Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove (photo via commons.wikipedia.org)
Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, according to jbhe.com. The award is given annually to recognize “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.” Established in 1994, the award comes with a $100,000 prize.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1987 for Thomas and Beulah, Dove also served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995. She is the only poet to receive the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts.
Dove has published 10 collections of poetry including her latest book Collected Poems, 1974-2004(2016). In addition to poetry, Dove has published a book of short stories and the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992).
Dove is a summa cum laude graduate of Miami University in Ohio, where she majored in English. She holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Iowa, and joined the faculty at the University of Virginia in 1989.
Lauren Christine Mims is a former assistant director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans and a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Psychology at the University of Virginia. She’s also one of the many women inspired by Michelle Obama’s Becoming, a New York Times best-selling book that sold more than 1.4 million copies within the first seven days of its release. Now, Mims is turning Obama’s book into a curriculum for black girls to further their learning and development.
“Reading Becoming was like sitting on the couch with your best friend and having one of those soulful conversations about life,” said Mims.
“Reading about how Michelle Obama felt unchallenged in elementary school, teased for the way she spoke, and noticed a difference in how she was perceived during adolescence was affirming.”
Mims hopes the Becoming curriculum will make space for black girls to thrive in a world that often seems to try and deny their humanity. As part of her doctoral research at the University of Virginia, Mims explores what it means to be a young, gifted, black girl in school.
“I disrupt the traditional practice of talking about black girls in pejorative ways and center them and their unique experiences to study how we can support them. For example, my research highlights what ‘Black Girl Magic’ means to black girls; the role teachers play in supporting or stopping the success of black girls; and more about what they are learning and how it makes them feel.”
“If you follow Jada Pinkett Smith, Adrienne Norris, and Willow Smith, think about my interviews as Red Table Talks where black girls are supported in discussing challenges and designing solutions.”
Lauren Christine Mims (photo via blackenterprise.com)
As part of the curriculum, students read Becoming, and watch films featuring black girls in leading roles. Additionally, “we will have important conversations, like about what it means to feel like your presence is a threat or that you do not belong. We will discuss Maddie Whitsett and McKenzie Nicole Adams; two 9-year-old black girls who died by suicide after being subjected to bullying. At the end of the course, students will apply their knowledge to draft new research proposals, policies, and practices,” says Mims.
Beyond the walls of the classroom, Mims says there are four things we can all do to support black girls:
Create supportive, affirming, and loving environments by listening to their needs and centering their unique experiences of Becoming;
Advocate for, adopt, and enforce school policies and accountability practices that recognize the brilliance of black girls and ensure they are not being pushed out of school.
Address the bullying, harassment, and discrimination of black girls and ensure that all students have access to mental healthcare;
Care for your own mental health and well-being.
Ultimately, Mims wants girls to know that they are enough. As Michelle Obama writes, “Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim,” yet there is so much pressure in college to define your identity and pick a career path. It can take a toll on you. Know that you are brilliant and never “underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.”
An elementary school in Utah has traded one Jackson for another in a change that many say was a long time coming.
Jackson Elementary School in Salt Lake City will no longer be named for Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, whose slave ownership and treatment of Native Americans are often cited in the debate over memorializing historical figures associated with racism.
Instead, the school will honor Mary Jackson, the first black female engineer at nasa whose story, and the stories of others like her at the space agency, was chronicled in Hidden Figures, a 2016 film based on a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly.
A unanimous vote by the the Salt Lake City school board this week was met with a standing ovation from the crowd in the room, reportsThe Salt Lake Tribune’s Erin Alberty. School employees and parents have discussed changing the elementary’s school name “for years,” Alberty reported, and last year started polling and meeting with parents, alumni, and others. More than 70 percent supported the change. Of the school’s 440 students, 85 percent are students of color, according to the Salt Lake City School District.
Mary Jackson, a native of Hampton, Virginia, worked as a math teacher, a receptionist, and an Army secretary before she arrived at NASA’s Langley Research Center in 1951 as a member of the West Area Computing unit, a segregated division where African American women spent hours doing calculations with pencil and paper, including for the trajectories of the country’s earliest space missions.
Two years in, a NASA engineer picked Jackson to help him work on a wind tunnel that tested flight hardware by blasting it with winds nearly twice the speed of sound. The engineer suggested Jackson train to become an engineer. To do that, Jackson had to take night courses in math and physics from the University of Virginia, which were held at the segregated Hampton High School. Jackson successfully petitioned the city to let her take the classes. She got her promotion to engineer in 1958. After 34 years at the space agency, Jackson retired in 1985. She died in 2005, at the age of 83.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (photo via nbc29.com) via nbc29.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) -As part of University of Virginia’s efforts to reconcile its controversial past, Wednesday, it formally dedicated Pinn Hall in honor of Dr. Vivian Pinn. Pinn is one of the earliest African-American women to graduate from the UVA School of Medicine. She went on to found the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health.
The school celebrated her life and legacy during the “Medical Center Hour” held Wednesday. “I don’t see this as an honor for me but really as a symbol for women, people of color, and others who struggled to see this name just as a symbol for them, for the pioneers who proceeded me and hopefully the many who will come behind me,” Pinn said. Pinn College, one of the medical school’s four colleges, is also named after Pinn. To read more and see video, go to: University of Virginia Medical Center Dedicates Hall to African- – NBC29 WVIR Charlottesville, VA News, Sports and Weather
via jbhe.com Andrew W. Kahrl, an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia, who is affiliated with the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the university, is using local tax records to document the history of racial discrimination and residential segregation in the state. Dr. Kahrl is conducting research on how tax liens and tax sales became a tool used by predatory land speculators to acquire Black-owned land.
“Many of these places were legally stolen from Black people by private investors working in concert with local officials,” Dr. Kahrl found.Dr. Kahrl discovered that local officials assessed Black property owners at highly inflated rates in an effort to tax them off the land. “This practice was pervasive,” Dr. Kahrl said. “It was something that was taking place throughout the South and it is clear that it is discriminatory in nature. African-Americans were consistently taxed higher on their property than White homeowners and landowners in the same neighborhood.”
In some states, if the Black landowners missed a tax payment, a lien would be put on the property – and the lien or the property would eventually be sold at a tax sale, where speculators could purchase the debt, add legal fees to it and eventually seize the property for much less than it was worth. Dr. Kahrl is the author of The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Source: University of Virginia Historian Documents How Black-Owned Land Was Stolen : The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
US President Barack Obama shakes hands with former NAACP chairman Julian Bond (L) during the NAACP 100th Anniversary convention in New York, July 16, 2009. (Photo credit SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) article via jbhe.com
The University of Virginia has announced that it is creating an endowed professorship to honor the late Julian Bond. Professor Bond, who was a civil rights pioneer and led the NAACP for 12 years, taught at the University of Virginia for 20 years. As a student at Morehouse College, Bond was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He later served as the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and was a member of the Georgia State legislature for 20 years.
The Julian Bond Professorship of Civil Rights and Social Justice has been endowed with more than $3 million by 350 alumni and supporters. Ian B. Baucom, the Dean of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia notes that ““Julian Bond worked tirelessly to ensure civil rights were extended to all Americans. The Bond Professorship will help us attract the faculty talent we need to continue the civil rights education work that Julian Bond championed throughout his life.” Teresa A. Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, added that “Julian Bond made significant contributions to the University of Virginia, teaching thousands of our students while serving as a mentor and role model for all of us. As a driving force for social change for more than a half-century, he had an extraordinary impact on our University, our community and our nation.”
Professor Derrick P. Alridge (photo via curry.virginia.edu)
The University of Virginia is conducting an oral history project that is documenting the stories of teachers during the civil rights movement. The project is called Teachers in the Movement and it is led by Derrick P. Alridge, a professor in the Curry School of Education at the university.
The project focuses on oral history interviews with elementary, secondary, and university teachers and educators of all races in several states about their participation in and efforts during the Civil Rights Movement. By the end of 2016, the researchers hope to have recorded 200 interviews.
“Teachers played very important roles in the movement,” said Professor Alridge. “What drives our research team is our desire to bring their stories to light. We intend to put the project on par someday with other major oral history projects that cover the Civil Rights Movement, such as The Behind the Veil Project at Duke University and the Southern Oral History Project at the University of North Carolina.”
Professor Alridge holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He earned a Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University. article via jbhe.com
Sjohnna McCray (Photo: savannahstate.edu) Sjohnna McCray, an adjunct instructor in the department of English at Savannah State University in Georgia, has been selected to receive the 2015 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. The award, established in 1975, honors a poet of “exceptional promise” who has not yet published a book of poetry.
As the winner of the Walt Whitman Award, McCray will have his collection of poems entitled Rapture published by Graywolf Press in 2016. He will also receive an all-expenses-paid six-week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy.
McCray is a native of Cincinnati and is a graduate of Ohio University. He earned a master’s degree at Teachers College of Columbia University and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Virginia. article via jbhe.com
Emory University has announced that Erika Hayes James will be the next dean of the Goizueta Business School, making her the first African-American female dean in the school’s history. She’s also the first among top business school programs. James will assume her role on July 15.
James is a former senior associate dean for executive education at the Darden Graduate School for Business at the University of Virginia. She earned her PhD. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, and her expertise is intersecting that knowledge with executive leadership. She has consulted numerous Fortune 500 companies and typically focuses on three key areas: crisis leadership, women in leadership, and commuter relationships. MBA students at Darden and Harvard Business School, where James taught as a visiting professor, gave her high praise, according to the Emory announcement.
Although there are three other minority women who are deans at American colleges of business, James will be the first at the helm of a full-time MBA program at a top-25 business school. Claire Sterk, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Emory, insisted that James’ race and gender did not impact their decision to hire her, although it is certainly an added bonus to make history. “Erika James has all of the qualities that we want for a leader at Goizueta,” says Sterk, who led the international search. “She brings a background of impressive scholarship and strong skills in academic administration, and she will work collaboratively with faculty, students, staff, alumni and supporters to take the school to the next level—all the while honoring the principled leadership of Mr. Goizueta’s legacy.” James hopes to strengthen the connection between Goizueta and Atlanta’s business community, as well as, make use of Emory’s expertise in health care to create business solutions for the national challenge of health care delivery systems. “I believe that the Goizueta Business School is a world-renowned school that is on the verge of greatness,” she said. “And I want to be a part of helping the school reach that greatness.” article by Natali Rivers via uptownmagazine.com
According to Variety.com, Sasheer Zamata will be the latest young comedian to join NBC’s Saturday Night Live, Zamata will make her debut as an SNL featured player on Jan. 18, the late-night program’s first live show of this new year. Zamata is a University of Virginia alumna and trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade.
Zamata will be SNL’s first black female cast member since the departure of Maya Rudolph in 2007. SNL and its producer Lorne Michaels came under fire in late 2013 over the cast’s lack of diversity, and the series poked fun at its own controversy during its opening segment when Kerry Washington hosted SNL in November 2013. News broke at the end of the year that SNL was holding auditions specifically to find black female cast members to join the program in 2014. article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson
“Reading Becoming was like sitting on the couch with your best friend and having one of those soulful conversations about life,” said Mims.
