Tagged With "Inspired by the Black Power"
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Weekly Highlights
Native American Heritage Month When COVID-19 hit the Navajo Nation, it limited students’ educational opportunities after schools closed, eliminated essential school services, exposed ongoing inequities, and made health and economic hardships families face worse. Navajo health officials said COVID-19 started spreading across the nation after a tribal member attended a basketball tournament in early March then went to a church revival the next day in Chilchinbeto, a small community south of...
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NJ medical school program requires all first-year students to learn about ACEs science
In 2015, Dr. Beth Pletcher, a pediatrician and associate professor specializing in genetics, was at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Washington D.C. when she heard two speakers that forever changed her work with medical students. Dr. Beth Pletcher “I went to two talks on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that were so mind-boggling to me that I decided on my drive back to New Jersey that I had to do something about it,”says Pletcher, director of the Division...
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Healing-Centered Schools
By Amanda Adams Imagine pulling into a school parking lot and seeing a garden full of flowers, fruit and vegetables, a spacious playground and well-paved walkways to several building entrances. As you get out of your car and approach the building there is clear signage, in multiple languages, to help you find the main entrance with welcoming and uplifting messages for students and their parents. When you walk in the building there is soft music playing over the intercom and someone is near...
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Nashville’s Purposeful Twist on ACEs: All Children Excel
In 2015, the pieces that became ACE Nashville began to fall into place. A five-year Community Health Improvement Plan included the support of mental and emotional health as one of its three goals. A core team of individuals from the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD), Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee and the Family Center, a non-profit focused on breaking generational cycles of child trauma, began to meet weekly. And a citywide “consensus workshop” in April of that year—drawing 44...
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*NEW PUBLICATION* Chronic Disease Among African American Families: A Systematic Scoping Review
Chronic diseases are common among African Americans, but the extent to which research has focused on addressing chronic diseases across multiple members of African American families is unclear. This systematic scoping review summarizes the characteristics of research addressing coexisting chronic conditions among African American families, including guiding theories, conditions studied, types of relationships, study outcomes, and intervention research.
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Self-Healing Communities Model, Co-Hosted with CTIPP, Second in a series
Self-Healing Communities Model, co hosted with CTIPP Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, 3-4:00 ET (Noon-1:00 PT) Second in a series on state-to-state best practices featuring the self-healing community model Self-Healing Community Model , Washington, developed networks that promoted collaboration across sectors and empowered local leaders to think about whole systems. The use of data helped prioritize efforts and learn what was working. Beyond Washington State, numerous other states are using the...
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NJ DCF Commissioner shares thoughts on National Day of Racial Healing
Dear ACEs Connection community, Today is the 5th Annual National Day of Racial Healing. This commemoration was established in 2017 by leaders in social services, faith-based organizations, government and private corporations from around the country to raise awareness and to recognize the need for racial reconciliation. These last several months have certainly shown us that equity among races is a goal not yet realized. The pandemic has disproportionately impacted individuals and families of...
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U.S. Coast Guard honors Black veteran, NFL great
Above is U.S. Coast Guard photo of Emlen Tunnell, who served in the Coast Guard during and after World War II, was the first Black player inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Before he became the first Black player inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Emlen Tunnell served in the U.S. Coast Guard during and after World War II, where he was credited with saving the lives of two shipmates. Now, a Coast Guard cutter and an athletic building on the Coast Guard Academy campus are...
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Black history explains why COVID-19 has ravaged that community | Opinion
By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist By Hamid Shaaban Black History Month is often observed by commemorating Black excellence and honoring the remarkable achievements and contributions of Black people in the United States and around the world. This month, I propose to all my colleagues in healthcare and medicine to promote and advance education about the history of medical racism. That history is Black history and it is often neglected and remains largely unacknowledged. It’s important to...
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Ernie Davis becomes the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy
‘Winning the Heisman Trophy is something you just dream about. You never think it could happen to you’ Ernie Davis, a two-time All-American halfback at Syracuse University, lived a short life as a result of leukemia. He died at age 23 in 1963, but managed to lead his high school basketball team to a 52-game winning streak, help Syracuse win its only national football title and become the No. 1 pick in the 1961 NFL draft. On Dec. 6, 1961, he became the first African-American to win the...
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SPARK: A Systemic Racism Story (18-minutes Spark Documentary)
SPARK hopes to inspire people to move from simply not being a racist, which does little to dismantle racism, to actively living an anti-racist life and becoming an ally to the Black community.
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Doug Williams - First Black Quarterback to Win Super Bowl XXII
On January 31st, 1988 Doug Williams made history. But before that historic day, Williams was already a history-maker. One of the greatest HBCU athletes of all time, Doug Williams career started as a Freshman at Grambling State University under legendary head coach Eddie Robinson. Williams was a four-year starter for GSU, leading the Tigers to a 36-7 record, three Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) titles and was awarded the Black College Player of the Year twice. 1977 Williams finished...
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Happy Birthday Alice Walker
Alice Walker Alice Walker is one of the most admired African American writers working today. She has written at length on issues of race and gender, and is most famous for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Born in Eatonton Georgia, on February the 9th, 1944, just before the end of World War II, Alice Malsenior Walker was the eighth of eight children to Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and Winnie Lee Walker. Her father, who was, in...
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ACEs Videos in Spanish
While resources in English on ACEs, toxic stress, resilience, trauma-informed care, and related topics have proliferated in recent years, there is still a dearth of resources in other languages. Below, please find some videos in Spanish (or at least subtitled in Spanish) that explain various aspects of ACEs science. If you know of others, please share them in the comments, and we’ll add them to the list! VIDEOS IN SPANISH Estrés Tóxico y Resiliencia ( Stress and Resilience: How Toxic Stress...
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Nelson Mandela Is Released
On February 11, 1990, African National Congress leader and future South African President Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison after being held for 27 years. In a speech given on the same day of his release, Mandela said “In conclusion I wish to quote my own words during my trial in 1964. They are true today as they were then: I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in...
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New Jersey's Own Whitney Houston
Today marks nine years since we lost an icon, the indelible mark Whitney Houston left on this world continues on today! With over 200 million combined album, singles and videos sold worldwide during her career with Arista Records, Whitney Houston has established a benchmark for superstardom that will quite simply never be eclipsed in the modern era. She is a singer’s singer who has influenced countless other vocalists female and male. Music historians cite Whitney’s record-setting...
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Dr. Natalia Tanner was the first African American board certified pediatrician in Detroit, Michigan.
Dr. Natalia M. Tanner, M.D: The first African American to be accepted into the residency program at the University of Chicago. The first African American woman fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The first African American on the staff of Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. The first woman and African American to serve as president of the Michigan Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Natalia M. Tanner, M.D. built a long and distinguished career in pediatrics.
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FREE WORKSHOP - 2021 Symposium for Social Change is this Saturday, February 13th, 2021 at 1:00 pm CST
"Yes, This is Your Grandparents Movement: The Significance of Intergenerational understanding and shared action" The freedom movement is the story of generations. It is and will always comprise the past, present and sincere hope for the future. This inspiring session explores the necessity of intergenerational dialogue, shared understanding, and collective socio-political action. Activists and scholars will share the history of interconnected action and the urgency of now. Movement making is...
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On this day the first black professional basketball team "The Renaissance" was organized.
The New York Rens were the first all-black fully professional African-American owned basketball team, formed in Harlem in 1923. That year, basketball manager Robert “Bob” Douglas made a deal with Harlem real estate developer William Roach, the owner of the new Renaissance Ballroom and Casino. Douglas owned and managed an all-black basketball team called the Spartan Braves, which was a leading contender for the black national championship title. His basketball club had no home court. The...
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New Jersey's Underground Railroad
Lawnside, New Jersey The Peter Mott House is the oldest known house to serve as a station on the Underground Railroad in New Jersey. Elizabeth and Newark New Jersey Jersey City - The last stop Before the Civil War, Jersey City was the last stop on the New Jersey Underground Railroad route for many runaway slaves seeking freedom. The quest for freedom prompted an estimated 100,000 19th century black slaves to make the dangerous journey along the Underground Railroad. That term refers to the...
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Black Enterprise - Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Virtual Summit 2021
PLEASE CHECK THE CALENDAR FOR DETAILS.
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Healing From Childhood Trauma
NEWS POSTED ON SEP 13, 2018 Childhood trauma can really shake you up, but you can heal from it. ACEs are adverse (harmful) childhood experiences that impact brain development. They can damage immune systems and change how people respond to stress. The physical effects of ACEs can show up even decades after the occurrences of toxic experiences themselves. The groundbreaking CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study showed that ACEs are often at the root of some mental illnesses, violence, social and...
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Bass Reeves: The Real Lone Ranger Was Black
If you’re like me, you remember watching the popular television show, The Lone Ranger, where it depicted a white man who wore a disguise on a white horse and had a Native American counterpart with him named Tonto. The story we are most familiar with started out as a radio show, then a popular television show that ran from 1949 to 1957, then comic books, and several cartoons and big-budget movies. But like many things during slavery, history may have been obscured and the actual “Lone Ranger”...
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Racial Equity and Philanthropy
“... Philanthropy is overlooking leaders of color who have the most lived experience with and understanding of the problems we are trying to solve.”
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Patricia Bath - Pioneer Ophthalmologist - Inventor of laser cataract surgery
Patricia Bath was the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology in 1973. Two years later, she became the first female faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute. In 1976, Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, which established that "eyesight is a basic human right." In 1986, Bath invented the Laserphaco Probe, improving treatment for cataract patients. She patented the device in 1988, becoming...
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Black History NJ: The Complete Series
Jersey Joe Walcott Arnold Raymond Cream, aka Jersey Joe Walcott, was born in Merchantville, NJ, on Jan. 31, 1914. He held the record for the oldest heavyweight champion for more than four decades. His father, an immigrant from Barbados, died when Walcott was 15, which forced him to go to work to provide for his mother and younger siblings. At 16-years-old, he began boxing professionally and adopted Jersey Joe Walcott as his moniker… Carla Harris Montclair resident Carla Harris is an author,...
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John Lewis | American Civil rights Leader and Politician
John Lewis, in full John Robert Lewis, (born February 21, 1940, near Troy, Alabama, U.S.—died July 17, 2020, Atlanta, Georgia), American civil rights leader and politician best known for his chairmanship of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and for leading the march that was halted by police violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, a landmark event in the history of the civil rights movement that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” A brief history of...
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Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. How Is It Different From PTSD?
How is Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome different from PTSD? Dr. Joy DeGruy explains how trauma can be passed on generation after generation. POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE SYNDROME As a result of twelve years of quantitative and qualitative research Dr. DeGruy has developed her theory of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and published her findings in the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome – America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing”. The book addresses the residual impacts of generations of slavery...
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Jane Fonda | Actress and Activist
From a polite and wholesome Hollywood starlet with billowing blonde locks to a fierce and outspoken activist with a choppy shag haircut, the early days of Jane Fonda’s political awakening proved to be a transformation no one saw coming. Beginning in the 1960s, the Academy Award-winning actress’ journey to social consciousness carries on to this day. Still speaking out for causes close to her heart such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the environmental crisis , Fonda rebels against the...
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Juliette Hampton
Healthy racial identity development among older white youth is a bit more complex. Often, white students must come to understand that society attaches meaning to their whiteness and that they have a choice about how to be white in a multicultural society. The American Civil Rights Movement was a movement of the people. Black and white, male and female, Jew and Christian, rich and poor -- ordinary people who came together across differences to advance this nation's core value of equality and...
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Melanie Funchess |Implicit Bias - How it Effects Us and How We Push Through
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Everyone makes assumptions about people they don’t know. Melanie will teach us to recognize these assumptions and work toward a common understanding. Ms. Melanie Funchess is currently employed by the Mental Health Association where she serves as the Director of Community Engagement. She is also involved in several community based coalitions and organizations such as the African American Leadership...
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Love Them First: Lessons from Lucy Laney Elementary
An amazing must watch documentary. With unprecedented access over the course of a year this feature-length documentary, Love Them First — Lessons from Lucy Laney Elementary, follows the determination of a charismatic north Minneapolis elementary school principal, Mauri Melander Friestleben, as she sets out to undo history. Not only does the state have the largest achievement gap between black and white children in the United States, Friestleben faced another seemingly impossible obstacle,...
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‘Whole Generations Of Fathers’ Lost As COVID-19 Kills Young Latino Men In NJ BY KAREN YI | Gothamist
After having a light cough for three days last spring, Miguel Mestiza Valderrabano called his partner Ana Maria Lorenzo to say that, when she got home from work, he planned to go to the hospital. He would never make it, and the mental image of his 32-year-old lifeless body on their living room floor still haunts her. “I couldn’t believe that had happened in minutes,” Lorenzo said. She had just arrived home from her cleaning job—her first assignment in weeks after she’d lost work during the...
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Racial disparities in Covid-19 case rates among young people were prevalent early in the pandemic, CDC study says By Deidre McPhillips, CNN
(CNN)Early in the pandemic, young people from all racial and ethnic minority groups had higher Covid-19 case rates than non-Hispanic White people under the age of 25, according to a study published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between January and April, case rates compared to young White people were about 1.5 times higher among young Asian people, about 2.5 times higher among young Black people and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, nearly 4 times higher...
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A Call-In to Grow Indigenous Power
Telling the truth about philanthropy is the first step to transforming it for generations to come. What would it mean to “decolonize” philanthropy? Language matters. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang have powerfully argued, “ Decolonization is not a metaphor ,” and shouldn’t be used to describe anything but fundamentally dismantling white supremacy. That means centering oppressed perspectives, supporting the rematriation of land, redistributing resources, shifting power and decision making, and...
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Betty Friedan | Gloria Steinem | Bell Hooks
Betty Friedan The American writer and activist penned The Feminine Mystique in 1963, which is often credited for sparking the second wave of feminism that began in the '60s and '70s. Friedan spent her life working to establish women's equality, helping to establish the National Women's Political Caucus as well as organizing the Women's Strike For Equality in 1970 , which popularized the feminist movement throughout America. Gloria Steinem Aptly referred to as the "Mother of Feminism," Gloria...
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Kathleen Neal Cleaver | Winona LaDuke | Naomi Klein
Kathleen Neal Cleaver In the '60s, Kathleen Neal Cleaver was a prominent member of the Black Panther Party, in which she created the position of communications secretary. In 1998, she said , "I think it is important to place the women who fought oppression as Black Panthers within the longer tradition of freedom fighters like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida Wells-Barnett, who took on an entirely oppressive world and insisted that their race, their gender, and their humanity be respected...
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Re: Anna Arnold Hedgeman
Lovely words. Just a FYI: Cheyney is the oldest black historical college.
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Anna Arnold Hedgeman
Through her work with various local and national organizations, Anna Arnold Hedgeman always fought for equal opportunity and respect, particularly for African American women. Throughout her long life, Hedgeman advocated for civil rights, education, social justice, poverty relief, and women. Anna Arnold Hedgeman was born on July 5, 1899 to Mary Ellen Parker and William James Arnold II in Marshalltown, Iowa. From an early age, her father emphasized education and a strong work ethic, and she...
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Breonna Taylor - One Year Later - No Accountability
Before Breonna Taylor's name became synonymous with police violence against Black Americans, she was an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky. The 26-year-old Black woman's friends and family say she was beloved, and relished the opportunity to brighten someone else's day. Exactly one year ago, Louisville police gunned her down in her home. Now, her name is a ubiquitous rallying cry at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to her story as an...
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Connections Matter New Jersey - Join the Movement!
Eighteen months ago, nobody could have predicted how much the world would have changed, or how much we would have learned to appreciate the incredible power of connections. In October 2019, a group of 30 state and community leaders gathered together to be the first class of trained Connections Matter NJ facilitators leading the effort to spread this important message across the state. The message is this: Everyday connections are more important than we ever believed. Science tells us that...