Category: Black Excellence

https://canvasrebel.com/meet-cameron-mccloud

We were lucky to catch up with Cameron McCloud recently and have shared our conversation below.

Cameron, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Day to day the world can seem like a tough place, but there’s also so much kindness in the world and we think talking about that kindness helps spread it and make the world a nicer, kinder place. Can you share a story of a time when someone did something really kind for you?

Putting together my first book should have been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and it would have been if not for all the people I had helping me.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/28/g-s1-121470/cure-for-paranoia-tiny-desk-concert

Cure For Paranoia wants you to believe in yourself. Perseverance, plus a whole lot of talent, is what got the Dallas hip-hop collective to our space after submitting to the Tiny Desk Contest four years in a row.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floetry

Floetry is an English music duo formed in 1997 by singer Marsha Ambrosius (“the Songstress”) and spoken-word poet Natalie Stewart (“the Floacist”). They are known for their diverse musical and performance style referred to as “poetic delivery with musical intent”.^[1][2][3]

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/02/g-s1-123334/floetry-tiny-desk-concert

Floetry made its way “from London’s SE5 to Philly’s west side just to bring the vibe” to the Tiny Desk. And with the poetic flows of Natalie Stewart (aka The Floacist) and a rich, floating soprano from Marsha Ambrosius (aka The Songstress), the vibe in our space was immaculate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantzdy_Pierrot

Frantzdy Pierrot (born 29 March 1995) is a Haitian professional footballer who plays as a forward for Süper Lig club Çaykur Rizespor, on loan from AEK Athens, and the Haiti national team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherrilyn_Ifill

Sherrilyn Ifill (born December 17, 1962) is an American attorney and the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights (Vernon E. Jordan) at Howard University. She is a law professor and the former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.^[1] She was the seventh president of the Legal Defense Fund, an organization that Thurgood Marshall founded in 1940. Ifill is a nationally recognized expert on voting rights and judicial selection.^[2] In 2021, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world on its annual Time 100 list. In 2025, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.^[3]

Clark student’s nonprofit has plenty of sole

Jordan Adeyemi ’28 has been working for the last four years to channel his love of soccer into community service by co-founding and operating a nonprofit that donates new and gently used sports shoes to underserved youth.

Adeyemi and his 14-year-old brother Jason launched The Shoeless Ones in 2020 to deliver shoes to young people in the Atlanta area, where they grew up. The brothers made special donations of shoes to youth in the United Kingdom and in Nigeria in 2021, and Adeyemi hopes to have a more global reach in the future.

https://newplayexchange.org/users/28248/aaron-mays

Playwright and director Aaron Mays is an award-winning theatre artist based in Chicago. His latest play BLACK SANTA was one of four finalists to receive its world premiere at the 2024 Obsidian Theatre Festival. The play’s Southeast premiere took place at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center and City Theatre in December 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophelia_DeVore

Ophelia DeVore (August 12, 1921 – February 28, 2014) was an American businesswoman, publisher, and model.^[1] She was the first model of African-American descent in the United States. In 1946, she helped establish the Grace Del Marco Agency, one of the first modeling agencies in America.^[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Clyburn

James Enos Clyburn (born July 21, 1940) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for South Carolina’s 6th congressional district. First elected in 1992, Clyburn is serving his 17th term, representing a congressional district that includes most of the majority-black precincts in and around Columbia and Charleston, as well as most of the majority-black areas outside Beaufort and nearly all of South Carolina’s share of the Black Belt. Since Joe Cunningham‘s departure in 2021, Clyburn has been the only Democrat in South Carolina’s congressional delegation as well as the dean of the state’s delegation since 2011 after fellow Democrat John Spratt lost re-election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Johnson-Odim

Cheryl Johnson-Odim is an American historian. She worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University and Loyola University Chicago. She became dean at Columbia College Chicago and in 2007 was made provost of Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois.

https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_caam_oralhistories/37

Dr. Cheryl Johnson-Odim is an activist and educator. She was raised in New York City, earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Youngstown State University, and a PhD in history from Northwestern University. She served as assistant director of the African Studies program at Northwestern, became the first woman and first African American to chair the history department at Loyola University Chicago, and was the first dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. She went on to serve as Provost at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, has since retired, and continues her activism in several causes.

Topics include the anti-apartheid movement, Chicago politics, activism since 2010, Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and the 2016 presidential election.

https://www.artic.edu/authors/63/antawan-i-byrd

Antawan I. Byrd is associate curator, Photography and Media, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Since joining the museum in 2017, he has contributed to the exhibition Volta Photo: Starring Sanlé Sory and the People of Bobo-Dioulasso in the Small but Musically Mighty Country of Burkina Faso (2018) and curated and co-edited the catalogue for The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster (2019) with Felicia Mings. He recently curated Mimi Cherono Ng’ok: Closer to the Earth, Closer to My Own Body, the first solo presentation in the United States of the Kenyan-born photographer.

https://arthistory.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/antawan-byrd.html

Antawan I. Byrd is an assistant professor of art history and a faculty affiliate of Northwestern’s Program of African Studies. As an art historian, Byrd’s research is grounded in Pan-Africanism, a long-standing political and cultural project that imagines global solidarities among peoples of African descent while confronting the enduring legacies of slavery and colonialism. His work asks what it would mean to write art history with these sociopolitical commitments in view, tracing how such aspirations, whether unified or fractured, have shaped artistic and everyday cultural practices across Africa and the African diaspora. Within this framework, he focuses on modern and contemporary art of the long twentieth century, with particular attention to the intersections of sound, visual culture, and politics.