Black Excellence: Tressie McMillan Cottom
A trenchant cultural critic, celebrated sociologist, and award-winning writer, Tressie McMillan Cottom is known for rearranging your brain in the span of a carefully-turned phrase. Her breadth is phenomenal – it moves from the racial hierarchy of beauty standards and the class codes of dressing for work to the predation of for-profit colleges and the stain of racial capitalism on our plural democracy – all while reimagining the essay form for the 21st century as she goes.
Black Excellence: Kelis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelis
Kelis Rogers (/kəˈliːs/;[2] born August 21, 1979) is an American singer-songwriter and chef.[3] She attended New York‘s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts,[4] where she played saxophone and was selected for the Girls Choir of Harlem.[5] Upon graduation, Rogers landed a role as a backing vocalist for the hip hop group Gravediggaz. She then began working with music producers Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo—collectively known as the Neptunes—who led her to sign with Virgin Records in 1998.[6][7]
Black Excellence: The Imafidon Family
https://thephoenixnewspaper.com/meet-the-imafidons-the-smartest-family-in-the-uk
The Imafidon family was recently named the smartest family in Britain.
Hailing from Nigeria, husband, Dr. Chris Imafidon and wife Ann, are parents to twelve-year-old twins Peter and Paula, who made history as the youngest children in ever, in the United Kingdom, to attend high school – before then also setting world records by passing A/AS-level math papers.
Sister, Anne-Marie Imafidon, graduated from high school at the age of 10, before gaining her Master’s Degree from Oxford University, at the age of 17 – becoming the youngest person to pass the A-level computing exam. And it doesn’t stop there.
Black Excellence: Dawn Shedrick
Dawn Shedrick is matter-of-fact about the heartbreaks of caregiving. She is clear and calm when she describes its hardships and grief. She has looked after her mother, who has multiple sclerosis, for more than 30 years. She has been through a lot, and she keeps going.
Black Excellence: Roland Hayes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Hayes
Roland Wiltse Hayes (June 3, 1887 – January 1, 1977) was an American lyric tenor and composer. Critics lauded his abilities and linguistic skills demonstrated with songs in French, German, and Italian. Hayes’ predecessors as well-known African-American concert artists, including Sissieretta Jones and Marie Selika, were not recorded. Along with Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson, Hayes was one of the first to break this barrier in the classical repertoire when he recorded with Columbia in 1939.[2]
Black Excellence: Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson
High school students who came up with ‘impossible’ proof of Pythagorean theorem discover 9 more solutions to the problem
Follow-up to post from May 8, 2024
Black Excellence: Carson and Cannan Huey-You
https://campaign.tcu.edu/stories/the-future-of-science.php
These gifted young brothers could have gone to college anywhere. They chose TCU.
You may have heard about TCU’s youngest-ever scholars, brothers Carson and Cannan Huey-You.
If you haven’t, you will. These kids are the future. And the future is looking bright.
Cannan, age 14, is now a TCU junior, and 17-year-old Carson ’17 is pursuing a Ph.D. in physics and getting a master’s along the way.
At 14, Carson was the youngest TCU graduate on record. He started graduate school at TCU before he was eligible to drive. He’s been researching quantum mechanical systems alongside the boys’ academic mentor, Magnus Rittby, and minored in math and Chinese.