Category: Black Excellence

Lizzo played James Madison’s crystal flute onstage in D.C., proving history rocks

Some people visit Washington, D.C., for the tourist attractions, like monuments and museums. They probably don’t expect to see history being made at a pop concert — but that’s what happened to an arena full of fans at Lizzo’s concert Tuesday night.

The superstar singer, rapper and classically trained flutist took a quick but momentous break from the setlist of “The Special Tour” to play a crystal flute that was owned by former President James Madison and loaned to her by the Library of Congress.

That makes Lizzo the first and only person to play the centuries-old flute, she said in a tweet. At least one other person has played it before, as NPR reported in 2001.

“NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD THIS FAMOUS CRYSTAL FLUTE BEFORE,” she wrote. “NOW YOU HAVE.”

NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD THIS FAMOUS CRYSTAL FLUTE BEFORE

NOW YOU HAVE

IM THE FIRST & ONLY PERSON TO EVER PLAY THIS PRESIDENTIAL 200-YEAR-OLD CRYSTAL FLUTE— THANK YOU @librarycongress ❤️ pic.twitter.com/VgXjpC49sO— FOLLOW @YITTY (@lizzo) September 28, 2022

A French fluter made the ornate instrument in 1813 specifically for Madison in honor of his second inauguration, according to the Library of Congress. It says it’s possible that the flute was one of a handful of valuables that former first lady Dolley Madison took with her from the White House as she fled just before British troops set fire to Washington, D.C., in 1814.

So how did it make its way onto the Capital One Arena stage and into the hands of the chart-topping artist? With a lot of security, is the short answer.

Here’s the longer version. The flute is among the more than 1,800 flutes that now live in the Library of Congress, which has the largest such collection in the world, according to Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress (a position nominated by the U.S. president and confirmed by the Senate). Notably, Hayden is the first woman and first African American to hold the title.

On Friday, Hayden tagged Lizzo in a tweet showcasing some of Library’s flutes — including Madison’s — and inviting her “to come see it and even play a couple when you are in D.C. next week.”

“Like your song they are ‘Good as hell,’ ” she added, with a winking emoji.

Lizzo quickly RSVP’ed with an enthusiastic tweet of her own:

IM COMING CARLA! AND IM PLAYIN THAT CRYSTAL FLUTE!!!!! https://t.co/aPcIthlqeo— FOLLOW @YITTY (@lizzo) September 24, 2022

It’s worth noting that Lizzo has been playing the flute since she was in grade school, first learning by ear and then in private lessons (she initially dreamed of becoming a concert flautist before getting into rap and singing). She whips out her flute — which is named Sasha after Beyonce’s “I Am Sasha Fierce” and has its own Instagram account — often, including on Saturday Night Live and at her NPR Tiny Desk Concert.

On Monday, a patron tweeted that they had spotted Lizzo at the Library of Congress and that Hayden had personally asked if it was OK with them if she broke the library’s “quiet rule” to play the flute (they said yes, of course). The Library of Congress also dropped a hint about its celebrity visitor, tweeting a photo of a sign with Lizzo’s picture and a piece of tape reading, in all caps, “flute guest.”

👀 pic.twitter.com/abm5yPoD5G— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) September 28, 2022

Handlers brought the flute onstage at Lizzo’s concert the next night. Clad in a shimmering bodysuit, she gingerly accepted the instrument and carried it carefully to the standing microphone a few steps away, remarking that “it’s like playing out of a wine glass, so be patient.”

Lizzo lined up her fingers and played a clear, reverberating note — then widened her eyes and stuck out her tongue in apparent amazement. She played another trill while twerking to the beat, as the audience roared. After that she returned the instrument and ran back to the mic.

“B***h, I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from the 1800s,” she exclaimed. “We just made history tonight!”

She thanked the Library of Congress for “preserving our history and making history freaking cool.”

Carrie Arnold, who was in the crowd on Tuesday, told NPR that the moment felt like a celebration of progress, in a way.

“It’s not often you see founding father’s personal artifacts reclaimed as a symbol of pop culture and a celebration [of] Black female empowerment,” she wrote via text. “It was so uniquely a moment that could only happen in D.C. and … the audience took pride in that.”

YALL…

I PLAYED THE 200-YEAR-OLD CRYSTAL FLUTE FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ON STAGE IN D.C. 😭😭😭😭 @LibnOfCongress thank you ❤️ pic.twitter.com/u07gCaRTH4— FOLLOW @YITTY (@lizzo) September 28, 2022

The library later tweeted that the flute had made it back safely, thanks to an escort from Capitol Police, and hinted it will be sharing more from Lizzo’s visit soon.

In the meantime, D.C. residents as well as history buffs and Lizzo fans from far and wide are amplifying the videos on social media and praising all involved for making the unforgettable moment possible — and especially Lizzo for championing the importance of history. As she said herself onstage:

“History is freaking cool, you guys!”

Clarification Sept. 28, 2022

Lizzo said she was the first person to play the flute. This story has been updated to reflect that at least one other person has played it, though that was not onstage.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/28/1125564856/lizzo-james-madison-crystal-flute-concert

What’s it take to go from mechanic to physician at 51? Patience, an Ohio doctor says

Carl Allamby’s professional trajectory could be reduced to the plot of a feel-good movie. Skimming over the details, his is a story of a once-poor boy from the wrong side of Cleveland, who went from fixing cars to fixing people, from mechanic to medical doctor.

And technically, all of that is correct. Allamby did go from owning an auto repair shop almost straight out of high school, to recently starting his first job as an emergency-room attending physician at Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights, Ohio.

But the more accurate truth is that in this case, Allamby’s social and economic mobility — the kind that embodies the so-calledAmerican Dream — was of the tortoise vs. hare variety; it stretched out over decades.

“If somebody were to watch most of my life over the past few years, it would be me sitting in a quiet room by myself studying and laboring over mounds of information,” he told NPR.

“And that’s the horribly boring part,” Allamby added with a laugh.

The 51-year-old is thoughtful and deliberate with his words,often restartingsentences to get whatever he wants to say just right. He answers questions like he approaches his work: Slow and steady.

“I think that sometimes people just look at the end product of somebody’s hard work,” he said, reflecting back on his own journey. “But you know, [by doing that] you kind of miss the part where people are doing all the work that it takes to become a success.”

From a young age, Allamby knew he was capable of more

As a kid, Allamby wasn’t a particularly good student. Elementary school was fun, he said, and he was bright and interested in the material. “But as the years went on, life became more complex,” he explained.

In middle school, he said, the pressures that came with growing up in and around poverty shifted his focus away from academics and toward basic survival. It was the 1980s in East Cleveland, and gang violence was common in his neighborhood, he recalled, adding that even the walk to and from school was fraught. “And you’re embarrassed to go up and get your free lunch.”

He became an academicallymarginal student, but inside, “I knew I was capable of so much more.”

His dad worked as a door to door salesman, but with five brothers and sisters, it was clear that Allamby, like his siblings, would also have to contribute financially to keep the household afloat. He got his first summer job at 13. At 15, he started washing dishes at a local Italian restaurant, working his way up to a line cook.

“I had to provide for myself to buy my clothes, school supplies, and different things that were needed throughout the year or just providing myself with basic needs like food,” Allamby said.

High school graduation came and went with little fanfare, though by then Allamby was living on his own and had picked up a job at an auto parts store. It was there that he learned about cars, and hewould often pick up small repair jobs that he worked on at a shop across the street. In the beginning, he rented a portion of the space but eventually he had enough business to buy the place. He was 19.

He was a community college poster boy

Despite his record as an unremarkable student, Allamby recognized there was a lot he needed to learn about cars before opening up his first auto service shop.

“I started going to the local community college, Cuyahoga Community College, and taking automotive courses at night,” he said, adding that at the time he was the youngest student in all of his classes.

The experience helped him begin to reframe his thoughts on education. It was challenging juggling his nascent business with the coursework, he said, but he was good at it. He liked learning about the inner workings of cars, how things are connected.

Fifteen years later, feeling a bit restless with a desire to improve his business, he enrolled in a four-year night class program at Ursuline College in Pepper Pike, Ohio. This time, he wanted an undergraduate degree in business. He was 34, married, raising children and running two auto shops.

“It was a fantastic time,” he said, unequivocally. “I no longer had those burdens that I had when I was a child. And when I was in class, I was able to just focus 100% on the lessons being taught, getting the most out of class.” He allowed himself to fully enjoy education, he added.

Plus, it unearthed a long-buried dream. Inspired in part by Denzel Washington on St. Elsewhere, he confessed: “I had thought as a young boy that I wanted to pursue a career in medicine.”

One of the requirements for his degree was an intro to biology course. It was the second-to-last class that he took before graduating. (Which he did summa cum laude.)

“When I took the biology class, it was just phenomenal. I loved it from the moment that I first walked in there,” Allamby said.

The feeling stuck with him, and soon Allamby had a talk with his wife. “I came home and told her that I was thinking about pursuing something in medicine in the medical career,” he recalled. It would be a break from the non-stop grind of servicing cars nearly 365 days a year, he thought.

Despite his enthusiasm, Allamby said he wanted to be certain that medical school would be a good idea. “Because I was hesitant at first, I went and took classes once again at the local community college. I would go to night classes or early morning classes, and I did phenomenally well and got straight A’s through all of my classes.”

He eventually transferred into a program at Cleveland State University that guaranteed him a spot at Northeast Ohio Medical University, if he did well.

He did. Once again he graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor’s in Science, and by 2015, Allamby, started medical school.

He benefited from being an older student

He was by far the oldest student in every class, he said. In fact, he recounted several instances where a fellow student would watch him walk into a room, sit up straight and introduce themselves. “Then, they’d ask me if I was the professor,” he said — and they’d be surprised when he explained that he was “one of them.”

Yes, there was some self-consciousness, he admitted. But in many respects, Allamby explained, he felt a certain advantage. “Younger students are dealing with much different circumstances … but I was very focused. I knew how to stay focused on the task in front of me.”

He added: “There’s some internal stigma that kind of sticks with you when you’re an older person, that you’re an older person. But my philosophy has always been to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And the more I can put myself into uncomfortable situations, the more I can grow.”

During his years in medical school, Allamby continued to run both of his auto service businesses. But as he got closer to realizing his dream of becoming a doctor, he decided to sell them off.

Allamby graduated from medical school at age 47, promptly starting an emergency medicine residency at Cleveland Clinic Akron. Now, at 51, he’s recently completed all of his training and was hired as an attending physician at Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital.

When asked if he feels like a different person now that he’s a doctor, Allamby said not much has changed.

“I know when I show up in the hospital that people are looking at me to be somebody who they can rely on to take care of their health needs and to give them guidance. But I’ve been dealing with that for a long time,” he said. “Back in the automotive industry, it was interestingly similar, because people put that same kind of trust and those same kinds of responsibilities on me when it came to taking care of the car.”

At the time, he said, he felt an “enormous responsibility for a big part of people’s lives – their cars. And that people are counting on me. I felt that, you know, almost all of my entire adult life. So that hasn’t changed much.”

Allamby’s rules to live by

In recent years, Allamby has been asked to speak publicly about his journey from fixing cars to saving lives. When he does, heavoids using language that makes him sound exceptional. In fact, he tries to do the opposite, stressing the methodical nature of his slow rise through the ranks of academia.

Being successful at just about any task requires a three pronged approach, he said. First, you need to devise a plan. Next, you have to makesacrifices to truly dedicate yourself to an area of study. And, finally, you have to find the conviction to stay the course, even when things become difficult.

“There’s going to be times when you feel like giving up, but those are the times to really push forward and to rely on the people who surround you,” Allamby said. “People who give you positive feedback in order to kind of fill your bucket back up so that you can keep going.”

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/05/1126661330/carl-allamby-mechanic-to-physician

How the ‘Black Metropolis’ made a comeback

In August 1992, community organizer Harold Lucas Jr. peered down a dilapidated street on the South Side of Chicago and tried to envision it in all of its past glory. The distressed neighborhood had once been the soil for a renaissance that blossomed like flowers pushing up through cracks in concrete.

Fleeing the violence and oppression they faced in the South, Black Americans began arriving on these blocks in 1916 as part of the Great Migration. Although they were discriminated against and barred from living in many parts of Chicago, Black migrants, by the 1920s, established a community on the South Side that was brimming with commerce, art and culture.

Originally called insulting names like “the Black Ghetto” by outsiders, the burgeoning neighborhood was rechristened “Bronzeville” by a local newspaper editor in 1930. The name stuck.

The list of luminaries who lived and worked in Bronzeville is astounding: Jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong; acclaimed writer Richard Wright; investigative journalist, anti-lynching activist, and NAACP co-founder Ida B. Wells; singer and songwriter Sam Cooke; the first Black woman to fly a plane, Bessie Coleman; boxer Joe Louis; blues musician Muddy Waters; comedian Redd Foxx; Olympian Jesse Owens; the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks; Nat King Cole; and on and on.

In its heyday, Bronzeville offered Black Americans rare opportunities for upward mobility. The ramshackle buildings that Lucas saw in the 1990s had once been Black-owned banks, publishing houses, insurance companies, restaurants, jazz and blues venues. Many Bronzeville residents also made a decent living working in nearby steel mills, stock yards, and factories.

But in the 1950s and 1960s, Bronzeville entered a downward spiral. The advent of large industrial machines and container ships began changing the economic calculus of manufacturing in America’s inner cities, and high-paying jobs for blue-collar workers began leaving cities like Chicago, as manufacturers relocated their factories to cheaper locations. Meanwhile, increasingly affordable cars and single-family houses made living in the suburbs more appealing to city families, ushering in an era of urban depopulation and decline.

The government helped facilitate Bronzeville’s downturn. It, for example, built the Dan Ryan Expressway through the area, further segregating the community from the rest of the city and literally paving the way for suburbanization. And — in what urban planners now consider a colossal misstep — the government built massive housing projects in the area, including the Robert Taylor Homes, 28 high-rises, each 16 stories tall, which formed the largest public housing complex in the world. Originally pitched as a solution to poverty and residential overcrowding, the Robert Taylor Homes became a national symbol for everything wrong with the projects.

As deindustrialization ravaged the inner-city economy, the situation in Bronzeville got worse and worse. Economic decline led to social decay, and affluent Black residents left the area as it saw an explosion in crime, drugs, and violence. Federal anti-discrimination housing laws passed in the 1960s opened up new neighborhoods for Black people to move to, ironically helping to facilitate the exodus of affluent Bronzeville residents and cementing the neighborhood’s decline.

Many forgot the illustrious history of Bronzeville. But not Harold Lucas Jr., who yearned for this formerly vibrant “Black Metropolis” to see a dramatic rebirth. “My heart has a vision of Bronzeville restored,” Lucas told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1992.

Incredibly, Lucas’s vision came to pass. Not only has Bronzeville seen a dramatic revival over the last few decades, but the community stands out in a new study as one of the roughly five percent of American neighborhoods that had a high rate of poverty in 2000 but has since seen the rise of “inclusive prosperity.” The term refers to neighborhoods that saw economic growth and a large reduction of poverty without experiencing what people might call gentrification.

The new study is published by Brookings Metro, and it’s authored by Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris of Common Good Labs, an organization that uses data science to study and improve communities. Acharya and Morris crunch data on more than 3,500 census tracts that had concentrated poverty in 2000 and then track what happened to them.

Some neighborhoods, like, for example, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, saw a large decline in poverty largely because minority groups that once called it home were displaced. The researchers don’t see that as a poverty-reduction success story. They wanted to find places that “achieved a large decrease in their poverty rates without displacing their existing communities.” And, of the 3,500 census tracts they track since 2000, they found 193 that experienced this positive development by the year 2015. Two of these 193 census tracts are in Bronzeville.

So how did Bronzeville do it?

The Remarkable Turnaround Of Bronzeville

By the early 1990s, Bronzeville had hit rock bottom. The neighborhood had less than half of the population it had back in the 1960s. Its streets had become a no man’s land, filled with crumbling infrastructure, abandoned buildings, and vacant lots.

But a group of dedicated community leaders and organizers, including Harold Lucas Jr., banded together to fight for something better. They formed the Mid-South Planning and Development Commission, which offered a comprehensive vision for preserving, developing, and celebrating Bronzeville and its rich history. Their idea was to create a place that championed Black culture; a destination that people would want to visit and live in.

“We need to be unapologetically African-American in planning,” Angelo Rose, the chairman of the Mid-South Commission, told the Chicago Tribune in 1994. “In Chinatown, they make no apologies for how (Chinese) their community looks.”

Through fierce and sustained activism over many years, Bronzeville leaders got lawmakers and financial institutions on board with their Afrocentric vision for their community’s redevelopment. They convinced the city to commit millions to improving infrastructure, preserving historic landmarks, and beautifying the neighborhood. The city also built a new, $65 million police headquarters in the community. The federal government, through the Empowerment Zone program, also spent millions providing tax incentives for development.

As community leaders had hoped, public investments proved to be seed money for even larger private investments. Commercial developers began upgrading local shopping centers. Community organizers created new parks, statues, and murals celebrating Black history. Churches and organizations like the Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council saved and renovated several landmark buildings.

And by the mid-1990s, Bronzeville began seeing an influx of so-called “buppies” — Black Upwardly Mobile Professionals — who began buying and renovating many of the area’s decaying townhouses and building new houses on vacant lots.

Recognizing how living in concentrated poverty often failed their residents, the Chicago Housing Authority, under the federal government’s HOPE VI program, began demolishing public housing high-rises and replacing them with mixed-income developments. The Robert Taylor Homes, known for their extreme, concentrated poverty, gang warfare, dysfunctional heating systems, and broken elevators, had become a poster child for the failures of urban policy. The buildings were torn down, one by one, starting in 1998.

Here’s where it’s important to note that Bronzeville’s subsequent success in reducing poverty cannot be simply explained by the bulldozing of the projects and the relocation of low-income folks. The two census tracts that saw large reductions in poverty in the new Brookings study, co-author Morris says, were not the ones that had large housing projects. Morris and Acharya excluded from their study the census tracts that demolished public housing because their aim was to find places that saw increased prosperity without displacing low-income residents — and, obviously, demolishing public housing and relocating residents confounded that analysis.

“To see two tracts from the rest of the neighborhood experience such positive change is impressive — especially when considering the fact that only 193 total tracts in the entire country experienced large reductions in poverty without community displacement,” Morris says.

Vacant Assets

By 2004, Bronzeville was booming, and a slew of Black-owned businesses started opening shops in the area. And as the district turned a corner and began seeing sustained growth, it had a weapon to prevent displacement: thousands of vacant lots, many of which were owned by the city of Chicago. These lots were both the result of the area’s depopulation between the 1960s and 1990s and also the city’s demolition of housing projects in the late 1990s.

“The presence of a large number of vacant lots is a common feature of neighborhoods with concentrated poverty,” says Morris. For many low-income communities, however, vacant lots are a problem: they’re an eyesore, a site for illegal dumping, and a place where crime is at least perceived to be a problem. Vacant lots also fail to generate economic activity and tax revenue.

But Bronzeville’s vacant lots became an asset: they have made constructing new housing units cheaper and easier than in many other places, where NIMBYism and fears about displacement often derail political support for new construction.

“Bronzeville demonstrates these vacant lots offer an opportunity for neighborhoods to significantly increase housing density without displacing existing residents,” Morris says. “Many other residential areas could follow Bronzeville’s path to both reduce the problems associated with vacant land and create housing for new residents.”

The area has seen demographic change, especially a significant influx of middle-class Black folks into the area, which has fueled a real estate and development boom. Whether socioeconomic — and not racial — change should be considered gentrification, or whether the process unfolding in the area will inevitably spark gentrification, is up for debate. But Morris and Acharya find that the two Bronzeville census tracts that have seen large drops in poverty also saw a retention of local residents above the national average.

Moreover, Morris and Acharya find that the number of Black folks living in those tracts actually increased. That makes Bronzeville pretty special: a predominantly Black area where successful Black folks want to live. As Jerusalem Demsas recently reported in The Atlantic, most predominantly Black areas “are caught in a disinvestment and depopulation spiral.”

Over the last decade, research has found that relationships and interactions with more affluent folks are crucial for low-income folks to climb the economic ladder. It’s an ongoing struggle to ensure that low-income folks can continue affording to live in the area. But, if the community meets this challenge, a Bronzeville with a large population of middle-class Black folks seems poised to give low-income Black kids a much better shot of escaping poverty and achieving their dreams than the distressed Bronzeville of the late 20th century.

None of this would have happened were it not for the fierce determination and vision of community leaders like Harold Lucas Jr — dubbed “the godfather of Bronzeville.” Sadly, Lucas passed away at the age of 79 in late August. The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times each wrote glowing obituaries about him. Happily, Lucas lived to see the change he helped bring about.

In his elderly years, Lucas served as a community historian, leading bus tours of the area and educating people about the legendary past of Bronzeville. Now Lucas himself is an important part of the community’s incredible history.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/10/04/1126224645/how-the-black-metropolis-made-a-comeback

Tyehimba Jess is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.  It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.  Leadbelly was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.”

Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU Alumni, received a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was a 2004–2005 Winter Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Jess is also a veteran of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team, and won a 2000–2001 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, the 2001 Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, and a 2006 Whiting Fellowship. He presented his poetry at the 2011 TedX Nashville Conference and won a 2016 Lannan Literary Award in Poetry. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2018. Jess is a Professor of English at College of Staten Island.  

Jess’ fiction and poetry have appeared in many journals, as well as anthologies such as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Beyond The Frontier: African American Poetry for the Twenty-First Century, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Power Lines: Ten Years of Poetry from Chicago’s Guild Complex, and Slam: The Art of Performance Poetry.

https://www.tyehimbajess.net/about.html

Mari is a 14 year old from Flint, Michigan known globally as Little Miss Flint. Born on July 6th, 2007.  She first entered the public spotlight when her letter to President Obama about the water crisis prompted him to visit the city and survey the water crisis for himself. That visit ultimately led to him approving $100 million dollars in relief for the city of Flint.  Her young age has not prevented her from making a significant impact on the dialogue around environmental racism and confronted the entire country with the reality faced by victims of state negligence. Her youthful honesty prevents political leaders from being able to ignore the consequences of neglectful leadership. She gives voice to the unheard hardships of Americans trapped by a collapsing and toxic infrastructure. 

In 2017 Mari continued her dedication to social justice by becoming a national youth ambassador to the Women’s March on Washington and the National Climate Mari. Mari is also dedicated to preventing bullying and works with the anti-bullying group Trendsetters Productions. She is also a member of the Flint Youth Justice League. She also sat on the 2019 Kid Box board of directors as the chairwoman of the board. She also proudly works with Eighteen by 18, a youth organization founded by her mentor Yara Shahidi.   Mari has also spoken twice at the March for Science about how the Flint water crisis has affected her community. Mari has a doll that is modeled after her by the doll company Lottie. She also sits on the Flint Youth Justice League and the MDE Anti-Racism Student Advisory Council. 

Mari has used her platform to not only bring awareness to the water crisis in her community but to also give back. Mari has raised over $600,000 for her Flint Kids projects including giving out over 17,000 backpacks stuffed with school supplies, a yearly  Christmas event with thousands of toys, easter baskets, movie screenings, and lots of other events centered around the kids in her community. Her book project where she gets books by authors of color into the hands of local children. Her dear Flint Kids letter project has received thousands of letters of support to the children of Flint from people all around the world.  She  also raised over $250k and given away over a million bottles of bottled water. But she takes the most pride in pivoting away from single-use bottled water to partnering with a company (Hydroviv) to produce her very own water filter, that is shipped all over the country to those that are facing toxic drinking water, to date she has raised over $600k to produce and distribute her filters. 

Mari Copeny has been featured in Teen Vogue, The Guardian, VICE, TIME, Refinery 29, The Washington Post, NBC News, Rewire, Buzzfeed, and more for her vocal opposition to the injustices of environmental racism. When Mari grows up she plans on running for president in 2044.

https://www.maricopeny.com/about

Describe your organization and your role.

I’m the Commissioner of Recreation, Youth & Workforce Services in Albany, NY – the Capital City of New York! My departments are the connecting links to get healthier and wealthier in our community.

Describe the most pressing challenges in your community, particularly for Black people, that your organization is addressing.

The Child Opportunity Index identified that over 50 percent of our Black boys are disconnected from opportunities in the areas of health & environment, education, and income. My departments have action plans and engagement strategies to help our residents routinely connect to opportunities in physical fitness, employment training, and career pathway exposure. 

We know that within the Albany region, there are areas that have been historically disenfranchised. So, this is long-term work. 

The investments in our youth programs aim to educate, expose, and explore opportunities in the work, business, and sports worlds. Because our programs serve people who are over 70 percent Black and half male, the goal is to educate these young men when they’re between 14 and 18 years old so this generation is not so disconnected from opportunity later.  We want to ensure that all of our city’s youth get a chance to contribute in places where their voice or input may not be heard at all.

Describe three of your proudest achievements for your organization and you.

My proudest moments of all time were delivering my daughter and son recently. My family means the world to me, and I’m most proud to be Dad.

Secondly, earning the U.S. Conference of Mayor’s Livability Award for our Summer Youth Employment Program model. We redesigned this program in the second year of a 4-year term to add a paid day for 1,200 youth that required them to expand their education by going to different postsecondary campuses on Fridays. This is not something that typically goes over well with a new administration, but we had faith that our youth would excel if we set a high bar. This recognition was validated when research concluded that participants were 66 percent more likely to graduate from high school than non-participants. 

And my third proudest moment comes when we have ribbon cutting ceremonies for our parks.  Working with the community to recreate a space that they have a hand in remaking brings the most joy. These parks are very special places. They’ve given me a lot of wonderful memories and feelings from my days as a child playing on playground, with all the stories I imagined and created with my friends. Working with the community, our department has been able to renovate equipment in 15 parks around the city since 2015. It’s a public servant’s dream to hear and see the community come together to work with each other and then see kids playing and enjoying our parks.

Why is this work so important in your community?

It’s a purpose I can’t run from. The work I’m doing was done for me. Sports changed my life and gave me networks that I’m still connected with and lessons that I continue to learn from. I’m also the product of grant-funded, government-supported enrichment programs, making me a direct example of how a government agency can foster growth and improve the life of a young person. 

What is your vision for your community and your work?

My vision for my community is a place where our unity is commonplace and it’s cool to be educated and engaged fully in conversation with neighbors, friends, colleagues, etc. My vision and hope are that the abandoned properties in our community are renovated by the folks in those communities, and they get a tax credit for it. And finally, my vision as Commissioner of Recreation, Youth & Workforce Services for Albany is to turn around the Child Opportunity Index results so that we focus on creating opportunity for our youth, build on all the lessons, and inspire people. 

https://www.clasp.org/blog/jonathan-p-jones-ms-commissioner-recreation-youth-workforce-services-0/

Throughout her ballet career, Misty Copeland has worked to break racial barriers in the world of dance.

She is doing it again — this time with an after-school dance program for children of color.

The Be Bold initiative will “make ballet more accessible, affordable and fun,” according to the program’s website. It will be an affordable, 12-week extracurricular based in New York City for children ages 8-10.

The program will provide lessons on the basics of ballet, music and health as well as offer tutoring and mentoring. It will take place in Boys & Girls Club centers and similar community-based, child-serving sites.

Copeland herself dedicates part of her success to a free ballet class offered by the Boys & Girls Club. She would go on to become the first Black woman to be named principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre company.

During her time in ABT, she publicly spoke out against the racism of some dance critics who questioned her body type for being too “bulky” or “busty.”

“I think it’s just something maybe that I will never escape from,” Copeland told NPR’s Steve Inskeep in 2014.

“But my mission, my voice, my story, my message, is not for them. And I think it’s more important to think of the people that I am influencing and helping to see a broader picture of what beauty is.”

Copeland has also written several books exploring the experiences of dancers of color — including her own. A memoir about Copeland’s friendship with Raven Wilkinson, her mentor and the first African American ballerina to tour the U.S., will be coming out in November.

Copeland also told the New York Times she is planning to return to the stage next year after going on a hiatus in December 2019.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/17/1123660178/misty-copeland-ballet-diversity-dance-program-be-bold

Octavia Payne is a member of the USA Ultimate National Team.

My name is Octavia Payne, but most people call me Opi. I’ve been playing ultimate for 10 years, starting at the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve been on four different club teams, including Washington, DC Scandal with whom I won two USA Ultimate national titles. I also won a championship with the 2013 U.S. World Games team and the U.S. Women’s National Team at the 2016 World Ultimate and Guts Championships in London.

When I’m not playing ultimate, I spend a lot of time cooking. I also love rock climbing. My day job is with a non-profit called World Resources Institute. My group helps fight deforestation using satellites.

Fun Facts about Octavia:

• Japanese is my first language.
• George Stubbs and I have the same exact birthday. My little half brother and I also have the same birthday (popular day apparently!).
• I’m an introvert and I hate thinking of fun facts about myself.

https://nationalteam.usaultimate.org/players/octavia-payne/

Maurice Ashley (born March 6, 1966) is a Jamaican-American chess player, author, and commentator.^[1][2] In 1999, he earned the FIDE title of Grandmaster (GM),^[3] making him the first black person to do so.^[4]

Ashley is well known as a commentator for high-profile chess events.^[5] He also spent many years teaching chess.^[6][7] On April 13, 2016, Ashley was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame.

Early life

Ashley was born in St. Andrew, Jamaica. He attended Wolmer’s Boys School in Jamaica, and then moved to the United States when he was 12.^[8]

He went to Brooklyn Technical High School.^[9] Ashley graduated from City College of New York (CCNY) with a B.A. in Creative Writing. While at City College, he represented the school in intercollegiate team competition.

Ashley said he discovered chess in Jamaica, where his brother played chess with his friends. He got more serious about chess during high school, where he grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and played in parks and clubs throughout New York City.^[9]

Ashley coached the Raging Rooks of Harlem, and the Dark Knights (also from Harlem), both of which won national championships under his guidance.^[6][10]

Career

In 1992, Ashley shared the United States Game/10 chess championship with Maxim Dlugy.^[11]

On March 14, 1999, Ashley beat Adrian Negulescu to complete the requirements for the Grandmaster title. This made him the first black chess Grandmaster.^[4]

In September 1999, Ashley founded the Harlem Chess Center,^[5] which has attracted such celebrities as Larry Johnson^[12] and Wynton Marsalis.

Along with GM Susan Polgar, Ashley was named 2003 Grandmaster of the Year by the U.S. Chess Federation.

In 2003, Ashley wrote an essay The End of the Draw Offer?, which raised discussion about ways to avoid quick agreed draws in chess tournaments.

In 2005, he wrote the book Chess for Success, relating his experiences and the positive aspects of chess. He was the main organizer for the 2005 HB Global Chess Challenge, with the biggest cash prize in history for an open chess tournament.

In 2007, Ashley returned to his birth country of Jamaica and became the first GM to ever participate in a tournament there. The tournament was the Frederick Cameron Open. After sweeping a field consisting of several of Jamaica’s top players, Ashley was upset in the final round by Jamaican National Master Jomo Pitterson.^[8]

In 2008, Ashley was featured in an interview for the CNN documentary Black in America. He was shown during one scene in the film Brooklyn Castle mentoring a young chess player. He was mentioned in the chess movie Life of a King starring Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Starting in the Fall of 2012, Ashley was a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and, between 2013 and 2015, Maurice was also a Fellow at Harvard University‘s Berkman Center for Internet & Society in a joint fellowship at both Harvard’s Berkman Center and the Media Lab at MIT. Currently, Maurice is a Research affiliate at the Media Lab at MIT.^[13][14][15]

In 2013, Ashley announced he was planning the highest-stakes open chess tournament in history, Millionaire Chess Open. Its first edition took place October 9–13, 2014 in Las Vegas.

In 2015, Maurice announced a partnership with the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis and Ascension, Your Move Chess. This program supports after school chess in the Florissant-Ferguson School District alongside other schools in the Saint Louis area. Longer term, the goal is to expand the program on a national level.^[16]

In February 2016, a video of Ashley defeating a “trash-talking” amateur chess player in Washington Square Park went viral.^[17][18]

On April 13, 2016, Ashley was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame along with Chess Grandmaster Gata Kamsky.^[19]

Commentator

Ashley has worked, and currently is working, as a chess commentator covering many events, including those of the Grand Chess Tour. He was one of the commentators of the two matches between world champion Garry Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue that took place in 1996 and 1997. He provided commentary for the Kasparov vs. Anand World Championship match in 1995. In 2003, Ashley hosted ESPN‘s broadcast of Kasparov’s match against X3D Fritz. He has also served as a commentator for the 2013–19 Sinquefield Cups, several US Chess Championships, and many other chess events.

Personal life

In 1993, Ashley married Michele Ashley-Johnson. Their daughter Nia was born the following year. Their son Jayden was born in 2002. The couple divorced in 2014.

Maurice’s sister is former world boxing champion Alicia Ashley, and his brother is former world kickboxing champion Devon Ashley.^[20][21] He once said “African[-]continent GMs do exist; but, according to the system of racial classification, I am the first Black GM in history… it matters, and doesn’t matter, all at the same time.”^[22][23]

Works and publications

Monographs

• Ashley, Maurice. “The End of the Draw Offer?” The 65th Square.
• Ashley, Maurice. Chess for Success: Using an Old Game to Build New Strengths in Children and Teens. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. ISBN 978-0-767-91568-7 OCLC 56793604
• Ashley, Maurice, and Graham Burgess. The Most Valuable Skills in Chess. London: Gambit, 2009. ISBN 978-1-904-60087-9 OCLC 907184357
• Ashley, Maurice. “Ferguson and The Chess Game of Life.” Jet. October 15, 2015.

Multimedia

• Ashley, Maurice. Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess For Beginning and Intermediate Players. Torrance, CA: Davidson & Associates, 1997. Electronic resource. ISBN 978-0-671-31579-5 OCLC 39350977
• “Maurice Ashley: Chess Grandmaster.” Gates, Jr. Henry Louis. America Beyond the Color Line: Ebony Towers. New York, N.Y.: Films Media Group, 2009. Starts at 2:19. OCLC 695008134
• Ashley, Maurice. Working backward to solve problems. TEDYouth 2012.
• Ashley, Maurice and Mobile MATCH, LLC. Learn Chess! with Maurice Ashley. Mobile phone app. 2012.
• Ashley, Maurice. Demetrious Johnson Charitable Foundation Lecture with GM Maurice Ashley: Chess for Football Players. Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. August 13, 2014.
• Ashley, Maurice. “Grandmaster Maurice Ashley plays trash talking guy in Washington Square Park.” Outtake. The Tim Ferriss Experiment. February 16, 2016. The video went viral and has 1.4 million views on Maurice’s YouTube channel.
• Ashley, Maurice. “Maurice Ashley 2016 US Chess Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.“

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

Leah Penniman (c. 1980) is a farmer, educator, author, and food sovereignty activist.^[1] Penniman is Co-Founder, Co-Director and Program Manager of Soul Fire Farm, in Grafton, New York.^[2]

Biography

Leah Penniman was born to Reverend doctor Adele Smith Penniman, a Haitian American pastor and activist, and a white father. Penniman was raised in central Massachusetts with two siblings as the only family of color after the parents split and Adele moved to Boston.^[3][4] Penniman began farming at age 16, working with The Food Project in Boston in 1996 when staying with their mother.^[3][5][6] Penniman received an MA in Science Education and BA in Environmental Science and International Development from Clark University.^[5] After graduation, Penniman lived in a food desert in Albany, New York and was on WIC after giving birth. This experience led Penniman to see the need for food sovereignty in Black and Brown communities.^[3]

In 2006, Penniman purchased 72-acres of land in Grafton, New York to co-found Soul Fire Farm, and the farm officially opened in 2011. The name is taken from the song Soulfire by Lee “Scratch” Perry and originally focused on a farm share for low-income people.^[3] As Soul Fire Farm has grown, its mission is to end racism and injustice in the food system and by reclaiming the inherent right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system as Black and Brown people.^[5] The farm’s flagship program is the Black Latinx Farmers Immersion, a 50-hour course to train beginner farmers. By 2018, 500 individuals had taken the course.^[6]

Penniman has been farming since 1996 and teaching since 2002. Penniman has worked at the Food Project, Farm School, Many Hands Organic Farm, Youth Grow and with farmers internationally in Ghana, Haiti, and Mexico.^[5] Penniman has also worked as a science teacher at University Park Campus School, Tech Valley High School, and Darrow School and was founding director of the Harriet Tubman Democratic High School.^[7]

In 2018, Penniman published Farming While Black, a book designed to create sustainable, equitable, profitable, and dignified relationships with food that historically disenfranchised communities eat, and the land it comes from.^[6]

Recognition

The work of Penniman and Soul Fire Farm has been recognized by the Soros Racial Justice Fellowship, Fulbright Program, Presidential Award for Science Teaching, NYS Health Emerging Innovator Awards, and Andrew Goodman Foundation, among others.^[8]

In 2019, Penniman was awarded the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award for facilitating food sovereignty programs.^[9]

Publications

• 2020: To free ourselves we must feed ourselves. Rapid Response Opinion, Agriculture and Human Values (published May 11)
• 2018: Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Decolonizing Land, Food, and Agriculture. Chelsea Green Publishing (November 8, 2018)^[10]
• 2018: Uprooting Racism, Seeding Sovereignty. Schumacher Center for a New Economics.
• 2018: Sowing the Seeds of Food Justice: A Guide for Farmers Who Want to Supply Low Income Communities While Maintaining Financial Sustainability, SARE Research Manual
• 2017: Land Justice, published by Food First. Contributing author.
• 2017: Perma/Culture, published by Routledge. Contributing author.
• 2017: Cherry Bombe Cookbook, published by Clarkson Potter, Contributing author.
• 2017: 4 Not-So-Easy Ways to Dismantle Racism in the Food System. no ! Magazine
• 2016: At Soul Fire Farm #blacklivesmatter and #black land matters, Fortune Magazine
• 2016: After a Century of Decline, Black Farmers on the Rise YES!Magazine
• 2015: USDA Puts $34.3 million into local food, but is it enough?YES! Magazine
• 2015: Four Ways Mexico’s Indigenous Farmers are Practicing the Agriculture of the Future. YES! Magazine
• 2015: Living and Learning in Oaxaca, New York Organic News, Volume 33, No 1, Spring
• 2015: Radical Farmers Use Fresh Food to Fight Racial Injustice.YES! Magazine (Republished in Solutions Journal) 2014: Black and Latino Farmers Immersion. YES! Magazine (Republished 2015 in Urban Food Stories)

Personal life

Penniman identifies as genderqueer/multigender.^[11] Penniman lives on the farm with a partner, Jonah Vitale-Wolff and their two children, Neshima and Emet Vitale-Penniman.^[7]

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