The Daily Egyptian - Feb. 24, 2021

THE

Daily Egyptian Serving the Southern Illinois University community since 1916.

dailyegyptian.com February 24, 2021 Vol. 104, Issue 6

Uncoiling the Black hair struggle Pg. 6-7

Kampus Kuts Pg. 8-9

1908 Springfield Race Riot Pg. 10

Wednesday, February 24 , 2021

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Professor went from prison to prestige through art

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About Us The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of Southern Illinois University Carbondale on a weekly basis. Fall and spring semester editions run every Wednesday. Free copies are distributed in the Carbondale, Carterville, and Springfield communities. The Daily Egyptian can be found at www. dailyegyptian.com or on the new Daily Egyptian app!

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SIU professor Najjar Abdul-Musawwir, displays a painting of his of a vase in his studio at the Glove Factory on Friday, Feb. 13, 2021 in Carbondale, Ill. Jared Treece | @bisalo Jared Treece | @bisalo

Najjar Abdul-Mussawwir is a professor at the School of Art and Design and Africana Studies at SIU. He is also an active artist that has been recognized in art exhibits and museums across the country, even across the world. But Abdul-Mussawwir did not only find out art was a passion, but it was something that saved him.

Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, as a kid, Abdul-Mussawwir was bused into primarily white schools.

“They were trying to integrate, mind you. It was supposed to be a period of progress. Which they tried to bring Blacks and whites together, but there was a lot of confrontation,” Abdul-Mussawwir said.

While at school, Abdul-Mussawwir found himself discovering his love for art.

“I remember being in fourth grade and they put out a lot of Crayolas out on a paper. They put black ink on it [the paper] and scratch into it. You could scratch anything you want into it. That blew me away. To me that was high-tech.”

While trying to further his education as he got older, racism from others around him discouraged him.

“I was in a school where the white students and white parents and the white instructors didn’t really want you there. How do you become educated in a system that don’t even want you in that environment?,” AbdulMussawwir said.

After rampant racial incidents, he dropped out of high school during his junior year.

After he left school, he was involved in an armed robbery, where he would later be sentenced to 10 years in prison.

While in prison, Abdul-Mussawwir met a fellow inmate from a nearby cell that changed his mindset.

“Mind you he is a stranger. A stranger who was African American, who had an interest in me because he

felt I had become subject to a system that didn’t have my best interest at heart,” Abdul-Mussawwir said.

“He said ‘freedom does not get you out of here [prison], that’s not your freedom[…] as a result, it’s your intellect. How you perceive the world.

You have to be more serious about analyzing where you’re at.’”

This same inmate encouraged Abdul-Mussawwir to finish his education while in prison.

“I ended up not being in school and when I got in prison, he made me realize that I couldn’t read […] as a result, I read everything I could get my hands on. I read the dictionary several times from front to back. Just to remember words that I had no intention of remembering,” AbdulMussawwir said.

This man encouraged AbdulMussawwir to study history, science, and philosophy. He also encouraged him to seek out what he loves mostart.

While in prison, Abdul-Mussawwir would use his art not only to express himself or his ideas, but to help other inmates by drawing images for fellow inmates’ family members or by sketching families of inmates.

“It made other prisoners happy.

So they could send something to their daughters, grandmother, or father. It was a means for them to send something that really meant something to them. It made them feel better when they could wake up in the morning and look on the wall and see a painting or drawing of their children or a relative or wife or something. It made them feel alive, it made them feel human.” Abdul-Mussawwir said.

After serving nine years and a month, Abdul-Mussawwir was released from prison. He went on to begin his undergraduate studies at SIU, after earning his GED in prison.

A group of professors had been trying to convince him to come to SIU.

“When I met those professors from Check out the video that accompanies this story!

Southern Illinois University inviting me to come here. And told me that I could be a professor myself [...] I said ‘I am Black, I am a Muslim, and I’ve been to prison. Who in the world is going to have any appreciation for me?’ It was stacked up against me,” Abdul-Mussawwir said.

The professors told AbdulMussawwir, that if he studied and put in the time, the academic community would embrace him because he had something to offer.

He studied and found a place in the School of Art and Design and later on was asked to teach a course.

Years later, Abdul-Mussawwir continues to teach art at the School of Art and Design, but also became a professor of Africana Studies.

“I feel like I am on top of the mountain. To survive the type of trauma and depreciation by otherness has made me realize that people are willing to struggle real hard to keep it there [...] if Africana Studies wasn’t here, a lot of people would be underfed intellectually,” Abdul-Mussawwir said.

“We have been very fortunate to have professors in Africana Studies who really are willing to sacrifice a little of themselves to continue our struggle that has gone on for so long.

The respect for my colleagues, that contributes to me wanting to stay here at SIU.” Staff Photographer Jared Treece can be reached at jtreece@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram at @bisalo.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

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Marion woman celebrates 103 years

Nicolas Galindo | @ngalindophoto

Born before women were allowed to vote and before the end of World War I, Dorothy Carter celebrated her 103rd birthday on Jan. 25 in Marion, Ill. Carter was born on Jan. 25, 1918 and in Carter’s 103 years, she has seen a lot of changes in race relations and can even recall Martin Luther King’s influence during the Civil Rights Era. “Martin Luther King was a splendid man. Everyone liked him,” Carter said. “He could take the whole town and travel with them together. Everybody singing together, talking together. We all are friends nowadays and it’s more pleasant now than it used to be years ago.”

Carter has also been able to see the vast improvements in race relations and the changes that are still happening today.

“It’s much better now. We’re all mixed together now,” Carter said.

“From thinking way back when we wasn’t allowed to associate together, now we are all friends together. We are all socialized together, we go to school together, it’s much different than it used to be years ago. It’s a pleasure to know that we all can get along in this world together. It’s more fun now than it used to be.”

She has lived in Marion since the 1930s and has become well-known in her neighborhood.

“She’s pretty much an icon in this neighborhood,” her son Roscoe Jenkins said. “[She’s] the neighborhood mom. Whatever she could do for the neighborhood, she did.”

In her younger years, Carter was an excellent swing dancer, according to Jenkins.

“Oh yes! I could shake it up now,” Carter said. “Do I miss it? I

Dorothy Carter sits for portrait on Feb. 12 at her home in Marion, Ill. Born Jan. 25, 1918, Carter celebrated her 103rd birthday. She has lived in southern Illinois most of her life and has seen the area’s attitude towards race change during her time. “It’s much better now. We’re all mixed together now,” Carter said. “From thinking way back when we wasn’t allowed to associate together, now we are all friends together. We are all socialized together, we go to school together, it’s much different than it used to be years ago. It’s a pleasure to know that we all can get along in this world together. It’s more fun now than it used to be.” Nicolas Galindo | @ngalindophoto

can hardly walk now. I’ve gotten so old, there’s not much I can do right now, but I do the best that I can to get around.”

Carter had 5 sons, two of whom are still alive: Caleb Carter Jr. and Jenkins. She is still very active in her church, Paul’s Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, where she has served for over 75 and is the oldest active member.

Carter’s age affords her an understanding of life, which many don’t appreciate in their youth.

Such as the understanding of respecting each other’s privacy and learning to get along.

“It’s a blessing that we learn those things after getting older,” she said.

Despite her increasing age and declining mobility, Carter still has

a sense of humor about getting older.

“I just have to take it. I can’t go forward and I can’t go backward. I just have to sit down,” Carter said.

Managing Editor Nicolas Galindo can be reached at ngalindophoto@ gmail.com or on Twitter & Instagram @ngalindophoto.

Eurma Hayes Center police substation reaches temporary standstill

Janae Mosby | @mosbyj

The recent revitalization of the Eurma C. Hayes Center has recently been one of the top issues of conversation in the Carbondale community.

The ECHC is located at 441 E. Willow St. and it was started by Carbondale activist Eurma Hayes.

Some citizens in the community are against putting a police resource center into the ECHC because of the deep-seated mistrust of the police.

“The whole northeast side of Carbondale isn’t even two Chicago blocks, there is no need for a substation there,” William Koine, a grandchild of Eurma Hayes, said in a Facebook post.

The Daily Egyptian spoke with the director of the Hayes Center, Bob Wills, on Feb. 1 about the substation, and since then, there

“There are a lot of people who have expressed their not wanting a police substation inside of the Center.”

- Emerald Avril Unity Coalition co-founder

has not been any progress.

“We had a meeting with the opposition group. We talked about many things, we talked about how to compromise. There is nothing really happening on it right now,” Wills said.

Carbondale Police Chief Stan Reno said the city is waiting to see what the desire of the Hayes Center board and the interested citizen groups is and how they want to proceed.

“There are still lots more discussions that are taking place, but I think ultimately there is so much work that needs to be done on the center,” Reno said.

The Southern Illinois Unity Coalition held a Zoom Webinar on Feb. 20 with Wills to ask questions about what he wants to do with the Center.

“There are a lot of people who have expressed their not wanting a police substation inside of the

Center. Also, the number of people on the police force is 2 to 1 to Carbondale residents,” Co-founder of the Unity Coalition Emerald Avril said.

Avril said there is a heavy police presence on the northeast side and she asked why it is necessary to have them in the Center which is located on East Willow Street.

“What I feel is trying to heal the community and you cannot heal the community being divided,” Wills said.

Wills said the intent of the meetings they have been having is how the community members living in the east side of Carbondale can start to trust the police department.

“I have asked many community people what they thought, I’ve talked to people who were pro and con on some things they would like to see happen,” Wills said.

Wills said he expects to have the ECHC open and ready for the community in late March or early April.

The ECHC was constructed in 1974 and it used to house many businesses inside of its walls, one of them being a daycare. The center started to lose tenants and with that they lost a lot of revenue.

In 2010, the City of Carbondale defunded the daycare and it was bought by the Eurma C. Hayes Center, Inc. The budget for the Carbondale Police department is $10,535,677 in 2021.

The ECHC had to rely on donations and tenant rents to cover the expenses. In 2012, donors raised over $4,000 for utilities.

Staff reporter Janae Mosby can be reached at jmosby@dailyegyptian. com or on Twitter at @mosbyj.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Revising the ‘official story’ with civil rights documentaries

Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

Angela Aguayo grew up in Los Angeles, the child of a white mother and a Mexican immigrant father who, Aguayo said, taught her early on that the history she would hear in schools and sanctioned history books was not the “only history.”

“I kind of grew up with this perspective that the history that gets told is not all the complete story,” Aguayo said. “There’s important, critical, essential perspectives that need to be recovered from history.”

Aguayo is now an Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and recently published a book, Documentary Resistance: Social Change and Participatory Media.

Before moving on to the state’s flagship university, Aguayo spent 12 years in Carbondale making documentaries and working as an Associate Professor of Cinema and Digital Culture at Southern Illinois University.

Aguayo said one of her first experiences at SIU was during faculty orientation when the school was putting up a picture of the first graduating class, which had an African American person, to promote its history of diversity.

“That didn’t totally square with my understanding of history,”

Aguayo said.

She grew up in the aftermath of the Rodney King riot, and knew issues like diversity and inclusion were more complicated than they might at first seem.

The moment at faculty training led her down a path to find out how racial and civil rights struggles manifest differently in rural environments removed from the urban landscape people often see depicted as more confrontational or violent.

On the path, Aguayo uncovered stories of segregated cemetery plots, a segregated cafe on SIU campus, the student activism of comedian Dick Gregory, Carbondale’s history of redlining, the rail station that served as a connection point to segregate railroad cars and Black parents challenging school segregation.

Her most prominent work from that time was, arguably, the documentary 778 Bullets, which detailed the coordinated police shoot-up of a Black Panther Party chapter office in Carbondale.

Before she set out to make the documentary, Aguayo said she’d only heard of the incident in whispers.

“I could not find grounding in it anywhere,” Aguayo said. “For whatever reason, the microfiche

in the library for that month was gone and no one was willing to talk about it. There was no one that had written about it.”

Eventually, a grad student who had grown up in the area offered to help by pulling up records from the courthouse.

“She came back with a giant box full of all of the depositions, the court cases, the media files, everything,” Aguayo said.

What was most important to Aguayo, however, wasn’t the box full of documents, the official story, but the interviews with community members that had been left out and forgotten for decades.

“What is so like in everyone’s craw 30 or 40 years later is that no one in the community makes it into those [official] stories,” Aguayo said. “No one’s quoted. No one talked to any of the moms or other families who, bullets went careening through their homes in the wee hours of the morning, who were on the other end of the police.”

Presenting that reflective narrative is what Aguayo sees as a major part of the power of documentary storytelling.

“I choose documentary work because I’m not interested in reifying the official story of history,” Aguayo said. “I know within the journalism framework, there’s

these rich, amazing investigative traditions that I’m all about, right, but I think that those are less so because: A) it takes a lot of long time for professionals to get the freedom to do that kind of critical reporting, and B) the news cycle moves so damn fast, there is just a problem with being able to take some time with something.”

Aguayo said she sees documentaries as a core part of healthily functioning community media.

“I was really interested in connecting those stories with our current social problems,” Aguayo said. “This story that hasn’t been told before, it actually adds an incredible amount of bearing in our current social problems because if we hadn’t left these voices out to begin with would we think about the situation differently.”

The disposition toward capturing stories people can learn from in the future is something Aguayo said she values from historic recording projects from people like Booker T. Washington, Lester Balog and Barbara Kopple.

“Barbara Kopple goes to coal miners in the 70’s in Appalachia, and she’s shot at by the police with her crew,” Aguayo said. “They’re the people who kind of realize that these images are essential and threatening.”

Despite cutbacks to funding

of community produced documentaries, Aguayo said she sees a resurgence of interest among young people in documenting life and watching things created by their peers who are more interested in YouTube and TikTok than traditional television and movies.

The kind of ingenuity and resilience among young people is already on display, Aguayo said, in in-the-thick-of-it live streams that became a primary source of news for many people during uprisings in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

One example she likes is a scene in the documentary Whose Streets, about the Ferguson, Mo. uprising in 2014, in which a professional camera crew is scared away by gunfire and chaos so fast they leave their equipment while local internet streamers stick around to keep their cameras rolling.

“That was like such a fucking poignant metaphor for the situation,” Aguayo said. “The folks on the ground who are committed far beyond professional commitment [...] they’re going to get the more embedded footage that is of interest to people.”

Staff reporter Jason Flynn can be reached at jflynn@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @dejasonflynn.

Segregation in Southern Illinois How students at SIU helped bring it to an end

Ryan Scott | @RyanscottDE

Southern Illinois University was an integrated school from the time of its opening in 1869.

SIU held its first class with two Black students in attendance on March 9, 1869, four years prior to Illinois’ mandate for public places to integrate after laws were passed in 1874 by the Illinois legislature Despite the university opening as an integrated school, much of the region’s schools and public facilities remained segregated into the later half of the twentieth century.

Students at SIU were an integral part in the desegregation of the southern Illinois area. In 1962, students at SIU created the Student Nonviolent Freedom Committee (SNFC), which used peaceful measures to help end segregation in the region.

SIU students led and participated in protests in Cairo, Ill., to desegregate the pool and skating rink there and 40 of the protestors were arrested, according to “The SNFC in The Civil Rights Movement in Carbondale, Illinois” by Brian Jenks.

At one of these protests in Cairo, a protestor, Mary Mccollum was stabbed in the thigh and needed 12 stitches after.

The SNFC also helped the SIU

“I attempted to buy some food, a sandwich there and he offered to bring it to the door so I guess you could say that’s a form of segregation, I wasn’t allowed to go in so I refused the service.”

- Roscoe Jenkins

administration decide to reverse discriminatory policies, including hiring.

The university president at the time, Delyte Morris, decided to give the students room to protest and not get in their way.

Morris was open to many of the changes the group proposed and helped bring those changes to the university.

The SNFC helped change segregation laws in southern Illinois even after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

The Brown v. Board of Education decision reversed the 1896 Plessy vs.

Ferguson Supreme Court decision of allowing “separate but equal” facilities for people of different races and ethnicities, and therefore made school segregation illegal on a nationwide scale.

Segregation in the Carbondale area, however, continued for years after Brown v. Board of Education was decided.

Although Carbondale Community High School followed the1954 Brown v. Board Decision, the school wasn’t integrated until 1956 when Delores Lily and Albert Blythe II attended the school.

The segregated African American Attucks High School in Carbondale stayed open until 1965.

Lincoln Elementary in Carbondale was first integrated in 1957 by Greg and Deborah Woods, which completed integration in the school district.

Roscoe Jenkins, 74, of Marion went to an all-Black school in Marion called Douglas School through tenth grade.

“We went to that [Douglas school] all the way up until 11th grade, and

then they integrated and then attended the junior high,” he said.

Jenkins said he also once went to a steakhouse and experienced segregation when he wasn’t allowed inside.

“I attempted to buy some food, a sandwich there and he offered to bring it to the door so I guess you could say that’s a form of segregation, I wasn’t allowed to go in so I refused the service,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins said at the movie theater in Marion there was an unwritten rule that African-Americans had to sit at the top of the theater.

“On occasions I would go down to the bottom and sit and watch a movie for a while just for that simple reason and then I would go upstairs where my friends were,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins said it wasn’t as prevalent as in the South but segregation was still

there in the southern Illinois area.

According to the research article from Jenks, there was a long history of segregation and racist laws in place in Illinois until after the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964.

“Black codes” were in place from 1819-1865, which prevented voting rights, serving on juries or in militias. “Black laws” passed the Illinois legislature in 1853 and stayed in place until 1865. They prevented Black people from staying in the state for more than ten days who weren’t already living there.

Enslaved people were still forced to work in Illinois, even after The state banned slavery. These codes allowed work arounds where slaves from Kentucky didn’t count towards the Illinois population if they left for one day a year. Enslaved people from Kentucky would work in Illinois for 364 days a year, but by leaving one day a year they weren’t given protection under Illinois law.

In the 1950’s, most Jim Crow laws became illegal in the state including housing discrimination and healthcare among others.

Sports reporter Ryan Scott can be reached at rscott@dailyegyptian.com or on twitter @RyanscottDE.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Archaeological investigations uncover Black history in southern Illinois

Elena Schauwecker | eschauwecker@dailyegyptian.com

In the 1840s, Harrison Miller and his son, both newly free men, moved to Pope County, Illinois and purchased a tract of farmland.

This was the start of Miller Grove, a community of formerly enslaved individuals that reached a peak residency of 30 to 40 families.

Fast forward over 170 years, where the Miller Grove site, located in the Shawnee National Forest, is being excavated by a group of volunteers and SIU students.

Mark Wagner, an archaeology professor at SIU, is directing a series of investigations with his students at Miller Grove. He said Miller Grove contained very few written records, so he taught his students other methods of determining information about the residents’ lives.

“We can look at sorts of animal remains to figure out what their diet was,” Wagner said. “We can look at the different types of dishes and glassware, tools that they had, to get information on their daily lives.”

These objects, Wagner said, were the first things the formerly enslaved people were able to buy for themselves and represented their new freedom to make

“The Miller Grove community actually had a school where their kids were taught to read and write. This is a big deal because if they were in Tennessee they would have been forbidden.”

- Mark Wagner SIU archaeology professor

choices. By studying the ceramics and the animal remains, students were able to get a sense of who the people were, what was important to them and what kinds of foods and activities they enjoyed.

Among the artifacts found at Miller Grove were pieces of writing slates, showing the importance of education in the community. Wagner talked about a schoolhouse that was run by Julia Singleton, a former enslaved woman who became a teacher in the community.

“The Miller Grove community actually had a school where their kids were taught to read and write,” Wagner said. “This is a big deal

because if they were in Tennessee they would have been forbidden.

So again, you’re getting this sort of information about something they were forbidden to do that they can now do.”

Mary McCorvie, the heritage program manager at Shawnee National Forest, also talked about the importance of religion in the community as a source of hope and fellowship.

“Like many African American communities, the church was the center of life,” McCorvie said.

“Religious songs were also used to send messages for people traveling on the Underground Railroad.”

SIU’s field school has

approximately a dozen students each year who work on the site alongside community volunteers from the forest service’s archaeology project “Passport in Time.”

Through excavations, students are seeking to find answers as to why the freed slaves chose to stay in southern Illinois rather than continue traveling north.

McCorvie said the most likely reason for this was that Miller Grove may have served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, a theory which the students are now exploring.

Though there were plenty of other places where archaeology students could have gotten field

experience, Wagner chose Miller Grove because of its cultural and historical significance to the African American community.

Wagner said Miller Grove is almost nonexistent in southern Illinois history, and the goal of the archaeology department is to bring awareness about this particularly important point in Black history.

Two years ago, the field research team held an open house to share their knowledge with the public, and they plan on hosting similar events when it’s safe to do so.

Wagner, McCorvie, and some students are also compiling information in hopes of publishing their research in a book in order to further educate the public on the diverse history of Southern Illinois.

“These farmsteads, Black or white, left no written history and exist only archaeologically,” McCorvie said. “Now their stories can only be unearthed through investigations. Each story helps recreate the agricultural history of southern Illinois and how each family contributed to the economic growth of southern Illinois.”

Staff reporter Elena Schauwecker can be reached at eschauwecker@ dailyegyptian.com.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Evie Allen (center) poses for a photograph with her mother, Clarissa Allen (left), and her aunt, Anita Csaszar (right), Feb. 13, 2021, in Marion, Ill. The three women discussed how, no matter what hairstyle or texture someone has, it should be accepted and embraced because it is not for any one person to dictate what hairstyles are right or wrong. “Whatever I do to my hair, it’s me that I’ve got to please, even though we’ve spent so much time trying to please somebody else,” Clarissa Allen said. Sophie Whitten | @swhittenphotography

Uncoiling the Black hair struggle

Oreoluwa Ojewuyi | @odojewuyi

Black hair is almost as complex to understand as it is to maintain. It is not only versatile, kinky and beautiful but it’s also been frowned upon, deemed as unprofessional or just “too much” by a world that does not understand it.

Evie Barton is an SIU alumna and a morning anchor on WSIL News 3.

Barton began her natural hair journey on local television.

The “big chop” is a large part of the Black natural hair movement.

The chop occurs when someone cuts off the chemically processed ends of their hair leaving only the natural new grown hair.

Nyashadzashe Makiriyado, is freelancing as marketing brand strategist and has explored the spirituality of her hair through a big chop, protective styles and locs.

Charmonique Rodgers is a student in the program at SIUC. Rodgers has done the big chop not once but twice.

The African American Women, Hair Care, and Health Barriers study found that 60% of 110 respondents wore their hair chemically straightened and the other 40% wore their hair in its natural state. Rodgers said her hair was permed in order to receive straight hair. Barton said her mother used different techniques on her hair to straighten it as a child.

“She put it either in pigtails or braids, she’d send me to my grandmothers to have my hair cornrowed or braided with beads.

I think at a certain age maybe 1113 she put a chemical relaxer in my

hair so that it could be straightened,” Barton said.

Prior to chemically straightening her hair Barton said her mother would use a hot comb to straighten her hair.

“She would use a pressing comb which is an old fashioned old style comb. You put it on the stove to let it heat up and then you would comb the hair straight. Once I took it over I was getting it relaxed every month and a half maybe two months and it made it a little easier to do. It wasn’t until I went natural that it was more frustrating,” Barton said Rodgers said she also got perms on her hair when she was around ten years old.

“I got the hot comb on Easter and then I moved to college and I was still perming my hair and I guess I was doing it wrong and it started to fall out,” Rodgers said.

Barton said chemically straightening her hair eventually led to her making the decision to transition her hair to its natural state.

“I made the decision to wear my hair natural because I had chemically straightened and I got a weave put in. I hadn’t gotten a weave in a really long time and I was sick of having the quote unquote news bob and weave looked great,” Barton said. “When I went to take out the weave my hair was ruined and semi-destroyed.”

Barton said she wasn’t sure what her hair could do and how to maintain her curls when she went natural. She found guidance in the natural hair community online.

“I had decided to look up on

YouTube ways to do my natural hair.

I found a huge community of ladies with natural hair, I had no idea that that even existed and all the things that my hair could do naturally,” Barton said.

Barton said her natural hair journey allowed her to appreciate her hair and its versatility.

Rodgers said she has been natural since her first big chop in 2014.

“My hair is a handful some days it behaves some days it doesn’t. I think after cutting it I gained more appreciation. At first I was so focused on length then I realized my hair was not healthy,” Rodgers said.

Makyirado said big chop hairstyles not only restore the health of hair but also the spiritual and mental health of the individual.

“My relationship with my hair began being spiritual around the time I went natural, both when I transitioned and again when I big chopped. It was the first time I really got to see my hair in her natural form and learn her beauty,” Makiryado said.

Makiryado said she learned her hair was a mirror of her own spirit and the phases she was going through life at the time.

“It was dry, brittle, it broke a lot, and didn’t work with me. That was during a time when I really tried to fit into the Eurocentric standard of beauty. By stepping back and learning my hair I also began to learn me from the inside out and it showed through my hair. My hair was healthy and had no breakage but instead shed old hair and my coils were bouncy,” Makiryado said.

The healthier she felt on a mental and spiritual level, the healthier her hair was Makiryado said.

“The healthier I felt inside on a genuine spiritual level, the healthier my hair was. However the real reason I believe it’s a spiritual divine connection to my own divinity. As I went through trauma I in turn traumatized my hair so badly there really was no going back,” Makiryado said.

Makiryado said she began the process of loving her natural hair shortly after realizing how damaged her hair was.

“Metaphorically it was to stay connected to myself without causing any further damage. On a literal level it forced me to only focus on nourishment. It was like the table flipped,” Makiryado said. “Instead of me feeding an extension of me, much like a tree grows from the ground and you water it, my hair was feeding me, like when you propagate a dying plant and stick the leaves in water until the roots grow and it’s strong enough to be on its own, mainly as a direct line to my spirit my soul.”

Makiryado said the stigma associated with Black women cutting their hair short is not only toxic but also rooted in trauma.

“I say do it because hair does grow back and at the end of the day it’s about you and your connection with yourself. I see Black hair as our most pure divine selves overflowing out of the physical body making it an extension of us,” Makiryado said.

While these women learned to love and appreciate their hair with

time it also took the outside world time to receive them. Barton said she received unsavory reactions from the community when she wore her natural hair on air.

“A lot of viewers for the most part were supportive and in awe. Then there were those few who hated it, ‘a birds nest,’ one lady described it as, ‘a bad wig’, ‘unprofessional’. One woman who I guess she retired from being a beautician told me that all I needed to do was ‘put mayonnaise in it overnight to keep it straight instead of the curly mess I had on top of my head,” Barton said.

Barton said although her hair wasn’t received well in the beginning, her bosses were supportive. She said she also had to educate some of the viewers who took issue with her natural hairstyle.

“That one woman I did explain to her ‘as a woman in my position, my job is to uplift young girls and to empower young girls.’ A lot of times women preach about being ourselves and telling young girls to be authentically themselves so I said to her ‘how can I preach about that and not be comfortable with myself?’”

Barton said. “So this is the hair that the lord gave me, so in order for me to tell young girls to be themselves then I have to feel free enough to be myself.

It’s not my problem she has a problem with who I am. That’s her problem.”

Barton said Black hair being deemed as unprofessional is a huge misconception. Rodgers said that Black women with different textured curls are often viewed differently by society as a whole.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Tyra Coleman poses in Rahim’s Beauty Supply Feb. 22, 2021, in Carbondale, Ill. She said that she enjoys changing her hair and trying new hair styles. “It makes me feel confident because I look good. I like getting my hair done,” Coleman said. Sophie Whitten | @swhittenphotography

“Women with 4c hair, women with tighter hair patterns, and women who wear afros are seen as ‘too Black’ and Black women who wear wigs are told they want to look like white people.

We don’t want to,” Rodgers said.

Barton said she grew up in an era of good versus bad hair.

Black women typically have type 3 to type 4 textured hair. Andre Walker, Oprah Winfrey’s former hairstylist came up with the hair type system in the 1990s. Hair is divided into four different categories from type 1 to type 4. Within each category are 3 different textures classified from a to c. See more Andre Walker.

“If there was a girl who had more loose curls that would be considered good hair. If there was a Black woman with tighter kinkier curls would be considered bad hair,” Rodgers said.

Rodgers said natural hair is expensive and time consuming to take care of which is why many Black women turn to protective styles to protect their natural hair.

“Braids and wigs are easier and more protective and give our hair room to grow. We wear Brazilian hair down to our butts because we want to. The next day we might wear an Afro puff. It is what it is,” Rodgers said.

Rodgers said she loves the possibilities that come with Black hair care.

“My favorite thing about my hair is it does what it wants. It has a mind of its own. I could have my Afro. I could have my hair in cornrows like Trey Songs,” Rodgers said. “Give me two days and I could have faux locs down to my kneecaps. Give me another week I could have a 38 in long wig. We can do whatever we want to our hair. I love being Black

Abdul Rahim Khalil, owner of Rahim’s Beauty Supply, helps a customer Feb. 22, 2021, in Carbondale, Ill. Khalil said that he started his business out of a truck in 1995 and moved into his current location in 2009. He wanted to bring an Arfican American owned beauty shop to the area and help bring confidence and empowerment to the people who come to his store. “[Hair] gives a sense of pride and self esteem,” Khalil said. Sophie Whitten | @ swhittenphotography

and having Black hair.”

Black Hair is so versatile and interesting that many non-Black celebrities like the Kardashians have worn traditionally Black hairstyles like cornrows, box braids, durags and afros.

Rodgers said cultural appropriation takes away from the spirituality and beauty of Black hair.

“Our hair is very ritualistic and I feel like they have no idea how it’s done and they just do it because they think it looks cute,” Rodgers said.

Barton said Black hair is finally becoming more appreciated by the general public. She said cultural

appropriation is a complicated issue.

“Yes across the board cultural appropriation is real, but there are instances where I’m not moved or bothered by it. For instance if you are appropriating for financial gain or some kind of gimmick and not being real then I would have a problem but if you are someone who grew up liking a certain culture that’s not something I can be upset about because that’s what you know and it seems more genuine that way,” Barton said.

Barton is one of many Black women news anchors who have owned their natural hair on air. In 2018 Rodgers did “Fro Fridays” on

air while applying for a position as a female anchor at WSIL news 3.

“I was trying to be creative, celebrate Black History and my culture, show personality and have fun. I wanted to do something that made me stand out, so I thought of Fro-Friday. I called that time period my “auditioning” because they were still deciding who will become the new female Morning Anchor,” Rodgers said.

Rodgers said she got the job by authentically being herself and embracing all parts of her identity.

“I knew what it would mean to my family, community since I’m from

Marion, and to the Black community to see this African American woman every morning in Southern Illinois,” Barton said. “The question was, was Southern Illinois ready? And whether they were or not, I got the job with my natural hair, so in the end being me paid off. It worked!”

Rodgers said Black women cannot let the opinions of others affect how they choose to express themselves through their hair.

“I love being Black and having Black hair. It’s coming out of your head you’re going to have to love it regardless. Don’t let anybody make you feel like you don’t have good hair.

There is no such thing as bad hair,” Rodgers said.

Makiraydo said that no matter how Black people especially Black women choose to express themselves through their hair they should be supported and uplifted.

“I glorify and prioritize healthy minds, bodies, emotions and spirit especially in Black women because society profits off of our unstable bodies. Do what feeds you because you are worthy and deserving,” Makiryado said.

Barton said that the complexity of taking care of Black hair is actually an advantage that helps us strengthen not only our hair but our community.

“Love your hair, get excited about what you can do and we can explore it together. Even if it’s not understood by the world it should be appreciated because it is what uniquely makes you uniquely you. It’s a blessing and you should wear your crown proudly,” Barton said.

Reporter Oreoluwa Ojewuyi can be reached at oojewuyi@dailyegyptian. com or on twitter @odojewuyi.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Kampus Kuts: a staple o

Kampus Kuts Barbershop and Salon Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021. Kampus Kuts is located just off of SIU Carbondale’s campus at 825 S. Illinois Ave. in Carbondale, Ill. Chris Bishop | @qu James Allen | @skyclopsphotojamboree

For over 15 years, Kampus Kuts has serviced the people of Carbondale in all of their hair cutting needs.

The owner of Kampus Kuts, Moshe Anderson, an SIU graduate, aims to support the community that he has called home for so many years.

As a barber Anderson is able to achieve this by being directly connected to the community.

“One thing I really love is to actually just watch the students come in as freshman and graduate, and even the residents come in as children and we watch them grow up and I think that’s a great thing; a great rite of passage that a barbershop provides to the community,” Anderson said.

Growing up in Chicago, Anderson learned to cut hair as early as 12 years old and never stopped. After graduating, Anderson sought to open a barbershop and found the Carbondale community was lacking one.

“The barbershop is a pinnacle in the neighborhood. Always has been.

It’s always been a place for young men, older men, and children to come in and get well groomed and also to get counseling advice and just trade information. A place where men can be men, guys can be guys, and that’s one thing that I really appreciate about the barbershop and it’s so needed in the community,” Anderson said.

Staff Photographer James Allen can be reached at jallen@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram at @skyclopsphotojamboree.

A variety of tools in use at Kampus Kuts Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021 in Carbondale, Ill. “The barbershop is a pinnacle in the neighborhood.

It’s always been a place for young men, older men, and children to come and get well groomed and also to get counseling advice […] a place where men can be men …” Moshe Anderson, the shop’s owner, said. Chris Bishop | @quippedmediallc

Quivon Bledsoe cuts Ryan Reed’s hair Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021, in Carbondale, Ill. Bledsoe has been a barber at Kampus Kuts since 2009 and is a Doctoral Candidate for the Rehabilitation Council program at SIUC. Chris Bishop | @quippedmediallc

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Page 9

of the Black community

uippedmediallc

Quivon Bledsoe works on Ryan Reed’s cut Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021, in Carbondale Ill. Bledsoe and Reed have been coworkers for the past four years. Chris Bishop | @quippedmediallc

Moshe Anderson poses for a portrait Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021 in Carbondale, Ill. Anderson is the owner of Kampus Kuts, and has been operating the business for fifteen years. Chris Bishop | @quippedmediallc

The interior of Kampus Kuts Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021 in Carbondale, Ill. Quivon Bledsoe is a barber at Kampus Kuts who has been working there since 2017. Chris Bishop | @quippedmediallc

Check out the video that accompanies this story!

Page 10

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Historians reflect on 1908 Springfield Race Riot

Courtney Alexander | @ ___Courtney_alex23______

The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 was devastating for Black residents at the state capital and resulted in 16 deaths and 2,000 Black residents fled from the captial to escape violence and racial discrimination.

Dr. Pamela Smoot, an assistant professor of history at SIU, said the riot began on Aug. 14 1908 and lasted for two days.

“It began when two African Americans were arrested for two separate crimes. One of the guys names was George Richardson, he was accused of raping a white female; and the other gentleman’s name was Joe James, he allegedly killed a white man whose name was Clergy Ballard,” Smoot said.

Smoot said once the white community heard about what happened, a mob assembled. The county sheriff, Charles Werner and a white businessman, Harry Loper, moved the men out of the jail to protect them from the mob.

“They slid them out the backdoor and put them on a train and sent them to another jail in Bloomington, Ill. The mob was angry once they found out what happened, so on Aug. 14, 1908, there were approximately 5,000 white people, including some European immigrants, who began to attack Black people randomly,” Smoot said.

Gun stores were broken into and residents stole guns and ammunition to shoot Black residents. Two prominent Black residents were lynched. Scott Burton, an 84-yearold resident and leader in the Black community and William Donegan, who was married to a white woman.

“Eventually the Governor of Illinois, Charles Deneen, called in the National Guard to quell the violence. There were a number of Black folks killed and the two gentlemen, Scott Burton and William Donegan were lynched.

There was property damage worth over $150,000. Homes were burned down and businesses were destroyed.

And there were 150 people arrested, but only one person was convicted,” Smoot said.

The civil rights organization National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded on Feb. 12, 1909 as a result of the riots.

Erika Holst, a curator of history at the Illinois State Museum, said Black businesses and Black homes were primarily targeted and the mob used tactics to avoid destroying other white-owned property.

“They went to the Black business district, the Levee district. Black businesses were specifically targeted because white businesses and homes would put white sheets out the window and the mob would pass by them,” Holst said.

Approximately 2,000 Black

Group of African Americans inspecting damage. Photo courtesy of the Sangamon Valley Collection at Lincoln Library.

Barber shop destroyed in riot. Photo courtesy of the Sangamon Valley Collection at Lincoln Library.

National Guard tents on lawn of Statehouse, Photo courtesy of the Sangamon Valley Collection at Lincoln Library.

residents of Springfield fled after the riots since they were driven out of homes and businesses.

“One of the things that’s surprising to me is that about 2,000 people of color left Springfield in the wake of the race riot because they were driven out of homes and businesses and didn’t feel safe. For the next two months, there were attacks on Black people and Black property.

The riots ended on Aug. 16, but the effort to drive people of color out of Springfield continued on,” Holst said.

Vincent “June” Chappelle, a curator of history at the Illinois State Museum said, despite Black residents fleeing the capital after the lynchings and riots, their problems weren’t limited to Springfield.

“The Black people that were fleeing needed to find somewhere else to go, but the outlying areas were racist,” Chappelle said.

the Black community, two thirds of the Black community left in haste.

Some of them came back within a few days, but some of them never came back.”

The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 wasn’t always a history lesson in Illinois schools. Lowen said students weren’t taught about the historical event until two middle school students, Lindsay Harney and Amanda Staab, did a project on it.

“The subject was airbrushed out of history in Springfield until two sixth grade girls did a project about it for national history day. The reason the girls knew about it was that one of their great-grandfather or uncles had been a reporter for one or two Springfield daily newspapers in 1908,” Lowen said. “They did a project on it and went to the library, what is now the Illinois Springfield Library, and the librarians never

Dr. James Lowen, an author and historian, said American race riots were perpetrated by white people against people of color until about 1943.

“All race riots in American history, until about 1943, were riots of white people against people of color. We tend to think race riots happen these days by Black folks, but they were all by white folks and some of them have been by white folks since then,” Lowen said.

Lowen said the Springfield riot resulted in nearby towns pushing out Black residents. The nearby sundown towns were Morton, Pekin, Washington.

“A number of other towns near Springfield became sundown towns.

If they had a Black population, they pushed them out, and if they didn’t have a Black population, they made informal decisions to not have one,” Lowen said. “Springfield terrorized

heard of it.”

The students were able to obtain minimal information about the Springfield Race Riot of 1908. After they did their report, they wrote a letter to the mayor and requested a historical marker as a way to remember the historical race riot.

“The city council performed a study commission, Lindsay Harney and Amanda Staab were on it, the NAACP was on it, professors were on it,” Lowen said. “They wound up at the race relations walking tour, there were six to eight monuments starting in downtown Springfield that talk about what the mob did. It’s a good statement of memory on the landscape, and it’s an apology.”

Courtney Alexander can be reached at calexander@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at ___Courtney_ alex23______.

Page 11

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

SIU’s first Black, female Dean of Law on why diversity matters

Leah Sutton | @LeahSutton_

Although there has been a Black Dean and a female Dean, Camille Davidson takes pride in being the first Black female Dean at the SIU School of Law. “The legal profession is still overwhelmingly white male. Today in 2021, only 5% of attorneys are Black people. I think that diversity is extremely important.

That’s the only way that you can ensure access to justice. I believe that whether we’re talking about Black people, LGBTQIA, Latinx, or first-generation students, rural populations, you can always teach the law, but you can never teach people to be from somewhere or to be from a certain culture,” Davidson said.

Born and raised in Mississippi, Davidson completed her undergraduate degree in Jackson Mississippi and obtained her juris doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington D.C. in 1990.

“I just think that the profession is not as diverse as it should be, and it hasn’t really changed. I graduated from law school in 1993 and the percentages haven’t really changed over the last almost 30 years and

so I think that’s very important,” Davidson said.

She said the only way to educate people on issues related to diversity, is to diversify the profession.

“Lawyers are at the forefront of so much whether it’s education or healthcare, our criminal justice system, employment issues and so there are so many opportunities for lawyers to have an impact,” Davidson said.

When she began looking for a school hiring for a Dean of Law position, she said her main focus was the student population and the mission of the school. In 2009, she was published in the SIU Law Journal which had brought her attention to SIU. Last year, faculty in the law school voted to talk about issues of diversity in the classroom.

The SIU School of Law also has a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee made up of students and faculty.

“When I teach, I try very hard to incorporate diversity of thought in the classroom. I think that, especially in law school, that we need that diversity of thought. It helps us become better practitioners so that’s what I strive to do,” Davidson said.

Camille Davidson poses for a photo. Photo courtesy of the SIU School of Law.

Davidson also strives to support law students outside of the classroom.

On her own time and not as the Dean of the Law school, Davidson spoke at the Breonna Taylor march on October 2, 2020.

Davidson said the event was organized by law students and

that “as a dean I walked the fine line of not speaking on behalf of the university, but speaking as an individual, but also supporting the students and things that are important to them and important to me as well and where I feel like I had something to offer.”

“I think that Black history is 365

days a year and I hope that we can all get to a point to understand that we can’t share America’s history without sharing Black history,” Davidson said.

Photo Editor Leah Sutton can be reached at Lsutton@dailyegyptian. com or on Twitter at @LeahSutton_

SIU Medicine Chair advocates for inclusive healthcare in the medical field

Diksha Mittal | dmittal@dailyegyptian.com

Recently there has been a very strong call to attention regarding institutional racism in the United States, in the areas of housing, education and policing but many people may overlook the lack of racial equity and inclusion in medicine.

There are only 5% of active African American or Black physicians in the United States. This is in stark contrast with more than 55% of white doctors and 17.1% of Asians who dominate the medical field, according to a 2019 survey from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

African American doctors who have entered and remained in the field have been trailblazers for those coming after them in their communities and have used their experience to bring more equity and understanding into medical practice.

Among these physicians is Dr. John Flack who is a professor and the department chair of Internal Medicine at the SIU School of Medicine.

Flack grew up in Chickasha, Oklahoma during the 1960s Civil Rights era where there were no African American doctors in his city or family.

Despite this, he had dreams from a young age of becoming an astronaut or a doctor. He was only in grade four

“When they [black children] look at basketball players and football players, there are people who look like them all the time [...] and they get the message, ‘I can do this.’”

- John Flack SIU Internal Medicine chair and professor

when he decided he would work in the medical field.

Flack said he considers himself lucky to have two parents as good role models who encouraged him, “to shoot high and aim high” and who told him not going to college was “not an option.”

He said one of the reasons there are very few Black doctors is because of lack of role models.

“The role models are typically not there,” Flack said. “When they [Black children] look at basketball players and football players, there are people who look like them all the time [...] and they get the message, ‘I can do this.’”

According to Flack, other reasons for lack of African American doctors are the high rate of high school dropouts and the financial burden of medical school. The latter can prohibit Black students from pursuing a career in medicine because many Black families are suffering

financially.

When Black people drop out of high school it can detrimentally impact their lifestyle, obesity levels and smoking patterns because of lack of proper health awareness, Flack said.

According to Flack, low income due to lack of education also can also inhibit African American people from eating a healthier, low sodium diet which may be more expensive.

Flack said many of the health issues in the African American community are due to structural racism instead of genetics.

Flack experienced a segregated education system in his youth and said when students drop out of high school or do not get good high school education, it is tougher to continue the long careers in medical school.

“Education is important,” Flack said. “We have an education system that does not treat people the same based on how they look [...] The more education you have, the

healthier you are.”

Diversity is one of the aspects of SIU that influenced Flack’s decision to accept a job there.

“SIU has a history of Black students, something I was taken back by. When I walked through the hallways, I saw pictures of Black students from the nineties [...] I didn’t expect that,” Flack said.

He studied at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine in 1978 where there were only three Black students out of 168 people.

In his opinion, racism is more about perpetuation than discrimination. If hospital authorities entertain patient requests to be treated by a doctor of a preferred race and do not respond strongly against that, they contribute to structural racism.

Flack said structural racism today is not created but perpetuated. He mentioned a new movement in medicine called “race conscious treatment,” where physicians don’t pay attention to research that characterizes race as an important factor in administering treatments to patients, rather only science is given importance.

“Repeatedly in my career I had to battle racist interpretations of data that was closed to science,” Flack said.

The background of researchers can impact research data in terms of where the data came from and the

setting up of a study. Therefore, more African American doctors and a more diverse group of educators can lead to a more scientifically accurate study, Flack said.

Such a study has lower chances of falling prey to fueling racist social constructs that homogenize Black people.

Even if there are illnesses that are more common among Black people, one should investigate the reason for it instead of assuming homogeneity, as there is plenty of variability genetically even among a racial group, Flack said.

Flack then spoke about the efforts of his department to make healthcare more inclusive and accessible, and the commendable work of community advisors focused on outreach to make the COVID-19 vaccine available to minorities.

The hope is that the work of Dr. Flack and others dedicated to change in the medical field will create a new standard and generation of medical professionals to help bring equal and well-informed healthcare to all people.

Staff reporter Diksha Mittal can be reached at dmittal@dailyegyptian.com.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Federick Martin Qualls, owner of Qualls Hat & Co., poses for a portrait inside his store Feb. 9, 2021. “Making hats is my hobby and I was planning to open this business after my retirement,” Qualls said with a smile. He spent more than half of his life in Chicago and almost 50 years as a hairdresser. Due to the pandemic, he said that he does not expect many customers in the store, but he says he is getting a good amount of online orders. He has set up a website to showcase the type of hats that he makes and is planning to shift to online ordering rather than receiving orders on his phone. Subash Kharel | @pics.leaks

Hat maker turns hobby into inspiration

Subash Kharel | @pics.leaks

“Making hats is my hobby and I was planning to open this business after my retirement,” Fredrick Martin Qualls, the owner of Qualls Hats & Co., said.

He spent more than half of his life in Chicago and almost 50 years of his life as a cosmetologist. Qualls wants to set an example that people don’t have to depend on anyone to open up a business.

“I was inspired to open up a hat store to reinvent myself to show the incarcerated that they don’t have to depend on nobody to open up a business. I have been incarcerated myself,” Qualls said.

Because of the pandemic, he doesn’t expect many customers, but he said he is getting a good amount of orders nowadays. He has a website to showcase the hats he makes and is planning to shift to online ordering rather than receiving orders on his phone.

Qualls said he buys the outer materials of the hat from a supplier warehouse. He first stiffens it by placing it in a wooden frame and then fixes the band and other decorative materials using the machine he owns in his workshop.

Showing some images of sample logos in his tablet, he said, “I have ordered my own logo that I am planning to stick in the new hats that I make afterwards.” He makes hats from silk, straw, wool and rabbit and beaver fur.

Federick Martin Qualls, owner of Qualls Hat & Co., works inside his store Feb. 9, 2021, in Carbondale, Ill. Qualls said that he buys the outer material of the hats from a supplier warehouse. He first stiffens the material placing it on a wooden frame and fixes the band. Lastly, he adds other decorative materials using the machine he owns in his workshop. Subash Kharel | @pics.leaks

Asked about the most expensive hat he sold, he comes up with a red colored hat and said, “This is the most expensive hat that I have right now and it’s priced at $175.00. Hats are priced from $55.00 to $175.00 currently in

my store.”

Qualls aims to give jobs to people who have disabilities and to those coming out of the institutions.

“My main focus is to teach people how to make hats,” Qualls said.

He thanks God giving him the ability to open the shop.

“With the help of God, you can do whatever you put your mind to.

You don’t have to depend upon the government to take care of you.”

He said he believes God can do things that can blow peoples’ minds.

Staff Photographer Subash Kharel can be reached at skharel@dailyegyptian. com or on Instagram at @pics.leaks.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Page 13

At a crossroads: Addressing racism in the Catholic church

George Wiebe | gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

Catholicism is the largest organized religion in the world as well as the 5th most diverse religion in the United States, however prior to the civil rights era, Black and White Catholics were largely segregated around the country, having to attend separate masses in separate buildings.

“In my seventy plus years as a Catholic, I have seen major changes,” Father Joseph Brown, an ordained Roman Catholic Priest and professor of African Studies at Southern Illinois University said.

Brown was a witness to the evolution of the church in the United States.

“My parents had been told in the middle of the 1960’s, ‘we’re not ready for you people,’” Brown said.

Today roughly 3% of America’s 51 million Catholics are Black according to a Pew Research Study conducted in 2015.

“When I was a small child the Bishop of the southern Illinois region was known as one of the worst racists in the church,” Brown said. “He kept all of the Catholic institutions, schools, hospitals, and parishes, completely segregated.”

Spurred on by the Great Migration, and missionaries from large, predominantly Catholic cities like Chicago, Catholicism grew in Black communities between the 1940s and 1970s.

“When white missionaries are introducing Catholicism to migrants, they don’t think they’re introducing them to white Catholicism or Irish Catholicism,” Mathew Cressler, a professor of religious studies at the College of Charleston, told The Atlantic.“They think they’re introducing the one, true, universal Church that transcends race.”

Today the church decries racism, labeling discrimination on the basis of race a sin, however some within the faith still feel more can and should be done.

Crossroads Antiracism Organization & Training, is a nonprofit committed to providing “training and consultation services to institutions desiring to dismantle systemic racism.”

“The injustices in our country have a long arc backwards,” Koch said. “We have to join together to make that better for all people.”

- Sister Marcelline Koch Office For Justice and Anti-Racism Team director

Check out the video that accompanies this story!

Africana studies professor, Joseph Brown, silently reflects during a vigil remembering victims of the Orlando shooting Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016, in Grinnell Hall. Ryan Michalesko | @photosbylesko

Founded in 1986, Crossroads has worked with a number of Catholic parishes, one of the most committed being the Sacred Heart Convent of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield Illinois.

In 2004 Sacred Heart began tackling the issue of race within its own institutions.

Sister Marcelline Koch, director of the Office For Justice and AntiRacism Team and Sister Beth Murphy, communications director for the Dominican Sisters, are outspoken in their thoughts on politics and race.

“The injustices in our country

have a long arc backwards,” Koch said. “We have to join together to make that better for all people.”

Sisters Koch and Murphy talked about their support of the Black Lives Matter movement comparing it to the anti-racism work being done within the church.

“Black lives have been overlooked in terms of mattering so you have to call attention to it,” Koch said.

“What we can see we can heal,” Murphy said. “For a long time the fact that we had a very racist nation was under the table, it was invisible to most white people, although not to people of color, so what is

happening recently is no longer invisible to us.”

Not everyone in the Catholic church has taken the same steps as the Dominican Sisters, Murphy explained the challenges that their congregation faced and the steps Crossroads was taking. “[Crossroads] told us it would be a twenty to forty year process to dismantle racism, within our own institutions, we are 16 years into it,” Murphy said.

Following the civil rights movements of the middle 20th century, the Catholic church would take a more active role attempting

to reconcile its own shortcomings on the topic of race.

“The Bishop in Bellville, Illinois and then the Archbishop in Atlanta, has now become the first African-American Cardinal in Washington, DC, which is popularly realized to be the highest ranking position in the Roman Catholic church in the United States,” Brown said, recognizing how far some institutions have progressed in his life.

Staff reporter George Wiebe can be reached at gwiebe@dailyegyptian. com

Page 14

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Dre James, owner of Victoria Candle Co. explains that he keeps a photo of him and his grandma in his workspace to help keep him motivated while making candles Feb. 21, 2021, in Carbondale Ill. James said that he was 3 years old in picture and his grandma was 57. “I just wanted to add something with her name on it that would push me to the spirit of excellence just because I know that it is attached to my grandmother,” James said. Leah Sutton | @leahsuttonphotography

Victoria Candle Co.: Entrepreneur’s dream of wax becomes a reality Leah Sutton | @LeahSutton_

Dre James, 24, is a Black entrepreneur from Chicago Illinois who had a dream that led him to starting his own candle company in southern Illinois.

James attended SIU three years ago for mortuary science and later decided to try teaching elementary age children. Before candles, James tried to start a line of men’s accessories and an obituary writing business.

In September 2019, James realized these businesses weren’t going as planned and decided to try something new.

“I was thinking, ‘Lord what is it I can do that I can interact with people, have fun while I’m doing it, and make money.’ I kid you not, I went to sleep, and I had a dream that night. At three o’clock in the morning, I woke up and just started writing everything down. I had a dream that I was pouring wax into a jar,” James said.

The next day, James started to make his dream a reality.

“The first candles I made, I went to Dollar Tree and bought the candles that were already made and remelted them and it didn’t turn out too well. So that’s when I really started to research candle making,” James said.

James wanted to find a way to honor his grandmother for raising him.

“She pretty much raised me to be the man I am today,” James said. “I just wanted to add something with her name on it that would push me to the spirit of excellence just because I know that it is attached to my grandmother.”

James decided to use her middle name, Victoria, in his company name.

James said he is currently working two other jobs and making candles in his free time, but that his goal is to eventually move Victoria Candle Co. into a permanent storefront location.

“Every month my customer basis is increasing so I’m obviously doing something right,” James said.

He said he is gaining more clients through word of mouth.

James said all candles by Victoria Candle Co. are natural and feature wax sourced from an American company. He also customizes scents based on the needs of the client. In some cases, people like the colors of the wax and order unscented candles.

“I will order all of the fragrances, but some I will mix because I have some customers that will like lavender and eucalyptus, but usually, eucalyptus is paired with

Dre James works on candle orders in his apartment. “Every month my customer basis is increasing so I’m obviously doing something right,” James said. He started his business in 2019 after having a dream about pouring candle wax. - “I just joined the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce and the president ordered a candle, so I just got done making his,” James said. Leah Sutton | @ leahsuttonphotography peppermint, but they don’t like peppermint,” James said.

James said presentation is everything and chooses to use vessels customers can reuse after the candle has been used.

“At the end of the day, my goal is to not just sell you a product but to provide you with an experience,” James said.

In addition to candles, James makes wax cubes for candle warmers and is working on a candle that turns into massage oil as it melts.

James has noticed certain scents are more common amongst different demographics.

“I’ve talked to five different men who don’t know each other but are

around the same age and they all love this fragrance [Beach Linen].”

When he first started Victoria Candle Co., he said men had come to him asking for a nonfruity scent. He added his mental freedom scent and found that it was more popular for women because they liked that it smelled like a man.

“I am glad to see that the narrative of the African American community is changing from being lazy and all of the negative stereotypes and how we’re stepping out of our comfort zones to prove those statements to be incorrect,” James said. “I’m glad to see that we are getting more degrees now than

we were 30-50 years ago.”

“Being a part of this journey is amazing, and I want to encourage everyone to keep fighting, keep getting degrees, keep getting an education because it wasn’t allowed at one point and not it’s no longer a privilege it’s a necessity, it’s a requirement, so let’s keep putting in the work and not let our ancestors’ fight be in vain. It’s pointless for them to die for us to have the opportunity to do these things and not take full advantage of it,” James said.

Photo Editor Leah Sutton can be reached at Lsutton@dailyegyptian. com or on Twitter at @LeahSutton_

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

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Track and field director reflects on Black History Month

Adam Warfel | @warfel_adam

Rosalind Joseph, director of track and field at SIU said she appreciates that there is time set aside to celebrate and learn about Black history in the United States, but her focus remains on racial justice.

“I think it’s always good to set aside a time to kind of highlight any issues or conversations that need to be had,” Joseph said. “For me, it’s a time to reflect, it’s a time to educate, and it’s a time to motivate, as well as we continue to just try and push initiatives.”

The conversations that were pushed to the forefront of Americans’ eyes this summer during the Black Lives Matters protests were conversations the Saluki track and field team had been having already.

“I’ve kind of said, these are conversations I’ve been having.

Before, we’ve been having. I think now the country is open to listening,” Joseph said. “Sometimes, it can be tiring; you feel like you’ve been saying something, but now people are open to hearing it.”

Joseph said while the events that happened this summer made people more open to listening it is still important that these conversations continue.

“I think it’s important to keep having them, keep educating, keep being patient with those that are just now realizing that these are conversations that need to be had,” Joseph said.“I think a lot of it did not stem from not wanting or willing to learn, but not even really recognizing there was an issue. “ After the protests that occurred this past summer, there were several Black athletes, including Makur Maker, a five star recruit, that opted to go to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) for athletics.

“I think what it also shows, hopefully for administrations at all levels that representation matters,” Joseph said. “There was a point where historically Black colleges were the only colleges that athletes could go to.”

While William Henry Lewis did attend Harvard University as a football player in 1892, being one of the first African Americans to play any sport in the NCAA. It was not until the late 1950’s and early 1960’sthat all conferences in the NCAA had African American athletes in football.

Lewis was one of the earliest African American players in the NCAA in any sport “Once there became a lot of money in sport and [people] realize that you could make a lot of money off of Black athletes, well then you were accepted into predominantly white institutions,” Joseph said.

As far as why student-athletes would choose to go to a HBCU over another program, Joseph said when someone looks like you, it does make things different.

Photo of SIU athlete Bri’Anna Branch courtesy of Alexander Underwood/SIU Athletics.

“There is something to be said about going to a school where coaches look like you, professors look like you, other students who are not athletes look like you,” Joseph said.

“So you’re not kind of pigeon-holed into ‘You must be an athlete, that’s why you’re here.’”

Black athletes at times can face different challenges in how people see them over athletes from other cultures.

“Certainly representation and so how language and how they’re perceived [are challenges],” Joseph said. “I think that there’s definitely just little things that I hear that I know is cultural or something that they are comfortable expressing that comes off as aggressive, comes off as disrespectful to someone that may not know.”

Joseph said that the many Black athletes have pressure put upon them as athletes that this is how they pay for school.

“I don’t think that the pressure is put on them to perform. It’s the pressure that this is how they get an education, or this is why they’ve been given a chance to get an education,” Joseph said.

Joseph said that the pressure Black athletes face is not necessarily to succeed, but attributing who they are as a person to their physical makeup.

“So, I don’t think it’s pressure that is inherently put on them to succeed, but I feel like they’ve gotten that far in life by being strong fast, aggressive,” Joseph said.” You know all these characteristics that are not smart, thought-provoking, good social skills, and so I think that inherently they attribute their worth

to their physical traits.”

There’s a meme that Joseph said reminds her of how we should look at people beyond their physical attributes.

“There’s a meme, and I love it: next time you see a tall Black male, tell him he looks like a doctor, tell him he looks like an engineer.” Joseph said.

In order to avoid these stereotypes, Joseph said representation is important and continue to have the conversations of being represented.

“I would say representation matters. I think that it’s a gift and a curse to sit in a seat like this and be able to have the conversations that say, ‘Hey, we need more people to have the conversation,’” Joseph said.

Joseph said when watching television commercials sometimes she wonders what people from different cultures would think of the ad.

“There’s a lot of times I see advertising on TV and it’s very easy to say I wonder if there’s one Black person in that room that can say, or Native American, or Asian American that can say let’s look at this from a

different angle and see how it may be perceived,” Joseph said.

Fans of the Saluki men’s basketball team can see the team in their warmup jerseys this season wearing one word equality across the back.

When looking at a normal track and field team at any college, diversity abounds when looking at any position on the team.

“For me when we talk equality, I’m tasked with bringing all these people, literally for track and field,” Joseph said. “I mean I have 300-pound men and 90-pound women that are teammates.”

Bringing those two separate groups of people together for a common goal can be difficult, but Joseph said having them understand each of their roles is important is what equality means to her.

“That’s equality for me, is that we can respect the fact that I never want my 300-pound men to be 90 pounds and I never want my 90-pound women to be 300,” Joseph said. “But we all have our part in doing what we need to do for the team. That’s

equality for me.”

In her interview with SIU, diversity within the athletics department was part of the conversation that they had with her.

“Coming in, it was brought up in my interview. It was very apparent that I would be the only Black head coach here,” Joseph said. “I was appreciative that that was pointed out, that we need to diversify the department that this is going to be important and that they entrusted me with that.”

In the spirit of Black history month, Joseph chose women’s tennis player Serena Williams as her current favorite Black athlete.

“I didn’t realize there was kind of a breakdown of Tom Brady kinda being the [greatest of all time] GOAT of all athletes but they actually compared his championships with Serena Williams and she’s killing him,” Joseph said.

Sports Reporter Adam Warfel can be reached at awarfel@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @warfel_adam.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

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