Social scientist and dean of largest University faculty excited to seize “moment of possibility.”
— Read on news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/12/harvard-names-claudine-gay-30th-president/
Posts tagged as “Harvard University”
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
On Memorial Day 2022, we take a look at the African American origins of the federal holiday established to remember America’s fallen soldiers.
To read about it, read on. To hear about it, press PLAY:
[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and Editor-in-Chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, May 30th, 2022, which is also Memorial Day, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Although May 30, 1868 is cited as the first national commemoration of Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, events lead by African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina to decorate the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers occurred on May 1, 1865, less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered.
Reports of this early version of Memorial Day or “Decoration Day” as it was called, were rediscovered in the Harvard University archives in the late 1990s by historian David Blight, author of the 2018 biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
To quote from history.com:
When Charleston fell and Confederate troops evacuated the badly damaged city, those freed from enslavement remained. One of the first things those emancipated men and women did was to give the fallen Union prisoners a proper burial. They exhumed the mass grave and reinterred the bodies in a new cemetery with a tall, whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
And then on May 1, 1865, something even more extraordinary happened. According to two reports that Blight found in The New York Tribune and The Charleston Courier, a crowd of 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves with some white missionaries, staged a parade around the race track.
Three thousand Black schoolchildren carried bouquets of flowers and sang “John Brown’s Body.” Members of the famed 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments were in attendance and performed double-time marches. Black ministers recited verses from the Bible.
Despite the size of the gathering and newspaper coverage, the memory of this event was “suppressed by white Charlestonians in favor of their own version of the day,” Blight stated in the New York Times in 2011.
On May 31, 2010, near a reflecting pool at Hampton Park, the city of Charleston reclaimed this history by installing a plaque commemorating the site as the place where Blacks held the first Memorial Day on May 1, 1865.
During the dedication of the plaque, the city’s mayor at the time, Joe Riley, was present to celebrate the historic occasion which included a brass band and a reenactment of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment.
In 2017, the City of Charleston erected yet another sign reclaiming the history and commemorating the event:
“On May 1, 1865 a parade to honor the Union war dead took place here. The event marked the earliest celebration of what became known as “Memorial Day.” The crowd numbered in the thousands, with African American school children from newly formed Freedmen’s Schools leading the parade. They were followed by church leaders, Freedpeople, Unionists, and members of the 54th Massachusetts 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Infantries. The dead were later reinterred in Beaufort.”
To learn more about African Americans’ role in the creation of Memorial Day, check out the links to sources provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a 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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Sources:
- https://www.history.com/news/memorial-day-civil-war-slavery-charleston
- https://www.lx.com/black-legacy/dont-overlook-memorial-days-black-southern-roots/53453/
- https://www.live5news.com/2020/02/18/charleston-claims-first-memorial-day-celebration-with-african-americans-playing-significant-role/
- https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2022/05/28/freed-slaves-started-first-memorial-day-in-the-us/
- https://aaregistry.org/story/the-first-american-memorial-day-is-commemorated/
- https://www.harlemworldmagazine.com/memorial-day-african-americans-memorial-day-charleston-south-carolina-1865/
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
History was made moments ago when the U.S. Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson 53-47 to become the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Jackson is the first African American woman to serve on the court and the 116th Associate Justice overall.
President Joe Biden nominated Jackson over a month ago to take over the seat of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom Jackson once clerked.
Associate Justice Jackson was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her parents attended segregated primary schools, then attended historically black colleges and universities.
Both started their careers as public school teachers and became leaders and administrators in the Miami-Dade Public School System. When Justice Jackson was in preschool, her father attended law school.
In a 2017 lecture, Justice Jackson traced her love of the law back to sitting next to her father in their apartment as he tackled his law school homework—reading cases and preparing for Socratic questioning—while she undertook her preschool homework—coloring books.
Justice Jackson stood out as a high achiever throughout her childhood. She was a speech and debate star who was elected “mayor” of Palmetto Junior High and student body president of Miami Palmetto Senior High School.
But like many Black women, Judge Jackson still faced naysayers. When Judge Jackson told her high school guidance counselor she wanted to attend Harvard, the guidance counselor warned that Justice Jackson should not set her “sights so high.”
That did not stop Judge Jackson. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, then attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Jackson went on to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court, serve as a public defender, become a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia and then a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Justice Jackson lives with her husband, Patrick, and their two daughters, in Washington, DC.
University of Michigan economist and executive vice president of academic affairs Susan M. Collins will be the next president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, taking office on July 1.
Collins will be only the second Black president and first Black woman to head one of the 12 Federal Reserve banks in the century-plus history of the institution. Raphael Bostic, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta president, was the first Black person ever to lead a reserve bank.
“It is an honor and an inspiration to serve as the Boston Fed’s next president,” Professor Collins said. “Throughout my career, I have been driven by a commitment to leveraging research, education, and public service to improve lives. I look forward to helping the Bank and System pursue the Fed’s dual mandate from Congress – achieving price stability and maximum employment.”
Dr. Collins added that “I am also inspired by the portfolio of important and innovative work underway at the Boston Fed,” Collins said. “I am delighted with the opportunity to lead such a dynamic organization, engage with its talented staff, and work with its constituents – to understand their economic challenges and help explain the work of the Fed in the economy. It will also be a pleasure to return to Greater Boston and New England.”
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been selected by President Joe Biden to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Stephen G. Breyer‘s impending retirement. When confirmed, Jackson will become the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court of law.
Jackson, 51, a U.S. appeals court judge in Washington, has been the front runner for the Supreme Court seat ever since Justice Breyer, 83, announced last month he was retiring. Jackson was, fittingly, a Supreme Court law clerk for Breyer.
In addition to being the first Black female justice, Jackson would be the first justice on the Supreme Court to have previously worked as a public defender, something progressive groups, according to the Los Angeles Times, hope will help the court offer a different perspective.
Judge Jackson, who graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her parents attended segregated primary schools, then attended historically black colleges and universities. Both started their careers as public school teachers and became leaders and administrators in the Miami-Dade Public School System.
When Judge Jackson was in preschool, her father attended law school. In a 2017 lecture, Judge Jackson traced her love of the law back to sitting next to her father in their apartment as he tackled his law school homework—reading cases and preparing for Socratic questioning—while she undertook her preschool homework—coloring books.
Judge Jackson stood out as a high achiever throughout her childhood. She was a speech and debate star who was elected “mayor” of Palmetto Junior High and student body president of Miami Palmetto Senior High School.
But like many Black women, Judge Jackson still faced naysayers. When Judge Jackson told her high school guidance counselor she wanted to attend Harvard, the guidance counselor warned that Judge Jackson should not set her “sights so high.”
That did not stop Judge Jackson. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University as an undergraduate, then attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Judge Jackson lives with her husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, who is a surgeon, and their two daughters, in Washington, DC.
Read more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/kbj/
[Photo: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson via thecrimson.com]
[Photo/Image via chicagocrusader.com]
Although May 30, 1868 is cited as the first national commemoration of Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, events lead by African Americans in Charleston, SC to decorate the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers occurred on May 1, 1865, less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered.
Reports of this early version of Memorial Day or “Decoration Day” as it was called, were rediscovered in the Harvard University archives in the late 1990s by historian David Blight, author of the 2018 biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
To quote from history.com:
When Charleston fell and Confederate troops evacuated the badly damaged city, those freed from enslavement remained. One of the first things those emancipated men and women did was to give the fallen Union prisoners a proper burial. They exhumed the mass grave and reinterred the bodies in a new cemetery with a tall whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
And then on May 1, 1865, something even more extraordinary happened. According to two reports that Blight found in The New York Tribune and The Charleston Courier, a crowd of 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves with some white missionaries, staged a parade around the race track. Three thousand Black schoolchildren carried bouquets of flowers and sang “John Brown’s Body.” Members of the famed 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments were in attendance and performed double-time marches. Black ministers recited verses from the Bible.
Despite the size of the gathering and newspaper coverage, the memory of this event was “suppressed by white Charlestonians in favor of their own version of the day,” Blight stated in the New York Times in 2011.
On May 31, 2010, near a reflecting pool at Hampton Park, the city of Charleston reclaimed this history by installing a plaque commemorating the site as the place where Blacks held the first Memorial Day on May 1, 1865.
During the dedication of the plaque, the city’s mayor at the time, Joe Riley, was present to celebrate the historic occasion which included a brass band and a reenactment of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment.
In 2017, the City of Charleston erected yet another sign reclaiming the history and commemorating the event:
Read more:
Happy Black History Month 2021! The team at Good Black News is excited as ever to celebrate and explore the events, movements and people who have contributed indelibly to African American life and culture throughout the centuries.
Today we start by honoring Carter G. Woodson, the man responsible for creating and advancing the concept of having a specific time every year nationally to recognize the achievements of Black people in the U.S.
To make ends meet, Woodson often had to forgo school for farm or mining work, but he was encouraged to learn independently and eventually earned advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and Harvard University.
In 1915 he helped found the Journal of Negro History, (see issues of the Journal here) and starting in 1926 he developed and promoted the second week of February as Negro History Week.
In 1933, Woodson published The Mis-Education of the Negro, a book where he argues that African Americans were being indoctrinated instead of taught in American schools, and being led to view themselves as inferior. Woodson encourages his readers to become autodidacts and to “do for themselves”, regardless of what they learn in the educational system.
February officially became Black History Month across the nation in 1976.
(paid links)
Amanda Gorman, 22, is set to become the youngest inaugural poet in memory when she recites her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at President-elect Joe Biden‘s inauguration tomorrow, according to thehill.com.
So honored to be the Inaugural Poet reciting at #InaugurationDay ! Not only am I excited to see @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris sworn in, but I also have the privilege of being the youngest Inaugural Poet in history. See you soon! https://t.co/b58CiVxMCD
— Amanda Gorman (@TheAmandaGorman) January 14, 2021
In 2014, Harvard University graduate Gorman became the the first Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Three years later she was named the country’s first National Youth Poet Laureate. She will carry on the tradition for Democratic presidents of having celebrated poets read an original piece at inauguration ceremonies.
According to The Associated Press, Gorman said she had been recommended to Biden’s inaugural committee by incoming first lady Dr. Jill Biden.
Gorman’s poem will follow in the line of noteworthy works by celebrated poets such as Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning,” written for the 1993’s inauguration of President Clinton, sold more than 1 million copies when published in book form.
To read more: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/534419-biden-chooses-black-female-activist-as-youngest-known-inaugural
Journalist and political commentator Abby Phillip will become the anchor of CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday” from 8-9 a.m. ET on Sundays, beginning January 24th. Harvard grad Phillip has also been named the network’s senior political correspondent.
I'm so thrilled to be taking the reins of Inside Politics Sunday from my friend and colleague @JohnKingCNN starting on January 24th. Could not be more proud to be joining this incredible @CNN franchise! https://t.co/odlIvfxUiK
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) January 11, 2021
Phillip’s new roles at the news network were announced among several other changes to the anchor line-up for its Washington-based programs. Phillip will take over for anchor John King, who will continue to host “Inside Politics with John King” weekdays from 12-1 p.m. ET.
Beginning in April, Jake Tapper’s program The Lead with Jake Tapper will expand to 4-6 p.m. ET nightly. In addition, he will continue in his role on Sunday mornings, now co-anchoring State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. He will also serve as the network’s lead anchor for all major Washington events.
Wolf Blitzer will continue to anchor the network’s signature evening newscast, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, now airing from 6-7 p.m. ET nightly. The program will be seen around the world, simulcast on the CNN US and CNN International networks. He will also have a principal anchor role for all major breaking news and continue to host CNN special reports.
Dana Bash has been named co-anchor of the network’s Sunday morning newsmaker show, now called State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Tapper and Bash will each anchor two Sundays a month, beginning January 24th. In addition, Bash will continue as the network’s chief political correspondent and will also host quarterly primetime interview specials.
[Photo: Abby Phillip courtesy CNN]
Noah Harris was elected president of Harvard’s Undergraduate Council on Nov. 12, becoming the first Black undergraduate elected as student body president at Harvard University.
Harris, 20, a junior from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is majoring in government and co-chairs the Undergraduate Council’s Black caucus.
Two other Black students have previously headed Harvard’s Undergraduate Council, but Harris is the first Black man to be elected by the student body.
Harris told his hometown paper, the Hattiesburg American, that does not take the honor lightly.
To quote from The Hattiesburg American:
“Especially with everything that went on this summer with the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, all the protests that went on in this moment of racial reckoning in this country,” he said. “This is a major statement by the Harvard student body to entrust a Black man with such an unprecedented moment in its history.”
Harris ran on a platform of diversity of inclusion with future Undergraduate Council Vice President Jenny Gan, a junior from Cleveland. Gan is studying neuroscience. The two said they want to focus on improving students’ mental and physical health.
Photo: Noah Harris via Twitter