We are highlighting examples of Black excellence every day this February….and beyond! Feel free to send us suggestions!
Meet the first Black skeleton athlete to compete for the U.S. at the Olympics
BEIJING — Skeleton is a heart-racing, adrenaline-fueled event where a single racer flies face-first down a frozen track, sometimes going more than 80 mph, belly-down on a sled.
Kelly Curtis is quick to acknowledge this sport is “crazy.” That doesn’t make her love it any less.
The event has been a mainstay at the Winter Games since 2002. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, just three Americans will compete for a medal — and Curtis is one of them.
As soon as Curtis shot herself down a topsy-turvy track in Beijing on Friday, she made history.
Curtis is the first Black athlete, man or woman, to represent the U.S. at the Olympics in skeleton. The 33-year-old is also the only member of the U.S. Air Force at this year’s Winter Games.
Curtis joins a small group of Black athletes competing for the U.S. at the Beijing Olympics.
The inherent pressure of being “the first” and “only” isn’t fazing her, she said.
“I am treating this like every race,” she said.
After the start of her two-day event Friday morning, Curtis stands 18th. Her teammate Katie Uhlaender is eighth. They are scheduled to next compete for the final round of skeleton runs at 9:55 p.m. Beijing time (8:55 a.m. EST) on Saturday.
We are highlighting examples of Black excellence every day this February….and beyond! Feel free to send us suggestions!
After an enrichment program at Sally Ride Elementary School, a young Jessica Watkins realized what she wanted to do when she grew up: study the geology of other planets.
Today, at 33 years old, Watkins is training for a mission to do just that.
This April, Watkins is set to become the first Black woman to live and work on the International Space Station for an extended mission. She will arrive there onboard a SpaceX capsule and then spend six months on the ISS as part of NASA’s Artemis program, a multi-billion dollar effort designed to return humans to the surface of the moon in 2025.
“We are building on the foundation that was laid by the Black women astronauts who have come before me,” Watkins told NPR’s Morning Edition. “I’m definitely honored to be a small part of that legacy, but ultimately be an equal member of the crew.”
Of the roughly 250 people who have boarded the ISS, fewer than 10 have been Black. Prior to the inception of the space station, Mae Jemison, an engineer and physician, became the first Black woman to travel to space in 1992. Other Black women have followed, including NASA astronauts Stephanie Wilson and Joan Higginbotham.
NASA selected Watkins for its astronaut program in 2017. She holds a bachelor’s degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University and a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Watkins will cover a lot of ground on her mission: earth and space science, biological science and human research into things like the effects of long-duration spaceflight for humans. That’s when the astronauts themselves become “the lab rats,” Watkins told NPR.
Over the course of her six-month mission, Watkins will also observe and photograph geological changes on Earth.
Ahead of her journey, Watkins said she’s done training on the systems of the International Space Station and how to fix anything if it isn’t working properly. She’s also practiced walking in space by wearing a puffy white suit in an underwater ISS mockup that’s housed in a giant pool.
Watkins said the journey to space has wide-ranging implications on everything from medical research “with direct impacts into our daily lives,” to international collaboration. Even amid tensions here on Earth between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine, she notes, the U.S. portion of the ISS is docked to the Russian segment.
“We are all coming together to accomplish this really hard thing that none of us would be able to do on our own,” Watkins said. “I think that is just such a beautiful picture of what we can all do if we come together and put all of our resources and skill sets together.”
We are highlighting examples of Black excellence every day this February….and beyond! Feel free to send us suggestions!
Eric Cora has been working for Community Action Pioneer Valley as the Program Manager of their Family Center in Greenfield for the past three years. Most of his duties involves developing and implementing community based programs for families and youth. Eric takes pride in the strength-based & family-centered approach he and his team use to work together with families.
When Eric completed his Social Work degree at Elms College, he was interested in two things: business and social work. When he learned about the opportunity at the Family Center in Greenfield, he knew this is where his professional future would take him. Eric has supported efforts that strengthen families and communities by setting a collaborative tone to build trust between systems of care and community members.
In his spare time, Eric enjoys reading sci-fi novels and cooking. He lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts with his wife Sadie, daughter Alice, and their pet Star the cat.
We are highlighting examples of Black excellence every day this February….and beyond! Feel free to send us suggestions!
Press Release: Make-It Springfield Names Roberta Wilmore as First Executive Director
SPRINGFIELD, MA, June 10, 2020 — Make-It Springfield, the downtown Springfield community makerspace, announced that it has hired Roberta Wilmore as its first Executive Director. Wilmore joins an already growing staff and will lead the organization into its next phase of growth, including a transition to a larger space.
“Roberta joins us with decades of experience in nonprofits, commercial real estate, creative entrepreneurship, and the equity and inclusion work that is so fundamental to our mission. Make-It will certainly benefit from Roberta’s veteran leadership, but Springfield at-large will benefit as well,” said Laura Masulis, co-founder of the makerspace.
Specifically, Wilmore’s consulting and training practice specializes in conflict management, board development, employee management, transition planning, and social justice. She has served as a trusted advisor, executive coach, and Board member for dozens of nonprofit organizations throughout the region, ranging from creative arts organizations, to academic institutions and philanthropic organizations. Additionally, in 2001, Wilmore founded the Children’s Equestrian Center, connecting under-served families and children of color to the world of equestrian sports.
“The search committee was especially impressed by Roberta’s deliberate and thoughtful approach to leadership, team-building and partnerships. We believe Roberta will lead Make-It Springfield forward and skillfully navigate the COVID crisis and any other challenges we might face in the future,” said Michael DiPasquale, another co-founder.
Wilmore said, “It is incredibly exciting to see that Make-It Springfield has outgrown its original location. I am honored to join them and to be part of growing this resource for the benefit of the city and its residents.”
We are highlighting examples of Black excellence every day this February….and beyond! Feel free to send us suggestions!
Ray Berry is the founder of White Lion Brewing Company in Springfield. He was one of the recipients of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts – Massachusetts Next Century Award for 2021. He is a member of the first class of Leadership Pioneer Valley 2011-2012.
We are highlighting examples of Black excellence every day this February….and beyond! Feel free to send us suggestions!
‘I Wanted To Be On Land’: A Conversation With Urban Farmer Kafi Dixon
Kafi Dixon is a farmer in Boston. A “backhoe-operating, tractor-driving, Hi-Lo-shifting, plant-seed-in-the-ground farmer,” as she puts it.
Dixon founded the Common Good Cooperative, an urban farm in Dorchester where women of color learn about agriculture, entrepreneurship, food sovereignty, and access to green space. Last year, during the pandemic, Dixon’s cooperative grew 500 pounds of produce and donated it to local families and senior living facilities.
Dixon and her work are featured in a new documentary “A Reckoning in Boston,” which premieres in New England on May 7. WBUR spoke with Dixon about the challenges of being a Black farmer, inequity in Boston and the joy of tinkering. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Last year during the pandemic, it was like everyone suddenly discovered the value of green space. But you were way ahead of that game; how did you get started in urban farming?
I started this back in 2015, based on what I knew the women in my community were going through — the women I grew up with in Upham’s Corner and Mattapan and Dorchester.
All of the women I’ve grown up with have lost either sons or their children’s fathers or brothers. And you know, we understood the violence of the city and just continued to exist in it.
But I knew that there were other spaces that were much more peaceful, and I had seen those places, lived on them, worked on them. I had benefited from healthy space and healthy conversations. And what better way to integrate women into self-designed green space that is for their health — mental and physical — than to found an urban farm?
How do you actually start an urban farm in Boston?
You create a cooperative. You know, you may not have the power and privilege of affluent networks, so one of the ways to address the resources that are missing is to come together as the many.
I just realized that a lot of communities around this country — and oddly here in Boston, too — they were designing for rather than with. And you realize that there is not just an inequality, but there’s an inequity in that design.
As much as the city and this region claims to be progressive — or likes to see themselves as progressive — there are still a lot of spaces that are thought of as spaces welcoming to Black women, that by design are not.
Can you give me an example?
Agriculture. Most of those spaces are not reflective of Black women enough for Black women to feel like they’re safe space for them to integrate into. Just look at the city of Boston, right? We can look at whether or not this is the first urban farm founded by a woman of color. Right? We can interrogate that question. We can interrogate how many women of color contractors there are. Right? We can interrogate how many women of color, especially African American women, are homeowners in the city. Right? We can look at diversity in upper management in some of the largest fiber 501(c)(3)’s in Boston. We can look at women of color and startup industries in the city of Boston, and look at the diminishing numbers of women who are in the startup field.
The census says that the African American community is the only demographic that’s being lost in the city of Boston. That’s the federal government saying that there are a people, for whatever reason, that are not existing as a culture in a professed progressive city.
If we are branching out into different spaces, into different sectors, and we don’t have a reflection of our community that’s in those spaces, then you can perceive that as an unwelcoming space. I’m fighting to be in a space that’s no longer integrated for Black women.
Have you always had a knack for farming and growing things?
I wish! I’m a woman with little standard academic education — maybe the eighth grade was the highest grade I completed — which was the reason I became a small business entrepreneur very early. It was because it didn’t require a high school diploma. Right? And nobody questioned my adequacy as far as education.
And I decided to go work on other people’s farms from upstate New York to Virginia to Mississippi. I was working in a very blue collar job, so I would save up my money and I would leave for a month and go work on farms. And then I went through rural farm training and certification.
Kafi Dixon on her Boston farm. (Courtesy Lost Nation Pictures)
Wait, you saved up your money and took all your vacation time to work on farms? Most people would save up for, you know, a cruise.
Or a really nice car?
Right! So what drove you spend all your free time working on farms?
I had just decided that I wanted to be on land. And I knew how to grow food. I had run produce markets, but I’d always purchased from somebody else. So who am I not to be able to go grow my own food and sell into markets? So this was, in my mind, my retirement plan.
So, yes, it was something I had to save up for because all business enterprises require a little bit of research — I wanted to make sure that as I was thinking about investing in land that it wasn’t a fantasy, that it was something that I felt capable to do.
How did you finally make the transition to professional farmer?
There’s no such thing as a professional farmer! You can ask any farmer, there’s no such thing.
And I say that because there’s still this burden that I, as a Black woman, carry around, like, “what experience do you have as a farmer?” And that’s used to marginalize people, like, “I don’t think she can do it.” But then we romanticize the failing farming couple, right? The greenhorns of the world, who are out there on land and are not able to survive. Because without question, it was the space and not any question about their aptitude.
But when Black women or men of color — especially here in the Northeast, which is weird — talk about moving into agricultural enterprises we’re put to a test that most people aren’t put through when they decide to, you know, quit graduate school at Harvard and to take a loan out and buy land somewhere in New Hampshire.
What do you like best about faming?
One of the things that attracts me to agriculture — actually a lot of farmers don’t admit this — but they are low-key tinkerers. Farming and agriculture requires you to be constantly problem-solving. And it’s easier to solve the problem of a tomato hornworm than affordable housing, or Section 8. It’s easier to purchase a high quality packet of nematodes to deal with certain beetles that attack your crops. It’s easier to get your soil tested and to get into the science of weed reduction and land remediation — right? — than it is to look at some of the socially systemic problems that are generational. So, yeah, thinking about agriculture, you know, I’m up for it. It’s easier than the other side of this.
We are highlighting examples of Black excellence every day this February….and beyond! Feel free to send us suggestions!
Travis Coe (He/Him/His) has been working with Double Edge Theatre since 2016. He has taken on several roles including actor, solo performer, co-creator, video director, and marketing. Coe pushes his desires and dreams forward unapologetically through work that speaks to his identity, his culture, and his perspective as the youngest member of the DE Ensemble. He created and performed the role of the Hyena in Leonora, la maga y la maestra and premiered his solo performance SUGA in 2019. He also performed in DE’s Fall Spectacle Leonora’s World, and in DE’s recent Summer Spectacles. In addition to directing DE’s documentary filmmaking, he is the head of enrollments and co-leader of Art Justice at DE.
Touring credits include United States of Amnesia (ROOM l 916: NEU/NOW Festival 2015: Amsterdam), Surrounded (Round Room Image: USA/Canada 2014 Tour) and Surrounded 2.0 (Round Room Image: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland & Prague Quadrennial 2015). Coe is a Co-Founder of Round Room Image and received his BA in Acting at Columbia College Chicago.
We are highlighting examples of Black excellence every day this February….and beyond! Feel free to send us suggestions!
By Kerri Lee Alexander, NWHM Fellow | 2018-2019
As a doctor, engineer, and NASA astronaut, Mae Jemison has always reached for the stars. In 1992, Jemison became the first African American woman to travel in space. She has also written several books and appeared on many television programs including an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In addition to her many awards, Jemison has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the International Space Hall of Fame.
Mae Carol Jemison was born on October 17, 1956 in Decatur, Alabama. The youngest of three children, her mother was an elementary school teacher and her father was a maintenance supervisor. A few years after she was born, Jemison and her family moved to Chicago, Illinois. In addition to her love for dance, Jemison knew that she wanted to study science at a very young age. Jemison grew up watching the Apollo airings on TV, but she was often upset that there were no female astronauts. However, Jemison was inspired by African American actress Nichelle Nichols who played Lieutenant Uhura on the Star Trek television show. Jemison was determined to one day travel in space. In 1973, she graduated from Morgan Park High School when she was 16 years old. Once she graduated, Jemison left Chicago to attend Stanford University in California.
As one of the only African American students in her class, Jemison experienced racial discrimination in school. She later served as president of the Black Student Union and choreographed a performing arts production called Out of the Shadows about the African American experience. Jemison graduated in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in African and African-American studies. After graduating from Stanford University, Jemison attended Cornell Medical School. While in medical school, she traveled to Cuba to lead a study for the American Medical Student Association. She also worked at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. Jemison graduated from Cornell with a Doctorate in Medicine in 1981. Shortly after her graduation, she became an intern at the Los Angeles County Medical Center, and then went on to practice general medicine. Fluent in Russian, Japanese and Swahili, Jemison joined the Peace Corps in 1983 and served as a medical officer for two years in Africa.
After working with the Peace Corps, Jemison opened a private practice as a doctor. However, once Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, Jemison decided to apply to the astronaut program at NASA. She applied in 1985, but after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, NASA took a break from accepting new people. However, Jemison applied again in 1987 and was one of the 15 people chosen out of over 2,000 applications. She was selected for NASA Astronaut Group 12, which was the first group chosen after the Challenger explosion. After being selected, Jemison trained with NASA and worked on projects at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory. She received her first mission on September 28, 1989 when she was selected to join the STS-47 crew as a Mission Specialist. On September 12, 1992 Jemison and six other astronauts went into space on the space shuttle Endeavor. This voyage made Jemison the first African American woman in space. The team made 127 orbits around the Earth and returned to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 20, 1992.
Jemison left NASA in 1993 after serving as an astronaut for six years in total. She started The Jemison Group, a consulting company that encourages science, technology, and social change. She also began teaching environmental studies at Dartmouth College and directed the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in Developing Countries. After hearing that she was a fan of the Star Trek television show, actor LeVar Burton asked Jemison to appear in an episode. Jemison agreed and became the first real astronaut to be on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She played Lieutenant Palmer in the episode, “Second Chances.” In 1994, Jemison created an international space camp for students 12-16 years old called The Earth We Share (TEWS). She also created a nonprofit organization called the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence. Jemison later accepted a position as the Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University in 1999. She went on to write her first book in 2001, Find Where the Wind Goes, which was a children’s book about her life.
Currently, Jemison is leading the 100 Year Starship project through the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This project works to make sure human space travel to another star is possible within the next 100 years. She also serves on the Board of Directors for many organizations including; the Kimberly-Clark Corp., Scholastic, Inc., Valspar Corp., Morehouse College, Texas Medical Center, Texas State Product Development and Small Business Incubator, Greater Houston Partnership Disaster Planning and Recovery Task Force, and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Jemison is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, and has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, National Medical Association Hall of Fame and Texas Science Hall of Fame. She has received multiple awards and honorary degrees including the National Organization for Women’s Intrepid Award and the Kilby Science Award. She currently lives in Houston, Texas.
