Category: Black Excellence

Meet the teenager who helped push Florida toward cleaner energy

MELBOURNE, Fla. — For most of his 15 years, Levi Draheim led a beachy life on a barrier island on Florida’s east coast, swimming, surfing and sailing in the nearshore waves. He dreamed of someday becoming a marine biologist. But Levi’s world is changing.

Warming temperatures led to widespread Sargassum seaweed and harmful algae blooms in the Atlantic Ocean and 156-mile Indian River Lagoon, which together encircle the island. The seaweed and algae blooms have left beaches stinking with rotting seaweed and dead marine life. In the Indian River Lagoon, the algae blooms have killed seagrass, leading to an unprecedented die-off of manatees that consume the marine plants. On some days, Levi wore a mask at the beach to guard against the smell.

Warming temperatures also have contributed to more frequent and damaging storms, and in 2017 a series of storms including Hurricane Irma, which wrought billions of dollars in damage across the state, caused floodwaters to rise 18 inches in Levi’s front yard. His family had to fortify the home with sandbags to prevent further damage. After Levi’s mother became pregnant with his half-sister Juniper, a curious 2-year-old with sparse blond hair and big brown eyes, the family decided to abandon the island and move to the mainland.

“It’s kind of disappointing not being able to live on the barrier island anymore, because there’s so much fun stuff that I could do. Most of my friends, they live on the barrier island,” says Levi, now in Melbourne, Fla. “It’s a mix of disappointment and also frustration, frustration with leaders.”

Earlier this year, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried announced a plan to put the state on a path toward cleaner energy, cutting the emissions Florida contributes to the climate disruptions that are already battering it. Behind the plan was a focused campaign by some 200 young Floridians all under the age of 25. Levi was the youngest.

Young Floridians filed a petition

The young Floridians had found something in state statutes, with help from Our Children’s Trust, an advocacy group, that Florida leaders, including Fried, apparently had overlooked: that Fried’s department is mandated to set goals for enhancing renewable energy use in the state. In Florida, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services oversees the state’s Office of Energy.

The young Floridians filed a petition for rulemaking in January admonishing the state leaders and especially Fried for ignoring the statutory mandate. The petition called on the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and Fried to set goals for moving Florida toward 100% clean energy by 2050. Levi felt proud of holding elected leaders accountable but felt they were capable of more.

“I’m glad that they’re doing something instead of not doing anything. But still, I feel like they could have done better,” Levi says about the rule, which was finalized on Aug. 9. “Like with a parent, that they know that their kid just ran this race and placed fairly decently. They placed third. But they knew that their kid has the potential to do more. I guess it’s, in some ways, it’s sort of like that. Because I know that there’s more that they can do. But I’m glad that they did their best, and I’m glad they did something.”

Florida’s new goals call for 100% renewable energy by 2050

Nearly half of states, along with Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have goals for moving toward 100% clean energy by midcentury, a benchmark scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The Biden administration is aiming for 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.

Florida is among the states most vulnerable to climate change and yet until now has lacked any real plan to address the main cause behind warming temperatures and wean the state from fossil fuels.

Most of Florida’s electricity comes from natural gas plants. Republicans who control the state have been hostile to such goals, leaving some local governments to step in with goals of their own. In 2021, the Republican-controlled state Legislature struck back with a measure effectively banning most local goals.

Agriculture Commissioner Fried, a Democrat, is running in the state primary Aug. 23 to ultimately take on Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, in this year’s gubernatorial race, and she has railed against the governor for his inaction on the issue. DeSantis has focused instead on resilience projects, saying he is “not a global warming person.”

Florida’s new goals call on utilities to move toward 40% clean energy by 2030, 63% by 2035, 82% by 2040 and 100% by 2050. The goals are the same as those proposed by the young Floridians in their petition and are based on a study by Evolved Energy Research, a consulting firm that did similar studies for other states.

The young Floridians’ 121-page petition relies on state policy dating back some 15 years to when former Gov. Charlie Crist, then a Republican, was in office. Crist, now a Democratic congressman representing the Tampa area, is running against Fried this month in the Florida Democratic primary.

“We read the law, literally,” says Andrea Rodgers, senior litigation attorney at Our Children’s Trust, about the Crist-era statute. The group filed the petition on behalf of the young Floridians, including Levi. “When we saw that, that was a mandatory duty that had not been fulfilled, that’s when we came up with a strategy to file the petition for rulemaking.”

The Crist administration’s clean energy goals effectively were abandoned in 2011 when his successor — former Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican and now U.S. senator — took office.

Since DeSantis took office in 2019, he has strived to make some environmental issues administration priorities. The governor, a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, has put millions of dollars toward the Everglades and other treasured but troubled waterways. But he has faced criticism for doing little about Florida’s biggest environmental threat: climate change.

“I have a light inside me”

Now on the mainland, Levi lives with his mother, stepfather, half-sister Juniper and dog Basil, a Staffordshire terrier and treeing Walker coonhound mix with one brown eye and one blue eye. His mom, Leigh-Ann Draheim, raises Juniper, home-schools Levi and works at the family’s church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brevard in West Melbourne.

Stepdad James Kilby is a professional photographer and tends the family’s elaborate home garden, aimed at protecting fragile local waters from harmful lawn fertilizers and also sustaining the family. At the moment he is raising fruits, vegetables and herbs, with plans for more.

Levi is an affable teen with a bright smile and hair that usually he wears in a “giant Afro,” which he describes as a “big part of who I am,” although when we meet his hair is closely shorn. He is an accomplished unicycler and spends his spare time sailing in the Indian River Lagoon and also volunteering at the Brevard Zoo. He now dreams of becoming a search-and-rescue dog handler, because he loves animals and loves helping people.

“My mom says that, I don’t know how she usually describes it, that I have a light inside me,” he says with his mom beside him at the kitchen table. Works of art adorn the walls throughout the home, colorful eclectic paintings from local artists. Many, like one of a fish skeleton and blue-and-green Earth, share a common theme of the environment..

“I don’t know what that means exactly,” Levi continued about the light inside him, “but my mom says I have a light inside of me that helps me be a better person.”

Leigh-Ann Draheim stepped in to help clarify. “He’s always had this really good energy about him that people are drawn to,” she says. “Even when he was very little, people would talk to him at the grocery store or at the library or whatever. He just had this sort of energy about him. So I think when he fell into this role I think it was a good thing for him, because people are, for whatever reason, interested in Levi.”

Levi got involved with Our Children’s Trust through his church. In 2015, he was among 21 young plaintiffs from across the country to file a lawsuit against the Obama administration and later, the Trump administration, challenging the federal government’s development of fossil fuels. At 8 years old Levi was the youngest. The plaintiffs contended that the system violated their constitutional rights to freedom, life and property. In 2020, an appeals court judge threw out the case.

Levi attended all the court hearings in Eugene, Ore., and traveled to Washington, D.C., to talk with congressional leaders about the lawsuit. His mom chaperoned. The other plaintiffs became like siblings for Levi, but the hardest part was sitting still through the hearings and meetings, his mom recalled.

“He would sit there frustrated going, ‘Don’t you see what’s happening? There’s hurricanes. We’ve had to evacuate my house,'” she says. “He didn’t understand all the legal stuff. He just understood that his environment was being affected, and that’s what he cared about.”

In 2018, Levi joined another lawsuit with other young Floridians against the Scott administration challenging the state’s energy system. In 2021, an appeals court dismissed that case, too. But the young Floridians were not ready to give up. The attorneys went back to the statutes and discovered the mandate involving the Department of Agriculture and renewable energy goals.

For Florida, climate change means hotter temperatures, rising seas and more frequent and damaging storms. By 2045, the DeSantis administration predicts some $26 billion in residential property statewide will face chronic flooding.

Levi has found his involvement in the litigation rewarding but also frustrating, in a Republican-led state that has taken almost no action on climate change for about a decade. Most of his friends have been supportive of his activism, but a few do not get it, he says. One friend asked why not speak up about “bigger” issues, like racism and homophobia.

Levi says he feels a unique responsibility about climate change as a person of color. He points out low-income communities and communities of color often are more vulnerable to impacts.

“African-American people sometimes, most of the time we don’t live in as safe, or as strong a neighborhood,” Levi says. “Or if we do, then it’s in the area that is more greatly affected than some other people that may have better opportunities.”

After spending half of his life involved in climate litigation aimed at holding federal and state leaders accountable on fossil fuels, Levi says he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“If you were given an opportunity to stop an explosion that would kill everyone, and you’re given that opportunity to stop it. If you don’t take that opportunity and you survive, that’s something that will always be there, that you’ll always know that you didn’t do something that you could’ve done,” he says. “So I think that if you think about it that way, that if I didn’t, if I don’t take action, then that will be something that will hang with me, that I’ll know that I didn’t do something that I could have done.”

This story was produced in partnership with Inside Climate News.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/14/1117040415/florida-renewable-energy-young-activists

For this 89-year-old Gullah Geechee chef, cooking is about heart

Lots of home cooks would be excited to get a book deal. In the case of one home chef, she got that opportunity at the age of 89 years old. Emily Meggett is from the low country of South Carolina, and NPR traveled to her home on Edisto Island to appreciate some of her cooking.

Edisto Island is a beautiful, quiet community of about 2,000 people, nearly an hour’s drive south of Charleston. The roads are framed by massive oak trees draped with Spanish moss; there’s a tang of sea salt in the air. Ms. Emily Meggett is known far and wide as the matriarch of Edisto.

I’m with her in her cozy home kitchen, where she’s going to teach me how to make a local classic: shrimp and grits with gravy. As she chops up some salt pork to get us started, she recalls the first thing she remembers making as a girl. “Grits!” she exclaims. “And the salt pork right here.”

Ms. Emily is a member of the Gullah Geechee people. Her community can trace their ancestry to West and central Africans brought to these shores and enslaved. In insulated locations throughout the coastal areas of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, they managed to preserve much of their rich culture, language, and music.

Her cookbook is called Gullah Geechee Home Cooking (get recipes for Benne Cookies, Red Rice and Chicken Perloo). Right now, Ms. Emily is focused on making her gravy: salt pork, onion, flour and some seasoning salt. That’s it.

“You watch me every step of the way,” she instructs, stirring the pot constantly with her favorite spoon. This virtuoso in the kitchen doesn’t bother with a whisk. Still, her gravy is as smooth as silk.

“I’m from the old school,” she says. “People add things, to see how that’s gonna taste. But sometimes I think they jazz it up too much! This is tradition, how I learned how to cook it. Wash the grits. Wash your meat. Fry your meat. Put your onion in there. Put your flour in there, make your gravy and your seasoning. Nothing else. That’s your tradition.”

Some of Ms. Emily’s other recipes are intensely local too, like her delicious benne wafers, sweet little cookies made with local sesame seeds. Benne seeds were brought over from West Africa by enslaved people and became an important staple in their hidden gardens.

Ms. Emily’s family kept their own gardens at home, too. They grew their vegetables, beans and fruit; they raised hogs, chickens, and other livestock. They fished and hunted. “We even had our own rice pond when I was growing up,” she says.

Ms. Emily’s ancestors, like other enslaved people brought to the Carolinas, were expert rice cultivators. And rice remains foundational in Ms. Emily’s cooking. She says if anyone’s going to try only two recipes in her book, it’s two Gullah Geechee staples: “Red rice and the Hoppin’ John.”

Gullah Geechee red rice is kin to jollof rice, a tomato-based recipe popular across western Africa. Her Hoppin’ John is a little different than the version many folks know from Southern cuisine. Instead of being made with blander black-eyed peas, here they’re made with nutty-tasting field peas.

Her beloved late husband Jessie grew up nearby too, in a two-room cabin that previous generations had lived in as enslaved people. In 2017, that cabin was relocated to Washington, D.C., where it’s now on permanent display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Ms. Emily, who friends around the island call “M.P.,” recounts plenty of family stories as well as her own, complex history in Gullah Geechee Home Cooking.

“When I came along, I guess I was the last of the slaves,” she says. As a teenager, she began babysitting the white children of the wealthy owners of local mansions as well as the children of Black workers at those houses. “When I went over to babysit, I got a dollar and 25 cents, from 8 o’clock in the morning until three in the afternoon. And that was in the 50s.”

Not long after, her mother told her she had to choose: she could either work in the fields or find something else. She became a cook for some of those wealthy white families. One of those was the Dodge family from Maine — and Ms. Emily cooked for them for 45 years.

“When I went over to the Dodge house, a week’s pay was $11 and 15 cents all week! And every year, it went up a dollar and three penny,” she recalls.

“I started from the bottom of the barrel,” she says emphatically. “Up to this time, I think I did good for myself and also my children because if I wasn’t be taught what to do and how to do it then I couldn’t have taught my children.”

Those recipes are imprinted in her memory. “That’s how I cook,” she says. “I cook by my brain, and my hand and my heart.”

Heart is a big word with Ms. Emily. She has always looked after Edisto. When the side door into her kitchen is open, folks know they can stop in for a plate of hot food. (Conversely, wherever she goes on the island, she is gifted with ingredients.) Cooking, for Ms. Emily, is about sharing history — and, as she says in her book, food is one of the most important ways we take care of each other. That was the whole impetus for her cookbook, she says.

“A lot of times, we has a treasure in our head,” she observes. “And we will die and go to heaven, and take that treasury with us. And why can’t we just share it with somebody else here? I’ll get more out of that, to share it.”

Gretchen Smith is the director of the Edisto Island Historic Preservation Society. She is thrilled that her good friend Emily Meggett is attracting so much attention with her cookbook.

“It’s got so much more than recipes in the book,” Smith says. “It’s stories, it’s anecdotes, it’s the culture of the Gullah community, it’s not just a cookbook by any means. And I think that’s really what has ignited the interest in it.”

In the meantime, the gravy’s ready. Ms. Emily Meggett is emphatic about her gravy. “All right now, you see what I put in there,” she says. “I didn’t put no celery, no bell pepper, no tomato, no water.”

At nearly the last moment, she sautees the shrimp in a separate skillet. They’re done in just a couple of minutes, and she quickly folds them into the sauce. “If you make the gravy, and put the shrimp in there to cook, it makes it tough,” she observes. After we take a bite, she says triumphantly, “See, you got the crunch of the shrimp.” She’s right. The shrimp are firm and meaty, with almost a bit of a snap to them still.

Finally, this tantalizing dish is ready — and you will never leave Ms. Emily’s house without getting fed. “The whole entire world!” she laughs. “The whole entire world. It don’t be a day pass by that somebody don’t stop by here that don’t get something to eat.”

As soon as the shrimp and grits are ready, we gather over the kitchen table for a moment of prayer, holding hands in communion. Ms. Emily says grace — and then we feast, together.

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Benne Cookies from Emily Meggett

Makes about 40 cookies

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, I HAD NO IDEA HOW MUCH HISTORY WAS IN BENNE COOKIES. Also known as “benne wafers,” benne cookies were just another sweet treat that we island folks loved to eat. In fact, I learned how to make these cookies at the Dodge House. A lady named Mamie Frances was the real pro, and she taught me how to make them just right.

As an adult, I found out that the benne seeds used for the cookie actually arrived to the United States with our African ancestors. Native to the African continent, benne seeds are often confused with sesame seeds. However, benne seeds have a much more distinct taste. They’re nuttier, a bit smoky, and when toasted, they produce an intense, almost woody smell throughout the kitchen. Benne seeds have a rich history in the Sea Islands. Enslaved people cultivated these seeds in their own gardens, and eventually, white slave owners took advantage of their crop and started use benne seeds to produce cooking oil. Their road in the United States has been long and complex, but thanks to the preservationist nature of the Gullah Geechee people, they still grow across the Carolinas and Sea Islands today.

My benne cookies come from Mama, and she learned how to make them from generations before her. Thin and crisp, these cookies should be like wafers; you don’t want them to rise.

1 tablespoon margarine or butter, or more as needed (butter can be used to toast the benne seeds, but it burns more easily than margarine)

1 cup (140 g) benne seeds or sesame seeds

1 cup (125 g) sifted all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick/115 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar

¼ cup (55 g) packed light brown sugar

1 large egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F (170°C). Grease two cookie sheets.

Melt 1 tablespoon margarine in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat and add the benne seeds, stirring to coat them—add more margarine if needed. Toast the seeds, stirring frequently, until fragrant and darkened a shade. Take care not to burn the seeds. Scrape onto a plate and let cool completely.

Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt together into a medium bowl.

In a large bowl, cream together the ½ cup (1 stick/115 g) butter and the sugars until well combined and fluffy. Add the egg and beat well. Add the cooled toasted benne seeds and the vanilla. Stir in the flour mixture.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the cookie dough at least 2 ½ inches (6 cm) apart on one prepared cookie sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes maximum, until golden brown around the edges. Remove the wafers from the cookie sheet immediately and place them on waxed paper to cool. Repeat with the remaining dough on the second cookie sheet, reusing the first sheet when it’s cooled.

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Red Rice from Emily Meggett

Serves 8 to 10

RED RICE GOES BACK TO THE OLD, OLD DAYS—THE DAYS BEFORE ME, MY MOMMA, AND HERS. Red rice is a beautiful, earthy one-pot rice dish that borrows from the traditions of my African ancestors. Sometimes called Charleston red rice, red rice really owes a great debt to the enslaved Africans who brought their knowledge of rice and vegetable farming to the United States. Here on Edisto, Wednesdays and Fridays were seafood days. We had shrimp or fish with red rice, so it was something to look forward to. Back in my day, you didn’t use tomato paste and sauce, you used the tomatoes you’d planted in your garden. The tomato paste works just as good, though, and Gullah Geechee red rice is one of the best dishes you can enjoy. Now, red rice can be a tricky thing. If you don’t have enough rice, it will come out like mush. If you have too much rice, you can add water, but the texture will be uneven. Early in the cooking, you want to use your spoon to feel the weight of the rice, and make sure it’s cooking evenly.

Don’t let this dish intimidate you—with well-seasoned vegetables, slices of sausage, and perfectly cooked rice, you’ve just about got yourself a meal. Oh, and when you put some fatback in there? Now you’re talking.

½ pound (225 g) salt pork, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) chunks

1 large onion, chopped

1 large bell pepper, chopped

½ cup (50 g) chopped celery

3 smoked sausages (about 14 ounces/395 g)

1 (6-ounce/170 g) can of tomato paste

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1½ teaspoons Nature’s Seasons, plus more to taste

2 cups (370 g) long-grain white rice, unrinsed

Fry the salt pork in a large pot over medium heat until browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the onion, bell pepper, and celery and cook until tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Cut the sausage into bite-size pieces and add to the pot; cook until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and 5 cups (1.2 L) water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the crushed red pepper and Nature’s Seasons and stir. Taste and add more seasoning if needed.

Add the rice. Cook, stirring frequently to keep the rice from sticking until most of the liquid has been absorbed and the rice is tender, about 10 minutes.

If using a rice steamer, transfer the absorbed mixture to the steamer. Cover the steamer, and cook on low heat for 15 to 20 minutes, or until all of the liquid is absorbed and the rice can be fluffed with a fork. If using a pot, cover the pot and cook over the lowest possible heat, stirring with a fork as needed, for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the rice has absorbed all the liquid.

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Chicken Perloo from Emily Meggett

Serves 8 to 10

MANY OF THE ONE-POT RICE DISHES IN THE LOWCOUNTRY AND THE SOUTH CAN TRACE THEIR ORIGINS BACK TO WEST AFRICA. There’s jollof rice in West Africa, jambalaya in Louisiana, and here in the Lowcountry? We’ve got red rice and chicken perloo. Chicken perloo has a lot of the same western European and African cooking styles you find in dishes like Spanish paella and Ghanaian jollof rice. However, tender chicken, ambrosial stock, and perfectly fluffed rice make this a true Lowcountry dish.

6 tablespoons (90 ml) bacon grease or vegetable oil

½ pound (225 g) salt pork, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) chunks

1 cup (125 g) roughly chopped onion

5 cups (1.2 L) chicken broth

1 teaspoon Nature’s Seasons

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

1 pound (455 g) cooked chicken thighs, skin removed and roughly chopped

2 ½ cups (460 g) long-grain white rice, unrinsed

In a large, heavy-bottomed pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease or oil over high heat. Once the grease or oil is shimmering, add the salt pork and cook on high heat for 1 minute. Pour the remaining bacon grease or oil into the pot. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook the salt pork for about 5 minutes, until browned.

Once browned, remove the salt pork from the pot and set it aside. Leave enough oil to coat the bottom of the pot. Add the onion and fry for 1 minute. Return the cooked salt pork to the pot and cook the onion and salt pork together over low heat for about 5 minutes, until onion just darkens.

Add the broth, Nature’s Seasons, and poultry seasoning and bring to a boil.

Once boiling, add the chicken. Cook for about 2 minutes, then add the rice. Adjust the heat to medium-low and cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed, 10 to 15 minutes.

If using a steamer, transfer the rice mixture to the top of the steamer, cover, and steam over medium heat for about 20 minutes, until done. If you’re using the regular pot, continue to cook the rice mixture on medium-low heat for 20 to 25 minutes, until the rice has absorbed all of the broth. Once done, stir the rice with a fork, and serve immediately.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/15/1116289080/for-this-89-year-old-gullah-geechee-chef-cooking-is-about-heart

Artist Statement

I’m Jim McDowell, the Black Potter. I’ve been making face jugs for over 35 years, always in the tradition of my African American and Caribbean ancestry. My face jugs are ugly because slavery was ugly. My four-times Great Aunt Evangeline was a slave potter in Jamaica. She made face jugs. I first heard about her and face jugs when, as a young man, I attended a family funeral and was listening to some of my elders talking about this. Among them was my grandfather, Boyce McDowell, who owned his own tombstone business in Gaffney, South Carolina. My family said that slaves were never given gravestones, so face jugs were sometimes made and used to mark a grave. It’s too late now, but I wish I could ask my grandfather if he chose his profession to right a wrong.

Africans made face jugs for use in spiritual and funerary practice or to ward away evil as in the practice of conjure. There are many myths and stories about these jugs. Sometimes a face jug was buried next to the doorway of a home, in the belief it held a spirit of protection. I’ve heard they are created ugly to scare away the devil. Another story says if the face jug on a grave is found to be broken, the soul of that person went on to heaven. Whatever the reason for their existence, I know face jugs were made by enslaved Africans in this country. When I first made one, I gave it Black features, sometimes exaggerated, thick lips and a broad nose with flaring nostrils. I’ve kept that style. I make teeth out of broken china to give them a scary or fierce look. I sometimes put stained glass on the face so when it’s fired the glass runs down like tears. An enslaved man named David Drake lived on the Edgefield, South Carolina plantation. He was known for making large jugs of exceptional quality used for food storage. “Dave” was literate and somehow got away with writing on his jugs, even signing his name. I write on my jugs to pay homage to him.

In 2010, I was invited to appear on a face jug episode of PBS’s History Detectives and heard archeologist Dr. Mark Newell, also on the show, confirm that face jugs of clay were made by African people who worked in a pottery at Edgefield, South Carolina. He found evidence of a site off in the woods where slaves used their own kiln, probably a groundhog kiln where the work is partially buried, and fired their personal work. He said that a cargo of Africans from a ship named the Wanderer was sold into slavery illegally in 1858, after the trade was abolished making the importation of humans illegal, even though slavery was still legal. Thirty of these enslaved people were quickly sold as a group to the Edgefield area, with their religious practices, language, and family ties intact. Because of this they did not lose their culture so quickly and were able to support each other in this new and foreign situation. Some of these people were most likely the first face jug makers of African descent in this country, says Dr. Newell.

The first exhibition of slave-made face jugs, “Face Jugs: Art and Ritual in 19^th Century South Carolina,” was curated by Claudia Mooney and toured four museums in 2012-2013. This exhibition was validation that enslaved people created this art form initially.

All of this serves as an inspiration to me. There are times when I sit at the wheel and I believe ideas come to me from the ancestors. I make my face jugs to honor my people who came to this country in bondage through the Middle Passage and not only survived but thrived. I sometimes make a jug to honor a person of color who has achieved greatness or endured tremendous discrimination, or worse. I pay homage to Civil Rights activists and Freedom Fighters whose job, it seems, will never be over.  I pay homage to those of my race who taught and wrote and built and preached and orated and invented and created.

I continue to make face jugs to keep the story alive.

~Jim McDowell

Jim’s Story

by Nicholas St. Fleur

Along with being a writer and civil rights activist, Josephine Silone Yates was the first Black woman to head a college science department. Born in Mattituck, New York, either in 1852 or 1859, Yates grew up living with her parents and maternal grandfather, Lymas Reeves, who was a formerly enslaved man. In grammar school, she was enthralled by physics, physiology and arithmetic, and excelled in her studies. At the age of 11, she moved to Philadelphia to pursue better educational opportunities at the Institute for Colored Youth.

She stayed at the school for a year until her uncle, Rev. John Bunyan, whom she was living with, got a job at Howard University. Yates moved in with her aunt in Newport, Rhode Island, and enrolled in Rogers High School in 1874. There, she was the only Black student. But she more than persisted—she shined. Yates developed an affinity to chemistry that impressed a professor, who encouraged her to further explore her interests through extra lab work. In 1877, just 3 years after enrolling, she graduated as class valedictorian.

Continuing on her educational journey, Yates next attended the Rhode Island State Normal School. There too, she graduated with honors. She passed the teacher’s examination and became the first Black person to be a certified public school teacher in Rhode Island. Yates taught chemistry, physiology, and botany, as well as speaking and English literature classes, at the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Yates soon became the first Black woman to head a college’s science department when she was put at the helm of the institute’s department of natural sciences. She was a civil rights activist, a writer, and a teacher until her death in 1912.

https://cen.acs.org/people/profiles/Six-black-chemists-should-know/97/web/2019/02?PageSpeed=noscript

Black men in the U.S. are more likely to be professional football players than public school psychologists.

It’s a startling statistic. But for Chase McCullum, a Black man who became a school psychologist over a decade ago, it’s just reality.

“Education is not a field that I think a lot of people from my background would typically pursue,” he says.

Growing up in southern Mississippi during the ’90s, McCullum planned on becoming a lawyer.

“I really did not know what a school psychologist was.”

But when he learned about the profession – through an internet search as a college student at the University of Mississippi – he was sold. “Once I found out what it was, and all the things that school psychologists can do, I fell in love with it.”

Psychologists play a critical role in K-12 schools. They support students with their mental health, help prevent bullying and promote conflict resolution between students. They’re often the only person in an entire school who is trained to assess a student’s behavioral, emotional and academic needs. A key element of that is assessing whether a student has a disability.

That representation of a Black male professional in the school building, it’s almost priceless … It impacts the entire school.

Bobby Gueh, Georgia State University’s Department of Counseling and Psychological Services.

And yet there’s a clear mismatch between the demographics of school psychologists and the student populations they serve. According to survey data from the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), more than 85% of school psychologists are white, while most K-12 public school students are not.

The exact number of Black male school psychologists is hard to pin down, but NASP estimates they make up fewer than 1% of psychologists in U.S. public schools.

Other groups, including Asian Americans and Hispanics, are also underrepresented. But, some experts are particularly worried about the dearth of Black male psychologists. Black children, especially boys, are disproportionately likely to be disciplined in school, handled forcibly by police and referred for special education services.

“That representation of a Black male professional in the school building, it’s almost priceless,” says Bobby Gueh, who teaches at Georgia State University’s Department of Counseling and Psychological Services.

And it isn’t only Black boys who stand to benefit. “It impacts the entire school,” he says.

The history of special education may be turning people away from school psychology

Federal law guarantees students with disabilities the right to a “free appropriate public education,” and school psychologists play a key role in evaluating what “appropriate” means. For any given student, that could mean providing occupational therapy, counseling or time with a paraprofessional. School psychologists also help make the call about whether to place students into separate special education classrooms.

For decades, Black students have disproportionately been referred for special education services. The National Center for Learning Disabilities finds that Black students are 40% more likely than their peers to be identified as having a disability, including a learning disability or an intellectual disability. They’re also more likely to be identified as having an “emotional disturbance,” a label advocates have long criticized as stigmatizing.

“Representation matters,” says Celeste Malone, an associate professor of school psychology at Howard University. “What does it mean to have a predominantly white profession working with predominantly kids of color, within a racist society?”

She believes the history of special education may discourage Black people from pursuing school psychology as a career.

“It could be hard to reconcile wanting to be in a profession and wanting to support kids that look like you,” with the role that school psychology “has played in the special education evaluation system,” she explains.

Malone, who is also the president of NASP, notes that at some historically black colleges and universities, psychology departments don’t direct their students toward school psychology because of “the historical legacy” of the field.

Black men don’t always feel there’s a place for them in education

Another challenge, several experts tell NPR, is that Black men often are steered away from education as a career.

“The conversation most Black boys are having is ‘you need to go into a field that makes a lot of money,’ ” says Gueh of Georgia State.

McCullum, the school psychologist in Mississippi, agrees: “I don’t think men feel like there’s a place for them in education.”

He discovered school psychology after volunteering at a Boys and Girls Club while in college, and realized he wanted a career where he could support young people. A Google search led him to school psychology, which came as a surprise to his family.

“It was kind of like, ‘Why would you go into that when you could pursue something else?’ ” he says. “I think the perception is, if you’re going to go to college and you’re trying to take care of your family and do those types of things, you probably go into another field.”

A solution may lie in targeted recruitment

With such an extreme shortage of Black men in a field that desperately needs them, some leaders are working on solutions.

NASP is expanding its Exposure Project, where school psychologists of color deliver presentations to undergraduate and high school classes in an effort to find recruits. “If you see more people from different backgrounds,” says McCullum, “and recognize that we are all doing the same work, I think that can really change how we see the field.”

Some school psychologists are focusing on changing the profession’s practices. Byron McClure, a school psychologist in Houston who advocates for more representation in the field, says that to bring more Black men in, there needs to be a major shift in the role school psychologists play.

Instead of relying on assessments to separate some students into special education, McClure says, school psychologists should use their expertise more broadly. For example, by creating restorative justice policies or helping design a more culturally responsive curriculum.

Doing all this requires more resources. NASP recommends one school psychologist for every 500 students. But most school districts don’t even come close to that goal. With such limited resources, school psychologists spend much of their time on evaluations for special ed.

McClure has launched a networking and recruiting organization that he hopes will help increase the number of Black male school psychologists.

We can’t just complain about the problem, he says. “We have to do something about it.”

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/1113045369/black-men-special-education

Part 3 of TED Radio Hour episode The Food Connection

Social entrepreneur Jasmine Crowe has one mission: feed more, waste less. Her company Goodr is tackling food waste and getting food to those who need it most.

About Jasmine Crowe

Jasmine Crowe is a social entrepreneur and the founder of Goodr, a startup based in Atlanta, Georgia that is leveraging technology to combat hunger and food waste.

Goodr collects surplus food from organizations like Turner Broadcasting Systems, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and others, and redirects that food to nonprofits who distribute the food to people experiencing food insecurity. The company also works directly with cities and governments to purchase quality food for certain communities.

Crowe has collected and donated more than two million food items worldwide and fed more than 80,000 people through the Sunday Soul Homeless feeding initiative as well. The initiative started out as formal pop-up dinners for the homeless community of Atlanta.

Crowe is also in the process of writing “Everybody Eats,” a children’s book to inspire the fight against hunger.

This segment of TED Radio Hour was produced by Diba Mohtasham and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Twitter @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadio@npr.org.

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/03/1033869498/jasmine-crowe-what-can-we-do-to-tackle-food-waste-and-hunger

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

For many Black Kentuckians and Tennesseans, the Eighth of August is a special day – a time for barbecue, reuniting with loved ones and marking their freedom from slavery. These annual celebrations are in the same spirit as Juneteenth, but their roots predate those of the now national holiday.

There’s an over 150-year history of Black communities – including those in Paducah, Hopkinsville and Russellville in Kentucky and Clarksville and Knoxville in Tennessee, among others – celebrating on the Eighth of August. Many take the late summer day to mark their freedom with homecomings, historical remembrances and usually a good party.

Marvin Nunn, the president of the W.C. Young Community Center in Paducah, is one of the lead organizers for Paducah’s Eighth of August celebration. He’s been celebrating the occasion for all of his life and he treasures his memories of the Eighth of August growing up.

“[Thousands of people] used to come to Paducah for the Eighth of August and the big celebrations and people from all over – St. Louis, Louisville, Chicago – had parties. It’d be an all day thing,” the 70-year-old west Kentucky native said. “People barbecued and had family reunions, the park would be full of people and we’d have a legendary Eighth of August dance, where everybody dresses up real nice. You’d go to the dance and you’d see old friends, middle school friends, elementary friends. It’s just a beautiful occasion.”

Nunn hasn’t tried to change things now that he’s one of the annual celebration’s planners. This year’s events – which concluded earlier Monday with a traditional emancipation breakfast – included a parade, a dance, a basketball clinic, a gospel concert, a fashion show and a block party, among other things.

Nunn’s family moved from Paducah to Detroit when he was a kid, but he always used to come home for the Eighth.

“Matter of fact, the only time I’ve missed an Eighth of August celebration, that’s when I was in the military and overseas,” Nunn said. “And I was depressed because I couldn’t make it to Paducah for the Eighth of August. I’ve always done it.”

Even now in towns across Kentucky and Tennessee, many Black families, schools and churches host reunions and homecomings on the Eighth of August.

Origin stories

All of these festivities are aimed at fostering community and commemorating when freedom first came to slaves in parts of the region.

According to the Beck Cultural Exchange Center – a Knoxville, Tennessee-based nonprofit that works to preserve and teach Black history – future U.S. president Andrew Johnson freed his own slaves in Tennessee on August 8, 1863.

Johnson, then military governor of the state, did this because the Emancipation Proclamation earlier that year didn’t include Tennessee, which was then under Union control. Kentucky wasn’t included because it was a neutral border state in the Civil War. All of the slaves in Tennessee would be freed by Johnson in October 1864 and slavery remained legal in Kentucky until federal law forced the state’s hand to abolish it in December 1865.

When the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – which ended slavery – went to the states to be ratified, Kentucky didn’t ratify it. The state waited over 100 years to symbolically ratify it in 1976.

William Isom is the director of Black in Appalachia, a nonprofit that documents African American contributions to the Mountain South. He says one of those slaves, Samuel Johnson, organized the first Eighth of August celebration on August 8, 1871 in Greenville, Tennessee.
“It was a parade with Andrew Johnson in attendance and some other elected officials and Samuel Johnson,” Isom said. “In several newspaper accounts in east Tennessee, he’s credited with being the one that spread the Eighth of August as Emancipation Day.”

Though this is the most historically supported origin of the tradition, there have been others connected to it over the years. A historical marker in downtown Paducah says the day was “chosen because it was when slaves in Santo Domingo (Haiti) earned their freedom.” Some say it’s when western Kentucky residents got news of the Emancipation Proclamation, though historians say neither narrative is supported by evidence.

How the tradition continues

Other Eighth of August celebrations started happening in communities across the region throughout the late 1800s. Historians like Isom and Alicestyne Turley – the director of the Freedom Stories Project, which focuses on African American and Appalachian history – think the tradition likely spread as Black Appalachians moved out across the region seeking a better life and fleeing racial persecution during the Reconstruction era.

“There was a whole hearted effort to run them out of the mountains. Many of them leave the mountains and come over here to western Kentucky on the river. People literally by community are leaving the mountains looking for work. Many of them come over and work on the river, work on the docks,” Turley said during a talk in Paducah as part of this year’s celebration. “I think if you look at the exodus or the expulsion of African Americans from Appalachia, you’ll be able to draw pretty much a straight line.”

Isom says at one point there were communities in 12 states celebrating the tradition. Another historian – Michael Morrow, the curator of the SEEK (Struggles for Emancipation and Equality in Kentucky) Museum in Russellville – agrees with Isom and Turley about the way the tradition spread. He also says there are historical records showing widespread celebrations in the state, though it’s faded in many places.

“I’ve done research on it and I can tell you 150 communities in Kentucky that used to have it that don’t have it now,” he said.

Though some places have stopped celebrating the Eighth of August, most everywhere has started celebrating Juneteenth since it was elevated to a federal holiday. But that hasn’t hurt the celebrations in the region; many communities that do celebrate the Eighth of August just mark both occasions now.

“All we’ve done different this year is celebrate Juneteenth, too,” Morrow added. “You’re not going to take away from the freedom [by celebrating both], we’re just gonna add to it. It’s just another day to celebrate: the day that the Lord saw fit to set millions of people free.”

West Kentucky native Ronda Smith grew up celebrating the Eighth of August. Though Juneteenth is now nationally recognized, she wasn’t really familiar with the Texan tradition turned federal holiday until pretty recently.

“I’m 64. I was 63 when I first celebrated Juneteenth, and I wouldn’t have done it then if my daughter wasn’t cooking fish. I wouldn’t have got up and went,” she said with a laugh.

Juneteenth and the Eighth of August aren’t the only widespread celebrations of Black freedom in America. Many Black Americans also mark January 1 as the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, although there are also regional celebrations on varying dates of historical significance in Washington D.C., Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi and Virginia.

Though some say these regional celebrations have gotten smaller over the decades, many are still going strong and organizers hope they’ll be planning events like the Eighth of August for decades to come. No matter what the date, historian William Isom says celebrations of emancipation help people to recognize progress, even if there’s still a long way to go.

“People have been celebrating Emancipation through Reconstruction, through Jim Crow, through the Red Summer, seasons of racial atrocities, and even today with the spate of rampant police violence and murder against Black folks in America,” Isom said. “People continue to celebrate the hope of freedom, regardless of the current conditions, and I think that that’s really important. It’s like a reminder of where people came from, and how far we have come as a nation.”

https://www.wkms.org/society/2022-08-08/black-kentuckians-tennesseans-celebrate-emancipation-with-eighth-of-august-events

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

Skinflint. Vulvodyinia. Metal Orizon. Wrust. Demorogoth Satanum.

You probably haven’t heard of these names, but they’re just some of the many African heavy metal bands featured in Edward Banchs’ new book, Scream for Me, Africa! Heavy Metal Identities in Post-Colonial Africa. The book examines the hard rock and metal scenes in Botswana, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and Togo to understand why artists and fans flock to this extreme subculture — and how bands have turned this predominantly white, Western musical genre into something uniquely African.

Africans have been fans of popular metal bands like Metallica, Motörhead and Iron Maiden since the 1970s, says Banchs, 43, a Pittsburgh, Pa.-based researcher and freelance writer who calls himself a “lifelong metalhead since I was in grade school.”

What draws them to this music, known for its screeching vocals, distorted guitars and nasty drum and bass rhythms, he adds, is that “metal bands are quick to hold a mirror right back to society — and [listeners] are responsive to the raw, human emotion.”

While many African metal bands are heavily influenced by these early pioneers — they put their own spin on the music, writing lyrics that call for social justice and celebrate African heritage and traditions.

“The band Dark Suburb, for example, speaks of fighting the incessant poverty ravaging Ghanaians in slums,” says Banchs. “And Arka’n Asrafokor from Togo uses their music to identify pre-colonial traditions they grew up being taught in their Ewe culture, like [preserving and caring for the] environment. They perform in the Ewe language as well.” https://www.youtube.com/embed/x6Nl0A_nVxU?rel=0 YouTube

Despite a growing fanbase, few African metal bands have been able to cross into the Western metal scene and gain international recognition. “The reality is the economics of Africa. Playing in a band is expensive. The ability to access good instruments is not easy,” says Banchs. “Furthermore, electricity [required to power electric guitars, microphones and amps] remains inconsistent in certain places.”

The band Overthrust from Botswana is one African act that’s overcome barriers. In 2016, the band played at Wacken Open Air in Germany, the world’s biggest heavy metal festival. Banch interviews lead singer Tshomarelo “Vulture” Mosaka — and we reached out to him to hear his story and vision. He lives in the village of Letlhakane in central Botswana, where he lives with his girlfriend and two young children, and works as a private security officer when he’s not rocking out with his band. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you get your nickname? Sounds hardcore.

One day when I was around 13 or 14, my parents were expecting visitors. They had food inside the kitchen. When my parents were chatting outside with other people, I went to eat the meat — all of it. I sat down next to the visitors like nothing happened. Then my uncle said to me: “Go get the food for the visitors.” I went to the kitchen and got the food, which was covered with a lid. My heart was beating so hard. When the guests took off the lid, there was no meat. I was frozen. And my uncle [pointed at me and] said: “It’s this guy! This guy is a vulture! He stole the meat!”

And ever since then, that’s what people called me: Vulture.

And that’s your stage name, too. You’ve been a fixture in Botswana’s metal scene for decades. How did you get into heavy metal?

I think I was around 10 years old. In my home village of Rakops in Botswana, one of my uncles was always playing heavy metal music. He had cassette tapes by Motörhead, Metallica, Iron Maiden and Sepultura, and I fell in love with it. When he found out I liked metal too, he was like: “Are you sure you want to be a metalhead? It’s more than just the music. It’s a lifestyle.” And I said: “I’m ready!”

And from that early fandom, you started getting into Botswana’s metal scene.

Botswana had its own pioneering bands: Metal Orizon [which formed in the early 1990s and is regarded as the country’s first heavy metal band] and Wrust, another group, followed. We were all part of one scene, and we were like a family. There were no limits between the artists and the fans.

And you say this scene supported your own musical journey. You’re the frontman of Overthrust, the four-piece heavy metal band you started in 2008. What are some of the themes you sing about? https://www.youtube.com/embed/T-S7jbt67dc?rel=0 YouTube

Our intention is to spread messages [about issues]that people don’t usually talk about, like false prophets. For example, we know of some pastors [in Botswana] who will preach in one way, but behind people’s backs they’ll do something different. And so with our music we actually criticize them.

Can you share some lyrics from a song about that?

The name of one song is “Bogus Vicars.” These are [some of] the lyrics:

“With the Bible you deceive
Congregate, blind, mystify them
[Gnash] their spirits with your phony parables
In trance rip their innocence
Consume their funds, awful priest” https://www.youtube.com/embed/4VbJSHI5noE?rel=0&start=909 YouTube

Haha, you’re telling me these lyrics while you’re smiling and laughing — but yeah, that’s pretty metal all right!

We always have this conflict between us and religious people.

What’s the beef?

Most of the stereotypes we faced as a band in Botswana were from religious people. They fail to understand that nobody knows the truth and we are all the same.

When we first started our band Overthrust in our small township, they were against our music, especially because we were very extreme. So they started labeling us locally as the devil. And I remember around 2014, there were a lot of accidents in the township and they were blaming us, saying we were casting evil spirits in the town.

But luckily the leadership in the town was open-minded. They said: This is just music, let people do their thing. They’re not doing anything wrong.

Apart from loving metal music, what does it mean to be a metalhead in Botswana?

We have our own unique style going on here. We have a dress code: spikes, chains, leather pants, cowboy boots and hats.

Cowboy boots and hats?

We have a huge cattle culture in Botswana.

Does the heavy metal scene help boost the economy in Botswana? According to the World Bank, 59% of the population lives under $5.50 a day — the poverty line for upper-middle income countries.

About 500 people attend our fest, the Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Charity Festival, every year. It’s been going on for 14 years. People pay a fee to get in and part of those proceeds go to charity. We try to identify beneficiaries who are disadvantaged. That includes orphans, people or children with a disability or who are affected by HIV/AIDS. And then some of the proceeds of the festival are given to those people for their needs — basic things like food baskets, clothing or funds for education or to start a small business. In 2021, for example, we donated $400 to a maternity ward in central Botswana.

When we do these festivals, people who work around the festival also benefit: hotels (people do travel from other countries), people selling foodstuffs, even local game reserves and national parks [where artists and festival-goers from out of town go and sightsee before and after the festival].

It’s hard to imagine religious groups calling you evil when you’re helping the community.

The little I got I will share with those in need.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/08/07/1114616272/scream-for-me-africa-how-the-continent-is-reinventing-heavy-metal-music

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

Lewis Morrison was one of the most prominent stage actors of his time. He was best known worldwide for his portrayal of “Mephistopheles” in Faust. He was also the first black Jewish officer to serve during the Civil War.

Lewis Morrison was born in Kingston, Jamaica on September 4, 1845. He was named Morris W. Morris at birth, although some sources claim that Moritz W. Morris is the correct spelling. Very little is known about his family history. After the Civil War, he changed his name to Lewis Morrison for unknown reasons. His great great grandson, Phil Downey, later claimed that Morris changed his name to escape his African and Jewish heritage.

Morris left Jamaica for the United States as a youth. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, the first official black military regiment in the Confederacy, with other free blacks. He soon rose to the rank of lieutenant, becoming the first black Jewish officer to serve in the Confederate Army. When the Louisiana State Legislature banned people of color from serving in the Confederate Army in February 1862, the regiment was disbanded.  Morris and about 10% of the other former 1st Louisiana Native Guard joined the Union Army in September 1862 and were organized into a new unit that was assigned the same name.  There Morris became the first black Jewish officer in the Union Army.

Lewis Morrison made his stage debut in New Orleans in The Loan of a Lover. He gradually secured additional acting work, including a supporting role to Edwin Booth’s lead role as “Richelieu.” Morrison moved to San Francisco in 1874 to perform at the California Theater for the next three years.  When he returned east, he gained recognition for his performance in The Legion of Honor at Park Theater, under Henry E. Abbey’s direction.

By the 1880s, Morrison had joined performers at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia where he played leading roles opposite famous stage actors of that time, including Adelaide Nelson, Lucille Western, and his first wife (1866-1886), Rose Wood, a prominent English-born stage actress.  After Morrison rose to fame for his role in Victor Durand, he formed his own touring company and performed around the world with second wife (1892-1906), Florence Roberts, as his leading lady.

Morrison became a worldwide icon for his portrayal of “Mephistopheles” in Faust, which opened in New York in 1889. While Morrison tried to introduce newer plays to the theater-going public, Faust was the most successful. He played “Mephistopheles” for fifteen years without a break until his death of complications from stomach surgery in 1906.

Morrison and Wood were grandparents to Constance and Joan Bennett, two successful Hollywood actors.

Morris W. Morris/ Lewis Morrison (1845-1906)

We are highlighting examples of Black excellence throughout the year! Feel free to send us suggestions!

Soccer star Briana Scurry still remembers the day she knew she wanted to be an Olympian: It was 1980, and Scurry, then 8 years old, watched on TV as the underdog men’s U.S. Olympic ice hockey team beat Team USSR in Lake Placid, NY.

“I was so inspired, I rose up from the couch and declared to my parents that I wanted to be an Olympian,” Scurry says. “They, thankfully, were nurturing of that little inspiration and helped me hone my skills in all different sports through high school.”

Scurry would go on to become one of the top goalkeepers in the history of U.S. women’s soccer. She won two Olympic gold medals, in 1996 and 2004, and a World Cup in 1999. But her soccer career ended abruptly in 2010, when she was playing in the new Women’s Professional Soccer league and a member of the opposing team collided with her, crashing her knee into Scurry’s right temple.

“My whole life changed from that moment,” Scurry says. “I knew there was something really wrong. … That was the last soccer game I’ve ever played.”

The collision left Scurry with a traumatic brain injury, which resulted in constant, excruciating headaches, blurred vision, cognitive problems and depression. She was unable to work and the league soon collapsed, leaving her without a medical team or training facility to help her. To make matters worse, Scurry’s insurance company refused to cover the surgery she needed to repair the nerve that was the source of her pain, and she was reduced to pawning her two gold medals.

“It was the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life,” Scurry says of selling her Olympic medals for $18,000. “But it was the patch and the temporary fix that I needed to get some stability in order to continue to press forward and get the help I needed.”

Scurry credits Chryssa, the woman who would become her wife, with helping to pressure the insurance company into covering her surgery and therapy — and with helping her buy back her Olympic medals. In 2017, Scurry became the first Black woman to be inducted in the National Soccer Hall of Fame. She tells her story in the new memoir, My Greatest Save.

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Interview highlights

On fighting for equity in resources with the U.S. Soccer Federation — like per diems, air travel and prize money

We felt in 1995 that we had some leverage at that point in time because the Olympics were just around the corner and we were, in fact, favored to win. So myself and eight of my other teammates basically decided to go on strike against the Federation. We risked not only our livelihoods, but also our dreams. … I was an 8-year-old girl who wanted to be an Olympian, and here I was at the precipice of potentially achieving a lifelong dream, and I was risking it for something that was greater than myself. We knew that the Federation would have to cave eventually, but boy, were they mean and nasty in the process. They said some very unsavory things about us as players, and all we were trying to do was provide equity for not only ourselves, but for all the women that would come behind us and don the jersey and represent the United States of America in soccer. We wanted to make sure that that playing field was more level and they were very, very strong willed and had an iron fist about it — but eventually we got what we wanted.

On the penalty kick save that paved the way for Team USA’s win against China in the 1999 Women’s World Cup

The goalkeeping shootout for a major game like that is a very interesting proposition. We train for it pretty much every day in training leading up to that event. And then you also actually hope you don’t have to be in a shootout, but when you find yourself in one, like I did in ’99, I was supremely confident. We had trained it. We had talked about it. I had done some sports visualization with the sport doc on that. And that third kicker, my normal MO, method of operations, for penalty kicks is to not look at my team kicks, nor do I really look at the opposing player walking up to the penalty spot. And on that particular kicker, that third kicker, as I was walking into the penalty area to present myself for the save, I heard something in my mind say, “Look.” So I actually looked at her and watched her approach a penalty spot, which is something that I normally didn’t do. And I knew right then that that was the one I was going to save.

On oftentimes being the only Black player on a team

I was in a Boys & Girls Club event and one of the young girls who was 12 years old, roughly, a young African American girl, she said to me, “I didn’t know Black people played soccer.

It was difficult to not see more people like me. I was so driven and was so passionate about my dream of being an Olympian. … I didn’t have too much difficulty being the only one because I knew I was blazing a trail for myself and for others to come behind me. But I also knew that more representation for women of color on the team was necessary and relevant. And so I really advocated for more women of color to play on the team. … I work[ed] with different organizations, like the Boys & Girls Club of America, different sponsors like Allstate and Pepsi, who helped me essentially go to the urban areas and tell young girls in junior high and high school about the game of soccer. … And I had one incident, I was in a Boys & Girls Club event and one of the young girls who was 12 years old, roughly, a young African American girl, she said to me, “I didn’t know Black people played soccer.” And right there in that moment basically encapsulates the whole problem. She didn’t know. So I took it upon myself to be my job to help grow the game in the urban areas, and the U.S. Soccer Federation and Foundation also helped me do that.

On her life-changing traumatic brain injury in 2010

In the first half I bent over for a low ball coming from my left-hand side, and as I was going to make that save and I was bent over, the attacking player came from the right-hand side and, trying to get her toe on the ball in front of me, crashed into the side of my head with her knee. And I never saw her coming. [Because] I didn’t see her, I couldn’t brace at all for it. So I was completely exposed. She crashed into me. We bundled over. And, of course, my first thought was, Did I make the save? Sure enough, I had the ball in my hands. …

I had had concussions before — you get some blurry vision, you get some sensitivities. And then … it fades away, like the wave of the emotions and the issue fade away and you get clarity again. But I wasn’t getting clarity. I was tipping to the left. The names on the jerseys were blurry. And at half time, which blew maybe seven or eight minutes later, I was walking off the pitch and … my trainer came into the pitch to meet me, and she grabbed my hands and she said, “Bri, are you okay?” And I said, “No, I’m not.” …

For the longest time, I was mad at [the player who crashed into me]. I found out what her name was and exactly who she was. And for several years, I was angry at her for putting me in this position, for not avoiding contact with me. I realized over time that my anger towards her wasn’t helping me and … for a long time wished I could undo that hit. And when you’re in an emotional state like a concussion, you are essentially disconnected from yourself. And I had all these symptoms and I was so angry at her. And I prayed so many days. I was like, “Why couldn’t you have just missed me?” BecauseI was a different person now. I changed emotionally, I was different. My confidence, my focus, all these different things. And I was so lost in the wilderness.

On having suicidal thoughts because of her emotional and physical symptoms

I was in that state of emotional distress. I had emotional and physical symptoms. I had depression. I once stood on the ledge of a waterfalls in Little Falls, New Jersey, and contemplated suicide. The railing where the falls were was really low and the water was just rushing over the falls and I could feel the mist of that water on my face. And I contemplated jumping over and I knew if I did that I wouldn’t survive it because I couldn’t swim. And the water was so high because it had rained just recently. I knew if I go into this water, I’m never coming out. But what stopped me was the image of my mom and some official, some law enforcement official knocking on her door and notifying her that her baby was gone. I couldn’t do that to her. So that image got me off the ledge and onto some solid ground, literally. And after that, I decided I wasn’t going to commit suicide while my mother was alive because I just couldn’t do it to her. And that was the beginning of my journey back to me.

On how her now wife Chryssa, who has a PR company, pressured the insurance company to get her the brain surgery she needed

The insurance company definitely didn’t want the headline to be “Two-time Olympic gold medalist, World Cup champion, battles insurance company over clear issues and obvious payments that they should make.” They didn’t want that to be inthe USA Today, The L.A. Times, The New York Times and the like. And so when Chryssa and I finally did speak, I told her all about my plight, all about what I was dealing with. And she said, “OK, let me speak to your lawyers and we’ll talk about what we can do.” And so Chryssa spoke to them. And the lawyers are the ones that went back to the insurance company and said, “Look, here’s the deal. You need to do the right thing. You need to pay for this surgery. We already went to court and it was found that you were liable and that you need to pay. So do it or this is what’s going to happen. The media is going to find out this story and it’s not going to look good for you.” At that moment, they did a complete 180. I got my surgery. I got a whole year of therapy after that. And I was able to settle with that insurance company during that year as well. …

When I came out of surgery, I remember opening my eyes and just being so happy, I started crying. Because when you have chronic pain like that, that I had for three years, you don’t realize how painful and how much energy it takes up until it’s gone. And then when it was gone, I was just so excited.

On being featured in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

I was so humbled and so thrilled to be honored to be in the same building as Oprah Winfrey, as Rosa Parks, Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King. I didn’t really think that my contribution was necessarily going to be worthy of that type of honor. And then when I spoke to them, they wanted me to be the Title IX example for the Title IX exhibit within the Game Changers exhibit at the museum, and I was more than honored and thrilled to do so. So in that Game Changers exhibit is the jersey that I wore for the Women’s World Cup that I made that penalty kick save in. That is the actual jersey in that exhibit.

Sam Briger and Susan Nkyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Ciera Crawford adapted it for the web.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/27/1112731819/soccer-briana-scurry-my-greatest-save-brain-injury