AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

Faith made Harriet Tubman fearless as she rescued slaves

11Dec

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Faith made Harriet Tubman fearless as she rescued slaves

Millions of people voted in an online poll in 2015 to have the face of Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill. But many might not have known the story of her life as chronicled in a recent film, “Harriet.” A portrait from 1868 of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz Harriet Tubman worked as a slave, spy and eventually as an abolitionist. What I find most fascinating, as a historian of American slavery, is how belief in God helped Tubman remain fearless, even when she came face to face with many challenges. Tubman’s early life Tubman was born Araminta Ross in 1822 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When interviewed later in life, Tubman said she started working when she was five as a house maid. She recalled that she endured whippings, starvation and hard work even before she ...

11Dec

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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

Tips for Black entrepreneurs from media mogul Byron Allen

This week, media mogul, Byron Allen, broke the internet with a viral interview on The Breakfast Club. The CEO of Entertainment Studios dropped numerous gems for success and told his incredible story of building an empire from his kitchen table. That hard work has paid off, as this Tuesday, Allen was inducted into the 2019 Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame. Allen doesn’t mince words: Black people may have been “blackballed” from the day they were born, but they can still succeed. He tells young entrepreneurs not to be afraid to speak out and dream big. “You cannot live in fear. You were born Blackballed. You know you’ve been positioned to fail and you have to recognize where you are.” These are five other gems from Allen’s interview that remind us to pursue our greatness and know our ...

How to Be an Antiracist: A Conversation With Ibram X. Kendi

14Dec

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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

How to Be an Antiracist: A Conversation With Ibram X. Kendi

In his new book, the professor challenges traditional definitions of racism, and who can be racist. A universal understanding, particularly in academia and among racial justice advocates and activists, has been that race and racism are based on a concept of whiteness as superior over other racial constructions (such as Black, Brown, or Indigenous). Whole bodies of scholarship under the Critical Race Theory framework have discussed this power dynamic inherent in racism, which also yields to classism, sexism, and most other forms of social injustice. In fact, the term is often substituted with a more specific descriptor: “white supremacy.” Gender scholar bell hooks eventually coined the term “imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy,” to capture the intersecting ...

11Dec

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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

How This Black Entrepreneur Went From Homelessness to Housing Others

With help from a business incubator, Tyrone Poole created a platform to help people on low incomes find housing. Collapse and regeneration are experiences Tyrone Poole knows intimately. There was that period back in 2006 when he was homeless—that moment when, on crutches and in excruciating pain, Poole found himself staggering into the bus station in Portland, Oregon, where he collapsed on a bench and threw up. That was how a policeman found him that night and later took him to the YMCA homeless shelter, where he got a cot on the gym floor. Everything he owned was in a bag under the bed. What had led to Poole’s downslide was medical debt. He’d completed his associate degree at Portland Community College and was training to be a firefighter when he suffered a debilitating i...

11Dec

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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

Damon Young Tells His Story in “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker”

I think that we should all know by now that trying to do or alter our behavior in a way to appease Whites is useless. Damon Young’s is the voice many Black people probably hear in their heads. The one that finds humor in the most-distressing situations. The one that has the perfect, witty clapback to some ridiculous statement. And the one that is thoughtful to the point of overthinking. I think this because every time I read one of his posts on Very Smart Brothas—a blog he cofounded about relationships, pop culture, and race—I excitedly exclaim, “Oh my God, I was thinking the exact same thing!” And based on the plethora of comments at the end of each blog post, I know I’m not the only one. Reading his recently published memoir, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, how...

9Dec

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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

The 20 most influential African-American chefs in the South today

It's safe to say that the work of chefs Tunde Wey, BJ Dennis and Michael Twitty has changed the way we talk about Southern cooking, and that New Orleans cuisine wouldn't be the same without Leah Chase. These chefs are only a few of the most influential African American chefs cooking in the South today. We've picked 20 of the most outstanding and influential African-American chefs across the South who we think have had the greatest influence on what we eat today. Some have dedicated their careers to teaching, others are television stars and still more are changing our culinary scene from behind the line. Tunde Wey, New Orleans Nigerian chef Tunde Wey has, until very recently, been traveling around the country serving pop-up meals as part of a series called "Blackness in America." Over ...

A talkative Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reflects on becoming himself

11Dec

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A talkative Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reflects on becoming himself

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has been a best-selling author, civil-rights activist, actor, historian and one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived. One thing Abdul-Jabbar has never been — at least not in public — is chatty. “I’m not known for being a blabbermouth, you know?” the soft-spoken Abdul-Jabbar concedes with a smile, something else he was never particularly known for during his playing days. But, he adds, still smiling, his public can expect to see that change — and soon. This fall Abdul-Jabbar will embark on a cross-country tour as part of “Becoming Kareem,” a stage show in which he’ll discuss his life, answer audience questions and talk about the key mentors he says helped him achieve his goals. Among them: civil rights heroes Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, his legendar...

Meet the mom behind #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe

10Dec

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Meet the mom behind #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe

Black Girl Nerds was on to something again. The site, a place created to give women of color a place to express themselves, was popping with chatter on its Slack channel about the “Black Panther” movie. (Slack is a virtual workspace where writers and staff of the site can talk about what to write for the site.) There, Kayla Marie Sutton, who is the director of online marketing for Black Girl Nerds (or BGN, as its followers know it), announced a Twitter campaign. It was a hashtag: #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe. The purpose was to engage BGN followers and channel the excitement around the film that comes out Friday. The conversation ended up doing so much more. Sutton is the Afro-Latina mastermind behind last year’s BGN Playlists on Spotify, engaging the collaboration of BGN followers, incl...

His Traveling Museum Is Bringing Black History to a Town Near You

11Dec

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His Traveling Museum Is Bringing Black History to a Town Near You

As a social studies teacher in Detroit in 1994, Khalid el-Hakim used African American artifacts he collected to supplement information about Black history he found lacking in middle school textbooks. It was a charge, el-Hakim says, by Minister Louis Farrakhan at the Million Man March in 1995 to men to go back to their cities and “join a community organization and try to make some type of contribution to our community,” that was the catalyst to start a mobile museum. El-Hakim went from having tabletop displays at meetings of the local organization he joined to setting up exhibits for various organizations and institutions—first throughout the city and then across the state and nationwide. His Black History 101 Mobile Museum travels throughout the year from coast to coast sharing Africa...

6 Tips for White People Who Want to Celebrate Black History

11Dec

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6 Tips for White People Who Want to Celebrate Black History

We’ve come a long way from Negro History Week to Black History Month and yet too often the celebrations that are planned in predominantly white spaces are nothing short of lackluster, rarely bringing a modern-day context to the celebration or acknowledgement that Black history is a continually evolving living history in which we all play a role. Part of the problem is that for non-Black people, too often there is a sense of being a passive celebrator. Yet, in this current climate there is immense opportunity. We can make real racial change by moving from passive observation to active engagement if we move past our own internal roadblocks and fears of messing up. Black history is more than just the named activists, agitators and changemakers—it encompasses the full scope of Black humanity...