BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 by STUDIO Gannett

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Where do we go from here? Black America and the nation’s reckoning with race

The promise of Vice President Kamala Harris • Tommie Smith on athletes and activism Few Black CEOs in the C-Suite • Rep. Jim Clyburn: We must reclaim Dr. King’s vision

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

WHAT’S INSIDE From the editor: Where do we go from here? Forward. “There is no going back to a ‘normal’ that never worked for Black people anyway.” 6

Doors to the C-suite still closed: Big companies talk up the value of diversity, but the makeup of their executive ranks tells a different story. 62

America at crossroads, again: House Majority Whip James Clyburn draws parallels between today’s challenges and the upheavals of the 1960s. 8

7 tips for Black entrepreneurs: John Rogers, founder of one of the largest minority-owned asset management ﬁ rms, shares hard-won wisdom. 70

Antiracism is thinking big: Bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi ﬁ nds inspiration in abolitionists who were undaunted by the “impossible.” 16

Global justice center takes shape: $100 million museum and education center in Birmingham already has an impressive list of supporters. 72

What Kamala Harris means: Donna Brazile and Rep. Ilhan Omar reflect on a woman of color ascending to the second-highest office in America. 20

A protest in Florida. GREG LOVETT/THE PALM BEACH POST

An agenda for a new day

After a year of turmoil capped by triumph at the polls, activists map out the next steps toward guaranteeing equality and justice for all. 10

COVID as “the great magniﬁ er”: The pandemic tore through Black America, laying bare the effects of income inequality, lack of access to health care and systemic discrimination. 22

HBCUs feel the momentum: With an alumna now the vice president of the U.S., historically Black schools hope to build on their recent progress. 80 Campus diversity goes deeper: Task forces and ad-hoc initiatives are all well and good, but if schools want to lock in progress, then inclusion must be baked into their DNA. 84

Breonna Taylor’s legacy: “You owe it to her to see Breonna in every Black woman you encounter ... and treat her like her life is worth living.” 30 Turning grief into action: Sisters of the Movement are women who lost loved ones to police. “No one should have to go through this alone.” 32 “Where do we go from here?”: The question Martin Luther King Jr. asked 55 years ago resonates as race relations sit at a new inflection point. 36 In the company of legends: USA TODAY reporter Deborah Barﬁ eld Berry thinks back on the civil rights titans and everyday heroes she has had the opportunity to cover. 40

Black labor put lives on line: In Arkansas in 1919, sharecroppers banded together in a union to try to gain a better life and a fairer shake. They soon came under violent attack. 76

The guide’s 1963-64 edition. VICTOR H. GREEN & CO.

‘Green Book’ still shows the way A new generation is expanding on the empowering legacy of the annual guidebooks that helped Black travelers ﬁ nd safe spaces for three decades. 57

Alexander Twilight: He was the ﬁ rst person of African descent to earn a bachelor’s degree in the U.S. But this isn’t as simple as Black and white. 88 James Baldwin’s prophetic words: Writer called out America for clinging to its own creation myth while ignoring the racism at its root. 96 Artists tested, art unleashed: The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the anger of summer 2020 combined to refocus creative minds. 100

“Black Wall Street” rises again: The spirit of Tulsa’s thriving African American business district endures, 100 years after its buildings burned. 44

The giant John Thompson: Before he was the celebrated coach leading Georgetown to basketball glory, he was at the forefront of integration in D.C. as a student and a mentor. 104

Women lead change: Back to the Montgomery bus boycott and even earlier, Black women have been there doing the hard political work. 48

Maribel Perez Wadsworth Publisher and President, USA TODAY Network

Nicole Carroll Editor in Chief

Patty Michalski Executive Editor

Issue editor Nichelle Smith

Issue photo editor Sean Dougherty

Issue designer David Anesta

Design manager Jennifer Herrmann

Production editor Lori Santos ISSN#0734-7456 A USA TODAY Publication, Gannett Co. Inc. USA TODAY, its logo and associated graphics are registered trademarks. All rights reserved. Editorial and publication headquarters are at 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22108.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Where do we go from here? Black America and the nation’s reckoning with race

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The promise of Vice President Kamala Harris • Tommie Smith on athletes and activism Few Black CEOs in the C-Suite • Rep. Jim Clyburn: We must reclaim Dr. King’s vision

Athletes make a statement: From Tommie Smith raising a ﬁ st to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee, activism is an unbroken line in sports. 108

Rebuilding history: Tireless research and new resources help Black families trace their enslaved ancestors. 50

At Magnolia Plantation in S.C. MARY ANN CHASTAIN/AP

Fried ﬁ sh and family tradition: The author remembers Fridays and her grandparents’ house growing up. 52

Plantation museums, public agencies and a host of other institutions are reckoning with the truth that was ignored or whitewashed for so long. 92

Getting the history right

6 influencers to follow: Meet some of the thought leaders guiding the conversation on racial justice. 112 Standing on their shoulders: Kamala Harris takes office with a tribute. 118

About the cover Design: David Anesta Image: University of Georgia students lead a Black Lives Matter march through downtown Athens, Georgia, on Sept. 25. By Joshua L. Jones, USA TODAY NETWORK

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 EDITOR’S NOTE

The only way forward is through — together Nichelle Smith USA TODAY

It’s an understatement to say that 2020 got on Black folks’ collective last nerve. We began the year with a pandemic that hit us harder than any other group of Americans and exposed the systemic inequities still at the root of the nation’s institutions despite the gains of the civil rights movement. Black people were among essential workers risking their lives to serve others, but also among the fi rst to lose their jobs after stay-at-home orders shuttered businesses in every state. Many of us lost friends and relatives and were unable, due to social distancing, to mourn them properly. Police-involved killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd sent us into the streets with our masks on to protest a law enforcement system that doesn’t protect us. To salt the wounds, racist rhetoric supported in the nation’s highest places pitted white Americans against Black Americans at a time when we all needed so badly to work together. Then 2021 arrived with an attack on the U.S. Capitol six days in by “patriots” bent on destruction largely because the election — of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the fi rst Black person and fi rst woman in that offi ce — didn’t go their way. But as House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn notes, in an exclusive essay on page 8, this historical moment is not unfamiliar terrain. Last year was not without some victories, and 2021 is not without hope. In 1967, the beloved community that Martin Luther King Jr. sought to build, seemingly buoyed by civil rights legislation, seemed further away than ever. Police brutality in Watts in Los Angeles exploded into rebellion just after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and white backlash to integration seemed to threaten democracy itself. Young Black activists were at odds with their elders over who should lead the movement. (Journalist Paul Delaney recalls this era on page 36.) So King put the question to the people in the title of his last book: “Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?” This is the same question before us more than 50 years later. Black people I’ve talked to on nearly a year’s worth of Zoom calls have all said the same thing: Black folks have had hard times before; we know how to get through them. With faith, we will come forth stronger and better, but we all have to do it together. We need to fi rst examine how we got here. How do we dismantle ideas and systems that keep racism alive? For best-selling author and Boston University

Clergy members march silently on June 2 to the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, the site where George Floyd had died in police custody a week earlier. JACK GRUBER/USA TODAY

Racist rhetoric in the nation’s highest places pitted white Americans against Black Americans at a time when we all needed so badly to work together. professor Ibram X. Kendi’s take, see Khari Thompson’s story on page 16. We also need to hold our leaders as accountable for progress as we do ourselves. Read Donna Owens’ cover story on page 10 to see what steps activists like Color of Change president Rashad Robinson say we should take in 2021. COVID-19 vaccines hold promise. For insight on how racism created a perfect storm of conditions to make the disease so deadly for Black people, see a sto-

ry from our COVID and Racism series on page 22. There is excitement in the election of Biden and Harris. Presidents of historically Black colleges and universities are hoping for Biden’s support (page 80). Black women like Donna Brazile, political strategist for several Democratic presidents, and Black girls like Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter can’t wait for the inspiration Harris will bring (page 20). As King said in 1967 and Clyburn says today, we are at a crossroads. But as much as we want things to right themselves, we can’t rush the process. We can’t heal as a people, as a country, until we’ve taken time to examine everything that has so clearly gone wrong and allowed all voices to be heard. Where do we go from here? The short answer: Forward. Through still-diﬃ cult times to the other, better side. There’s no going back to a “normal” that never worked that well for Black people anyway. The only way forward is through.

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the author of this essay, is the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives. JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP

We’ve been here before — at crossroads Essay: Like today, the 1960s were a time of turbulence and a chance for triumph

James E. Clyburn Special to USA TODAY

I do not think it is possible to look back on our recent national elections and subsequent events and not conclude that our country is at a crossroads. That could be an alarming prospect but for the fact that it is not unfamiliar terrain. Without going too far back in history, I ﬁ nd the turbulent 1960s for references. The election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and his subsequent assassination in 1963. The election of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and the turmoil that followed with his escalation of the Vietnam War. The National Democratic Convention and election of Richard Nixon in 1968. Among the social activism that were backdrops to all these political events were the Freedom Rides in 1961, the March on Washington in 1963, and Bloody Sunday in 1965.

As a student activist on the campus of South Carolina State College, I became a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. It was in that capacity that I fi rst met and got to work with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and my late colleague and great friend John Lewis. After the extraordinary success of the March on Washington, Dr. King penned “Why We Can’t Wait,” extolling the “fi erce urgency of now.” The book was an extension of his timeless 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” That letter was written in response to a letter Dr. King had received from eight white clergymen who chided him for being too impatient in his fi ght for freedom, justice and equality under the law. They urged Dr. King to be patient and wait; that the goals he sought would eventually be won. Although he expressed hope that political activism and the Johnson presi-

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Clyburn, left, meets in 1982 with John Glenn, center, and Jesse Jackson, both of whom would seek the party’s presidential nomination two years later. BARRY THUMA/AP

dency would bring about change that Blacks hoped to see, Dr. King wrote that “wait almost always meant never.” In “Why We Can’t Wait,” Dr. King argued that the promise of America had been denied to African Americans for 300 years and attempts to prolong the wait for equal rights would be met with persistent nonviolent resistance. Shortly before his life was cut short by the type of violence and ill will he had always extolled against, Dr. King wrote another rather profound book entitled “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” — which, in my not so humble opinion, can be viewed as a roadmap for us today. During the three short years between “Why We Can’t Wait” and “Where Do We Go From Here,” there was signiﬁ cant unrest in the country. In 1965, Alabama oﬃ cials turned a peaceful voting rights march across Selma’s Edmund Pettus

“We are again faced with the ‘ﬁ erce urgency of now.’ This country does not need to be made great; it is great. Our challenge is making that greatness accessible and affordable for all.” Bridge into what has become known as Bloody Sunday, and the deadly Watts riots in response to police brutality took place in Los Angeles. Despite the turmoil, some incremental progress was made: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 all became law. Dr. King also made demands for better

jobs, higher wages, decent housing and education equity. He wrote in 1967 that, “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. … This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose chaos or community.” Recent chaotic events remind us that we still have a long way to go to achieve the beloved community of which Dr. King dreamed and that we are promised in our pledge of “liberty and justice for all.” Although he diff ered with President Johnson over the Vietnam War, King worked with the Johnson administration to achieve many of his dreams in Johnson’s Great Society programs. In these challenging days that are so reminiscent of the 1960s, I fi nd myself refl ecting on Dr. King’s vision for America. As Dr. King did in 1964, I also fi nd myself echoing the hope that our newly elected president — Joe Biden – will provide the

leadership needed to get us back onto our pursuit of a “more perfect union.” Hopefully, he and the new Congress will pursue an agenda that addresses the inequities in health care, housing, education, and criminal justice. Hopefully they will work together to restore faith in our democracy and strengthen the foundation upon which that democracy is built: unfettered access to the ballot box and equal justice under the law. We are again faced with the “ﬁ erce urgency of now.” This country does not need to be made great; it is great. Our challenge is making that greatness accessible and aﬀ ordable for all. And we would do well to heed historian Alexis de Tocqueville’s admonition that our “greatness lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but in our ability to repair our faults.” Congressman Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., is the House Majority Whip.

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

An agenda for a new day Activists map a path forward after a year of turmoil capped by a voting triumph Donna M. Owens Special to USA TODAY

The arc of Timuel Black Jr.’s life is long, covering most of the 20th century and all we’ve seen of the 21st. Along the way, the 102-year-old labor organizer, educator, author and freedom fi ghter has witnessed pivotal events in American and African American history. As an infant, he survived the 1918 infl uenza pandemic. He was part of the Great Migration, which brought his family north from Alabama to Chicago. As an Army soldier in World War II, he battled both Hitler abroad and segregation at home. During the civil rights movement, he led a contingent to the 1963 March on Washington. Today, he counts former president Barack Obama as a protege, supports the Black Lives Matter movement and is experiencing another pandemic, COVID-19. “Though the struggle goes on, I am encouraged by younger generations, in particular, across races and gender,” Black told USA TODAY in a phone interview. “They’re fi ghting to make things better economically, socially, politically for everyone, not just for themselves.” The country is grappling with concurrent crises that have disproportionately shaken Black Americans: COVID-19, economic instability and resurgent racism. Four years of a White House occupied by Donald Trump emboldened bigotry, exposing deep racial divides and simmering resentment. The 2020 police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others ignited nationwide and global protests. In a nation already devastated by the deadly coronavirus, the racial unrest felt like “a match dropped into a powder keg of grief,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. The powder keg exploded on Jan. 6, when a mostly white, male mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building to protest the election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Five people died, including a Capitol Police offi cer. Trump had riled up supporters that day by again claiming without evidence

Tyrone Carter speaks June 3 at the site in Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed by a police officer a week earlier. Video of the officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck, as the man struggled to breathe, triggered worldwide protests. JACK GRUBER/USA TODAY

that the election had been stolen, and he urged them to march to the Capitol to try to stop the electoral votes from being counted. Trump was impeached — for the second time — for inciting the mob. Yet many believe this chapter does not end with Trump’s exit from oﬃ ce. “He is a symptom, not the cause. If we do not ﬁ nd a path forward that goes beyond consequences for just one man, this can and will happen again,” said Quentin James, president of The Collective PAC, which works to elect and politically empower African Americans. “The rhetoric, often racist and hateful, that encouraged the participants in the

attack will not just go away.” Clearly America and its 328 million people, including more than 40 million Black Americans, are at a critical inﬂ ection point. What’s next to propel an agenda of progress?

2020 a success for voting rights Despite its diffi culties, 2020 was a year of “remarkable progress” in the fi ght for racial equity, said Cliff Albright, cofounder of Black Voters Matter. “The challenges aff ecting Black America became the biggest issues on the presidential ballot for the fi rst time in modern his-

tory. And Southern Black voters made history with unprecedented turnout at the polls, largely driven by demands to see changes in their communities.” Co-founder LaTosha Brown added: “We’ve achieved so much in the past year because of our voting power, and now we must continue to build and maintain that power.” Indeed, years of Black grassroots organizing, the Black Lives Matter movement, and multiracial coalitions sparked record-breaking Black turnout that set the stage for Biden’s and Harris historic Continued on page 12

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Fulton County voter Sharron Lee casts her ballot at the Metropolitan Library on Nov. 3, 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia. JESSICA MCGOWAN GETTY IMAGES Continued from page 10

victory over Trumpism, as well as the election of Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate from Georgia. “The win unlocks the full possibility of the restorative and transformational agenda that Black voters and organizers worked for in November,” said Arisha Hatch, executive director of Color of Change PAC. “This improbable and hardwon victory will allow President-elect Biden to pursue the agenda he laid forth in his victory speech, one that centers the needs of Black communities.” To move forward, healing must commence, said Al Sharpton, president and

founder of the National Action Network. But ﬁ rst, he said, “the injured parties” require a seat at the table. “You can’t have this discussion without African Americans, given all the ills we’ve suﬀ ered as a people. Progressives and conservatives must speak to us, not for us. They don’t know what we need.” Sharpton was among seven leaders of civil rights groups who met with Biden and Harris in December. Also participating were the NAACP, the Urban League, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

The 90-minute discussion, which included Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., whom Biden has picked to head the White House Oﬃ ce of Public Engagement, ranged from advancing racial equity to enforcing civil rights laws to ensuring that the Biden administration represents the diversity of modern America. Separately, Biden’s team also met with the Rev. William J. Barber II, cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign, about ways to aid impoverished and lower-wealth individuals and families. “The structural inequality that’s rooted deep within our society must be addressed,” NAACP president Derrick Johnson said. “We must prioritize the

transformation of our nation into a more just, equal society where all can succeed and thrive.” The NAACP is urging Biden to create a White House position for a national adviser on racial justice who would centralize “bold, visionary thinking and strategy on racial justice,” and foster holistic practices to tackle systemic racism. Henry Fernandez, a national pollster with the African American Research Collaborative, queried thousands of voters in recent months to learn their priorities and concerns. While “COVID dominates,” discrimination and racial justice Continued on page 14

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 12

are number two among Black respondents,” he said. Next are jobs and the economy, followed by police reform. Indeed, 2020 exposed longstanding systemic racism across nearly every facet of American life — from child care, as kids attended school remotely, to accessible health care, as COVID-19 raged. The National Urban League’s annual “State of Black America” report, titled “Unmasked,” cited a sobering statistic: Blacks and Latinos are more than three times as likely to contract the coronavirus as whites, and African Americans are nearly twice as likely to die from it. Black patients tend to be far sicker when they ﬁ nally receive treatment — in part because they are less likely to have health insurance. Moreover, the health care system may downplay their symptoms. In a video that went viral in December, Black physician Susan Moore alleged bias by a white doctor at an Indiana hospital. Moore moved to another facility but died soon after, reportedly from COVID-19 complications. The incident hits home for Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, who is a COVID-19 survivor. “The administration’s COVID task force must pay special attention to what is happening with racial disparities in hospital care, especially as it relates to who is admitted when they show up for treatment based on race and gender,” she said. The report also found that 20% of essential workers, largely people of color, live in poverty; more than 40% rely on public assistance. Meanwhile, the Black unemployment rate has remained twice as high as that of whites, at nearly 7%. “We need a broad stimulus plan and a secondary economic infrastructure recovery plan that focuses on long-term investment: broadband, transportation and community facilities,” Morial said. “That plan has to have speciﬁ c measures in it that ensure that Black and brown workers and businesses have an opportunity to participate. “Business as usual and exclusionary practices are not going to work.”

Addressing uneven policy Even as protests continue in the streets, activists are addressing policy at the local, state and federal levels. Following this summer’s Democratic and Republican national party conven-

“All people need to be aware that on this Earth, in all the generations, politics is part of the answer — a very important part.” Timuel Black Jr.

author, educator, labor organizer and witness to history

tions, the 2020 Black National Convention, held virtually, drew nearly half a million participants. “We have a vision for Black lives and a plan,” said Jessica Byrd, co-organizer of the Movement for Black Lives’ Electoral Justice Project, a coalition of 100-plus groups behind the convention. “We helped mobilize millions to vote, and it’s harvest time,” Byrd said. “But the work is not done.” The movement’s platform addresses slavery reparations, universal income, criminal justice reform, housing investments, environmental justice and more. A major legislative initiative is the BREATHE Act, which would divest federal resources from incarceration and policing, invest in non-punitive approaches to community safety; allocate new funding to build healthy, sustainable and equitable communities. and enhance Black self-determination. “It’s a legislative love letter to Black people and a modern day landmark civil rights bill,” said Patrisse Cullors, cofounder of Black Lives Matter. “We can’t stop at survival. We also have to ask: What does it take for Black people to thrive?” It will take bold, transformative policymaking — from cities, to state capitols to Congress. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, the new chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, pledged to “use my voice to address enduring economic and health disparities and ﬁ ght to break the chains of systemic racism that have held back the Black community for far too long.” The Congressional Black Caucus marks its 50th anniversary this year with a record 59 members, 28 of them women. Beatty indicated the caucus will focus on racial wealth equity, aﬀ ordable health care access; stronger housing and education policies; criminal justice reforms and cleaning up the environment. Any battle plan for progress must in-

President-elect Joe Biden, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and their families celebrate in Wilmington, Delaware, on Nov. 7 — three days after Election Day — after results from Pennsylvania put them over the top. POOL PHOTO BY JIM LO SCALZO

corporate building and fortifying Black institutions, said Spencer Overton, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a storied Black think tank. That includes Black businesses, think tanks, political and advocacy organizations, HBCUs, community groups, churches and the like. “Laws and politicians will come and go. Some will be good and others will be bad for Black folks. Strong Black institutions allow us to weather the storms, exercise agency and leadership, debate, participate and fully take advantage of opportunities.” In this season of racial reckoning, Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, is bullish on holding entities accountable, from government to corporations. To wit, the racial justice group has won a long-term commitment from Facebook for ﬁ ghting discrimination. “Racial justice can’t be a stand-alone issue. It has to be integrated into everything,” Robinson said. “It means actually addressing and repairing the harm done by generations of institutionalized racist policy in government and society and moving forward to a better future.” Glynda C. Carr is co-founder and CEO of Higher Heights, which helps elect Black women. Its network has proven pivotal to the history-making candidacy of Harris and numerous national, state and local victories. “The next phase of our collective political power is: How do we hold elected oﬃ cials accountable and receive a return

on our voting investment?” Carr said. “We can’t continue to say Black women decide elections, but at the end of the day the daily lives of everyday Americans, African Americans and Black women’s circumstances don’t change.” Black agrees. “All people need to be aware that on this Earth, in all the generations, politics is part of the answer — a very important part — and the control of who is going to, at the top level, make decisions about the distribution of food, clothing and shelter to all is the challenge that I see.” He thinks Black America should carry a we-shall-overcome attitude that channels the fortitude of its ancestors. “Do I think there’s a continuation of the theme who we had with Dr. Martin Luther King and other leaders across the world? The idea is, be optimistic and believe in the song that we sang at the March on Washington and other places throughout the world: ‘We shall overcome. We shall overcome. One day.’ “That is the legacy which my generation, following the inheritance of my ancestors, have continued to believe. That this world can be and ought to be a world of safety and comfort for all people. ... as expressed in the Constitution of the United States: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, and gradually to human beings, are created equal, are endowed. So that is encouraging and inspires this old man to continue the movement.” Contributing: Grace Hauck

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Antiracism thinks big: Why not equality right now? Kendi works from stance that nothing’s impossible Khari Thompson

Special to USA TODAY

The revolutionary spirit of Boston inspires Ibram X. Kendi. But he’s not thinking about the Boston Tea Party or the ride of Paul Revere to warn that the British were coming. And he’s not just driven by walking in the literal footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr., who attended Boston University as a doctoral student in theology nearly 70 years before Kendi joined its faculty last summer as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities. No, Kendi — author of the 2019 bestseller “How to Be an Antiracist” — has two mid-19th-century Boston abolitionists on his mind: Maria Stewart, a freeborn Black woman he calls the mother of modern feminism, and William Lloyd Garrison, a journalist who published The Liberator newspaper from 1831 until the Civil War ended. Both were activists for the complete emancipation of enslaved people in America as early as the 1830s. “Somehow, some way, those abolitionists didn’t think eliminating slavery was impossible,” Kendi says. “Why can’t we be calling for immediate equality? Why can’t we be thinking that big?” Perhaps that question more than any other motivates Kendi’s studies of racism, ﬁ rst at American University in Washington, D.C., and now at Boston University’s newly minted Center for Continued on page 18

Ibram X. Kendi wrote the 2019 best-seller “How to Be an Antiracist” and is director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, where he is also a professor in the humanities. MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 16

Antiracist Research. His arrival in Boston in July, amid a global pandemic and the racial-justice protests after the police killings of unarmed Black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, couldn’t have been timelier, says historian and BU colleague Linda Heywood. “I think this is a moment of change,” says Heywood, a professor of African history and African-American studies. “With the type of funding he has for his institute, then looking at his antiracist strategies for dealing with how to dismantle the system, I just think that it’s brought an excitement. It’s brought a new way of addressing an old problem.”

“Racist research asks the question: ‘What’s wrong with people? What’s wrong with those racial groups?’ Contrast that with antiracist research, which asks questions like: ‘What’s wrong with policies? ... What’s wrong with systems and structures?’ ” Ibram X. Kendi

Heywood traces Kendi’s antiracist roots past King to Fredrick Douglass’ jarring challenges to American illusions of liberty during the throes of chattel slavery (“What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass asked in a speech at an Independence Day celebration in 1852) and W.E.B. Du Bois’ scholarly and spiritual examinations of Black American life at the turn of the 20th century. The Du Bois connection resonates with Martin Summers, a professor of history and African and African diaspora studies at Boston College. “I think about something like Du Bois and his ‘Atlanta University Studies,’ which looked at racism in various areas of American life, health and employment, and housing, and were done with an eye towards shaping policy,” Summers says in considering analogs to Kendi’s institution-backed work in Boston. For Summers, Kendi’s tributary work

fl ows from one of Du Bois’ simple yet poignant observations in his seminal 1903 work “The Souls of Black Folk.” Du Bois wrote: “The problem of the 21st century is still the problem of the color line.” Dissolving that line, according to Kendi, requires understanding what “racism” and “antiracism” are and how those concepts aff ect the policies that govern our everyday lives. “Racist research asks the question: ‘What’s wrong with people? What’s wrong with those racial groups?’ ” he explains. “Contrast that with antiracist research, which asks questions like: ‘What’s wrong with policies? What’s wrong with conditions? What’s wrong with systems and structures?’ ” His antiracism center’s research team aims to answer those questions by creating the nation’s largest racial inequity database and using its fi ndings to inform the public about racial disparities. The COVID-19 pandemic provides the center a compelling fi rst subject. Data that the center has collected in collaboration with The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project shows how COVID-19 has killed Black Americans at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group. The institute is recruiting proposals from research and policy teams to study the pandemic more closely. It hopes to inspire its network of faculty and graduate students to undertake further studies of racial inequality in education, economics, health care and beyond. But simply exposing racial inequities with data and rigorous study is one thing. Ending racism is another. That goal, Kendi says, won’t be achieved by pushing for race neutrality or a “colorblind” society. Rather, the only way to eliminate the negative eff ects of racist policy is to counter it with uncompromising antiracism that promotes true racial equity. As a congressional policy maker, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley acknowledges how daunting a challenge that can be. “From chattel slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries, to Jim Crow, to redlining, mass incarceration, and police brutality,” Pressley says, “those in power have consistently infl icted policy violence on communities of color, and Black folks in particular. “We must now be every bit as intentional in legislating justice and equity, and that starts with embracing anti-racism as a central tenet of the policymaking process.” Pressley, the fi rst Black woman to rep-

Kendi’s “How to Be a Racist” was published in 2019. Sales surged amid the racial justice protests of 2020. His children’s book, “Antiracist Baby,” released in summer 2020 became a best-seller as well. TOP: KOKILA

resent Massachusetts in Congress, consulted with Kendi and other advocates while introducing the Antiracism in Public Health Act last year. The legislation would push federal health oﬃ cials to recognize racism as a public health crisis and fund more research on nationwide racial health disparities. She also sees a more widespread embrace of Kendi’s antiracist activism in her congressional colleagues on topics of health care reform and criminal justice after Floyd’s and Taylor’s killings. But Kendi’s advocacy for antiracism has received its share of backlash. Coleman Hughes, a fellow at the New York-based policy center Manhattan Institute and frequent critic of Kendi’s, argues that Kendi’s solutions for racist policies promote discrimination against other racial and ethnic groups and that his eﬀ orts are ultimately fruitless because racial equity is ultimately “unachievable.” Kendi, for his part, believes history has proven otherwise. “At some point,” he said, “a generation has to decide: ‘We’re going to be the generation that eliminates slavery. We’re going to be the generation that eliminates Jim Crow. We’re going to be the generation that eliminates racism.’ ” Khari Thompson is a producer for WBUR’s Morning Edition show.

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Donna Brazile

Rep. Ilhan Omar

Special to USA TODAY

‘A country where anything is possible’

‘We have made this a country for all of us’ Recognition. That’s what Kamala Harris’ election as the fi rst female vice president means to me. But her election isn’t merely a recognition of women. It’s also a recognition of women of color and the strength of our democracy — especially on the centennial anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote. The election of Joe Biden as president and Harris as vice president is a recognition of the more than 80 million Americans who voted not for gender or color, but rather for qualifi cations, and who stood up for America’s core principles of inclusion and merit. These principles couldn’t be more personal to me. Growing up in Louisiana, my mother and grandmother weren’t recognized. In the Jim Crow South, they weren’t even allowed their right to vote until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But I was able to vote when I turned 18. And I’ve spent my entire life believing that the right to vote is the key to America’s future — especially the future of women and people of color. So today, let us rejoice that America has fi nally achieved this milestone, and achieved it by voting. Let’s also recognize that our nation still has many divisions. Even as Harris’s victory reinforces our democracy, it also mandates that we now see women as leaders. For now, we must prepare for backlash or resistance from those who still believe women must simply wait our turn. More that 74 million Americans voted for the status quo. While some may be uncomfortable seeing a woman in such a highly visible leadership role, I fi rmly believe that millions more are ready to see an authentic and wise leader who will help lead this great country. Here I stand as a grateful American and a grateful Black woman who proudly recognizes that, in my lifetime, I have fi nally seen what Martin Luther King Jr. taught us was possible simply if we had access to the ballot box. We have made this country what it said it always was — a country for all of us. Donna Brazile is an author, Democratic strategist and former head of the Democratic National Committee.

In January, we began to turn the page on Donald Trump’s America and welcome back hope and optimism into our country. I know President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will use their positions to govern with respect and empathy to better the lives of all Americans. As Harris fi rst addressed the nation as vice president-elect, my 8 year-old daughter, Ilwad, turned to me and said, “She looks like me, Mama.” Representation is powerful. Women, and especially women of color, have waited generations to fi nally see themselves at the highest level of government. Not only is Harris the fi rst such woman to ascend to the secondhighest offi ce in our country, she is also the daughter of immigrants. Her story refl ects the experience of millions of Americans. Little girls will fi nally be able to see themselves fully refl ected in their government. As Harris said on Nov. 7 in her fi rst address as vice presidentelect, “Dream with ambition, lead with conviction and see yourselves in a way that others may not simply because they've never seen it before.” This is our chance to create the America I dreamed about as a refugee, a country where anything is possible. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, is the fi rst Somali-American woman elected to Congress.

USATODAY.COM/OPINION

Harris’ ﬁ rst speech as VP-elect Nov. 7. ROBERT DEUTSCH/USA TODAY

Find more essays from female newsmakers on this groundbreaking moment.

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Segregation: COVID’s ‘magniﬁ er’ Crisis in N.J. county was decades in the making Deborah Barfield Berry and Kameel Stanley USA TODAY

EAST ORANGE, N.J. — Angenetta Robinson shut her door, sat on the edge of her queen bed and stuck the thermometer under her tongue. It read 99. Two hours later, it said 101, then 103. She last remembers 105. She was terriﬁ ed that the illness she was suﬀ ering would spread to the four other people in the apartment she shared

Zayid Muhammad feared that he was coming down with COVID-19, but he had no health insurance and had heard horror stories about what was happening in overwhelmed hospitals. “I’m a Black man in America,” he thought. “I can’t take that risk.’’ Muhammad lives in Essex County, New Jersey. The county, which includes Newark, has had one of the nation’s highest death rates during the coronavirus pandemic. JARRAD HENDERSON/USA TODAY

with family and friends, including her 9year-old grandniece, who has asthma. “I wasn’t even scared of dying, but I just didn’t want anybody in here to catch it,” said Robinson, 57. Steps away in the living room, her housemate Zayid Muhammad couldn’t sleep and was having chills. In the days that followed, Robinson got so weak she could hardly move from her bed. Water tasted like sugar, chicken soup like turpentine. Her hair was brittle. Her skin felt like ﬁ sh scales. Her brother called 911. Robinson lives in New Jersey’s Essex County, which at the height of the ﬁ rst wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was

among the top 10 in the country for its death rate. Housing segregation made Essex County ripe for the spread of the virus, according to dozens of public health experts, community activists, researchers and housing advocates. They point to decades of housing policies — some unspoken, some written — that banned white property owners from selling homes to Black buyers. Those practices excluded Black residents from the midcentury homeownership and wealth-building boom. Today, Essex County is home to some Continued on page 24

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Continued from page 22

‘Like living in the Twilight Zone’

of the most segregated and impoverished communities in the U.S., where some residents jam together in cramped apartments, multigenerational homes and housing projects. This reality, experts and local oﬃ cials say, has contributed to an alarmingly high number of the county’s Black and brown residents catching the novel coronavirus and dying from COVID-19. “These are real people,” said Maria Lopez-Núnez, a community activist in Newark. “And I don’t think that what family you were born into should dictate whether or not you survive a pandemic.”

Funeral director John B. Houston can still hear the pleas. Can you please pick my daddy up? Can you come and pick up mama? Can you come and pick up my uncle? Notiﬁ cations kept buzzing on his phone. Death. Death. Death. ‘‘It was like living in the Twilight Zone,’’ said Houston, owner of CushnieHouston Funeral Home in East Orange. Houston and his staﬀ picked up bodies from hospitals and nursing homes — all of them people of color, mostly from segregated communities nearby. The fu-

John B. Houston says funeral directors like him are often the ﬁ rst to recognize the magnitude of a public health crisis like COVID-19. Cushnie-Houston Funeral Home handled arrangements for more than 100 people in March and April. In a more typical year, it might handle that many cases over the full 12 months. JARRAD HENDERSON/USA TODAY

neral business, which he said is also segregated, is often the fi rst to see what’s coming. His funeral home handled arrangements for more than 100 people in March and April, Houston said. It usually buries that many in a year. Nearly 2,000 people had died of COVID-19 in Essex County by mid-September, according to state health department data. About 50% were Black, 18% were Hispanic and 28% were white. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said the number of cases in his city terrifi ed him. His own mother testifi ed positive. Continued on page 26

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

At Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark, Brenda Blount, 55, and other volunteers help pack food for families in need in August. PHOTOS BY JARRAD HENDERSON/USA TODAY Continued from page 24

“I was scared. My wife was scared because I had to be outside doing all types of stuﬀ ,’’ Baraka said. “Early on, nobody even knew what was happening. You don’t know who can get it. Who is dying? Why? ... And then we found out, ‘Oh, Black and brown people are dying.’ That scared the heck out of us even more, especially in this town.” Newark, a city of about 280,000 just outside New York City, is nearly 50% Black, 36% Hispanic and 26% white, according to Census data.

American dream denied for some In the late 1800s, aﬄ uent white people who wanted an exclusive enclave formed Glen Ridge, a tony suburb west of

The early days of the pandemic were terrifying, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka says, especially as it became clear how severely it hit people of color.

Newark, said New Jersey City University sociology professor Max Herman. The town had restrictive covenants to keep everyone else out, he said. Federal and state policies also fueled suburbanization and segregation in Essex County. The Federal Housing Administration subsidized mortgages for white borrowers while also funding highway and infrastructure projects that bulldozed Black communities. Local and state oﬃ cials, real estate agents and homeowner associations adopted their own measures. They redlined communities considered undesirable for lending and investment. They bought up homes in white neighborhoods, moved in Black residents, then warned the remaining whites that property values would plummet. Essex is No. 1 on a segregation index of

counties in New Jersey, according to the 2020 County Health Rankings, a program from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

Frustrations reach boiling point Civil rights activists have long challenged the state-sanctioned segregation that has occurred here. In 1947, the New Jersey Afro-American newspaper in Newark submitted testimony to a congressional committee examining postwar housing shortages in Essex County. The newspaper complained that racial prejudice was a barrier to housing opportunities. “We are moved particularly by the tragedy visited upon our colored citizens

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Carol and Gaynor Singh wait for a COVID test at St. Matthew AME Church in East Orange. Many faith organizations stepped in to provide services in Essex County.

and other minority groups by municipal and State policies as well as by private groups,’’ the testimony read. The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court banned racially restrictive covenants. But that didn’t eliminate housing discrimination or stem white ﬂ ight. In the summer of 1967, Newark police arrested and beat a Black cab driver. During days of unrest and violence that followed, 26 people were killed, millions of dollars in property destroyed and the city forever changed. The uprising was about more than the beating of John Smith, experts and locals said. It was fueled by decades of systemic inequities that entrenched and empowered white people and corralled many Black residents into shoddy and crowded housing. “We were conﬁ ned to houses owned

by someone else who had moved to the suburbs,’’ said historian and activist Junius Williams. The protest sped up the shifting demographics of the city. In 1950, Newark was 83% white. By 1970, according to the ﬁ rst Census after the rebellion, the white population had dropped to 44%. By 2010, it was 28% white.

‘I can’t take that risk’ Muhammad, Robinson’s housemate, had taken steps to try to ward oﬀ the virus — popping vitamin C, wearing masks, pulling on latex gloves and venturing out only when necessary. “It’s very sneaky,’’ he said. He got the virus anyway. He suspects he may have caught it from Robinson. To prevent others from infection, Mu-

Junius Williams can vividly describe the damage wrought by decades of discriminatory housing policies. PHOTOS BY JARRAD HENDERSON/USA TODAY

hammad used a sponge and bleach to scrub the sinks, the utensils, the countertops. And as much as he could, he stayed in a corner of the living room. Others sought safety in their rooms. Meanwhile, Robinson’s condition got worse, and an ambulance took her to the hospital. She returned home four days later, walking with a cane. Muhammad, who has lung issues, didn’t have health insurance and didn’t go to the hospital. He had heard horror stories about people dying there, alone. “I’m a Black man in America,’’ he thought. “I can’t take that risk.’’ Instead, Muhammad turned to a free city program that helped people who needed to isolate, including those who Continued on page 28

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 27

are homeless and those with no place to quarantine at home. For 14 days, he stayed in a room on the sixth ﬂ oor of a boutique hotel downtown. Food was delivered outside his door. He was tested when he got there and when he left. When Muhammad returned to Robinson’s apartment, everyone was COVIDclear. “It could have been worse,’’ he said. ”We could have all gotten sick.”

Virus magnifi es inequities Housing is one of the primary social determinants of health, experts said, and homeownership is the primary driver of wealth. “COVID was never the ‘great equalizer’ ” endangering everyone in the same way, as some made it out to be, said Michellene Davis, executive vice president and chief corporate aff airs offi cer at RWJBarnabas Health, a network of independent health care providers in New Jersey. “It was the great magnifi er. And so it has been magnifying inequity, lack of access, health disparity, all of it.” Doug Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and a renowned expert on residential segregation, called the disparities “a conglomeration of disadvantages.” The segregation of Essex County is emblematic of what happened in most major metropolitan regions during the 20th century, he said. But because New Jersey is sandwiched between New York and Philadelphia, the suburbanization there was much more rapid and much more complete. Many who live in these segregated communities are essential workers and use public transportation, putting them at higher risk for getting the virus, Massey and other experts said. Others commute to New York City, another hot spot.

Faith leaders ﬁ ll in gaps Alarmed by the outbreak’s spread and frustrated by the state’s slow response, faith leaders and community activists handed out masks, served up hot meals, gave out bags of groceries, set up testing sites and went door to door swabbing noses in public housing complexes. “Jesus didn’t wait for his disciples to come to him,’’ said David Jeﬀ erson, pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark. “We couldn’t wait for people to come to us in their cars.”

Donna Williams’ brush with COVID-19 brought her close to death. She’s an aide to a state lawmaker who sponsored legislation to help people at risk of losing their homes because of the economic fallout from the pandemic. JARRAD HENDERSON/USA TODAY

New Jersey scrambled to set up enough testing sites and lagged behind dozens of other states providing racial breakdowns of virus cases, said Leslie Kantor, chair of the Department of Urban Global Public Health at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Joenika Ponder, a member of Wilson’s church, brought her family to Saint Matthew in June to get a COVID-19 test. Her teenage daughter tested negative. Ponder and her boyfriend tested positive for the virus antibody, indications previous exposure. Ponder, 43, had woken up one morning in March and couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop coughing. Her doctor told her to go to the hospital, where she was given a mask and waited six hours in a tent outside. Finally, inside the hospital, staﬀ ers gave her a COVID-19 test, hooked her up to a machine to test her breathing, then sent her home to quarantine.

For 18 days, Ponder holed up in her bedroom, isolated from her boyfriend and her daughter, Trinity, then 12. Inside her room, Ponder, texted, then, as she felt better, FaceTimed her daughter to check on her schoolwork. She also texted family who lived hundreds of miles away in Georgia. She couldn’t catch her breath long enough to talk. She didn’t tell anyone she was ﬁ nishing her will.

Bracing for the next battle Donna Williams plopped down in the reclining chair in her mother’s downstairs den and yelled to her nephew to call 911. She had been holed up in her bedroom for days — struggling to breathe, struggling to take a shower, struggling to eat, struggling to just get up. “I believe if I had waited one more day … you would’ve got obituary information,’’ she said.

Williams is now ﬁ ghting COVID-19 on another front. She’strying to help protect those who could become victims of the pandemic’s latest fallout: evictions. Williams is a legislative aide to New Jersey state Rep. Britnee Timberlake, a co-sponsor of a bill that would provide mortgage forbearance and payment plans for renters impacted by the pandemic. Timberlake and housing advocates worry that many people who lost their jobs or were furloughed during the pandemic will be unable to pay what they own all at once. Those families, they said, may be forced to double and triple up to share housing, making them even more vulnerable to the spread of the virus. “It’s going to be a disaster,’’ said Yvette Gibbons, executive director of the Essex County Legal Aid Association. “This is a vicious circle.” Contributing: Rick Jervis, Mark Nichols

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Breonna Taylor: Beloved sister became symbol ‘See Breonna in every Black woman you encounter’ Shaylah Brown

NorthJersey.com USA TODAY NETWORK — NEW JERSEY

Nearly a year after Breonna Taylor’s death, she has become an icon of the Black Lives Matter Movement: a young ﬁ rst responder, innocent of any crime, killed by a hail of police bullets in her own home. Photos and illustrations of her have been on magazine covers, spotlighting her as a victim of overzealous policing, with accompanying articles demanding justice and change. But when Ju’Niyah Palmer thinks about Breonna Taylor, she calls her sister. She remembers her sister as a conﬁ -

“Black women are not safe at all in this country (if) you can innocently be sleeping in your own home, and all it takes is for someone to make a life decision for you. That is just scary.” Jaida Hampton

Kentucky NAACP youth leader

dante and friend. “She was lovely, she was caring,” Palmer said. In a December interview with USA TODAY, Palmer, 21, recalled the summers she and Taylor spent with their grandmother in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One moment etched in her memory is the car ride back home to Kentucky one year. They’d usually ridden with their mother, Tamika Palmer, but this time they were driving the route by themselves. It started to pour down rain. Taylor,

who was driving, couldn’t see. The car inched along in the middle of the highway. “It was just really funny, because she really stopped and started crying because she couldn’t see, and called my mama,” Palmer said. Their mother told them to pull over to the side of the highway and put the hazard lights on, but they didn’t move. They stayed in the middle of the highway for about 20 minutes until the rain passed and Taylor felt fi ne to drive again. To Palmer, Taylor was playful yet vulnerable — in other words, very much like any other young Black woman. As the anniversary of her death approaches, Palmer and social justice activists are working to keep her legacy alive by pushing for police reforms and public policies that would prevent more needless deaths like hers. “Breonna’s life mattered,” said Brittany Packnett Cunningham, founder of the social impact fi rm Love & Power Works and host of a podcast, “Undistracted.” “We have to wake up every day and ask ourselves what we owe her.” Taylor, 26, was killed in her home at about 1 a.m. on March 13, by Louisville police offi cers who had a “no-knock” search warrant for her apartment in a drug investigation involving an ex-boyfriend of hers. Taylor and her current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, were in the apartment that morning when they heard loud pounding at the door. According to Walker, the police did not announce themselves before breaking down the door. Fearing a home invasion, Walker fi red one shot, hitting Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. Police responded by fi ring 32 shots. Taylor was hit multiple times and died on the fl oor of her hallway. Mattingly was wounded and rushed to surgery. In September, a grand jury charged

Protesters in Nashville, Tennessee, react in September to news that no officers would be charged for killing Breonna Taylor — but that one was being charged for endangering her neighbors by ﬁ ring indiscriminately. ARK ZALESKI, THE TENNESSEAN

Breonna Taylor, 26, was an emergency room technician at hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky, who had dreams of becoming a nurse. TAYLOR FAMILY VIA AP

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Ju’Niyah Palmer, right, embraces her mother, Tamika Palmer at a vigil outside the Judicial Center in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 19. Six days earlier, Breonna Taylor — Tamika Palmer’s daughter and Ju’Niyah Palmer’s sister — was killed inside her apartment by police serving a search warrant. SAM UPSHAW JR./COURIER-JOURNAL

Sgt. Brett Hankison with wanton endangerment because some of the 10 shots he ﬁ red went into a neighboring apartment. But none of the oﬃ cers were charged with Taylor’s death. “Breonna’s Law,” legislation banning no-knock search warrants, was adopted in June by the city of Louisville, and similar measures passed in Florida, Oregon and Virginia. But such laws are far from widespread, not even in Kentucky. So activists worry that this same scenario could play out elsewhere. “You owe it to her to see Breonna in every Black woman you encounter at work, school, or delivering your groceries and treat her like her life is worth living before she dies,” Packnett Cunningham said. Activists in Louisville and beyond are

pushing for police reforms and accountability for police oﬃ cers. They continue to demand charges against the oﬃ cers involved in Taylor’s death despite the refusal of the Kentucky Prosecutors Advisory Council last December to appoint someone to pursue the case. During last year’s “BreonnaCon” event in Louisville, convened to inspire activism in the wake of Taylor’s death, young Black women like Jaida Hampton, 22, Youth & College president of the Kentucky NAACP State Conference, held voter education and registration sessions and legal roundtables. “Being a Black woman myself, living in Kentucky alone, (I know) that could potentially happen to me, and I have older sisters as well that are the same age as Breonna Taylor,” Hampton said.

“Black women are not safe at all in this country (if) you can innocently be sleeping in your own home, and all it takes is for someone to make a life decision for you. That is just scary,” Hampton said. If Palmer could have told Taylor one thing on March 12 last year, she would have told her to go to their mom’s house that night, or to work some overtime. “If this was a dream, I would literally tell her to go to pick up that shift at work that you planned on picking up, or go to mom’s house, and go out like you planned,” Palmer said. The days are longer than normal for Palmer, who shared the apartment with Taylor just as she had shared a room with her growing up. She was used to coming home and seeing Taylor getting ready to leave for work. Taylor worked evenings

as an emergency room technician at University of Louisville Health, Jewish Hospital and Norton Hospital, and she wanted to become a nurse. Other times, Palmer would come home and go into Taylor’s room to playfully bother her sister as she watched TV. Little memories like this, or mundane tasks like cleaning her room or washing her car, make Palmer miss Taylor the most. “My outlook of the future has changed. Any day could be really anybody’s last day,” Palmer said. When Palmer sees images of her sister painted on murals in bright hues or printed on the cover of magazines it makes her feel joyful. “It makes me feel like people are still thinking about her,” she said. “We’re no longer lonely about the whole situation.”

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Sisters turning grief into action on police reform ‘No one should have to go through this alone’ Nicquel Terry Ellis USA TODAY

The phone lit up around 5 p.m. Allisa Charles-Findley knew it was her younger brother calling for their daily chat. “Guess where I’m going,” Botham Jean said. He was excited. After many long nights working late at his accounting job at PricewaterhouseCoopers, he had been dismissed early and was headed home. He planned to watch Thursday night football on the couch while eating ice cream — his favorite dessert. The siblings hung up the phone as Jean walked into his apartment. Hours later, Charles-Findley was awakened by a call from a hospital social worker. Jean was dead. The killer was off -duty Dallas police offi cer Amber Guyger. She said she entered Jean’s apartment thinking that it was her own and shot the 26-year-old in the heart believing he was an intruder. Investigators found Jean’s opened work laptop and a bowl of freshly scooped ice cream near his body. "I think I’m still stuck in anger because it was so senseless," Charles-Findley said. "She saw this big Black man and thought, ‘Oh, he has to be robbing me,’ and shot him.” Two years after Jean's death Sept. 6, 2018, Charles-Findley still mourns the loss of her brother and is channeling her grief with advocacy. In May, she united with other Black women who have lost siblings to police violence to form Sisters of the Movement. The group is lobbying for federal police reform that they hope prevents other Black and brown people from being killed by police. And they aren't wasting any time. Within three months, Sisters of the Movement had created a fi ve-point pro-

posal for federal legislation and met with offi cials and lawmakers including President Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, who led a police reform platform proposed by Senate Republicans, and staff from Joe Biden's campaign. The Sisters are demanding a "zero tolerance" policy that would disarm any police offi cer who receives an infraction for excessive use of force; mandatory independent investigations when the use of force by police results in death; an end to the “qualifi ed immunity” that shields police offi cers from many civil lawsuits; increased oversight of federal money that goes to state and local police departments; and mandatory, independent psychological evaluations and background checks for police applicants. "Yes, there are diff erent laws locally," said Tiff any Crutcher, a founding member of Sisters of the Movement. Her twin brother, Terence Crutcher, was fatally shot by police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2016. "But in order to really hold police accountable, we have to eff ect change at the federal level." Charles-Findley said the Sisters didn't get the support they hoped for from Trump or Scott, the Senate’s lone Black Republican. Scott blamed Democrats for stalled progress on police reform. He proposed the Justice Act in June, which requires all police shootings and use of no-knock warrants to be reported to federal authorities, and provides more federal funding for departments to better train and recruit offi cers. The bill was blocked by Senate Democrats who said it didn't do enough to address police misconduct and racial injustice. Charles-Findley said she and a handful of other families victimized by police brutality and racist violence met with Trump at the White House in June. Trump promised federal investigations

Allisa Charles-Findley helped organize Sisters of the Movement after her brother Botham Jean, seen below in college in 2014, was killed by a police officer in his own home. The officer claimed she had entered Jean’s apartment by mistake, thinking it was hers, and assumed Jean was an intruder. MICHAEL MULVEY FOR USA TODAY

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of all of their cases. But she has yet to see one for Jean. "I don't think they (Republicans) see an issue," Charles-Findley said. "I think they see it as Black people are complaining again." Meanwhile, Charles-Findley said Biden's campaign expressed a willingness to work with the Sisters on police reform.

A wave of protest The women began organizing their efforts just as a nationwide protest movement exploded last year over a string of police shootings and killings of Black people. Among the cases that spawned or intensiﬁ ed the Black Lives Matter protests were those of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, who were all killed by police; Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times by a police ofﬁ cer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and left paralyzed from the waist down; and Ahmaud Arbery, who was pursued and fatally shot by two white men as he jogged through a neighborhood in south Georgia, a killing that local authorities initially declined to prosecute. All of the victims had sisters who have since spoken out about the pain of losing a sibling to police brutality and racist violence. Letetra Widman, Blake's sister, said during a news conference in August that she has become "numb" to the unjust killings of Black people. "So many people have reached out to me saying they're sorry that this happened to my family," Widman said. Invoking the names of other victims in cases historic and recent, she said:"Well, don't be sorry, because this has been happening to my family for a long time, longer than I can account for. It happened to Emmett Till, Emmett Till is my family. Philando (Castile), Mike Brown, Sandra (Bland).... This is nothing new."

Sisters share a special bond After Jean died, Charles-Findley said she discovered there was no outlet for siblings of Black men and women killed by police. Much of the public attention and support groups such as Mothers of the Movement — an informal sorority of Black mothers whose children have died at the hands of police and who have advocated for political reform since the 2016 presidential election— cater exclusively to the parents of victims. "The emphasis is always placed on the

Members of Sisters of Movement, a group of women who have lost siblings to police violence and who are advocating for change. COURTESY OF K.C. FOX

Tiffany Crutcher’s brother Terence was shot and killed by a Tulsa, Oklahoma, police officer, who was later acquitted by a jury. COURTESY OF TIFFANY CRUTCHER

mom," Charles-Findley said. "Not that it shouldn’t be, but I saw it as other family members are grieving, too." Charles-Findley reached out to other sisters of victims, including Crutcher; Ashley and Amber Carr, whose sister Atatiana Jeff erson was fatally shot in her home by a police offi cer in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2019; and Natasha Duncan, whose sister Shantel Davis was killed by an offi cer in New York City in 2012. The women say they have found solace and friendship in one another. They talk often, send one another heart emojis to signify love and encouragement, and share advice. Crutcher said the Sisters called on her birthday this year. It was a diffi cult marker of time: She was getting older, but her twin brother was not. All she has now is memories of them sharing chocolate and vanilla birthday cake and having heartfelt talks about their plans to fi nd their purpose and pursue their dreams. When the twins spoke on their 40th

birthday in 2016, Terence Crutcher was excited about starting music appreciation classes at Tulsa Community College. The father of three wanted to become a music producer. "I’m going to make you proud, and God is going to get the glory out of my life," Terence Crutcher had said. A month later, Terence Crutcher was shot dead by Tulsa police offi cer Betty Shelby as he walked toward his stalled vehicle with his hands in the air. "When he was killed, I felt like she killed me, too," Tiff any Crutcher said. "But I had to live and I had to fi ght." Shelby was acquitted of manslaughter charges in Terence Crutcher's death. After her acquittal, Shelby began teaching classes about how police can survive the aftermath of killing a civilian. Both Crutcher and Charles-Findley say that every time an unarmed Black person is killed by police, it reopens their wounds. It also presents an opportunity to connect with the victims' sisters and invite them to join Sisters of the Movement. "No one should have to go through this alone," Charles-Findley said. "We will support each other."

A day of service The founders of Sisters of the Movement say they also want to be community partners. Charles-Findley planned to host a "Day of Kindness" in Dallas to mark the second anniversary of Botham Jean's death and honor his love for community service with the hashtag #BeLikeBo.

Jean, she said, often traveled back to their native island of St. Lucia to volunteer in poor communities. He would host puppet shows at orphanages and play soccer with young boys. During the "Day of Kindness," Sisters of the Movement planned to provide meals to the homeless, unveil a mural dedicated to Jean and hold a candlelight vigil. John Dixon III, a Dallas businessman, partnered with the Sisters for the event and planned to off er masks, hand sanitizer and free COVID-19 testing to the local community that day. Dixon said the Sisters provide a source of comfort and advocacy that many Black families victimized by police brutality would not otherwise receive. “When I look at Sisters of the Movement, I just see a group of powerful women who are looking to be the group of change,” Dixon said. "Me just being a pillar of the community I live in, I just wanted to contribute in any way possible and by any means necessary." K.C. Fox, a strategist for Sisters of the Movement, said the group is planning a march for Black women in March 2022 that will center around empowerment with events that teach people how to handle encounters with people. Charles-Findley said she wants Jean to be remembered as a happy, God-fearing man who saw the good in everyone. Jean had followed Charles-Findley to the United States when he fi nished high school in 2011 in search of better education and career opportunities. He attended Harding University in Arkansas and was off ered a job at PricewaterhouseCoopers after graduation. The siblings bonded over their favorite TV shows— "Power" and "Scandal." During their last conversation, Jean asked for Drake concert tickets for his birthday. Charles-Findley preferred to get him a set of pots and pans. Jean would also frequently visit CharlesFindley and her three sons in New York. A doting uncle and role model, he would always give her oldest son his hoodies. In October 2019, Guyger was found guilty of Jean's murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Guyger fi led an appeal in August to overturn her murder conviction. Police offi cers, Charles-Findley said, need stiff er penalties for killing innocent people. “I don’t look at it as justice because my brother is still dead," Charles-Findley said. "And Amber Guyger got 10 years and she’s still appealing it, so there is still a lot of work to be done.”

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Martin Luther King Jr. celebrates in St. Augustine, Florida, on June 19, 1964, upon learning that Congress had passed the landmark Civil Rights Act. AP Paul Delaney Special to USA TODAY

At a low point in his career of activism, Martin Luther King, Jr., asked himself a question — one also relevant to the wider civil rights movement and is just as pertinent today: Where do we go from here? He was so torn about the state of civil rights, the possible fracturing of the movement and the pressures the Vietnam War was exerting on the country that King took a brief break from the action, secluded himself in a villa in Jamaica and wrote a book — appropriately titled “Where Do We Go from Here?” It was June 1965, and there was little question that race relations were dire

‘Where do we go from here?’ King’s question still resonates today and getting worse. The movement was at a crossroads, as was the nation. Then, as now, there was bickering, debate and disagreement over the path forward. The emotions and opinions on the

state of race relations range from those who believe that progress is obvious to those who say things are not what they seem. Courtland Cox and Cliﬀ ord Alexander, Jr., two prominent ﬁ gures from

the ‘60s, represent those positions. Alexander was a pillar of establishment power in the ﬁ ght for integration when he served as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Lyndon Johnson and as the ﬁ rst Black secretary of the Army under President Jimmy Carter. He is not at all pleased with race relations today. “There is more racism now. It’s much worse than in the past,” he said. “There are more racists now who just don’t care. They feel Black people are not needed. And the Trump administration has made racism more respectable.” Cox, who was with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when it Continued on page 38

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took on Jim Crow in the most rigidly segregated states in the Deep South, expresses optimism about the future. “Yes, there is more awareness, more consciousness today, and that gives me hope,” he said. “The more diff erent groups are involved, the better. ‘Black Lives Matter’ signs across the country are diff erent from the 1960s, and that gives me hope.” In those days, moderate organizations such as King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference were strongly challenged by the college students and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC. The youngsters accused King and other leaders of being out of step with the times and of being too cozy with whites. That debate is similar to one raging today between young Black Lives Matter activists and older establishment leaders. Then, as now, race was front and center. The youngsters of SNCC had kicked whites out of the group, while King’s group and other organizations were strong proponents of integration. In 1960, the theme was “Black and white together” after students at North Carolina A&T, an all-Black college in Greensboro, demanded service at a whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth’s Department Store. Their action triggered demonstrations throughout the South, resulting in the modern civil rights movement. The irony of SNCC’s birth and nurturing is striking. After the group’s founding at Fisk University in Nashville and its decision to set up headquarters in Atlanta, leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference provided the youngsters a desk in a corner of the SCLC’s Auburn Avenue offi ces. That assistance was at the urging of Ella Baker, SCLC’s fi rst executive director. Two white students, Jane Stembridge and Ann Curry, ran the makeshift operation from a corner desk until the new group moved across the street. I witnessed those developments from my perch as a reporter for the Atlanta Daily World. Despite the mutual distrust between the groups, the sit-in phase of the movement, as well as subsequent protest activity, was mostly successful. Lunch counters were desegregated, jobs previously denied were opened to Blacks and other nonwhites, and many segregated neighborhoods opened up, thanks to civ-

President Lyndon Johnson moves to shake hands with Martin Luther King after signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965. King needed Johnson’s support for major civil rights legislation, but he also opposed him on the Vietnam War. YOICHI R. OKAMOTO

“Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.” Martin Luther King Jr.

il rights laws of 1964, 1965 and 1968. A schism developed among Black people after Stokely Carmichael, the SNCC leader from 1966 to 1967, raised a clenched ﬁ st and shouted “Black Power,” called whites “honkies,” and said Blacks should cut ties to whites. He was also part of the eﬀ ort to replace centuries-old racial labels of “colored” and “Negro” with “African American” and “Black,”

which once was deemed an insult. We at The New York Times were puzzled at fi rst over which term to use in our reporting. Executive editor A. M. Rosenthal fi nally threw up his hands and instructed writers to use whichever term their sources preferred. For a while, we did just that, until Black and African American became standard. The 1970s and ’80s marked a signifi cant shift with slow but sure progress. More Blacks were elected to political offi ce; there was economic improvement and more progress for other ethnic groups; and the general racial climate began to improve. Recent elections have propelled even more nonwhites and women into public offi ce. Also of signifi cance is the reach of the movement today. Black Lives Matter demonstrations occurred in every state. Plus, there were more white participants than during the civil rights movement. Finally, another promising sign lies in

the election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. They have pledged to make their administration look more like America; if successful, it would mean more nonwhites and women in the national government than ever. How did King answer the question of where do we go from here? He resolved, “Never again will I be silent.” From his Jamaican retreat, he returned to Atlanta and devoted his attention to opposing the Vietnam War and organizing the Poor People’s Campaign. He vowed to broaden the alliance of groups to include Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Indians and poor whites. “Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness,” he wrote. Paul Delaney is a former New York Times editor and co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.

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Lawrence Guyot, 23, removes his shirt in front of reporters in June 1963 to show bruises from a beating delivered by police from Greenwood and Winona, Mississippi, after he was arrested at a demonstration. Guyot would soon lead the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, an integrated party in a segregated state. JIM BOURDIER, AP

Blessed to hear, and share, stories from these legends Reporter reﬂ ects on encounters with historic faces

Deborah Barfield Berry USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — It felt like I couldn’t breathe when I saw the hospital bed sitting empty that day in 2012. I exhaled when a nurse told me that civil rights veteran Lawrence Guyot was down the hall, in the dialysis room. I went there and stood in the doorway until Guyot motioned for me to come over. As machines hummed, I leaned in to hear Guyot, who directed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 and

worked alongside Fannie Lou Hamer, tell me how weeks earlier he had voted for Barack Obama. He seemed so proud when he said people trying to deter Black voters from re-electing the nation’s ﬁ rst Black president had “lost that battle.” I thanked him for his lifelong work registering Blacks to vote and paving the way so Black journalists like me could retell those stories at national newspapers. Weeks later, I would join others in a packed church in Washington, D.C., for Continued on page 42

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Guyot’s homegoing service. It was a ﬁ nal opportunity to salute him and his work. In the years since, many other civil rights veterans have “gone on to glory,” as the old folks say. Last year was particularly hard with the loss of legends like Martin Luther King Jr.’s lieutenant Rev. C.T. Vivian; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King; and Rep. John Lewis, standard-bearer for King’s beloved community. I was blessed to have also interviewed them. Some said their deaths marked the end of an era. Others said it was the beginning of a new one. “With each passing, the torch is being

Sharlene Kranz, who joined SNCC’s voter registration project in Tuskegee, Alabama, once told me that local activists were the true heroes. “These were people born there, who grew up there, who stayed their whole lives there,” she said. “So to stick their necks out when they did, where they did, was so excruciatingly brave and dangerous.”

passed,’’ Dorie Ladner, 78, who helped register Blacks to vote in her native Mississippi, told me recently. “We’re mindful of the fact that there is so much work to do for the next generations to come.” Thousands of “foot soldiers’’ challenged segregation in the Deep South and across the country during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s. Over the years, I’ve interviewed countless foot soldiers, including some who worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of Racial Equality. Some were well-known and have a place in history books. Many weren’t featured in articles or chapters on the Civil Rights Movement. They nonetheless played critical roles, making lunch for activists, housing them and even hiding them. Sharlene Kranz, who joined SNCC’s voter registration project in Tuskegee, Alabama, once told me that local activists were the true heroes. “These were people born there, who grew up there, who stayed their whole lives there,” she said. “So to stick their necks out when they did, where they did, was so excruciatingly brave and dangerous.”

Alabama State University has hundreds of recordings of interviews with civil rights veterans. Most of them have passed, said Howard Robinson, the university’s archivist and a member of the steering committee for its National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture. It’s important, Robinson said, to be good stewards of that history. “I hope we can be true to their stories … so future generations understand their commitment and sacrifi ce,” he said. For years, I was a Washington correspondent for Gannett’s newspapers in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, so I had priceless opportunities to write about the Civil Rights Movement. I’ll never forget watching Lowery walk over to an elderly Black woman hanging laundry in Virginia. Decades after the movement, he was still working to get Black folks out to vote. I’ll never forget sitting with former Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry as he explained that as the fi rst chair of SNCC he focused on Mississippi because it was “the last bastion of apartheid.” I’ll never forget talking to Vivian about traveling the South to get faith leaders to send busloads of folks to the March on Washington. My colleague, the late Maria Fowler, who could work magic with a video camera, teamed up with me to capture the stories. We sat in Guyot’s kitchen, Ladner’s living room, Eleanor Holmes Norton’s dining room. We met with Lewis and House Majority Whip James Clyburn in their offi ces in the U.S. Capitol. Editor Nichelle Smith massaged our work, posted it online in the Civil Rights in America: Connections to a Movement project and included it in USA TODAY’s annual Black History Month edition. Maria isn’t here anymore, and the civil rights site is no longer active. But there are still stories to tell while we have veterans to share them. Many are in their 80s and 90s. And there are still lessons to learn. “Every generation has to fi ght its own battle,’’ Frank Smith, 78, who was a fi eld secretary for SNCC in Mississippi, told me last summer as the death of George Floyd sparked demonstrations across the country. Ladner said her comrades fought hard for social justice. She still shares her passion on a weekend radio program in D.C. “We have given the fi ght the best fi ght that we could,’’ she said. “I will keep on fi ghting until I take my last breath.”

Dorie Ladner is mindful of the work still to be done. DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY/USA TODAY

Marion Barry talks about his days with SNCC in the 1960s. LISA NIPP/GANNETT

Author Deborah Barﬁ eld Berry with Reps. James Clyburn, left, and John Lewis.

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100 years later, Tulsa returning to ‘Black Wall St.’ Anniversary of massacre is also time to look ahead N’dea Yancey-Bragg USA TODAY

Dwight Eaton believes his entrepreneurial spirit is part of his DNA. That genetic imperative may have been what drove his great-grandmother Minnie to move her family from Arkansas to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the early 1900s. Lured there like many Black families by the discovery of oil and the abundance of land, she opened a grocery

Muskogee High School graduate Amitie Esparaza has her photo taken in front of a mural in the historic Greenwood District of Tulsa. In the early 1900s, Greenwood was a prosperous African American area known as “Black Wall Street.” In 1921, white mobs burned 35 city blocks to the ground, destroying 1,200 homes and many businesses and killing and injuring hundreds. But the community rebuilt. DOUG HOKE

store. They set up shop less than a mile from the Greenwood District, a thriving stretch of Black-owned businesses known nationally as “Black Wall Street.” His grandfather, Joseph Eaton, whom Dwight remembers as a soft-spoken man who liked to chew on cigars, spent his early teenage years working in a factory and cutting hair on the side. When a mob of white Tulsans burned Greenwood to the ground, injuring and killing hundreds of their Black neighbors in 1921, Joseph Eaton and many others stayed to rebuild. More than 25 years later, Joseph Eaton raised the money to open a barber-

shop, which would become a community hub for local civil rights leaders. His wife, Louise, was an activist and writer. “Contrary to popular to belief, Greenwood did rebuild after the massacre,” Dwight Eaton said. “It rebuilt to a certain degree of prominence maybe equal to or slightly more than what it was.” This summer’s 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre is a time for the nation to pause to remember the tragedy. But Tulsa’s leaders hope to use the centennial to celebrate and revive the “Black Wall Street mindset” that brought famContinued on page 46

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ilies like the Eatons to Oklahoma and helped them rebuild after the massacre. “The overarching story as I tell it is that of the human spirit,” said Hannibal Johnson, a member of the 1921 Centennial Commission and author of “Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples with Its Historical Racial Trauma.” “It’s important to highlight the character of these incredible people who against odds that are almost unimaginable to us today were able to realize their vision, fulﬁ ll their dream,” Johnson said.

How the ‘promised land’ turned into a ‘tinderbox’ For Blacks facing political and social oppression in the Jim Crow South of the late 1800s, Oklahoma represented “a promised land,” Johnson said. Black people who had been enslaved by Native Americans and brought with them to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears, as well as their descendants, were given allotments of land by the federal government following the Civil War. The discovery of oil brought O.W. Gurley, once one of the country’s wealthiest Black men, to Tulsa. Gurley started a number of businesses and bought land that he sold to other African Americans in what would become the Greenwood District in 1906, Johnson said. The Greenwood District grew into an economic haven within the rigidly segregated city. It was home to an array of mom-and-pop operations and small businesses including grocery stores, restaurants, theaters, beauty salons and barbershops, as well as professional service providers like doctors, lawyers and pharmacists. “It was remarkable in terms of the concentration, the number of Black entrepreneurs,” Johnson said. As Greenwood prospered, the country hit what Johnson called the “nadir of race relations.” Attacks on Black communities escalated nationwide during the so-called Red Summer of 1919. Oklahoma enacted some of the same Jim Crow policies that many African Americans had faced in the South. Outside of Greenwood, Tulsa was a lawless city where lynchings took place and the Ku Klux Klan had a presence. “Tulsa was a sort of tinderbox waiting on something really to ignite those smoldering embers,” Johnson said. “Certainly a factor was jealousy of the Greenwood

“Our community and Black people again realize their strong ability to not only recover and be resilient but to be prosperous and create cooperative economics in a way that hasn’t happened since 1921.” State Sen. Kevin Matthews

community” among whites. What set Tulsa on fi re was the arrest of Dick Rowland, a Black teenager who was accused of assaulting 17-year-old white elevator operator Sarah Page on May 30. The next day, a group of whites gathered outside the jail where he was held, and Black residents arrived to prevent a lynching. Shots were fi red, and at least a dozen people were killed. What followed was a 16-hour rampage in which whites burned 35 city blocks and more than 1,200 residences. A state commission report released in 2001 confi rmed at least 39 dead — 26 Black and 13 white. But experts say the death toll could be as high as 300; hundreds more were injured. The case against Rowland was dismissed later that year after Page stated she did not want to prosecute. Nearly 100 years later, experts are attempting to fi nd and identify victims buried in Tulsa. Forensic anthropologists found at least 10 bodies in an unmarked mass grave in October.

Rebuilding and reviving the ‘Black Wall Street’ mindset Black Tulsans were unable to receive any insurance money because the massacre was labeled a “riot.” Nevertheless, Greenwood was rebuilt within ﬁ ve years, said Phil Armstrong, project director for the 1921 Centennial Commission. By the mid-1940s, 200 Black-owned businesses had returned to the city, including the Eatons’, Johnson said. But the community struggled, in part because of federally backed “urban renewal” policies that demolished many homes and businesses that were labeled as blighted, according to state senator Kevin Matthews, who represents the district that includes Greenwood.

The Midway Hotel is little more than ashes after the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. PHOTOS VIA UNIVERSITY OF TULSA/MCFARLIN LIBRARY ARCHIVES

A portion of the outer shell was all that remained of the Dreamland Theater.

Large percentages of the Black population still live in North Tulsa, where 33.5% are living in poverty. Tulsa leaders, including Matthews, Armstrong and Johnson, are seeking to revive the spirit of Black Wall Street through the Centennial Commission. Matthews hopes to use Greenwood Rising, a history center being built by the commission, to tell the stories of entrepreneurs, draw people to Tulsa and allow Black Tulsans to beneﬁ t economically from the inﬂ ux of tourism. He’s also started entrepreneurship programs for Black youth to learn more about becoming business owners. “The highest hope I have is that the mentality and the Greenwood spirit re-

turns to Tulsa,” he said. “Our community and Black people again realize their strong ability to not only recover and be resilient but to be prosperous and create cooperative economics in a way that hasn’t happened since 1921.” Today, the barbershop Dwight Eaton’s grandfather built has been preserved, and his brother, Bobby Eaton Jr., runs a radio station out of the building. Eaton opened a coﬀ ee shop, the Black Wall Street Liquid Lounge, in January 2020. “We’re just taking that model of success that was in place from the 1900s ... and using the same principles to attempt to re-create the district,” he said. “There’s hope, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”

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Members of the Women's Political Council, which was central in organizing the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. ALABAMA STATE UNIVERSITY AND ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA SORORITY, INC.

Montgomery ’55: The women led Lessons from bus boycott resonate in politics today Safiya Charles

Montgomery Advertiser USA TODAY NETWORK

It was Dec. 1, 1955. Rosa Parks had been arrested that day for defying an order to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. Jo Ann Robinson sat at home, lost in thought. Could the Black women of Montgomery’s Women’s Political Council, of which she was president, persuade 50,000 Black people to stay oﬀ the city buses that so many depended on as their only transportation? She couldn’t be sure. Her telephone rang. It was attorney Fred Gray. Gray had received Robinson’s urgent message about Parks’ arrest. Active since 1949, Robinson and the Women’s Political Council had worked closely with the lawyer to negotiate with city leaders

and bus company offi cials ward it, the boycott may not for better treatment of Black have occurred,” said Autrey, citizens aboard Montgomery program chair of the Nationbuses — to no avail. al Center for the Study of CivRobinson wrote in her il Rights and African-Ameri1987 memoir, “The Montgocan Culture at Alabama State mery Bus Boycott and the University. In 1955, Robinson Women Who Started It,” that was a professor at that she told Gray about her idea school, then known as AlaJo Ann Robinson bama State College. to call on all Black riders to led the council. The Women’s Political stay off the buses. ALABAMA STATE Council off ers a blueprint of “ ‘Are you ready?,’ Gray UNIVERSITY what Black female leaderasked. Without hesitation, I ship can look like, and why assured him that we were,” Black women have long been out front as Robinson wrote. They hung up, and she jotted some architects of change. Despite their sucnotes: “The Women’s Political Council cess, though, few outside their city rewill not wait for Mrs. Parks’ consent to member the courageous women of the call for a boycott of city buses. On Friday, council and their outsized contribution December 2, 1955, the women of Mont- to American democracy. It’s a feeling many Black women in gomery will call for a boycott.” As far as historian Dorothy Autrey can politics today understand well. tell, the council was the only group thinkAn uphill battle then and now ing about a bus boycott. “It’s most likely that had not the WPC Despite years of commitment, succonceived of this plan and worked tocessful organizing and grassroots work

both in and outside their communities, Black women continue to face an uphill battle for recognition as political leaders. To date, fewer than 50 Black women have served in Congress. Only 15 have ever held statewide elected executive ofﬁ ce. And just two have become U.S. senators: Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois in 1993 and Kamala Harris of California in 2017. A Black woman has never served as a state governor, although Stacey Abrams came close in Georgia in a hotly contested election in 2018. “Going back to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and even before that, Black women have been major catalysts. Suffrage, abolition — we’ve always been there, and we’ve always been doing the work. But we have very rarely gotten the recognition that has been due,” said Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a visiting practitioner at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University and the co-founder of Higher Heights, an organization dedicated solely to encouraging Black women to grow their political power and leadership.

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In Alabama, Black women have increased their political footprint since “Old Dixie.” Today, 11 of the 104 representatives in the state House are Black women; seven are white women. The four women in the 35-member state Senate are all Black. Even so, Black female leaders at the city and state levels say more could be done to empower and support Black women seeking offi ce, who are often actively discouraged. There seems to be a societal expectation that “minority” politicians are male and female politicians are white. Women of color disrupt this notion. In 2018, Audrey Graham became the fi rst woman to serve on the Montgomery City Council since 2010. Graham is only the sixth woman elected to the body in its 45-year history. In a crowded fi eld of candidates, Graham, who works for the domestic relations division of the county, soon learned that some were less than thrilled to see her throw her hat in the ring, including one Black male candidate. “He said to me, ‘Why are you running? You’re just going to split the vote. … You need to sit back. Nobody’s going to vote for you.’ He said that to me as plain-faced as if he were ordering a Big Mac off a menu. Matter of fact. I said, ‘We’ll see.’ ” Graham wasn’t deterred, but she was troubled. “ ‘People are not going to vote for you because you’re a woman.’ ... That began that eye-opening for me,” Graham said.

Kamala Harris’ nomination and election “changed the historical face of leadership, and that’s not just about gender or race but ... the types of qualiﬁ cations and lived experience that Black women bring.” Glynda Carr

co-founder and CEO, Higher Heights

female, it’s a whole diﬀ erent story. I can just talk, and she understands and listens. But when I’m talking to a male, I had to soften it down a lot,” Morris said. Morris won and now represents Montgomery in the Legislature. TaShina Morris’ experience in running for office is familiar to many women in politics. Her stances on issues didn’t draw as much attention as her style and appearance. JULIE BENNETT / ADVERTISER

Softening for ‘electability’ After Democrat TaShina Morris lost her 2015 campaign for a City Council seat in Montgomery, she went back to the drawing board ahead of her 2017 run for the state House. Like it or not, Morris felt she had to make some changes — not to her platform but to her appearance. During her ﬁ rst run, she had received questions and complaints from some men about her marital status. “I guess that was a lack of leadership for them, because I wasn’t married,” Morris said. So she wore a ring the second time around. That put all that talk to bed. “They never asked.” Morris stopped wearing pants to campaign events in favor of skirt suits. “It was showing too much authority. They want to see you looking feminine.” Her tone had to change, too. “I couldn’t talk about the issues and concerns in a forceful way. ... Now, when I’m face to face with another Black

Members of the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery. From top, left to right: Geraldine Nesbitt, Thelma Glass, founder Mary Fair Burks, president Jo Ann Robinson, C.D. Alexander and Irene West. LEVI WATKINS LEARNING CENTER ARCHIVES/ALABAMA STATE UNIVERSITY AND BETA NU OMEGA CHAPTER/ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA SORORITY INC.

Closing the gap Questions of electability have long plagued Black women, who must deal with the compounded scourges of racism and sexism and who typically face heightened scrutiny from the media and public. In the midst of the presidential campaign, Newsweek published an essay casting doubt on Kamala Harris’ eligibility for the offi ce as the child of immigrants. (The magazine quickly apologized for furthering “the racist lie of Birtherism.”) When Harris became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, a Virginia mayor, in a racist comment, referred to her as Aunt Jemima. Black women running for offi ce also typically receive less fi nancial support than their male and white female counterparts, a major snag for many who campaign for more expensive statewide offi ce, according to research from the Center for American Women and Politics and the Center for Responsive Politics. “When you start talking about ‘electability’ or ‘viability,’ that framing actually slows down the ability for people to raise money and create institutional support,” said Glynda Carr, co-founder and CEO of Higher Heights. Groups like hers are working to close the gap by training politically minded Black women for leadership and connecting them with the resources they need to mount successful campaigns. Carr sees a road map in the success of women like Morris and others across the U.S. who have run and won with fewer resources. With Harris’ nomination and election, “we have changed the historical face of leadership, and that’s not just about gen-

der or race but frankly the types of qualiﬁ cations and lived experience that Black women bring as candidates and elected leaders,” Carr said.

Council’s legacy lives on When the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization charged with managing the bus boycott, was formed on Dec. 5, 1955, it had only four paid employees, all of them members of the Women’s Political Council. Men came to be known as the leaders of boycott, but the women of the council were critically involved throughout. Robinson and others met and negotiated with city commissioners, bus company offi cials and even the governor. By 4 a.m. on Dec. 2, the morning after Robinson had received Gray’s late-night phone call, she and two Alabama State students had mimeographed more than 52,000 leafl ets. By 7 a.m., they had organized them into parcels and mapped out distribution routes. And by 2 p.m. the council had used its grassroots network of 300 women spread across three chapters on the city’s west, east and north sides to the effect that “practically every [B]lack man, woman, and child in Montgomery knew the plan and was passing the word along” about the boycott, Robinson wrote in her memoir. Thirteen months later, they had broken the bus company’s bottom line and shattered the segregated seating law. Their legacy is visible in the work of Black women leaders today. People like LaTosha Brown, who worked for years to increase Black civic participation and helped turn out Alabama’s Democratic women voters in record numbers to deliver Doug Jones a U.S. Senate seat in 2017’s special election. Black women like Deborah Scott, of Georgia Stand Up, and Abrams, whose decades-long eff orts tipped the state to Democrats in November’s general election and January’s Senate runoff s. The women of the Montgomery council were not discontented that their effort, in some ways, had been “usurped” by prominent men. Although the women were leaders, they were not necessarily seeking leadership. It was a diff erent time after all, with no concept of today’s modern feminism. Yet even as they took on ancillary roles, their intelligence, leadership and action were respected, sought after and encouraged. They had seats at the table.

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Laurie Scott-Reyes traced her family history to the William Hurt Plantation in Georgia and the dwellings where her enslaved ancestors had lived. PHOTOS COURTESY OF LAURIE SCOTT-REYES

Nathaniel Cline

Special to USA TODAY

Laurie Scott-Reyes drove for two hours, alone, on a back road from Crawford, Alabama, to Sparta, Georgia, retracing in reverse the migration her ancestors made after slavery ended. Anxious to reach her destination and determined to make the journey, she took in the sights around her, staring at dilapidated homes, rusted-over storefronts and rows and rows of pine trees. Long ago, her family had ﬂ ed Georgia looking for a better life and made Alabama their new home. Now she felt a pull to come see what they had left behind. “It was like driving into the past,” Scott-Reyes said, thinking of her forebears. “Their spirits are very real to me, and for me, that was like a great achievement, and I felt like I was doing it for my tribe.” That achievement: tracing her roots to the William Hurt Plantation, where her family had once been enslaved. At the plantation, Scott-Reyes joined a growing wave of Black Americans who in recent years have been exploring their genealogy at historical sites. They have been digging into the increasingly available information about their families’

Tireless research rebuilds history for Black families More resources available to ﬁ nd enslaved ancestors history in the United States — history dating back to more than 400 years ago, when kidnapped Africans were ﬁ rst brought to Jamestown, Virginia, and sold into slavery. Their search for answers has led to new explorations at former slavery sites and to deep dives into historical data. It has also led to reckonings —both in private homes, over family trees, and in the nation’s institutions, which have had to face controversial truths about the role slavery played in American society. For Scott-Reyes, who lives in Florida, her journey into her family’s experience with slavery brought her more than 500

miles southwest of Jamestown to the Hurt plantation in Georgia. Scott-Reyes toured the plantation where William Hurt once controlled some 2,000 acres of land. It was sad, she said, to walk around the muscadine and scuppernong grape vines to view the sleeping quarters and the cookhouse for the enslaved. “It was almost like I was driven by something that was bigger than myself,” Scott-Reyes said. “It’s no longer just me, my curiosity and wanting to know my people. I wanted all the descendants to know who these ancestors were, so it became more for them than for me at a certain point.”

Historians, genealogists and personal researchers like Scott-Reyes have long sought answers from plantation sites. One of the most famous events toward that goal took place in 1986, when descendants of enslaved Black Americans gathered for a reunion in Somerset Place, near Creswell, North Carolina, at a plantation that was once home to multiple generations of enslaved people. Dorothy Spruill Redford, an author, historian and former executive director of Somerset Place, helped organize the event. Researchers have also found likeminded individuals through The Slave Dwelling Project, a group that raises awareness with overnight stays in historic buildings and other programs. Joseph McGill Jr., the project’s founder, was inspired to start it in 2010 after staying overnight in a restored South Carolina slave cabin. A year later, he slept near an auction block in Brenham, Texas. He has now visited slave dwellings in 25 states. He says it’s critical that descendants of enslaved Africans tell the stories of what happened at sites like Somerset Place. “If we’re not in the audience or participants in what these places oﬀ er, they’re going to continue to sugarcoat the story, to tell the ‘Gone With the Wind’ version

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

The Slave Dwelling Project has visited historic buildings like these in 25 states in the decade since it was founded. The project uses overnight stays at the sites to raise awareness. THE SLAVE DWELLING PROJECT

Bettye Kearse traces her family lineage back to James Madison, fourth president of the United States. At left is her grandfather John Chester Madison with his family around 1935. COURTESY OF BETTYE KEARSE

of history,” McGill said. “The Slave Dwelling Project counters that.” Alex Haley’s 1976 novel “Roots: The Saga of an American Family” and the landmark 1977 miniseries based on it inspired many African Americans to explore their family histories. In 2019, the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the ﬁ rst Africans in English North America, at Jamestown, provided another boost to genealogy engagement. Ric Murphy, former vice president of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and author of the book “Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia,” urged Black families to consider researching their genealogy. “American history is our history, and our history is American history,” he said. Families have been poring over family records and submitting their DNA to genetic services in search of answers. Others have been using oral histories to map out their heritage. Among them is Bettye Kearse, author of “The Other Madisons: The Lost History of A President’s Black Family,” who oﬀ ers evidence that she is related to James Madison, president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. “Always remember, you’re a Madison, you come from African slaves and a president,” Kearse said, quoting a family

“It’s exhilarating for me to think that we can use the knowledge of our forebears to make a difference in our future.” Stephen Hammond

credo she began hearing at age of 5. Years later, she became the family griot — a West African term for the person responsible for maintaining the oral histories of a family — and the keeper of scrapbook photos and other artifacts. “I’m very big on scrapbooks, boxes and tangible things that people save in basements and attics and closets and all sorts of places,” Kearse said. “It’s very important to do it, save it and pass it on.” Museums and other institutions have also been engaging more with descendants of the enslaved in the past several years. Some have reformatted their programming, and others have used tools to help catalog the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants. In December, Michigan State University launched a searchable database,

Enslaved.org, that includes short biographical sketches. The University of Maryland and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are partners in the project. Stephen Hammond, a family historian and expert on the lives of enslaved people at the Arlington House museum in Virginia, said more information-sharing allows researchers to be able to better explore genealogical cases. In the past 20 years, Hammond said staff at historic places such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, Madison’s Montpelier and Thomas Jeff erson’s Monticello have started to share more about the history of slavery. Hammond is a seventh-generation member of the Syphax family, which is connected to Martha Washington, the wife of the fi rst president. He has a DNA study underway that could confi rm not only the family’s African ancestry but also how it intersects with white Washington descendants. “It’s exhilarating for me to think that we can use the knowledge of our forebears to make a diff erence in our future,” Hammond said. “And I would hope that we can inspire other people to think about that in that way, as well.” Historical research can be diffi cult for Black families because many were torn

apart through the slave trade, documents have been burned, names have been changed, and, at times, even living family members have dismissed DNA requests. Cheryl Brown, who is based in Virginia, experienced some of those challenges personally after uncovering a marital aff air through DNA tracing and going most of her life without knowing her father or her family because she was adopted. But after responding to a persistent emailer claiming to be her cousin, obtaining her birth records and taking an Ancestry.com DNA test, she met her father two years ago. Lonnie Lee Jr., Brown’s 81-year-old father, said he was elated about his daughter’s eff orts and glad to meet her for the fi rst time at a tearful family reunion in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I knew she existed somewhere, and I was just glad that she found me,” he said. Brown has also learned about a late sister, connected two family members to their birth fathers, and gained over a hundred new family members. She is now researching slave transaction records and is motivated to dig even deeper. “I’m pressing forward,” she said. “I’ll never tire from the research. There’s just so much to do.”

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Fried ﬁ sh Fridays: A family tradition Good food, good times and beautiful memories Shaylah Brown Bergen Record

The fi rst thing I did on the car ride home was roll down the windows — not for the refreshing breeze that topped off a beautiful day with my grandparents, but to make sure my clothes wouldn’t smell like fi sh and onions. Every Friday evening growing up, my family and I would visit my grandparents, Joyce and Chester Anthony, in Hillside, New Jersey. Some days I would pretend I didn’t know what we were having for dinner, only to have a fl ash fl ood of excitement when I found out it was fi sh. Fried fi sh. The dinner spread always included fried fi sh, rice, cabbage and a salad with cucumbers, tomatoes and onions fresh from the garden. In the center, possibly the second star of the show, was hot sauce. To complement the meal: my grandmother’s homemade iced tea. But waiting for that meal was half the fun. On Friday afternoons, after we arrived, my grandfather would leave for the fi sh market, and my sister and I would fi nally be able to watch some television after a week of focusing on school "with no distractions," as my mom put it. But instead of gorging ourselves with cartoons, we’d usually end up playing “Go Fish” with Grandma. There was always an after-school hunger that nagged at me, but a snack had to be something that wouldn’t outshine and spoil my dinner. Grandma and Grandaddy’s snack basket never disappointed. I had grown up gardening with my grandparents: One side of the backyard was dedicated to my grandmother’s plants, and the other side, in front of the garage with a basketball hoop attached, was my grandfather’s vegetable garden. I was my granddaddy’s “assistant gardener.” I helped him grow perfectly round and juicy red tomatoes. On top of this already prestigious title, I am Continued on page 54

Shaylah Brown and her younger sister Brianna with their grandfather Chester Anthony Jr. at his home in Hillside, New Jersey, in 2002. Brown’s family had dinner there every Friday. The menu? Fried ﬁ sh — always. SIMONE ANTHONY-BROWN

Shaylah, right, and her sister enjoy corn on the cob in 2003. SIMONE BROWN

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 52

“Grandbaby No. 1.” When my dad and uncles were playing basketball, there was always the chance for the ball to bounce its way over to the garden. I was the would-be goalkeeper, intervening before any real damage could be done. If I stood on top of the bright red porch and looked down, I could immediately see that all our hard work was not in vain. The vegetable garden was sprawling with tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and cabbage. For a snack, I'd sometimes settle on a bright orange peach, with ﬂ ecks of yellow so sweet. Or an old-time classic: crackers and peanut butter. The peanut butter sat on the highest shelf in the kitchen. That snack took commitment because I’d need to get the step stool that would prop me up a few extra feet. All snacks needed to be eaten in the kitchen. And if I had even the slightest thought of stepping outside the kitchen without washing my hands, my grandmother could sense it. “Shaylah, did you wash your hands?” “Yes, Grandma.” After a snack, I would often go down to the basement, tug on the metal string that turned on the bulb over the laundry room, and hop on my grandmother’s old beige and brown exercise bike. I went as fast as I could. No matter how fast I went, or how much the bike rattled and creaked, it remained in the same spot. Then, unamused by the nonmoving bicycle, I’d ﬁ nd something else. I often ended up in my favorite part of the house: the bathroom. I was enchanted with the bright fuchsia walls, the Hollywood-style vanity and my grandmother’s perfumes. I’d dance in the mirror, prance around and come up with silly hairstyles. When I was about 12, I remember grooving to Meli’sa Morgan’s "Fool’s Paradise," courtesy of the cookout taking place next door. This was my sanctuary, my safe, familiar place. And then I would hear the heavy front door slowly open and close. My grandfather was back from the seafood market. The time had arrived! I would descend from the bathroom in unapologetic haste. I had a job to do: I was the souschef, and I knew my taste-testing abilities would be highly sought after in just moments. My grandfather would often be sing-

Shaylah Brown, aka “Grandbaby No. 1,” dances with her grandfather at his 80th birthday celebration in 2018. EMMANUEL DAUPHIN

Brown's grandparents, Joyce and Chester Anthony, at her grandfather's 80th birthday celebration. EMMANUEL DAUPHIN

ing his favorite tune, Dean Martin's "Everybody Loves Somebody," in his low baritone: “Everybody loves somebody sometime." (To this day that is the only part of the song I know.) My grandfather is still the best cook. He tells stories of his time serving in the Army during the Korean War, when he cooked for the people on his base.

On a typical Friday night we would get out all the ingredients: the fi sh, the eggs, the fl our. After washing up, he would take the fi sh, douse it in the egg wash, dunk it in the fl our, and fl ip it back and forth. In a large, deep skillet on top of the stove, the oil would be heating. My eyes would scurry back and forth. We were in the fi rst quarter. The fi sh would be coated, the pan would be heated. My anticipation would rise ... and then ... Score! Into the pan, with the rewarding sound of shhhh and then pops. And that most enticing aroma — a smell that could only be created from fresh, hand-battered whiting hitting the grease of a hot pan. When the fi rst piece was golden brown and crisp, he would take it out and lay it on the plate to cool. “Aye Shaylah try this,” he would say. This was my granddaddy’s invitation to sample any of his cooking — and he would not let anyone turn him down. I’d often get the fi rst piece on a small saucer plate that was decorated with fl oral trim. I knew I should have let the fi sh cool more, but I couldn’t help it. My eyes would eat before my mouth did. It was always too hot, but I took the risk anyway. My dad seemed always to arrive from work just in time for dinner. We all would sit around the table: my parents, my grandparents and siblings. Saying grace was always the last thing between cooking and eating. Sometimes

I’d be asked to say it. After our "Amens," it would be on. Often, my aunts, uncles and cousins would stop by. The doorbell would ring, or on summer days my grandmother would leave the door to the porch propped open. I could see them ascending the steps if I were sitting on the right side of the table. There always seemed to be enough food. Friday nights wouldn’t end until midnight. There would be laughing, talking, telling stories about the week. Goodnights would take place at least six times before we actually left. And goodnights would only be "see you later" because we would gather again Sunday after church. I used to wonder if the fi sh fry was just something my family did. It's an old tradition, I learned. Inherited and passed down from my greatgreat-grandmother, who would buy fi sh every Friday from the fi sh man who came around on horse and wagon, my grandmother said. She'd pair the fi sh with potatoes and cornbread. Now the family still comes together, but the tradition has slightly evolved amid the pandemic. And instead of whiting, sometimes salmon or tilapia is served. But the main ingredients remain intact: family and love. And on the way home, I still roll down the windows.

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

‘Green Book’ still guiding Black travelers New generation expands on its empowering legacy Morgan Hines USA TODAY

At a time when the simple act of traveling through the United States often put Black people in physical danger, “The Negro Motorist Green Book” was an essential guide to safe spaces. Published by Victor Hugo Green annually from 1936 to 1966, the book helped Black travelers in the Jim Crow period fi nd hotels, restaurants, gas stations and other businesses that would serve them. The Academy Award-winning 2018 fi lm “Green Book” renewed interest in the book, which had ceased publishing after major civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s. Today, a new generation of authors and creators are examining and building on its legacy. “The ‘Green Book’ enabled African Americans to travel with dignity and fi nd safe harbors during a period in U.S. history when the vast majority of whiteowned businesses, even in large urban areas, were not welcoming, even hostile, to Black patrons,” said Alvin Hall, host of the podcast series “Driving the Green Book,” which launched in September. Continued on page 58 A 1947 edition of “The Negro Motorist Green Book.” The annual guidebook, published from 1936 to 1966, helped African American travelers fi nd hotels, restaurants and other businesses that would serve them. The guides lent their name to the 2018 fi lm “Green Book.” NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY VIA AP

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 57

Establishments in the book, many of them Black-owned, “welcomed not only their dollars but were also genuinely welcoming to them as human beings, an experience that could be hard to ﬁ nd during the days of segregation,” Hall said. Martinique Lewis, president of the Black Travel Alliance, said that after learning about the “Green Book” she was inspired to create a modern version. Her “ABC Travel Greenbook: Connecting the African Diaspora Globally” is a catalog of Black-owned businesses, Black-focused experiences such as tours, and resources for international travel. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, why have I never heard about this book?’ ... I’m like the Black travel guru,” Lewis said, noting that she bought every copy of the origi-

The author “never acknowledged the racial violence and discrimination that had prompted the creation of his guide. The tone was very businesslike, but in subtle ways he expressed why the guide was so important.” Maira Liriano

New York Public Library

nal books that she could ﬁ nd. Like its predecessors, Lewis’ book is more than just a directory of businesses. “I give paragraphs, and I’ll let you know: ‘There’s been this many cases of discrimination (at a given location) that we know about. Be alert and be aware,’ ” Lewis explained. Lewis also includes personal experiences. For example, she describes one incident in which she was walking down the street and was called a “monkey.” She wants readers to to be aware of what could happen in certain places. “I always tell people do your research before you go. Because, for one, not everybody is racist. A lot of times people have never seen Black people in these places,” she said. She pointed to an experience she had in Latvia in 2019. “People ask to take photos, people ask to touch your hair.” Lewis is also working on an app that will include reviews. It will be something like a “Yelp, TripAdvisor and Facebook fused into one,” she said. Lewis’ book serves all travelers — including those who want to serve as allies and support Black-owned businesses. “There are so many diﬀ erent ways we

Charles Becknell Sr., 77, browses through a 1954 copy of the “Green Book” at his home in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. More than 50 years after the “Green Book” stopped publishing, the Oscar-winning 2018 ﬁ lm renewed interest. RUSSELL CONTRERAS/AP

A 1960 edition of the “Green Book.” The guide went by a few different names over the years as its scope continually expanded. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY VIA AP

The De Anza Motor Lodge on Route 66 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was listed in the “Green Book” as a place where African American travelers would be able to ﬁ nd a room. This image shows the motel in 2016, after it had closed. Most of the property has been razed and is being redeveloped. RUSSELL CONTRERAS/AP

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Driving the Green Book

Detroit

The Detroit-to-New Orleans route, one of dozens, was well traveled by Black migrants who had moved North for better jobs but still had family and friends in the South.

Mich. Toledo 127

1947 route 1956 route 2021, avoiding federal highways and tolls.

Columbus

Images from New York Public Library collection

Green Book facts Though the first year of Green Book publication is 1936, no known copy exists. It may be that it was established in 1936 with first publication in 1937.

Based on the New York Public Ill. Library’s “Navigating the Green Book” trip-mapping feature

Ind.

Cincinnati Scottsburg

St. Louis

Louisville

Ky. Mo.

The Green Book published a list of 106 historically Black colleges in the ’46 and ’47 editions. They were included to help Black soldiers returning from WWII find a college that would accept them and their GI Bill benefits.

Kosciusko

Pages and prices:

1960-63¹

1937 16 pages 25 cents

Tenn. 45

Tupelo

Atlanta

407

Miss.

100 pages $1

Birmingham 45

128 pages $1.95 120

Nashville

Jackson

Green Books were sold at Esso gas stations, which welcomed Black travelers. 1966

Bowling Green

While official business records don’t exist, some sources estimate about 15,000 copies were sold each year.

The Green Book grew in popularity, size over 30 years

Dayton

The 1937 Green Book cost 25 cents, about $4.61 today, accounting for inflation. Green Books measured about 5 x 6³/4 inches in size.

Ohio

Decatur

Ala.

Not published during World War II or in 1965

Ga.

Meridian

Hattiesburg 60

La. Fla.

New Orleans Gulf of Mexico

100 miles

1937 1966 1 – Combined editions published for 1963-64 and 1966-67

SOURCE ©Mapcreator.io/©HERE; USA TODAY; New York Public Library Digital Collections; “Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America” by Candacy Taylor; GRAPHIC Janet Loehrke and George Petras/USA TODAY

can all become more inclusive.” Candacy Taylor spent weeks on the road photographing and investigating “Green Book” sites for “Overground Railroad,” published last year, a book tracing the roots of Black travel. “The ‘Green Book’ made travel more enjoyable because Black people didn’t have to worry about being turned away and humiliated by white business owners,” Taylor said. While Taylor was on the road, sometimes working up to 15 hours a day and scouting up to 30 sites, her stepfather, Ron, worried about her. “We’d talk a lot when I was driving in the car, and I had to check in with him every day,” she said. “He taught me how to use a stun gun and a knife. ... He was always concerned for my safety, and he should have been.” While things have changed since the era when the “Green Book” was so indispensable, the possibility of a violent encounter still gives Black drivers a reason to be wary when on the road, said Maira Liriano, associate chief librarian at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library. The center holds an extensive collection of “Green Book” editions. “If you think about how many killings have happened recently with Black motorists — so many of the police shootings have been associated with Black motorists — I think you start connecting the dots, and I think it’s really important to understand the history,” Liriano said. The text of the original “Green Book” guides stayed mostly positive, with darker undertones pertaining to safety on the road, Liriano said. “Victor kept the written communication in the ‘Green Books’ very upbeat,” she said. “He never acknowledged the racial violence and discrimination that had prompted the creation of his guide. The tone was very businesslike, but in subtle ways he expressed why the guide was so important.” While the new eﬀ orts pay tribute to Green’s original vision, they’re also a reminder that the books’ original mission remains a work in progress. Liriano read from the last paragraph of the “Green Book” introduction from 1948 to 1951: “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.”

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick appears on a Nike billboard in San Francisco, where he played for the 49ers — and led them to the Super Bowl. ERIC RISBERG/AP

Doors to C-suite still closed Big companies talk up diversity, but their executive ranks tell a diﬀ erent story Jessica Guynn and Brent Schrotenboer USA TODAY

Nike has been talking this talk for the past quarter-century: diversity, inclusion, equality. The company’s ads, which famously encourage America to “Just Do It,” have celebrated disabled athletes, spotlighted female participation in sports and focused on Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback whose protest against racial

injustice in 2016 made him an outcast. Last year, after George Floyd, a Black man, died under the knee of a white policeman in Minneapolis, Nike announced a $40 million commitment to the Black community. Nike said it will “never stop striving to role model how a diverse company acts.” Nike even has three Black directors on its governing board of 12. But those external signals stand in stark contrast to the complexion of the power players at the top of the company.

“How many times do you have to hear how (people of color) are being ostracized in your company?” Ella L.J. Bell Smith

business professor and author

All fi ve of the top executive offi cers at Nike are white, refl ecting a common reality in corporate America more than 55 years after the Civil Rights Act. A USA TODAY analysis shows that while corporations have added more African American employees and directors over the decades, they haven’t done likewise in the executive suite, even at companies that have diverse boards. Continued on page 64

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 62

USA TODAY reviewed the most recent proxy statements for the 50 largest companies in the Standard & Poor’s 100 as of July 15, including some of the world’s most infl uential consumer brands, such as Apple and Facebook. These regulatory fi lings show compensation for top executives, among other corporate information, to help the company’s investors make informed decisions. Nearly all of those companies — 48 of the 50 — issued statements in support of the Black community following Floyd’s death May 25, an unprecedented outpouring after decades of corporate silence on racism and police killings. Yet corporate America’s top ranks look nothing like the country they serve. Of the 279 top executives listed in the proxy statements, only fi ve, or 1.8%, were Black, including two who recently retired. By comparison, the U.S. population is more than 13% Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Many of these megacompanies are led by all-white executives in the top fi ve slots listed on proxy statements — the CEO, the chief fi nancial offi cer and three other top-paid executives. In some cases, companies also list other top-paid offi cers who recently left. In all, 279 executives are listed on the 50 proxy statements examined by USA TODAY. Business and diversity scholars say the executive suite is still one of America’s most exclusive and impenetrable clubs, with the corporate hierarchy most closely resembling a plantation: White at the top; black labor struggling to rise. For decades, corporate America has failed to hire, promote and fairly pay Black men and women, stalling many from rising above middle management, says Ella L.J. Bell Smith, a Dartmouth professor of business administration. That has had a cascading eff ect, resulting in stagnant incomes and helping worsen a wealth gap that yawned even wider during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also puts corporations at a disadvantage. As the nation gets less white and more diverse, corporate America will need to adapt to better serve that changing market. A 2018 Boston Consulting Group study suggests that greater diversity on leadership teams improves fi nancial performance and innovation. Even small changes to senior teams can generate gains, the study found. Smith’s message to corporate America: Move beyond hashtag activism.

Of the 279 top executives listed at the 50 biggest companies in the S&P 100…

274 are white, Hispanic, Asian, or other ethnicity

are Black (2 have recently retired) NOTE The list includes some who retired or departed in the most recent reporting year SOURCE USA TODAY analysis of the most recent proxy statements for the 50 biggest companies in the S&P 100 as of July 15, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence George Petras/USA TODAY

“The reality is that we have to get past the talking,” said Smith, co-author of “Our Separate Ways,” which examines the career trajectories of Black and white female managers. “How many times do you have to hear how women of color, men of color are being ostracized in your company? How many stories from Black folks do you need?” “If you are still running a plantation internally, or if you are still running your company like the 1960s,” consider this a wake-up call, she said.

Comparing words with actions On May 30, Netﬂ ix’s corporate Twitter account tweeted: “To be silent is to be complicit. Black lives matter. We have a platform, and we have a duty to our Black members, employees, creators and talent to speak up.” Co-CEO Reed Hastings and wife Patty Quillin announced they were donating $120 million to historically Black colleges and universities to “reverse generations of inequity in our country.”

Netfl ix also committed another $100 million to support Black communities in the U.S. But according to its most recent proxy statement, none of its top fi ve executive offi cers is Black. The company has one Black director, representing 8% of the board. In a statement, Netfl ix told USA TODAY that in the past three years in the U.S., it has made strides, increasing the number of Black American vice presidents from three to nine and the percentage of Black executive-level managers from 0% to 13%. In June, Netfl ix hired Netflix’s Bozoma Saint John as its Hastings. chief marketing offi cer. Netfl ix’s website showed Saint John, who is Black, as the only nonwhite member of its management team of eight. Meanwhile, on Nike’s website, the company executives page went through its own makeover. The page had shown the photos of 10 people, all white, until mid-July when the photo lineup changed. It now shows an expanded group of 16, including three Black executives who had been with Nike since at least 2019 but who were not previously listed on that page as top executives. “The page was updated to refl ect Nike’s current Executive Leadership Team,” the company said in a statement to USA TODAY, noting the recent promotion of two of those executives. So why now? Nike board member John W. Nike direcRogers Jr. said Nike CEO tor Rogers. John Donahoe has transformed his team after taking over in January. “That’s real, not just a show (of faces),” said Rogers, who is Black. Former Nike brand president Trevor Edwards, who is Black, had been listed among Nike’s top-paid elite leaders before he resigned in March 2018. In 2019, 9.9% of its vice presidents were Black, according to Nike, which also recently announced a $100 million commitment to the Black community from Michael Jordan and Nike’s Jordan Brand. Allegations about racial exclusivity at the top have continued, including in an online letter June 1 from former Nike manager Danny Tawiah. He wrote that Continued on page 66

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

When Dick Parksons became CEO of Time Warner in 2002, he hoped a wave of Black executives would follow in corporate America. It didn’t happen. "There is no shortage of minority candidates who can compete for these jobs. It’s not that they get overlooked. They don’t get looked, period.” 2004 PHOTO BY TODD PLITT/USA TODAY Continued from page 64

“systemic racism exists within Nike” and that institutional racism curbs upward mobility for people of color. Nike, which had about 22% Black employees in 2019, said it continues to “sharpen our focus on hiring more Black leaders across all levels at the company.” In 2014, Apple made similar adjustments to its executive staff page online, adding photos of executives, including two Black women, soon after the release of a report that highlighted the predominantly white and Asian male makeup of its workforce. Six years later, Apple — the world’s most valuable company — had one Black board member and an all-white top-fi ve executive tier, led by CEO Tim Cook, who announced a $100 million commitment to racial justice last June. Apple’s larger leadership team of 16 has one Black executive, according to its website. According to the company, 3% of Apple leadership is African American, and it plans to take “signifi cant new steps on

diversity and inclusion.” “It’s one thing to add a Black member to your board or to promote at least one African American to the (executive suite) so you have numerical cover,” Dick Parsons, an executive-suite veteran and a senior adviser at asset management ﬁ rm Providence Equity, told USA TODAY. “It’s another thing to understand why we need to do something extraordinary to get to where we need to be.”

Black executives losing ground? When Parsons took the helm of Time Warner as CEO in 2002 and of Citigroup as chairman in 2009, he was one of the most powerful African Americans in corporate America. “I thought this was the beginning of a wave of African American executives coming into the C-suite,” Parsons said. That wave never really built. The problem is twofold, Parsons said: too few Black executives being groomed for key posts, and too many corporations hunting for talent in all the same places.

Ursula Burns was the ﬁ rst Black woman CEO of a Fortune 500 ﬁ rm. She was CEO of Xerox from 2009 to 2016. KIMBERLY WHITE/ GETTY IMAGES FOR NEW YORK TIMES

At Time Warner, Parsons tapped one individual to make sure his company interviewed a diverse slate for every executive opening. There were no hiring quotas — the pool of potential candidates was simply widened — but more than 100 candidates from underrepresented groups were hired. “It turns out that to have a level playing ﬁ eld, you have to go out and search

for candidates who can compete. And there is no shortage of minority candidates who can compete for these jobs,” Parsons said. “It’s not that they get overlooked. They don’t get looked, period.” Today, stubborn patterns of exclusion and discrimination are still keeping Black executives from reaching the top rungs despite the heights climbed by trailblazers such as former Xerox chief Ursula Burns, the ﬁ rst Black woman CEO in the Fortune 500, and former American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault, who ran the credit card giant for 16 years. If anything, the ranks of those who have occupied the corner oﬃ ce appear to be thinning. Last month, Jide Zeitlin stepped down as CEO of Tapestry, which owns the Coach and Kate Spade fashion brands, leaving four Black CEOs in the Fortune 500, none of them women, down from seven in 2014, according to Fortune Media. By contrast, the boardrooms of these companies are becoming less homogeContinued on page 68

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 66

neous, with Black members making up about 11% of directors at the 50 companies in the USA TODAY analysis. However, leading business and diversity scholars warn against placing too much stock in Black representation on boards, which they say is too often window dressing to conceal the lack of diversity in the executive suite. Board members are appointed by the company and then voted on by shareholders. They often come from diverse industries and backgrounds. And while boards have an oversight role, they aren’t involved in the day-to-day operation of the fi rm. By contrast, the senior executives who wield direct power tend to come Rosette of up through the ranks of Duke U. the organization or from within the same industry, says Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, professor and senior associate dean at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. “Attaining a senior leadership role takes a much longer time to accomplish, and the expertise needed to occupy the position is usually either company or industry-specifi c,” Rosette said. “More importantly, there exists so many more opportunities for biases and discrimination to creep in as one attempts the ascent up the ladder to a top position.” Facebook has pledged to employ 30% more Black people in leadership positions over the next Facebook’s fi ve years. It also has addZuckerberg. ed two Black members to its board. But Facebook was still listing all-white executives on its proxy statement. Its investor relations site listed an all-white management team of seven, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his lieutenant, Sheryl Sandberg. The company website listed an 18-member executive team with one Black member: Maxine Williams, the company’s chief diversity offi cer. Amazon, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase and Walmart are among the other companies with a Black board member but no Black executive offi cers listed among their top fi ve on their proxy statements. Bank of America, Pfi zer and McDonald’s each have two Black board members but also list no Black executive offi cers. And some companies including Cisco and Or-

acle have no Black board members or executive oﬃ cers listed. Since July 30, at least two other companies that didn’t have any Black board members or top executives listed on their proxy statements announced they were adding Black board members. Bristol Myers Squibb said it was expanding its board from 12 to 14 to add new members Paula Price and Derica Rice, both of whom are Black. Procter & Gamble announced the appointment of Debra Lee, the former CEO of BET Networks. At the “Big Five” tech companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft — there was only one Black executive listed on proxy statements. That executive, David Drummond, left Alphabet in January 2020, according to the company.

Change has to come from the top Why does it matter? Unlike the parttime directors who oversee and advise company leadership, the top executives of these businesses are the captains of industry running the economy full-time and making decisions about the ways we communicate and shop, how our banks are run and what kind of information and entertainment we see online. They are also the only ones who can lead the charge for racial equity, says Marvin Owens Jr., senior director of economic programs for the NAACP. Diversity, inclusion and equity eff orts inside major corporations are too often relegated to the sidelines, with few if any penalties for failing to reach goals, unlike with other business initiatives, he said. “If a CEO does not value diversity, if there is no accountability, there will be no meeting of internal goals and there will be no change,” Owens said. It’s not that corporate America is lacking for Black executive talent, said Barry Lawson Williams, a retired Black businessman who has served on more than a dozen public company boards. To live up to all those statements after Floyd’s death, he said, companies must network outside their comfort zone. “There is no issue, zero issue, with the candidate pool,” said Williams, founder of Williams Pacifi c Ventures, an investment and consulting fi rm. “The issue is they don’t know ’em, and they don’t have a vehicle to get comfortable with people in the candidate pool.” Tristan Walker‘s phone has been ringing a lot lately. Corporations are hunting for Black ex-

Entrepreneur Tristan Walker: “Hope is not a strategy.” MARTIN E. KLIMEK/USA TODAY

ecutives to serve on boards of directors and for recommendations for top openings. Walker, the 35-year-old founder and CEO of Walker & Co. Brands, says he’s grateful for progress. His majorityminority-led company makes a modern personal care line for people of color. It was acquired by Procter & Gamble in 2018, with Walker staying on as CEO. “I have seen people taking a stand and at least taking a side. It’s hopeful for me. But hope is not a strategy,” said Walker, who last year joined the boards of Foot Locker and Shake Shack. “What matters is sustained action.” One snapshot of the racial stratiﬁ cation in private industry can be seen in the ratio of those at the top compared with those at the bottom. For white people, the ratio of service

workers and laborers to senior-level management is roughly 7 to 1, according to 2018 statistics from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. For Black people, the ratio is 105 to 1. Black people make up 13.4% of the population. But they represent only 8% of white-collar professionals, a number that has stayed steady since 2013, according to a study by the Center for Talent Innovation, a nonproﬁ t research group. “It helps to explain why the wealth gap in this country has gotten so much worse in the last 40 years,” Rogers said. Improving diversity at the top of the ladder “makes our country stronger” and provides role models for the next generation, he said. “People see them and want to be them.”

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John Rogersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 7 tips for Black entrepreneurs Executive passes along hard-won wisdom

John Rogers, founder and chairman of Ariel Investments, comes from a family with a strong entrepreneurial legacy. SCOTT EELLS/BLOOMBERG

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

5. Hold leaders accountable

HERE ARE ROGERS’ TIPS FOR YOUNG BLACK ENTREPRENEURS:

Roger points out that the wealth divide between Black and white Americans has widened in the past 40 years. As a result, African Americans are “worse off today than our grandparents were.”

1. Never pass up great talent Rogers says it’s important for Black entrepreneurs to surround themselves with the most talented people. He says he ‘s glad he brought in his co-CEO, Mellody Hobson, at a young age, but he admits that he let other talent “drift away” from his ﬁ rm.

He urges the Black community to maintain pressure on corporate America to live up to its commitments to Black businesses. “We’ve got to support our progressive political leaders and remind them that economic justice is really really important, because sometimes we can focus on social justice and forget about the economic justice agenda.”

“Thinking about your teammates ﬁ rst,” he says. “It’s something that’s so critical to success.”

2. Diversify your cash flows Rogers admits he was slow to diversify when he was ﬁ rst starting out. “I tell entrepreneurs: Make sure you diversify your cash flows around your core business expertise,” he said. “You can’t be an expert on everything, so it’s got to be close to your circle of conﬁ dence.”

3. Show that your word is your bond Rogers says young entrepreneurs must establish a reputation for keeping their word. “Live up to commitments,” he says. “People know they can count on me. That’s my number one thing that my dad taught me.”

4. Commit to excellence No matter what profession you’re in, Rogers says, entrepreneurs must make a commitment to becoming the best in their ﬁ eld. “You want to be known as a true expert in whatever ﬁ eld you’re in — that you’re the best of the best,” he says. “ I think that a lot of people forget that. ... They accept mediocrity, they accept second best.”

Rogers’ grandfather J.B. Stradford had multiple properties in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the early 1900s — before white mobs attacked the thriving district known as Black Wall Street in the notorious Tulsa Massacre of 1921. UNIVERSITY OF TULSA/MCFARLIN LIBRARY ARCHIVES N'dea Yancey-Bragg USA TODAY

John Rogers has grown Ariel Investments into one of the largest minority-owned asset management fi rms. His business savvy is rooted in a wealth of generational knowledge. His great-grandfather J.B. Stradford was one of the architects of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which in the early 1900s was home to so many successful Blackowned businesses that the district was dubbed “Black Wall Street.” Stradford owned a large number of rental properties in Tulsa, the crown jewel of which was the Stradford Hotel, one of the largest Black-owned businesses in Oklahoma. The 54-room brick establishment, which housed drugstore, barbershop, restaurant and banquet hall, was burned to the ground during the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, according to a 2001 report from a state commission. Stradford fl ed to Independence, Kansas, and then on to Chicago, where Rogers grew up. Offi cials in Tulsa accused Stradford of having been an instigator of the violence and tried to have him extradited back to Oklahoma, but his son, Jack, used his legal skills to block the move, Rogers said. That inspired Rogers’ mother, Jewel, to go to law school like her husband. She became the fi rst Black woman to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed her as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in 1955. She was also the fi rst woman and fi rst Black woman to be deputy solicitor general of the United States. “I’ve just been very fortunate to have these pioneering, strong, real dynamic folks in my family,” Rogers said. “We’re willing to speak out, fi ght for fairness, tell the truth, not be afraid to talk about uncomfortable issues in the boardroom, in leadership roles.” Rogers fi rst got interested in the stock market as a boy because his father, a former member of the Tuskegee Airmen, bought him stocks “instead of toys.” After graduating from Princeton in 1980, he founded the fi rst Black-owned mutual fund company in 1983. Ariel Investments, which has more than $13.3 billion in assets under management, has since become a trailblazer among thriving minority-owned fi rms. Rogers is also a longtime associate of Barack Obama and served on the committee for Obama’s presidential inauguration in 2009.

6. Abolish ‘supplier diversity’ Rogers advocates approaching diversity more holistically by abolishing the term “supplier diversity” and replacing it with “business diversity.” Rogers says corporate boards need to be pushed to support civil rights organizations, include diverse candidates at the highest levels of management and track how much of their business’ money is going to people of color in spending categories like advertising and 401(k) fees, not just construction and catering. “We want to be included in all aspects of the economy,” he says. “If you really want to build wealth in our society and equality economic opportunity, you’ve got to include us in everything.”

7. Prioritize access to customers Rogers disputes the idea that access to capital is the biggest challenge to building a business. “Access to customers is at least as important as access to capital,” he says. Without that access, he says, “the wealth gap will just get larger and larger.”

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Global justice institute taking shape Birmingham center would honor past, look to future Brad Harper USA TODAY

Frank M. Johnson Jr. had just been confi rmed as the nation’s youngest federal judge when, in 1956, he was the deciding vote in a 2-1 ruling that desegregated the bus system in Montgomery, Alabama. That ruling — in a case that took aim at that same discriminatory practices as the bus boycott touched off by Rosa Parks — was one of a series of civil rights-era decisions involving Johnson that reshaped the South. Over his decades on the bench, Johnson’s judicial robes began to fall apart. He patched them together with electrical tape and kept putting them on. A few months before he died in 1999, Johnson fulfi lled a promise to send those robes to Washington philanthropist Wayne Reynolds, who hoped they would inspire future leaders. They’ve been kept in a glass case in Reynolds’ offi ce for 20 years. Now, he thinks he’s building a place worthy of them. Reynolds, chairman of the American Academy of Achievement, is the driving force behind a proposed $100 million museum and education center in Birmingham, Alabama, that would combine the lessons of the past with a modern focus on social justice, community leadership and change. The “Global Forum for Freedom and Justice” would spotlight the arts, technology and faith across a range of programming while incorporating a campus for 500 students, an onsite technology incubator and more. That campus would sit on hallowed ground, near dozens of existing civil rights sites that each have their own programs tracing the legacy of leaders like Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., whose work shook the nation. Backers originally proposed building the Global Forum near the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, an expansive cultural research and interpretative center. That caused some in the community to question whether the new project was necessary, though the institute itself Continued on page 74

Rosa Parks arrives at court in Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb. 24, 1956, to be arraigned on charges related to the boycott of the city’s segregated bus system. As the boycott continued, civil rights activists took the ﬁ ght to federal court. Their case wound up before a panel that included Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., seen at left in 1977. The panel ruled that the bus system’s segregation was unconstitutional, a decision affirmed by the Supreme Court. AP

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Continued from page 72

never publicly opposed the plan. “I’m not trying to compete with those existing civil rights institutions,” Reynolds said. “They tell a story of what’s happened in the ’50s and ’60s that needs to be told.” The Global Forum project, he said, is about inspiring the next generation while also giving them tools to act. It’s an idea that quickly found traction here. One of the ﬁ rst supporters was University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban. Reynolds said Saban liked the idea of teaching kids leadership. Saban now serves on the Global Forum Advisory Board, along with a wide range of national and global ﬁ gures in-

This rendering shows the proposed $100 million Global Forum for Freedom and Justice in Birmingham, Alabama.

“There’s never been so much money set aside for social justice in the history of the world.” Wayne Reynolds

Global Forum for Freedom and Justice

cluding liberals and conservatives, artists and military leaders. Among board members are former White House chief of staﬀ Mark Meadows, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, former secretary of state Colin Powell, Smithsonian Institution director Lonnie Bunch, musicians Peter Gabriel and Wynton Marsalis, ﬁ lm director Peter Jackson and retired Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy. Reynolds said that wide-ranging approach was a deliberate choice. “I think it’s important to be on both sides of the aisle. Both sides love it,” he said. The ideas behind the project are big — “transformative for the narrative on civil rights and social justice,” as Reynolds and his wife Catherine Reynolds described it in a message to supporters. But

the support, at least so far, has matched that ambition. The Trump administration in December announced a $2.9 million federal grant to study where to build the Global Forum. Then-commerce secretary Wilbur Ross and then-housing secretary Ben Carson both praised the project and its potential. That grant is good for the next 18 months. Reynolds thinks it’ll take three to ﬁ ve years to ﬁ nish the entire project, and he doesn’t think he’ll have any trouble raising up to $100 million to make it a reality. “There’s never been so much money set aside for social justice in the history of the world,” he said. “They don’t know what to do with it all. I think I have a solution.”

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Federal troops escort Black men on a road outside Elaine, Arkansas, in the fall of 1919. When whites attempted to disrupt a meeting of a new union of Black farmers, shots were ﬁ red, and a massacre ensued. Officials and newspapers pushed a false story that the farmers were plotting an insurrection. ARKANSAS HISTORY COMMISSION VIA AP

Black labor put lives on line to organize Union drive by farmers met violent resistance Heather Tirado Gilligan Special to USA TODAY

Two hundred people — men, women, children — packed into a church in Hoop Spur, Arkansas, on Sept. 30, 1919, for a meeting of a newly formed, all-Black labor union, the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. Hoop Spur, just outside the town of Elaine, was a speck of land in a rich

swath of topsoil, but the Black farmers who tended crops in that soil didn’t reap those riches. Instead, wealth was siphoned oﬀ by white landowners. The meeting led to racial bloodshed, known today as the Elaine massacre. A century later, the union’s role in helping light the way for later labor unions and for the civil rights movement is usually overshadowed by the massacre. “That’s the part of the story that people almost always miss,” said Cherisse Jones-Branch, the James and Wanda Lee Vaughn Endowed Professor of History at Arkansas State University.

Once-enslaved Blacks worked for white landowners as sharecroppers after the Civil War, often on the same plantations that were built with slave labor. Under sharecropping, Black farmers were given a plot of land to work and paid owners a share of their crops in return. White landowners quickly instituted exploitative practices as part of the sharecropping system. They ran company stores that charged 33% to 40% markups, and they routinely shorted tenant farmers on their share of the proﬁ ts. These practices kept the sharecroppers continually indebted to the landowners.

And the landowners colluded to ensure farmers could not escape their debt by leaving to work for someone else. “They and their families were as eﬀ ectively held and immobilized on those farms in the 1890s into the early 1900s as their grandparents had been held as slaves in the same plantations before the Civil War,” explained Douglas Blackman, author of “Slavery by Another Name,” in a PBS documentary with the same title. Even successful farmers like Ed Ware weren’t safe from exploitation. Ware Continued on page 78

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 76

rented 120 acres outright rather than through a sharecropping arrangement and owned his own cotton gin. But he still had to sell to white merchants, who oﬀ ered him half of what his cotton was worth in 1919. “I refused to take it,” he recalled years later, “and they said they were going to take the cotton at that price. … They said they were going to mob me.” Ware joined the Progressive Household and Farmers Union, or PFHU, which was founded by sharecropper Robert Hill and three others in April 1919. Hill was in charge of recruitment. “This union wants to know,” Hill wrote in a 1919 recruitment circular, “why it is that the laborers cannot control their just earnings which they work for.” The question was dangerous for Hill and the members of PFHU. Ware, who became secretary of the

“The lesson that you might draw there is don’t raise your head, don’t ask for trouble, keep your head down, mind your own business and stay alive.” Eric Arnesen labor historian

Hoop Spur branch of the union, was at the church meeting when a group of white men drove up. Armed union members were guarding the church. White men fi red into the church, and Black men fi red back. A white man was killed in the exchange, touching off a week of chaos as white mobs attacked Black people across the area. The massacre lasted seven days. Five whites died. Exactly how many Black people were killed remains unknown, but estimates put it in the hundreds. White landowners and newspapers were quick to spread a diff erent version of the story — that the Black farmers had attempted an insurrection. Gov. Charles Hillman Brough called in the National Guard to put down the so-called rebellion. The troops marched into town with machine guns to fi nd posses of white men hunting down African Americans. Both Hill and Ware survived. Hill escaped to Kansas, while Ware was one of

12 Black men convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of the fi ve white men who died. Ware and fi ve other condemned men were later freed by the Arkansas Supreme Court. The remaining six were freed by the U.S. Supreme Court. No whites were tried for their role in the massacre. Black people knew they were risking their lives by organizing, Jones-Branch said. Black unions had a long history by 1919, starting in the years following the Civil War. Black rural agricultural unions dated back to the 1880s. Black unions formed for the same reasons white unions formed, said Eric Arnesen, the James R. Hoff a Professor of Modern American Labor History at George Washington University: “Labor conditions are oppressive. Wages are abysmally low. Treatment on the job by managers is arbitrary or harsh.” But Black workers were typically excluded from white labor unions or forced into less-powerful all-Black branches of those unions. As Elaine demonstrated, their eff orts to organize were met by a particular and brutal violence. “The lesson that you might draw there is don’t raise your head, don’t ask for trouble, keep your head down, mind your own business and stay alive,” Arnesen said. After Elaine, Black sharecroppers joined with white tenant farmers to form another agricultural labor union in 1935, the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, which began in Arkansas and spread across much of the South. The union successfully drew national attention to the plight of sharecroppers during the Great Depression. Descendants of the Elaine massacre helped to organize the new union, historian Nan Woodward noted in her book “American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta.” Other Black unions from the 1920s and ’30s, such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, won concessions that helped Black people do better economically. Their increased wages meant a porter could “solidify his standing in the storied American middle class,” Larry Tye pointed out in his book “Rising from the Rails.” Porters were also crucial to the civil rights movement, Tye noted, sharing organizing strategies and donating money. So were former organizers of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, who played a key role in forming the infl uential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commit-

Robert Hill co-founded the farmers’ union. After the massacre, he fled to Kansas, where he is shown here in Topeka working for a railroad in 1943. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Elaine today is a town of a few hundred. ALBERT CESARE/MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER

tee, Woodward explained. Rory Gamble, the ﬁ rst African-American president of the United Auto Workers union, notes that his union’s historic involvement in the civil rights movement included raising the bail money for Martin Luther King Jr. when he was jailed in Birmingham in 1963. “The UAW integrated bowling alleys in America and pressed for an end to apartheid, culminating with Nelson Mandela’s visit to Detroit” in 1990, Gamble said. Today, Black workers are more likely to belong to unions than any other ethnic group, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Public-sector unionized positions such as U.S. Postal Service jobs have Black membership as high as 27%. Black union workers earn, on average, 16.4% higher wages than non-union Black workers and are far more likely to have employer-sponsored health and retirement plans, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Jones-Branch said understanding the long and ongoing legacy of Black organizing and resistance means learning stories like the forming of PHFU. “People wanting to be able to take care of themselves and their families and make a fair living wage — there’s nothing new about that.”

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HBCUs look to maintain momentum New administration can build on recent progress Meghan Mangrum

Nashville Tennessean USA TODAY NETWORK — TENNESSEE

The election of Vice President Kamala Harris, a graduate of Howard University, has boosted the proﬁ le of historically Black colleges and universities during a time of racial unrest and heightened calls for racial justice. The Biden-Harris campaign pledged $70 billion to support HBCUs, and now leaders and supporters of these institutions hope the new administration can deliver on their promises. Many leaders say HBCUs have experienced a renaissance in recent years as enrollment has increased — thanks to increased focus on social justice, racial unrest and even Harris herself.

“It’s important for the next administration to prioritize this type of school. The president and the vice president will show where their interest is.” Lodriguez Murray UNCF

But the need to serve more students highlights the main challenges that HBCUs face: serving a high-needs student body, expanding or updating facilities and remaining ﬁ nancially sound. HBCU leaders hope the Biden administration will take up these issues, build on the groundwork laid in recent years during the Trump administration and elevate the voices of those hoping to bring the nation together. HBCUs — schools originally founded “to educate the progeny of slaves” — have been experiencing a renaissance, said Lodriguez Murray, senior vice president of public policy and government affairs for UNCF, which provides scholarContinued on page 82

Howard University freshman — and future vice president of the United States — Kamala Harris, right, attend an anti-apartheid protest in November 1982 with Gwen Whitﬁ eld. KAMALA HARRIS CAMPAIGN VIA AP

Historically Black colleges and universities like Howard, left, have seen a renaissance, school leaders say. ANDREW HARNK/AP

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ships to Black students and supports historically Black learning institutions. With the extra attention on social justice issues, young adults are turning to schools with leaders and professors who look like them and who come from backgrounds similar to theirs, Murray said. And student-athletes who once might have attended larger, better-known schools are realizing that they can ﬁ nd athletic success at HBCUs, too. Although enrollment at the nation’s more than 100 historically Black colleges and universities declined about 11%, to 291,700 students, between 2010 and 2018, according to the National Center of Education Statistics, the schools have seen enrollment upticks since then. Those increases are expected to continue after a summer of protests, a resurgence of activism and the election of Harris as vice president.

Debt weighs on students’ minds An infl ux of students will bring its own challenges. More than 75% of HBCU students come from low-income households, and about 50% this year are fi rst-generation college students. “Some groups of institutions run away from that mix on purpose, yet we run toward it,” Murray said. “It allows us to take students that others might not want.” School leaders would like to see more fi nancial resources for their students, such as increasing federal Pell Grants and student loan forgiveness. “Student debt is probably fi rst on the minds of a lot of our students,” said Gregory Carr, chair of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, during a panel session focused on the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden and Harris. Biden is already grappling with what to do about the more than $27 trillion in student loan debt currently owed in the U.S. Not only does the president plan to extend the pause on federal student loan repayment amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but Biden’s team has said it will encourage Congress to pass legislation to erase $10,000 in federal student loan debt per person. That move, however, is likely to draw criticism from activists who have pushed Biden to forgive more debt per person, in some cases up to $50,000, via executive action upon taking offi ce.

The new administration could help fuel the nation’s HBCU renaissance by refueling some of the initiatives the previous administration already put in place, said Vann Newkirk, Sr., interim president of Fisk University, a private HBCU in Nashville, Tennessee. “The outgoing administration has done a lot for HBCUs,” Newkirk said. “I’d like to see the trend, this renaissance continue. I think the administration coming in has that knowledge and hopefully the will to do that.” Many university leaders are appreciative of the fi nancial investments made by the previous administration. Donald Trump touted that he “saved HBCUs,” and while many don’t credit him with having that dramatic of an impact, HBCUs did benefi t from historic investment by the last Congress. During the 2018-19 fi scal year, HBCUrelated spending by Congress was up more than $300 million year-over-year, Murray said, and the fi rst COVID-19 stimulus bill granted an additional $900 million in HBCU funding alone. Murray credits the increase in fi nancial fundFisk’s ing in part to more HBCU Newkirk. supporters in leadership positions. “For the fi rst time ever, you had three Black Americans in the U.S. Senate for the fi rst time in the history of our country,” Murray said, referring to Harris, who represented California; New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, the son of two HBCU grads; and South Carolina Republican Tim Scott, who represents eight such institutions.

Differing challenges Of course, even when they have a shared purpose and heritage, no two institutions are exactly alike. Newkirk said that the needs of private HBCUs are often very diﬀ erent from those of larger public institutions. At Fisk — the alma mater of civil rights icons including W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, John Lewis and Diane Nash — enrollment has grown 5% to 6% even during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We are turning out students who are able to ﬁ nd the kind of jobs that people are looking for and are able to navigate their way up the ladder,” he said. “I think what we have to work on now is that people out there know that the education we

Historic Jubilee Hall on the Fisk University campus in Nashville. THE TENNESSEAN

are providing is a quality education.” HBCUs are often economic-drivers for not only the communities they are in, but for the nation, Newkirk said. The schools’ role in workforce development is critical. HBCUs generate nearly $15 billion in economic impact annually and hire like a Fortune 500 company, according to a report commissioned by UNCF in 2017. “Each dollar spent on, or by, an HBCU and its students have signifi cant ‘ripple eff ects’ across a much wider area,” the report said. “That means heightened economic activity. More jobs. Stronger growth. Stronger communities.” Newkirk concurs. His hope is that the Biden administration directs more money to HBCUs, especially small, private institutions that already maintain ties with local private and philanthropic partners. The work schools like Fisk do in supporting minority communities would also have an economic benefi t, Newkirk said. “For every dollar we could get, we could turn it around 10 times in the amount of money they could save in policing the neighborhood, in recidivism, in incarceration,” he said.

Hopes for the future As an HBCU graduate and the ﬁ rst woman of color elected to the vice presidency, Harris has the opportunity — and almost the responsibility — to ensure this administration has a diverse mix of

leaders at the table, said J.Jarpa Dawuni, associate professor of political science and director of the Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership at Howard University. “We often talk about equality, but equity is giving people equal opportunities, so when people talk about Black women or Black people, the narrative is often made to look as if they are always begging or dependent,” Dawuni said at the recent Howard panel. “All Black people are asking for is, ‘Give us equitable opportunities.’ Let us have a level playing fi eld, so we have opportunities for education, so we have opportunities for good health care, so we have opportunities for equal pay. Black people, women of color, minorities would rise. If we have these equitable opportunities, we would see an equitable society that would lead to equitable outcomes for all of society.” Newkirk said he thinks Biden and Harris can make specifi c moves in the fi rst days and weeks of his administration that can set the tone going forward. He would like to see the administration meet with HBCU leadership in the fi rst 50 days and even work on legislation or more resources for schools to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. “I think it’s important for the next administration to prioritize this type of school in the next budget,” Murray said. “The president and the vice president will show where their interest is.”

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Campus diversity, going deeper Enough with task forces: ‘Put this issue at our core’ Lindsay Schnell USA TODAY

Shirley Collado still remembers the bus ride. Shortly after Collado, now the president of Ithaca College in upstate New York, graduated from high school in Brooklyn in 1990, she boarded a bus for Nashville, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt University, her home for the next four years. She left behind an Afro-Caribbean immigrant community bubbling with diff erent cultures: a pizza joint on one corner, an empanada stand across the street, diff erent languages shouted joyfully up and down the block. Her outfi t that late summer day was an expression of what she called her “evolving feminist” personality: ripped jeans, a faded, worn T-shirt, suede combat boots and extremely short hair, bucking the trend of long locks traditionally worn by Dominican Catholic young women. She stepped off the bus in Tennessee and "into a diff erent planet,” she recalled. Vanderbilt was predominately white, Christian and conservative. Collado stood out, and she knew it. But she wasn't deterred. She had a mission, one with a value exchange: Vanderbilt was going to help her get a college education — the fi rst in her family to do so — and she was going to help Vanderbilt increase its diversity. Now 48 and the leader of a predominantly white educational institution — and the fi rst Dominican American president of a four-year college — Collado knows what it feels like to the be the only person of color in the room. She knows the pitfalls of a student body and faculty dominated by one demographic, and how many students are left behind when that happens. She's been ready for change for decades. “The academy (higher education) has struggled with a lot of the same issues over and over again,” she said. “Now, we have to stop dealing with it in the perimeter. Instead of having a diversity ‘plan’ or ‘task force' or special offi ce, we need to put this issue at our core.”

Students stroll the campus at Ithaca College in New York. Predominantly white educational institutions must stop treating diversity, equity and inclusion as a “perimeter” concern, Ithaca president Shirley Collado says. MICHAEL GRIPPI/ITHACA COLLEGE

Collado says diversity efforts must be part of a school’s “DNA.” Otherwise, they’re “the ﬁ rst thing to go” in a crisis.

And this time, she thinks it might really happen. With the protests following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other people of color, the nation has been rocked by a racial reckoning that’s forced many to reﬂ ect about their role in being actively antiracist or not. This includes power brokers in higher education, many of whom believe their institutions can be leaders in diversity, equity and inclusion. For decades, universities have touted the work of their diversity committees and task forces without their student body or faculty demographics actually changing substantially, if at all. But some

see this time as diff erent. “I’m a hopeful skeptic,” said Kimberly Griffi n, a professor and associate dean of graduate studies and faculty aff airs at the University of Maryland. She is also editor of the Journal of Diversity in Higher education. “I think what’s diff erent about this moment is that our approach and understanding of what the problem is is shifting. … More institutions are looking at themselves and asking, ‘What are the barriers we’ve created, what are the structural changes we need to engage in?’ We seem to fi nally be underContinued on page 86

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

“We need broader perspectives”: Adrian Hall, third from left, and other members of Laker Familia at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. COURTESY OF ADRIAN HALL Continued from page 84

standing that instead of fi xing people, we need to fi x the institutions.” Most colleges and universities across the nation are considered predominantly white institutions but a relatively small subset — including historically Black colleges and universities — can be classifi ed as minority-serving institutions based on student demographics. California State University is the nation’s largest public university system, with more than 480,000 students and 23 campuses — 21 of which are classifi ed as Hispanic serving institutions, meaning at least 25% of students are Hispanic. Since its inception, the Cal State system has prided itself on recruiting and retaining a diverse student body, a task some might consider challenging without af-

fi rmative action, which California does not have. “I would say that overly relying on any one tool to achieve any goal — especially a goal that’s a complex, ever-evolving challenge — that’s never a good thing,” said Luoluo Hong, CSU’s associate vice chancellor for student aff airs and enrollment management. “CSU’s success refl ects that whether or not we have affi rmative action in our toolkit, we’re going to focus very consciously” on recruiting students and faculty of color. Building a diverse student body can’t be the end either, Hong stressed: “We have to do the things that will make diversity stick." CSU's schools, like others across the country, have specifi c programs in place designed to help dismantle barriers for students of color, many of whom are also

ﬁ rst-generation students, or from a lower socioeconomic status, or both. Adrian Hall is a senior in general and allied health sciences at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. He’s also the president of the Latino Student Union and an active member of Laker Familia, a program designed to help students who self-identify as Hispanic or Latinx ﬁ nd a network of support at a school where more than 80% of students are white. “Your anxiety goes through the roof the second you notice you’re the only student of color in the room,” Hall said. Programs like Laker Familia don’t just help students of color feel comfortable, he said, but show those students that the university is committed to their success by creating a welcoming environment. “We need broader perspectives for ev-

erybody,” Hall said. “History, for example, shouldn’t just be through the eyes of our white founding fathers — there is more to the story that we don’t see. What I know for sure is adding more students of color and faculty of color gives you those diff erent perspectives.” At Ithaca, Collado agrees. And she sees diversity, equity and inclusion as the root of a new system, not merely a branch that can snap off and disappear. “We have to tackle the entire structure, and bake it into our DNA,” Collado said. “Because when we’re in the middle of a crisis, which we are right now, guess what’s the fi rst thing to go? All the peripheral stuff , all the special programs for students of color. “When you make it part of your core, it’s hard — but it’s also harder to make it go away.”

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Pioneer’s story isn’t as simple as Black and white Life of Alexander Twilight holds lessons in identity Marina Affo

Delaware News Journal USATODAY NETWORK

Tucked away on Franklin Street at Vermont’s Middlebury College sits a modest, red-brick building bearing the name Twilight Hall. It pays homage to the fi rst student of African descent to graduate from Middlebury, in 1823. Alexander Twilight was also the fi rst Black person to obtain a bachelor’s degree anywhere in America — a historical distinction that Middlebury is proud to be part of. Though not as widely known as other fi gures in African American history, Twilight is still celebrated as an accomplished man whose achievements paved the way for others like him. At Northern Vermont University, there is Alexander Twilight Theater, and in Boston, there is Alexander Twilight Academy, which offers year-round academic programming for middle school students from underresourced backgrounds to prepare them for high school and college. But consider this: Although Twilight is lauded today as an African American scholar, preacher and educator, for much of his life he was marked as white on Census records. Does that erase the accomplishments he worked hard for that students of color today can be inspired by? Did the notion of “passing” — being fair-skinned enough to be able to convincingly present as white — play a role in Twilight’s success and his legacy? Questions like these are being explored by historians and scholars at Mid-

When Alexander Twilight graduated from Vermont’s Middlebury College in 1823, he became the ﬁ rst person of African heritage to earn a bachelor's degree in the United States. OLD STONE HOUSE MUSEUM & HISTORIC VILLAGE.

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dlebury and the Old Stone House Museum, located in a 19th-century school building that Twilight had built. The year 2020 marked the 225 anniversary of Twilight’s birth, and the museum hosted a celebration to commemorate his achievements. “Twilight’s history is very emblematic of the type of work we want to do in terms of uncovering complex histories at the college, but also locally within Vermont concerning people of color, marginalized identities and the uncomfortable histories that institutions like Middlebury have had in relation to systems of oppression,” said Daniel Silva, director of the Black studies program at Middlebury and of the college’s Twilight Project. Silva, in conjunction with Twilight scholar and professor emeritus of history Bill Hart, began the Twilight Project in 2020 to look at race relations at Middlebury, past and present. The project’s fi rst initiative involves examining the historical fi gures tied to the college, such as Twilight, and their contributions. This analysis aims to look past the shine that’s often placed on historical fi gures and take a more critical look at such things as who buildings are named for and what statues on campus represent. In doing so, the project hopes people can have more thoughtful conversations about who and what the college community celebrates. The project also seeks to highlight the stories of students of color and how these fi gures and cultures at the college aff ect their journey at the school and beyond.

Who was Alexander Twilight? It all started with Hart, who looked at census data in 2013 and found that Twilight himself had had a complicated relationship with his race. Alexander Twilight was born Sept. 23, 1795, the third of six children to Ichabod and Mary Twilight in Corinth, Vermont (or in Bradford, Vermont, according to some records). Ichabod was believed to be of mixed race, and Mary was believed to be white, making Alexander Twilight about a quarter African American. “People didn’t see him as Black,” said Hart, who is working on a biography of Twilight. “Some of his students did make some judgments about his complexion. They called him kind of like a swarthy color or a man of darker complexion.” From the age of 8, Twilight worked on a farm for a neighbor while also learning

Alexander Twilight preached at Brownington Congregational Church in Vermont. OLD STONE HOUSE MUSEUM AND HISTORIC VILLAGE

reading, writing and math, according to his biography at the Old Stone House Museum, where records of his life and his later sermons are kept. At age 20, he enrolled at Randolph’s Orange County Grammar School in 1815. There, he completed six years of secondary education and two years of college level work. He was admitted to Middlebury in 1821 as a junior and graduated two years later with a bachelor’s degree. Although Middlebury claims him today as its ﬁ rst African American graduate, there is no record that the college knew he was Black at the time of his admission. The college was open only to white men at the time. Twilight’s appearance may have played a role in this. As Hart learned when he looked into the family’s history, they were seen as white for many years. In the 1800 census, the Twilight family were marked as “All other free persons,” a designation that indicated free

nonwhites. Hart speculates that a census taker showed up at the Twilight house in 1800, saw Ichabod, who was clearly a racially mixed person, and concluded the family were all Black. “In the United States, then as now — with the exception of some regions and some decades — people with some African ancestry are Black,” Hart said. Anthropologists call this the “descent law,” which has two sides, he said. One side, known as hypodescent, says that your racial identity comes from whichever race in your ancestry is furthest removed from whiteness. Common in the United States, hypodescent says, for example, that if a person has any Native American ancestry, they are Native American, or if they have any Mexican ancestry, even mixed, they are Mexican. Other parts of the world, like Latin America, however, subscribe to the idea of hyperdescent. This says that for those who have any percentage of whiteness,

the closer they are phenotypically or physically appearing to be white, they’re white, Hart said. This adds a new dimension to Twilight’s story. By the time a census taker came back to the family home home in 1810, Twilight’s father, Ichabod, had died, and the only people at the house were Mary and the six children. Mary was white, and from then on, the family was marked as white. This remained Twilight’s racial identity, according to the census, until his death. “During his lifetime, he did not identify as Black, nor was he identiﬁ ed as Black,” Hart said. “He’s clearly a man of some racial mixture, African descent. But he either avoided that during his lifetime, or just didn’t think it was important to acknowledge it, and there’s no evidence that Middlebury College knew or thought he was Black.” Continued on page 90

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 89

Hart speculates that this could have been due to a number of reasons, and he doesn’t necessarily believe it was a calculated move on Twilight’s part. One factor could have been the work of the American Colonization Society, created in January 1817 to encourage American Blacks to emigrate to Africa — speciﬁ cally to what is now Liberia. Hart said Twilight, whose entire family was in America, could have seen overtly claiming a Black identity as leaving him vulnerable to people trying to persuade him to go to Liberia, which was seen as a space for free Black people to live out their lives. This designation as white and his lack of acknowledgement of his racial identity could have played a role in how Twilight was able to advance throughout his accomplished life, Silva said. An argument can be made that it helped Twilight to be “white passing” or racially ambiguous enough that during an era of slavery, his race was assumed, he said.

Preacher and teacher Twilight never ended up in Liberia. After he graduated from Middlebury, he became a teacher in Peru, New York. It was there that he met and married Mercy Ladd Merrill. During his four years as a teacher there, he focused a lot of his time studying theology and became a licensed preacher. Twilight was ordained to be the acting pastor of Brownington Congregational Church in Brownington, Vermont, and in 1829, he was asked to become principal of Orleans County Grammar School, also in Brownington. The Twilights lived in a small threeroom house next to the school. The couple built another house nearby to accommodate boarding students as enrollment rose due to a push by Twilight when he fi rst got to the school. Twilight resigned as pastor in 1834 and worked on getting a bigger school and boarding house erected, which he achieved by 1836. The building, called Athenian Hall, included four fl oors with a kitchen, dining room and 14 student dorm rooms. This is now the Old Stone House Museum. Twilight was also elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 1836, the fi rst African American so elected. Ten years later, Twilight resumed his

service to the Congregational Church as acting pastor. At one point, he and the board of the school got into disputes — there aren’t records explicitly stating what they were about — but they led Twilight to sell Athenian Hall to the school’s trustees. He and his wife moved to Shipton, (now Richmond), Quebec, about 75 miles north of Brownington, and later to Hatley, Quebec, according to the Old Stone House Museum. After he left, however, the school’s enrollment and direction worsened, and he was eventually persuaded to come back as both pastor and school leader. He only lasted a year preaching before he again resigned that role, but he led the grammar school until 1855. That year, he suﬀ ered a major stroke and was left paralyzed. He died two years later in 1857 and was buried in a cemetery at Brownington Congregational Church.

Examining legacies Although Twilight was a man of African descent in a position of authority and infl uence, he was not an abolitionist. Hart said Twilight preached a few times that slavery was bad, but did not get involved with anti-slavery activism. In the Twilight Project, Middlebury students are looking at Twilight and other prominent fi gures in the college’s history. Silva hopes the work will spark conversations about social mobility across structures of racial oppression today, and possibly lead the college to reconsider who it names buildings after or celebrates around campus. “Our students of color past and present have done a lot of important work to bring real diversity, equity and inclusion eff orts to campus,” he said. “It’s been through student activism that we’ve made the progress that we’ve made, and there’s still so much left to do.” The nationwide protests of summer 2020, touched off by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in May, underscored just how much. Before the semester even started, Mia Pangasnan could feel the tension and anger radiating from her fellow Middlebury students. The sophomore said seeing someone like Breonna Taylor being mistreated and die made her angry personally, but she knew there was a subset of people who didn’t see it the same way. “When you hear the other side’s arguments, it’s like ‘Really? That’s what you

Another trail blazed: Alexander Twilight was also the ﬁ rst African American elected to the Vermont Legislature, winning a seat in the state House of Representatives in 1836. OLD STONE HOUSE MUSEUM AND HISTORIC VILLAGE

“During his lifetime, [Twilight] did not identify as Black, nor was he identiﬁ ed as Black. He’s clearly a man of some racial mixture, African descent. But he either avoided that during his lifetime, or just didn’t think it was important to acknowledge it, and there’s no evidence that Middlebury College knew or thought he was Black.” Bill Hart

professor emeritus of history at Middlebury

value?’ I think there’s just massive disconnect, and that makes me angry.” Pangasnan is one of the Twilight Project’s fellows and is working on a project about student activism past and present. She wants this to spark real discussions that could lead to a cultural shift and better understanding. Others involved in the Twilight project hope for that outcome as well. “Cultural shift is really, really diﬃ cult to do, but it’s not impossible,” Roni Lezama said. “A big part of that is trying to invoke empathy.” Lezama, a junior, is one of the student commissioners for the Twilight Project, a

position that involves overseeing the approval of various project proposals. He said it has been really good working with the college because administrators have been receptive to a lot of suggestions. But he also knows that the school doesn’t feel like home for every single student. By complicating and understanding the history of the people and traditions at the college, Lezama said he hopes that not only will students of color feel more at home, but everyone can also have a better understanding of marginalization. Examining history and having frank discussions about marginalization — about who has historically had a seat at the table and who hasn’t — will propel the college to make more changes, he said. Twilight’s complicated history and how people interact with race is just one of the many stories at Middlebury that can open up those discussions, he said.

‘A complicated conversation’ Middlebury is not the only site of Twilight’s legacy. The Old Stone House Museum celebrated Twilight’s 225th birthday with virtual events talking about his history and creating spaces for people to talk about his complex past and what that might mean for race relations today. The museum also sparked a concurrent resolution from Vermont politicians acknowledging his birthday as a state day. A portrait of Twilight will be hung in the Vermont Legislature, something that normally takes years to happen. Deeply invested in its sense of place, the museum also helps focus people on the idea of disconnecting to learn. Twilight was a big lover of math and science and spent a bulk of his time teaching his young students about the wonders of these subjects, along with the basics of reading and writing. The museum provides a space to learn about Twilight, but it also gives educational lessons around racial equity and identity for preschool students all the way up to senior citizens. Molly Veysey, executive director of the Old Stone House Museum, hopes these conversations will have an impact on the greater Vermont community, which is predominantly white and may not even understand the necessity of the conversations. “It has become more a complicated conversation, but I think one that we are really well poised to maybe take on to facilitate at least,” Veysey said.

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

An exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis commemorates the boycott of the segregated Montgomery, Alabama, bus system in 1955-56. ADRIAN SAINZ/AP

Getting the history right Plantations, agencies and others ﬁ x their narratives By Andrew J. Yawn, Todd A. Price and Maria Clark The American South

The removal of Confederate symbols from public spaces began as a movement. It turned into a mass social reckoning. As people took to the streets to protest the death of unarmed Black Americans

at the hands of police, it sparked a renewed conversation about systemic racism in America. Confederate statues and ﬂ ags — commemorating those who had taken up arms against the U.S. in order to preserve slavery — came down. And educators in schools and other public settings were forced to re-examine how the history of Black Americans has been told, and how it should be told. As a result, the stories you may hear while touring a Civil War battleﬁ eld, an antebellum plantation in the South or other historical sites are changing. Long

accused of presenting only a whitewashed version of history that obscured or sanitized the stories of enslaved people, some tour operators are now including a diﬀ erent narrative. In Montgomery, Alabama, one guide crafted an entire tour out of sharing forgotten or ignored chapters of the city’s history. Often, these stories go untold because not enough has been done to preserve them, said Steve Murray of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. His team has been pulling together more

than a century’s worth of photos and information about Black Alabamians that had long been omitted from the public record.

Plantations change the narrative The American South spoke to tour operators at Southern plantations, guides and archivists about the removal of Confederate symbols and the recent protests against racial inequality and police bruContinued on page 94

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 Continued from page 92

tality, the eff ect they have had on their work, and what is being done to assure a full telling of Black American history. Ten years ago, Joe McGill was called in with a team of experts to oversee the restoration of several old buildings at the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens property in Charleston, South Carolina. The buildings once served as homes to enslaved people who lived on the property. The experience took on personal signifi cance for McGill, a descendant of enslaved people. Slave dwellings on plantation properties are often neglected and fall into ruin. McGill wanted to fi nd a way to draw interest in preserving the structures. He received permission to spend a night in a restored cabin on at Magnolia. That “simple sleepover,” as he called it, has evolved into an immersive educational experience known as the Slave Dwelling Project. In his work, McGill engages with visitors at participating plantations across the South — including Evergreen in Louisiana, the most intact plantation complex in the South, with 37 buildings, including 22 slave cabins. He leads conversations about the enduring legacy of slavery with groups of up to 40 people at a time. The in-person work was suspended during the pandemic but continued virtually, with McGill leading discussions from diff erent sites over Facebook Live and Zoom. “It was important for me to spend a night in those cabins,” McGill said. “I got to see more of what these plantations were not doing. They were not telling the stories of the people from whom I derive my DNA. It was upsetting. It angered me. But instead of using that anger for evil, I knew I could use it for good.” The sleepovers allowed him to reconnect with his ancestors and gave him the space to have frank discussions with visitors about the lives of the people who once lived in the cabins. Historic plantation properties are still frequently used as event venues for weddings and large gatherings, often drawing visitors from around the world. To protect those business interests, many properties sought to share a watereddown version of their history, focused on the architecture and natural beauty of the plantation while erasing the stories of enslaved people. In recent years, however, a growing number of locations have started to incorporate African American history in

their tours more thoroughly. Plantations such as Thomas Jeff erson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, Middleton in Charleston and Somerset in Creswell, North Carolina, have added information to their tours about the enslaved people who lived there. Kimberly Clements, a historian based at the Robert Toombs House Historic Site in Washington, Georgia, has been researching the lives and families of 17 people who were enslaved at the house and is building an exhibit of artifacts found in a dwelling believed to be the home of one enslaved family. “My tours have changed since I have been here (two years), from being all about the Toombses to how the house functioned, who each family member was and who the enslaved people were that lived here,” she said. Clements is compiling fi les for each person with the ultimate goal of having a room dedicated to research on enslaved people who lived at the Toombs site and elsewhere in the area. Her hope is that descendants will be able to conduct their own research there for free. Bernard Powers, director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, believes more locations will follow suit. “The turbulence we have witnessed this year has created a greater consciousness about these issues,” Powers said. “People are going to come with questions and expecting answers. If these organizations care anything about satisfying their patrons, they are going to have to be proactive and be ready to provide the kind of information their visitors demand.” That said, Powers noted that docents and tour operators should steer away from a narrative that focuses only on oppression and abuse of enslaved people. “People don’t want to learn they were mere victims. In addition to those things, you want to talk about how people resisted, what they did to fi ght back. Acts of sabotage and how they culturally resisted by means of folklore and song and all of those human creations and responses to an oppressive situation.”

Director Steve Murray and other leaders at the Alabama Department of Archives and History are confronting the agency’s own past. It was founded in 1901 to preserve and promote Confederate history while ignoring the African American experience — or erasing it from the public record entirely. JAY REEVES/AP

A city contends with its past “I’m a storyteller,” Michelle Browder says. The story she tells is about Montgomery, Alabama’s capital. It’s a complicated tale. In 2016, Browder launched More Than Tours to teach visitors about chapters of the city’s history that often went

Joe McGill founded the Slave Dwelling Project, which works to preserve buildings once occupied by enslaved people — like these cabins at McLeod Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina — while also educating plantation visitors about those people’s lives. His work has taken him to sites in more than a dozen states. AP

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on history.” She said she once had a proud member of the Sons of the Confederacy take her tour. By the end, he was crying. He said Browder had made him rethink the history he thought he knew. “I want to call myself an ambassador and not a tour guide, because Montgomery with its history has not always been pleasant. It needs ambassadors.”

Questioning history itself Renewed interest in honest history is important to this moment of reckoning, but what if the historical resources themselves have been dishonest? That’s the issue Steve Murray has been forced to confront during his tenure

“It can be a painful process for folks, but I think that’s what our charge as a historical organization is — to serve the public and contribute to effective history education.” Steve Murray

Alabama Department of Archives and History

Michelle Browder operates More Than Tours in Montgomery, Alabama. Her tours cover elements of the city’s history that frequently go unmentioned. “It’s heavy, this history,” she says. “Very heavy.” JAKE CRANDALL/MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER

unmentioned. On the tour, Browder, with her signature bright red glasses, takes visitors to the Brick a Day Church, where Freedom Riders sought refuge in 1961 from an angry white mob. She goes to the city’s riverfront and provides a more honest history of slavery than the public marker there reveals. She also talks about the Trail of Tears — the forced removal of Native Americans in the Southeast — and the Chinese people who helped build the railroad that runs through town. “I tell stories about people I’ve met along the way. Or I’ll tell stories about some of the iconic civil rights heroes that I admire and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting,” she said. “It’s heavy, this history. Very heavy. But I’m an artist, and I like humor. You tell the truth, and you make it palatable.” Montgomery today is more open to

confronting the ugliness of its past, Browder said. It’s in the city’s economic self-interest. Since the 2018 opening of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which memorializes the victims of lynchings, Browder has seen an increase in tourism by people drawn to the city’s civil rights history. “They’re coming here not to talk about Jeﬀ erson Davis, but they’re coming to talk about racial justice,” she said. “It’s forcing that old money to shift a bit, because our economy thrives on tourism.” Browder’s tours, she said, are ﬁ lling in the gaps with history people should have learned in school. Not everyone appreciates it. She once received a bad online review from someone who said he “didn’t sign up for a history lesson.” But Browder contends, “you can’t come to Montgomery and tour the place without a history lesson, right? It’s built

as director at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. “Some people wonder what systemic racism looks like and what that means. From the lens of a historical organization, it means discrepancies that exist in the way resources were used to preserve and tell the history of some Alabamians while not telling the history of other Alabamians,” Murray said. “We’re working from a position of a great defi cit when it comes to African American history.” The department was founded in 1901 and spent decades collecting and preserving Confederate history and collections from white Alabamians. But Murray said the department refused to similarly document the lives of Black Alabamians. “When the Montgomery Advertiser (newspaper) was being microfi lmed, whether it was by our agency or by commercial fi rms, they didn’t bother to fi lm the African American section. That’s a great example of a huge void in the records,” Murray said. Filling that void was a mission that began in 2019, when Murray and his staff were preparing for Alabama’s bicentennial celebration. The department created

an exhibition that showed how the 1901 Alabama Constitution worked to remove rights from Black Americans. His staff also wrote the text for historical plaques that balanced the history of Alabama’s successes against an economy that was singlehandedly supported by slavery. But after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police offi cer in Minneapolis on May 25 — the death that touched off a summer of protests nationwide — Murray felt obliged to publicly pledge the department’s renewed commitment to honest record-keeping. The department released a statement June 23 acknowledging that it was originally founded “to serve a white southern concern for the preservation of Confederate history and the promotion of Lost Cause ideals” that romanticized and justifi ed slavery. It pledged to tell a more inclusive story of Alabama. “The events of this summer brought into focus a moment of urgency and an opportunity to articulate our objectives in a really clear way for the public,” Murray said. “Specifi cally, we wanted to make the public aware of resources we have that could help the growing number of Americans interested in understanding systemic racism and racial injustice through the lens of history.” Now the department is working to fulfi ll that commitment. The department has acquired a collection of more than 11,000 photos by Jim Peppler, a photographer for The Southern Courier, a weekly newspaper covering civil rights in the South. The photos depict the lives of Black Alabamians in the late 1960s, and Murray said his agency is planning to add other similar collections. Murray said the department is also working to increase public access to long-held government records that could add to the understanding and research of the state’s history. For example, the agency is working to transcribe antebellum civil court records. Because enslaved people were considered property, the records tell of property disputes between Alabamians and could provide new insights for historians and genealogists. “It can be a painful process for folks, but I think that’s what our charge as a historical organization is — to serve the public and contribute to eff ective history education,” Murray said. “Moving forward, we’re going to try to do more to become trusted stewards among the African American community.”

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

Writer James Baldwin at work in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, in 1983. Though he moved to Europe in 1948, Baldwin never gave up on America. PHOTO PRESSENIA/AP

‘He got the contradictions at the heart of America’ Carl Chancellor

Special to USA TODAY

In 2020’s Black Lives Matter moment, protesters by the tens of thousands ﬂ ooded streets from Minneapolis to Louisville to Atlanta to Kenosha shouting at America to look at itself — to confront its lies about race. Arguably, no writer has ever made that demand more forcefully, passionately or eloquently than James Baldwin. More than 33 years after his death at age 63, Baldwin continues to give voice to our times. Some of today’s most prominent intellectuals and writers, including TaNehisi Coates and Jesymn Ward, have published works that channel Baldwin. Both Ward’s “The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race” (2016) and Coates’ “Between the World

Why James Baldwin’s words of warning resonate today

and Me” (2015) are direct riﬀ s on Baldwin’s iconic 1963 collection of essays, “The Fire Next Time,” a searing critique of the racial issues that have distorted and turned ugly the American Dream. Baldwin even seemed to foreshadow our current fraught political moment — the aftermath of the 2020 election that spawned the deadly U.S. Capitol riot: “A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless,” he wrote in “The Fire Next Time.” “Jimmy lived in the present. He spoke to the ‘now,’ ” said internationally acclaimed writer and poet Quincy Troupe, explaining why the words of his close friend still resonate. “He was unﬂ inchingly honest, always truthful, always blunt. … He’d tell it like it is and never minced words.” Eddie Glaude Jr., chairman of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, agrees. His book, “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America

and Its Urgent Lessons For Our Own,” shot up the best-seller lists in summer 2020. Of Baldwin, he says: “Without question, he was the pre-eminent America writer on race and democracy. … Here you have this queer Black man who spoke courageously and truthfully to the circumstances of Black folks, of all Americans. … His life was so on point, so in the moment.” It was Baldwin’s willingness to accept the risks that come with unapologetic honesty — in his own words, “to bear witness” — that made him one of the foremost advocates for racial and personal freedom. This wisp of man — bigeyed, gap-toothed and all of 5-foot-6 — called out America’s hypocrisy and depravity again and again, shaming its need to cling to its creation myth of freedom and democracy while ignoring the racism and genocide at its root. Sitting for an interview with Esquire Continued on page 98

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magazine in July 1968, with the nation rocked by riots in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Baldwin was asked by the editors: “How can we get Black people to cool it?” Baldwin replied: “All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history. … Your history has led you to this moment, and you can only begin to change yourself and save yourself by looking at what you are doing in the name of your history.” Baldwin’s bearing witness to the anger and angst of the civil rights struggle that metamorphosed into the Black Power movement made best-sellers of his books of the late 1950s and ’60s — and again in 21st century. Raoul Peck’s 2016 Oscar-nominated documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” which explored America’s racist history based on Baldwin’s unfi nished manuscript “Remember This House,” speaks to his timelessness. So does the award-winning 2018 fi lm “If Beale Street Could Talk,” adapted from Baldwin’s 1974 novel of the same name. Baldwin’s famous 1965 Cambridge University debate with William F. Buckley, the father of the conservative movement, was reimagined for the 2020 March on Washington Film Festival. Harvard University professor Khalil Muhammad and conservative political commentator and writer David Frum tackled roughly the same question put to Baldwin and Buckley 55 years earlier: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?” The original debate, along with Baldwin’s speeches and fi lm interviews, receive millions of online views each year. And historians and scholars by the score continuously mine the life and works of the man Malcolm X knighted as “the poet of the revolution.” Glaude noted that at one point in his life, Baldwin was a child preacher. In a sense, he said, Baldwin never left the pulpit. “He got the contradictions at the heart of America. … Baldwin has always been the key fi gure in helping us understand this American project.” Baldwin keenly observed that every time America is on the precipice of fundamental change — as it is now after its continued racial divisions have been laid so bare — it recoils and reasserts “the lie at the center of America’s self-image: that white people matter more than others.” Those times, according to Glaude, include Reconstruction, the civil rights

James Baldwin embraces actor Marlon Brando at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington in August 1963. At left are actor Charlton Heston and Harry Belafonte. 1963 was also the year Baldwin published “The Fire Next Time.” AP

“Your history has led you to this moment, and you can only begin to change yourself and save yourself by looking at what you are doing in the name of your history.” James Baldwin

movement, and most recently, the election of Barack Obama. “Baldwin said that the ‘horror is that America changes all the time without ever changing at all.’ ” Born into the hardscrabble world that was Harlem in 1924, young Baldwin felt the sting of rejection ﬁ rst from an unloving stepfather and soon after from a country that diminished and demonized him solely because of his race. In 1948, at age of 24, he ﬂ ed penniless and unpublished to Paris. In a 1984 interview, he explained his escape to Paris: “It was not so much a matter of choosing France. It was a matter of getting out of America.” Baldwin never gave up on America, though, crossing and recrossing the At-

lantic to immerse himself fully in the civil rights struggle and the Black Power movement. He returned not only to confront but to recharge and reconnect, said Troupe, who as young writer would often meet Baldwin at Mikell’s, a Harlem jazz club. “Jimmy would come to town and call everyone to the spot.” He remembered Baldwin, smoking, a scotch or bourbon in hand, holding court talking politics, talking about writing, or just talking smack. “Jimmy was physically a small guy, but he didn’t take (crap) oﬀ nobody … Everybody loved his courage, his writing, he was just a beautiful brother,” Troupe says. Nearing the end of his life, Baldwin shared with Troupe that he felt like a “broken motor,” issuing the same warnings about racism over and over again. Troupe had gone to Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France in November 1987 to visit the writer just weeks before his death. As Baldwin expressed in “The Last Interview,” as told to Troupe: “You know I was trying to tell the truth … It’s been said, and it’s been said, and it’s been said. It’s been heard and not heard. You are a broken motor.” Troupe said that even weakened by stomach cancer and bedridden, Baldwin remained insistent in his demand of honesty from America. “Jimmy loved

America, but he hated stupidity and racism,” Troupe said. Baldwin had that determination, that unbreakable will, that doggedness to go toe to toe with America because at his core he was fi ghter, Troupe said. He said that resolve came from Baldwin being bullied in the streets of Harlem as a boy, a story the author shared with him in “The Last Interview.” “Well, if you wanted to beat me up, okay,” Baldwin recounted. “And, say, you were bigger than I was, you could do it … but you gonna have to do it every day. You’d have to beat me up every single day. So, then the question becomes which one of us would get tired fi rst. And I knew it wouldn’t be me.” Glaude said that in Baldwin’s nearly 7,000 pages of writing, the demand for honesty is the through line. “There was always his insistence on being honest with ourselves. And this honesty will open up space to imagine ourselves otherwise. James Baldwin set the stage for us being together in a way that is diff erent and more just.” “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Chancellor is managing director of editorial at the Center for American Progress.

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Artists tested, and art unleashed COVID, year’s protests refocus creative minds Bob Mehr

Memphis Commercial Appeal USATODAY NETWORK — TENNESSEE

For Memphis hip-hop producer James Dukes, music has been a lifelong passion, bordering on obsession. He could hardly recall a day where he hadn’t been in the studio, tinkering with beats or creating tracks. But in March 2020, that all changed

Music producer James Dukes, aka IMAKEMADBEATS, thought 2020 would be the year his Memphis company, Unapologetic, took the next step. BRAD VEST/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL

with the COVID-19 pandemic. “For the ﬁ rst time I’m not thinking about beats or mixing records,” said Dukes, who goes by the handle IMAKEMADBEATS. “I was thinking about the health of my family — my parents, my son — and ﬁ guring out how to get groceries without getting COVID. That’s where my mind was. And just the fatigue and exhaustion from dealing with all that … it took me away from any sort of inspiration. I didn’t go into the studio for weeks. Which, if you know me, that’s like an eternity. It’s unthinkable.” Like most Americans, Dukes spent

weeks last spring trying to ﬁ nd his place and priorities in a suddenly unfamiliar and unsafe world. But he did so while trying to recalibrate his role as an artist, speciﬁ cally a Black artist. For Dukes, it was reading an old quote from Nobel- and Pulitzer-winning writer Toni Morrison that refocused him — a quote about the critical role that creative individuals play during a crisis. “This is precisely the time when artists go to work,” Morrison said. “There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how

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civilizations heal.” “Reading that empowered me and inspired me and sent me back into the studio,” Dukes said. Dukes’ story is one just example of how Black artists were aﬀ ected by the pandemic, as well as the widespread racial unrest and protests that were the dominant stories of America in 2020. Those artists — musicians, writers, painters, poets — responded and in some cases ﬂ ourished amid the unprecedented circumstances.

‘Your emotions are how you create’ For Dukes, 2020 was supposed to be the year things broke wide open for his Memphis-based company Unapologetic. A multifaceted creative “ecosystem,” Unapologetic is a label for musicians (including experimental funk virtuoso MonoNeon, and rapper A Weirdo From Memphis) as well as visual artists (among them 35 Miles and Gabby). It’s also a media organization active in licensing music to ﬁ lm, TV and commercials, while also maintaining a clothing line, Unapologetic Garments, and its own Unapologetic World app. Unapologetic’s motto is “… where vulnerability becomes art and weird becomes genius.” The fast-rising, 6-year-old company was on track for a transformative year. “For us, 2019, economically speaking, was great,” Dukes said. “We had ﬂ own past almost all of our goals. We were set up in 2020 to not just accomplish big things, but to do them on a much bigger level than we ever had.” At the top of the list was a planned international multimedia tour, headlined by MonoNeon and A Weirdo From Memphis, as well as Unapologetic’s stable of visual artists, who would create unique exhibits as part of the shows. Unapologetic had secured a partnership with energy drink maker Red Bull and was deep in preparations for the ambitious excursion when the pandemic hit. “I can’t think of a bigger disruption for what we had planned,” Dukes said. “It killed all our plans.” As spring turned to summer, the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd began to dominate the headlines, sparking unrest across the country and putting a unique focus on the issue. “As Black people, sadly we’re very desensitized to these things because they always happen. But this time — because of the pandemic, because everyone was locked down and so focused on the news

For author Hanif Abdurraqib, 2020 had a bit of a paradoxical quality. "2020 felt like somewhat of a lost year, even though I know that’s not true,” he says. At the same time, having to stay in one place let him be more productive. MEGAN LEIGH BARNARD

“I can’t think of a bigger disruption for what we had planned.” COVID-19 “killed all our plans.” James Dukes, aka IMAKEMADBEATS

— the world could not escape it. Black people, we sit and live in that reality all the time. But because everyone was locked into that same moment together, no one could escape it. That’s what the pandemic did. More than maybe ever, we had a shared reality and experience.” For Dukes, what the lasting impact of 2020 will be — both the fallout from COVID-19 and the racial unrest — isn’t clear just yet. But it has made him keenly aware of how it might aff ect his artists, their art, and the future of Unapologetic. “There’s a heavy mental issue happening right now for everyone,” Dukes said. “In fi ve or 10 years we’re going to learn how the mind was aff ected by ev-

erything that happened in 2020. Right now with the virus, we’ve just been focused on the impact to the body, but the mind has 100% been aﬀ ected.” “The thing about being an artist — you have to keep your emotions right there on the surface. You can’t tuck them away. Your emotions are how you create. They are the fuel, the gasoline. So it’s a balancing act. This last year was overwhelming in a lot of ways. As an artist and the head of an artistic organization, I just want to make sure everyone can get through this and come out the other side intact and still keep creating.”

‘Some doors ... have been opened’ For best-selling author, award-winning poet and noted essayist, Hanif Abdurraqib, 2020 was supposed to be a year to recharge and refocus. Following a busy 2019 — during which he released two books, an exploration of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest and his second poetry collection, and held nearly 100 readings and appearances in support

of the projects — Abdurraqib was planning to pull back from the road and focus on writing his next book in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. As the pandemic set in, he had no choice but to adjust how he worked. “Like a lot of people, I had to learn how to operate in a much smaller and more anxious space than I otherwise would have,” he said. “After a while, there’s also a feeling of reckoning with the loss of time and thinking through the loss of time. 2020 felt like somewhat of a lost year, even though I know that’s not true.” As it happened, Abdurraqib put the time to good use, completing work on his book “A Little Devil in America,” a collection of essays considering modes of Black performance. It’s due from Random House in March. “I was probably more productive [last year] honestly, because I had to be in one place for a while. Traveling so much is hard because I do my best work when I’m at home, in this city I love and care a Continued on page 102

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great deal about.” By the time the racial and social justice protests began to take shape in Columbus in the summer, Abdurraqib felt a need to be a on the front line. “Historically, my writing work and my organizing work are two very separate things. So it’s not so much that the [protests] impacted my work, except that it took me away from my work. Which was ﬁ ne and necessary for me. It felt like that was the work, more than writing was at that moment.” For Abdurraqib, the pandemic created “an interesting set of circumstances, under which the protests could ﬂ ourish.” “The pandemic also laid bare some of the nation’s many inequalities that fed people’s frustrations and reactivated and radicalized people,” Abdurraqib said. “The hope for me is that it carries beyond the pandemic. I think there are some doors that have been opened and things awakened by the failure of this country to care for its people. Hopefully, that’s a good thing.”

‘This is when we ... are important’ This past March, Dawn Okoro was in the midst of promoting an exhibit of her art, called “Punk Noir,” when the pandemic hit. Born in Houston, raised in Lubbock and a longtime Austin resident, Okoro took a rather nontraditional route in her creative journey, graduating from law school rather than art school before launching her career as a painter. “But once we got into the lockdown, I wasn’t in the mood to create at all,” Okoro said. “My fi rst concern was whether my basic needs were going to be met. There was a period adjusting to all that. Eventually, I did start working again.” When she resumed, however, it was in a diff erent way. “Normally I work on larger paintings. But when I started again during the pandemic, I found myself doing smaller drawings and being attracted to diff erent [mediums]. It really triggered some experimentations for me. I wanted to try sculpture, I wanted to try making wearable art.” In the midst of this creative exploration, the summer’s racial climate began ratcheting up. “After Breonna Taylor was killed, after George Floyd was killed, there was a renewed call for racial and social justice,” Okoro said. “Almost as part of that there was also a call to support Black business and Black artists. A

Visual artist Dawn Okoro had her work shared widely and saw her proﬁ le grow in the summer of 2020. SHANE GORDON

lot more people started sharing my work on social media. By the middle of the summer I became overwhelmed with people reaching out to me, buying art prints and buying work.” For Okoro, the focus on race and what Black Americans were forced to deal with in 2020 would have a direct impact on her subsequent eﬀ orts, speciﬁ cally a wearable art collection titled “Burden of Respectability.” “It’s about how Black people are expected to behave a certain way, adhere to a certain code of conduct, in order to be accepted or even just be left alone. It’s something I’ve always had to worry about, something that my white counterparts don’t have to worry about. So, for me, everything happening last year did ultimately impact my art.”

For Okoro, that impact has been positive in terms of raising her proﬁ le. In 2020, she signed with London-based Maddox Gallery to represent her work internationally. In February, her work will be the subject of a retrospective at Rice University in Houston. In between, she signed a deal with Pepsi to have her art featured on the company’s LIFEWTR brand products, something that will bring by far her widest exposure. For Unapologetic’s James Dukes, whatever the fallout of 2020 was for Black artists, the ultimate imperative was simply to ﬁ nd a way to continue to create. After returning to the studio last spring, Dukes and his artists set to work recording at a furious pace. For 2021, Unapologetic has an ambitious slate of projects, including a new label compilation,

the full-length debut from A Weirdo From Memphis, new records from soul singer Cameron Bethany and rapper PreauXX, a collaboration between Dukes and MonoNeon, and more. Dukes again cites Toni Morrison: “The world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.” “It’s true — and you can’t feel any shame or guilt about wanting or needing to create,” Dukes said. “This is when we as artists, especially Black artists, are important. These are the moments that are necessary to do what we do. That is the duty — to tell the story of these times through your work.”

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Thompson was a giant in the lives of so many Basketball coach won games, saved young men, took a stand Stephen Borelli USA TODAY

Growing up in segregated Washington, D.C., John Thompson was accustomed to sitting in the back of his Catholic church behind white parishioners and receiving Holy Communion after them. “I even had to put my money in the collection after all the white people put their money in the collection,” Thompson once told John Mudd, his schoolmate at Archbishop Carroll High who became pastor of St. Augustine Catholic Church, where Thompson worshiped. When Thompson helped lead Carroll’s basketball team to a 55-game winning streak, the school had mostly white students, all white administrators and an all-white faculty. “John was in the forefront of integration,” Mudd said. “He was one of the few Black students in a white school. He was kind of loved and respected by everyone, but racism was very real and very deeply seated. And I suspect he was observing and learning how to manage in a white, racist world as a 15-year-old kid. That was the beginning of that learning experience." Thompson is best known as a towering presence on the Georgetown University sideline as its head men's basketball coach for more than 25 years, a formative ﬁ gure in young men’s lives and an outspoken one for African Americans. When he died in August at age 78, his life and legacy were as relevant as ever, at a time when athletes are ﬁ nding their voice against racial injustice. Continued on page 106

Georgetown coach John Thompson celebrates with Patrick Ewing, right, and other players after winning the Big East Conference tournament in March 1985. A year earlier, they won the NCAA national championship. Thompson, Georgetown’s coach from 1972 to 1999, died in August at age 78. RAY STUBBLEBINE/AP

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Thompson was born Sept. 2, 1941, in Washington. He would tell many stories of growing up in the segregated city, but he loved Washington so much that after starring at Providence College and playing backup center for the NBA's Boston Celtics, he took at job as head boys basketball coach at St. Anthony's, a tiny high school that played among Washington's Catholic league giants. "What he did was give that team some self-esteem," says Barbara Gallagher, a nun at St. Anthony’s during Thompson’s tenure there. “He instilled a spirit of knowing they could do things. He insisted that when they come to the ballgame, they have a suit and tie on and they change in the locker room so that they could be gentlemen. "Some of the boys had bad grades, so he asked one of the sisters if she would tutor them on the side, which she did do. ... He just gave these kids a sense of pride and self-esteem, and they did so well for themselves in winning games." “I was more a John Thompson fan than I was a (Georgetown) Hoya fan,” said Ed Cooley, who grew up in Providence and went on to become the head men’s basketball coach at Thompson's alma mater. “In our community, all young, Black males wanted to go to Georgetown because we could identify with the coach. There weren’t many Black coaches that we as youngsters could look up to."

Taking over at Georgetown When Georgetown hired Thompson as its coach in 1972, Washington was coming out of period of unrest and rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The elite, predominantly white university was looking for a more national identity while trying to establish a better relationship with the city’s Black community. In Thompson’s third season, the Hoyas were on a losing streak. Mike Riley, then a freshman guard, remembers a game at the school’s on-campus arena in which someone climbed up to the roof, opened a window and hung a sign containing a racial slur that was visible from the court: “Get rid of the (expletive) ﬂ op Thompson.” In such dark moments, Thompson’s players would sense him cling to them tighter. Georgetown went on a run that led to the school’s ﬁ rst NCAA tourna-

After retiring from coaching in 1999, Thompson became an A-list broadcaster, providing commentary at such events as the 2007 NCAA Final Four, above. His son, John III, coached Georgetown from 2004 to 2017. ROBERT DEUTSCH/USA TODAY

ment appearance since 1943. Thompson remained in his position until 1999. “Coach used to always say that people disregard color if you have economic value,” said Riley, who later served as an assistant coach under Thompson. “And I have found that to be very, very true. And so you just to have to live with that.” Thompson had turned St. Anthony’s into a power school. The task at Georgetown was far more daunting. “Another backstory that he would never let me share while he was living,” says John Butler, who played for Thompson at St. Anthony's from 1966 to 1970, “is that some in the archdiocese Catholic league, some coaches, did not speak favorably about him when he went to Georgetown. “And that really, really hurt him that there would be some who knew him because he was a product of the Catholic schools, he spent his time at Carroll High School and helped to put the place on the map, and some coaches who knew of his commitment to young people, and, having played against him, would take the opportunity to talk down about him when he went to Georgetown, in eﬀ orts, I think, to sabotage his success.” Thompson often recruited overlooked Black players who bought into his system

of pressure defense and tough academics. In 1981, Thompson landed Patrick Ewing, a 7-foot native of Jamaica who was the most highly sought-after recruit in the country. “He was the main reason” Ewing committed to Georgetown, says Ewing, now head coach there. “Georgetown was my last visit and leading up to all of it, to have the opportunity to see a Black man who looked like me, who carried himself with class and dignity, and he was someone that you could be like or emulate.” Together, Ewing and Thompson led the Hoyas to three NCAA championship games and the 1984 national title during the center’s four years at the school. When he reached his fi rst Final Four in 1982, Thompson famously rebuff ed a question in the media about being the fi rst Black coach to do so. Thomas suggested he was the fi rst Black coach with the opportunity to do so. “I resent the hell out of that question,” he boomed.

Producing scholars, not just stars Of 78 players who stayed four years at Georgetown under Thompson, 76 graduated with degrees. “He was really running the Underground Railroad,” said Riley, a product of

Washington’s Cardozo High School. “He was bringing inner-city kids over here that went to the D.C. public schools, Philadelphia public schools, New York public schools or wherever public schools, and he was getting them degrees.” In 1989, Thompson skipped two games to protest the NCAA’s “Proposition 42,” academic requirements that he felt punished kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Thompson's visible contention helped infl uence the NCAA to modify the rule the next year. Thompson dramatically walked off the court to a standing ovation before his protest, a poignant visual in light of today’s social justice movements. “He did that before anybody," said Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, Thompson’s fi ercest rival who became his friend. “Not just the Prop 42 stuff , that was one thing, but he did it, and he it did all along in little ways here and there. In meetings, talking about African American referees getting a chance, and he helped that. Just everyday things. And he was always outspoken and willing to put himself on the line. And he would do it today. You know, we need people like him today that are willing to do that and he set that example. I think that’s why we’re all trying to do things today.”

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Athletes make a statement with a ﬁ st or a knee Activism is unbroken line in Black sports history Mike Freeman USA TODAY

There's something you may not know about Tommie Smith. Smith, who along with John Carlos raised a black-gloved fi st in protest from the medal stand at the Olympics in one of the most iconic moments of the 1960s, was far from a leftist radical. Radical was how history portrayed Smith for decades. In some ways, that's how he's still portrayed. But he was the opposite of that. He was centrist. He was, well, quintessentially American. He thought of joining the military. He was an ROTC member while at San Jose State. He considered becoming a cop. Or even a teacher. Smith saw his life on a predictable trajectory, a low-key one, which is striking considering what he did, and the symbol he would become. Then, in that one moment in 1968, on that podium in Mexico City, fi st clenched and raised high, everything changed. It was intended as a demonstration of unity with South Africans who were crushed under the weight of apartheid. But with African Americans fi ghting Jim Crow, it led to his portrayal in the American press as an extremist. Future broadcaster Brent Musburger, then working for The Chicago American newspaper, wrote Smith and Carlos “looked like a couple of black-skinned stormtroopers.” “I wanted to do what was right,” Smith told USA TODAY. “There was no other reason. It was that simple for me. People before me did what was right, at great Continued on page 110

Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos raise their ﬁ sts as the national anthem plays following their gold- and bronze-medal ﬁ nishes in the 200 meters at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. AP

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costs to them, and it was my turn.” Those few seconds of Smith’s life eventually led to the intersection of two American heroes separated by decades. In Smith’s case, the eventual adulation and appreciation of his protest came begrudgingly and glacially. In Colin Kaepernick’s case, a killing changed how he was viewed almost in a fl ash. More than four years after he fi rst took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality, Kaepernick remains blackballed by the NFL. But the death last May of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis triggered a summer of protests and a worldwide racial reckoning — and Kaepernick phaseshifted almost instantly into a diff erent reality. Much of the nation suddenly said in unison: “You were right.” Kaepernick launched a publishing house, and started a production company. The latter partnered with Disney to create shows about race and injustice. Thus, Kaepernick was able to gather the fruits of his sacrifi ce, while Smith and others like him weren’t often granted the same permission. But Smith wouldn’t change a thing. “I’m happy Colin has been able to do all that he’s accomplished,” Smith said. “Yes, there were things taken from me, but I did what I did for people after me. America needed people like me and John at that time. America needed someone like Colin now. Because of Colin, he’ll inspire a new group of people, and so that line never breaks. It will be there when it’s needed.” “I think about Colin all the time,” Smith said. “I think about how important he is to history, and how he understood that he needed to bring attention to something. That’s the key — bringing attention. You have to force people to see what they don’t want to see. He’s a brave American. A true American.” The reasons that Smith and Kaepernick gave for protesting are similar. "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a fl ag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color," Kaepernick told NFL Media in 2016. "To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfi sh on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street, and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder." Smith represents the connective tissue from past sports civil rights heroes to

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the pregame national anthem in 2016. He ended up blackballed by the league and sued the NFL for collusion. The lawsuit was settled in 2019. ROBERT HANASHIRO/USA TODAY SPORTS

“I think about Colin (Kaepernick) all the time. ... You have to force people to see what they don’t want to see. He’s a brave American. A true American.” Tommie Smith

current ones. The commonality is the racism they faced even while reaching remarkable heights. Jesse Owens embarrassed Hitler at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin by winning four gold medals. But President Franklin Roosevelt refused to meet with Owens after he returned home, as was customary. “When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus,” Owens said. “I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either.” In 1908, Jack Johnson became the ﬁ rst Black heavyweight champion, and his

victory over a white opponent caused race riots across the country. Fritz Pollard became the fi rst Black coach in the NFL in 1920, leading the Akron Pros of Ohio, a state and city where the Ku Klux Klan had immense power. Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, yet some restaurants, hotels — and even umpires — refused to acknowledge him. Muhammad Ali stood against the Vietnam War, had his heavyweight title taken from him, was vilifi ed, and then, like Smith, came to be honored and respected decades later. Curt Flood fought for free agency in baseball and ultimately helped open it up. The true nature of his sacrifi ce was never fully realized. There are others not as familiar. Octavius Catto was a Black baseball player who fought for African American voting rights in the late 1800s. Catto also led protests to desegregate the trolleys across Philadelphia, using sit-ins and speeches the way civil rights leaders would across the South decades later. A white man shot and killed him in 1871. Catto wasn't formally recognized for his accomplishments by the city of Philadelphia until 2017, when a statue was erected near City Hall. More than 140 years after Catto's murder, players from the WNBA led sports

social justice movements before their NBA counterparts and even Kaepernick. Yet it’s impossible not to compare Smith with Kaepernick, and to see how they took two diff erent paths. When Smith returned home, he was kicked out of ROTC. He’d been portrayed in the media as anti-cop and anti-fl ag, so joining the police wasn’t an option. There were no endorsements or widespread adulation. There was scorn. “Back when I did it, it was seen as a militant act,” he said. “There were people who thought what I did was extreme. It was treated like an attack on democracy when what I did was very democratic. It wasn’t just me on that stand. I represented a lot of people who couldn’t be there.” There are fi nally some full-throated eff orts to document his importance. “With Drawn Arms,” a documentary released in December chronicles Smith’s life and that moment. So many people know about that moment even if they don’t immediately recognize Smith. His house recently needed repairs after some fl ooding. One of the workers saw that iconic picture in Smith’s home and said, “I remember that guy. That was great what he did.” “That guy,” Smith told the man, “was me.”

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

6 worth following: Black inﬂ uencers making diﬀ erence Jessica Guynn

USA TODAY

Celebrities and scholars, best-selling authors and everyday people are using their social media presence to lead the conversation on racial justice. Here are just a few of them spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and other platforms.

Erynn Chambers In June, Erynn Chambers watched a TikTok video from drag queen Online Kyne, talking about how statistics are manipulated to make it appear that Black Americans are more violent. So the 28-year-old elementary school music teacher from North Carolina opened up TikTok and added her own commentary, in song form. “Black neighborhoods are overpoliced, so of course they have higher rates of crime. And white perpetrators are undercharged, so of course they have lower rates of crime,” she sang. “And all those stupid stats that you keep using are operating oﬀ a small sample size. So shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.” The video, labeled “About y’alls favor- Erryn Chambers had 609,000 ite ‘statistics,’ ” blew up overnight. It was followers on TikTok as of January, reposted again and again and has 2 mil- and her videos had amassed more lion views. It wasn’t her only hit. “Why is than 45 million likes on the platform. Rosa Parks the only black activist we COURTESY OF ERRYN CHAMBERS learn about?” also brought her attention as she examined how Parks came to be the face of the Tiktok: 1955-56 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. With more than 600,000 followers and 45 million @rynnstar likes, Chambers has become one of the most important Instagram: creators raising awareness of the Black experience and @therealrynnstar racism on TikTok, which has been criticized for promotTwitter: ing white voices over Black voices. Chambers says she’d been on TikTok for ﬁ ve years @TheRealRynnstar but spent more time watching videos than making Facebook: them until the pandemic. The death of George Floyd got facebook.com/ her to do more research into racial equity. therealrynnstar “I never really set out for it to be this big thing,” Chambers told USA TODAY. “I certainly didn’t expect to have a half million followers at any point in time.”

Rachel Cargle and Shay-Akil McLean in New York in November 2019. Among the core messages of Cargle’s work is that it’s not enough to just be “not racist.” What’s needed is to be actively anti-racist. BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES FOR UNIVERSAL

Rachel Cargle At the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, Rachel Cargle and her friend and fellow activist Dana Suchow posed with protest signs in front of the U.S. Capitol. Cargle’s read: “If You Don’t Fight for All Women You Fight for No Women.” The photo went viral, and so did Cargle. An anti-racism activist and author of an upcoming book on feminism through the lens of race, “I Don’t Want Your Love and Light,” Cargle works outside academia as a “public academic.” She tours the nation to give sold-out lectures. “The Start,” for example, is a three-hour workshop on how to be an anti-racist. “I teach from a platform from a frame of knowledge plus empathy plus action,” Cargle told interview Sia Nyorkor of TV station Cleveland19. “You have to have each of these things to Instagram: @rachel.cargle be actively anti-racist.” Cargle also educates her followers, many of them Twitter: white, on structural racism from a virtual public class@RachelCargle room on Instagram. Coursework includes understanding the intersecting inequalities of race, gender, class Facebook: and other identities. In her online learning collective, facebook.com/ The Great Unlearn, supported through Patreon, stu- rachelecargle/ dents learn about race and history from historians and academics of color. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Oh, I know it’s happening and I hope it gets better,’ “ Cargle told InStyle. “It’s saying, ‘I see you and I feel you and I understand, and I’m going to hold myself accountable.’ That is what will move someone into action to say, ‘I can no longer be complacent. I can no longer be silent. It’s not enough to be ‘not racist’. I have to be actively anti-racist.’ ” In her hometown of Akron, Ohio, Cargle is making a diﬀ erence in the physical world with a pop-up space, Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre, to amplify literature “that has been written away from the pen of the white, cis, hetero man and gives us a new way to understand the world.” And she’s founder of the Loveland Foundation, which oﬀ ers free therapy to Black women and girls. Continued on page 114

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Brittany Packnett Cunningham In March 2015, President Barack Obama told Brittany Packnett Cunningham in a handwritten note that her voice would make a diff erence “for years to come.” The elementary school teacher became a Ferguson Uprising activist and a member of Obama’s policing task force after a white police offi cer killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, outside Instagram: her hometown of St. Louis, in 2014. @mspackyetti Packnett Cunningham went on to co-found the anti-police-brutality platform Campaign Zero and the feminist Twitter: media platform The Meteor and co-hosted the “Pod Save @MsPackyetti The People” podcast. Facebook: “What’s your biggest fl ex of 2020?” she recently asked facebook.com/ her followers. She had many of her own. She’s a cableMsPackyetti news contributor, podcast host for a new show, “Undistracted,” and a 2020 Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She’s also writing a book and was on the cover of Vogue. “We want to build a group of people who are relentlessly undistracted — who are focused on matters of intersectional justice, who are focused on leveraging all of their power toward that end, and who are committed to doing the work necessary, even when it’s diffi cult,” she told W Magazine about her podcast.

Roxane Gay’s published work includes ﬁ ction and nonﬁ ction, a best-selling collection of essays, her acclaimed memoir, “Hunger,” and the “World of Wakanda” series for Marvel Comics. PRESLEY ANN/GETTY IMAGES FOR HAMMER MUSEUM

Roxane Gay “I’m a writer, editor, cultural critic, and sometimes podcaster,” Roxane Gay tells USA TODAY. And then some. Her trenchant insights on feminism, gender, race, sexuality and sexual violence have won her a large and loyal social media audience. This year she launched a Substack newsletter, The Instagram: Audacity, as well as The Audacious Book Club. Among the @roxanegay74 book club’s fi rst picks from underrepresented American writers: “Black Futures,” edited by Jenna Wortham and Twitter: Kimberly Drew; “Detransition, Baby” by Torrey Peters; and @rgay “The Removed” by Brandon Hobson. Facebook: What makes her so popular is not just her searing memfacebook.com/ oir “Hunger,” or her best-selling nonfi ction collection of esroxanegay74 says, “Bad Feminist,” or her podcast, “Hear to Slay.” Or even that she was the fi rst Black woman to write for Marvel Comics. She’s an irresistible social media personality who also thinks and writes about “fun things,” as she puts it. Lighter fare includes her pop-culture likes and dislikes and adorable photos of her puppy in tiny clothing. Then there’s her inimitably good-natured shredding of critics. When one person tweeted at her “Who cares what you think?” she replied sweetly, “You seem to care, dear heart.”

Brittany Packnett Cunningham’s activism caught the White House’s attention. President Barack Obama told her in a note in 2015 that she would continue to have an impact “for years to come.” CRAIG BARRITT/GETTY IMAGES FOR AUDIBLE Continued on page 116

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Peppermint Peppermint emerged in 2020 as one of the most important voices in the Black Trans Lives Matter movement. Tapping her following on social media, she brought greater awareness to violence against Black trans women and the broader Black trans community and to the relentless toll of racism, homophobia, misogyny and transphobia. Instagram: “I think we’re on the precipice of some really great change,” @peppermint247 Peppermint told Entertainment Tonight. “We’re able to speak Twitter: about race and misogyny and sexuality in a mainstream way @Peppermint247 that we’ve not been able to do in years past without being shunned or canceled.” Facebook: The ﬁ rst trans woman to originate a leading role on Broad- facebook.com/ way in “Head Over Heels,” Peppermint rose to fame on “Ru- peppermintnyc Paul’s Drag Race,” followed by performances on “Pose,” “God Friended Me” and “Deputy.” She recently joined the national board of directors of advocacy group GLAAD. “I’m so thankful that the Black Lives Matter movement began after the murder of Trayvon Martin and continued with George Floyd, but what we’re not seeing is the same sort of energy when it comes to the women who have been killed: Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland and many others,” Peppermint told the Guardian.

John Legend says the attention to police killings “made clear to the general public what Black folks already knew” about racism in America. MICHAEL PEREZ/AP

John Legend

Peppermint was the ﬁ rst trans woman to originate a leading role on Broadway, playing Pythio in “Head Over Heels” in 2018. JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC

Following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hands of law enforcement, singer-songwriter and longtime social activist John Legend lent his soulful voice to the anti-racist struggle, off ering a Twitter primer on the “defund the police” movement and campaigning for Florida voting rights with Camila Cabello. And Legend’s Instagram: Oscar-winning civil rights anthem “Glory” from the @johnlegend 2014 fi lm “Selma” became part of the 2020 soundtrack @letsfreeamerica when he performed it with Common in August at the Twitter: virtual Democratic National Convention. @johnlegend “These killings made clear to the general public what @LetsFreeAmerica Black folks already knew: Racism is real, it is ugly, and it is woven into the systems that govern our everyday Facebook: lives,” Legend said at the virtual FN Achievement facebook.com/ Awards — the “Shoe Oscars” — in December. johnlegend With his organization #FreeAmerica, Legend is working to reform the criminal justice system and end mass incarceration. “As a teenager growing up in Ohio, I watched my mother deal with depression and drug abuse after my maternal grandmother — a person who fi lled our whole family with love — passed away,” Legend told PEOPLE in 2016. “My mother’s addiction didn’t just tear her life apart. It tore me and the rest of our family apart, too.” By amplifying the voices of those aff ected by the criminal justice system and those working to change it, #FreeAmerica is working to build thriving, just, and equitable communities, Legend says. “Artists have a rich tradition of activism. We have a unique opportunity to reach people where they are, beyond political divisions, borders, and silos,” Legend said in a video recently after being recognized by the United Nations’ human rights agency for his social justice advocacy work. “It’s been my privilege to use my voice and my platform to advance the cause of equity and justice.”

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021

So many ﬁ rsts, and yet ‘it’s just the beginning’ Nichelle Smith USA TODAY

Regally, in purple and pearls, Kamala Harris became the fi rst Black, female and South Asian vice president of the United States on Jan. 20. In her attire and carriage, she channeled the spirit of one of those trailblazing women who have gone before: Shirley Chisholm, the fi rst Black woman elected to Congress and the fi rst Black person from a major party to run for president. Chisholm, a Democrat fi rst elected to the U.S. House in 1968 and a presidential candidate in 1972, was a tireless advocate for racial and gender equity. It is in her footsteps that Harris follows. CNN commentator Bakari Sellers noted of Harris: “She stands on the shoulders of (civil rights activist) Fannie Lou Hamer, she stands on the shoulders of (community organizer) Ella Baker ... she stands on the shoulders of Hillary Clinton.” Hope and pride in Harris are high. “Vice President Harris’s accomplishment represents the leadership, hard work, determination and focus that Black women have displayed not only throughout this past election cycle, but for decades in our eff orts to protect America’s democracy,” said Melanie L. Campbell, a guest at the inauguration who is president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable. “For Black women, her becoming a ‘fi rst’ in so many areas represents not the end, but it’s just the beginning.” Indeed, the election of Harris along with President Joe Biden signals that all of us are again welcome to participate in our own democracy. There is a healing yet to come and a promise that Harris can bring us all together. As Amanda Gorman, the fi rst National Youth Poet Laureate, recited at the end of her inauguration poem: “When day comes, we step out of the shade, afl ame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Kamala Harris takes the oath of office, becoming the 49th vice president of the United States, on Jan. 20. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, holds the Bible. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor administered the oath. ROBERT DEUTSCH/USA TODAY

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