Tagged With "Igbo Landing Commemoration"

My early life was defined by deep emotional pain and turmoil. In exchange for all that I endured, I was gifted reunification with the Motherland. As a young person, I stood on the same shore where my ancestors lost their freedom as the clear blue ocean water licked my feet and enticed me with her beauty. It was an anointing. Finally, I was home. For the past 27 years, I have been deeply submerged in West African culture. Throughout that time, I have lived on and off the Continent; spending...

By Ellen Crankey, September 11, 2020, Insider. In less than a month, two women turned a viral news story about a small Georgia town for sale into the foundation for a new Black-centric community with the idea of freedom at its core. Ashley Scott, a realtor from Stonecrest, Georgia, told Insider that events that rattled the US this year — George Floyd's death in police custody in late May and the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic — had left her feeling "distraught" and "looking for...

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are known for helping students of color and opportunity youth access an affordable and quality higher education. Realizing that high SAT scores and GPAs aren’t necessarily indicators of student success in college, HBCUs instead focus on developing learners through personalized learning and support. Learn4Life and FLEX High serve at-risk students and share this approach to recover dropouts, and promote college access, readiness and...

SAPELO ISLAND, Ga. — Fall is cane syrup season in pockets of the Deep South, where people still gather to grind sugar cane and boil its juice into dark, sweet syrup in iron kettles big enough to bathe in. This autumn, no cane syrup has been more significant than the batches Maurice Bailey and his friends made from the first purple ribbon sugar cane grown here on Sapelo Island since the 1800s. The 11-mile-long barrier island is home to the Salt Water Geechees , who can trace an unbroken line...

1. Kwanzaa is less than 60 years old. Maulana Karenga, a Black nationalist who later became a college professor, created Kwanzaa as a way of uniting and empowering the African African community in the aftermath of the deadly Watts Rebellion . Having modeled his holiday on traditional African harvest festivals, he took the name “Kwanzaa” from the Swahili phrase, “matunda ya kwanza,” which means “first fruits.” The extra “a” was added, Karenga has said, simply to accommodate seven children at...

Little Richard called himself, over and over again, the architect of rock and roll. Many take this assertion to mean that he thought of himself as an influence in the genre, but as Tavia Nyong'o argued this spring after the artist's death, influence is " perhaps too weak a word ." Others think Little Richard meant he created the genre, but that is a misunderstanding of architecture. Architects don't create sui generis: They gather and create ideas based on what's already there, even if...

Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin, a researcher, lecturer, and cultural worker at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and William Isom, director of the Black in Appalachia project at East Tennessee PBS, were searching for the project to collaborate on that would help share their passion and research on the Black Appalachian experience. So, in 2019, when PRX—the Public Radio Exchange—began accepting applications for podcast pitches, Isom and podcast producer Chris Smith approached El-Amin about...

Anderson Cooper has interviewed hundreds of people, from top celebrities to heads of state to people on the street. He is fairly unflappable when it comes to chatting with a guest, which is what makes his reaction while interviewing inaugural poet Amanda Gorman all the more delightful. Gorman stole the show at President Biden's Inauguration with a powerful performance of her original poem, "The Hill We Climb." People were blown away by both her words and her poise in delivering them,...

“Enough food” is each person having daily access to an average of 2,353 calories of culturally appropriate, locally available, affordable, unrefined, and delectable nourishment. The good news is that we already grow enough food to feed 10 billion people . The challenges are that the food is not fairly distributed, a lot of it is thrown away, and the process of growing it industrially is trashing the planet. Contrary to conventional mythology, smallholder farms and regenerative agriculture...

Small swollen hungry African bellies on tv; Black men, women and children in chains; Naked flesh on the auction block; Strange low hanging fruit on southern trees. These are the images we embody as our identity. Igbo Landing tells the truth of our souls. In May 1803, a ship with kidnapped human beings from West Africa arrived in Georgia. After the human cargo was sold at $100 per head, the enslaved rose up and revolted. They seized control of the slave ship, drowned their captors and...