aesthetically speaking
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Insight News March 21 - March 27, 2016
Vol. 43 No. 12 • The Journal For Community News, Business & The Arts • insightnews.com
Blacks, latinos forge historic media alliance
Partners y Compañeros: NNPA and NAHP By Irma McClaurin, PhD, Culture and Education Editor This year’s annual Black Press Week (March 9-11, 2016) marked the beginning of what is destined to be a long-term collaboration between the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the National Association of Hispanic Publications. Founded 76 years ago, the NNPA serves as the trade organization for 205 member Black publications and media outlets located across the United States from the nation’s capital of Washington, DC to California. According to NNPA Chair Denise Rolark Barnes, publisher of The Washington Informer, the path of NNPA is in its founding: “Our faith
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Freddie Allen/AMG/NNPA
NNPA president Dr. Benjamin Chavis speaks outside of the U.S. Capitol during a joint press conference between NNPA and NAHP. The press conference was attended by Washington, D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (far left).
By Stacy M. Brown NNPA News Wire Contributing Writer
Publishers and leaders from the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a trade group of more than 200 Blackowned media companies, and
from the 400-plus member National Association of Hispanic Publications (NAHP) recently held a historic threeday summit in Washington, D.C.
that featured an all-star roster of speakers, meetings on Capitol Hill, and the enshrinement of the late Gerri Warren into The Gallery of Distinguished Black
Publishers. “I think we very productive
had a week,”
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Brown and Black Giants of Science: Making the Invisible Visible Science Speak By Irma McClaurin, PhD NNPA Foundation Science Writer “There is no American History without Black American History.” Lonnie Bunch, Director, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) If it is true that there can be no American history without Black
American history, then it is also true that there can be no history of science in America without recognition of the contributions that Africans, African Americans and Hispanics have made to the development of science, technology, engineering and math. Yet these contribution to STEM, which increasingly shapes our daily lives, is virtually invisible. Too often our accomplishments as Blacks and Hispanics in any field have been rendered invisible or only discussed during Black History Month in February or National Hispanic Heritage Month in September. Black and Hispanic
Roy Lewis
Denise Rolark-Barnes, NNPA chairman and publisher, Washington Informer Newspaper, (l) with StuartHobson Middle School student Joshua Graves, 11; Dr. Thomas Mensah fiber optics inventor and NNPA Foundation’s STEM Reach 2020 Brand Ambassador, and Al McFarlane chairman NNPA Foundation at the Best Practices in STEM forum March 11th, 2016 at Howard University in Washington D.C.
children are still not taught facts about their histories and cultural contributions as part of their normal school curriculum; instead, they leave school “miseducated,” and today believing that science is for anyone else but them. In 1933, Carter G. Woodson, who founded Negro History Week in 1926, published The Mis-Education of the Negro. So why aren’t there more Blacks or Hispanics in Science? What we know about science is that if you don’t ask the right question, you will not get the correct answer.
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Community swells with pride as Polars win state hoops title By Harry Colbert, Jr. Contributing Writer
Courtesy of Larry McKenzie
North High Coach Larry McKenzie salutes Polar Nation following North’s state championship victory at the Target Center.
A school that was on the chopping blocks four years ago can now again call itself a champion. The Polars of North Community High School are state champions in Class 1A boys basketball following a 68 – 45 win in the title game over Goodhue, March 12 at the Target Center. In a bit of irony, just four years ago when North was set to close, enrollment at the school was just 68 students … one student per point scored by the Polars in the championship game. Now, thanks to protests and community pushback, North’s enrollment is just above 300, graduation rates are up 28 percent and 90 percent of the school’s seniors are slated to graduate in a couple of months. “Nine out of the 12 kids
on this team are on the A and B honor roll; that’s what I’m most proud of,” said North head coach, Larry McKenzie. “Four of our five starters are on the honor roll. We have three seniors who are going to college next year. That’s what this is all about. These are student athletes in every sense of the word.” Winning is nothing new to McKenzie. A Minnesota Hall of Fame coach, McKenzie was the first coach to claim four consecutive state crowns when he led Patrick Henry to titles from 2000 – 2003. In his third season at North, McKenzie said his kids felt as if they were not only representing the school, but all of north Minneapolis. “These kids could have gone elsewhere but they accepted the challenge to stay and represent their community and to restore
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Geri Warren
Commentary
Education
Lifestyle
Late publisher of The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint, enshrined
Flint residents deserve better than this
STEM: A pipeline to greatness
Organic food: Facts and fluff
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