Tag: Black Excellence

District Attorney Jason Williams was born in New Orleans in 1972 to Sidney Williams, a master carpenter, and Janice Rogers, a school teacher. He spent much of his childhood in Georgia, where he attended high school at Woodward Academy (formerly the Georgia Military Academy). Throughout his four years of high school, District Attorney Williams was elected class president and was named “Senior Superlative: Class Leader” by his senior class. He then returned to New Orleans to attend Tulane University in 1990, where he walked onto the football team, eventually earning a full scholarship and being awarded the Martin M. Kelly Award for leadership on and off the field. District Attorney Williams was once again elected class president for all four years of college. He began studying law at Tulane Law School immediately upon graduating and, once again, was elected class president for all three years. District Attorney Williams’s oral advocacy won him a place on the Moot Court board, and as a third-year law student, he took his first cases for poor criminal defendants through Tulane’s Criminal Law Clinic. District Attorney Williams was inducted into the Order of the Barristers based on his three years of excellence in courtroom advocacy.

Bestselling author, National Book Award Winner, Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction Winner, Pushcart Prize nominee, NAACP Image Award nominee, and Carnegie Medals For Excellence Longlist nominee, Jason Mott has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His poetry and fiction has appeared in various literary journals.

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

Pearl Mae Bailey (March 29, 1918 – August 17, 1990) was an American actress, singer, comedian and author.^[1] After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946.^[2] She received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale. Her rendition of “Takes Two to Tango” hit the top ten in 1952.^[3]

In 1976, she became the first African American to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.^[4] She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on October 17, 1988.

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

Brittany Luse (born 1986 or 1987)^[1] is an American podcast host. In October 2022, she became the host of NPR‘s current events and culture podcast, It’s Been a Minute. She previously hosted the podcasts For Colored Nerds and The Nod, both about Black culture, and Sampler, about other podcasts. In 2020, The Nod was adapted as a short-form video streaming show on Quibi.

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

Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth (born Clementine Dinah Bullock; 28 October 1927 – 24 July 2025) was an English singer and actress known for her scat singing.^[1] She was the wife of jazz composer and musician Sir John Dankworth and the mother of bassist Alec and singer Jacqui Dankworth. Laine had popular success with singles such as “You’ll Answer To Me” and appeared in a range of musical theatre productions. She received a number of awards and honours including appointment as an OBE in 1979, and a Grammy in 1986; she became a dame in 1997.

Early life

Laine was born Clementine Dinah Bullock on 28 October 1927, in Southall, Middlesex, second of the three children of Sylvan Alexander Campbell and Minnie Blanche Bullock (née Hitchings), and was registered under the name Clementine Dinah Bullock.^[2][3][4] Her father was a black Jamaican veteran of the First World War who worked as a building labourer and regularly busked.^[5][6] Her mother was the child of white English parents from Wiltshire, both of whom had died some years before their daughter’s first marriage to a man named Bullock in 1913.^[7]

The family moved constantly, but most of Laine’s childhood was spent in Southall. Her parents married in 1933,^[8] but it was not until 1953, when she was 26 and applying for a passport for a forthcoming tour of Germany, that Laine found out her real birth name, owing to her parents not being married at the time and her mother registering her with the surname Bullock.^[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leikeli47

Leikeli47 (or Leikeli) is an American rapper^[1] signed to RCA Records. In 2018, she released her second full-length album, Acrylic.^[2] Until 2024, she was known for concealing her face with a bandana or balaclava at all performances and professional appearances.^[3]

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

Waris Dirie (Somali: Waris Diiriye; born 21 October 1965) is a Somali model, author, actress and human rights activist in the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM). From 1997 to 2003, she was a UN special ambassador against FGM. In 2002 she founded her own organization in Vienna, the Desert Flower Foundation. She has won numerous awards recognizing her work on eradicating FGM, including the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (2007).

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

Andrew Austin Wyatt Hawkins^[1] (born March 10, 1986) is an American former professional football wide receiver. He played six seasons in the National Football League (NFL) with the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns and two seasons for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League (CFL), where he was part of back-to-back Grey Cup Championships. He had signed with the New England Patriots in the 2017 offseason, but announced his retirement just days before training camp. He played college football for the Toledo Rockets from 2004 to 2007.

Dr. Marcia Faustin (BS ’07) vaults Team USA gymnastics to success

It was a moment that shocked the world. Simone Biles, widely regarded as one of the best gymnasts in Olympic history, withdrew from most of her planned events in the 2021 Tokyo Games due to a debilitating case of the “twisties,” a condition that made her lose sense of where her body was midair. A mere three years later, at the 2024 Paris Games, Biles awed the world, winning gold in vault, individual all-around, and team all-around, and silver on floor. In an Instagram post, Biles thanked Loyola University Chicago alumna Dr. Marcia Faustin (BS ’07) for “making sure I never gave up on my dreams.” The current co-head team physician for the U.S. gymnastics women’s national team might not do a triple-twisting double tuck on the mat, but she accomplished a feat as difficult as scoring a perfect 10—restoring the team’s physical and emotional health after years of devastating challenges.

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

Professor Olawale Sulaiman CON (born 1969/1970) is a Canadian and american-trained neurosurgeon, academician and physician executive of nigerian heritage.^[1][2] He is the CEO and chief medical director of RNZ Global Ltd, a healthcare development, operations and management company he started in 2010.^[3][4][5] He is also the chief medical officer of RNZ Clinic.