A Fantastic, Terrific, Great Summer “Freedom School, how do you feel? GRRRREAT! All! Day! Long!”
July 1, 2022If you heard a call-and-response chant like this, you might be sitting in the middle of Harambee at a Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools site—and you would know that another Freedom Summer is in full swing. Rooted in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project of 1964, the CDF Freedom Schools program is a high-quality academic […]
Queen Tiye’s Kitchen
June 24, 2022“The kitchen don’t lie” was a saying I heard often during my childhood. In the 1950s in my part of Virginia, Saturday evenings saw a lot of African American sisters finish washing the dinner dishes and place a hot comb on top of the stove and begin to “do hair,” getting ready for Sunday service. […]
Are American classrooms producing mass shooters?
June 16, 2022Let’s face it. With all the mass shootings in America today, it is difficult to tease out the various motivations that prompt murderers to unleash their automatic weapons on unsuspecting and innocent individuals they do not even know. This country being awash in guns is certainly a major contributor to the constant carnage. But a […]
Despite years of payments, Black student loan balances go up – not down
June 10, 2022With every passing day, urgency grows to cancel the nation’s $1.7 trillion student loan debt. The current federal pause on payments and interest rates will expire on August 31. If no federal action is taken before that date, 15 million borrowers already struggling with the unfortunate combination of unsustainable debt and little or no wealth […]
What are we doing?
June 3, 2022The funerals for the ten Black community members who were murdered while grocery shopping in Buffalo on May 14 are not even over—but it happened again. This time, children. Thursday should have been the last day of school and the start of summer vacation for teachers and students at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. […]
Speaking of Theories …
May 27, 2022Marcel Verdier’s 1840s painting, “Punishment of the Four Stakes/Pegs in the Colonies,” depicts an enslaved Black man, staked naked and spread-eagle face down on the ground as he is whipped by another enslaved man, while a White planter, joined by his wife and infant child casually look on. This painting speaks to the power of […]
Hungry children still need help
May 20, 2022As the school year winds down, once again millions of children and families are facing the reality that hunger doesn’t take a summer vacation. This has been especially true over the last two years. Many of the lines at food pantries that started forming at the beginning of the pandemic still have not disappeared, and […]
Pay attention Roe v. Wade & the far right’s extreme plans
May 13, 2022Things are about to get worse for millions of vulnerable people in our country. It looks like the far right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is getting ready to reverse Roe v. Wade, the 50-year-old ruling that recognized a pregnant person’s right to have an abortion. Abortion is legal today, but pretty soon that […]
Being Black can cost an arm and a leg
May 6, 2022COVID-19 is not the only epidemic plaguing America’s Black community today. The respected medical journal, The Lancet, has reported, “The epidemic of amputations among Black communities across the USA is a brutal reminder of the enduring complications of [diabetes] among underserved populations…” Other prestigious publications have characterized this epidemic as an indictment of our health […]
An extraordinary life, linking past and present
April 29, 2022I was trained to fight by my grandmother, Mamie Bland Todd. She would often remind me, “Pessimists are right more often, but optimists win more often.” “In this life you have to decide what’s more important to you.” Then she would add, “As for me, I’ll take winning.” My favorite optimist died recently at 105. […]
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