Saturday, March 16, 2024

Thurgood Marshall College Fund and NIKE announce HBCU Scholarship

The Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) and NIKE are proud to offer financial assistance to outstanding students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Ninety-five (95) scholars will be selected to receive a scholarship of up to $10,000 for the 2024-2025 academic school year (which can only be applied to verifiable costs associated with average tuition and usual fees).

 

Eligibility Requirements: 

  • Be enrolled full-time as a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior at a select HBCU during the 2024-2025 academic school year.
  • Must attend one of the following schools:
    • Atlanta University Center Consortium (Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, or Spelman College)
    • Hampton University
    • LeMoyne-Owen College
    • Morgan State University
    • North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University
    • Tennessee State University
    • Texas Southern University
    • Tuskegee University
  • Current cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or higher.
  • Must have the 2024-2025 FAFSA on file at your selected university/college by the time of selection.
  • Able to demonstrate a financial need.
  • Be a U.S. Citizen or legal permanent resident with a valid permanent resident card or passport stamped I-551.

 

How to Apply

All Applicants Must: 

  • Answer the following statement (Video – maximum of 2 minutes)
    • Tell us about a time when you succeeded or failed. What were your learnings from the experience?

 

Application Dates

This application opens January 16, 2024, and closes March 8, 2024, at 11:59 PM ET – Eastern Time.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

West Virginia Senate Republicans killed the CROWN Act intended to protect against discrimination based on hair style

Republican lawmakers in West Virginia have killed a bill that would have banned discrimination against Black hairstyles, known as the CROWN Act, in a blow for Black hair advocates in the state.

Despite initial optimism that this would be the year when lawmakers pass a bill to prohibit race-based hair discrimination, supporters were disappointed earlier this week when lawmakers killed the CROWN Act by taking it off the Senate floor and sending it back to the Senate Finance Committee.

Sen. Eric Tarr (Republican), the finance chair, did not take the bill back up, citing concerns that lawsuits over discrimination against West Virginians based on their hair styles would cost the state too much money.

Black West Virginians have been pushing for the CROWN Act for years. There have been instances both in the state and nationally where Black people have been discriminated against when wearing their hair naturally or in traditional styles.

“There’s absolutely no reason why anyone should have to walk into an office or classroom and have to defend their hair,” Katonya Hart, who has pushed for the legislation for several years, said.

[SOURCE:mountainstatespotlight]

Friday, March 15, 2024

Clark Atlanta University Panthers Win Sixth SIAC Basketball Title

The Clark Atlanta men's basketball team (25-5, 16-5 SIAC) are officially the 2023-24 Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Champions after taking down Miles College 65-55 on Sunday afternoon inside Enmarket Arena. With the win, Clark Atlanta secures their first SIAC Championship since 2017 and an automatic bid to the NCAA Division II South Region Tournament.

"This is a full circle moment that I've dreamt about since I was a player. But there's still more work to be done." said head coach Alfred Jordan after the win.

Shemani Fuller led all scorers with a game-high 20 points, earning himself tournament MVP in his first season with the Panthers. Jalen NeSmith poured in a season-high 15 points on 4-of-8 from the floor and 7-for-8 from the charity stripe. Reigning SIAC Player of the Year Chris Martin chipped in 13 points to help power the Panthers to their sixth SIAC Championship in program history.

Sunday's contest was dominated by Clark Atlanta as Miles College only held a lead for 43 seconds. Fuller scored the game's first points and six of the Panthers' first nine to mount a 9-6 advantage at 15:55 mark. The Bronx, N.Y. native nailed a pair of free throws to ignite an 11-2 run to put the Panthers in front 20-8 with 10 minutes until halftime.

NeSmith knocked down a jumper with 25 seconds left in the half, keeping the Panthers ahead 33-25 headed into the locker room. Clark Atlanta shot 39% from the floor, 33% from three-point range, and 62% from the foul line in the first half.

Fuller and NeSmith combined for eight points to open the second half to put the Panthers in front 40-26 with 17:35 to left to play. The Panthers continued to assert dominance on the defensive end after holding Miles to just eight points in the first nine minutes of the second half. Clark Atlanta took their biggest lead of the day at the 11:10 mark as they mounted a 52-33 advantage over the Golden Bears.

Despite the deficit, Miles strung together a 19-4 run to climb back within four points (56-52) with just under two minutes to play. The Panthers responded with a 9-3 run to diminish the comeback effort and escape with the 2024 SIAC Championship.

Clark Atlanta outshot Miles from the field 41% to 30% for the game while also winning the paint-scoring battle 38-12. CAU's reserves outscored MC's 12-9 and held the Golden Bears scoreless in transition with zero fastbreak points.

[SOURCE: CLARKATLANTASPORTS]

Read The Nathan Wade Resignation Letter

Nathan Wade, who helped lead former President Trump’s criminal prosecution in Georgia, resigned Friday after the judge called for him to do so over his romantic relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D). Read his resignation letter below.

Nathan Wade Resignation Letter by George L. Cook III on Scribd

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Smithsonian American Art Museum Names Dalila Scruggs as the Inaugural Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art

The Smithsonian American Art Museum announced today that Dalila Scruggs will join its curatorial team as the Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art. Scruggs’s expertise ranges across different types of media—including painting, prints, sculpture and photography—from the 19th- and 20th centuries. In her new role, Scruggs will help shape the museum’s exhibition program and collecting priorities as they relate broadly to African American art, a longstanding area of strength of the museum’s holdings distinguished by its depth and range. She will also contribute to “American Voices and Visions,” a major cross-departmental initiative to comprehensively reinstall the museum’s collection. She begins work at the museum April 22.

The position is named to honor Savage’s legacy as an artist, teacher and community art program director in Harlem in the 1930s. Fittingly, Scruggs has served in education and curatorial roles and has sought to draw on her experience as a museum educator to cultivate a curatorial practice that is visitor- and object-centered.

“I am delighted to welcome Dalila Scruggs to SAAM as the inaugural Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art,” said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “SAAM is home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world, and I am so pleased that Dr. Scruggs will bring fresh, thoughtful analysis to these works that evoke themes both universal and specific to the African American and the American experience.”

Scruggs comes to the museum from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she has been the curator for photography and prints since 2021. She also has served as a guest curator at the Brooklyn Museum since 2020. Previously, she has held positions at the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at the University of Alabama as a consulting curator, at the Brooklyn Museum as an assistant curator of American art and at the Williams College Museum of Art as a curatorial fellow.

Her publications include “Activism in Exile: Elizabeth Catlett’s Mask for Whites,” a contribution to the scholarly journal American Art, published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with the University of Chicago Press, and several exhibition catalogs, including contributions to Brooklyn Museum: Highlights collections handbook and an entry for the upcoming The Awe of the Arctic: A Visual History for the New York Public Library.

Scruggs joins the curatorial department led by Randall Griffey, the museum’s head curator and joins a team of 11 curators at the museum.

Scruggs graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in art history and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in the history of art and architecture. Her dissertation “’The Love of Liberty Has Brought Us Here’: The American Colonization Society and the Imaging of African-American Settlers in Liberia, West Africa” focuses on African American daguerreotypist August Washington and his photographs in service to the American Colonization Society, a 19th-century reform organization dedicated to sending African Americans to Liberia, West Africa as an alternative to promoting radical abolition or perpetual slavery in the United States. From 2007 to 2008, Scruggs was a Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s prestigious fellowship program.

The Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art is generously funded by anonymous donors with a $5 million endowment gift to the museum. The donors requested the position be named for the trailblazing artist and educator to elevate her legacy.