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Posts tagged as “Harvard”

Five Ivy League Colleges Vie for DC Student Avery Coffey

By goodblacknews on March 29, 2014

Avery Coffey
WASHINGTON – This is the college acceptance season — frequently a nervous time for high school seniors. But D.C.’s Avery Coffey can relax. He applied to five Ivy League universities and all five accepted him.
Coffey attends Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, a D.C. public school with strict rules. None of the 439 students at Banneker is allowed to bring a cell phone into the building. They are also not allowed to go to their lockers during the school day. (That has spawned the peculiar tradition of piling up textbooks at the base of lockers, so kids can switch books between classes without violating the locker rule.)
The strict rules at Banneker have fostered a rather serious academic environment. Principal Anita Berger says year after year after year, 100 percent of Banneker graduates are accepted into post-secondary institutions.  Among these brainy and motivated public school students is 17-year-old Coffey who, like a lot of kids, enjoys sports. What does he play?
“Baseball, basketball, tennis, soccer,” Coffey told us.
He also enjoys academics, and he has a 4.3 high school report card average, adjusted for the demanding International Baccalaureate courses he takes. Coffey scored very high on standardized tests also. He calls himself a “determined” student.
Coffey applied to five Ivy League universities, and, amazingly, has been accepted at all of them: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown.  And four of the five universities have already offered very generous financial aid packages. (Harvard is still formulating its offer.)

15 Year-Old Jaylen Bledsoe Builds Multi-Million Dollar Tech Company in St. Louis

By goodblacknews on September 3, 2013

Jaylen Bledsoe in screengrab from According to msnnow.com, Jaylen Bledsoe is a 15-year-old sophomore at Hazelwood West High School in St. Louis who also happens to be the CEO and President of Bledsoe Technologies.  Bledsoe started his IT consultancy when he was 12 or 13, quickly growing it into the $3.5 million enterprise it is today.

He plans to attend Harvard after he graduates from high school and will be a presenter for a St. Louis youth entrepreneurship nonprofit Independent Youth at their annual TrepStart Day in September, as well as being a national speaker for the organization.  To see video of Bledsoe and his story, click here: [Source]
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson 

R.I.P. Leo Branton Jr., Civil Rights Lawyer Who Defended Angela Davis

By goodblacknews on April 27, 2013

April 6, 1972: Defense attorney Leo Branton listens to Angela Davis as the two walk from court at San Jose. For obit of Branton.
April 6, 1972: Defense attorney Leo Branton listens to Angela Davis as the two walk from court at San Jose.

Leo Branton Jr., a civil rights and entertainment lawyer whose stirring defense of ’60s radical Angela Davis brought him his most celebrated victory in a six-decade career often spent championing unpopular cases, died of natural causes Friday in Los Angeles. He was 91.  His death was confirmed by his son Tony Nicholas.

Branton, the only African-American graduate of Northwestern University’s law school in 1948, helped singer Nat King Cole integrate an exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood, defended Communists in McCarthy-era Los Angeles and won misconduct cases against the Los Angeles Police Department decades before Rodney King became a household name.
“He was a hero of mine,” said Connie Rice, a prominent Los Angeles civil rights attorney who helped lead efforts to reform the LAPD after the King beating.  “All the things I’ve done, Leo Branton did 50 years before I even thought about going to law school. He saw himself not as a private practitioner out to make money for himself but as a lawyer with the skills to be a champion for black liberation.”

“Walking Dead” Actress Danai Gurira Wins Whiting Writing Award

By goodblacknews on October 24, 2012
Danai Gurira, best known for her role of Michonne on AMC’s The Walking Dead, has been awarded the Whiting Writers Award.

For those who may not be familiar, Danai Gurira, who made her Broadway debut in 2010 in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson, is an accomplished playwright in her own right.  She co-wrote In the Continuum with Nikkole Salter which received the Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for writing.  Gurira also received a Helen Hayes Award for her performance in In The Contiuum.  Other work written by Gurira includes Eclipsed and The Convert.

Another woman of color honored was Sharifa Rhodes-Pitt a non-fiction writer.  She graduated from Harvard and was a Fulbright Scholar. 

Harvard Sophomore Temi Fagbenle Named to Great Britain's 2012 Olympic Team

By goodblacknews on July 21, 2012

Fagbenle becomes the fifth Olympian in Ivy League Basketball history(Ahmed Photography).
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Rising sophomore Temi Fagbenle has been named to Great Britain’s 12-woman roster for the 2012 London Olympic Games, becoming just the second Olympian in Ivy League women’s basketball history.
Fagbenle has helped Great Britain to a 6-6 record through 12 test matches during its Olympic tune up, averaging 10.5 points and 4.4 rebounds. GB most recently defeated the world’s fourth-ranked team, Czech Republic, on June 20 with Fagbenle netting 12 points and grabbing seven rebounds in a starting role. GB has also beaten ninth-ranked Korea, 11th-ranked Canada and 12th-ranked Argentina.  Great Britain began its training camp on May 5 with 20 women invited to compete for a roster spot. The team went through two rounds of cuts before the final 12-woman squad was announced. GB is scheduled to play seven more test matches before the Games begin.
Great Britain, as host, received an automatic qualification to this year’s Olympic women’s basketball competition.  The tournament is set to begin on Saturday, July 28 and will run through Sunday, Aug. 12. All games will be played at the newly built Basketball Arena and the North Greenwich Arena.  Fagbenle is only the second Olympian in Ivy League women’s basketball history and just the fifth basketball Olympian in the Ancient Eight’s storied history. She joins Brown’s Martina Jerant (Canda, 1996), Princeton’s Bill Bradley (United States, 1964) and Konrad Wysocki (Germany, 2008), and Dartmouth’s Crawford Palmer (France, 2000).
Fagbenle matriculated to Camrbridge this past fall as the program’s first-ever McDonald’s All-American after concluding an incredibly successful high school career. She was ranked 13th overall in the Class of 2011 by ESPN HoopGurlz, and was the fifth ranked forward on the list. She led Great Britain’s U18 National Team to the 2010 Women’s European Championship, and was named Great Britain’s U18 Player of the Year as a result. As a senior at Blair Academy, she was named the New Jersey Gatorade Player of the Year after guiding her team to the state and MAPL championships .  After sitting a year in residency, Fagbenle will enter the 2012-13 season as a sophomore at Harvard.
article via gocrimson.com

Harvard Sophomore Temi Fagbenle Named to Great Britain’s 2012 Olympic Team

By goodblacknews on July 21, 2012

Fagbenle becomes the fifth Olympian in Ivy League Basketball history(Ahmed Photography).

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Rising sophomore Temi Fagbenle has been named to Great Britain’s 12-woman roster for the 2012 London Olympic Games, becoming just the second Olympian in Ivy League women’s basketball history.

Fagbenle has helped Great Britain to a 6-6 record through 12 test matches during its Olympic tune up, averaging 10.5 points and 4.4 rebounds. GB most recently defeated the world’s fourth-ranked team, Czech Republic, on June 20 with Fagbenle netting 12 points and grabbing seven rebounds in a starting role. GB has also beaten ninth-ranked Korea, 11th-ranked Canada and 12th-ranked Argentina.  Great Britain began its training camp on May 5 with 20 women invited to compete for a roster spot. The team went through two rounds of cuts before the final 12-woman squad was announced. GB is scheduled to play seven more test matches before the Games begin.

Great Britain, as host, received an automatic qualification to this year’s Olympic women’s basketball competition.  The tournament is set to begin on Saturday, July 28 and will run through Sunday, Aug. 12. All games will be played at the newly built Basketball Arena and the North Greenwich Arena.  Fagbenle is only the second Olympian in Ivy League women’s basketball history and just the fifth basketball Olympian in the Ancient Eight’s storied history. She joins Brown’s Martina Jerant (Canda, 1996), Princeton’s Bill Bradley (United States, 1964) and Konrad Wysocki (Germany, 2008), and Dartmouth’s Crawford Palmer (France, 2000).

Fagbenle matriculated to Camrbridge this past fall as the program’s first-ever McDonald’s All-American after concluding an incredibly successful high school career. She was ranked 13th overall in the Class of 2011 by ESPN HoopGurlz, and was the fifth ranked forward on the list. She led Great Britain’s U18 National Team to the 2010 Women’s European Championship, and was named Great Britain’s U18 Player of the Year as a result. As a senior at Blair Academy, she was named the New Jersey Gatorade Player of the Year after guiding her team to the state and MAPL championships .  After sitting a year in residency, Fagbenle will enter the 2012-13 season as a sophomore at Harvard.

article via gocrimson.com

Cleveland Student David Boone Worked Hard To Go From Homeless To Harvard

By goodblacknews on May 20, 2012

 david.jpgDavid Boone used to sleep on this bench in Artha Woods Park when he had nowhere else to go. Next fall, the senior at Cleveland’s MC2STEM High School is headed to Harvard.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — David Boone had a system.  There wasn’t much the then-15-year-old could do about the hookers or drug deals around him when he slept in Artha Woods Park. And the spectator’s bench at the park’s baseball diamond wasn’t much of a bed.
But the aspiring engineer, now 18 and headed to Harvard University in the fall, had no regular home. Though friends, relatives and school employees often put him up, there were nights when David had no place to go, other than the park off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
So he says he made the best of those nights on the wooden bench.
His book bag became his pillow, stuffed with textbooks first — for height, he says — and papers on top for padding.
In the morning, David would duck into his friend Eric’s house after Eric’s parents left early for work so he could shower and dress before heading to class at Cleveland’s specialized MC2STEM High School. David expects to graduate from there next month as salutatorian of the new school’s first graduating class.
“I’d do my homework in a rapid station, usually Tower City since they have heat, and I’d stay wherever I could find,” he said.
If you meet David Boone today, his gentle, confident demeanor and easygoing laugh betray no cockiness over racking up a college acceptance record that others brag about for him. He was accepted at 22 of the 23 schools he applied to — including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown and Penn.
He also gives no hint of the often harsh and nomadic life he has led. The medical problems he faced as a boy, a splintered family, being homeless — it all could have left him bitter and angry.
But David says that giving up would have left him stuck in a dead-end life, so it was never an option.
“I didn’t know what the results of not giving up were going to be, but it was better than nothing and having no advantages,” he said. “I wanted to be in a position to have options to do what I want to do.”
David was born to a young mother, who divorced his father when David was a little boy.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Annette Gordon-Reed Earns 2010 MacArthur "Genius" Grant!

By goodblacknews on September 28, 2010
Macarthur4-popup

Harvard Professor and author Annette Gordon-Reed, 51, whose book “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” (W. W. Norton) won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction, is among the 23 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.  Ms. Gordon-Reed investigated the story of the slave family that included Sally Hemings, a slave owned by Jefferson who scholars widely believe bore his children. A New Yorker, Ms. Gordon-Reed teaches law and history at Harvard. Some of her grant will go toward travel expenses as she researches another book on the Hemings, she said.
Twelve men and 11 women, ranging in age from 30 to 72, were named MacArthur fellows this year. All will receive $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached.  Since the inception of the program in 1981 and including this year’s fellows, 828 people, ranging in age from 18 to 82 at the time of their selection, have been named.
article information via nytimes.com

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Annette Gordon-Reed Earns 2010 MacArthur “Genius” Grant!

By goodblacknews on September 28, 2010
Macarthur4-popup

Harvard Professor and author Annette Gordon-Reed, 51, whose book “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” (W. W. Norton) won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction, is among the 23 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.  Ms. Gordon-Reed investigated the story of the slave family that included Sally Hemings, a slave owned by Jefferson who scholars widely believe bore his children. A New Yorker, Ms. Gordon-Reed teaches law and history at Harvard. Some of her grant will go toward travel expenses as she researches another book on the Hemings, she said.

Twelve men and 11 women, ranging in age from 30 to 72, were named MacArthur fellows this year. All will receive $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached.  Since the inception of the program in 1981 and including this year’s fellows, 828 people, ranging in age from 18 to 82 at the time of their selection, have been named.

article information via nytimes.com