Black Excellence: Peter Nyongesa
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/15/nx-s1-5039826/kenya-mangroves-hidden-beehives-combat-logging
To protect mangroves, some Kenyans combat logging with hidden beehives
Black Excellence: Mayor Cavalier Johnson
https://city.milwaukee.gov/mayor/About
Mayor Cavalier Johnson took office as Acting Mayor of the City of Milwaukee in late 2021 and set out immediately to build a safer city. He has prioritized violence reduction, economic development, and roadway safety. Before taking on his role as Acting Mayor, Johnson served as Common Council President while representing the city’s 2nd Aldermanic District.
In April of 2022, Mayor Johnson was elected as the forty-fifth chief executive of the City of Milwaukee, winning with more than seventy percent of the vote. He is the first Black Mayor elected in the city and only the fourth elected mayor in the past sixty-two years.
Black Excellence: Mumu Fresh
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/11/627681339/mumu-fresh-feat-black-thought-dj-dummy-tiny-desk-concert
Mumu Fresh sings that the teacher arrives when the student is ready. During a recent trip to the Tiny Desk, she came bearing life lessons from the depths of her soul.
Black Excellence: Bingwa Thomas
https://www.cnn.com/travel/man-buys-cheap-house-italy-life-expectancy/index.html
He bought a cheap house in Italy to improve his life expectancy
Most people buying cheap houses in Italy are simply attracted by the idea of paying a bargain price for the opportunity to escape to somewhere warmer that has better food.
But what if it could also help you live longer?
That was the thinking for Bingwa Thomas, 72, originally from Kansas City, who purchased an old dwelling in Latronico, deep in Italy’s southern Basilicata region, hoping that the change in lifestyle would push him well beyond the life expectancy of his demographic in the United States. Of course, price was also a factor.
Black Excellence: Shaboozey
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/10/nx-s1-5027961/pop-charts-shaboozey
Shaboozey’s slow-burning hybrid of hip-hop and country is finally the biggest song in the land
Black Excellence: Helen Wonjila
Foot juggling is an old Chinese and Russian circus trick. It’s not very common in the U.S.
Ethiopian-born performer Helen Wonjila learned foot juggling in China, at a school outside of Beijing. She calls it the result of “a happy accident,” and in recent months she’s performed at NBA and hockey halftime shows and elsewhere. In late May, she’ll be on “America’s Got Talent.”
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/watch-jaw-dropping-act-agt-173244576.html
Watch a Jaw-Dropping Act the ‘AGT’ Judges Have Never Seen Before
Black Excellence: Sarah Akinbuwa
A Somerville teen crocheted her prom dress in three days. Her video of the design process went viral.
Black Excellence: b. Robert Moore
For b. Robert Moore, art is personal — and political.
The Des Moines-based artist does not shy away from sharing the scars of his past in his new exhibition “In Loving Memory,” on display at the Des Moines Art Center through Oct. 20.
Black Excellence: Tessie Prevost
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/09/nx-s1-5034337/tessie-prevost-new-orleans-school-desegregation-dies
NEW ORLEANS — Tessie Prevost, a pioneer of school desegregation in the Deep South, has died.
She was one of the first young Black girls who integrated New Orleans public schools after federal courts forced the system to abide by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling that declared segregated schools unconstitutional.
Black Excellence: Zarinah Lomax
Zarinah Lomax is an uncommon documentarian of our times. She has designed dresses from yellow crime-scene tape and styled jackets with hand-painted demands like “Don’t Shoot” in purple, black, and gold script. Every few months, she curates exhibits of dozens of portraits of Philadelphians — vibrant, bold, bigger-than-life faces — at pop-up galleries to raise an alarm about gun violence in her hometown and America.