Columbus & Dayton African American_February 2021 Edition

Columbus & Dayton

February 2021

FREE

Celebrating 10 YearsEDITION of Excellence SPECIAL ELECTION SPECIAL ELECTION EDITION

AMANDA GORMAN

“Ready For The Moment”

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Eugene Goodman: The Man Who Saved The Senate

By William McCoy, MPA

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The Columbus Division of Police and Our City Need Prophetic Leadership With Vision

By Rev. Tim Ahrens, DMin

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I’ve Fallen and Need Help In Getting Up

By Charleta B. Tavares

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PUBLISHER’S PAGE Founder & Publisher Ray Miller

Layout & Design Ray Miller, III

Assistant Editor Ray Miller, III

Dayton Editor Benette Decoux Distribution Manager Ronald Burke Student Interns Jada Respress Olivia Deslandes

Lead Photographer Steve Harrison

Contributing Editors Rev. Tim Ahrens, DMin Lisa D. Benton, MD Roderick Q. Blount, Jr., MA Stacy M. Brown Marian Wright Edelman Rev. Derrick Holmes Eric Johnson, PhD Cecil Jones, MBA Robin A. Jones, PhD Joseph W. Kane, MUP Jeremy Kittredge LaGarrett J. King William McCoy, MPA Leon McDougle, MD Suzanne Parks, MEDL Marc Schindler Fmr. Sen. Charleta B. Tavares Kristal Brent Zook

The Columbus African American news journal was founded by Ray Miller on January 10, 2011

Welcome to the 10th Annual Black History Month Edition of The Columbus & Dayton African American. Over the course of many years, I have heard countless individuals state that they find little value in lifting up the accomplishments of people of African descent, once a year during the month of February. The points made by the critics of this month of celebration and education have some degree of legitimacy. It is true that 28 days in February is an insufficient period of time to tell our story in an effective manner. It is also true that our standard treatment of African American history, identifying people, places, and things leaves much to be desired in an educational manner. And yet, the need remains critical and the reward is ripe with reflection, introspection, and healing of the mind, body, and soul.

It is critical that we learn and teach our history. As an example, the reality is that many Africans were captured, beaten, and sold into slavery, not only by white people but by other Africans as well. And unfortunately, iterations of that horrendous practice continues even until this day. We cannot erase our pain by denying the historical injustices perpetrated against us. Nor can we afford to delegitimize the powerful stories written on the hearts and minds of African American scholars, teachers, pastors, public officials, doctors, lawyers, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, information technologists, venture capitalists, etc. We need to absorb knowledge like a sponge and apply that which we have learned to the uplift and liberation of our people. There are yet to be discovered stories, personalities, and practices of people waiting to be unearthed and heralded upon the blank canvasses of our minds. How else could this generation come to appreciate the brilliance of Frederick Douglass, Rev. Gardner C. Taylor, Rev. James Poindexter, Major Martin R. Delaney, Paul Robeson, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Fannie Lou Hamer, Benjamin Elijah Mays, Attorney Charles Hamilton Houston, and the list goes on and on.

Allow me a moment to share a story to illustrate an important point. While serving as a Member of the Ohio Senate, I spontaneously decided one day to review all of the statues, busts, photographs, monuments, and encased exhibits in and around the Ohio State Capitol Building. I did this because it occurred to me that I had never seen any African Americans memorialized in or around the Capitol Building in any way. Although, I had in large measure grown up in the building--first serving as a Legislative Intern, and then as a Research Associate with the Legislative Service Commission, Legislative Assistant to Rep. C.J. McLin, Jr., Member of the Ohio House of Representatives, Minority Whip in the House, and Minority Leader in the Senate--I had never really noticed that African Americans were not permanently represented visually in the Capitol with the exception of class photos. Needless to say, when I recognized this exclusion, I immediately developed a plan to change this shameful omission.

I had read about George Washington Williams who was the first elected African American Member of the Ohio House of Representatives--elected from Hamilton County in 1879.

What better person could there be to memorialize than this highly accomplished legislator, Pastor, attorney, author, historian, diplomat, soldier, orator, and military officer? I received a lot of “shared concern” from my white legislative colleagues, but no financial support from any elected officials other than some of my fellow Ohio Legislative Black Caucus members, and Governor Bob Taft whose Great Great Grandfather had allowed George Washington Williams to study law in his firm in 1878. The President of the Ohio Senate, Richard Finan, contributed nothing and neither did the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Larry Householder. Even with their lack of financial support, we were able to raise $280,000 to complete this most important project.

In addition, we organized a powerful support team which included Dr. John Hope Franklin; the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board; Bob Loversidge, Architect with Schooley Caldwell Associates; Ed Dwight, Sculptor; Ron Anderson, Artist; Rev. Nelson Crawley, Crawley’s Custom Framing; and Gary Ness, of the Ohio Historical Society.

Because of our refusal to be ignored, and our unwillingness to accept “no” as an answer, we were able to build a team and construct a beautiful and educational room in the State Capitol Building. In studying George Washington Williams, students will learn about a man who lived a short, but eventful life. In addition to his two years in the state legislature, Williams also served as Judge Advocate, with the rank of Colonel, in the Ohio Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic and graduated from Newton Theological Institution. He did all of these things before his death at the age of 41 in 1891 in Blackpool, England. Now, hundreds of thousands of children and visitors to our State have the opportunity to honor a man of African descent and add to the rich Black History that will undoubtedly cause generations yet unborn to achieve at a level of excellence that was the signature of The Honorable George Washington Williams, Esq. With Respect and Appreciation,

The Columbus & Dayton African American 503 S. High Street - Suite 102 Columbus, Ohio 43215 Office: 614.826.2254

Ray Miller Founder & Publisher

editor@columbusafricanamerican.com www.CAANJ.com

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The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

In This Issue

Photo by Getty Images

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Cleveland’s First Elected Official of African Descent: John Patterson Green

By Susanne Parks, MEDL

Work On Your Pandemic Recovery By: Lisa D. Benton, MD

HBCU’s, COVID and You By: Cecil Jones, MBA

Racial (In)Justice In Small 11 Town Rural America

Eugene Goodman: The

Ohio History Connection Celebrates Black History Month

Man Who Saved The Senate

12 New HEAP Assistance Available

The Columbus Division of Police and Our City Need Prophetic Leadership With Vision

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Volunteers Stay Connected with Children Amid Pandemic

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Cleveland’s First Elected Official of African Descent 16 Black History Is About More 17 Than Oppression

Biden Needs to Create an Infrastructure Pipeline, Not Just Create New Jobs Community Update from Franklin County Auditor’s Office Legislative Update

The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

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The Next Chapter COVER STORY History Lessens: When Black History is Remembered and Not Repeated Greater Columbus Arts Council Opens #ArtUnitesCbus Exhibition in Community Gallery Deja Vu: The Persisent Time Loop of Race, Inequality, Liberty and the Enduring Struggle to Create a More Perfect Union I’ve Fallen and I Need Help In Getting Up Study Shows When Housing Quality Is Poor, Children Suffer Work On Your Pandemic Recovery NMA Covid-19 Task Force on Vaccines and Therapeutics The Kroger Co. Foundation Announces Racial Equity Fund Build It Together Partners Book Bags & E-Readers How Black Lives Matter Came to the Academy Columbus State Earns Placement in Inaugural Year-Long Racial Equity Leadership Academy A Crisis Within a Crisis: Police Killings of Black Emerging Adults HBCU’s, COVID and You James R. Williams: Pioneering Akron Judge and Civic Leader In Memoriam: Film and Stage Legend Cicely Tyson Dies at 96

All contents of this news journal are copyrighted © 2015; all rights reserved.

Title registration with the U.S. Patent Office pending. Reproduction or use, without written permission, of editorial or graphic content in any manner is prohibited.

Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, and illustrations will not be returned unless accompanied by a properly addresses envelope bearing sufficient postage. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited materials.

RACIAL (IN)JUSTICE IN SMALL TOWN RURAL AMERICA

By Robin A. Jones, PhD Rural America and Racial Bias.

In Rural America there is an undertone of racial bias based on climate culture. Growing up, in a small town, it was all too familiar. I was born in Jackson, Ohio, and grew up in Chillicothe, a farming community of cornfields and livestock. There was one high school for 300ish graduating seniors, and the elementary school classrooms were a mix of approximately two-to-five Black students, all sequestered along the back row. The City of Chillicothe, Ohio, has a population of less than 25,000, and describes the area as “the foothills of the Appalachia” or “God’s country.” This is not about a city without recognition or history. Chillicothe, is rich in Ohio, twice being the Capital of Ohio, and all while born of the State’s Great Seal.

Yes, they live Among Us. Chillicothe, unlike the urban counterparts, rural residents often see members of the local police force as their neighbors. ‘Folks’ may know where the sheriff likes to grab lunch.

Some have his cellphone number in their phones. Locals know which officers they can build a relationship with and which to avoid.

Yes, there are “Klansman” as we call(ed) them, among us. Always ready to throw up a hand and say hello!

Do You Really Know Your Neighbor?

Those who live in Rural America know that the lives of residents’ are intertwined across races. Families may have lived among each other for generations. In some tight-knit communities, it doesn’t matter how many years someone has lived in the town, they’ll never be fully considered a local if not born there. For Blacks growing up in rural areas there is a fair amount of denial about racism in their communities, as they recount their experiences with injustice and hate. The comment, soft slaves continues to exist with mother’s and grandmother’s all poised to clean houses, wash and iron laundry, while replacing the ‘mammy’ with ‘nanny’. There is a mix of Black and White, along with a blend of Bi-racial. While the climate is set for toting guns, the look becomes dismal while seeking displays of basketballs.

How did we get Here?

Early immigrants to Chillicothe included free Blacks who settled into the rural farming communities. Shotguns and hunting became their way of life. You have to ask yourself, “Was it their way of protection or as they like to put it, ‘eating off the land’?” Yes, the ‘game’ was plentiful with pheasants, quail, deer, rabbit, and if it moved on four legs, “it was good eatin’”. Because Ohio was considered a free state during the Civil War era as a ‘Free Black’ you came with fewer restrictions than in the slave states. Living in a ‘trusted’ community gave way to creating a vibrant ‘Free Black’ community.

believe the bias can be equated to living as a conservative Republican, which is not just the normal, it is practically required.

The Disparity is Palpable without Undertones.

With rural America’s racial disparity, an even greater economic pitfall. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 1 in 4 rural Black Americans live in poverty; for whites, it’s just 1 in 10. Accordingly, small towns and farming communities that residents describe as “close-knit,” do not hold their White ‘associates’ accountable for a more level playing field. According to Ms. Resident, “In order for a Black to get an opportunity, someone has to give them an opportunity.

What is the Mason Dixon Line?

As it was, Chillicothe maintained ‘safe’ Blacks don’t get jobs based on credentials stations and aid to support the refugee slaves alone, we need a “who” you know.” that were tunneled on the Underground Railroad. While many history books depicts Confronting the Elephant in the Room. the runaways on ground, the water-ways Assigning the task of confronting racism to sheltered much of the refugees. They could those most victimized by it heaps insult on not be tracked through the water. So, the to injury. If America is ever going to heal, Ohio River which borders the state, known White people need to step up. With many to the community as the Mason Dixon Line, hopes and dreams of affection for small town divided the north from the south. By the tunes residents, they seem to view the place through of, “Row Jordan Row,” the slaves crossed two distinct sets of lenses. Some see it as the river to freedom. From the Ohio River an agreeable refuge; other as an imperiled up to the Scioto River, which ran through redoubt.

Chillicothe for the Underground Railroad.

It became the perfect stow away while they Dr. Jones has a commitment to strong put more distance between their former work ethics, education, and a passion for homes and slave hunters. Aided by White entrepreneurship. Robin started her career abolitionists, the rural farmers (Jones family, my father’s grandfather, (John) and uncle) path with GE as a database developer operated a barge from West Virginia, to building her first database for the F14 Cincinnati, Ohio, along the Ohio River. All Aircraft Fighter planes and from there she while teaching the runaways how to read and catapulted her way to the position of Interim CIO. In her 40+ years of employment write. in technology, Robin spent 12 of those years gainfully employed as founder and Racism and Equality.

Since before the signing of the Civil Rights entrepreneur of a multimillion dollar Act, much of the country has rallied against company which received national awards racism, and data suggests that the United and presidential recognition. From there States is a long way from full social or Robin’s career advanced to fortune 50 material equality. While racism may no companies such as IBM, Ashland Oil, and the longer be entrenched in laws, the result of U.S. Departments of Energy, and Defense. years of discrimination is clear in today’s In her most recent capacity, Robin retired racial divide and myriad inequalities. from University of California, Berkeley However, even decades later, there remains Haas School of Business, Computer Center vast inequalities between whites and blacks as Senior Manager, PMO Director. Today, in the United States. In comparison, below Robin continues to work in the field of higher the Mason Dixon Line, Black Americans education as an Associate Professor, and she have a stronger belief about the injustice and is a strong advocate for children in K-12 who living among white America. Southern blacks are Twice Exceptional.

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The Columbus & Dayton African American 2021 The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

EUGENE GOODMAN: THE MAN WHO SAVED THE SENATE Police officer Eugene Goodman tricked dozens of insurrectionists into chasing him away from the vulnerable, unguarded Senate chambers where frightened legislators hid.

No shouts of “Blue Lives Matter” were heard as one police officer was being beaten with an American flag, another clubbed with a fire extinguisher, and a third crushed in a doorway on synchronized command.

Those former and current police officers and military personnel who sympathized, took pictures with, and helped the MAGA mob lay siege to the Capitol building learned a hard lesson that day: treasonous law-breakers and law enforcement are not on the same team.

The “teachers” who imparted that lesson included pro-Trump White supremacists who claim to support the police and “law and order.” Do you think Brian Sidnick (the officer killed in the Capitol attack) would say these far-right extremists supported law and order, if he were alive? the death toll from the January 6, 2021 attack could have been much higher if Goodman On January 6, 2021, a Black had made different choices. “These folks man saved the United States had zip ties. It’s not unreasonable to say that they were ready to take hostages.

Senate.

Officer Goodman really helped to avoid a Someone shouted, “Grab that [man]. Get tremendous tragedy.” him!” With that, the chase was on. In a scene reminiscent of days gone by, the The Trump Insurrection claimed, at least, Black man pushed a member of the mob seven lives. The dead included Capitol and started running. Dozens of pro-Trump police officer Brian Sicknick, who as beaten insurrectionists followed in hot pursuit. with a fire extinguisher before he died. Two Down a hall and up a flight of stairs, he ran. other officers, one with the Capitol Police Behind him, the agitated White mob shouted and another from the (DC) Metropolitan threats and racial slurs as they pursued their Police Department, later committed suicide. prey. Repeatedly looking back, the Black Donald Trump’s supporters injured over 50 man ran toward help. With guile and cunning, police officers during the historic uprising. he lured the would-be seditionists away from Roughly, 30 sworn police officers from across the unguarded Senate room. the country were involved in the attack on the This was not a scene from yesteryear. It U.S. Capitol. Some came from as far away as occurred during the January 6, 2021 attack California in response to Trump’s call to stop on the nation’s Capitol incited by twice the certification of a free and fair election. It impeached, ex-president Donald Trump. is not clear how many of these police officers For “85 tense seconds,” U.S. Capitol Police stormed the building with rioters and/or now officer Eugene Goodman: (1) led rioters face federal criminal charges. Officers took away from the Senate chambers; (2) secured photos with rioters, videotaped themselves backup on the second-floor landing; and breaching and defiling the Capitol, and (3) exercised extreme restraint in order to helped insurrectionists access and navigate prevent injury or loss of life, according to a the building. No less than 21 highly trained Washington Post article written by Rebecca current and former military personnel joined these police officers. It was as if participating Tan (January 13, 2021). police, military, and seditionists thought they On a day that will forever live in infamy, a were on the same team, just wearing different Black man saved the United States Senate jerseys. from a mob of Trump-inspired rioters seeking to derail the certification of the Electoral Remember, these 50-plus police officers and College vote declaring Joe Biden the winner military veterans all swore an oath to uphold of the 2020 Presidential election. Lives were the Constitution of the United States of spared, a U.S. Constitution mandated process America. Yet, on January 6, 2021, they turned was completed, and American democracy their collective backs on that oath and the was preserved- thanks to Eugene Goodman. Constitution to participate in an unsuccessful, Black history will call Goodman a hero. un-American attempt to subvert democracy and cancel the results of 2020 presidential American history will call him a patriot. election. The pro-Trump seditionists did not Kirk D. Burkhalter, a law professor and sing “God Bless the USA” on that fateful day. former New York City police officer, said No one chanted, “Back the Blue,” as Capitol

By William McCoy, MPA

The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

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In conclusion, now-former Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman is a real-life American hero. Goodman has since been appointed acting deputy Senate sergeantat-arms. He was part of the official escort accompanying Vice President Kamala Harris to the platform outside the Capitol, where she was sworn into the nation’s secondhighest office. The mention of Goodman’s name evoked loud applause, as he appeared at the Capitol’s arched entranceway where rioters breached the building on January 6, 2021. A bipartisan trio of lawmakers has also introduced legislation that would award Officer Eugene Goodman the Congressional Gold Medal for his bravery during the rampage.

Former tennis-great Arthur Ashe said, “True heroism is remarkably sober, very dramatic.

It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others, at whatever cost.”

William McCoy is founder of and principal consultant for The McCoy Company- a personal services consulting firm specializing in planning, training, and development. He is certified by the U.S. Department of Justice in disproportionate minority contact reduction and crime victim services. Mr. McCoy is one on the nation’s leading proponents of violence interruption training. Prior to establishing The McCoy Company, he spent 12 years in high-profile public service positions, highlighted by two White House appointments. William McCoy holds a BA in economics and MPA in finance. He is author of the up-coming book On the Edge: A Practical Approach to Bridging the Gap between Police and the Black Community.

McCoy is profiled in Who’s Who in the World and elsewhere. William McCoy can be reached at (614) 785-8497 or via e-mail at wmccoy2@themccoycompany.com. You can visit his website at wmccoy29.wixsite. com/mysite.

THE COLUMBUS DIVISION OF POLICE AND OUR CITY NEED PROPHETIC LEADERSHIP WITH VISION

By Rev. Tim Ahrens, DMin Would you want your son or daughter to serve in the Columbus Police Division?

This is a question I have been asking African American Officers in Columbus for the past 2½ years. I have heard a few say, “yes… with changes.” Most offer a clear “no” or “not the way it is now.” There is palpable pain in these answers from men and women who truly want to “protect and serve” the people of Columbus. They are good men and women. They are good parents. They are also realistic about the troubles they face each day within the Columbus Police Division (CPD).

In her memoir, Walking the Thin Black Line: Confronting Racism in the Columbus Division of Police, published in 2020, Lt. Melissa McFadden, the highest ranking Black female officer in the history of the Columbus Division of Police, writes this near the end of her book: “I don’t think that the well-meaning people in city government and on citizen advisory panels truly understand the level of oppression and discrimination that still exists within the Columbus Division of Police. Part of that is because we haven’t been able to tell the whole story until now.

The other part is that they truly don’t want to believe it. They are still in the “bad apple” mode. It is really shameful that our police department is such a stain on our wonderful city that we love.”

Lt. McFadden continues, “In 2020, everything should not be about racism and sexism within the division, but it is. It spills over into the relationships with the people we serve. What is happening inside the division is a plague that has had tragic implications in our community.”

These words are prophetic in the aftermath of Chief Quinlan’s bungling of the investigation of Casey Goodson, Jr.’s murder on his front steps going into his house with a Subway for his grandmother on December 4th by a Sheriff’s deputy and Baptist pastor Jason Meade. On December 22nd, the fatal shooting of Andre Hill by CPD officer Adam Coy while Andre was delivering a Christmas gift and then all the officers total lack of care for him as he lay dying revealed the sickness in the system. We saw on full display a lack of discipline and compassion.

In the weeks the mayor has discrimination spills out into

that followed, we also that no real plan to deal with the within the department that our streets and continues to

have tragic implications in our community.

I say this because the mayor’s response to Officer Coy’s body camera being turned off and then, at the last minute being turned on, is to waste $4.5 million more dollars on a NEW body camera which turns on automatically replacing the perfectly fine $5 million dollar body cameras that were recently purchased.

Rather than penalize officers for “not doing their jobs” and following department regulations, they waste $4.5 million for new body cameras. I liken this to buying a new computer and since I can’t find the “on” button, I throw it out and buy a new computer that turns on by itself. But it is much worse than that. It shows that this is department is run by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) not by chief, the safety director or the mayor.

This is a mess.

Imagine what we could do in Columbus with the wasted $4.5 million. We could use $4.5 million for community/police training, for Crisis Intervention Training which trains officers to deal compassionately and effectively with citizens facing mental health crises, for officer training around racial and implicit bias, for programs for our neighborhood youth – that would be money well invested and well-spent.

could have boldly stepped up and chiseled away and changed the racist culture within the department, it has not happened.

I have asked myself “why?” I believe there is a lack of vision, leadership, courage and a real desire to become an antiracist culture in the CPD. With the termination of Tom Quinlan’s contract as Chief of Police, we have an opportunity to bring in someone with a vision and plan for change. I believe that person is Perry Tarrant. Mr. Tarrant has demonstrated visionary leadership throughout his entire career. He was the “outside” choice for Chief of Police in 2019.

At the end of a national search, he was head and shoulders above every other man or woman on the national search radar. The mayor chose to change this department from the inside. That was the wrong choice. He has admitted that. Now he has the chance to make the right choice. The next chief cannot come from within the department or from a retired officer from CPD stepping back in.

We need prophetic imagination to create systemic antiracist change.

The pastors, priests, rabbis and citizens of this community that I have spent time with HAVE vision, leadership, courage and real desire to foster an antiracist culture in the CPD. The mayor needs to open his doors and his heart to people in this community Where are the comprehensive plans for with prophetic imagination. Proverbs 29:18 creating an antiracist police department in was never truer than in this present moment, Columbus, Ohio? For 2½ years, 75 pastors, “Where there is no prophecy, the people cast priests and rabbis have been working on off restraint, but happy are those who keep change. We call ourselves the Area Religious the law.”

Coalition (ARC). We have been I have been fighting for racial justice within the CPD and Rev. Dr. Tim Ahrens is the Senior Minister for justice for Brown and Black people in of First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ in downtown Columbus. A this city. church known for its witness to social justice since its birth as an abolitionist congregation In the last eight months, while Columbus in 1852. Rev. Ahrens is the fifth consecutive citizens have been marching, crying out senior minister from Yale Divinity School and demanding change - the mayor, safety and is a lifelong member of the United director, chief of police and others in city hall Church of Christ.

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The Columbus & Dayton African American 2021 The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

THE EARLY YEARS OF CLEVELAND’S FIRST ELECTED OFFICIAL OF AFRICAN DESCENT, JOHN PATTERSON GREEN

By Suzanne Parks, MEDL

Bede and Alice later gave birth to a daughter each, which they had by two white men who happened to be brothers.

The Early Years of Cleveland’s First Elected Official of African Descent, John Patterson Green

Anyway, one of the colored daughters of one of the two sisters whose mothers got pregnant by the same slave and who turned around and then themselves got pregnant by two brothers who happened to be white, Obedience or Bede for short, gave birth to Temperance.

Depending upon who you ask or which resource you access your information from, there are many who are credited with the establishment of Labor Day. But in the State of Ohio, the “Daddy of Labor Day,” was a black man by the name of John Patterson Green.

Temperance married John Green. Their union produced a son, John Patterson Green.

A Negro, Green hailed from New Bern, North Carolina during slavery times. Born in 1845, he was the son of free persons of color. However, in North Carolina, whether born free, enslaved, manumitted, well to do, impoverished, aware of one’s lineage or not; educated, illiterate, and regardless of one’s skin tone varying from blue-black to white likeness, life was perilous for persons with African DNA. And not unlike today, there was this constant quest to become meritorious in spite of unrelenting oppression based upon one’s genetic composition.

In those days as well as today, John Patterson Green is a reputed descendent of these two European-Americans, great-grandson and grandson respectively. Much like the Hemings of Thomas Jefferson fame, John Green who was John Patterson Green’s father was the son born of an enslaved woman, which means he was born into slavery. He was later manumitted and became a tailor by John Patterson Green was the grandson of trade. a man by the name of John Wright Stanly (sometimes spelled Stanley), who was a man Stanly summoned John Green to his death bed of noble British birth and later a privateer where he acknowledged paternity and gifted who owned a fleet of 14 merchant ships, John Green with a steel engraved portrait of which were commissioned by the patriots himself. But John Green was never legally during the American Revolution. Because legitimized as one of John Stanley’s heirs. of his war efforts, the English Crown placed a bounty upon his head, as if he were a pirate, John Patterson Green’s grandmother, Sarah which is what a privateer is before being Rice was a beloved “servant” in the Speight commissioned by a government, to further household at the time when the notorious their cause. Fabulously wealthy, he once exchange of bullets between Stanly and loaned General Nathaniel Greene during Speight commenced. a despairing period during the American Revolution when things we not going well, John Patterson Green’s mother, Temperance forty thousand pounds, in order to strengthen Burden Green, a quadroon whose story the war effort. This sum is worth $1,224,800 further questions the morality of North in today’s market. Greene nor the new Carolinians during that era. Now bear with government repaid him. But JW Stanly and me and try to keep up while I attempt to his descendants can claim they are true sons retell this tale of “unprotected women,” elicit and daughters of the American Revolution. love, the sister/cousin phenomena and race mixing.

JW Stanly’s son and heir, John Stanly became a renowned lawyer and a savvy politician Long story short, Temperance’s grandmother in North Carolina and within the federal and her great-aunt, sisters, were part of the government. He served seven consecutive Chestnut (nee Chestnutt) lineage. Both terms in the North Carolina House of were beautiful and desirable by many of Representatives, was Speaker of the House the young suitors of the day. But the ladies and served as a member of Congress. John grew impatient and weary because no Stanly was also a scoundrel of sort because proposals of marriage were forthcoming. he killed Richard Dobbs Speight,a member So, the sisters sought the advice and found of the Democratic-Republican Party and one solace from a likeable colored man, their of the signers of the Constitution, during a father’s slave. Dude must have been some duel. Speight at the time was the governor kind of something else, because he fathered of North Carolina. the daughters of both sisters. The two little colored babies were named Obedience or Stanly was later pardoned.by Governor Bede for short and Alice.

Benjamin Williams.

The Columbus African & Dayton American African American News Journal • February • February 20212015

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John Patterson Green lived in the lap of pre-civil war Colored folks well-to-doness during the first five years of his life in New Bern, North Carolina. His father John Green became a highly skilled tailor who was able with his earnings to not only provide a more than comfortable lifestyle for his family, but was able to purchase many of his relatives from the enslavers.

John Stewart Stanley, another free person of color (FPOC) and second cousin of Green became an educator and founded a school for the free persons of color and poor whites in the area. He was John Patterson Green’s first teacher.

At the age of five, John Patterson Green’s father died an early death. Life after his father’s passing was difficult. At a tender age John Patterson Green became the man of the family by helping his mother with tasks that required manly strength and endurance.

He took on odd jobs that today might be construed as child labor. There were many nights when the family went to bed hungry.

Or they subsisted on meager meals made of little more than corn meal and water.

As a young boy in New Bern, John Patterson Green was constantly warding off cruelty from the cruder members of the white race or free persons of color. Once he witnessed white rage and presumably the birth pangs of mob justice directed at the enslaved black man who had ran afoul of the so-called white law.

In his autobiography, Green recalled how as a young boy working in the Cooper House an enraged white man came in demanding that the colored coopers put holes in his paddle.

They refused. Since the white man who called himself the law, knew that their master would back them up and not punish them for refusing to help this cruelty to unfold, commandeered the shop and perforated the paddle himself. He left in an even more Continued on Page 9

Continued from Page 8

heated state, determined to enact his brand of justice.

White rage laced with white resentment for prominent and prosperous free persons of color became even more enflamed and more outrageous during this period and conditions for individuals of African descent went beyond the barometer of intolerable. Green’s relatives, their exodus from New Bern with the majority of them fleeing to Cleveland, Ohio in pursuit of liberty. On June 24, 1957, John Patterson Green, along with his mother and sister boarded a boat bound for Cleveland, Ohio.

Young John followed him to the site of the whipping and hid so he could watch the brutal beating of an enslaved man. The selfproclaimed official beat the accused with the perforated paddle he had fashioned knowing the holes would inflict excruciating pain and split flesh. But before he began the beating, the offender was stripped to the waist, handcuffed behind his back and then strung John Patterson Green, earned a law degree up, swinging from a tree. and passed the Ohio Bar in 1870. He became Cuyahoga County’s first African Patterson recalled in his autobiography, Fact American Justice of the Peace in 1878, was Stranger than Fiction, that after the torturous the second African American to serve in beating which Patterson regretted watching, the Ohio House of Representatives between he noticed that the white sand upon which the 1873-1883, 1890-1891. He became ths first incident took place had turned to crimson.

African American elected to the Ohio Senate

(1892-1893). President William McKinley appointed him Government Stamp Agent in 1897, until the position was eliminated.

Finally, as a legislator, he championed for civil rights.

John Patterson Green whose life and contributions were many, was honored with a portrait that hangs in the Ohio State House.

Suzanne Parks is the Director of Asset Development for the Ohio CDC Association, where she oversees state-wide asset building projects serving low to moderate income individuals. In her spare time, she likes to perform in community theatre productions and write. Ms. Parks was conferred a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Ohio Dominican University and a Masters in Leadership Education from the Mid-America Christian University.

BLACK HISTORY IS ABOUT MORE THAN OPPRESSION

By LaGarrett J. King We keep teaching about Black history, not through it.

I begin by asking a simple question, why can’t we get Black history education right?

The desire to write and learn Black history has been a priority by Black communities for over a century. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black educators including Edward A. Johnson, Booker T. Washington, Lelia Amos Pendleton, Carter G. Woodson, and Merl Eppse wrote Black history textbooks, teacher guides, and other resources to correct white authors’ omissions and misrepresentations.

Black history education became more mainstream during the 1960s as Black children, parents, teachers, and community members protested for more Black history courses. These acts of agency led to more Black history courses and a handful of states creating legislation mandating Black history in public schools.

Despite its storied past, Black history education continues to have severe problems in the way it is conceived and taught. As prominent educator Gloria Ladson-Billings wrote in her 2003 Critical Race Theory: Perspectives on the Social Studies, when schoolchildren learn “Black history,” they learn that Black people “are relatively insignificant to the growth and development of our democracy and our nation, and they represent a drain on the resources and values.”

The first time many schoolchildren learn about Black people is through enslavement and other oppression-centered narratives.

Black people are taught as passive people and disconnected from their liberation.

The prevailing narrative emphasizes white saviors and the federal government as Black people’s primary liberators. When Black liberation is taught, “liberation” is limited to “nonviolence,” and historical narratives that state otherwise are vilified and compared to white supremacy. The stale K-12 Black history instruction rarely builds on itself; instead, the same context and content are regurgitated throughout students’ educational careers.

teach from how white people imagine Black histories. Teaching through Black history should mean listening, writing, and teaching narratives from the actual historical experiences and voices of Black people.

The s e h is to r ic a l p e r s p e c tiv e s d if f e r significantly. For instance, teaching Brown v. Board of Education through Black voices would acknowledge that many Black communities were not in favor of integrating schools, just equity in school funding.

Black schools were culturally confirming, relevant, and sustaining. Integration meant transferring Black students to predominately white schools where instructional practices were culturally insensitive and racist. Black We can’t get Black history education right schools were closed, and many Black teachers because we teach about Black history and administrators lost their jobs. Teaching instead of through Black history. Teaching about Black history has meant that schools Continued on Page 10

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nationalism, and the experiences of Black Indigenous people, Black women, and Black LGBTQ+ communities.

6. Recognize that all Black histories are contentious. These histories are twofold.

First, Black people are not a monolithic group and have had various and sometimes competing ideas on how to solve social issues. Examples include Black Marxism, the reparations movement, Pan-Africanist movements, and the Garvey movement.

Second, like all histories, Black histories are not always positive and include unfavorable and problematic moments and narratives.

Examples include recolonizing Africa, homophobia, and sexism during the civil rights movement. through Black history about the Brown ruling provides a critical assessment of the policy and not the federal government’s moral prerogative of racial progress.

own decisions based on their interests, and fought back against oppression. Just because oppression has influenced Black life histories does not mean that oppression defines Black history. Examples include African resistance We can teach through Black history by to slavery, Black abolitionists, the two Great adopting what I call Black historical Migrations, the NAACP and the courts, and consciousness. Black historical consciousness the Black Power movement. is a set of principles to understand, develop, and teach Black histories that recognize 3. Study the similarities and differences of Black people’s full humanity and emphasize Black histories and cultures across Africa pedagogical practices that reimagine the and the African Diaspora worldwide. Black legitimacy, selection, and interpretation of history should begin with the study of historical sources. This consciousness should ancient Africa and move to define Blackness be adopted for creating and sustaining Black worldwide. Examples include African history programs. origins of humanity, the Haitian Revolution, the Caribbean Black Power movement, and Black historical consciousness consists of African civilization, kingdoms, and dynasties. six principles and ample examples, some of which may require further research even for 4. Focus on Black joy through liberation history teachers: and radical projects that defied oppressive structures throughout history. Highlight 1. Don’t ignore systemic power, oppression, histories about Black culture that are not and racism. We cannot teach about Black focused on hardship but sustain Black history without exploring how these forces people’s spirits. Examples include Black have influenced Black life in America. family dynamics, music, dance, cultural Examples include the institution of slavery, expressions, sports, holidays and traditions, the nadir of race relations, the wealth gap and and the Black Arts Movement. housing patterns, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration.

5. Explore the multiple identities that can inform and intersect with Blackness.

2. Acknowledge Black agency. Black people Examples include the Combahee River have always acted independently, made their Collective, Black political thought, Black

If we continue to teach about Black history and not through it, we will perpetuate instructional practices that (intentionally or not) dehumanize Black people, emphasize white supremacy and anti-Blackness, and psychologically harm schoolchildren, especially Black children.

The reason why we cannot get Black history right is that we refuse to seriously listen to, understand, and interpret Black historical voices. We fail to listen to Black teachers and educators who have been telling us how to teach Black history for more than a century.

We cling to historical fantasies and not historical truths from multiple perspectives.

Until we believe Black people are historical vessels, we will continue to suffer from antiBlackness and an inequitable society that continue to relegate Black histories to the margins. The unbalanced Black histories we continue to propagate as “history” paint Black people as a problem in society and not a solution. Black historical consciousness holds the hope to transform history education and, in turn, society.

LaGarrett J. King is the Isabella Wade Lyda and Paul Lyda Professor of Education and the founding director of the Carter Center for K-12 Black history education at the University of Missouri’s College of Education.

To Advertise in The Columbus - Dayton African American contact us at: editor@columbusafricanamerican.com Ray Miller, 503 S. High StreetPublisher - Suite 102 750 East Long Street, Suite Columbus, OH 43215 3000 614-571-9340 Columbus, Ohio 43203

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COMMUNITY OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION CELEBRATES BLACK HISTORY MONTH Robust schedule of family-friendly programming including curator talks, discussions and interactive experiences highlight Ohio’s African American history.

(COLUMBUS)– In celebration of Black History Month, Ohio History Connection invites you to take part in special programming. Presented in partnership with several of the organization’s historic sites, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, all programming is virtual and free for Ohio History Connection members unless noted. Advanced registration is required. More info: ohiohistory.org/ blackhistory Ohio History Center Programming Connecting Cultures: Masks, Identity, and Community, Sat., Feb. 6, 10 a.m.

Join Rosa Rojas, lead curator at National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, as she explores the work of Ohio African American artists Willis “Bing” Davis and Queen Brooks. Viewers will learn about three distinct African cultures and create an African mask. This program is recommended for children 5+ and their families.

Underground Railroad Immersive Experience, Sat., Feb. 13, 10 a.m.

It’s 1859 and the nation is on the brink of Civil War. Participants will observe and talk to residents from Ohio Village to understand the Underground Railroad and identify the secret “conductor.” Through the use of highly researched first-person interpreters, participants are able to experience the moral and social struggles surrounding the anti-slavery movement. This program is recommended for children 11+ and their families.

Snapshot: The Power of Protest, Sat., Feb. 20, 10 a.m.

Snapshot! Power of Protest is an interactive program where attendees will be taught to think like historians and analyze historic photographs to learn more about the past.

This program focuses on the Civil Rights Movement and encourages students to think deeply on social justice topics both in the past and present.

Programming at Historic Sites: Harriet Beecher Stowe House After Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Horrors of Slavery, Told by the Formerly Enslaved, Weds., Feb. 3, 7 p.m.

After the Civil War, Harriet Beecher Stowe became increasingly concerned with women’s issues, and we’ll follow her example by examining questions of both racial and gender justice as well as intersections between the two. In 2021 the Harriet Beecher Stowe House’s monthly discussion series “After Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Black Voices for Justice” will consider some of the essential works by men and women in this tradition from the 19th century to our own time. After abolition, Black authors recognized that the fight for equality had only begun. They made contributions to the rich, diverse tradition of Black voices for justice that continues today.

The discussion is led by Dr. John Getz, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University and

Dr. Jerry Cline-Bailey, Associate Professor of English, Xavier University.

RSVP for this discussion through this link. A $5.00 donation is requested of non-members.

The discussion is free for Harriet Beecher Stowe House members.

Queens of the Queen City: Cincinnati Stories of African American Women Sun., Feb. 21, 7 p.m.

Since the 1800s, Ohio was at the heart of social change led by African American women. Not only was it was the first free state established from the Northwest Territory, it was home to some of the earliest universities for African Americans. Ohio drew Black women from across the country who found there wasn’t space for them in their chosen professions, in education, or in society at large, and so they claimed that space here.

These queens broke barriers, but they are more than a list of firsts. They collaborated and formed collectives, they were friends and teachers, one generation of bricklayers after another. Meet some of these architects of change, like poet and abolitionist Frances Watkins Harper, educator and suffragist Hallie Quinn Brown, author Lucretia Newman Coleman, and civil rights leader Marian Spencer. This program is $7/Free for Harriet Beecher Stowe House members.

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Evolution of American Cuisine, Thurs., Feb. 18, 7 p.m.

During this discussion we’ll delve into the culinary traditions of three groups of people who have influenced the American cuisine we know today, enslaved people, immigrants and Indigenous peoples.. The discussion will be led by food historian Michael Twitty, the author of The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, Sarah Lohman, historian and author of the bestselling book Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, and Masami and Ty Smith from the Native American Indian Center of Ohio. Register HERE. Free/Ohio History Connection premium members. $5/ Ohio History Connection Member. $20/ General Public.

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National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center Black Power in Comics Roundtable, Thurs., Feb. 4, 7 p.m.

Storytellers have always been at the forefront of political and social change. It’s no different for Black comic creators, who have historically used their work to shine a light on how everyday people can overcome injustice and become heroes. Join us for a lively discussion with Willie Cordy Jr., professor at Norfolk State University and Regent University, writer and illustrator for City Earth comics, and Vonnell Young, writer for the Delta Dogs comic series.

This webinar is inspired by an exhibit currently on display at the NAAMCC: “Behind the Mask: Black Power in Comics”.

Behind the Mask: Black Power in Comics, Mon., Feb. 15, 7 p.m.

Storytellers have always been at the forefront of political and social change. It’s no different for Black comic creators, who have historically used their work to shine a light on how everyday people can overcome injustice and become heroes. Join us for a lively discussion and overview of our Behind the Mask: Black Power in Comics exhibit, currently on display at the National AfroAmerican Museum and Cultural Center. The exhibit uncovers the influence of several generations of comic artists and illustrates how comics have changed as America has changed. NAAMCC curatorial assistant Derek Pridemore will explore how these comic artists are forging new stories while honoring the struggles of those who came before.

This event is co-sponsored by the superhero Before Her Time: The life of Virginia librarians at the Wright Memorial Public Library in Dayton, Ohio.

Hamilton, Thurs., Feb. 11, 11 a.m.

Virginia Hamilton was born and raised in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Discover how this Art of Soul! Awards Ceremony and young African American writer became one Exhibit closing event, Sat., Feb. 27, Noon of the most celebrated authors of children’s This event will feature an artist panel literature. The webinar is presented by Ohio discussion, a virtual Art of Soul tour, and an Humanities and Julie K. Rubini. Rubini awards ceremony. is a children’s book author and founder of Claire’s Day, Ohio’s largest children’s book Queens of the Heartland, online exhibit tour One of Ohio’s greatest legacies is a story festival.

rarely told. Since the 1800s, Ohio was at the heart of social change led by African American women. Not only was it was the first free state established from the Northwest Territory, but it was also home to some of the earliest universities for African Americans and women. Ohio drew Black women from across the country who found there wasn’t space for them in their chosen professions, in education, or society at large, and so they built them here.

Queens of the Heartland features 30 of these pioneering women in a new exhibit curated by the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center. Go online to tour this powerful exhibit.

About the Ohio History Connection The Ohio History Connection is a statewide history organization with the mission to spark discovery of Ohio’s stories. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization chartered in 1885, the Ohio History Connection carries out history services for Ohio and its citizens focused on preserving and sharing the state’s history. This includes housing the state historic preservation office, the official state archives, and local history office and managing more than 50 sites and museums across Ohio. Support for Ohio History Connection programs comes from the Greater Columbus Arts Council. For more information, visit ohiohistory.org.

NEW HEAP ASSISTANCE AVAILABLE The Ohio Development Services Agency and IMPACT Community Action want to remind Ohioans that assistance is available to help with their home energy bills. The Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP) helps Ohioans at or below 175 percent of the federal poverty guidelines pay their heating bills. And Ohioans who are threatened with disconnection, or have been disconnected from their utility service, may also be eligible for the HEAP Winter Crisis Program, which started on November 1, 2020.

Ohioans can visit https://development.ohio. gov/is/is_energyassist.htm to download a copy of the application. Individuals will need to have copies of the following documents to include with their application:

Most recent utility bills A list of all household members (including birth dates and Social Security numbers) Proof of income for the past 30 days for all household members (12 months for certain income types) Proof of U.S. citizenship or legal residency “These resources will help prevent energy for all household members disruptions and restore disconnections for Proof of disability (if applicable) our neighbors, who are already scrambling to make tough decisions during these HEAP benefits are applied to an individual’s unprecedented times. IMPACT appreciates energy bill after January 1st. If you need being a partner for the HEAP program immediate assistance with your energy bills, contact IMPACT Community Action to make sure we can keep people safe at please at 614-252-2799. home, ” stated Latisha Chastang, IMPACT Emergency Services Director. To apply for Applications for the HEAP Winter Crisis the program, clients are required to schedule program must be received by March 31, an appointment with IMPACT Community 2021. The last day to apply for the regular Action. Appointments can be scheduled HEAP benefit is May 31, 2021. For by calling 614-246-0019. For additional more information on the programs, visit information please email Kevin Jones at energyhelp.ohio.gov or call your local KLJones@impactca.org or call 614-453- Energy Assistance Provider.

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VOLUNTEERS STAY CONNECTED WITH CHILDREN AMID PANDEMIC

By Alex Paquet In a time marked by distanced relationships, dedicated community members have gone to great lengths to stay connected with kids in Ohio’s child welfare system.

“Often, children who have been abused or neglected lack consistent, responsive and nurturing adult relationships. Trusting and healthy relationships allow children to heal from the trauma they have experienced,” says Bill Payne, a volunteer with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Franklin County.

is invaluable to hear from the child without the child enduring the trauma of physically entering the cCourthouse. My best decisions are made when my judicial lens captures the full picture of the child’s world. I am so very grateful that the CASA staff was able to pivot [to virtual training and visits] to ensure that the children of Franklin County continue to have a voice in the cCourtroom amidst these uncertain times.”

without knowing everything they’d like to.

Too often, the information that goes missing is the child’s perspective, a gap that CASA dutifully works to fill.

“I think so much of bias across systems comes from working with many cases with negative outcomes that one may come to expect those negative outcomes,” says Morgan Bommer-Guinn, Director of Volunteer Management for CASA. “If somebody has In addition to straining many social services, as much information as possible, they are the pandemic has exacerbated long-standing able to better gauge the situation with more racial health disparities, creating what CAANJ accuracy, so it is not conflated with their past contributor Rev. Dr. Tim Ahrens calls ‘A experiences.”

Pandemic within a Pandemic’. Coinciding Confronting CASA volunteers’ own bias is with The Franklin County Board of Health a recurring part of their training, and a core declaring racism a public health crisis in practice of staff. During training, BommerMay of 2020, many institutions, including Guinn says, “We teach volunteers how to child welfare organizations, have begun self-identify, slow down, and reflect on how using data-driven approaches to examine the personal bias could impact a case before they prevalence of racism and disproportionality begin working with a child or family.” in their work. In Franklin County, for example, African Americans make up 23% Beyond advocating for a child’s best interest, of the population, yet African American simply listening to a child, being present children make up 45% of CASA’s case load. and being a role model can build a child’s While the reasons for this disproportionality resiliency. Between children and CASA are plentiful, addressing bias within child volunteers of color, sometimes that resiliency welfare workers and systems is a crucial step stems from just having a consistent adult to creating better outcomes for children. who looks like them.

CASA is an agency under the Franklin County Board of Commissioners that trains volunteers to become lay Guardians ad Litem. These volunteers ensure that children who have been abused or neglected have a consistent voice in court hearings concerning their placement, visitation schedule, and service plan. Over the course of up to two years, a volunteer makes monthly visits with the child or sibling group, talks to their parents, school counselors, and clinicians, and then shares the child’s perspective in court, advocating for their best interest.

This consistency and focus on the child’s perspective have become all the more Bias does its worst work when people important amid the COVID-19 pandemic. make quick decisions with incomplete data. Sometimes, child welfare workers “As a Judge,” says Franklin County Domestic and magistrates are tasked with making and Juvenile Court Judge Lasheyl Stroud, “it large decisions about the lives of children

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“The power of being there,” says Bill Payne, “cannot be underestimated.”

Alex Paquet is the Volunteer Outreach Coordinator for CASA of Franklin County.

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POLITICS BIDEN NEEDS TO CREATE AN INFRASTRUCTURE TALENT PIPELINE, NOT JUST MORE JOBS

By Joseph W. Kane A new year, a new Congress, and a new administration in the White House have raised hopes around a familiar issue: infrastructure. For decades, federal lawmakers across both parties have called for greater investment in our transportation, water, energy, telecommunications, and similar systems; now, Capitol Hill leaders, President Joe Biden, and his cabinet picks—from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh—are echoing calls for action. After all, it’s no secret that infrastructure spending has the potential to stimulate economic growth during recessions, including the current one.

But Washington too often frames infrastructure bills around short-term economic returns, especially when it comes to jobs. By doing so, it overlooks the generational nature of these investments and other long-term economic returns which benefit more people and places. It’s the long-term infrastructure careers that matter and should be the centerpiece of any jobsfocused infrastructure legislation.

Policymakers frequently lead their arguments with construction jobs; for instance, additional infrastructure spending can have a “multiplier effect,” with every $1 billion in federal highway investment estimated to support 13,000 jobs in a year.

While construction jobs help some workers in the short term, policymakers may ignore the full range of operational jobs, which represent three-quarters of all infrastructure jobs nationally. Moving people, shipping goods, pumping water, distributing energy, and fixing broadband—these are the types of long-term, essential activities our infrastructure enables, which have become more visible during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Any federal infrastructure action should look toward empowering this workforce by hiring, training, and retaining more workers as part of an infrastructure talent pipeline.

Strengthening this pipeline begins with acknowledging the variety and extent of infrastructure career pathways nationally, as past Brookings research has explored. In 2019, before the pandemic hit, 17.2 million workers—or more than one of every 10 workers nationally—were employed in infrastructure, primarily concentrated in 91 different occupations. The largest positions include truck drivers, electricians, plumbers, and other skilled trades. But many workers are also involved in administrative, financial, and managerial roles at warehouses, utilities, and engineering firms.

In other words, this pipeline is not about filling one type of job in one place, but rather, having multiple entry points and pathways available for more people in more places.

This flexibility matters because a diverse range of unemployed and low-wage workers in hospitality, retail, and other industries nationally need to transition to better jobs, which will require many branching pathways.

an infrastructure talent pipeline, in turn, means current and prospective workers can earn and learn on the job, with access to flexible training opportunities over time rather than applying for a single position on a single project.

New infrastructure bills will have an opportunity to train people for the infrastructure jobs of today and tomorrow.

Some infrastructure occupations are projected to grow rapidly over the next decade, including clean energy jobs such as wind turbine service technicians (a 60.7% increase in jobs) and solar photovoltaic installers (a 50.5% increase), compared to a 3.7% average increase for all jobs nationally.

But infrastructure jobs are also projected to have high replacement needs, with 10.4% of infrastructure workers (around 1.5 million people) projected to permanently leave their jobs each year on average, particularly due to a wave of retirements.

But it’s not just the variety of positions that matters; it’s the pay and accessibility too.

Infrastructure jobs not only offer higher wages, but they also pose lower formal educational barriers to entry. Policymakers need to expand the reach of these careers.

From aircraft mechanics to water treatment operators, infrastructure jobs can pay 30% more to workers at lower ends of the wage spectrum. Hourly wages at the 10th and 25th percentiles stand at $13.68 and $16.82 in these jobs, compared to $10.35 and $13.02 in all jobs nationally. At the same time, around a half (53.4%) of infrastructure workers have a high school diploma or less, compared Infrastructure legislation can also advance to around a third (31.7%) of all workers careers for women and people of color—a nationally. stated focus of the new administration and Congress. An aging, predominantly white While many infrastructure jobs are in the and male infrastructure workforce reveals public sector and have higher unionization our long-standing gaps connecting younger, rates—partially explaining this wage more diverse workers to careers in the space. premium—these workers also possess In some infrastructure occupations, such as valuable, transferable skills and experience. bus drivers and transportation inspectors, up Whether employed as technicians, operators, to 72.7% of workers are over the age of 45. or engineers, they frequently possess higher In occupations such as highway maintenance levels of STEM knowledge and digital skills gained by on-the-job training. Strengthening

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workers and power plant operators, up to 82.2% of workers are white. But the underrepresentation of women—81.9% of all infrastructure workers are male across all infrastructure jobs—is perhaps the most consistent, glaring gap.

learning, and measure and monitor outcomes.

Apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, internships, and other bridge programs are vital conduits to getting more workers involved in these careers. But even these programs—boosted by additional funding, for instance—will not automatically help all our disconnected, underrepresented younger and midcareer workers; ongoing supportive services, including child care and transportation, are important, as are ongoing educational and training resources, including competency-based models.

The upside is unequivocal. Infrastructure jobs offer multiple career pathways, pay higher wages, pose lower formal educational barriers to entry, promote in-demand skills, and have demonstrated hiring needs.

However, connecting workers to all these Fortunately, many national and regional opportunities will require new policies. efforts are already emerging to strengthen our infrastructure talent pipeline—and should Federal leaders will need to collaborate build momentum for any federal plans over the with a wide range of state, local, and coming months and years. Sector strategies, private partners—including educational including those in water and energy, are institutions, workforce development boards, coordinating action among employers, labor groups, and employers—to expand educators, and other groups to better target recruitment efforts, extend work-based recruitment and training. Innovative regional

collaborations and workforce pilots—around diversity and inclusion, in particular—are also providing guidance and case studies for broader national replication. And calls for expanding national service opportunities— including our recommendations around an “InfraCorps” program—can ideally build technical and financial capacity for new and existing federal programs.

As federal policymakers continue to raise visibility around infrastructure investment and all the jobs it can create in an economic recovery, they cannot forget the longer-term opportunities it can deliver as well.

Joseph W. Kane is a senior research associate and associate fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. He hold’s a master’s degree in urban and environmental planning from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s degree in economics and history from the College of William and Mary.

Article from www.brookings.edu

COMMUNITY UPDATE FROM FRANKLIN COUNTY AUDITOR’S OFFICE

As we kick off 2021, your Franklin County Auditor’s office is hard at work ensuring that property owners continue to have their voices heard about their recently-updated property values following the completion of the Triennial Update.

with the BOR as they deal with the negative impacts of COVID-19 on their bottom lines.

HB 751, which passed the Senate but was not adopted by the Ohio House, contained a provision that would have allowed the Board of Revision to consider the economic impacts of the pandemic in filings made this year. I urge lawmakers to reconsider passing this important provision.

The Board of Revision is now accepting complaints regarding property values through March 31, 2021. Filing a complaint gives homeowners the opportunity to present evidence to the board about a home’s value at a hearing or mediation, after which the board can adjust the value if warranted.

This year we’re working to make the process more convenient and accessible than ever before. Earlier this month, the Board added a new option to e-file complaints via its website. The web-based option offers convenience for homeowners and makes the process more efficient for board staff. Of course, owners can still file via mail, email or fax if they prefer.

To help lower-and middle-income homeowners, the office has launched the Franklin County Board of Revision Pro Bono Assistance Program which is designed to help qualifying homeowners file a complaint with the BOR. The free program consists of filing

Additionally, I support changing current law to allow multiple BOR filings per three-year property value update cycle, which would allow business owners more flexibility in filing with the board. Current law stipulates that a property owner can only file once with the Board every three years between Auditor’s office property value updates.

Using the Board of Revision complaint process represents an opportunity to help homeowners and businesses during these economically tough times. I urge anyone who feels their property value is incorrect to take advantage of the BOR process and clinics staffed by real estate professionals make your voice heard. who can also refer homeowners for possible further representation at their board hearing. As always, if you have suggestions, I encourage you to contact me at (614) At the statehouse, I have pushed for legislation 525-5700, or at AuditorStinziano@ that would help business owners who file franklincountyohio.gov.

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POLITICS

LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

By Senator Charleta B. Tavares (Ret.) The 134rd Ohio General Assembly commenced in January 2021. As noted in last month’s Columbus/Dayton African American the new Session brought in new leadership in the Ohio House and Senate, as well as the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus (OLBC).

The first year of the new 2-year General Assembly (GA) will focus on passing a twoyear State Operating, Transportation, and Workers Compensation budgets. We will focus on these major budgets along with sponsored and passed legislation that are of particular interest to our African American communities.

The Legislative Update is focused on educating and empowering our African American people specifically and communities of color generally with information in order to advocate for the policies, funding and programs that will improve economic/employment, business, health, education, housing, justice and environment for our residents.

The Sessions of the Ohio House of Representatives and Senate can be viewed live or recorded after each Chamber’s Session date on the Ohio Channel www.ohiochannel. org.

Ohio House Session Schedule – February 2021 Wednesday, February 3, 2021 1:00 PM Wednesday, February 10, 2021 1:00 PM Wednesday, February 17, 2021 1:00 PM Thursday, February 18, 2021 1:00 PM Wednesday, February 24, 2021 1:00 PM Thursday, February 25, 2021 1:00 PM Ohio Senate Session Schedule – February 2021 Wednesday, February 3, 2021 1:30PM Wednesday, February 10, 2021 1:30PM Wednesday, February 17, 2021 1:30PM Wednesday, February 24, 2021 1:30PM New African American Members The 134th General Assembly elected two new African American members in the Ohio

House of Representatives, Representatives legislators on commonsense legislation to Willis Blackshear, Jr. (D-Dayton) and make Ohio a better place to live, work, go to Dontavius Jarrells (D-Columbus). school, start a business or raise a family.

Rep. Willis Blackshear, Jr.

These two new members join the other sixteen members of OLBC. The eighteen A D a y t o n - a r e a n a t i v e , members of OLBC will be highlighted with Rep. Blackshear serves his their legislative agendas and sponsored h o m e t o w n r e p r e s e n t i n g legislation in future additions of the CAANJ. the 39th House District.

The district includes most Ohio Legislative Black Caucus of Dayton and Jefferson Township. He Founded in 1967 by former Representative formerly served as an outreach specialist at C.J. McLin, Jr., is the oldest legislative Black the Montgomery County Auditor’s Office Caucus in the United States. and earned his BA in Political Science from President – Representative Thomas West Wright State University in Dayton.

(D-Canton)* 1st Vice Pres. – Representative Juanita Brent Representative Blackshear is prioritizing (D-Cleveland)* ways to reinvest in area neighborhoods and Second Vice Pres. – Representative Catherine communities, bring tax dollars back to the Ingram (D-Cinc.) district and put more money back in the Treasurer – Representative Erica Crawley pockets of Ohio taxpayers. As a Democrat (D-Cols.) he plans to work across the aisle with Sergeant-at-Arms – Senator Hearcel Craig Republicans to invest in public education, (D-Cols.) expand access to early learning opportunities and ensure a quality education for every Ohio Secretary – Representative Sedrick Denson (D-Cinc.) student regardless of where they live.

Parliamentarian – Senator Vernon Sykes Rep. Blackshear is also committed to (D-Akron) listening to the vast majority of Ohioans who want more—not less—gun safety measures, If you are interested in testifying on any of the and supports passing commonsense gun bills introduced in either the House or Senate, safety legislation to keep children and please contact the chair of the committee who can be found at www.ohiosenate.gov or communities safe. www.ohr.gov.

Rep. Dontavius L. Jarrells Additional Contacts Rep. Jarrells represents the UPDATE: The Ohio General Assembly 25th District which includes s e s s i o n s a n d t h e H o u s e a n d S e n a t e p o r t i o n s o f C o l u m b u s Committees are televised live on WOSU/ (northeast), Clinton and WPBO and replays can be viewed at www.

Mifflin Townships. He is a ohiochannel.org (specific House and Senate native of Cleveland, Ohio where he graduated sessions and committee hearings can be from East Technical High School and earned searched in the video archives). a degree from Hiram College in Northeast Ohio.

If you would like to receive updated information on the Ohio General Assembly Rep. Jarrells’ legislative priorities include and policy initiatives introduced, call or email legislation to raise wages, invest in job your state Representative or Senator. The training and make it easier for Ohioans, committee schedules, full membership rosters especially those in minority and immigrant and contact information for the Ohio House communities, to start, grow and sustain a and Senate can be found at www.ohiohouse. business, expand early childhood education, gov and www.ohiosenate.gov respectively. improve literacy initiatives, support STEM programs for Ohio students, and promote F o r m e r S e n . C h a r l e t a B . T a v a r e s , opportunities in the skilled trades. In D-Columbus, is the 1st Democrat and African addition he supports the Ohio Fairness American woman to serve in the Ohio House Act, community policing initiatives and of Representatives and the Ohio Senate from measures to improve the care and supports Franklin County. She is also the first African for individuals with mental illness, substance American woman to serve in leadership in the use disorders, and those experiencing history of Ohio and the 1st Democrat woman homelessness. to serve in leadership in both the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate As a longtime advocate for building better (House Minority Whip and Senate Assistant communities, he plans to work with other Minority Leader).

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

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The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

POLITICS

THE NEXT CHAPTER

By Marian Wright Edelman “This is a time of testing. We face an attack on democracy and on truth. A raging virus.

Growing inequity. The sting of systemic racism. A climate in crisis. America’s role in the world. Any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways. But the fact is we face them all at once, presenting this nation with the gravest of responsibilities. Now we must step up. All of us. It is a time for boldness, for there is so much to do. And, this is certain: We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era. Will we rise to the occasion? Will we master this rare and difficult hour? Will we meet our obligations and pass along a new and better world for our children? I believe we must and I believe we will. And when we do, we will write the next chapter in the American story.”

—President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Inaugural Address, January 20, 2021 This Inauguration Day was full of powerful symbolism for all Americans and especially for our nation’s children. Once again they could see on full display the reality and promise of a multiracial, multicultural society where everyone is welcome.

The Pledge of Allegiance was recited simultaneously out loud and in American Sign Language. Girls and boys watched the first Latina Supreme Court Justice swearing in the first woman, first African American, and first Asian American Vice President, and remembered our new Vice President Kamala Harris’s promise that even when she is the first to do something, she won’t be the last. The Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas modeled gracious, dignified leadership, setting the tone for a recommitment to the rituals of a peaceful transfer of power against the backdrop of a restored Capitol.

Universal values most parents teach their children, including humility, compassion, and cooperation, were back in view. And children and adults alike marveled at the beautiful brilliance of 22-year-old Amanda Gorman, our nation’s Youth Poet Laureate and the youngest inaugural poet ever. Some people watching from home described feeling as if a heavy weight were being lifted from their shoulders. Others recognized another feeling: hope.

Now, for the hopeful, the hard work begins again: to help make sure, in words President Biden often quotes from the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

Before he was sworn in President Biden began taking steps to make real his inaugural promise of a better world for children. On January 14 he released a $1.9 trillion COVID

relief proposal as a major down payment on ending child poverty. It would significantly expand the Child Tax Credit by making it fully refundable and increasing it for one year, a change that would improve the lives of millions of poor children, especially Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous children, who are currently left out. It also would dramatically fight child poverty by extending Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit increases through the end of the year, providing a one-time direct payment of $1,400 for eligible adults and children, and extending unemployment insurance benefits with an additional $400 each week. Together, these changes could lift five million children out of poverty in 2021. President Biden’s proposal would also include significant funding for child care, resources to help schools reopen safely, and an extension of the eviction moratorium and more help so families can pay their rent and avoid homelessness. This is the kind of leadership our children and families need from their president.

Let’s make sure children and families’ urgent needs are met followed by beginning the larger work of honoring America’s overdue promise of hope and opportunity for every child. The horrific images children saw of our nation’s capital being stormed and

The Columbus African & Dayton African American • February 20212015 American News Journal • February

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defaced by insurrectionists in Nazi, white supremacist, and Trump insignia seeking to violently overthrow our nation’s government must never be repeated. As Amanda Gorman wrote in her wonderful inaugural poem, in the face of “a force that would shatter our nation/rather than share it,” it’s up to us to say: We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free And as she concluded: The new dawn blooms as we free it For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Marian Wright Edelman is Founder and President Emerita of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

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The Columbus & Dayton African American 2021 The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

COVER STORY READY FOR THE MOMENT For this truth marches on inside each of us:

By Marty Miller

Americans know one another by our love of liberty, When in fact, we are liberated by our love for one another.

We understand that a house divided cannot stand.

So let us make a pact to be the country that acts As compassionate as we are courageous.

January 6, 2021 – a day when we gasped and watched in disbelief a mob of white nationalists attacking our nation’s capital. One-byone we heard the 45th President, his son, his lawyer and his friend, Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama give the order to destroy our democracy. Blood was spilled and people died but the insurrection failed.

And then in the days following, we watched again as a fortress of fences went up around the capital and checkpoints were established and the most U.S. military personnel were stationed in D.C. than in another part of the world.

. . . and demands we pay attention and take action.

From Black History Month Manifesto (2020)

And we wondered where we would go from here; could we go from here?

“We are the new generation Watch us rise. We recognize Legacy as opportunity Leadership as our duty.

Two short weeks later on January 20, 2021, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President and Kamala Harris made history as the first woman and first person of color to be sworn in as Vice President of the United States of America. The setting did not look or feel like a celebration of our democracy in action; the ring of freedom was muffled by armed protectors, physical barriers and masks reminding us that an out-of-control pandemic was killing more of us than them.

she was five or six years old. She and her two siblings were raised by their mother who was a sixth-grade schoolteacher. Gorman had an auditory processing disorder that resulted in a speech impediment, so writing was an important means of communicating.

Someone less determined than Gorman would have charted a different path out-ofthe-spotlight but Gorman preserved. This highly acclaimed orator and 2020 Harvard grad proves that hard work pays off.

And we wondered how we move forward.

Her body of work centers around issues of oppression, feminism, race, marginalization, and the African diaspora. She has written for the New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Washington Post. In 2015, she published her first book of poetry, The One For Whom Food Is Not Enough. Gorman has written and performed five commissioned poems for CBS This Morning and Nike commissioned her to write the manifesto for their 2020 Black History Month campaign. She has Gorman has three books in the works for performed her emotion-charging poems with 2020: celebrity pianist John Batiste and on stage The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for with the Boston Pops. the Country (March 2021) Gorman’s work flows with a maturity that Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem (September 2021) affirms that children have contradicts her age . . . the power to shape the world with their actions and voices From Fury & Faith (2020) The Hill We Climb & Other Poems “You will be told that this not a problem, not (September 2021) new poetry collection on hope and healing your problem.

‘You will be told that now is not the time for Ever mindful of The Hill We Climb, change to begin, told we cannot win.

Gorman stepped away from the podium on But the point of protest isn’t winning.

It’s holding fast to the promise of freedom January 20, 2021 and we found ourselves even when fast victory is not promised.” hopeful and energized to fight again: “When day comes, we step out of the shade, From Believer’s Hymn of the Republic (2019) aflame and unafraid.

The new dawn blooms as we free it for there “And while we cannot shake or cast aside is always light if only we’re brave enough to our past, see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Every day we write the future. Together we sign it, Marty Miller is a staff writer for the Columbus Together we declare it, we share it, and Dayton African American news journal.

Then up to the podium stepped a small, wisp of a young woman.

“When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We braved the belly of the beast.”

And there it was right in our face and touching our soul: The Hill We Climb.

With wisdom beyond her years and the poise of a seasoned celebrity, Amanda Gorman harnessed our doubts about the future and opened our reservoir of strength, power, and courage to give us the boost we needed to carry on.

“We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it, would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith, we trust. For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.”

Perhaps we should not have been surprised that Amanda Gorman would move us to tears and strengthen our resolve to keep fighting for what is right. Born in 1998, Gorman reports that she started writing when

The & Dayton African American • February 20212015 The Columbus Columbus African American News Journal • February

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We step forward We go all in.

We know becoming the best Means raising up all the rest Because victory doesn’t begin Until We All Win. From The Miracle of Morning (2020) “We’ll observe how the burdens braved by humankind Are also the moments that make us humans kind; Let every dawn find us courageous, brought closer; Heeding the light before the fight is over.

When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing In testing times, we became the best of beings.”

HISTORY LESSENS: WHEN BLACK HISTORY IS REMEMBERED AND NOT REPEATED

By Rev. Derrick K. Holmes The 15th Chapter of Paul’s letter to the body of believers in Rome finds him offering perspective to the way in which the church ought to view Old Testament writ. The Apostle Paul writes in the 4th verse, “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope”. Paul suggests that the sacred text ought not be exclusively considered as written wisdom of the past but should also be seen as a tool to provide direction for how we ought to live and engage our present.

The Apostle’s epistle provides a framing for the way that we, as African Americans, ought to engage our own past. As we find ourselves in the middle of yet another Black History Month, celebrating the contributions made by our ancestors to this nation and the world, perhaps the perspective we should take of our rich and remarkable history is not one

of annual acknowledgment but also one of press past a mistake and place priority on the persistent provocation. purpose must all be seen and treated as jewels of the highest worth. Essential equipage as With all that God has empowered our people we attempt to navigate through a wilderness to overcome in the past, perhaps viewing that of wickedness towards a Promised Land that past with a different lens would allow us to we are presently unable to see. discover the tools needed to catalyze as we attempt to overcome in this present season The proper perspective of the times behind us of struggle we are in. Our progression must get us through, and over, the times before us. not only be propelled by our passion but also We must resolve to lift our history from the from the precepts, principles, and practices tombs of traditional tendency. For when our we pull from our past in order to lay ground history is lifted, it, in turn, lifts us. When we for our future. Not all repeated history choose to keep a singular perspective of the signifies doom. Repeated history that results days of old, we depreciate the distinction of in righteous redemption is of the greatest those days. When we do not take the lessons value. Those who seek to oppress us repeat from our history, our history actually lessens. history for their benefit. It is high time that We transform it into something trite and less notable with each passing moment. we repeat our history for our benefit.

In a time where government attempts to pacify us, police attempt to persecute us, corporations attempt to capitalize upon us...in a time where many of us don’t “do” because we do not know what to do, we must not only learn from our history but also be willing to listen to our history. We may be surprised by The examples given by the pillars of our what we hear. yesterday, the principled ways in which we protested, the dignified determination and Reverend Derrick K. Holmes is the pastor of discipline of our leaders, the pellucidity to Second Baptist Church of Circleville, Ohio.

What if we looked to our history for meaningful models of liberation instead of solely for memorable milestones? Perhaps deeper, what does it mean to hold up a history that we do not value enough to emulate?

GREATER COLUMBUS ARTS COUNCIL OPENS #ARTUNITESCBUS EXHIBITION

COLUMBUS, Ohio—The Greater Columbus Arts Council (Arts Council) opens the #ArtUnitesCbus Film & Photography exhibition in its community meeting room and gallery on Thursday, Feb. 4. The exhibition will be on view through May 7, 2021.

The exhibition features the 12 recipients of the #ArtUnitesCbus Film & Photography awards announced last October. The awards are a partnership between the Arts Council and Film Columbus, providing cash awards to Black photographers and filmmakers for documenting and exploring the story of the Black Lives Matter protests in Columbus and/ or the art created in response to the protests.

Artists selected for the film awards are: Carter University Energy Partners, Huntington, Sterling (43215), Cristyn Steward (43205) Cardinal Health, Grange Insurance and PNC. and Donte Woods-Spikes (43206).

The Greater Columbus Arts Council gallery Artists selected for the photography awards exhibition can be viewed by appointment are: Kendel Boone (43004), Jamie Ceasar only, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., until (43219), Teri Dashfield (43035), Asia Glenn further notice. Visitors must wear masks and (43147), Rashunda Holloway (43214), John comply with social distancing guidelines; Landry (43219), Ngabo Mutenda (43035), there will be a limit of four people in the Brittoney Roane (44907) and Benjamin gallery at any time. Appointments may be made by e-mailing gallery@gcac.org or Willis (43201). calling (614) 221-2606.

The Wexner Center for the Arts is screening the films online for free, Feb. The Arts Council offices and gallery are at 182 E. Long St. in downtown 5-19. More information can be found at located Columbus.

Arts Council moved into columbusmakesart.com/event/37569-art- the historic The building in May of 2020 after unites-cbus-film-awards. searching for a space more accessible to the community for more than six years. Its Jurors for the awards included curator gallery space is dedicated to showing work and cultural organizer La Tanya Autry; by artists from historically marginalized photographer Vandell Cobb; American communities.

Electric Power Executive Vice President, External Affairs, Charles Patton; visual artist, Mission of the Greater Columbus Arts researcher and educator Dawit L. Petros; Council: To support and advance the arts and and freelance writer, producer and director cultural fabric of Columbus. www.gcac.org Gabriel Tolliver.

The Greater Columbus Arts Council receives #ArtUnitesCbus is made possible through the major financial support from the City of generous support of the American Electric Columbus, Franklin County Commissioners Power Foundation, Engie/The Ohio State and the Ohio Arts Council.

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The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

DEJA VU: THE PERSISTENT TIME LOOP OF RACE, INEQUALITY, LIBERTY AND THE ENDURING STRUGGLE TO CREATE A MORE PERFECT UNION

By Eric Johnson, PhD It has been said that facts are stubborn things and that may well be true, but they often shrink in the face of people’s unholy pursuit to acquire power and then maintain it. While any given fact speaks for itself, it is often a fishing boat struggling to navigate the mighty roar of a seemingly dominant ocean. The continuous waves serve as an ever present and omnipotent danger for the boat and its inhabitants. Certainly, there are precautions one can take such as: becoming a skillful boat operator, the use of life vests, and an awareness of oceanic conditions that may serve to be more dangerous than others.

However, in the end no boat no matter how big and regardless of the safety measures one undertakes is any match for the on slot of an angry ocean. This analogy represents the challenge of stubborn facts in the face of collective delusions and the narratives they support and create. Facts are indeed no match for the on slot of activity borne from collective delusions and narrative creation; this endeavor is further complicated by people who would use these delusions and narratives in their pursuit to both acquire and maintain power. Any fact or truth teller is but a fishing boat confronting the commanding and violent on slot of collective delusions and narratives manipulated by unholy pursuits to power acquisitions; as a consequence, the enduring struggle to form a more perfect union is coerced into a time loop that perpetuates inequality.

While collective delusions have the potential to inspire an examination of our best possible selves, they are often tools used by power seekers to manipulate circumstance to their interest. This tool is not new to the American psyche or political landscape. Even the Civil War was in large part a manipulation of the vulnerable by the powerful. Even if one accepts the general notion that the war was largely fueled by the issue of slavery which at best is a complicated truth and at worst another collective delusion. Most white people in the South did not own slaves, or land for that matter, and in many ways were economically harmed by the industry. In fact, most records indicate that only 20 percent of white people in the south owned slaves, which meant that nearly 80 percent did not, and those who had no land or slaves were relegated to an economic poverty that was supported by the industry of slavery. Slavery was in fact a contributor to their poverty.

That reality begs the question, “why would they fight a war to maintain their own political disenfranchisement and economic instability?” The North was filled with ghettos of people who were white and who

labored for the low wages and were often hungry and homeless. A reality that begs a similar question. “why would they fight a war to provide enslaved Africans with things they themselves did not enjoy. The fact is both realities are unlikely without narratives and collective delusions manipulated by the powerful in both the North and South on the weak and susceptible. These truths are no more evident today than they were at the time. Many people gave speeches on the topic, see Henry Wilson’s “The Slave Power Conspiracy.” People of African descent proudly participated in two world wars to provide freedoms for people they themselves did not enjoy. All in support of a narrative that claimed they would eventually experience a better day in their homeland.

Still, we wait.

The historical déjà vu phenomenon in the struggle to form a more perfect union in the face of inequality and bigotry is ever present.

Déjà vu represents the seemingly inevitable outcome of a social order that both feeds and produces disparities on a host of indicators that include race, sex, gender, ethnicity and any other characteristic deemed as “other.”

More directly déjà vu refers to an ever apparent and seemingly cyclical narrative production process that serves as barrier for the equality, progress, and freedom. The effort to form a more perfect union is often misdirected by collective delusions and narratives that serve the haves at the expense of the have nots. While the haves often vary across in any given effort to form a more perfect union they are united in an effort to either stifle change or manage social, political and economic change in ways that suits their interests as much as possible. The have nots vary across a host of dimensions, but are unified their tendency to agitate for change in way that troubles the existing social order.

Déjà vu refers to the idea that over the longhaul social orders rarely change to provide more access, equity and fairness to groups who have been systemically marginalized and left out. The efforts to pursue and advocate for social change are rarely undone by the facts, because the facts often support the need for change. However, narratives and delusions that provide comfort in face of inequality, disparities and suffering, are often more acceptable than disturbing truths that burden and interrupt a blissful ignorance.

The compelling tendency to seek comfort acts as the most formidable adversary to progress, equality and the effort to form a more perfect union has or will ever face.

facts. In more concrete terms, the pandemic has wrought unimaginable economic devastation but not for the richest among us, the top 1 percent has nearly doubled their wealth in the last year, largely due to wealth generated from the stock market. While Black and Brown people were often more than twice as likely to catch the virus, be hospitalized and die, White people are more than twice as likely to receive the vaccine.

As the momentum for the Black Lives Matter campaign began in the summer of 2020 as a response there was a Blue Lives Matter crusade, but nearly have half of police officer deaths over the last year were the result of COVID 19, but that threat didn’t produce any mask wearing drive to save more Blue lives, in large part because that set of facts didn’t fit any narrative the anti-mask wears wanted to support. In the summer of 2020, there was significant show of force for Black Lives Matter protests, but in the last 25 years violent right-wing White supremacist organizations have been responsible for the vast majority of domestic terrorist violence.

Making the January 6th insurrection more than predictable, and resulting in the death of two police officers.

While the effort to create narratives and delusions that facilitate people’s comfort with inequality, disparities and the absence of fairness is considerable, it is not insurmountable. The response has to include big and bold visions of a future that identifies our struggle to form a more perfect union as an essential part of each our survival. The idea that our individual dreams are more likely to be realized when each of us is free to pursue and realize our God given potential.

When we sow the seeds of the discontent, despair, and hopelessness we damage our collective ability to realize life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We can end the déjà vu phenomenon by seeing the whole together and understanding that conflict is a natural part of the human experience. When we use difference and conflict as opportunities to build a stronger collective where each of us in invested in its success, we are not required to agree on every issue, we need only share a collective desire to construct a healthy space that allows each of us to pursue our selfinterest. A collective narrative that invites us to see the big picture together, self-actualize and manage conflict is what is needed to end the viscous cycle of inequality connected to and supported by the déjà vu phenomenon.

As Black history month begins again let us use this opportunity to build a world and a future where we can all feel valued in our As a consequence, the effort to make us authentic selves in the enduring effort to form better by ever struggling to form a more a more perfect union. perfect union appears to be locked in a time loop that seems to be cyclical in nature. A Dr. Eric L. Johnson currently serves as the boat operator sets out on a journey to find Chief Consultant with Strategies to Succeed better and faces the life-threatening hazards and is on the faculty at Virginia International and challenges that many before have often University. He is the former Chief of unceremoniously succumbed. Delusion and Research Publications for the United States narratives have always had more import than Air Force Academy.

The Columbus African & Dayton African American • February 20212015 American News Journal • February

22

HEALTH I’VE FALLEN AND I NEED HELP IN GETTING UP

SAFETY AND SERVICES TO PROVIDE CARE FOR OUR SENIORS

By Charleta B. Tavares We have all seen and heard the commercials for a certain alert company that is marketing a service to protect older and/or disabled adults with a personal alarm that can dispatch help. We may have laughed or used the line when we have slipped and fallen on ice, a greasy floor, missed a stair or tripped on a rug. This could be a serious issue and may be a warning sign of other serious health matters with an older or even younger adult.

of monitoring device to ensure that someone will know when they have fallen especially, if they are not near a phone and cannot get back up. There are many companies and forms of monitoring systems that can be purchased. Medical alert systems typically consist of two components – a base station and a wearable device. When the user presses the help button on their wearable device, a call is initiated to a monitoring center. The user is connected with an operator who can help to assess the situation and dispatch the emergency services to their location. Some systems will come with extra features like GPS monitoring and automatic fall detection.

The best advice is to review the needs, budget and types of monitoring system or “personal emergency response system” that is best for you and/or your loved one. The prices can range from $19.95 - $50.00 for the system plus a subscription, monthly monitoring fee or an app to track on your smartphone or computer.

Falling is significant concern. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: • One in four Americans aged 65+ falls each year (Approximately 36 million); • Every 11 seconds, an older adult is treated in the emergency room for a fall; and • Every 19 minutes, an older adult dies from For those of us who live in Franklin County, a fall (more than 32,000 deaths annually). we have the Central Ohio Area Agency on An article published in the Journal of the Royal Aging’s Franklin County Senior Options Society of Medicine by shares some further (FCSO) program which provides help at home research on older adults and falls. “Only one to all senior residents which is funded by the in a hundred falls results in a hip fracture, Franklin County Senior Services Levy, and but one-fifth cause serious injury. Of those administered by the Franklin County Office who fall and lie on the floor for hours, half on Aging. The Senior Options program will be dead within six months. Lord and his provides help at home, enabling older adults co-authors carefully analyzed the published to remain in their home as long as possible. work on risk factors and prevention. The The COAAA is responsible for the face-torisk of falls is doubled in dementia. There face visits and enrollment of clients, as well is also an increased risk with depression; as case management for over 1,000 recipients we do not know why. The more drugs an of services. The Senior Options Program is elderly person takes, the greater the risk of available to all Franklin County residents falls: the principle of minimal medication over age 60 with a demonstrated unmet need is often contravened. Visual impairment for service. Some of the many services that is an important risk factor: patients who FCSO program provides includes: use eye-drops for glaucoma have a three- • Homemaker fold increased risk of falling; those with • Home-delivered meals cataract are more at risk of breaking a hip. • Personal care assistance The importance of footwear in the genesis of • Transportation falls is emphasized: high heels (favored by • Emergency response systems or personal emergency response systems many old ladies) reduce stride length, alter • Adult day services toe propulsion and increase lumbar lordosis.

• Incontinence supplies Loose slippers can also be a factor in the 1 • Nutritional supplements genesis of falls.”

• Durable medical equipment Falls may be a warning sign of other serious • Etc. problems in older adults or injuries they may have sustained in their youth. I have several The services are provided on a sliding fee family members who have fallen over the scale, and applicants must provide financial last five years who were later diagnosed with verification in order to enroll. For additional other critical medical concerns. This is not information, contact Franklin County uncommon for African American and other Senior Options at (614) 525-6200 , www. people of color. Sometimes we believe it is officeonaging.org/fcso/ or the Central Ohio because of imbalance due to hearing loss, Area Agency on Aging at (614) 645-7250 or furniture or rug placement however; there (800) 589-7277. may be more severe underlying health issues The residents in Dayton/Montgomery that may have triggered the fall.

County also have similar services for older Older adults who are living independently adults with the West Central Ohio Area and alone will at some point need some form Agency on Aging. The Area Agency on 23

Aging, is a private, non-profit organization that has been designated by the State of Ohio to be the contact agency for federal and state aging programs in Champaign, Clark, Darke, Greene, Logan, Miami, Montgomery, Preble, and Shelby counties. Registered nurses and social workers are available to help you get the assistance you need. Contact them at 937-223-HELP, 800-258-7277, or send an email to request a FREE, IN-HOME ASSESSMENT to determine eligibility for their programs or other community resources.

Let us remember that each of us will need some help in getting services and care at some point in our lives. We should each share this information and other resources made available in the Columbus/Dayton African American to protect the health, safety and welfare of our loved ones and community residents. Pass on the knowledge.

COVID Vaccines, In-person Visits and Flu Shots to Save Lives COVID-19 Vaccine PrimaryOne Health as a first responder will continue to work with Columbus Public Health, Franklin County Public Health, and the Ohio Department of Health on vaccinating patients, community residents and other staff as more vaccines are made available. Please visit our website for more information www.primaryonehealth.org The health center is also providing faceto-face child/youth immunizations and Flu vaccines for adults and children, call 614.645.5500 to schedule these appointments.

We are all in this - together. We are One! Footnotes: Falls in Older People: Risk Factors and Strategies for Prevention. Stephen R Lord, Catherine Sherrington, Hylton B Menz.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

1

Charleta B. Tavares is the Chief Executive Officer at PrimaryOne Health, the oldest and largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) system in Central Ohio providing comprehensive primary care, OB-GYN, pediatric, vision, dental, behavioral health and specialty care to more than 48,000 patients at 12 locations in Central Ohio.

The mission is to provide access to services that improve the health status of families including people experiencing financial, social, or cultural barriers to health care. www.primaryonehealth.org.

The Columbus & Dayton African American 2021 The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

HEALTH

STUDY SHOWS WHEN HOUSING QUALITY IS POOR, CHILDREN SUFFER Holes in floors, cracks in walls, plumbing issues and/or problems with pests are linked with overall poorer pediatric health and higher health care use in a nationally representative study.

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Housing instability and homelessness are widely understood to have an impact on health, and certain housing problems have been linked to specific childhood health conditions, such as mold with asthma. But it has not been clear how overall housing quality may affect children—especially those who are at risk from other social determinants of health such as food insecurity or poverty.

The authors based the study on the 2014 U.S. Census Survey of Income and Program Participation, ultimately considering 12,964 children 2-14 years of age across the country. As part of the survey, parents were asked about their children’s overall health, number of medical visits and number of hospitalizations. They were also asked about the quality of their housing in four specific categories: holes or cracks in walls or ceilings; holes in the floor “big enough to catch your foot on”; plumbing features (including hot water heaters and toilets) that do not work; and problems with pests such as mice and roaches.

housing-related issues like inability to pay rent or neighborhood safety, poor housing quality has an independent association with poorer health and higher health care use,” said Dr. Boch.

When demographic factors were considered, each additional housing problem was associated with 18% greater odds of poorer health; when other housing issues were considered, there were 16% greater odds.

The authors also found poor housing quality was independently associated with a greater number of medical visits for children (as were inability to pay utilities, rent or mortgage and living in a nonmetropolitan home).

The study found each additional housing problem was associated with 43% greater Dr. Kelleher says these findings reinforce A new nationally representative study odds of having a poorer health status. the need for social determinants of health screening, and suggest housing quality, not in the Journal of Child Health Care, led just homelessness or housing insecurity, by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, has found poor-quality housing “It was important, however, to account for should be part of those screens. The study is independently associated with poorer other factors that are understood to impact also puts a national lens on the convergence pediatric health, and suggests ways health health, and so the study used a modeling of health and housing Nationwide Children’s care providers and housing programs may strategy that went beyond housing quality has long seen locally through its Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families initiative, address those findings. alone,” said Samantha Boch, PhD, RN, the which has now built or helped improve lead author of the study who completed approximately 400 homes in traditionally it as a post-doctoral fellow in Nationwide disadvantaged Columbus neighborhoods.

“We are really trying to pick apart the social Children’s Patient-Centered Pediatric determinants of health. What happens to a Research Program. She is now an assistant child’s health if the child is hungry? What professor at the University of Cincinnati “We know anecdotally, from our experience happens if a parent can’t pay rent?” said Kelly College of Nursing and an affiliate faculty in our own backyard, that housing quality Kelleher, MD, senior author of the study member of the James M. Anderson Center impacts health,” said Dr. Kelleher. “We can and vice president of Community Health at for Health Systems Excellence at Cincinnati now say it’s true nationally, and new housing isn’t the only thing that matters—improving Nationwide Children’s. “What we found in Children’s Hospital Medical Center. existing housing may be just as important.” this study is that when housing quality is a problem, children suffer. And children are suffering now.”

“Even when you adjust for demographic Information provided by Nationwide factors like race, ethnicity and disability, and Childrens Hospital.

The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

HEALTH

WORK ON YOUR PANDEMIC RECOVERY

By Lisa Benton, MD, MPH

People also are reporting hair falling out, memory loss, ongoing abnormal tiredness, and losing their senses of taste and smell due to Covid. While many of the Covid complications happen if you have risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, lung, heart, and kidney problems, you can still be in top shape and have Covid, or a complication of it that can kill you.

Most recently, the overall unemployment rate for people ages 16 and older is 6.5%, and even lower for whites at 5.8%. Despite news that the unemployment rate is falling and trending toward pre-pandemic shutdown numbers, the numbers remain higher for Black, Latinx, and Asian Americans.

Even with a little optimism as we wait for the vaccines, stay on top of your health and be Disparity and inequity in all sectors of the job proactive. Wearing a double mask will give market is made plain when the numbers are an extra barrier of protection. Continue to analyzed to show that the rates are higher for keep safe distances (2 shopping cart lengths) people of color. It’s 9.9% for Blacks, 8.7% apart and wash your hands with soap and for Latinx, and 6.7% for Asians, reminding water. Use hand sanitizer regularly. us that recovery in our communities lags the optimistic outlook that others may be talking Consider getting a finger pulse oximeter about, and a lot more work needs to be done (about $25 at Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens). on many levels to revitalize the economy.

This will measure minute to minute if you are getting enough oxygen. More importantly, For women, and particularly women of color, it can warn you if you’re getting short of the pandemic driven recession continues to breath when moving around or sitting still be hitting us even harder, has been and will before you feel it. It will detect that very continue to be devastating. Women have early signs of Covid, pneumonia and other been leaving the paid workforce in greater lung problems. numbers to provide childcare, eldercare and homeschooling, and losing income. Even Studies have shown that the pulse oximeter though we’re working harder, our earnings measurement will drop even before you start and equity are decreasing. Because of this, to show other signs of a Covid infection. it is that much more important to make time Doctors have been sending patients home to keep your physical, mental, and spiritual from the emergency room and hospital to health together. monitor themselves. A normal pulse oximetry reading is near 100%, and if it drops into the Even though we’re hearing for the first low 90’s and high 80s you should get help or time in months that hospitalizations due to check in with an advice nurse.

Covid and its complications may be leveling off, don’t let your guard down. Covid still Check with you doctor about whether you continues to be the thief that comes to steal, need to take a baby aspirin daily or need a kill, and destroy. vitamin D supplement beyond your regular diet. As African Americans we are often The complications of Covid on the heart, lung vitamin D deficient especially during the and brain are still happening with a vengeance. winter months when there is less sunshine We’re seeing many hospitalizations for blood and daylight. clots in the lung and brain as well as irregular heartbeats, rhythms, and heart attacks. Many Continue to make sure you’re getting your people getting a second pneumonia on top of daily recommended allowances of vitamin and after Covid causing further respiratory C, zinc. Stay hydrated by drinking water and increasing fruits and vegetables in your diet. problems and need for extra oxygen.

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

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Try to get enough sleep and again, check with your doctor to see if it’s alright for you to take melatonin. Researchers are still looking to see if helps, but there are a few reports out that maybe melatonin does have benefits.

Just as important to staying healthy is working to reduce you stress and increase your peace. Connecting for your mental health matters just as much as taking care of your physical body.

Regular prayer, meditation and turning off negative news and social media are activities that will do wonders for you. Cutting off your phone, radio, and television at least one hour before bedtime will help you rest better and give you more time to focus on yourself in that much needed “me time” that everyone is after.

Adding exercise which can be as simple as walking, deep breathing, and gentle stretching for 15-minute intervals during your day and before bedtime, will help you relax, calm down, reduce your anxiety, improve your mood. It will help get you ready and keep you in your right mind to face tomorrow and the day after that.

See A Little More How Earlier Covid Diagnosis and Treatment Saves Lives, retrieved from: https://www.pbs. org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/ how-earlier-covid-diagnosis-and-treatmentsaves-lives Working women are still being disproportionately hurt by the pandemic recession. by Juliana Kaplan and Madison Hoff. 1/31/21. Retrieved from: https:// www.businessinsider.com/women-are-stilldisproportionately-hurt-by-the-pandemicrecession-2021-1 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics retrieved from: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ cpsee_e16.htm Lisa D. Benton, MD, MPH (The Doctor is In) breastsurgeonlb@gmail.com, Twitter:@ DctrLisa (415) 746-0627

The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

HEALTH

NATIONAL MEDICAL ASSOCIATION COVID-19 TASK FORCE ON VACCINES AND THERAPEUTICS

By Leon McDougle, MD, MPH The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted existing disparities in our nation and specifically in the Black community resulting in a hospitalization rate of 3.7 times greater and a death rate of 2.8 times greater than the White community (see https://www.cdc. gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/ investigations-discovery/hospitalizationdeath-by-race-ethnicity.html). The National Medical Association (NMA) serves as a leading voice for quality healthcare and elimination of health disparities and established its COVID-19 Task Force on Vaccines and Therapeutics to advise NMA members, healthcare partners and patient constituents about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

The independent, nonpartisan task force was appointed by the NMA President and includes pediatric and adult infectious disease specialists, infectious diseases epidemiologists, members of the Infectious Disease Society of America, American Public Health Association, American College of Preventive Medicine, National Pharmaceutical Association, NMA liaison members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), Vaccine Consultation Panel of the Department of Health and Human Services, Western States Scientific Safety Vaccine Review Work Group, California Scientific Safety Vaccine Review Work Group, and County Departments of Health. Over the past several months the task force has met with clinical scientists from Pfizer and Moderna and reviewed clinical outcomes data made available to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC ACIP.

in the occurrence of Serious Adverse Events (SAE). In England, two people with a prior history of severe allergies developed anaphylaxis immediately after receiving the Pfizer vaccine outside of the clinical trial.

They did recover from the allergic reaction.

While these reports are being investigated, caution should be observed for any person with history of severe allergy to vaccines or other injectable therapy. Patients with a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) to the vaccine components have a contraindication to receiving these vaccines. Please refer to the CDC ACIP recommendations for more details at https://www.cdc.gov/ vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/clinicalconsiderations.html, https://www.cdc.gov/ vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer/ anaphylaxis-management.html, https:// www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/ mm6950e2.htm?s_cid=mm6950e2_x and The task force reviewed the clinical trial data https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/ in search of differences in health outcomes mm695152e1.htm?s_cid=mm695152e1_w. that would place the Black community at higher risk of unfavorable outcomes from The messenger RNA vaccines cannot transmit the vaccine and determined the following: COVID-19 infection. These vaccines enable the immune system to develop antibodies to · Ten percent of people who enrolled in both a segment of the coronavirus called the spike the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials were protein. Immunity should be achieved about Black, equaling more than 4,400 and 3,000 7 days following the 2nd dose of the vaccine. people, respectively.

Short-term symptoms are commonly experienced following the Pfizer and · Both the percentage and number of Black Moderna vaccinations and last an average people enrolled are sufficient to have of 1 to 3 days and include pain and redness confidence in health outcomes of the clinical at injection site, fatigue, muscle aches and trials. pains, joint pain and headache. · Persons receiving the vaccine were > 94% The task force review also included questions less likely to develop COVID-19 infection as about safety of vaccine administration in compared to the placebo group. special populations, such as persons with sickle cell disease or sickle cell trait, HIV, · Efficacy and safety were observed and and autoimmune diseases like systemic consistent across age, gender, race, ethnicity lupus erythematosus that disproportionately and adults over 65 years of age. impact Black populations. In general, persons with chronic diseases that are controlled, and When comparing the outcomes of people stable do qualify for receiving the vaccines. receiving the vaccine versus the placebo Consultation with one’s healthcare provider injection there were no significant differences beforehand is advisable.

The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

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· Data regarding persons enrolled in the clinical trials with sickle cell disease or sickle cell trait have not been separately analyzed by Pfizer or Moderna to date. A request for analysis has been submitted by the NMA COVID-19 Task Force. · Persons with controlled HIV with CD4 counts of more than 200 and undetectable viral load were enrolled in the clinical trials.

Data will be reported during or before the 1st quarter of 2021 with the Biologics License Applications. · Persons with controlled autoimmune diseases were enrolled in the clinical trials and an increased risk to receiving the vaccines was not observed.

In addition, reproductive toxicology studies in animals did not reveal increased risk of vaccines to the fetus during pregnancy.

Expanding clinical trial enrollment to include pregnant women is planned. The Task Force is supportive of plans for Phase 4 follow-up of clinical trial participants for 2 years, and for the post-licensure surveillance plans including V-safe https://www.cdc.gov/ and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System https://vaers.hhs.gov/ to monitor for Serious Adverse Events in persons who receive the vaccines and inform precautions as needed for future vaccine administration.

In closing, the NMA COVID-19 Task Force supports recommendations by the U.S. FDA to approve emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine.

Building equity in plans to distribute the vaccines including culturally sensitive, multi-lingual outreach tailored for local communities will be essential for closing gaps in health outcomes.

Dr. Leon McDougle is the President of the National Medical Association and the Chief Diversity Officer for the OSU Wexner Medical Center

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

LET’S KEEP IT UP LET’S ALL #MASKUP As some of the most trusted hospitals in the nation, we know it’s tough that we all need to do our part and keep wearing masks. But here’s what we also know: The science has not changed. Masks slow the spread of COVID-19.

So please join us as we all embrace this simple ask: Wear. Care. Share with #MaskUp. Together, wearing is caring. And together, we are saving lives.

everymaskup.com

MASK UP, OHIO!

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© OhioHealth Inc. 2020. All rights reserved. FY21-500227. 12/20.

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

AdventHealth Adventist Health Advocate Aurora Health Allegheny Health Network Atlantic Health System Atrium Health Avera Health Banner Health Baptist Health Northeast Florida Baylor Scott & White Health Baystate Health Beebe Healthcare BJC HealthCare Bon Secours Mercy Health Boston Children’s Hospital Cedars-Sinai Centura Health Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Children’s Hospital of Orange County Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Children’s National Hospital ChristianaCare Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center City of Hope Cleveland Clinic CommonSpirit Health Community Health Systems Cone Health Cooper University Health Care Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health Duke Health El Camino Health Emory Healthcare Geisinger Hackensack Meridian Health HCA Healthcare HonorHealth Inspira Health Intermountain Healthcare Jefferson Health John Muir Health Johns Hopkins Medicine Kaiser Permanente Keck Medicine of USC LifePoint Health Lurie Children’s Main Line Health MarinHealth Mass General Brigham Mayo Clinic MedStar Health Memorial Hermann Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center MemorialCare (Southern California) Mercy Michigan Medicine Moffitt Cancer Center Mount Carmel Health System Mount Sinai Health System National Jewish Health Nationwide Children’s Hospital Nebraska Medicine Nemours Children’s Health System NewYork-Presbyterian Northwell Health Northwestern Medicine Norton Healthcare Ochsner Health OhioHealth Oregon Health & Science University OSF HealthCare OU Health PeaceHealth Penn Medicine Penn State Health Piedmont Healthcare Providence Renown Health Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center Rush University System for Health RWJBarnabas Health Saint Luke’s Health System (Kansas City, MO) SCL Health Scripps Health Sharp HealthCare Southwestern Health Resources Spectrum Health SSM Health St. Elizabeth Healthcare St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital St. Luke’s Hospital (St. Louis) Stanford Medicine Sutter Health Temple Health Texas Health Resources The Christ Hospital Health Network The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center ThedaCare TriHealth (Cincinnati) Tufts Medical Center

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The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

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Raggin’ On The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson’s House and Journals

Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Incantations, Themba: A Life of Grace and Hope, (detail) 1996–2012. Mixed media, 20 x 107 in.

Columbus Museum of Art, Estate of the Artist.

The Columbus & Dayton African American • February 2021

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

THE KROGER CO. FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES RACIAL EQUITY FUND BUILD IT TOGETHER PARTNERS CINCINNATI -- The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) Foundation (“Foundation”) today announced the recipients of its Racial Equity Fund Build It Together grant challenge, an initiative awarding $3 million in grants and forging partnerships with innovative organizations to help build more equitable, inclusive communities. This initiative reflects a focus area of Kroger’s Framework for Action: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion plan, a 10-point commitment announced in October 2020 to accelerate and promote greater change in the workplace and in the communities the company serves.

The Foundation invited 14 organizations to apply for up to $1 million in funding through the Build It Together grant challenge, which welcomed organizations to submit proposals aimed at positively uplifting, supporting and impacting communities of color. A panel of judges, including Kroger associates and leaders, external partners, and local community foundations, evaluated the proposals and selected four finalists that collectively will receive $3 million to accelerate their visions.

“We launched our Framework for Action: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion plan with the goal of harnessing Kroger’s collective energy to advance racial equality in our culture and our communities,” said Keith Dailey, Kroger’s group vice president of corporate affairs and president of The Kroger Co. Foundation. “The intent of The Kroger Co. Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund is to catalyze innovative approaches to help create more equitable, inclusive and stronger communities. The Build It Together cohort reflects a group of enterprising organizations that are committed to creating lasting change for communities of color. We’re honored to partner with them.”

The Kroger Co. Foundation’s Build It Together grant recipients include: Black Girl Ventures (Washington, D.C.) Founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur and computer scientist Shelly Bell, Black Girl Ventures’ (BGV) mission is to provide Black and Brown women founders with access to community, capital, and capacity building to meet business milestones that lead to economic advancement through entrepreneurship. BGV scales tech-enabled, revenue-generating businesses under $1 million to create racial and gender equity and an inclusive free market. BGV operates five chapters (Birmingham, AL; Durham, NC; Houston, TX; Miami, FL; and Philadelphia, PA) and has funded over 130 Black and Brown women, held over 30 BGV pitch programs across 12 cities, leveraging over $600,000 in funding, and served more than 600 participants.

BGV will use its $500,000 Build It Together grant to launch two Change Agent Fellowship cohorts, respectively in Cincinnati, OH and Detroit, MI, to achieve the mutual goal of increasing racial equity.

The program expands the capacity of Black and Brown women founders, connecting them with sponsors, mentors and peers and providing training through entrepreneurship workshops and access to BGV’s network of investors and partners.

Everytable (Los Angeles, CA) Everytable’s groundbreaking social franchise model is pioneering a new way to produce food that dramatically reduces the cost of healthy, fresh, and prepared meals, providing a viable alternative to fast food.

The organization’s mission is to transform the food system to make fresh, delicious food accessible to everyone, everywhere through grab-and-go storefront markets in communities with extreme scarcity of healthy food options. Everytable’s social equity franchise program removes barriers to business ownership for Black and Latinx entrepreneurs with the goal to eliminate racial wealth disparities and expand access to healthy food.

attending HBCUs. Through scholarships, capacity building, strategic partnerships, and innovative planning, TMCF serves as a critical access point for students, from college to career.

TMCF will use its $1 million Build It Together grant to adapt its successful innovation and entrepreneurship program to focus on food insecurity and food waste, particularly in low-income and underserved Black communities. The challenge will combine the program model to bring the winning ideas to market, leveraging expertise from Kroger and its partners like Feeding America, as well as the community focus of HBCUs and the research capacity of these educational institutions. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, HBCU leadership Everytable will use its $1 million Build is focused more than ever on harnessing It Together grant to expand an innovative expertise to address basic needs – food, public-private funding structure to spur an shelter, and health – for communities. increase in business ownership for Black entrepreneurs, and people of color (POC) The Build It Together cohort will leverage broadly, with the goal of opening 40 POC- funding from the Foundation to implement owned franchises over the next two years. innovative programs and initiatives over the next 12 months and beyond.

LISC (New York, NY) The Local Initiatives Support Corporation “We’re eager to partner with these four (LISC) is the country’s largest community exceptional organizations to create a brighter, development organization. With offices in more equitable future for the communities we 36 cities and a rural program that serves over serve,” said Sunny Reelhorn Parr, executive 2,200 counties in 45 states, LISC’s dedicated director of The Kroger Co. Foundation. team is committed to creating economic “As a purpose-led organization, we know opportunity for all. that actions speak louder than words. We remain committed to not only illuminating LISC will use its $500,000 Build It Together the important, impactful work of groups grant to launch a long-term partnership to like these but also sharing our resources and advance Project 10X, the organization’s delivering on the promises of our Framework ambitious strategy to close the racial health, for Action to accelerate meaningful change wealth, and opportunity gaps in America. in our culture and country.”

The organization’s proposal aims to support food-system businesses and community To learn more about Kroger’s Framework for organizations working for equitable food Action: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion plan, access, led by and serving Black, Indigenous visit TheKrogerCo.com/StandingTogether. and people of color.

About Kroger Thurgood Marshall College Fund At The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), we are (Washington, D.C.) Fresh for Everyone™ and dedicated to our Established in 1987, the Thurgood Purpose: To Feed the Human Spirit®. We Marshall College Fund (TMCF) is the are, across our family of companies, nearly nation’s largest organization exclusively half a million associates who serve over 11 representing the Black college community. million customers daily through a seamless TMCF member schools include publicly shopping experience under a variety of supported Historically Black Colleges and banner names. We are committed to creating Universities (HBCUs) and Predominately #ZeroHungerZeroWaste communities by Black Institutions (PBIs). Publicly supported 2025. To learn more about us, visit our HBCUs enroll over 80% of all students newsroom and investor relations site.

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The Columbus & Dayton African American 2021 The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

By Ray Miller Four Hundred Souls

By Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain

The Dead Are Arising - The Life of Malcolm X

By Les Payne

Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span.

The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.

Long Time Coming - Reckoning With Race In America

By Michael Eric Dyson

Wandering In Strange Lands - A Daughter of The Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

By Morgan Jerkins

Long Time Coming grapples with the cultural and social forces that have shaped our nation in the brutal crucible of race. In five beautifully argued chapters―each addressed to a black martyr from Breonna Taylor to Rev. Clementa Pinckney―Dyson traces the genealogy of anti-blackness from the slave ship to the street corner where Floyd lost his life―and where America gained its will to confront the ugly truth of systemic racism. Ending with a poignant plea for hope, Dyson’s exciting new book points the way to social redemption. Long Time Coming is a necessary guide to help America finally reckon with race.

Just As I Am

By Cicely Tyson “Just As I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. In these pages, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by His hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say.”

–Cicely Tyson

The Columbus African & Dayton African American • February 20212015 American News Journal • February

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirtyyear-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X―all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. With a biographer’s unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations―from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder “Fard Muhammad,” who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz’s 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X’s murder at the Audubon Ballroom.

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Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration, she recreates her ancestors’ journeys across America, following the migratory routes they took from Georgia and South Carolina to Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California.

The Devil You Know - A Black Power Manifesto

By Charles M Blow Acclaimed columnist and author Charles Blow never wanted to write a “race book.” But as violence against Black people— both physical and psychological— seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests of the summer of 2020, he felt compelled to write a new story for Black Americans. He envisioned a succinct, counterintuitive, and impassioned corrective to the myths that have for too long governed our thinking about race and geography in America.

Drawing on both political observations and personal experience as a Black son of the South, Charles set out to offer a call to action by which Black people can finally achieve equality, on their own terms.

HOW BLACK LIVES MATTER CAME TO THE ACADEMY

By Krtstal Brent Zook On a Saturday night in early June, Shardé Davis, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Connecticut, was sitting on a couch in a rented apartment in San Diego, scrolling through her Twitter feed. She was in California to do research on a project that was funded by a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship— plans that had been affected somewhat by covid-19 and the widespread protests for racial justice. Davis herself had gone to a Black Lives Matter protest in La Mesa the previous weekend. The event had started out peacefully but turned ugly when California Highway Patrol officers squared off with thousands of protesters on the I-8 freeway.

There were reports of bottles thrown, tear gas unleashed, arson, and looting.

A week later, after attending another protest, Davis still couldn’t calm down. As she sat alone on her couch, ruminating about the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and news coverage of the La Mesa protest— the crowd had been mostly white and Latinx, she said, but the media made it seem as though Black folks were the ones destroying property—she felt more and more enraged.

She asked herself repeatedly, “What can I do?” She was already thinking about what it would look like for universities to cut ties with police departments. “I think I was just drawing the very obvious connections,” she said. “Academia is seen as a very liberal and progressive place, but systemic racism is running through all of these different institutions.”

Although she was not an avid Twitter user, Davis came up with the hashtag #BlackInTheIvory, thinking it might be a good way for Black people to share their stories about racism in her sphere of influence. “Folks tout the liberal ivory tower,” she told me. “They hide behind it.”

Photo by Ed Kashi/VII/Redux

having campus security constantly ask for your research-lab badge, residence-hall identification, and/or driver’s license. Marc Edwards, now an assistant professor of biology at Amherst College, recalled that, in graduate school, at another institution, a dean suggested he wear a tie to class in response to incessant profiling. #BlackInTheIvory is being thrashed in student evaluations for discussing racial injustice, Danielle Clealand, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote. And my personal favorite: #BlackInTheIvory is being asked to serve on endless diversity committees and write endless diversity reports, without regard for one’s labor or time, also known as the “Black tax.” To drive the point home, Woods and Davis posted Venmo bar codes on their Twitter feeds for anyone who might care to contribute.

The movement took off, with feature stories in Nature, The Chronicle of Higher Education, NBCNews.com, and the Boston Globe. Davis and Woods created a Web site, which sold branded merchandise and launched an effort to match Black graduate students in need with donors. “Not the Diversity Hire,” read She texted a friend, Joy Melody Woods, a the text on one coffee mug. doctoral student in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas “You’re finally seeing people opening up and at Austin, to see what she thought of the sharing these experiences,” Woods said. “We hashtag idea. “I love it,” Woods replied had been feeling like we were alone.” from her iPhone. “Already tweeted it out.”

Davis followed suit, using the hashtag while When Woods and I spoke in June, she told retweeting a physician named Shaquita Bell: me the story of her own experience as an “Black individuals in the United States have incoming graduate student. In the fall of endured events in our everyday life without 2016, she was the only Black student on her an audience or validation of our experiences.” track in a master’s program in public health at the University of Iowa. The college had no The next morning, Davis and Woods Black faculty, and Woods said that professors found their notification in-boxes filled with made it clear that she didn’t belong, that she hundreds of tweets from Black academics wasn’t smart enough. One professor told her and graduate students, sharing their stories directly that she “didn’t have the skills to be of exclusion and pain. By Sunday night, a graduate student.” #BlackInTheIvory was one of the top twenty hashtags in the country. #BlackInTheIvory is “I was feeling maybe I am dumb,” she said. being asked during your first week of college “I thought I was going insane. I would just be if you’re sure you can handle it, many said, on the floor crying.” or being asked on campus if you’re in the right place or “lost.” #BlackInTheIvory is Toward the end of her first semester, Woods The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

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tried reporting one faculty member to the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, but the complaint went nowhere.

“It’s hard to prove microaggressions,” she said. “That’s why we think we’re going crazy.”

In Woods’s second semester of graduate school, a private psychologist tested her for learning disabilities. She discovered that she had three: a reading impairment, a visualspatial processing disability, and a nonverbal learning disability. The psychologist told Woods that she didn’t know how she had managed to finish high school. Yet her professors refused to provide learning accommodations, as is required by law. (In response, a spokesperson from the college said that “we have made progress since 2016, but it is not enough. We are determined to do better.”)

So she left. “Walked right across the bridge,” as she put it, transferring to the College of Education, where she found three Black professors, an Asian-American adviser, and far more Black students in her classes. “I was never the ‘only’ anymore,” she said.

The course readings also featured more diverse authors, and, because they explicitly addressed issues of inequality, it was easier to have open conversations about racism. In her new program, Woods completed a master’s degree in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies with an emphasis on the sociology of education.

But, in many ways, Woods is an exception.

Both of her parents have bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering, and her two older sisters have graduate degrees in medicine and science. Many other Black students leave graduate programs in despair, but Woods felt that her family simply wouldn’t accept her defeat.

She persisted, but her education came at a cost. “These experiences are traumatic,” Woods said. They can be isolating and Continued on Page 32

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emotionally battering. The problem of being the “first and the only” Black person in any institution is that being alone makes it much easier for white majorities to dismiss one’s perceptions.

As a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, I experienced the same isolation and resentment that Black women are now once again shouting about from their Twitter-feed rooftops. I know all too well what #BlackInTheIvory is about. I was already writing about my time in graduate school when I came across the hashtag. It took a moment for its meaning to sink in. For so long, I had recalled my experiences in isolation, pushing them to the corners of my memory and doing my best to make them small. #BlackInTheIvory reminded me that, like Woods, I wasn’t alone.

hippie-like surfer students, white kids who found it perfectly acceptable to walk the woodsy paths barefoot on a warm day, or to wear their straight hair in clumped mats. For so many of them, college was an inevitable part of growing up. They treated the privilege with a certain casualness that I, as a firstgeneration student, did not share.

And, although I didn’t think of it that way at the time, I crossed a bridge that year in search of bolstering, just like Joy Woods. I made my way across campus, over to Kresge College, where I found the writer Gloria Anzaldúa working on a doctorate in literature. Gloria called herself a Chicana-Mexicana-mestiza.

She had edited a seminal book for Black and brown feminists, “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color,” that was mandatory reading in women’sstudies courses across the country. I also found Ekua Omosupe, an African-American single mom from Mississippi. We three In 1988, I was the first Black woman to enroll became friends. I was no longer alone. in my Ph.D. program in ten years. I was there, really, only because my undergraduate “I’m putting together another anthology,” mentor, Elliott Butler-Evans, a Black Gloria told me one day, “and I was wondering professor in English at the University of if you have any essays or poems you’d like California, Santa Barbara, had insisted on it. to contribute?” She did that thing which is He had attended the program and received his so often missing from our lives as Black own Ph.D. there, some years earlier. He told scholars and academics. Nurturing. me about the dearth of Black women with tenure in the U.C. system. In his eyes, getting “It doesn’t have to be polished. Just send me a doctorate was my civic duty. So I went to what you have.” My essay, which I called “Light-Skinned’ded Naps,” appeared in graduate school.

“Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras” There were seven incoming students at the the next year. It was my first published piece history-of-consciousness program at U.C. of writing. I was twenty-three years old.

Santa Cruz that year: five white men and women, me, and a Chicano from Los Angeles Not long afterward, the literature department named Raul. One afternoon, the conversation brought the novelists Toni Cade Bambara and Buchi Emecheta to campus, as distinguished in our first-year seminar turned to race. visiting professors, and my life changed Our professors for the seminar, Donna again. I became their teaching assistant, Haraway and Jim Clifford, were two of the crossing campus regularly to commune with most formidable minds I had ever met. The my newfound Black community. conversation was stimulating, as I recall.

Something about how racial meaning is One day, after class, I walked with Toni socially constructed, perhaps, rather than back to her office. The day was bright and strictly biological. I was only just beginning impossibly blue—which made her next words to wrap my head around post-structuralism seem incongruous. She pulled a small AM and “theory,” and the concepts were still fresh radio from her pocket. “Always carry a shortand new. But it soon became apparent that a wave radio,” she told me. “For when the young woman in our cohort was becoming revolution comes.” I loved her commitment agitated. I’ll call her Mary. She shifted in her to revolutionary ideas, and to Black people, and to me. seat as though biting her tongue.

I plopped myself down in a chair in her office, continuing our conversation. Mostly, I was hungry for her affirmation, which she gave freely. Years later, I found an old cassette tape of an interview she gave for my dissertation, on nationalist desire in Black television, film, and literature. Playing it “I mean, I get even darker than her,” she back, I was mortified to discover that I had said, crooking her chin in my direction. And done most of the talking. Toni listened that’s when she hit me with it. “So . . . I don’t patiently, offering “mm-hmm”s in all the understand, why does she get to be Black?” right places.

“It’s just that I’m Italian-American and . . . I get really tan in the summer,” Mary said. She paused, searching the room. It seemed that no one had a clue what she was getting at. Raul and I exchanged confused looks, waiting for her to complete her thought.

I wish I could say that anyone had a good With Buchi, a Nigerian novelist, one day response to what Mary had said. If they did, in particular stands out in my memory.

She stood before a class of white students, I don’t recall. I remember only the silence. pausing to survey a Douglas fir outside the I was isolated in a program in which not a window. single student or faculty member looked like me, or my mother, or my grandmother, or “For you, the trees and the forest are very anyone in my family. All around me were beautiful,” she said. “Beau-ti-ful,” she

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repeated, enunciating each syllable with her thick, British accent. “But for me I see something more in the forests.”

Uh-oh. I surveyed the room, sensing what was coming.

“I see fear and danger.” She pronounced this last word “dan-jah,” allowing it to linger in the coffee-scented air for a beat or two.

“You just don’t know who might be behind those trees.” The class considered her words in silence. She was right, and they knew it, although I doubt that a Black person had ever said this to them before in quite that way.

“And, if something happens, well, then . . . I’m just another Black woman gone.

I wouldn’t even get two sentences in the newspaper.” Buchi paused, allowing students to sit with their discomfort awhile.

One rustled papers. Another crossed and uncrossed her legs.

Buchi smiled, shifting the mood. “Well . . . you know.” Her expression turned playful.

“Since I am Buchi, I might get two or three lines.”

There was relieved laughter.

The next year, two Latinas and another Black woman enrolled in my program, across campus, and, because there was now a critical mass of students of color, we rallied and demanded that the department hire a Black woman professor. Because that is precisely how these things work. There is power in numbers.

The university heard our demands, and, in 1990, the scholar and activist Angela Davis became the first person of color ever to join the full-time faculty in the history-ofconsciousness program. She arrived just as I was leaving. And, although I didn’t get to take any classes with her, she supported me by serving on my dissertation committee.

The resurgence of Black Lives Matter and the launch of #BlackInTheIvory happened in June, when most universities were already online, owing to covid-19, and wrapping up the semester. Faculty and administrators did not yet feel widespread pressure to address race. That would soon change.

At Hofstra University, on Long Island, where I’ve taught journalism for the past thirteen years, a handful of my colleagues created the Black Faculty Council to address issues of systemic racism and bias. The group outlined a list of twelve recommendations, including making public the number and rank of Black faculty on campus (a figure that hovers between four and six per cent nationally); providing mandatory anti-racism and antiBlack-bias training for students, faculty, staff, and administration; and disclosing details about complaints regarding the department of public safety and campus policing. A coalition of Black students sent their own eight-page list of demands to administrators—which included a zeroContinued on Page 33

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tolerance hate-speech policy, more diversity among professors, support for Black mental health, a revitalization of the Africana-studies program, and mandatory undergraduate requirements for courses on race and racism in the United States.

Across the country, we’ve seen similar pockets of change, some more radical than others. The University of Chicago announced that it would admit only Black-studies scholars into its English Ph.D. program for 2021, citing Black Lives Matter. Similarly, the Rhode Island School of Design said that it would hire ten new faculty members focussed on race, decolonization, and cultural representation—a move that was made possible by an anonymous donation large enough to pay their salaries for the next five years. The California State University system is phasing in a requirement that all students on its twenty-three campuses take at least one ethnic-studies course. The University of Pittsburgh required its first-year students to complete an online course on systemic antiBlack racism in the fall.

as before. They’ve insisted on confronting white power structures directly and challenging the myriad ways in which America’s racial hierarchy is ingrained in academic institutions. In November, about seven hundred and eighty students participated in a two-week strike at Haverford College, in response to what they saw as an insensitive e-mail from the school’s president, Wendy Raymond, who had been serving as the interim chief diversity officer at the time. The e-mail urged students not to participate in protests after police fatally shot Walter Wallace, Jr., a twenty-seven-year-old Uber Eats driver, during a domestic dispute near the college. Students ended their strike after receiving a commitment from college administrators to meet the majority of their demands.

official Twitter handle @BlackintheIvory have been inactive since September.

Still, #BlackInTheIvory lives on, having taken on an identity that is larger than its founders. “The visibility of this hashtag allowed institutions to start to have conversations that people have been begging them to have for years,” Woods told me when I caught up with her in November. “I still get messages from people saying, ‘You gave me courage to finally say something.’ ”

Davis agreed, citing a recent speech she had given about #BlackInTheIvory at the University of Northampton, in England.

“For so long we barely talked about racism,” she said. “Now I feel like that’s actually happening. This has opened the door in a White officials like Raymond aren’t the only really powerful way.” ones struggling. In August, after a difficult conversation with Shardé Davis over the Kristal Brent Zook is a professor of future of their movement, Joy Woods journalism at Hofstra University and the announced that she would no longer be author of three books, including “Color by associated with #BlackInTheIvory, removing Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in her name from the Web site and Twitter Black Television.” She is currently writing a account. Many who had donated funds felt family memoir.

Students and faculty nationwide have betrayed, vowing to return merchandise expressed their unwillingness to continue on purchased on the site. Both the site and the Article from www.newyorker.com

COLUMBUS STATE EARNS PLACEMENT IN INAUGURAL YEAR-LONG RACIAL EQUITY LEADERSHIP ACADEMY The College’s participation in this new joint Achieving the Dream and USC Race and Equity Center initiative will support concrete next steps in institutional racial equity change.

Columbus State Community College has been named as one of 10 leading community colleges in the nation to further its racial equity work through participation in a practitioner-guided Racial Equity Leadership Academy designed to break down institutional barriers to racially minoritized student success. The Academy will provide the College with critical opportunities to enhance and promote its commitment to outcomes, and intend to leverage this racial equity at every institutional level. experience as a key means of our integrated The Achieving the Dream and USC Race efforts to measurably improve diversity, and Equity Center Racial Equity Leadership equity and inclusion in everything that we Academy will engage selected Achieving do.” the Dream Network community college leadership teams in a year-long facilitated Columbus State’s engagement in the exploration of tools and tactics to scrutinize Academy will conclude in early 2022, and dismantle structures and policies that culminating in a comprehensive, prioritized hamper racially equitable student outcomes, racial equity action plan aligned with the through a deep focus on designing effective College’s student success and strategic strategies and projects to articulate principles plans. The College will share the lessons of racial equity into an actionable framework. learned during its year-long journey at the “Columbus State is ready to make our next 2022 national Achieving the Dream Network leap forward in racial equity change work DREAM conference. as a leading Achieving the Dream member college,” said Dr. David T. Harrison, “We are proud to welcome Columbus State president. “We are honored at ATD’s into the inaugural cohort of the Racial Equity selection of our team to build upon our Leadership Academy,” said Dr. Karen A. organizational commitment and progress Stoudt, president and CEO of Achieving advancing racially equitable student success the Dream. “Achieving the Dream believes 33

that a commitment to equity is tantamount to institutional transformation that leads to greater student outcomes. Columbus State’s commitment to embed anti-racism and racial equity into their campus culture exemplifies the systematic approach necessary to bring about change and builds on their strong student success work that was recognized with the Leah Meyer Austin Award in 2019.”

Columbus State first joined the Achieving the Dream Network in 2012, becoming a Leader College in 2015, the Leah Meyer Austin Award winner in 2019, and a Leader College of Distinction in 2020. The Leah Meyer Austin Award is Achieving the Dream’s highest honor and recognized Columbus State’s double-digit improvement in student completion outcomes with an emphasis on lifting achievement rates among AfricanAmerican and low-income students.

The Columbus & Dayton African American February 2015 2021 The Columbus African American News Journal •• February

A CRISIS WITHIN A CRISIS: POLICE KILLINGS OF BLACK EMERGING ADULTS

By Marc Schindler & Jeremy Kittredge In the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks, thousands of Americans from across the country have been standing up for racial justice and demanding fundamental reform to the way this country conducts policing.

While many have known all too well that law enforcement has victimized communities of color throughout U.S. history, the intersection of police violence, the racially disparate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a rising right-wing white supremacist movement seemed to elevate the devastating effects of racism and police violence to a much broader slice of America. Calls for defunding the police and dismantling a racist criminal justice system echoed across communities, in state capitals and even across the world. As the issue of police violence is finally receiving the attention it justifiably deserves, it is critical that state and local leaders pay particular attention to its impact on young adults (increasingly being referred to as “emerging adults”), especially Black and Brown emerging adults.

to be killed by a police officer than a white emerging adult and nearly three times more likely than a Latinx emerging adult. Further, Latinx emerging adults are about two times more likely to be killed than white emerging adults.

One of the underlying drivers of these disparities is overly aggressive policing in communities of color, which is seldom driven by actual evidence of wrongdoing.

For example, stop-and-frisk encounters disproportionately impact communities of color, but data show that only three percent of the incidents rendered adequate evidence of a crime. This treatment by police often leads to an erosion of trust in law enforcement, including willingness to report crime, and belief in the legitimacy of the law more generally.[1] Thus, these racially-biased tactics do not create safer, stronger communities but, instead, erode trust between the communities – particularly amongst young adults — and the police and ultimately result in unconscionable rates of victimization among Black and Latinx emerging adults by law enforcement.[2]

Unfortunately, these disparities continue, and even increase, as emerging adults of color go deeper into the legal system. In 2018, First, research shows that the brain continues Black emerging adult males were 20 times as to mature until at least a person’s mid-20s. likely to be incarcerated as white males, and While emerging adults have more cognitive Latinx were about five times as likely.[3] A development than someone under 18, they still longitudinal study analyzing arrest data from possess youth-like attributes of impulsivity, 1997 to 2008 found that nearly 50 percent risk-seeking, and impaired judgment. of Black males, and 44 percent of Latinx Though emerging adults have specific needs males, are arrested by the age of 23.[4] based on their level of development, they When communities lack developmentallyrarely receive developmentally-appropriate appropriate supports for their emerging adult services. Entering the emerging adult years population, law enforcement often becomes means exiting public education and losing the sole response to behaviors that can be access to many other publicly-funded better handled outside of the criminal justice programs. Equipping communities with system. Moreover, this unnecessary contact tailored approaches for emerging adults with the front-end of the system can be a will have an outsized impact on our justice catalyst for police misconduct. system, including reducing unnecessary Moving forward, we must ask ourselves: encounters with law enforcement.

What do safe and healthy communities look Second, recent data shows a disturbing like, and where do we allocate our resources connection between police-related violence most effectively to achieve this goal? and emerging adults. The Washington Post found that police killings are a leading It is beyond time we end the failed policies cause of death for young men in America, of the past, reckon with these unjust practices specifically young Black men. In 2017, that are drastically impacting emerging Black emerging adults, 20 – 24 years old, adults of color, and implement policies and were killed by police at more than triple the practices that are based on evidence and rate of white emerging adults. Black males what studies have shown will work. The do not experience similar mortality rates as unrest in response to police killings shows we have reached a boiling point. People white males until they are 40 years old. are saying, “enough is enough.” Failure to Since there is still no national database heed calls for reform to the way policing reporting use of force data by police, we’ve is done in America has resulted in a tragic collected data drawn from news coverage loss of human life, weakened families and about police killings to estimate the scale communities, and an overwhelming feeling of police violence against emerging adults. of anger and hopelessness in communities of color.

What we found is genuinely alarming.

Focusing on emerging adults is essential for several reasons.

Of the 6,577 reported police killings during that period, 20 percent were emerging adults, twice their representation in the general population. For emerging adults of color, the disparity is even worse. Of all Black people killed by police, Black emerging adults accounted for 31 percent, despite representing only 12 percent of the Black population and just one percent of the entire U.S. population. On average, Black emerging adults are five times more likely

individual’s mental health state or substance use disorder. We know the police are not always appropriate to respond to mental health crises – they are not social workers or psychologists. Other jurisdictions should follow the lead of San Francisco, CharlotteMecklenburg, and others re-imagining their 911 response, which changed practice to deploy teams of professionals from the fire and health departments to address 911 calls for a psychiatric, behavioral, or substance use crisis.

While it is too early to understand the full impact that these types of changes will have, relying on non-criminal justice professionals with experience in defusing situations, rather than escalating by defaulting to handcuffs, chokeholds, or drawn guns, will significantly reduce the number of young people dying at the hands of police violence.

There are also other systemic reforms that should be implemented to change the way the legal system responds to emerging adults, including specialized supervision approaches, courts and corrections units.

It is heartening to see the potential for real change in the way policing is done. Ensuring that these reforms are developed and tailored with emerging adults in mind will likely have an outsized impact on the outcomes achieved.

Footnotes: [1] Carr, P. J., Napolitano, L., & Keating, J. (2007). We never call the cops and here is why: A qualitative examination of legal cynicism in three Philadelphia neighborhoods. Criminology, 45(2), 445480.

[2] Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito, The risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race-ethnicity, and sex (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 2018); See also, Justin Nix, et al., A Bird’s Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015 (Criminology & Public Policy, 2017); See also, forthcoming report, Fader, J. and Talley, D. “Respect: A Necessary Element of Justice Contact with Emerging Adults.” Emerging Adult Justice Learning Community, Justice Lab, Columbia University.

[3] E. Ann Carson, Prisoners in 2018 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2020). https://www.bjs. gov/content/pub/pdf/p18.pdf.

[4] Robert Brame, Shawn D. Bushway, Ray Paternoster, et al., Demographic Patterns of Cumulative Arrests Prevalence by Age 18 and 23 (College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College of Behavioral & Social Rather than merely deploying police, we Sciences, 2014). https://bsos.umd.edu/ should repair the harms committed in featured-content/study-nearly-half-blackthe most impacted communities without males resorting to a law enforcement response.

Meaningful and manageable community- Marc Schindler is the executive director of based investments can create an outsized the Justice Policy Institute. impact. For example, providing alternatives to calling 911 for every issue would make Jeremy Kittredge is a staff writer for the a significant difference. Nearly 25 percent Brookings Institute. of all fatal police encounters follow a response to disruptive behavior tied to an Article from www.brookings.edu

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

HBCUS, COVID AND YOU Community influence/own in this country?

Not businesses. There are approximately 125,000 Black owned businesses in the Let’s look at the importance of United States. https://www.census.gov/ Historically Black Colleges and newsroom/press-releases/2020/annualUniversities, their educational delivery (and business-survey-data.html expenses) as a result of COVIC and your There are approximately 33 million direct connection to HBCUs. businesses in the United States. (https://www.

Who Attends or Works with Historically bizjournals.com/albany/news/2019/04/11/ number-of-businesses-in-the-united-states.

Black Colleges? html). 125,000 Black owned businesses out The 100+ Historically Black Colleges and of 33 million businesses is less than 1% of Universities (HBCUs) are impacted by all businesses in this country. We must and COVID, just as you and I are. Why should will do better. you care about the state of HBCUs, COVID, Online instruction and the well-being of Unfortunately, there are few places where HBCUs? United Negro College Fund shares the Black community currently has influence. (https://uncf.org/programs/the-audacity-to- Black churches and Black colleges are lead) that 70% of all Black doctors, 50% of spheres in which we have major influence.

Black engineers and 35% of Black lawyers Each couple of years, we hear Ohio legislators and others bring forward desires to merge graduated from HBCUs. Central State University with a primarily You have family, friends and/or co-workers white university. The missions, mentoring that attend/have attended HBCUs. My wife, and networking of those two entities are Dr. Triphinia Harris-Jones graduated from different and this should not be done. When Fisk University, an HBCU. My doctor you hear this idea being floated, make your graduated from Howard University’s Medical thoughts known. HBCUs impact you.

School. Our Editor Ray Miller was on the Board of Trustees for Central State University HBCUs are important to us because that is for several years. HBCU graduates are leaders where many of our key leaders (business, in our community, i.e. Vice President Kamala human rights, governmental officials, Harris (Howard University) and Chair of the etc.) were groomed. Much of the young Congressional Black Caucus U.S. House of Black impetus in key human rights issues Representative’s Joyce Beatty (Central State originates and is influenced by dialogue held on Black campuses. The graduation rate for University).

Black students is higher at HBCUs than at Many of the administrators, faculty and predominately white colleges. Mentoring and others at Wilberforce University and Central networking occurs at HBCUs as part of their State University live in Dayton, Cincinnati mission and everyday work (see the mission statement on the various colleges’ websites). and Columbus.

Parents, students and others, HBCUs can I lived in the dormitory and went to school at provide students an accelerated step up.

Central State during my high school summers HBCUs impact you. via the Upward Bound High School program.

Central State’s Upward Bound program also COVID and HBCU Online Instruction brought us high school students to its campus each quarter, on the weekends. Education, Moving from face-to-face courses to online mentoring and reinforcement continued. courses is expensive in time, people and The program also provided a monetary money. Online Learning Management stipend, which really helped. Wilberforce Systems cost money and training is needed.

University and Central State University The following describe some of the responses are across the street from each other, in a that occurred at HBCUs in response to rural Ohio campus like atmosphere. This COVID. Let’s think about COVID, its impact rural area was refreshing, allowed me to be on technology and the resulting changes reflective and was very different from the those technology changes have on HBCUs’ West Side of Dayton, where I grew up. All ability to deliver education. COVID and its of this education and mentoring adequately effect on the world has changed the focus of prepared me for college, when I graduated technology. As a result, this change in the from high school. I have been mentored by, focus of technology affects HBCUs. Let’s networked and interacted with the professors look at those impacts below, so that we and administrators from that period, all of my handle the changes well. adult life. This is usual HBCU mentorship.

Central State University in Wilberforce HBCUs impacted me.

By Cecil Jones, MBA

Why Are HBCUs Important for Our “Following the guidance given by Gov. DeWine, Central State University will Community? conduct classes strictly online for the We should influence and impact positively remainder of the Spring 2020 semester. The whenever and wherever we can. Giving above strategy is to address the disruption up influence is something in which we caused by the threat of COVID-19.” (https:// should not specialize. What does the Black www.centralstate.edu/academics/provost/ index.php?num=9)

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Wilberforce University in Wilberforce Wilberforce University shares: (https:// wilberforce.edu/statement-to-the-universitycommunity-response-to-coronaviruscovid-19/August 8, 2020) “Over the last several weeks, the circumstances that occasioned our initial decision to return in a hybrid teaching and learning format for the fall semester have changed significantly.

We have been forced to recognize our vulnerability to the coronavirus and our inability to control behavior and the subsequent spread of the coronavirus.”

Bennett College in Greensboro, NC Bennett communicates: “Bennett is among a growing number of U.S. colleges opting for online-only instruction. In late June, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, only 8 percent of U.S. colleges and universities were planning for a virtual fall and nearly two-thirds expected to hold most of their classes in-person. As of a week ago, the number of schools going onlineonly this fall had risen to 14 percent, but the number planning for only or mostly face-to-face classes had dropped to less than half.” (https://www.bennett.edu/news/ bennett-college-was-the-first-n-c-schoolto-announce-that-it-will-offer-only-virtualclasses-during-the-upcoming-fall-semesterbecause-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/) Spelman College in Atlanta Spelman provides its impact: Important On-Campus Visit Update (https:// www.spelman.edu/admissions/visit-us) “Spelman College made the difficult decision to suspend large campus gatherings as we work to limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. All campus recruitment activities continue to be canceled, including scheduled family and group tours. In place of on-campus events & visits, the Office of Admissions is hosting various virtual information sessions and events throughout the year to connect with prospective students.”

Some, not all, of the questions and answers provided on Spelman’s website are below.

These are classic questions with which HBCUs are asking, answering and seeking assistance. Also, you may want to ask your children’s K-12 school some of the below.

From Spelman’s website: (https://www. spelman.edu/academics/path-forwardspring-2021) and Spring 2021 FAQ (https:// www.spelman.edu/academics/path-forwardspring-2021/spring-2021-faq).

To maintain Spelman’s academic excellence and mitigate against the spread of COVID-19, in spring 2021, the College plans to implement a low density, hybrid model with significant proactive health and safety protocols, including required COVID-19 testing, symptom tracking and monitoring, Continued on Page 36

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Students at Central State University Continued from Page 35

[1-22-2021] When does registration officially start for virtual students?

[1-22-2021] Will professors maintain any type of in-person or on-campus office hours for those students who need assistance with remote instruction?

and contact tracing. These protocols will be added to those already in place: mandatory mask wearing and frequent handwashing and disinfecting. The frequently asked questions below contain more details about the academic and safety plans for the upcoming One Person’s Efforts semester.

To assist you in keeping up-to-date with the latest information, the date at the beginning of the question indicates when that answer was last updated.

LAST UPDATED: 01-25-2021 Academics [11-15-2020] How has the academic calendar been affected?

[1-22-2021] If a professor opts into teaching their class in person and the student is instate, what is the protocol for the student if they do not feel comfortable attending an inperson class?

[1-22-2021] How and when will I know if my class will be held in person or not?

[1-22-2021] Will the majority of Spelman students be virtual or in-person this semester?

[1-22-2021] Will the computer lab be open this semester?

[1-22-2021] If a class is in-person, can students who registered for those courses attend virtually?

[1-22-2021] If a student chooses remote learning because of medical conditions, will the in-person classes be offered virtually also?

[1-22-2021] When can academic advisors be contacted regarding registration?

I drove from Columbus to Wilberforce regularly (pre-pandemic) when Wilberforce University was having some challenges. I met with those that I knew and was introduced to others to share my skills and resources. I have taught in the Wilberforce CLIMB program, so of course I met with the Director of that program. I met with the President. I met with the Vice President of Advancement (Giving) sharing what I could do. I met with others to share my online course development, online Learning Management Systems selection experience and online education infrastructure experience. A couple of the past presidents of the Columbus Alumni chapter of Wilberforce University are my fraternity brothers (Alpha Phi Alpha) in our Columbus Alumni chapter. Whenever they mention their fundraising or ticket sales, I make sure that I participate. I have attended several of their face-to-face events, pre-pandemic. I introduced Central State’s past president to corporate leaders.

Facebook or other social media posts, showing your support for an HBCU.  Volunteer – remind students in your sphere of influence (church, family, friends, social networks) to include  Hire/recommend HBCU interns and graduates.  Arrange a tour of your workplace for current HBCU students. Share available internships.  Go to Central State’s homecoming when the pandemic dies out, even if you do not like football. Networking, mentoring, motivating, tradition and culture merge in one setting.  Introduce HBCU representatives to the foundations and funding managers in your workplace.  Remind students to go NOW to https:// studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa and enter their information. That is mandatory to receive grant and scholarship money via almost all colleges and universities. While the deadline is June 30, the filing via FAFSA began in October 2020 for Fall 2021. The allocation of dollars is occurring now.  Attend an HBCU Fair in your area HBCUs IMPACT YOU!

Are you looking for a technology networking group to help you get smarter? What new technology or process have you learned this month? Need advice on how to look for that technology position? Are you considering technology education (courses, certificates or What Can You Do? degrees) and need information? Do you have a business, process, project management,  Follow an HBCU online. personnel or technology question? Please  Donate to an HBCU or their local Alumni let me know. admin@accelerationservices.net chapter in your area.

Cecil Jones MBA, ABD, PMP, CCP, SCPM,  Speak up via emails, calls, letters, FLMI, Lean Professional, 614-726-1925.

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HISTORY JAMES R. WILLIAMS: PIONEERING AKRON JUDGE AND CIVIC LEADER

By Roderick Q. Blount, Jr., MA January 20, 2021, left an indelible mark on the history of the United States of America with the inauguration of Joseph Biden as the President and Kamala Harris as Vice President. Vice President Harris particularly made history as the first African American, woman, and person of South Asian descent to be elected and to serve in that role. President Biden and Vice President Harris come into their lofty positions with unprecedented problems including a strongly divided country, the COVID-19 pandemic and an insurrection at the United States capitol incited by a contingent of Trump supporters.

However, President Biden and Vice President Harris are already working at a fast pace to enact laws and fulfill appointments. One of the key areas of focus of the previous administration was the appointment of judges. Judges at all levels of government are important because their interpretation of lawsuits can fortify or reverse laws that affect all aspects of our lives. Consequently, it is important to have competent judges who are able to impartially interpret, enforce or reverse laws. Hon. James R. Williams was a distinguished judge whose character, life experiences and education enabled him to successfully serve on his court and in the community.

James Robert Williams was born on September 16, 1932, in Lowndes County, Mississippi, and reared in Columbus, Mississippi. He matriculated through local schools and was a graduate of Union Academy High School. The valedictorian of his class at Union Academy, Catherine Douglas, was his high school sweetheart and future wife. Upon graduation, Williams entered the United States Army. After his honorable discharge, Williams matriculated to University of Akron where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1960.

At the University of Akron, he played on the university baseball team as an infielder.

He received his Juris Doctor in 1965 from the University of Akron Law School while attending its night school, becoming one of the first African Americans to graduate from the law school.

Judge James Williams had a robust career.

He taught in the Akron Public Schools for four years at Lane Elementary School and East High School. He worked as a supervisor in Akron Parks and Recreation. He served as a senior staff member for the city of Akron’s Department of Planning and Urban Development. He had a private law practice and later joined the firm Parms, Purnell, Stubbs, and Williams. He also lectured in Senior Problems at the University of Akron.

In 1970, was elected to the Akron City Council and served for several terms with distinction. He was a proponent of gun control and sponsored a gun control ordinance which was passed into law in

Akron in 1974. Also in 1974, Williams was a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Ohio.

In 1978, Williams was appointed as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio by President Jimmy Carter, serving until 1982.

He returned to his private law practice for one year. He was appointed judge of the Akron Municipal Court in 1983 and was elected to the court in 1985 and again in 1987. Judge Williams continued to make history when became the first African American judge on the Summit County Common Pleas Court after his appointment in 1989. He was elected in 1990 to serve the unexpired term of Judge John Reece. He was re-elected to the court in 1992 and 1998. In 2003, Judge Williams presided over the case involving LeBron James. He retired in January of 2005 after 15 years of service as a common pleas judge.

Judge James Williams was an active member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. He was initiated into Alpha Tau chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha in 1958 and served as president of the chapter in 1959. He matriculated to Eta Tau Lambda alumni chapter where he served as President from 1963 to 1964.

He was Legal Counsel for the Midwestern Region during 1967-1970. He was elected as the Midwestern Regional Vice President in 1970 and subsequently elevated to the Board of Directors. On January 1,1977, Judge Williams was installed as the 25th General President of Alpha Phi Alpha. He was particularly proud of his role as the Chairman of the Board of Alpha Phi Alpha Homes, Inc., a non-profit housing, development and management corporation formed in 1966 that has built more than 1,600 units of housing assisting low and moderate-income families and the elderly.

Judge James R. Williams was an active member of several organizations and community activities. During the 1960s, he served as secretary of the Akron NAACP and vice president of the Ohio NAACP. He was a member of the Summit County Legal Service Program (Past President), the Summit County CAP Agency (Past President), NEFCO (Treasurer), Summit County Democratic Party, Metro YMCA (Exec. Board), National Association of Regional Councils (Executive Board), the Akron Children’s Hospital (Trustee), Leadership Akron, Akron Roundtable, Red Cross, Salvation Army, the Akron Community Foundation, Akron

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City Club, and the University of Akron Foundation Board from 1998-2007. He was also a member of Sigma Pi Phi (Beta Rho Boule/Past Central Region Sire Archon), 33rd degree Prince Hall Mason (Mt. Calvary Lodge #76), and Wesley Temple A.M.E. Zion Church (Past President of the Brotherhood).

Judge Williams has received many awards and recognition for his trailblazing career and activities. Hw was named as one of the 100 most influential Black Americans by Ebony magazine and was given the Alumni Honor Award in 1990 by the UA Alumni Association, The University of Akron School of Law Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2001 and The University of Akron Public Administration Urban Light Award in 2004.

The degree of Doctor of Humane Letters of the University of Akron was conferred on Judge Williams in 2006. The Honorable James R. and Catherine D. Williams Scholarship Fund and the James R. Williams Tower have been named after him.

Judge James R. Williams passed away on November 6, 2020. He was predeceased by his first wife, Catherine, an educator, and two brothers. He is survived by his by his wife, Jewell Cardwell-Williams; sister-inlaw, Ruth Horn of Akron; two children, Michael (Annalisa) Williams and Jacqueline (Kyle) Walton of Toledo; granddaughters Alexandria Williams and Alexis Walton and grandsons, James R. Williams II and Ryan Walton. Judge Willams was a family man.

Jacqueline Walton, his daughter, described him as a provider, protector, advisor, and friend. His son, Michael, followed in his father’s footsteps as a city councilman. The former Akron Beacon Journal columnist compared Judge Williams’ character to the classic hymn; “May the work I’ve done speak for me…May the service I give speak for me.” Williams was humble, accomplished, intelligent, charitable, and a man of faith.

He continued to be active in the community until his passing. Christopher J. Peters, dean of University of Akron’s School of Law, said it best when he stated, “Among his many accomplishments, he will be remembered as a mentor to countless attorneys who have gone on to enjoy their own distinguished careers, including many Black lawyers. His legacy will remain long after his passing.”

Works Cited https://www.uakron.edu/ https://www.justice.gov/ https://calhounfuneral.com/ https://www.beaconjournal.com/ http://alphahomes.org/ The Sphinx magazine (Winter 1976, Vol. 62, No. 1) Roderick Q. Blount, Jr. is an Educator and Historian. He received two Bachelor of Arts degrees from Ball State University and a Masters of Arts degree from The Ohio State University. His work has been featured in several publications. Rodney is a native of Columbus, Ohio and is a member of several organizations.

The Columbus & Dayton African American - February 2021

HISTORY

IN MEMORIAM: FILM AND STAGE LEGEND CICELY TYSON DIES AT 96

By Stacy M. Brown Among her more memorable stage performances were 1968’s “Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights,” 1969’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” and 1983’s “The Corn is Green.”

“So many great stories about Cicely Tyson,” Tweeted Soledad O’Brien. “Whew, that lady was amazing. While shooting a doc on her in Spanish Harlem, people kept stopping their cars. In the street. To hop out and say hi. Old people. Teenagers. Middle-aged fans. “Cissel-lee” they’d chant as she’d walk by.”

From her first significant role as Jane Foster in the TV drama “East Side/West Side” to her recurring role as Ophelia Harkness in “How to Get Away with Murder,” Cicely Tyson’s nuanced portrayals of proud Black women “were a powerful counterbalance to the negative stereotypes prevalent in film and television.”

The legendary film, television, and stage actress who earned an Academy Honorary Award, three Emmy’s and a Tony, has died at the age of 96.

“Often at great personal cost, she demanded truth and dignity in the roles she accepted.

Few actors have done more to advance the cause of racial justice than the incomparable Cicely Tyson,” National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial said late Thursday.

“The National Urban League was proud to present her with one of our highest honors, the Arts Award, at our 2013 Conference. The entire Urban League Movement mourns her passing and honors her memory.”

A cause of death was not immediately released.

“With heavy heart, the family of Miss Cicely Tyson announces her peaceful transition this afternoon,” her manager, Larry Thompson, said in a statement. “At this time, please allow the family their privacy.”

Born in New York on December 19, 1924, Tyson grew up in Harlem’s famed but hardscrabble streets.

As a teenager, she worked as a typist but decided she wanted to go into show business.

She began modeling at the age of 18, but her love of the stage almost immediately took over.

In 1963, Tyson made history with East Side/ West Side, becoming the first Black lead in a television drama series.

Her star soared after an Academy Awardnominated performance for the 1972 film, Sounder.

She had previously appeared in an episode of the TV western “Gunsmoke,” and had made a name for herself in “The FBI,” “A Man Called Adam,” and I-Spy with Bill Cosby.

“Cicely was a brilliant actress, who was a woman of color, with the strength of her

Blackness, she made it possible for Black women to grace the stage of theatre, film, and television,” comedian Bill Cosby wrote in a statement posted to his official Twitter account.

“I still smile because I had the blessings of witnessing her talent on an episode of ‘The Bill Cosby Show’ called ‘Blind Date’ I can only imagine how strong Miles Davis is blowing that trumpet, welcoming you in his arms with the song, ‘So What.’ Thank you for your brilliance and grace.”

The ultra-talented Tyson would earn Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Kunta Kinte’s mother in Alex Haley’s “Roots,” and as the lead character in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.”

In 1994, Tyson earned her third Emmy in her supporting role as housemaid Castalia in CBS’ miniseries “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.” Among her more memorable stage performances were 1968’s “Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights,” 1969’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” and 1983’s “The Corn is Green.”

“So many great stories about Cicely Tyson,” Tweeted Soledad O’Brien. “Whew, that lady was amazing. While shooting a doc on her in Spanish Harlem, people kept stopping their cars. In the street. To hop out and say hi. Old people. Teenagers. Middle-aged fans. “Cissel-lee” they’d chant as she’d walk by.”

The Hollywood Reporter received statements from some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Viola Davis, who worked with Tyson on How to Get Away with Murder and wrote the foreword of Tyson’s memoir, wrote: “I’m devastated. My heart is just broken. I loved you so much!! You were everything to me! You made me feel loved and seen and valued in a world where there is still a cloak

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of invisibility for us dark chocolate girls. You gave me permission to I’m not ready for you to be my angel yet.

But…I also understand that it’s only when the last person who has a memory of you dies that you’ll truly be dead.

“In that case, you will be immortal. Thank you for shifting my life. Thank you for the long talks. Thank you for loving me. Rest well.”

In a tribute, Tyler Perry emotionally shared that the news “brought me to my knees,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“She was the grandmother I never had and the wisdom tree that I could always sit under to fill my cup. My heart breaks in one beat, while celebrating her life in the next,” he wrote.

“She called me son. Well, today your son grieves your loss and will miss our long talks, your laughter from your belly, and your very presence.”

Whoopi Goldberg also paid tribute by describing Tyson as “a tower of power, a pillar of strength, CLEAR about who she was, and how she was to be treated.”

LeVar Burton paid tribute to his “first screen Mom.” “Elegance, warmth, beauty, wisdom, style, and abundant grace. She was as regal as they come. An artist of the highest order, I will love her forever,” he wrote.

Stacy M Brown is the co-author of Blind Faith: The Miraculous Journey of Lula Hardaway and her son, Stevie Wonder (Simon & Schuster) and Michael Jackson: The Man Behind The Mask, An Insider’s Account of the King of Pop (Select Books Publishing, Inc.His work can often be found in the Washington Informer, Baltimore Times, Philadelphia Tribune, Pocono Record, the New York Post, and Black Press USA. Article from www.blackpressusa.com

NATIONAL SKILLED TRADES NETWORK WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT “CHANGING PERSPECTIVE CHANGING LIFE”

National Skilled Trades Network creates job opportunities in the community through NCCER accredited construction training. We prepare young men and women for lucrative skilled craft jobs of the future, like Solar Photovoltaic Installation (pictured). Possible tuition assistance available through the VTAC construction training program at IMPACT Community Action.

VISIT: http://www.nstnetwork.org | EMAIL: nstnetwork@nstnetwork.org

Construction Trades Training Center: 1994-1996 Britains Lane Columbus, Ohio 43224 Michael Watkins: NSTN Executive Director, NCCER Certified Master Trainer and Master Electrician

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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015

governmentjobs.com/careers/franklincounty

Franklin County employees help Central Ohio thrive Local government employees contribute to the community while being a part of a dynamic, fair and flexible environment. Visit our website today to see how you can make a difference!

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KEVIN L. BOYCE

The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015