Queen Latifah, Robert F. Smith among W.E.B. Du Bois Medal recipients

Entertainer Queen Latifah and Robert F. Smith the entrepreneur who announced that he would pay the college loans of more than 400 Morehouse College students who graduated in May are among W.E.B. Du Bois Medal recipients. The Du Bois Medal celebrates black excellence and opportunity.

The Du Bois medal is the highest honor Harvard gives to scholars, artists, writers, journalists, philanthropists, and public servants for their contributions to African and African American history and culture. It is awarded by the African and African American Studies Department, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary at Harvard.

“Understand that there will be times when you will have to stand alone. There will be no one else that will believe in your dream,” Queen Latifah, hip-hop artist, actress, and medal recipient, told a packed audience Tuesday evening at Sanders Theatre. “There are plenty of people who told us we will never be where we are today … but we don’t believe those people. You have to be strong and be courageous and just know that if you believe in it, it’s going to happen. Don’t give up. Do not quit. Fight for it.”

In a moving speech, Smith — the founder, chairman, and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, a firm that manages equity capital worth upwards of $50 billion — recalled how his upbringing and community inspired him to succeed for those who didn’t have the opportunities he did, and to open doors to success for others. Of his $34 million gift to the 2019 graduates of Morehouse, he said, “To me that’s my job. It is to liberate the human spirit.”

Besides Smith and Latifah, this year’s honorees included Elizabeth Alexander, a renowned poet, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and former fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Lonnie Bunch III, the head of the Smithsonian Institution; Rita Dove, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. poet laureate; Sheila C. Johnson, philanthropist and co-founder of Black Entertainment Television; and Kerry James Marshall, an award-winning artist.

Past winners include such luminaries as poet Toni Morrison, boxer Muhammad Ali, children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, comedian Dave Chappelle, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, writer Maya Angelou, politician and civil rights leader John Lewis, opera star Jessye Norman, rapper Nasir “Nas” Jones, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and entertainer and media executive Oprah Winfrey.

[SOURCE: HARVARD GAZZETTE]

Gwen Ifill to be honored with 2020 Black Heritage Series Stamp by USPS

In 2020 the U.S. Postal Service will honor the late PBS NewsHour anchor Gwen Ifill with a commemorative Forever stamp.

The 43rd stamp in the Black Heritage series honors Gwen Ifill (1955–2016), one of America’s most esteemed journalists. Ifill, who died in November 2016 after battling cancer, became the first African American woman to host a national political TV talk show with her 1999 host-debut on PBS' Washington Week.

The stamp features a photo of Ifill taken in 2008 by photographer Robert Severi. Art director Derry Noyes designed the stamp.

Rep. Al Green slams Trump for comparing being impeached to being lynched

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) took to the floor of the House on Tuesday to deliver a blistering rebuke of President Trump for likening the House impeachment inquiry to a lynching. Green went as far as saying that the comparison made Trump “no better than those who burn crosses” and “wear hoods and white robes.”

Watch his speech below:

National museum of African American Music to open in 2020

Scheduled to open in Downtown Nashville in early 2020, the National Museum of African American Music will be a 56,000-square-foot facility that will encourage visitors to discover the many connections and influences that composers have had on all genres of music. From classical to country to jazz and hip hop, NMAAM will integrate history and interactive technology to share the untold story of more than 50 music genres and subgenres. It will be an unparalleled institution, not confined by record label, genre or recording artist, but instead will tell a unique narrative through the lens of black music.

NMAAM (or the National Museum of African American Music) is to be the only museum dedicated to preserving the legacy and celebrating the accomplishments of the many music genres created, influenced, or inspired by African Americans. Located in Downtown Nashville the museum will share the story of the American soundtrack by integrating history and interactive technology to bring music heroes of the past into the present.

From production to songwriting to performance to consumption, this country’s musical landscape was formed by a distinct group who created, influenced and inspired more than 50 genres and subgenres of music. NMAAM’s purpose is to tell the story that has never been told before—one that shares how African Americans play a critical role in shaping our country’s heritage and culture. This museum will highlight the history, struggles, triumphs, and culture of African Americans. NMAAM will showcase how today’s artists are connected to the traditions born out of the African American Experience through interactive technology, quotes, artifacts and creative educational programming. We’ve all been touched by this music. The artists, genres, songs, dances and the history from which they emerged is the soundtrack of our lives. And the narrative will unfold right here in NMAAM.

Learn more about the NMAAM here: https://nmaam.org/

Princeton seminary will pay $27M in slavery reparations

Princeton Theological Seminary Board of Trustees unanimously endorsed the implementation of a multi-year action plan to repent for its ties to slavery. The approved series of new initiatives, ranging from increased student financial assistance to curriculum changes to added support for the Center for Black Church Studies, is a direct response to a report the Seminary published in October 2018 after conducting a two-year historical audit.

“The report was an act of confession,” says John White, dean of students and vice president of student relations. “These responses are intended as acts of repentance that will lead to lasting impact within our community. This is the beginning of the process of repair that will be ongoing,” says White.

White served as chair of the historical audit recommendations task force, which included trustees, faculty, administrators, students, and alumni, who led a deliberative process to provide opportunities for the campus community to discuss and respond to the audit report. The task force hosted more than 25 events, meetings, and conversations on the campus in the previous academic year. Feedback gathered from students, faculty, administrators, and alumni was incorporated in the recommendations presented to the Seminary’s board. The Board of Trustees also conducted a year-long process of study.  

“From the beginning,” says White, “the Board of Trustees has encouraged a thorough process of understanding our history that would lead to meaningful response.”

With an immediate rollout of the plan and continuation through 2024, the Seminary intends to make meaningful and lasting change with the more than 20 approved initiatives, including: 

• Offering 30 new scholarships, valued at the cost of tuition plus $15,000, for students who are descendants of slaves or from underrepresented groups  
• Hiring a full-time director of the Center for Black Church Studies
• Hiring a new faculty member whose research and teaching will give critical attention to African American experience and ecclesial life
• Changes in the Seminary curriculum, including a required cross-cultural component and integrating into the first-year curriculum for every master’s student sustained academic engagement with the implications of the historical audit
• Designating five doctoral fellowships for students who are descendants of slaves or from underrepresented groups
• Naming the library after Theodore Sedgwick Wright, the first African American to attend and graduate from Princeton Seminary
• Naming the Center for Black Church Studies after Betsey Stockton a prominent African American educator in Princeton during the antebellum North and a Presbyterian missionary in the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii). Prior to gaining freedom, Stockton was owned by the chair of Princeton Seminary’s Board of Trustees.
• Enhancing community partnerships and supporting historically disenfranchised communities in and around Princeton
• Ensuring every member of the Princeton Seminary community understands its history

A committee has been established to oversee the implementation of the plan and will regularly report progress to the board.  The program costs for the responses represent a commitment of more than $1 million annually on an ongoing basis. To sustain this programming in perpetuity, $27.6 million will be reserved in the endowment.

“The Seminary’s ties to slavery are a part of our story. It is important to acknowledge that our founders were entangled with slavery and could not envision a fully integrated society,” says Princeton Seminary President M. Craig Barnes. “We are committed to telling the truth.  We did not want to shy away from the uncomfortable part of our history and the difficult conversations that revealing the truth would produce.”

The historical audit uncovered that the Seminary did not own slaves and its buildings were not constructed with slave labor. Yet, the Seminary benefited from the slave economy, both through investments in Southern banks in the mid-19th century and from donors who profited from slavery. Also, founding faculty and leaders used slave labor at some point in their lives. Several of the first professors and board members were deeply involved in the American Colonization Society, which advocated sending free blacks to Liberia.

“Our response to the historical audit is the beginning of our community’s journey of repair as we seek to redress historic wrongs and to help the Seminary be more faithful to our mission as a school of the church, both now and in the years to come,” says Barnes. “We are taking tangible action to write a new chapter in our story.”