SEAN POWER
OUR COMMUNITY
Our B Moment The Skillman Foundation’s Angelique Power on being a Black Jewish change agent in Detroit.
ROBIN SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER
TOP: Angelique Power in front of a wall of family photographs. Behind her, to the right, are her grandfather, Vernon B. Williams Jr., and parents Vernon B. Williams III and Mikie Williams.
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lack life in America and Jewish life in America are both Angelique Power’s life. Raised on Chicago’s south side by a white Jewish mother who was a schoolteacher and a Black father who was a police officer, Angelique developed a perspective that fuels her passion for racial equity and social justice to this day. Who she is and how she moves through the world have uniquely positioned her for her role as president and CEO of The Skillman Foundation. The diversity-driven and inclusion-minded private Detroit youth philanthropy works to strengthen K-12 education, afterschool learning opportunities, and college and career pathways in Detroit. “My job is to move obstacles away and let young
people lead us to where they need to go,” she says. Over the years, Angelique has spent a lot of time studying and reflecting on her family history. While much has been written about her parents, Vernon B. Williams III and Mikie Williams, she says a little-known fact is that her paternal grandfather, Vernon B. Williams Jr., was one of the first African American scholars to earn a master’s degree in education from the University of Chicago in the 1930s. At the time, he also researched and wrote about how Judaism was the main religion for many Black people in different parts of Africa and an important part of Black history. “My grandfather learned Hebrew in the 1940s and ’50s,” Power says. “When my father was young, they would
