NEGROPhile

Born on the Fourth of July … a.k.a. Juneteenth, C.P.T.

  • They didn’t see it as a sport for women of color

    VOA News: “I feel like it’s nice to show that Black girls can do it, too,” Cromartie said. “We have a team that’s 100% of people of color and you’ve never seen that before anywhere. … I feel like we have a point to prove.”

  • I was living out a series of ideas about myself

    New York Times: “At the end of the workday, he would finish off a roll of black-and-white film with self-portraits for his grandmother back home, to demonstrate that despite having been a sickly child, he was in robust health. Showing off in front of the painted backdrops he used for his clients, he would put […]

  • See vegan eating as an opportunity to fight against these challenges

    Bon Appetit: “It’s a huge benefit when I’m trying to communicate why we’re doing what we do,” he says. “All the benefits that come with a plant-based diet, I’ve been able to experience them in a community I’m from, and where people are suffering from a lot of health issues caused by what we eat.”

  • They could also read and write in multiple languages

    The Brink: “It was shocking,” says Ngom, who has helped build a vast digital library of Ajami texts at BU. “It was so shocking to me when I realized how misguided I was as a result of my training, which is a French-based system. But not only were my dad and many people like him […]

  • It awaits a new generation to keep it moving forward

    NPR: “He’s such a pivotal figure,” Dr. Kernodle tells NPR, “and his influence crosses all types of spheres — social, intellectual, musical, cultural, political — so it’s unfortunate that he has not received the kind of attention that he deserves, because there’s so much that can be gleaned from his life and his career.”

  • It happened not just in Tuskegee but here

    Cardinal News: “There were 355 pilots who actually deployed with the 332nd,” said Smith, the fighter group designation for the Tuskegee Airmen. “There are only three left today. There is just not a lot of opportunity for us to hear firsthand exactly what they did, what their accomplishments were, what their legacy has been, so […]

  • Holds important lessons for understanding modern America

    JSTOR Daily: “Over the course of the next seven days, at least eight people would be killed and every Black-owned building burned to the ground. Rosewood’s African American population would never return following this forced displacement. […]”

  • And I plan to just do what I can do until the end

    Evanston Roundtable: “We used to go [to] Fox Lake. We went a lot to Starved Rock. … I didn’t know that [at Lake Ivanhoe] we were history in the making,” she said in a December 2022 interview with the RoundTable. She did know, though, that “Black people just couldn’t go anyplace they wanted to, to […]

  • Emancipation is the root of a lot of this

    Democrat & Chronicle: “It is a pivotal period in our national history — the great day which is to determine the destiny not only of the American Republic, but that of the American Continent,” he wrote in his abolitionist paper Douglass’ Monthly. “Far off in the after coming centuries, some Gibbon with truthful pen, will […]

  • A moment for joy, thanks giving and praise

    Louisville Journal-Courier: “It was a time of very mixed emotions,” Harris said. “There was some anxiety and fear, but it was also a day of jubilee, so there was happiness and joy. The proclamation set enslaved people on a new path, to freedom that they had never really known. They didn’t know what freedom would […]