A petition calling for Mayor Beverly Whaling’s termination has garnered over 24,000 signatures.
article by Rachaell Davis via essence.com
UPDATE (11/15/16): West Virginia Mayor Beverly Whaling has resigned. WSAZ News reportedly received confirmation that Whaling has submitted an official resignation letter, following the fallout from her comments on a racially offensive Facebook post, in which Clay County Corporation Director Pamela Ramsey Taylor referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as “an ape in heels.”
Previous Report:
As racial tensions continue to rise across the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, a disturbing incident out of West Virginia has thousands demanding action.
Clay County Development Corporation Executive Pamela Ramsey Taylor hurled words of blatant disrespect and disregard for First Lady Michelle Obama in a racist Facebook post, where she referred to FLOTUS as “an ape in heels.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Clay Mayor Beverly Whaling agreed with Taylor’s racially offensive statement, commenting on the original post, “Just made my day, Pam.”
To read full article, go to: West Virginia Mayor Criticized For Racist FB Post About Michelle Obama Essence.com
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article by Charles Bolden via vanityfair.com
When I was growing up, in segregated South Carolina, African-American role models in national life were few and far between. Later, when my fellow flight students and I, in training at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Mississippi, clustered around a small television watching the Apollo 11 moon landing, little did I know that one of the key figures responsible for its success was an unassuming black woman from West Virginia: Katherine Johnson.
Hidden Figures is both an upcoming book and an upcoming movie about her incredible life, and, as the title suggests, Katherine worked behind the scenes but with incredible impact. When Katherine began at NASA, she and her cohorts were known as “human computers,” and if you talk to her or read quotes from throughout her long career, you can see that precision, that humming mind, constantly at work. She is a human computer, indeed, but one with a quick wit, a quiet ambition, and a confidence in her talents that rose above her era and her surroundings.
“In math, you’re either right or you’re wrong,” she said. Her succinct words belie a deep curiosity about the world and dedication to her discipline, despite the prejudices of her time against both women and African-Americans. It was her duty to calculate orbital trajectories and flight times relative to the position of the moon—you know, simple things. In this day and age, when we increasingly rely on technology, it’s hard to believe that John Glenn himself tasked Katherine to double-check the results of the computer calculations before his historic orbital flight, the first by an American. The numbers of the human computer and the machine matched.
To read full article, go to: Katherine Johnson, the NASA Mathematician Who Advanced Human Rights with a Slide Rule and Pencil | Vanity Fair
article via jbhe.com
On May 1, Adrienne Washington of Morgantown, West Virginia, became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. For her thesis, Dr. Washington researched the study and redevelopment of Yoruba language practices in the city of Salvador da Bahia in modern-day northeastern Brazil.
Dr. Washington is a graduate of Hampton University in Virginia. She received a master’s degree in linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Washington told JBHE, “My plan is to continue developing my research on Yoruba language practices in northeastern Brazil as well as explore other interdisciplinary topics in sociolinguistics. Currently, I am focused on writing manuscripts and applying for jobs in academia, where I see myself best contributing to society.”
In a press release, Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens has announced that Roslyn Clark Artis will become its interim president on July 15. After a career in law, in 2003 Artis joined the staff at Mountain State University in Parkersburg, West Virginia, as senior academic officer for distance education. She later served as provost for distance education, vice president for advancement, president of the Mountain State University Foundation, and chief academic officer of the university.
Artis is a graduate of West Virginia State University and the West Virginia University School of Law. She holds an educational doctorate from Vanderbilt University.
article by jbhe.com