses her platform to give people like Stacey Abrams, a former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, and Tram Nguyen, a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the resonance they need to make a greater impact. Washington worked with Abrams in the 2021 U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia and founded Influence Change, an initiative that partners with high-impact organizations to generate greater voter turnout. Washington is very vocal on the importance of voting. She asserts that the right to vote is central to having a voice and that by giving up that right, we are silencing our ability to have opinions.

Washington passes the spotlight to reallife heroes to save us from the chaos of the current political crisis. The world watched the network drama star of Scandal embody a real-life Olivia Pope after the 2016 election results were announced. Although she has been heavily involved in politics throughout her career, after that immense political divide, she truly embodied the hope and courage of the network character she plays.

She spent two years actively doing onthe-ground activism and has partnered with several national organizations such as Black Voters Matter, We the People Michigan and New Virginia Majority.

Alongside other prominent figures such as Alfre Woodard and Forest Whitaker, Washington was appointed to former President Barack Obama’s President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

While on the committee, Washington was particularly hands-on with the education segment that focused

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Photo credit: David Urbanke for Vanity Fair

on schools in poverty-stricken areas as she and Michelle Obama visited Savoy Elementary School in D.C. Washington also served as co-chair of Michelle Obama’s initiative When We All Vote. To help empower marginalized groups and grassroots organizations, she created the Vision Into Power Cohort, a program in partnership with the Movement Voter Project.

Through this organization, Washington assists democracybuilding organizations, including many that have appointed women, especially women of color, to major leadership positions. Through this two-year program, Washington has worked with Action St. Louis, a group that empowers the black community, and Advance Native Political Leadership, a womenled organization whose mission is to expand representation and equity for the Native community.

Washington provides direct funding, storytelling and digital strategy workshops, and mentorship opportunities to these groups.

Washington calls on women to support each other. She gave a compelling speech at the 2017 Women’s March in Los Angeles and supports numerous female-led startup companies.

This influential activist is a cochair of the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund, whose mission is to amplify clarion voices regarding racial justice and address structural and systemic racism in this country by supporting black leaders locally and nationally.

Washington is a founder of Time’s Up, a movement that began in 2018 when she stood alongside more than 300 influential women in the entertainment business and said, “Enough is enough.” The goal of this initiative is to connect those who experience sexual misconduct in the workplace and to provide equal representation to those who experience sexual harassment and assault survivors across all industries. The focus of this organization is to establish legislation on gender parity issues and increase opportunities for

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Washington as political fixer Olivia Pope in the ABC drama series Scandal Photo credit: Mitch Haaseth/ABC via Getty Images

women in low-wage industries and women of color. In the workplace, women are often the only woman in the room, pitted against each other, harassed or discriminated against. Time’s Up is such a significant movement because it’s such a large display of women showing up for each other.

The organization now has more than 700 attorneys in its network taking on cases and helping people understand their rights in a work environment.

Over the years, Time’s Up has evolved to fight for the wider mission of ending inequality and injustice in the workplace. In 2021, the organization pushed for reform of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association after it was revealed that out of 87 members, there was not a single black person in the group of journalists who determine who receives the Golden Globe awards. The organization had not appointed anyone from the black community since 1987.

This extreme lack of diversity is apparent and directly reflected in the noticeable snubbing of top black-led films in best picture categories in previous years.

Washington also pushes for social justice through her body of work as an actress. When Scandal first aired on ABC in 2012, Washington was the first black woman to star in a network TV drama in 38 years. In a pivotal episode, the series depicted the

first on-air abortion procedure.

This necessary representation normalized a woman’s ability to have control and total agency over her life and body. Washington helped change the narrative of a decision commonly associated with shame and secrecy in her storytelling. Washington also appeared in the 2012 blockbuster film Django Unchained, which depicts a freed slave who travels across America to free his wife from bondage on a plantation.

Washington established her own production company, Simpson Street, in 2016 to highlight the stories and perspectives of women of color. Simpson Street produced the moving 2016 film Confirmation, which follows the story of Anita Hill, whose testimony in 1991 gave a voice to victims of sexual harassment.

Washington’s dedication has not gone unnoticed. She has received five NAACP Image Awards, including the President’s Award in 2013, which recognizes her efforts in furthering civil rights and public service.

Although she portrayed a fictional fixer in film for several seasons, she knows that fixing the world in real time takes real gladiators showing up to do the hard work. And if there’s one thing about Washington that no one can deny, it’s this: She definitely shows up.

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PAST, MEET PRESENT The Afrocentric Experience in Cartoons

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AFROCENTRIC ART

Jacob Lawrence, 1991 Photo credit: Robert Sorbo/AP/Shutterstock.com

Jacob Lawrence Bright and Shing Son of the Harlem Renaisc

By Rick Bowers

Bold, jagged, triangular shapes. Mostly flat, unmixed primary or secondary colors. An abstract painting?

Wait! Are those faces of people? Is that a gun or sword? Is that dripping blood?

A quick look at a Jacob Lawrence painting will probably stop your eye. At first, it might appear to be an abstract painting of only shapes, but then, you may realize that something more is going on. Human interactions, news reporting, history?

Lawrence’s version of the human story—either as reporting of current events or reevaluating historical happenings—might be called semi-abstract, semi-narrative, semi-expressionistic or semi-something else. His work is unique—not quite this traditional art category or another one.

According to LeRonn P. Brooks, associate curator for modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, Lawrence understood his figures “as pure form, but he also puts enough characterization on them that you see them as people. …

Lawrence actually made figures that were in both worlds [abstract and narrative]. … I think it communicated his modernity to people who cared about aesthetics, and it also communicated his importance of community to people who cared about the narrative.”

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Regardless of how we define Jacob Lawrence’s paintings, we must acknowledge that they made him one of the most widely known and popular African American artists of the 20th century, perhaps second only to Jean-Michel Basquiat. And Lawrence’s ascent began at a time in the United States of America— the 1930s—when such fame was unheard of for a black artist.

According to Art History School, “[Lawrence’s] rise to artistic prominence was rapid. He was part of the Harlem Renaissance, which was an intellectual revival of African American art and literature centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, around the 1920s and 30s. He had his first exhibition at 18, and by 1941, New York’s Downtown Gallery was exhibiting his paintings. He was one of the first black artists to be represented by a major gallery.”

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TOP: Painting from The Migration Series (1940-41) BOTTOM: This Is Harlem, 1943

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To Preserve Their Freedom (From the Toussaint L’Ouverture Series), 1988

The Making of an Artist

Lawrence was born in 1917 in Atlantic City, N.J., and later lived in Pennsylvania and then Harlem, N.Y. If there was a right place and time for a young black man who had dreams of becoming an artist, Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s was probably it. Young Lawrence’s mother encouraged him in the arts and put him in Utopia Children’s Center and its after-school art program. Then, after he quit school when he was 16, he still attended the Harlem Art Workshop and made many trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In Harlem, said Brooks, “he walked into a very sophisticated mentorship structure.” There, he met the sculptor Augusta Savage, the poet Claude McKay, and many other important figures of the Harlem Renaissance. He

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was also mentored by black artist and teacher Charles Alston, who included partial abstraction of figures in his work, and Alston’s influence can clearly be seen in Lawrence’s partially abstract paintings.

Access to The New York Public Library’s 135th Street Branch and The Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints in Harlem—now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—at a time when blacks did not often have access to traditional education also enabled him to pursue advanced learning on his own.

Early Works

According to Paul Priestley of Art History School, success came very early for Lawrence, and “in 1935 at the age of 18, Lawrence had his first exhibition with the 306 Group show at the Alston

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Bannarn Studio in Harlem. …

[Lawrence’s] early paintings depict his environment, his studio, street scenes of his neighborhood, and everyday life in Harlem.”

Alston noted that Lawrence was sensitive to the lives around him and their weaknesses, suffering, joy and strength.

Lawrence was also involved with the Harlem Community Art Center and met “Professor” Charles Seifert, a lecturer and historian who influenced his work. In 1937, he produced 41 panels that focused on Toussaint L’Ouverture, a Haitian revolutionary leader, which were later exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art. “I’m sure much of what they said [about Toussaint L’Ouverture] was romanticized,” he said in a 2000 interview with

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Jackson Frost. “But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that you had something to be proud of, something to look up to.”

In 1937, he also received a twoyear scholarship to the American Artists School in New York, where he would graduate in 1939. In 1938, he exhibited his Toussaint L’Ouverture paintings in his first one-man show, which was held at the Harlem YMCA. Lawrence mainly painted with water-based media. “I think one of the reasons [I started out using those media] was economic,” he explained to Frost. “Oils were expensive. Paper and brushes were inexpensive. ... I could get a piece of brown wrapping paper. ... It was tough, strong, durable.

And [jars] of color—red, yellow, blue, the primary colors—were like 15 cents a jar.”

Still poor during this time period, he supported himself and his family by delivering newspapers, picking up and delivering laundry, and working as a printer. Perhaps recalling those days of poverty and his unwavering dedication to his art, Lawrence later told the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “If everything was stripped away from me and I had no other support that I could see or appreciate, I would still paint.”

Improvement of His Lot

Afterward, with the help of sculptor and mentor Augusta Savage, he was hired by the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, and two of his series panels in the late 1930s portrayed the lives of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

“I was making a fabulous salary of $23.86 a week,” he told Frost. “… I had just turned 21.

To make this kind of money was fantastic.”

A $1,500 fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Fund in 1940

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Recently discovered 1956 painting depicting a standoff between soldiers and farmers during Shays’ Rebellion in the late 1780s. enabled him to rent a studio in Harlem and produce possibly his most famous series: The Migration Series. This series consisted of 60 18-by-12-inch panels about the migration of millions of largely rural blacks from the South to Northern, Midwestern and Western cities in the early 20th century. Just as John Steinbeck told the story of the Okies’ migration West during the 1930s in prose in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, Lawrence, a child of such migrants himself, told the story of black migrants’ quest for a better life and the discrimination and violence they faced in his paintings.

According to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, “He used descriptive titles, vibrant patterns and blocks of color, and simplified, angular figures and forms to distill epic narratives into powerfully direct images.”

“I always used very primary, secondary colors, plus black and white,” Lawrence said in a 1992 interview with Elizabeth Hutton Turner, former senior curator,

The Phillips Collection. “It was very minimal, and I used it more in a very direct manner. Later, I began to explore the medium of egg tempera to a greater degree where you get translucencies. …

The medium [for The Migration Series] is casein tempera, which is matte. I’ve always worked in a water media. … I think … the Harriet Tubman and the Frederick Douglass work were both egg tempera, which gives a slight sheen to the surface.

It’s a very beautiful medium. …

The casein medium is opaque whereas the egg medium is more or less translucent. … I don’t work in oil, and I think I have found the perfect medium … for my temperament.”

Along with 27 panels from his epic Migrant Series being published in Fortune in 1941, when he was just 24, he also became the first African American to join Edith Halpert’s prestigious Downtown Gallery when the gallery exhibited the series to wide acclaim. “Lawrence had become the first black American artist to be represented

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Self-Portrait, 1977 by a ‘mainstream’ gallery,” Priestley said. “[He also] became the first major artist of the 20th century to be technically trained and artistically educated within the art community in Harlem.”

Still, while Lawrence is often known as a painter of the black experience and black history, his work actually includes the history of other peoples as well. Although his most famous series was probably his Migration Series, he also did paintings about war, black and white abolitionist leaders, American history around the time of the Revolutionary War, and the bombing of Hiroshima.

In the 1940s, he had a solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and painted 22 panels about the life of the white abolitionist John Brown, who was hanged in 1859 after raiding Harpers Ferry in West Virginia with the intention of starting a slave revolt.

“I had never done anything prior to that time of a non-black figure,” Lawrence told Frost.

“And he was a figure who was Caucasian, and he gave his life for what he believed in. …. He was a very special person in our history.”

In his 1992 book about Harriet Tubman, he wrote, “The United

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States is a great country. It is a great country because of people like John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman.”

An additional $1,200 from the Julius Rosenwald Fund had helped him finish the Migration Series and then another $1,200 from the fund had helped him complete the John Brown panels. These funds also helped him marry Gwendolyn Knight, a fellow artist.

After serving in the United States Coast Guard as an artist during World War II, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and painted what became known as his War Series.

Josef Albers also invited him to teach for 10 weeks in North Carolina at the progressive Black Mountain College—his first of numerous teaching positions. “[He] was among the first African Americans to break the color line in the highly segregated world of modern art,” according to The Fralin Museum of Art. “Celebrated for his highly original use of flat tempera color patterns in a style termed ‘dynamic cubism,’ and for his vivid storytelling, Lawrence’s paintings made visible the struggles for economic, political and racial equality.”

According to Art History School, “By 1949, Lawrence was the most prominent black artist in America.” Although the young artist had certainly benefited from some unusual breaks, he attributed much of his success to the people he met

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and experiences he had during his artistic development in the Harlem community during the Harlem Renaissance.

To Depression and Back

After he returned to New York, Lawrence struggled with depression and admitted himself to Hillside Hospital for nearly a year in 1949. While there, he still painted, and his 1950 Hospital Series displayed his feeling that he should paint from personal experience.

Following his experience at Hillside Hospital, he painted and taught at several prominent art schools and continued his own painting.

In the mid-1950s, during the Civil Rights Movement and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare, he completed his series titled Struggle: From the History of the American People. This wellresearched series focused on the nation’s history from the 1770s to 1817 and portrayed such events as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River in 1776 and Shays’ Rebellion in the 1780s. It also included the experiences and struggles of black soldiers, native Americans and women.

Panel 1, which is titled with the 1775 words of Patrick Henry—…

Is Life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?—in which Henry advocates for freedom from British rule for the colonies, also elicits questions about enslaved people and their desire for freedom. The painting is of a group of seemingly multiracial colonists calling for freedom, fists raised high in protest.

Panel 2 portrays an incident from the Boston Massacre in 1770 when the British fired on colonists and killed Crispus Attucks, who was probably of African and Native American descent.

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Panel 5, titled with the caption We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!—petition of many slaves, 1773, directly spotlights the plight of enslaved people shortly before the nation’s declaration of independence from England.

This panel perhaps represents the various slave revolts during the nation’s hypocritical history.

The 60s and Beyond

In the 1960s, Lawrence’s subjects included civil rights, nonviolent protest, police brutality and interracial relationships.

According to Priestley, “He was known as a gentle but tough artist who in the words of art historian Patricia Hills ‘never swerved from his commitment to the struggle for a fair and just society.’”

In 1968, he published his first illustrated children’s book, Harriet and the Promised Land, which was the winner of a 1993 Parents’ Choice Award.

“He’s mega successful. He is a one of a kind,” said Tammi Lawson, curator of the art and artifacts division at the Schomburg Center. “There’s rarely an artist, a living artist who has the fame that he has while he was living, not only as a young man but throughout his whole career. He was blessed. He found his lane, and regardless of what was going on, he had his lane, and that’s what he did.”

In 1971, Lawrence became a tenured professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and taught there until 1986. He continued taking commissions, painting murals, and making prints, which he used to support nonprofits such as the Schomburg Center, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Children’s Defense Fund.

He also made silkscreens and painted in gouache on paper

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Two Rebels, 1963, is Lawrence’s response to anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Alabama. about history and everyday events in people’s lives. In 1972, he produced a print of several black runners for the Munich Olympics. In 1997, he illustrated an adaptation of Aesop’s Fables.

His works were also included in others’ books, such as Gwen Everett’s John Brown: One Man Against Slavery and Walter Dean Myers’ Toussaint L’Ouverture: The Fight for Haiti’s Freedom.

He passed away on June 9, 2000, in Seattle, continuing to paint up until just weeks before his death. His paintings are held

at various venues, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Phillips Collection, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He achieved many firsts in his life, and in 1970, he became the first visual artist to be awarded the NAACP’s highest award, the Spingarn Medal, given each year to an African American.

“Some have said my art is social commentary or it’s protest,” Lawrence said. “It couldn’t be anything else if I grew up in the Harlem community and that was the source of my content.”

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BLACK HISTORY BLACK WOMEN

Quiz

Women of color have made great strides in all fields throughout history.

Test your knowledge of their achievements.

For answers to the quiz, click this digital link or contact eab@bavual.com for a link to YouTube video answers.

PEOPLE 1. W hich black woman is the youngest self-made billionaire?

Photo credit: rockhall.com.

2. W ho was the first black woman (and woman period) inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

3. W ho was the first black James Bond girl?

4. W hat military accomplishment is Shawna Kimbrell known for?

5. W hich African American woman was the first to become a federal judge?

6. W ho was the first African American author of a published book of poetry?

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The African Heritage Magazine

| Spring 2022

EVENTS

1. Lauryn Williams was the first woman to accomplish what major sports feat in London in 2012 and Sochi in 2014?

1. For what reason did Vanessa Williams relinquish her crown as the first black Miss America in 1984?

2. Marsha P. Johnson was a black transgender woman who rose to prominence during what pivotal 1969 event?

2. W hat major fashion magazine was the first to put a black woman on its cover?

4. W hat is Elizabeth Freeman known for having accomplished in Massachusetts in 1781?

3. Patricia Roberts Harris became the first African American woman to head which Cabinet department under which president?

4. W hich African woman was the first to win the Nobel Peace Prize and for what reason?

5. In addition to her work on the Underground Railroad, what other major achievement did Harriet Tubman accomplish during the Civil War?

6. W hat is contralto Marian Anderson’s connection to the White House and the Lincoln Memorial?

6. W hat sports landmark did Marcenia Lyle “Toni” Stone accomplish in 1953?

Photo credit: AP

Photo credit: Netflix

Photo credit: Getty Images

5. In 1944­—11 years before Rosa Parks—which black woman was beaten and arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Virginia?

Photo credit: Getty Images

3. W hat is the oldest historically black college for women in America?

Photo credit: amrevmuseum.org

PLACES

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THE HUSTLE Boss Ladies

Black Female Execs Lead the Way for Others to the C-Suite 84

yB Kristen Jones and Loraine Jones

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Ursula Burns (see her profile in The Next 10 Years, page 39), Thasunda Brown Duckett, Rosalind Brewer and Mary Winston are names that you should know. These are the few African American women who have been on the Fortune 500 list as chief executive officers (CEOs) at their companies. With this number being so low, the lack of representation of black women in Fortune 500 companies has often been discussed.

THE GOLD STANDARD The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly and privately held companies for which revenues are publicly available.

Created by Edgar P. Smith, the list was first published in 1955. The original Top Ten companies were General Motors, Jersey Standard, U.S. Steel, General Electric, Esmark, Chrysler, Armour, Gulf Oil, Mobil and DuPont.

It wasn’t until 2009 that a black woman was added to the list, that being Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox from 2009 until 2016. She was also Xerox’s chairman from 2010 to 2017 and has served on the board of directors of multiple large American companies, including Uber, American Express and ExxonMobil. She was the chairman and CEO of VEON from late 2018 to early 2020 and was also a senior advisor to Teneo. In 2014, Forbes rated her the 22nd most powerful woman in the world. Among other civic positions, she was a leader of theWhite House STEM program from 2009 to 2016 and head of the President’s Export Council from 2015 until 2016.

Since Burns’ rise, a few others have followed in her footsteps.

THASUNDA BROWN DUCKETT, TIAA Thasunda Brown Duckett is an American businesswoman who serves as the president and CEO of Teachers Insurance and

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Thasunda Brown Duckett, President and CEO of TIAA Photo credit: Business Wire

Annuity Association of AmericaCollege Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA, formerly TIAACREF). TIAA is the leading provider of financial services in the academic, research, medical, cultural and governmental fields. The company serves over 5 million active and retired employees participating at more

than 15,000 institutions and has $1 trillion in combined assets under management with holdings in more than 50 countries. The 104-year-old firm, founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie, had revenue of $40.45 billion in 2020.

Duckett is also a former CEO of Chase Consumer Banking,

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ROSALIND BREWER, Walgreens

a division of JPMorgan Chase, and a member of the board of directors of Nike. The average salary for a TIAA CEO is $20 million, which was what Roger Ferguson capped out at before he retired. Although Duckett hasn’t disclosed her salary as the new CEO of TIAA, it’s estimated that she’s receiving as much as Ferguson did. Interestingly, in her previous role at Nike, she was making close to $300,000 per year.

Born in Rochester, N.Y., she later moved to Texas with her parents, where she graduated from Sam Houston High School.

She went on to the University of Houston, receiving a bachelor’s degree in finance and marketing, and earned an MBA from Baylor University. She is a member of Women Inspiring Philanthropy in Arlington, Texas, and also founded and chairs The Otis and Rosie Brown Foundation to continue the legacy of her parents.

On May 1, 2021, she assumed the post of CEO of TIAA, making her the fourth black woman in history to serve as a Fortune 500 CEO and one of two female black American CEOs to lead a Fortune 500 company at the same time— another first.

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The other current black female CEO alongside Duckett is Rosalind G. “Roz” Brewer, the CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, the giant pharmaceutical retailer and manufacturer that grossed $139.5 billion in 2020. Appointed in March 2021, she is the first African American woman to become CEO of the Deerfield, Ill., conglomerate, formed after a 2014 merger between Walgreens and Alliance Boots. Prior to her ascension at Walgreens, Brewer had been group president and COO of Starbucks and CEO of Sam’s Club. She has also held various leadership positions at Walmart and Kimberly-Clark.

How powerful is Brewer? USA Today referred to her as “one of corporate America’s most prominent women and black female executives.” In 2021, she was also cited as a “highly powerful woman” by Forbes (17th out of 100 on its list) and Fortune (sixth out 50 on its list). In addition, she was named one of the 25 most influential women by the Financial Times in 2021.

Brewer’s net worth doesn’t come solely from her position as one of the few black CEOs in America, however. Her salary is reportedly only $8 million a year—not bad, but certainly nowhere near what the top earner on this list is making.

Rather, her net worth also comes from stock ownership and trading.

Born in Detroit, Mich., Brewer and her four siblings became the first generation in her family to go to college. Brewer earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Spelman College in 1984.

In addition, she graduated from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Stanford Law School, and in 2006, she finished the advanced

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management program at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Brewer made history as the first African American to lead a Walmart division in 2012 when she was appointed president and CEO of Sam’s Club. Brewer modernized the company with convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and a process that enables customers to scan products with their mobile devices during checkout.

When she was ­appointed CEO of Walgreens in March 2021, she became the only black woman at the head of an S&P 500 company. Only 4 percent of board seats at S&P 500 companies are occupied by black women so Brewer is providing an important example of the value of black women executives. By accepting this position, she also solidified Walgreens Boots Alliance as the largest company ever to be run by a black woman.

Like many trailblazers, Brewer faced scrutiny and hate, with critics saying that she only advanced because of her race or that her presence is merely tokenism. When Brewer was the CEO of Sam’s Club, she received death threats after she said that diversity makes for good business, a comment that a male CEO had previously made without prompting any harsh backlash.

When Brewer became the Starbucks COO in 2017, she used her voice as a black woman to help implement proactive policies as she committed to diversity and inclusion. In 2018, while she was with the company, a Starbucks manager in Philadelphia summoned the police when two black men sat in the establishment without purchasing anything. After this incident, the company released a public apology and shut down

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Roz Brewer, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance Photo credit: Lucy Hewett

8,000 restaurants for one day to hold racial bias training.

Although closing stores across the country for a whole day would cost the chain tens of millions in revenue, it was necessary due to the blatant racial bias in the workplace.

Her first-hand connection to this issue and the black community assured customers that this issue would not be taken lightly.

“It was very personal.” Brewer told TODAY in 2021. “I saw these two young men, and what really struck me was they were the same exact age as my son, John, and I knew right away that I had to dive into this one. … This could have happened to him.”

The following year, in 2019, she was appointed to serve on Amazon’s board of directors, making her the second black woman to ever sit on the board.

At the time, Brewer was the only

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person of color on Amazon’s 10-person board of directors, providing visibility for minorities and helping propel black females to future leadership roles.

Brewer currently serves as the chairperson of the board of trustees for Spelman College, where she did her undergraduate work. She is also a board member

of VillageMD, World Business Chicago, Business Roundtable and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Brewer formerly served on the board of directors for Starbucks, Amazon, Lockheed Martin Corporation and Molson Coors Brewing Company.

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Mary Winston, ex-interim CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond Photo credit: Melissa Key

MARY WINSTON Mary Winston was interim CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond, the home-goods retailer, for seven months in 2019. She is a seasoned executive with significant governance expertise across a broad range of industries, having served on large public company boards and audit committees for many years. She has a strong background in all aspects of finance and accounting, as well as experience in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), corporate strategy, cost restructuring programs, corporate governance/ compliance, and investor relations/communications.

Among other roles, she has served as executive vice president (EVP) and chief financial officer (CFO) at Family Dollar Stores, Inc.; senior vice president and

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CFO at Giant Eagle, Inc.; EVP and CFO at Scholastic Corporation; vice president (VP) and controller of Visteon Corporation; and VP, Global Financial Operations, at Pfizer Inc. in the Pharmaceuticals Group.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in accounting at the University of Wisconsin, Winston received an MBA in finance, marketing and international business from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She started her career as a CPA and auditor at Arthur Andersen & Co. and is a National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) board governance fellow. She currently serves as president at WinsCo Enterprises, Inc., a financial and board governance consulting firm. She has served on the boards of Plexus Corp. and

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SuperValu, Inc., and is currently a member of the boards of Acuity Brands, Inc., Domtar Corporation and Dover Corporation.

THE ROAD AHEAD While black CEOs are becoming more commonplace, they’re still relatively rare. According to Fortune, less than 1 percent of all companies throughout the country have a black leader at the helm. In the history of the Fortune 500 list, there have only been 18 CEOs who have identified as black—and the peak number on the Fortune 500 list was in 2012 when six black men made the list. The numbers get even bleaker when the gender factor is weighed in. Until 2016, only one black woman—Burns— headed a Fortune 500 company.

And these numbers are despite

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Black people make up just 3.3% of senior and executive leaders presently working in corporate America.* *Equal Employment Opportunity Commission/CNN

the fact that black people make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population. There are currently no black-majority-owned companies in the Fortune 500 rankings. In the years that have followed, we’ve seen more female Fortune 500 CEOs, but not much has changed; women are still a minority with 8.1 percent as of 2021. That’s 41 female executives out of 500 Fortune CEOs. Despite progress over the last two decades, women face significant obstacles to advancing and remaining in executive positions. Among them is not being taken seriously. Most businesses operate on a culture of constant availability to stay competitive.

From full-time employees to managers, companies expect overtime, availability for out-of-hours phone calls and emails, etc. As leaders rise in rank and responsibilities, these expectations also rise. As a result, it becomes harder for women to compete effectively with males when the extra burden of family responsibilities is factored in.

Most women today still take care of household duties, even when working a full-time job. This limits their availability and locks them out of potential leadership roles, creating a pipeline issue in the process. As such, there are fewer and fewer women as you move up the corporate ladder, with fewer women than men to replace them.

Some companies allow their staff time off for educational

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purposes, even paying for it.

However, in today’s alwaysavailable work culture, most companies prefer part-time working arrangements. With this system, workers advance their education and skills while companies retain their workers, albeit part-time. As a result, companies don’t need to hire extra staff or train existing ones, and work continues. It seems like a win-win situation, except it’s not for women. Most graduate programs coincide with childbearing years. As such, it becomes difficult to juggle work, graduate school and family.

Another problem is that, within management functions, women are often concentrated in specific roles compared to men. According to a recent report by the International Labour Organization (ILO), women are more likely to work in human resources, public relations, finance and administration, rather than operations and sales, research and product management, or general management, where men dominate. This trend reflects a corporate culture that confines women to specific roles, limiting their exposure and experience, both of which are crucial for top positions.

What’s surprising is that this isn’t a recent phenomenon.

Networks significantly impact careers. They provide access to sponsorships, job opportunities, mentorship, referrals, reputation enhancement, etc. Ultimately

your network influences how fast you can get a promotion.

The problem is that men occupy most boardrooms and leadership positions. Consequently, women are less likely to have strong professional and mentorship networks, social ties or insider information. There just aren’t enough women in powerful positions. Without access to such networks, it’s hard to imagine more female CEOs. Essentially, there is a lack of infrastructure. Boardroom quotas often seem like the best solution to gender inequality, but in actuality, one may never know. What would it take for the women who have blazed the trail to feel as if they are among those who represent Americans?

Fortune 500 companies have the ability to stop overlooking African American women when it is time to promote and honor their credentials along with their white counterparts. The time is now to acknowledge these hardworking individuals and appoint them to the positions that they deserve. NPR has noted the lack of diversity among top-ranking companies in America, but little has been done to change the current corporate culture.

African American women need to be in positions that have a clear trajectory to the top in order to add more names to the list. The success of Burns, Duckett, Brewer and Winston certainly proves that black women have what it takes to excel in top leadership roles.

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AFRICAN FACES OF THE WORLD

The Moors

By Lorraine Jones

Descending from the indigenous Berbers of North Africa and the Arabs who migrated there from the East, the Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus, the Maghreb and western Africa. After the North African territory was conquered by the Muslim Arabs in the early 8th century, the inhabitants of that region became known as the Moors.

In 711 CE, a group of these North African Muslims invaded the Iberian Peninsula, now the territory known as Spain and Portugal. The Moor general, Tariq ibn Ziyad, led an army of perhaps 7,000 soldiers with reinforcements of 5,000 to invade that land, which became known as al-Andalus (Andalusia) and was soon established as a center for economic and education advancements as well as a hub for cultural expansion. According to Flash Point History, most of these soldiers were probably converted Muslim Berbers, the indigenous people of North Africa, which the Romans called Mauretania (not to be confused with modern-day Mauritania).

These Arab, Berber and African soldiers were darker skinned than the Visigoths that then populated the Iberian Peninsula, and over time, the terms “Moors” and “Moorish” were increasingly used as descriptors to indicate both the reign of Muslims in Spain and also Europeans of Arab, Berber and African descent for centuries to follow. The word

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Tariq ibn Ziyad, for whom Gibraltar is named.

“Moor” derives from the Greek word “mauros,” which means “black” or “very dark.”

In the 16th and 17th centuries, William Shakespeare used Moor and African interchangeably in his plays. The word “Moor” was predominately used in Europe in reference to anyone of Arab or African descent. In Shakespeare’s notorious play The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, he depicts a hypersexual and untrustworthy Moor who serves as a general in the Venetian army, perpetuating age-old stereotypes of black people. Eventually during medieval times, the term evolved into “Blackamoor” as it became synonymous with “negro” and was often used to describe someone who was black African or a very dark-skinned person in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

The terms “Moors” and “Moorish” encompass more than a single race and include the people’s conquests, advancements, art and culture. Their advancements in mathematics, education, medicine, art, architecture and agriculture went on to percolate throughout Europe, helping propel Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the culture explosion that was the Renaissance.

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Portrait of a Moorish Woman, 1550

The Moorish Chief, by Eduard Charlemont , 1878

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Alcazar of Seville, an example of Moorish architecture in Spain

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Infographic credit: blackarchaeologist.com

While much of Europe was illiterate, the Moors created a basis for universal education. They established 17 universities in various locations such as Almeria, Cordova, Granada, Jaen, Malaga, Seville and Toledo. While public libraries were unheard of in the 10th and 11th centuries, Moorish Spain proudly established more than 70, with the library in Cordova alone holding hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. The unprecedented Moorish system of education that was eventually brought to Europe provided a foundation for the European Renaissance.

These flourishing people introduced musical instruments from Africa, Asia and Arabia to the rest of the world. They brought the first drums, stringed instruments and horns to these conquered lands, which enabled the development of pianos, trumpets and other musical instruments. Their ascendancy also led to the absorption of more than 4,000 words with Arabic roots into the Spanish language. Additionally, the agricultural techniques and sophisticated irrigation systems that were influenced by the Moors made possible the introduction of new crops and greatly increased food output.

Moorish articulated architecture consists of colors, materials, symmetry, domes and elegant arches. The pueblos blancos (“white villages”)—of Andalusia were inspired by the African heritage of the Moors. These

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buildings reflected sunlight and cooled the structures’ interiors.

Other examples of the great legacy of Moorish architecture include the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba and the Alhambra in Granada.

Despite all its glory, over time, Moorish Andalusia was weakened by corruption, power struggles, internal conflict and divisions in the wider Islamic world.

As a result, the nearly eightcenturies-long reign of the Moors concluded as its last bastion, Granada, fell to the Christians in 1492. While the reign of the Moors is long over, their memory and cultural influence persist.

John McCullough as Othello

A modern-day descendant of the Moors

Notable Moors and Their Descendants

Ibn Battuta Alessandro de Medici

Believed by some historians to be the son of an enslaved black female (possibly a Moor) and a male member of the powerful Medici family that monopolized the cultural and political life in Florence from the 15th to 18th century, de Medici became the Duke of Penne and Duke of Florence in the 16th century.

His reign as the powerful Duke of Florence lasted from 1531 to 1537 when he was assassinated by a cousin.

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Considered one of the most widely traveled explorers in history and sometimes called “The Islamic Marco Polo,” Ibn Battuta was a 14th century ArabBerber from North Africa. In a 30-year period, he is thought to have visited many regions of the world, including Andalusia, Africa, The Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. He later dictated an account of his travels titled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, or simply The Travels.

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Abu Al Qasim Al Zahrawi

Born in 936 CE in Andalusia, Al Zahrawi was a physician best known as “the father of modern surgery.” He devoted 50 years to his field, writing down extensive findings that became the leading textbook in Western medical training for the next 500 years.

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On it.

Ending racial injustice requires all of us to work together and take real action.

What can you do to help?

Educate yourself about the history of American racism, privilege and what it means to be anti-racist. Educate yourself

about the history of American racism, privilege and what it means to be anti-racist.

Commit to actions that challenge injustice and make everyone feel like they belong, such as challenging biased or racist language when you hear it.

Vote in national and local elections to ensure your elected officials share your vision of public safety.

Donate to organizations, campaigns and initiatives who are committed to racial justice.

Let’s come together to take action against racism and fight for racial justice for the Black community.

Visit lovehasnolabels.com/fightforfreedom

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JUST THE FACTS

Black Heads of State and Government* 53, or 27%, of the Earth’s 195 recognized countries are led by a black person TOTAL: 90 MEN: 80 WOMEN: 10 (noted in teal)

*Head of state is the president and head of government is the prime minister unless otherwise designated.

Angola

João Lourenço, President

Antigua and Barbuda Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State Sir Rodney Williams, GovernorGeneral Gaston Browne, Prime Minister The Bahamas Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State Sir Cornelius A. Smith, GovernorGeneral Philip Davis, Prime Minister Barbados

Dame Sandra Mason, President Mia Mottley, Prime Minister

Benin

Patrice Talon, President

Botswana

Mokgweetsi Masisi, President

Comoros

Azali Assoumani, President

Democratic Republic Félix Tshisekedi, President of the Congo Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, Prime Minister Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso, President Anatole Collinet Makosso, Prime Minister

Ethiopia Sahle-Work Zewde, President Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister Gabon Ali Bongo Ondimba, President Rose Christiane Raponda, Prime Minister Gambia, The

Adama Barrow, President

Ghana

Nana Akufo-Addo, President

Grenada Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State Dame Cécile La Grenade, Governor-General Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister

Burkina Faso Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, Transitional President, President of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration Albert Ouédraogo, Prime Minister Burundi Évariste Ndayishimiye, President Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, Prime Minister Cameroon

Paul Biya, President Joseph Ngute, Prime Minister

Djibouti Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, President Abdoulkader Kamil Mohamed, Prime Minister

Cape Verde José Maria Neves, President Ulisses Correia e Silva, Prime Minister

Dominica Charles Savarin, President Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister

Central African Republic Faustin-Archange Touadéra, President Félix Moloua, Prime Minister

Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, President Francisco Pascual Obama Asue, Prime Minister

Chad Mahamat Deby, Interim President, Chairman of the Transitional Military Council Albert Pahimi Padacké, Acting Prime Minister

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Eritrea Isaias Afwerki, President, Chairman of the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice Eswatini King Mswati III, Head of State Cleopas Dlamini, Prime Minister

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Guinea Mamady Doumbouya, Interim President, Chairman of the National Committee of Reconciliation and Development Mohamed Béavogui, Acting Prime Minister Guinea-Bissau Umaro Sissoco Embaló, President Nuno Gomes Nabiam, Prime Minister Guyana Irfaan Ali, President Mark Phillips, Prime Minister Haiti Ariel Henry, Interim President, Prime Minister Ivory Coast Alassane Ouattara, President Patrick Achi, Prime Minister Jamaica Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State Sir Patrick Allen, Governor-General Andrew Holness, Prime Minister Kenya

Uhuru Kenyatta, President

Niger Mohamed Bazoum, President Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou, Prime Minister Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari, President Rwanda Paul Kagame, President Édouard Ngirente, Prime Minister Saint Kitts and Nevis Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State Sir Tapley Seaton, GovernorGeneral Timothy Harris, Prime Minister Saint Lucia Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State Errol Charles, Acting GovernorGeneral Philip J. Pierre, Prime Minister São Tomé and Príncipe Carlos Vila Nova, President Jorge Bom Jesus, Prime Minister Senegal

Sierra Leone Julius Maada Bio, President Jacob Jusu Saffa, Chief Minister Somalia Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, President Mohamed Hussein Roble, Prime Minister South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, President Tanzania Samia Sululhu Hassan, President Kassim Majaliwa, Prime Minister Togo Faure Gnassingbé, President Victoire Tomegah Dogbé, Prime Minister Trinidad and Tobago Paula-Mae Weekes, President Keith Rowley, Prime Minister Uganda Yoweri Museveni, President

Robinah Nabbanja, Prime Minister

Macky Sall, President Zambia Hakainde Hichilema, President Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa, President

Lesotho King Letsie III, Head of State Moeketsi Majoro, Prime Minister Liberia

George Weah, President

Malawi

Lazarus Chakwera, President

Mali Assimi Goita, Interim President Choguel Kokalla Maïga, Acting Prime Minister Namibia Hage Geingob, President Saara Kuugongelwa, Prime Minister

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95

ROLL OF HONOR Recognizing Greatness in Any Endeavor

Flowers in Spring Civil rights lawyer; USA Guinier, a legal scholar and author, elevated minority voices throughout her career as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and her mission to establish proportional voting. Guinier fought to make American democracy reflective of every group and addressed the racism baked into legal policies and institutions in the U.S. She called for changes in the electoral voting system to give African Americans a more influential say in laws that specifically affect them. Her work paid off in the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982—a continuation of the battle to protect African Americans’ ability to access the ballot.

Photo credit: Franklin City Public Schools

LANI GUINIER (1950-2022)

Novelist; USA Best known for his novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman published in 1971, Gaines used storytelling to address the struggles of African Americans in the South. In 1974, CBS adapted Gaines’ fictional characters in a film that starred Cicely Tyson and was awarded nine Emmy Awards. Gaines was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1993 and received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in 2000. He increased the visibility of authentic black experiences before and during the civil rights era.

ANDRÉ LEON TALLEY (1948-January 18, 2022)

Editor; USA Talley, a fashion journalist, stylist, and pioneer in the fashion industry, became Vogue magazine’s fashion news director in 1983 and later the first black man to hold the position of creative director for the elite magazine in 1988.

He went on to become the magazine’s editor-at-large in 1998. Before Talley ascended to one of the highest ranks in the fashion world, he grew up in the segregated South and went on to attend North Carolina Central University, a historically black university. The flamboyant style icon released a memoir, The Chiffon Trenches, in 2020 in which he divulges the discrimination he endured after decades in the industry, from racial slurs to homophobic remarks.

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SAMUEL LYONS (2002-present)

Student; USA This 18-year-old senior at Franklin High School in Virginia has endless opportunities upon graduation after gaining acceptance to 40 colleges and receiving over $1.6 million in scholarship offers. Lyons is the first in the school’s history to receive success of this magnitude in the college application process. His top choice thus far is Virginia Commonwealth University. Lyon’s goal is to become a computer engineer and return to his high school where it all started to act as a mentor and advisor for future students.

JARRETT ADAMS (1981-present)

ERNEST J. GAINES (1933-2019)

Photo credit: Joe Kohen

Photo credit: JJohn Bohn/Getty Images

By Lorraine Jones

Prisoners’ rights advocate; USA Adams was wrongfully convicted of rape in Wisconsin in 1998 at the age of 17 and was sentenced to 28 years in prison by an all-white jury. During his incarceration, Adams studied the judicial system, educating himself on legal practices that would help his case. His pleas to authorities and the Wisconsin Innocence Project finally paid off when he was eventually exonerated almost a decade later in 2007. Once released, Adams pursued a career in law to fix the broken system that he had fallen victim to. He attended law school, passed the bar, and eventually became an attorney for the New York Innocence Project to help others in similar situations. Adams tells his story in his book, Redeeming Justice: From Defendant to Defender, My Fight for Equity on Both Sides of a Broken System (Crown, 2021).

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BAVUAL:

The African Heritage Magazine

| Spring 2022

DR. CHARLES DREW (1904-1950)

Medical pioneer; USA Dr. Drew, a surgeon, physician and researcher, made a revolutionary breakthrough in the understanding of plasma, facilitating the ability to store blood for extended periods of time during World War II. His revelation that plasma sustains longer than whole blood made it possible for blood to be banked, thus saving millions of lives. This groundbreaking research on how to collect and preserve blood changed medicine during this time. Drew became the medical director of the American Red Cross National Blood Donor Service, allowing him to lead the assembly of tens of thousands of pints of blood for American troops in WWII. He resigned from his post shortly afterward due to the military’s requirement that African American blood be segregated and used only for blacks.

JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON (1943-2016)

Essayist; USA McPherson is the first black writer to receive a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1978) for his second published collection Elbow Room: Stories (AtlanticLittle, Brown, 1977). McPherson’s essays and short stories explore the relationship between race and community. In 1967, McPherson studied fiction writing while attending Harvard Law School. He wrote his first short story collection, Hue and Cry: Stories (The Atlantic Monthly Press), in 1968. McPherson was among the first few who received the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants in 1981.

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MARY FIELDS (c. 1832-1914)

Worker extraordinaire; USA Born a slave in Tennessee, Fields migrated North once she gained her freedom after Emancipation. In 1886, she settled in Cascade, Mont., where she was the sole black resident from 1886 to 1914. Instead of seeking traditional work performed by black women, Fields was interested in various forms of physical labor. In 1895, she became the first African American woman and second woman to become a Star Route Carrier for the United States Post Office Department. Using a stagecoach to deliver mail, Fields, also known as “Stagecoach Mary” and “Black Mary,” traveled 34 miles round trip between St. Pete’s Mission and Cascade through harsh weather, bandits and wolves every day for eight years without missing a single day of work.

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WILMA RUDOLPH (1940-1994)

Star athlete; USA Rudolph, a track and field athlete, earned her title as the fastest woman in the world during her time. When Rudolph was 4 years old, she was plagued with polio and scarlet fever hindering the use of her left leg until she was 12. After she regained function in her leg and no longer needed to wear a leg brace or orthopedic shoe, she turned to sports in high school, revealing a natural talent. She earned a bronze medal in the 1956 Olympics. When she returned to the Games in 1960, Rudolph won three gold medals, broke three world records, and became the first American woman to earn three gold medals in track and field at the same Olympics. Rudolph used her success to draw attention to racial prejudice in the U.S. She refused to attend her homecoming parade if it was segregated. In 1960 and 1961, she won the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year award.

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97

BENEDICTION

Mothers of Black Boys Don’t Exhale Mothers of black boys survive by pushing fear down so it doesn’t overflow, overwhelm our senses paralyze us and derail our ability to love, nurture and protect our black boys

We cling. One hand on the bible and another holding on to our sons They say that we love boys and raise girls Forgive us; we have been anxious since their birth We haven’t exhaled because we remember Emmitt Till and we are in the same prayer circle as the mothers of Tamir, Elijah, and Trayvon We embrace the legend of the strong black woman during the day but cry silent tears at night As we push down, there is an uprising of fibroids, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, yet we carry on We organize and fight and vote and hold our boys close We fight for our sons because we need the world to heal so that every mother of black boys can finally exhale.

By Janet Autherine from the book The Heart and Soul of Black Women: Poems of Love, Struggle and Resilience 98

: The African Heritage Magazine | Spring 2022 www.JanetAutherine.com | BAVUAL https://www.instagram.com/j.autherine/

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BAVUAL: The African Heritage Magazine’s mission is to explore the Afrocentric experience in world history, from the beginning of recorded time to the present. It is for anyone who is interested in understanding cause and effect in history from the perspective of a key race of people.

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