Category: Black Excellence

It wasn’t until September 2021 that Sesame Street — which started in November 1969 — got its first full-time Black female puppeteer. That’s when Megan Piphus Peace joined the cast full time and landed the role of Gabrielle, a 6-year-old puppet on the classic children’s show.

This month, as she marks one year working with Sesame Street, she’s decided to dedicate her career to entertainment.

“I’m so glad I had the opportunity to be on Sesame Street and encourage other kids to dream as big as their imaginations will allow,” the 29-year-old tells NPR’s Weekend Edition.”I always dreamed of working in television, but I never imagined myself being at Sesame Street.”

A passion for puppetry

Her interest in puppetry and performing started when she was a child.

Piphus Peace says a woman at her church invited her to a puppetry conference where she first learned about the art. She saw female ventriloquists who would sing and tell stories with their characters.

She went home and told her parents she wanted to learn ventriloquism.

“I had never seen a ventriloquist before. And at the time, I didn’t realize that Shari Lewis, one of my idols … was a ventriloquist until I was much older because she was so good,” Piphus Peace says.

Lewis, the original puppeteer of Lamb Chop, performed puppetry and ventriloquism on television for decades, most notably on The Shari Lewis Show and the PBS program Lamb Chop’s Play-Along. Piphus Peace grew up watching her work.

“Lamb Chop was my friend and Shari was just her friend too,” she laughs.

Piphus Peace watched tapes, got her own puppet and started entertaining her classmates.

“I realized I found my passion in making children laugh and smile through puppetry.”

Becoming the show’s first Black female puppeteer

Her journey to Sesame Street was preceded by Kevin Clash, a Black male puppeteer who started with the show in the 1980s. It wasn’t until 2021 that a Black female puppeteer would do the same.

“It’s a matter of representation,” Piphus Peace says. “It’s not very often that you see women puppeteers in general and also Black women puppeteers. I can probably count on one hand the number that there are.”

She first performed with Sesame Street in 2020 as part of a special with CNN. Then after a year of training in what she calls Muppet-style puppetry, she formally joined the cast in 2021.

Piphus Peace says she hopes that by being the first Black female puppeteer on the show,more doors will open for women and people of color.

She notes that the show has had Black women in other production positions “who have been woven into the fabric of Sesame Street over the years.” That has inspired her to become a producer one day.

Discussing race on Sesame Street

Piphus Peace praises the show’s team of writers and producers, saying they take the hardest topics and frame them in a way that children can understand.

“One of the lessons that we have was on using your voice. It speaks subtly to equity,” she says. “You know, we didn’t have Gabrielle go into the camera and say, ‘Black Lives Matter.’ She says that we all have a voice that matters and we can use our voice.”

Piphus Peace hopes to bring an unwavering sense of confidence and love of self to her character.

“I want her confidence to just shine through the screen so that little girls and boys around the world are filled with confidence in themselves.”

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/25/1124974188/sesame-street-first-black-female-puppeteer-megan-piphus-peace

Revisiting San Juan Hill, the neighborhood destroyed to make way for Lincoln Center

Think back to the opening of the 2021 film version of the musical West Side Story. The very first thing we see is acres of rubble, and a sign: “This property purchased by the New York Housing Authority for slum clearance.”

That’s an allusion to a real neighborhood that was destroyed to make way for Lincoln Center. In the 1950s, San Juan Hill was mostly a community of Black and Puerto Rican residents. Their story — and even the name of their neighborhood — has been mostly scrubbed from history. Now, a new piece of music being premiered by the New York Philharmonic aims to acknowledge that past.

Long before Lincoln Center existed, San Juan Hill was a nexus for African American and Caribbean culture. It nurtured many jazz greats, who lived and played there — including alto saxophonist Benny Carter, who grew up in the neighborhood, and pianist Herbie Nichols, who was born there to parents from St. Kitts and Trinidad. Duke Ellington and cornet player Rex Stewart even co-wrote a tune named in tribute to this community, where dance halls and jazz clubs thrived.

But in the 1950s, the powerful urban planner Robert Moses led the effort to have San Juan Hill razed, with the intention of establishing a midtown campus for Fordham University and creating Lincoln Center. He displaced more than 7,000 families as well as some 800 businesses. In a 1977 interview with New York’s public television station, WNET, Moses defended destroying San Juan Hill.

When the interviewer asked about San Juan Hill, Moses retorted: “Now I ask you, what was that neighborhood? It was a Puerto Rican slum. You remember it?” No, the host admitted.

“Yeah, well, I lived on one of those streets there for a number of years, and I know exactly what it was like,” Moses responded. (There is no record of Moses residing in this neighborhood, according to Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of Moses, The Power Broker.)

“It was the worst slum in New York,” Moses insisted in the television interview. “You want to leave it there? Why? Out of account of neighborhood business? Christ, you never could have been there. That was the worst slum in New York,” he bellowed, clapping his hands for emphasis. “And we cleared it out.”

Professor Yarimar Bonilla is the director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. She says Robert Moses intentionally used highly charged language about San Juan Hill.

“Robert Moses in particular,” Bonilla says, “He used a lot of kind of medical language talking about the slums as these cancers that had to be eradicated and cleaned up, almost as if it was a disease that could spread.”

60 years after Lincoln Center’s opening and a $550 million renovation later, the New York Philharmonic’s home at Lincoln Center, David Geffen Hall, is reopening this weekend. Lincoln Center is taking this opportunity to readdress the narrative of its founding.

It invited Etienne Charles — a composer, trumpet player, percussionist and Guggenheim fellow — to think deeply about that complicated past, and create a piece of music that would acknowledge that hidden history. So Etienne Charles created a new work for the Philharmonic and his band, Creole Soul called San Juan Hill: A New York Story.

Charles is originally from Trinidad. He had never heard of San Juan Hill until he moved to New York to study for a master’s degree at Juilliard, which is part of the Lincoln Center campus.

Charles eventually realized, however, that the razed neighborhood had significant Caribbean connections — and to jazz. Initially, Charles learned that pianist Herbie Nichols (whose roots were also in Trinidad) was from San Juan Hill. Not long after, the Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander told Charles that composer and pianist Thelonious Monk had also grown up in San Juan Hill.

“Monty Alexander came to my house,” Charles recounts, “And we were working on some music for his concert. He started playing Monk’s music and he’s like, ‘You realize Monk’s music has a Caribbean bounce, right?’ And I said, ‘I never thought about it.’ He started playing Green Chimneys — ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom, ba-doo-boo, boom, boom, boom, boom, ba doo,'” Charles says, enunciating the Monk tune’s rhythm. “Monk heard Caribbean music in San Jan Hill all around him.”

Charles notes that once Lincoln Center opened in 1962, even its physical campus felt literally exclusive to some. The institution’s general shape, he says, is of the letter C, with a large plaza and impressive fountain facing Broadway. “And the C has its back to the neighborhood,” he adds — an area that includes the Amsterdam Houses, a public housing project immediately behind Lincoln Center. “You can make huge statements with architecture,” the musician observes. “It’s body language with bricks.”

Charles recalls an interview that he and one of his San Juan Hill collaborators, photographer Hollis King, did for this project. “Hollis asked somebody who still lives in the neighborhood, ‘What was your most memorable musical event in the neighborhood?'”

“And he said,” Charles continues, “My most memorable musical event was when Tito Puente played.’ And then he added, ‘But it wasn’t in the neighborhood. It was at Lincoln Center.'” Charles pauses to let that exchange sink in. “There’s sometimes that moment when somebody tells you what you see.”

Charles’ meditation on San Juan Hill will be the very first piece of music to be heard in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. It’s also the first time that Lincoln Center has ever commissioned music for the New York Philharmonic. Charles worked with a number of creative multi-discipline collaborators to make San Juan Hill come alive.

Shanta Thake is the chief artistic officer at Lincoln Center. She says commissioning Charles to write such a piece was a crucial moment of reckoning for the institution.

“What an example, what a moment that would be, to open David Geffen Hall with this commission, with this story, and really confront our past head-on as we move into the future,” Thake says. “Not kind of blank slate everything, but really make things more complicated for ourselves — and I think in a way actually allow us to make space for what’s next.”

Thake continues, “I think the cultural sector has even more of a responsibility to hold our histories and not to plaster over them. It matters whose stories we have historically told. It certainly matters that we tell our own story fully, and with all the complexity and the mistakes that we made. That’s okay.”

In his musical portrait of San Juan Hill, Etienne Charles wanted to move through many dimensions — chronological, stylistic, and demographic, from Gullah Geechee shipyard workers to recently arrived European communities, as well as historical moments and figures in the neighborhood.

“This piece is about showing the magic of the culture that was created when these people came together here,” Charles says. “Gullah dance here, paseo rhythm there, Antillean waltz here, Sicilian folk chant there, Irish drunk song there — all of these different pieces together mixed up, the blues from the South. It created a vibe that fed not just American culture, but influenced everything that would happen and come out of New York for the next 50 years.”

Charles’ piece references lots of music made and heard in the neighborhood — including the Charleston dance. Although it’s named after the South Carolina city, it was actually born right in San Juan Hill, thanks to composer and pianist James P. Johnson, who had grown up partly in the neighborhood and later frequently played at one of its clubs.

“Then from the Charleston, we get to the serious part,” Charles explains, “Which is urban removal, with the 10 years from 1949 to 1959 when it went from the Housing Act to the groundbreaking of Lincoln Center. And then the last part is a piece called House Rent Party, where was you know, we could all come together.”

Tickets for this world premiere are priced as pay-what-you-want, starting at $5 per seat, with some free tickets available the day of the performance — another way of making Lincoln Center a truly welcoming space for all New Yorkers.

San Juan Hill: A New York Story has its world premiere this Saturday.

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/07/1126189129/san-juan-hill-lincoln-center

Carla Diane Hayden (born August 10, 1952)^[1][2] is an American librarian and the 14th Librarian of Congress.^[3][4] Since the creation of the office of the Librarian of Congress in 1802, Hayden is both the first African American and the first woman to hold this post.^[5][6][7][8] Appointed in 2016, she is the first professional librarian to hold the post since 1974.^[9]

Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Hayden began her career at the Chicago Public Library, and earned a doctorate in library science from the University of Chicago. From 1993 until 2016, she was the CEO of Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, and president of the American Library Association (ALA) from 2003 to 2004.^[10][11][12] During her presidency, she was the leading voice of the ALA in speaking out against provisions of the newly passed United States Patriot Act, which impacted public information services.^[13][14]

In 2020, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.^[15]

Early life

Hayden was born in Tallahassee, Florida, to Bruce Kennard Hayden Jr., at that time director of the String Department at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, and Colleen Hayden (née Dowling), a social worker.^[2][16] Her parents met while attending Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois.^[2] Hayden grew up in Queens, New York. When she was 10 years old, her parents divorced and she moved with her mother to Chicago, Illinois.^[2][17] She had a younger half-brother from her father’s second marriage, Bruce Kennard Hayden, III, who died in 1992.^[18]

Hayden’s mother’s side of the family comes from Helena, Arkansas. Her father’s maternal side of the family, who eventually settled in Du Quoin, Illinois, had been enslaved, which is chronicled in the book, It’s Good to Be Black, by Ruby Berkley Goodwin.^[2][19]

Hayden said that her passion for reading was inspired by Marguerite de Angeli’s Bright April, the 1946 book about a young African-American girl who was in the Brownies. At Chicago’s South Shore High School, Hayden became interested in books on British history and “cozy mysteries”.^[20] She attended MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and then transferred to Roosevelt University.^[2]

While she loved libraries she didn’t consider it as a career until after she had graduated from Roosevelt University with majors in political science and African history in 1973. Hayden received her master’s degree in Library Science in 1977, and a doctorate degree in Library Science in 1987,^[21] both from the University of Chicago Graduate Library School.^[22]

Career

Hayden began her library career at the Chicago Public Library telling stories to children with autism.^[8] From 1973 to 1979, she worked as an Associate/Children’s Librarian at the Whitney Young branch. From 1979 to 1982, she served as the Young Adult Services Coordinator. From 1982 to 1987, Hayden worked as a Library Services Coordinator at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.^[23]

Hayden moved to Pittsburgh, where she was an associate professor, teaching at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences from 1987 to 1991.^[23] At the time, well known African-American librarians, E. J. Josey and Spencer Shaw, were on the faculty there.^[2]

Hayden then moved back to Chicago and became Deputy Commissioner and Chief Librarian of the Chicago Public Library, posts she held from 1991 to 1993.^[23] During her time working at the Chicago Public Library, Hayden became acquainted with Michelle Obama and Barack Obama.^[24]

From 1993 to 2016, Hayden was Executive Director of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library.^[23]

Enoch Pratt Free Library

On July 1, 1993, Hayden began the appointed position of Director at Enoch Pratt Free Library, the public library system in Baltimore, Maryland.^[25]

During her tenure, Hayden oversaw a library co-operative with 22 locations, hundreds of employees, and an annual budget of $40 million. She also oversaw the first new branch opening in 35 years along with the renovation of the co-operative’s central branch, at a cost of $112 million. During the 2015 protests of the death of Freddie Gray, Hayden kept Baltimore’s libraries open, an act for which she received extensive praise.^[26] When asked about the incident in a 2016 Time magazine interview she stated that the library became a command center of sorts as many stores in the community closed, and that “we knew that [people] would look for that place of refuge and relief and opportunity.”^[27] She left this position on August 11, 2016, when she was appointed to the Library of Congress.^[18]

ALA presidency

As president of the American Library Association (ALA) from 2003 to 2004, Hayden chose the theme “Equity of Access”.^{[28][29][30][31]}

In her role as ALA President, Hayden was vocal in her public opposition to the Patriot Act, leading a battle for the protections of library users’ privacy.^[2][32] She especially objected to the special permissions contained in Section 215 of that law, which gave the Justice Department and the FBI the power to access library user records. Hayden often sparred publicly with then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft over the language of the law.^[33] Ashcroft often ridiculed the library community, and stated that the ALA had been “misled into opposing provisions of the act that make it easier for FBI agents to fish through library records”.^[34] Hayden’s response was immediate, stating that the ALA was “deeply concerned that the Attorney General would be so openly contemptuous” (to the library community), while also pointing out that librarians had been monitored and been under FBI surveillance as far back as the McCarthy Era. Hayden asserted that Ashcroft should release information as to the number of libraries that had been visited under the provisions of Section 215.^[35] She has stated that the concern stemmed from making sure that a balance existed “between security and personal freedoms.”^[27]

As a result of her stand for the rights of every American, she became Ms. magazine’s 2003 Woman of the Year. In her interview with the magazine, she stated:

Libraries are a cornerstone of democracy—where information is free and equally available to everyone. People tend to take that for granted, and they don’t realize what is at stake when that is put at risk.^[36]

Hayden says, “[Librarians] are activists, engaged in the social work aspect of librarianship. Now we are fighters for freedom”.^[36]

Along with her objections of the Patriot Act, Hayden has done much in her career in outreach programs. As ALA President she wrote:

At a time when our public is challenged on multiple fronts, we need to recommit ourselves to the ideal of providing equal access to everyone, anywhere, anytime, and in any format … By finally embracing equity of access we will be affirming our core values, recognizing realities, and assuring our future.^[28][37]

One program she is notable for is for the outreach program she began at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. This outreach program included “an after school center for Baltimore teens offering homework assistance and college and career counseling.” Because of this, Hayden received Library Journal‘s Librarian of the Year Award.^[38]

In January 2010, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Hayden as a member of the National Museum and Library Services Board and National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities.^[39]

14th Librarian of Congress

On February 24, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Hayden to serve as the next Librarian of Congress.^[24] In a press release from the White House, President Obama stated:

Michelle and I have known Carla Hayden for a long time, since her days working at the Chicago Public Library, and I am proud to nominate her to lead our nation’s oldest federal institution as our 14th Librarian of Congress. Hayden has devoted her career to modernizing libraries so that everyone can participate in today’s digital culture. She has the proven experience, dedication, and deep knowledge of our nation’s libraries to serve our country well and that’s why I look forward to working with her in the months ahead. If confirmed, Hayden would be the first woman and the first African American to hold the position – both of which are long overdue.^[24]

After her nomination, more than 140 library, publishing, educational, and academic organizations signed a letter of support. The letter said in part that Congress had “an opportunity to equip the Library and the nation with the unique combination of professional skills and sensibilities that Dr. Hayden will bring to the post.”^[42]

The nomination was received by the U.S. Senate and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.^[43][44] On April 20, 2016, the Committee on Rules and Administration, chaired by Senator Roy Blunt with Charles E. Schumer as ranking member, held the confirmation hearing.^[41][45][46] Hayden opposed the 2000 Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which was a sticking point in her nomination to become Librarian of Congress.^[3][47]

On July 13, 2016, she was confirmed as Librarian of Congress by a 74–18 vote in the United States Senate.^[26] Hayden was sworn in by Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts on September 14, 2016.^[48][49] Even though more than eighty percent of American librarians are women, for over two hundred years the position of Librarian of Congress was filled exclusively by white men,^[50] making Hayden the first woman and the first African American to hold the position. Notably, she is also a librarian by profession. Many past Librarians of Congress have been scholars and historians.^[51]

As Librarian of Congress, Hayden says she hopes to continue “the movement to open the treasure chest that is the Library of Congress.”^[52] Hayden said much of her early effort will focus on building and retaining staff.^[53] In the next five years, Hayden will also focus on making sure that at least half of the library’s 162 million items are digitized, especially rare collections.^[20] Hayden hopes for the library to have live performances and broadcasts and have traveling exhibits tour America that tie in with educational programming for schoolkids.^[54]

Hayden aspires to modernize the institution during her tenure by both preserving the collection and modernizing access to it, as she will be the first Librarian of Congress appointed “since the advent of the internet.” In a press release by the ALA Washington Office, ALA President Julie Todaro said, “Hayden holds a profound understanding of the integral role libraries play in formal education, community-based learning, and the promotion of individual opportunity and community progress. I believe that through her visionary leadership the Library of Congress will soon mirror society’s rapidly changing information environment, while successfully preserving the cultural record of the United States.”^[9] She spoke of her desire to reach people outside of Washington, D.C., especially in rural areas and in accessible formats to people with visual disabilities. Another one of her main goals is to improve the infrastructure and “technological capacity” of the Library of Congress.^[23] She is undecided if the United States Copyright Office, which is overseen by the Library, should be independent of the Library, but believes the Office should be “fully functional” and be able carry to out its mandates to protect creators.^[41]

In January 2017, Hayden hosted 4-year old Daliyah Marie Arana as Librarian of Congress for the day.^[55]

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

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