The College Board has announced it will begin offering an Advanced Placement(AP) African American Studies course at 60 high schools across the U.S. this fall.
The AP program, which traditionally gives high school students an opportunity to take college-level courses before graduation, currently covers 38 subjects, including U.S. government and politics, biology, chemistry, English, European History and art history.
The AP African American Studies course is the College Board’s first new offering since 2014, according to TIME, and the multi-disciplinary course will cover over 400 years of African American history, literature, civil rights, politics, the arts, culture and geography.
Though a pilot program currently, the aim is by the 2024-2025 school year for this AP offering to be the first course in African American studies for U.S. high school students that is considered rigorous enough to allow students to receive credit and advanced placement at colleges across the country.
The plan for an Advanced Placement course is a significant step in acknowledging the field of African American studies, more than 50 years after what has been credited as the first Black studies department was started after a student strike at San Francisco State College in 1968, said Henry Louis Gates Jr., a former chair of Harvard’s department of African and African American studies and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.
“In the history of any field, in the history of any discipline in the academy, there are always milestones indicating the degree of institutionalization,” said Dr. Gates, who is a consultant to the project along with a colleague, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. “These are milestones which signify the acceptance of a field as being quote-unquote ‘academic’ and quote-unquote ‘legitimate.’”
Students will take a pilot exam but will not receive scores or college credit, according to the College Board.
Bank of America recently announced a new zero down payment, zero closing cost mortgage plan for first-time homebuyers, which will be available in certain markets, including African American and/or Hispanic-Latino neighborhoods in Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami.
What BofA is calling “The Community Affordable Loan Solution™” aims to help eligible individuals and families obtain an affordable loan to purchase a home.
“Homeownership strengthens our communities and can help individuals and families to build wealth over time,” said AJ Barkley, head of neighborhood and community lending for Bank of America. “Our Community Affordable Loan Solution will help make the dream of sustained homeownership attainable for more Black and Hispanic families, and it is part of our broader commitment to the communities that we serve.”
The Community Affordable Loan Solution is a Special Purpose Credit Program which uses credit guidelines based on factors such as timely rent, utility bill, phone and auto insurance payments. It requires no mortgage insurance or minimum credit score.
Individual eligibility is based on income and home location. Prospective buyers must complete a homebuyer certification course provided by select Bank of America and HUD-approved housing counseling partners prior to application.
This new program is in addition to and complements Bank of America’s existing $15 billionCommunity Homeownership Commitment™ to offer affordable mortgages, industry leading grants and educational opportunities to help 60,000 individuals and families purchase affordable homes by 2025.
According to the National Association of Realtors, currently there is a nearly 30-percentage-point gap in homeownership between White and Black Americans; for Hispanic buyers, the gap is nearly 20 percent. And the competitive housing market has made it even more difficult for potential homebuyers, especially people of color, to buy homes.
In addition to expanding access to credit and down payment assistance, Bank of America provides educational resources to help homebuyers navigate the homebuying process, including:
BetterMoneyHabits.com free financial education content, including videos about managing finances and how to prepare for buying a new home.
Bank of America Down Payment Center – site to help homebuyers find state and local down payment and closing cost assistance programs in their area. Bank of America participates in more than 1,300 state and local down payment and closing cost assistance programs.
Bank of America Real Estate Center – site to help homebuyers find properties with flags to identify properties that may qualify for Bank of America grant programs and Community Affordable Loan Solution™.
For more information, contact Bank of America at 1-800-641-8362.
Harvard University-based historian and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr. will be the editor-in-chief of Oxford’s new dictionary entitled the Oxford Dictionary of African American English.
This dictionary, slated to debut in 2025, will provide a comprehensive collection of words and phrases created and used by Black Americans, past and present.
Gates Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, announced the project officially in an interview with the New York Times.
“Just the way Louis Armstrong took the trumpet and turned it inside out from the way people played European classical music,” Gates Jr. said. “Black people took English and “reinvented it, to make it reflect their sensibilities and to make it mirror their cultural selves.”
“The bottom line of the African American people, these are people who love language.” I am proud to announce I will be the editor in chief for the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. Read more here: https://t.co/fUakIdNo45
— Henry Louis Gates Jr (@HenryLouisGates) July 21, 2022
“Words with African origins such as ‘ ‘goober,’ ‘gumbo’ and ‘okra’ survived the Middle Passage along with our African ancestors,” Gates Jr. said. “And words that we take for granted today, such as ‘cool’ and ‘crib,’ ‘hokum’ and ‘diss,’ ‘hip’ and ‘hep,’ ‘bad,’ meaning ‘good,’ and ‘dig,’ meaning ‘to understand ’— these are just a tiny fraction of the words that have come into American English from African American speakers … over the last few hundred years.”
Resources could also include books like “Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue: a Hepster’s Dictionary,” a collection of words used by musicians, including “beat” to mean tired; “Dan Burley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive,” published in 1944; and “Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner,” published in 1994.
Researchers can look to recorded interviews with formerly enslaved people, Salazar said, and to music, such as the lyrics in old jazz songs. Salazar said the project’s editors also plan to crowdsource information, with call outs on the Oxford website and on social media, asking Black Americans what words they’d like to see in the dictionary and for help with historical documentation.
“Maybe there’s a diary in your grandmother’s attic that has evidence of this word,” Salazar said.
In addition to word and phrase definitions, the Oxford Dictionary of African American English will also provide also where they came from and how they emerged.
“You wouldn’t normally think of a dictionary as a way of telling the story of the evolution of the African American people, but it is,” Gates said. “If you sat down and read the dictionary, you’d get a history of the African American people from A to Z.”
According to the New York Times, just after noon today, Ketanji Brown Jackson took the judicial oath, becoming the first Black woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
Justice Jackson, 51, was confirmed in April, when the Senate voted 53 to 47 on her nomination. She has replaced Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, who she once clerked for. Breyer stepped down at the conclusion of the court’s current term.To quote nytimes.com:
Justice Jackson took both a constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, and a judicial oath, administered by Justice Breyer. The brief swearing in ceremony took place in the West Conference Room at the Supreme Court, before a small gathering of Judge Jackson’s family. Her husband, Patrick G. Jackson, held the Bible.
“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Judge Jackson said in April at a White House celebration following her confirmation. “But we’ve made it. We’ve made it. All of us.”
[To listen to GBN’s recent bonus podcast about Jackson’s life and career on our site and read the transcript, click here.To go to Apple Podcasts, click below:]
[Photo: Anthony Bruce, the great-great-grandson of Charles and Willa Bruce, at Bruce’s Beach on Thursday. Photograph: Jay L Clendenin/Los Angeles Times/Rex/Shutterstock]
This week, in California, a case for reparations was finally won.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted their unanimous approval of the return of two oceanfront parcels unjustly taken by the government known as Bruce’s Beach to the descendants of former owners Charles and Willa Bruce.
Near the beginning of the 20th century, Charles and Willa Bruce made their way to California and purchased two lots in Manhattan Beach right by the sand and ran a popular lodge, cafe and dance hall for Black beachgoers.
A few more Black families, drawn to this new neighborhood that became known as Bruce’s Beach, bought and built their own cottages nearby. But they all soon were threatened by white neighbors and harassed by the local Ku Klux Klan.
When those attempts at intimidation failed, in 1924 city officials condemned the neighborhood and seized more than two dozen properties via eminent domain, claiming there was an urgent need for a public park. For decades, the properties sat empty.
The two oceanfront parcels that had been owned by the Bruces were transferred to the state in 1948, then to the county in 1995. The other lots were eventually turned into the park by city officials in Manhattan Beach.
In a heartfelt moment during the board meeting Tuesday, Supervisor Janice Hahn reflected on all the legal, legislative and very complicated real estate details that had to be worked out to right a wrong that had sparked a movement and captivated the country.
“We are finally here today,” said Hahn, who launched the complex process more than a year ago. “We can’t change the past, and we will never be able to make up for the injustice that was done to Willa and Charles Bruce a century ago. But this is a start, and it is the right thing to do.”
The property will now enter escrow before officially transferring to the Bruce family. After it’s transferred, the county has agreed to rent the property from the Bruces for $413,000 a year and will maintain its lifeguard facility there.
The lease agreement also includes a right for the county to purchase the land at a later date for $20 million, plus any associated transaction costs.
This unprecedented case of restorative justice to a Black family or property owners who were harassed by the KKK and run out of Manhattan Beach via racially-weaponized invocation of eminent domain almost a century ago — paves the way for more efforts by the government to rectify similar historic injustices.
[Wedding portrait of Charles Aaron and Willa A. Bruce. California African American Museum]To quote latimes.com once more:
For Anthony Bruce, the great-great-grandson of Charles and Willa Bruce, the last two years have been a jumble of emotions.
What Manhattan Beach did almost a century ago tore his family apart. Charles and Willa ended up as chefs serving other business owners for the remainder of their lives. His grandfather Bernard, born a few years after his family had been run out of town, was obsessed with what happened and lived his life “extremely angry at the world.” Bruce’s father, tormented by this history, had to leave California.
Bruce, a security supervisor in Florida, was thrust into the spotlight after Bruce’s Beach became a national story. It has been painful for him to talk publicly about his family’s history, but he has been heartened to see the growing movement of people calling for justice.
“Many families across the United States have been forced away from their homes and lands,” he said. “I hope that these monumental events encourage such families to keep trusting and believing that they will one day have what they deserve. We hope that our country no longer accepts prejudice as an acceptable behavior, and we need to stand united against it, because it has no place in our society today.”
According to variety.com, filmmaker Tyler Perry announced he’s donating $500,000 to New York’s famed Apollo Theater during the venue’s annual spring benefit gala yesterday.
Perry made the offer during his acceptance speech for the organization’s Impact Award, which was presented to him by Whoopi Goldberg.
“My studio [in Georgia] was once a former Confederate-owned army base where there were 3.9 million negroes and slaves at the time, and there were Confederate soldiers plotting and planning how to keep them enslaved,” Perry said.
“While now that land is owned by one negro and I know the importance of what it means to honor that and honor the history of what it has been, and what it has been and to redirect it and rechange it. So it’s very important to me that we all give and support, and with that said, I’d like to give a half-million dollars to make sure this place continues to grow and thrive.”
Perry concluded his speech by sharing that 98 percent of the people he paid last year with his $154 million payroll were Black. He then implored those listening not to give up on their career goals, using his own uplift of Black people in the industry as an example of the good that can come from Black people’s success.
“That is the power of us, that is the power of understanding our stories, our messages, whether who gets it or who don’t. Long as you walk you path, you understand who you’re talking to, you know your audience. If you’ve got a dream in this room, please hear me when I say this, do not give up on your dreams,” Perry said.
“If I would have given up, I don’t know who would have given that payroll, or if they would be in Hollywood, if people wouldn’t let them in the door. When you come to Tyler Perry Studios, you see the most diverse group of people who have ever worked in the industry, and for that I am grateful.”
Including Perry’s gift, the Apollo raised a record-breaking $3.7 million last night as comedian Kenan Thompson hosted the fundraising event.
Cook was confirmed by a51-to-50 votein the Senate, with Vice President Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.
No Republicans voted for Cook, and Democrats, who hold a razor-thin majority, had delayed moving forward on her nomination until they could assemble all 50 of their members to back her.
Cook is among the country’s preeminent economists and teaches at Michigan State University.
Her research has focused on macroeconomics, economic history, international finance and innovation, particularly on how hate-related violence has harmed U.S. economic growth.
Her work has analyzed how patent records show that the riots, lynchings and Jim Crow laws that targeted African American communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s hurt Black people’s ability to pursue inventions and discoveries at the time.
Cook also worked on the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration and has held visiting appointments at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the University of Michigan and the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Philadelphia.
A few days ago, Karine Jean-Pierre made history when she was announced as the next White House Press Secretary, taking over from current Press Secretary Jen Psaki on May 13. Jean-Pierre will be the first Black woman and openly LGBTQ+ person to hold the high-profile position.
To read about her, read on. To hear about her, press PLAY:
[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:
Karine Jean-Pierre (photo via Twitter)
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a bonus daily drop of Good Black News for Saturday, May 7th, 2022, based on the format of the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Earlier this week, Karine Jean-Pierre was named the new White House Press Secretary after serving as the Principal Deputy Press Secretary for the Biden Administration. Jean-Pierre will be the first Black woman and openly LGBTQ-plus person to serve in this position.
Jean-Pierre, the daughter of Haitian parents, grew up in New York City from the age of five and attended the New York Institute of Technology before earning her Masters in Public Administration at Columbia University.
After working in a few different political positions and then the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign and in Obama’s administration, Jean-Pierre joined the faculty at her alma mater Columbia, where she was a lecturer in international and public affairs.
In 2016, Jean-Pierre became MoveOn.org’s national spokesperson and on June 1, 2019, Jean-Pierre famously intervened during a MoveOn Forum where then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris was rushed by an audience member who grabbed her microphone.
Jean-Pierre put herself between the man and Harris until security and Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff removed the man from the stage.
Jean-Pierre then worked as a senior advisor on the Joe Biden presidential campaign, and after the election, was appointed to serve as Principal Deputy Press Secretary. On May 13, 2022, Jean-Pierre will take over from Jen Psaki and officially begin her new duties.
Here’s a clip from Jean-Pierre speaking about her new appointment and its importance overall:
“Wow, I am still processing it. Because as Jen said, at the top, this is a historic moment, and it’s not lost on me.
I understand how important it is for so many people out there. So many different communities that I stand on their shoulders, and I have been throughout my career. And so, it is an honor and a privilege to be behind this podium in about a week or so when Jen is ready.
And that, that is something that I will honor and, and do my best to represent this President and the First Lady the best that I can, but also the American people. And so it is, you know, it’s a very emotional day.
That’s probably the best way that I can explain it a very emotional day. And I just appreciate this time in this moment, and I hope that I make people proud.”
This has been a bonus daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
If you like these Daily Drops, follow us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.
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Karine Jean-Pierre was appointed by President Joe Biden today as the new White House press secretary, succeeding Jen Psaki, according to nbcnews.com. Jean-Pierre will be the first black woman and the first openly gay person to hold the position.
Jean-Pierre currently serves as the White House’s principal deputy press secretary.
“Karine not only brings the experience, talent and integrity needed for this difficult job, but she will continue to lead the way in communicating about the work of the Biden-Harris Administration on behalf of the American people,” the president said in a statement. “Jill and I have known and respected Karine a long time and she will be a strong voice speaking for me and this Administration.”
Jean-Pierre was born in Haiti and immigrated to the U.S. as a child, growing up in Queens, New York. She has served as deputy press secretary since the start of the administration and has filled in for Psaki behind the White House podium and briefed reporters traveling with the president.
Prior to joining the White House, Jean-Pierre served as chief of staff for vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris during the 2020 campaign and was the national spokeswoman for MoveOn.org during the 2016 election. She previously worked on both of Barack Obama‘s presidential campaigns.
Jean-Pierre will formally take over as Press Secretary following Psaki’s last day, which will be May 13.
Actor and Howard University graduate Taraji P. Henson and former head of the NBA Players Association and NBA star Chris Paul are among the more than a dozen top education leaders, celebrities and athletes President Joe Biden announced he is appointing to his board of advisers on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), the White House said.
The presidents of five HBCUs – Alabama State University, Virginia State University, Norfolk State University in Virginia, Dillard University in New Orleans and Prairie View A&M University in Texas – have also been appointed to the board.
Biden’s move comes weeks after his administration touted a $2.7 billion in funding from the American Rescue Plan that was provided to HBCUs over the past year and as HBCUs continue working to keep campuses safe after dozens received bomb threats in recent months.
The group is made of “qualified and diverse leaders” and appointing them to the board “will allow the administration to build on that financial commitment with continued institutional support,” the White House said.
HBCUs affected by recent bomb threats will be eligible for federal security grants, as more support for HBCUs has part of Biden’s domestic policy agenda since he ran for president. Last year, Biden proposed increased funding for HBCUs but his full proposal was not passed by Congress.
To learn more about Karine Jean-Pierre, check out her 2019 book 
