Early Life

Okolloh was born into a relatively poor family. She has said that her parents sent her to a private elementary school that they could “barely afford,” which “set the foundation for what ended up being my career.

Education

Ory graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh, and graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Activist

In 2006 she co-founded the parliamentary watchdog site Mzalendo (Swahili: “Patriot”). The site sought to increase government accountability by systematically recording bills, speeches, MPs, standing orders, etc. When Kenya was engulfed in violence following a disputed presidential election in 2007, Okolloh helped create Ushahidi (Swahili: “testimony”), a website that collected and recorded eyewitness reports of violence using text messages and Google Maps. The technology has since been adapted for other purposes (including monitoring elections and tracking pharmaceutical availability) and used in a number of other countries.

Okolloh also has a personal blog, Kenyan Pundit, which was featured on Global Voices Online.

Career

She also works as a legal consultant for NGOs and has worked at Covington and Burling, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, and the World Bank in the past.

Public Speaker

She is a frequent speaker at conferences including TED Global and Poptech on issues around citizen journalism, the role of technology in Africa, and the role of young people in reshaping the future of Africa. She currently lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Heading to Google

Here, Ory writes about her new job at Google.

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2. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Educator, Activist, 1st African-American Woman Editor in North America and 1st to enroll in Howard University Law School
3. Eleanor Holmes Norton: Congresswoman, Civil Rights Activist

Thanks for taking the time to welcome all the future scholars at Howard University.

Start here, with Episode #1:

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2. Ty Hobson-Powell: Howard's 14 year old Sophmore
3. [HBCU Presidents] Dr. Michelle Howard-Vital, Cheney University

Education

Mr. Phillips holds a BS in Computer Science from the United States Air Force Academy, a JD from New York Law School, and an MBA from Hampton University.

Career

Before joining Oracle, Mr. Phillips was with Morgan Stanley, a global investment bank. Prior to Wall Street, Mr. Phillips served as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps in the 2nd Battalion, 10th Marines.

Service

Mr. Phillips is on the boards of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, The American Museum of Natural History, New York Law School, and Viacom Inc. In February 2009, Mr. Phillips was appointed as a member to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

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Experience

Only 25 he already has years of experience helping young people learn and interact with technology.

Since high school he’s tutored and coached kids through programs such as MATHCOUNTS and Intel Computer Clubhouse. More than this, as an undergraduate, he recruited others to set up a distance tutoring program that used video conferencing to teach medical education to students in Africa (the program also raised more than $200,000 in medical equipment for Ethiopian schools). Education is something he cares about and he unstintingly volunteers his time.

Education

He’s currently pursuing an education PhD at Stanford in Learning Sciences and Technology Design. This interdisciplinary program systematically applies technological and psychological processes to understand how people learn and how to design technologies that support learning in the classroom. A key component is being able to capture clues to the learning process.

Marcelo Worsley

AT&T Research

Marcelo’s summer project at AT&T Research centers on multimodal interfaces that incorporate speech and gestures to make it easier and more natural for people to interact with technology. The idea is for devices to capture and interpret people’s natural ways of communicating with one another. Someone using a multimodal interface should be able to point at a map while saying “this is where you need to be” and for the interface to associate the gesture with the utterance and interpret both inputs.

Futuristic as that seems, natural interfaces may not be that far off. Low-cost sensors for capturing speech and gestures—microphones, accelerometers, and cameras—are all around, embedded in iPhones and other mobile devices (which can do double-duty in transmitting input to speech and gesture recognition programs residing on a computer or in the cloud).

The technology exists. What’s missing is a clear idea of what a natural interface will look like. With no start button or enter key, how best to signal the start of input to a device? A hand motion, a spoken command, a long pause? What’s most natural to people while also effective for devices?

With natural interfaces allowing people to talk and gesture freely and at the same time, there’s the added difficulty of aligning two or more input streams. Most work on speech recognition or computer vision has focussed on a single mode, and many questions remain regarding the most effective methods for robust integration (or fusion) of inputs from multiple different input modes. Gestures may precede, accompany, or follow spoken inputs, and handling groups of gestures within a single utterance can be complex.

More information about Marcelo Worsley can be found here:

http://soe.stanford.edu/publicservice/ProfileWorsley.php

http://www.research.att.com/articles/featured_stories/2010_07/201007_marcelo_ALFP.html

http://bmccain.com/prospective_students/meet_our_students.html

Related External Links

• Developers: How to integrate touch gestures to your apps | PocketBerry
• Like gadgets? Sign up…
• Deborah Stipek to conclude tenure as School of Education dean in …
• fourteen students, six groups honored with university awards

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“Dr. Howard-Vital has had a long, distinguished career in higher education,” said Board of Governors Chairman Kenneth M. Jarin. “The experience she brings to Cheyney will be invaluable as she prepares to lead the University into the future.”

Dr. Howard-Vital was named interim chancellor at Winston-Salem in July 2006. Previously, she was associate vice president for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She also spent two years at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, as dean of University College and associate vice president for academic programs. She began her academic career in 1975 as an English instructor at Central YMCA Community College in Chicago.

PASSHE Chancellor Dr. Judy G. Hample also cited Dr. Howard-Vital’s varied experiences as a teacher and administrator, calling her “a talented leader who will serve both Cheyney University and the Commonwealth well.”

“With 30 years in higher education, Dr. Howard-Vital is well-suited to lead America’s oldest historically black institution of higher education,” said Robert W. Bogle, chairman of Cheyney University ’s Council of Trustees. “Her academic experience and distinguished service to education make her ideal to guide Cheyney University into the future.”

Dr. Howard-Vital said she is looking forward to assuming the Cheyney presidency, promising to “roll up my sleeves and get to work ASAP.”

“I look forward to working with the faculty, staff and students to support the teaching-learning environment at Cheyney University,” she said.

As interim chancellor at Winston-Salem State, Dr. Howard-Vital is responsible for providing overall leadership to the 5,600-student public university. She also assists in economic development efforts in the region by serving as the University’s representative on numerous county and city organizations.

Education

Dr. Howard-Vital earned both a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and a Master of Arts in Teaching degree in English education from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Teaching & Leadership

While at Central YMCA Community College, Dr. Howard-Vital taught courses in composition, rhetoric, research writing and black literature. She also served as the college’s coordinator of prior learning and director of the College Without Walls program during her six-year tenure. She was named project coordinator of the early outreach program at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1981, a position she held for three years.

Dr. Howard-Vital was named dean of adult and continuing education of Loop College, now Harold Washington College, in Chicago in 1984, and, two years later, dean of continuing education and non-traditional programs at Chicago State University. She also served as an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction during her four years at Chicago State.

She moved to Edinboro University in 1991, spending two years there before being named vice chancellor for public service and continuing studies and associate provost at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, a position she remained in for 10 years. In that position she designed numerous non-credit, instructional programs and corporate training programs to meet specific community needs. She also led the Digital Communities Project, an experiment in international distance education with Japanese universities.

As an associate vice president at UNC-Chapel Hill, Dr. Howard-Vital provided leadership for postsecondary, nonpublic institutions seeking licensure to offer degree programs in North Carolina. She also coordinated the review of undergraduate degree programs at 16 University of North Carolina campuses and served as the state coordinator for the Academic Common Market program. She served as the liaison for K-16 efforts as a member of the North Carolina State Board of Education and reviewed doctoral programs in appropriate disciplines.

Publications & Grants

Dr. Howard-Vital has participated in state, regional and national meetings and conferences and has published dozens of articles primarily related to teaching and learning. She served as the principal or co-principal investigator on numerous grants while at UNC-Wilmington, and, in 2001, received the Million Dollar Club award for bringing in more than $1 million in grants to the University.

Service

She is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Educational Research Association, Association of Black Women in Higher Education, American Association of Higher Education and the National University Continuing Education Association. She also serves on the Specialty Studies Board of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). She has served on such civic and community organizations as the Cape Fear American Red Cross.

—

Information from http://www.cheyneyfoundation.org/howardvital.html

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In 1887, Kelly Miller became the first African-American Mathematics Graduate Student. He went on to become extremely influential at Howard University and planted the seed for what is now called the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University.

Early Life

Kelly Miller was the sixth of ten children born to Kelly Miller, a free Negro who served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and Elizabeth (Roberts) Miller, a slave.

Education

Miller received his early education in one of the local primary schools established during Reconstruction and, based on the recommendation of a missionary (Reverend Willard Richardson) who recognized Miller’s mathematical aptitude, Miller attended the Fairfield Institute in Winnsboro, South Carolina from 1878 to 1880. Awarded a scholarship to Howard University, he completed the Preparatory Department’s three-year curriculum in Latin, Greek, and mathematics in two years (1880-1882), then attended the College Department at Howard from 1882 to 1886.

During the period from 1882 to 1886, while Miller attended the College Department at Howard University, he also worked as a clerk for the U.S. Pension Office for two years. Kelly Miller was appointed to the position in the Pension Office after taking the civil service examination a test prescribed by the Civil Service Act passed during the administration of President Grover Cleveland. Miller’s greatest influence while at Howard University where his professors of Latin (James Monroe Gregory) and History (Howard president William Weston Patton, who also taught philosophy and conducted weekly vesper services required of all students). He received a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) from Howard University in 1886. Miller continued to work at the Pension Office after graduation in 1886. He also studied advanced mathematics (1886-1887) with Captain Edgar Frisby, an English mathematician at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Frisby’s chief at the observatory, Simon Newcomb, who was also a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, and who recommended Miller for admission to Hopkins University President Daniel Coit Gilman.

From Howard University, Kelly Miller received a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Mathematics (1901) and a law degree (LL.D.) in 1903.

First African-American Graduate Student in Mathematics

Johns Hopkins University had recently become the first American school to offer graduate work in mathematics. As Miller was to be the first African American student admitted to the university, the recommendation was decided by the Board of Trustees, who decided to admit Miller based on the university founder’s known Quaker beliefs.

From 1887 to 1889 Miller performed graduate work in Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy. When an increase in tuition ($100 to $200) prevented Miller from continuing his studies, Kelly Miller left (and Johns Hopkins closed its doors to Blacks) and taught at the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. (1889-1890), whose principal was Francis L. Cardozo. [Note: One source reports that Kelly Miller left school after deciding that his best contribution would be in the areas of civil rights.]

Kelly Miller

Career

After teaching mathematics briefly at the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. (1889-1890), he was appointed to the faculty of Howard University in 1890. Five years later Miller added sociology to Howard’s curriculum because he thought that the new discipline was important for developing objective analyses of the racial system in the United States. As dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, he modernized the classical curriculum, strengthening the natural and social sciences.

From 1895 to 1907 Miller was professor of mathematics and sociology, but he taught sociology exclusively after that, serving from 1915 to 1925 as head of the new sociology department. In 1894 Miller had married Annie May Butler, a teacher at the Baltimore Normal School, with whom he had five children.

Noted for his brilliant mind, Miller rapidly became a major figure in the life of Howard University. In 1907 he was appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. During his twelve-year deanship the college grew dramatically, as the old classical curriculum was modernized and new courses in the natural sciences and the social sciences were added. Miller’s recruiting tours through the South and Middle Atlantic states were so successful that the enrollment increased from 75 undergraduates in 1907 to 243 undergraduates in 1911.

Although Miller was a leader at Howard for most of his tenure there, his national importance derived from his intellectual leadership during the conflict between the “accommodationism” of Booker T. Washington and the “radicalism” of the nascent civil rights movement led by W. E. B. Du Bois. Critical of Washington’s famous Cotton States Exposition Address (1895) in 1896, Miller later praised Washington’s emphasis on self-help and initiative. He remained an opponent of the exaggerated claims made on behalf of industrial education and became one of the most effective advocates of higher education for black Americans when it was attacked as “inappropriate” for a people whose social role was increasingly limited by statute and custom to agriculture, some skilled trades, unskilled labor, and domestic service.

Education Advocate

In the Educational Review, Dial, Education, the Journal of Social Science, and other leading journals, Miller argued that blacks required wise leadership in the difficult political and social circumstances following the defeat of Reconstruction, and only higher education could provide such leaders. Moreover, the race required physicians, lawyers, clergymen, teachers, and other professionals whose existence was dependent on higher education. Excluded from most white colleges, black Americans would have to secure higher education in their own institutions, Miller argued, and some of them, like Howard, Fisk, and Atlanta Universities, would emphasize liberal education and the professions rather than the trades and manual arts (industrial education) stressed at Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes. In the debate between the advocates of collegiate and industrial education, Miller maintained that the whole matter was one of “ratio and proportion” not “fundamental controversy.” Recognized as one of the most influential black educators in the nation because of his extensive writing and his leadership at Howard, Miller was sought out by both camps in the controversy but was trusted by neither because of his refusal to dogmatically support either of the rival systems.

Known as “philosopher of the race question”

Miller’s reputation as a “philosopher of the race question” was based on his brilliant articles, published anonymously at first, on “radicals” and “conservatives” in the Boston Transcript (18, 19 Sept. 1903). With some alterations, these articles later became the lead essay in his book Race Adjustment (1908). Miller’s essays insisted on the right of black Americans to protest against the injustices that had multiplied with the rise of the white supremacy movement in the South, as the Du Bois “radicals” did, but he also advocated racial solidarity, thrift, and institution-building as emphasized by the followers of Washington.

Characteristically, Miller had two reputations as a public policy analyst, first as a compromiser between black radicals and conservatives, and second as a race spokesman during the prolonged crisis of disfranchisement and the denial of civil rights by white supremacists and their elected representatives in Congress.

The Disgrace of Democracy: An Open Letter to President Woodrow Wilson, a pamphlet published in August 1917, was Miller’s most popular effort. Responding to recent race riots in Memphis and East St. Louis, Miller argued that a “democracy of race or class is no democracy at all.” Writing to Woodrow Wilson, he said,

“It is but hollow mockery of the Negro when he is beaten and bruised in all parts of the nation and flees to the national government for asylum, to be denied relief on the basis of doubtful jurisdiction. The black man asks for protection and is given a theory of government.”

More than 250,000 copies of the pamphlet were sold, and the military authorities banned it on army posts.

Contributions to Sociology

Although Miller was best known as a controversialist, he also made important but frequently overlooked contributions to the discipline of sociology. His earliest contribution was his analysis of Frederick L. Hoffman’s Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, published by the American Economic Association in 1896. Hoffman attempted to demonstrate that the social disorganization of black Americans (weak community institutions and family structure) was caused by an alleged genetic inferiority and that their correspondingly high mortality rate would result in their disappearance as an element of the American population. Miller’s refutation of Hoffman’s claims, A Review of Hoffman’s Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, published by the American Negro Academy in 1897, was based on a technical analysis of census data.

Perhaps Miller’s most lasting contribution to scholarship was his pioneering advocacy of the systematic study of black people. In 1901 he proposed to the Howard board of trustees that the university financially support the publications of the American Negro Academy, whose goals were to promote literature, science, art, higher education, and scholarly works by blacks, and to defend them against “vicious assaults.” Although the board declined, it permitted the academy to meet on the campus. Convinced that Howard should use its prestige and location in Washington to become a national center for black studies, Miller planned a “Negro-Americana Museum and Library.” In 1914 he persuaded Jesse E. Moorland, a Howard alumnus and Young Men’s Christian Association official, to donate to Howard his large private library on blacks in Africa and in the United States as the foundation for the proposed center. This became the Moorland Foundation (reorganized in 1973 as the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center), a research library, archives, and museum that has been vital to the emergence of sound scholarship in this field.

Demotion

The years after World War I were difficult ones for Miller. J. Stanley Durkee, the last of Howard’s white presidents, was appointed in 1918 and set out to curtail the baronial power of the deans by building a new central administration. Miller, a conspicuously powerful dean, was demoted in 1919 to dean of a new junior college, which was later abolished in 1925. A leader in the movement to have a black president of Howard, Miller was a perennial favorite of the alumni but was never selected.

Although his influence at Howard declined significantly by the late 1920s through his retirement in 1934, Miller’s stature as a commentator on race relations and politics remained high. He had become alarmed by the vast social changes stimulated by World War I and was seen as increasingly conservative.

He opposed the widespread abandonment of farming by black Americans and warned that the mass migration to cities would be socially and culturally destructive. At a time when many younger blacks regarded labor unions as progressive forces, Miller was skeptical of them, citing their history of persistent racial discrimination. He remained an old-fashioned American patriot despite the nation’s many disappointing failures to extend democracy to black Americans.

As a weekly columnist in the black press, Miller’s views were published in more than one hundred newspapers. By 1923 it was estimated that his columns reached half a million readers.

Miller died at his home on the campus of Howard University.

Kelly Miller Middle School is located at 217 49th Street Northeast, Washington, DC

Information obtained from http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/special/miller_kelley.html

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You have a right to your freedom and to every other privilege connected with it and if you cannot secure these in Virginia or Alabama, by all means make your escape without delay to some other locality in God’s wide universe. —Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Early Life

Born to a free African-American family in Wilmington, Delaware, MaryAnn Shadd was the first of 13 children. Her father was an abolitionist and a conductor on the Underground Railroad. There home was a station on the Underground Railroad, where hey provided shelter for slaves who were running away to find freedom.

From an early age, Mary was exposed to the anti-slavery movement, where she developed a good grasp of the issues and honed her debating skills.

Teaching

As it was against the law to educate blacks in Delaware, the family moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where she attended a Quaker boarding school. At age 16, she returned to Wilmington to teach in a school for black children. Subsequently, she taught in New York and Morristown, New Jersey.

In 1849 she published an essay called “Hints to the Colored People of the North“. She then wrote a letter to Frederick Douglass who published the North Star newspaper. She was critical of the black leaders and the black churches. She called for education and action to correct the injustices which were suffered by blacks.

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. This Act allowed free northern blacks and escaped southern slaves to be rounded up and sent to the South. This law also increased the flow of traffic on the Underground Railroad, which assisted escaping slaves to travel from the southern slave-holding states to the northern states and Canada. As blacks could no longer take their freedom for granted within the United States, Canada became a beacon of hope. Mary and her brother, Isaac, fled to Windsor, Ontario, in 1851.

In Canada, she continued her teaching and established a school that was open to people of all races, while continuing to devote herself to the abolitionist cause working on behalf of fugitive slaves. At this time, slave owners were desperately attempting to deter runaway slaves from seeking refuge in Canada.

Author

In order to quash horror stories concocted by southern slaveholders to thwart black immigration, Shadd published a forty-four–page pamphlet entitled A Plea for Emigration or Notes on Canada West in Its Moral, Social and Political Aspect: Suggestions Respecting Mexico, West Indies and Vancouver’s Island for the Information of Colored Emigrants. In this pamphlet, she extolled the virtues of Canada, listed opportunities available to blacks in Canada, and urged them to move north of the 49th parallel.

She teamed up with Samuel Ward of the Anti-Slavery Society and others to publish a newspaper, The Provincial Freeman, with the motto “Self Reliance Is the True Road to Independence.” Subsequently, she became editor of the Freeman and, in so doing, was the first black female editor and publisher in North America. She wrote in one article that she had “broken the editorial ice”.

She married Thomas Cary, a Toronto barber, and lived in Chatham, Ontario, until his death four years later.

Law School

During the Civil War, she became an Army recruiting officer. After the Civil War, she returned to the United States and moved to Washington D.C. with her daughter Elizabeth, where she opened a school for black children and enrolled in Howard University Law School. She taught for 15 years both at public schools and Howard University. Establishing the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise Association, she was an ardent advocate of women’s rights, urging black women to discern their specific economic and political position and to fight for equal rights and opportunities.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary completed her studies at the age of 60. Some say she practiced law in Washington D.C. for four years. Shamina Sneed of Stanford Law School wrote in her 2002 paper that possibly Mary Ann got the law degree to enhance her image and further herself personally and politically rather than to practice law. Gaining her L.L.B. degree, she is considered to be the first black female lawyer in the United States. After graduation, she launched an attack on the judicial system challenging the House of Representatives for the right to vote and was one of the few women to vote in federal elections during the Reconstruction period.

Women’s Suffrage

Cary was held in high regard by Frederick Douglass, and she worked with Susan B. Anthony to obtain the right to vote for women. Shadd Cary joined the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, working alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women’s suffrage, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives and becoming the first black woman to cast a vote in a national election.

She died in 1893 after suffering with stomach cancer. Her daughter Sarah was still living. Her son Linton had died the previous year. Her obituary described her as “a woman of excellent traits of character and loved by all who knew her”. It goes on to say, “While she may have been excentric at times, she was a woman of kind disposition.”

The Mary Ann Shadd Cary House is a historic residence located at 1421 W Street, Northwest in Washington, D.C. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark on December 8, 1976 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It also is a contributing property to the Greater U Street Historic District.

Her daughter Sarah wrote an essay about her which is published in a book called Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction.

Books

Demanding Justice: A Story about Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Jeri Ferris and Kimanne Smith, Carolrhoda Books, 2003.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century, Jane Rhodes, Indiana University Press, 1999.

A Plea for Emigration by Mary Shadd, Mary Shadd Cary (Richard Almante, ed.), Mercury Press, 1998.

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Early Life

Pauli Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1910, to William H. and Agnes Georgiana (Fitzgerald) Murray. When Pauli Murray was three years old, her mother died, and she went to live with her aunt and maternal grandparents, the Fitzgeralds, in Durham, North Carolina.

Education

Pauli graduated from Hunter College, and in 1938 was denied admission into the University of North Carolina law school because of her race. She later entered Howard University Law School and graduated as valedictorian in 1944. She sought admission to Harvard University for an advanced law degree but was denied admission because she was a woman. She then studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her Masters of Law degree.

Career

A contemporary and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, she was a professor of American studies at Brandeis University from 1968 to 1973 and also taught law in Ghana. She was the author of the 1950 book “States’ Laws on Race and Color,” which catalogued state statutes discriminating against African Americans, Native Americans, Asians and other groups.

Murray was one of the founders of the Women’s Rights Law Reporter, the first legal periodical to focus exclusively on women’s rights.

Service

Reverend Dr. Anna Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray contributed to the NAACP’s litigation strategy in Brown v. Board of Education and in 1961 she was appointed to the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. While serving on the commissions and studying at Yale Law School (where she was the first African American to earn a J.S.D.) Murray authored a series of papers outlining a legal strategy for challenging sex discrimination by states. These arguments were first published in an article co-authored with Mary Eastwood after the passage of Title VII entitled “Jane Crow and the Law.”

Dr. Murray testified on discrimination against women before the 91st Congress of the United States. She was the first African-American woman Episcopal priest and a co-founder of NOW, the National Organization for Women.

Pauli Murray died of cancer on July 1, 1985 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her autobiography Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage was published posthumously in 1987. According to Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s book “Gender Talk,” Murray was a lesbian who did not disclose it to the public. In 1990, the Pauli Murray Human Relations Award was established in her honor to commemorate her life’s work.

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Education

After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Antioch College in Ohio, she simultaneously earned her law degree and a master’s degree in American Studies from Yale University. Yale Law School has awarded her the Citation of Merit for outstanding alumni, and Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences has awarded her the Wilbur Cross Medal for outstanding alumni, the highest awards conferred by each on alumni. She is the recipient of more than 50 honorary degrees. The Congresswoman, who taught law full time before being elected, is a tenured professor of law at Georgetown University, teaching a course there every year. .

Career

Before her congressional service, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to serve as the first woman to chair the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She came to Congress as a national figure who had been a civil rights and feminist leader, tenured professor of law, and board member at three Fortune 500 companies. Congresswoman Norton has been named one of the 100 most important American women in one survey and one of the most powerful women in Washington in another. The Congresswoman’s work for full congressional voting representation and for full democracy for the people of the District of Columbia continues her lifelong struggle for universal human and civil rights.

Before being elected, Congresswoman Norton served as a trustee on a number of public service boards, including the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Board of Governors of the D.C. Bar Association, as well as, served on the boards of civil rights and other national organizations.

Accomplishments

Congresswoman Norton’s accomplishments in breaking barriers for her disempowered district are matched by her success in bringing home unique economic benefits to her constituents. Among them are senatorial courtesy to recommend federal judges, the U.S. Attorney, and other significant federal law enforcement positions for the District; up to $10,000 per year for all D.C. high school graduates to attend any public U.S. college or university and up to $2,500 per year to many private colleges and universities; a unique $5,000 D.C. homebuyer tax credit, which has sharply increased home ownership in the District and has been a major factor in stabilizing the city’s population; and D.C. business tax incentives, including a significant wage credit for employing D.C. residents, which has maintained businesses and residents in the District.

Congresswoman Norton has brought significant economic development to the District of Columbia throughout her service in Congress, creating and preserving jobs in D.C. The most significant are her work in bringing to D.C. the U.S. Department of Homeland Security headquarters compound, now under construction, and is the largest federal construction project in the country; her bill for private development of the 55 acre-Southeast Federal Center, the first private development on federal land; her work with the Clinton administration that resulted in the relocation of 6,000 jobs to the Washington Navy Yard; and her successful efforts as committee chair to bring to the District the new headquarters for the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, along with an additional Metro station at New York Avenue, which has resulted in the development of the NOMA neighborhood.

Congresswoman Norton helped end the city’s most serious financial crisis in a century, in the 1990′s, by achieving a historic package that for the first time restructured the financial relationship between Congress and the District, by transferring $5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and billions more in state costs to the federal government. Congresswoman Norton, who taught full time before being elected, continues as a the federal government.

More information: http://www.norton.house.gov/

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Education

Moore earned his B.S. in accounting from Pennsylvania State University in 1968, and completed his M.B.A. degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 2001. He has received Distinguished Alumnus awards from both institutions.

Moore currently sits on the board of Universal Corp. and Owens and Minor, Inc. Having served in the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant, Moore is a Vietnam veteran and received the Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious achievement.

At VSU

Moore, who joined VSU after serving as state treasurer of Virginia, knew the work in front of him and tackled his mission with zeal. He surrounded himself with a team of new leaders and established a strategic agenda. “I believe in stretch goals,” he says, describing his short list of objectives that focused on academics, faculty, university scholarship and physical structure. Moore’s strategy was not only to save the university, but also prepare it for the future.

Under Moore’s leadership, VSU now enrolls more than five thousand students and has completed more than $100 million in capital improvements to its 236-acre main campus. The student dining hall, student union, athletic stadium and auditorium have been renovated, and the business school has a three-story addition. Other new completions include Gateway, a residential facility with several classrooms, an engineering and science building, and University Apartments at Ettrick.

VSU also has expanded or added academic programs in engineering, computer science, criminal justice, and mass media. New advanced degree programs include a doctoral degree in “Educational Administration & Supervision” and in “Psychology.” In 2007 and 2008, U.S. News & World Report named VSU the top public historically black college in the country among masters-level institutions.

The 2007-2008 operating budget for VSU was $125 million. Moore traces his fiscally conscious management to working in his father’s fish market as a youth.

“I learned all of my business acumen from my dad,” he says. “The numbers (in arithmetic) came relatively easy for me.” He offers the same advice to students, telling them to “make sure you have all the resources you need and be willing to take risks.”

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At last count, the 107 seniors gained acceptance to a total of 72 different colleges, including Northwestern University, Morehouse College, Howard University, Rutgers University, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, DePaul University.

See the original article.

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However, recently, we learned that the Atlanta Hawks paid tribute to them as Trailblazers during Black History Month.

Check out the video by clicking the link above.

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Career

Prior to joining Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Black served on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) faculty for 10 years where he was a (Full) Professor of Neurosurgery. In 1992 he was awarded the Ruth and Raymond Stotter Chair in the Department of Surgery and was Head of the UCLA Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program.

Pioneering Research

Dr. Black pioneered research on designing ways to open the blood-brain barrier, enabling chemotherapeutic drugs to be delivered directly into the tumor. His work in this field received the Jacob Javits award from the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health in June 2000. Dr. Black, along with patients undergoing the first clinical trials of the drug RMP-7, was profiled in 1996 on the PBS program, The New Explorers, in an episode called “Outsmarting the Brain”. Below is a clipped from BET.com posted just a few days ago:

Dr. Black’s other groundbreaking research has focused on developing a vaccine to enhance the body’s immune response to brain tumors, use of gene arrays to develop molecular profiles of tumors, the use of optical technology for brain mapping, and the use of focused microwave energy to noninvasively destroy brain tumors. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in the Fall 1997 special edition “Heroes of Medicine”.

Dr. Black serves on the editorial boards of the Neurological Research, Gene Therapy and Molecular Biology, Neurosurgery Quarterly and Frontiers In Bioscience. He was on the National Institutes of Health’s Board of Scientific Counselors for Neurological Disorders and Stroke and was appointed to the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health from 2000 to 2004. He was also selected as a committee member of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Independent Citizens Oversight Committee from 2004-2006. He is also a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Neurosurgical Society of America and the Academy of Neurological Surgery. He also is a Founding Member of the North American Skull Base Society.
Dr. Black has a unique ability to combine cutting-edge research and an extremely busy surgical practice. Since 1987, he has performed more than 5,000 operations for resection of brain tumors.

In 2009 Black published his autobiography, co-authored with Arnold Mann, entitled Brain Surgeon. New York Times reviewer Abigail Zuger described the book as a “fascinating, if somewhat stilted, memoir”. The Publishers Weekly review commented that the book

“examines racial hurdles he had to leap to become a neurosurgeon” and “alternat[es] incisive writing about incisions with his personal memoir, insightful and inspirational.”

Early Life and Education

Keith Black was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. His mother was a teacher and his father was the principal at a racially segregated elementary school in Auburn, Alabama; unable to integrate the student body, Black’s father instead integrated the faculty, raised standards, and brought more challenging subjects to the school. Unwilling to send their son to the substandard segregated high school in Auburn, Black’s parents found new jobs and relocated the family to Shaker Heights, Ohio. Black attended Shaker Heights High School. Already interested in medicine, Black was admitted to an apprenticeship program for minority students at Case Western Reserve University, and then became a teenaged lab assistant for Frederick Cross and Richard Jones (inventors of the Cross-Jones artificial heart valve) at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cleveland. At 17, he won an award in a national science competition for research on the damage done to red blood cells in patients with heart-valve replacements. It was during this time that he published his first scientific paper, which earned a Westinghouse Science Award. He completed an accelerated college program at the University of Michigan and earned both his undergraduate and medical degrees in six years. He completed his internship in general surgery and residency in neurological surgery at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.

To learn more about Dr. Black, please view his CV here.

For an appointment, a second opinion or more information, please call 1-800-CEDARS-1 (1-800-233-2771) or e-mail the center.

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Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., is the founding Dean and first President of Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM). With the exception of his tenure as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 1989 to 1993, Dr. Sullivan was President of MSM for more than two decades. On July 1, 2002, he left the presidency, but continues to serve on the MSM Board of Trustees, to teach, and to assist in national fund-raising activities on behalf of the school.

Education

A native of Atlanta, Dr. Sullivan graduated magna cum laude from Morehouse College in 1954, and earned his medical degree, cum laude, from Boston University School of Medicine in 1958. He is certified in internal medicine and hematology (the study of blood, the blood-forming organs, and blood diseases).

Career

Dr. Sullivan was instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 1963-64, and assistant professor of medicine at Seton Hall College of Medicine from 1964- 65. In 1966, he became co-director of hematology at Boston University Medical Center and, a year later, founded the Boston University Hematology Service at Boston City Hospital. Dr. Sullivan joined the Boston University School of Medicine in 1966 and remained until 1975, holding positions as assistant professor of medicine, associate professor of medicine, and professor of medicine.

Starting Morehouse School of Medicine

Dr. Sullivan became the founding Dean and Director of the Medical Education Program at Morehouse College in 1975. The program became The School of Medicine at Morehouse College in 1978, admitting its first 24 students to a two year program in the basic medical sciences. In 1981, the school became independent from Morehouse College and became Morehouse School of Medicine, with Dr. Sullivan as Dean and President. In 1983, MSM became a member of the Atlanta University Center. MSM was fully accredited as a four year medical school in April 1985 and awarded its first 16 M.D. degrees in May of that year.

Serving as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Dr. Sullivan left MSM in 1989 to accept an appointment by President George H.W. Bush to head HHS. In this post, Dr. Sullivan managed the federal agency responsible for the major health, welfare, food and drug safety, medical research and income security programs serving the American people. In January 1993, he returned to MSM and resumed the office of president.

Service

Dr. Sullivan is Chairman of the board of the National Health Museum in Washington, D.C. and is also Chairman of the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Healthcare Workforce (funded by the Kellogg Foundation). He also serves as Chair of the President’s Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and is Co-Chair of the President’s Commission on HIV and AIDS.

A member of numerous medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the National Medical Association, Dr. Sullivan was the founding President of the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools. He is a former member of the Joint Committee on Health Policy of the Association of American Universities and the national Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities.

He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

Watch a clip from his speaking tour entitled “The Symphony of Health Care Delivery” – an extremely relevant message!

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Barbara Jordan was born on February 21, 1936 in Houston, Texas. Her parents were Reverend Benjamin, a Baptist minister, and Arlyn Jordan. Barbara’s mother was a great orator, but did not pursue a career, and instead devoted herself to being a wife and mother. Barbara recalled that her mother “was the most eloquent, articulate person I ever heard. If she had been a man, she would have been a preacher.” Barbara inherited her great oratorical skills from her father and mother.

Education

Barbara’s grandfather, John Ed Patten, introduced her to literature, and philosophy and helped her improve her speaking skills. She attended Phillis Wheatley High School and participated in debates and public speaking engagements. She was the first place winner at the National Ushers Convention Oratorical Contest in Chicago, Illinois. She received the Girl of the Year Award and was became a well-known and respected public speaker throughout Texas.

In 1952, Barbara enrolled in Texas Southern University (TSU). Her tutor was Dr. Thomas Freeman, the University’s debate coach. Barbara attributed much of her success as a speaker to him. She later recalled,

“I thought I had superb diction and that no one would need to correct anything. Thomas Freeman found a flaw, and worked on it until it was corrected. I cannot overestimate the impact and influence Dr. Freeman had on my life.”

Barbara Jordan

In 1956, Barbara Jordan graduated from TSU with honors.

After graduating from TSU, Jordan attended Boston University Law School and graduated in 1959. She passed both the Massachusetts and Texas bar examinations and set up a law practice in her parents’ kitchen. After saving enough money she moved her firm to the Fifth Ward, a black section of Houston.

Politician

In 1966, Jordan ran for the Texas Senate and won the Democratic Primary with over 60 percent of the votes. She became one of two blacks in the state legislature. About working with the Texas politicians in the senate, she commented,

“I wanted them to see me first-hand and not just read about this great thing that had happened in Houston. I wanted them to know I was coming to be a senator, and I wasn’t coming to lead any charge. I was not coming carrying the flag and singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’ I was coming to work and I wanted to get that message communicated personally.”

Jordan served in the Texas senate for six years, during which she authored many bills that improved the quality of life for minorities, the poor and women. She was the first African American to preside over the state senate and chair a major committee, and the first freshman senator named to the Texas Legislative Council. On June 10, 1972, she became “Governor for a Day.”

In 1972, Barbara Jordan was elected to serve in the Ninety-third Congress, becoming the first African American woman elected to Congress from Texas and the first African American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the South. During her six-year term, Congresswoman Jordan introduced legislation that authorizes cities to receive direct Law Enforcement Assistance Administration grants, cosponsored legislation to extend the state ratification deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment, and campaigned for the inclusion of Native Americans, Hispanics, Alaskan Natives, and Asian American language minorities in the 1965 Voting Rights Act extension. She supported the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, legislation that required banks to lend and make services available to underserved poor and minority communities.

1st Black Keynote Speaker of the Democratic National Convention

In 1976, Jordan was the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention at which she nominated President Jimmy Carter. She became the first African American to give a keynote speech at a major party’s political convention. Her speech was dynamic and well received, in opening she said,

“One hundred and forty-four years ago, members of the Democratic Party met for the first time in convention to select their presidential candidate. Since that time, Democrats have continued to convene once every four years to draft a party platform and nominate a presidential candidate. Our meeting this week continues that tradition. But there is something different about tonight. There is something special about tonight. What is different? What is special? I, Barbara Jordan, am a keynote speaker.”

Life After Congress

In 1978, Jordan left Congress and returned to private life as a professor at the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in Austin. She also continued to participate in public service activities. In 1990, the National Women’s Hall of Fame voted her one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. In 1992, she was again the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention at which she nominated President Bill Clinton. In 1994, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Barbara Jordan died on January 17, 1996. She had earned a lasting reputation as a powerful force in American politics and was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

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Dr. David Hall began his tenure as the fifth President of the University of the Virgin Islands on August 1, 2009. He has been awarded a Distinguished University Professorship of Spirituality and Professionalism at UVI.

Education

Born in Savannah, Georgia, Dr. Hall holds a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University, where he was named an “all American” for his athletic and scholarly accomplishments. After graduating from Kansas State, he played professional basketball in Italy.

Dr. Hall holds both a doctorate of juridical science and an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School and received his juris doctorate from the University of Oklahoma, where he also earned a master’s degree in human relations.

Career

With a distinguished career as an educational administrator, Dr. Hall is also recognized as a preeminent scholar in the field of law. In 1993, when Dr. Hall was appointed Dean of the Northeastern University School of Law, he made history by being the first African-American to hold the position. He was appointed Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Northeastern in July of 1998 and served in that capacity until July of 2002.

In a December 1995 Wall Street Journal article on the Northeastern School of Law, Harvard Law Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. referred to Dr. Hall as “one of the most important leaders in legal education today.”

During his tenure as the chief academic officer for Northeastern, Dr. Hall oversaw significant growth in the University’s external research funding, retention rate and overall academic standing.

Having taught law for more than 20 years in the law schools of the University of Mississippi and the University of Oklahoma, in addition to Northeastern, Dr. Hall has developed a unique perspective with regard to legal education and the ethical standards of the profession. Working to bridge the often-alienated worlds of law and the inner city, he was instrumental in the formation of Northeastern’s Urban Law and Public Policy Institute, which brought community activists, government representatives and academicians together to develop solutions to urban dilemmas.

Publications

Dr. Hall’s publications include works on civil rights, the U.S. Constitution and race, legal education, and social justice. He has authored a book on the intersection of law and spirituality, entitled The Spiritual Revitalization of the Legal Profession: A Search for Sacred Rivers, and lectures nationally on topics of social justice, leadership, diversity and spiritual values in professional life.

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Information courtesy of University of the Virgin Islands website.

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Anthony Foxx is Mayor (D) of the City of Charlotte, NC. He began his political career in 2005 with his election to City Council as an At-Large representative and served two terms before being elected Mayor in 2009.

Early Life

Raised in the Dale Brook of Charlotte neighborhood by his mother and grandparents, Anthony Foxx knows the power of opportunity. Though his family had modest financial means, they made sure Anthony received a great education and taught him the value of hard work and service.

As a child, Anthony watched his grandparents, who were public school teachers, sacrifice for his educational opportunities and work tirelessly to help make Charlotte a better place to live.

Education

Thanks to their efforts, Anthony’s hard work and city leaders committed to expanding opportunity to all parts of Charlotte, Anthony received a great education at West Charlotte High School and went on to attend Davidson College. At Davidson, he received a bachelor’s degree in history and became the first African American elected to student body president. Anthony earned his law degree from New York University School of Law where he received the competitive Root-Tilden-Snow Public Interest Law Scholarship.

After law school, Anthony chose to follow the lessons of his grandparents and set out to make a difference. He served in all three branches of federal government, serving as a judicial clerk for the U.S. Circuit Court for the Sixth Circuit, a trial attorney for the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee.

Service

Anthony soon returned to Charlotte and quickly began to serve the city that had given him so much. He led efforts to organize volunteer lawyers to respond to election irregularities and served on a number of boards, including the Mecklenburg County Education Budget Advisory Committee, the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching Foundation Board, and the North Carolina Dance Theatre Board.

Anthony has served as an at-large member of Charlotte City Council since 2005. From day one, he has been a strong advocate for Charlotte neighborhoods and families and a leader for the future of Charlotte. Anthony championed a groundbreaking initiative to create job growth and opportunities in Charlotte neighborhoods. He put an end to years of neglect of our public safety and transportation needs by fighting to hire police officers and build roads. Anthony has chaired the city council environment and transportation committees and is a member of the economic development committee. Anthony’s continued service to Charlotte remains guided by the lessons of his youth and motivated by a steadfast determination to fight for a brighter future for all of Charlotte.

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Information obtained from Anthony Foxx campaign website and website of the city of Charlotte, NC.

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Barry C. Black is the 62nd Chaplain of the United States Senate. He was elected to this position on June 27, 2003, becoming the first African-American, the first Seventh-day Adventist, and the first military chaplain to hold the office of chaplain to the United States Senate. He ministers to a flock of 6,000, comprising senators, spouses, Chiefs of Staff, and Capitol Hill employees. Black is advisor to the most powerful people in the United States government on moral, spiritual, and ethical issues that affect the lives of millions in the United Sates and abroad. (The Senate elected its first chaplain in 1789.)

Early Life

Chaplain Barry C. Black was born on November 1, 1948, in the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland, to Pearline and Lester Black.

“My mother was a beautiful person who connected with all her children and made each of us feel special,” Chaplain Black said in an interview with Contemporary Black Biography (CBB). “She was a storyteller with the ability to find allies and build networks, and she was athletic. I inherited these skills from my mother.”

Sensing his destiny, Pearline told her son, “You will have a special destination in life and a life with God.” This she believed because when she was baptized and pregnant with the chaplain she had asked God to do something special with his life.

Pearline taught her eight children the importance of God and education as the way to a better life without poverty. Raising a large family alone, Pearline, a Seventh-day Adventist, found church to be the supportive environment she needed to accomplish this. At Berea Temple and its Baltimore Junior Academy her children found a thriving community of helping hands, a quality education, and much needed tuition assistance. Black’s mother found friends like Albertha Brown, who shared her home with young Barry after school, providing him a haven from the mean streets of Baltimore.

During church services Black heard the best preachers in the community and began to develop his language skills. “Mother supplemented this by giving us a nickel for scriptures we memorized. She had to put me on a flat rate; I was breaking the bank,” Black remembered. At school young Barry would study the prose of Longfellow, Emerson, Milton, and Thoreau.

“I entered poetry readings and oratorical contests. I had a love for the music of language,” explained Black.

Hearing his oratory skills, the congregation and school provided affirmation that oratory was also his gift.

Heeded His Calling

Black felt from an early age that he wanted to be a minister and knew he had a “special feeling for God,” but he resisted. “I wanted to pursue God, but most ministers in the inner city seemed poor. In my junior year of college I decided to go with the desire of my heart and pursue the ministry even if it meant poverty.”

He is the author of From the Hood to the Hill:

Education

First Black received his bachelor of theology degree in 1970, from Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. He entered Andrews Theological Seminary at Berrien Springs, Michigan, earning a master of divinity degree in 1973. There he enjoyed the focus on theology. Next Black moved to Durham, North Carolina, to pastor seven churches in South Carolina and North Carolina. Preaching two or three times each week allowed Black to learn quickly; within two years he was sent to pastor three other churches in North Carolina.

By this time Black had married Brenda Pearsall, who he met during his junior year at Oakwood College, and he began work on a master’s degree in counseling, completing it in 1978. Brenda was an English major; her skills would become a valuable asset as Black developed his language skills. In 1982 Black completed a doctorate in theology, and received a master’s degree in management in 1989. In 1996 he was awarded a doctorate in psychology.

One day in North Carolina, while speaking with three young servicemen from Norfolk, Virginia, Black wondered why they did not worship back on base. When asked, they said they had never heard of a black Navy Chaplain.

“It planted a seed,” says Black. The Navy needed African-American chaplains, and Black wanted to work with young people. “Also I didn’t want to minister to just people from my own race,” he told CBB. “I wanted a broader challenge.”

Found His Place and Mission

Black was just 25 years old and, citing his young age, church leaders would not grant Black approval to minister to the young people of his church. Subsequently he did find what he was searching for with the United States Navy in 1976. At the time his church was seeking individuals interested in providing ministry in the military, so Black joined the Navy. Intending initially to stay three years, Black knew after his first day he had found his niche.

“The variety of denominations, the improved salary, the appreciation on the part of a diverse group of people for my particular talents and gifts, the additional challenge of being physically fit, the joy of working with young people, all those factors I recognized very quickly and thought this is too good to be true. The experience was a protracted honeymoon for 27 years that went by very quickly,” said Black.

Appointed to Top Posts

Black held several posts during his 27-year career in the Navy, eventually becoming Deputy Chief of Chaplains in 1997, and in 2000 he became Chief of Navy Chaplains. As chief he held responsibility for the spiritual care of servicemen from 190 religious traditions. He advised and provided ministry to the Chief of Naval Operations, the Secretaries of the Navy and Defense, and the Commandants of the Marine Corps and Coast Guard.

He officially retired from the Navy on August 15, 2003.

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As a 13-year-old, Lithonia resident Stephen Stafford II can usually be found sitting in front of the television playing video games or playing his drum set. But Stafford is no typical 13-year old – he’s a college student. The triple-major child prodigy is becoming a sensation at Morehouse College.

“I’ve never taught a student as young as Stephen, and it’s been amazing,” said computer science professor Sonya Dennis. “He’s motivating other students to do better and makes them want to step up their game.”

“When I saw how much knowledge Stephen has at such a young age, I wondered what I had been doing with my life,” laughed third-year student, Eric Crawford. A psychology major and computer science minor, Crawford wanted to step up his game so much that he got Stephen to tutor him. “Even though I’m older, Stephen is like a mentor and my elder in computer science,” said Crawford.

“Eric’s a really fun person to be around, and we have a good time together,” said Stafford.

Crawford added, “Stephen has a lot of patience with me. I got a 95 in the class because of Stephen.”

Even at age 11 when Stafford started at Morehouse, he got the highest score in his pre-calculus class. “He breezes through whatever I throw at him. If it’s an hour lab, he can do it in 20 or 30 minutes,” said Dennis.

Stafford said he isn’t nervous about studying with students much older than himself. “I just do what I always did. I show up, I do the work, and I go home,” he said.

When talking to Stafford, it’s easy to forget his age. But his age shows when he’s playing video games or even at dinner, where he eats while also trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. Still, Stafford finds it hard to relate to teens his age. “I relate better to Eric…most kids my age don’t know when to stop playing around and when to be serious,” he said.

Stafford’s mother, Michelle Brown-Stafford, home-schooled both her children (Stephen has an older sister also in college) and believes that parental involvement is essential for students to excel. But when she realized her son was starting to teach her instead of being taught, she knew he needed to be in a college environment.

“It was surreal because on one hand he’s talking about technical things I didn’t even understand, and on the other hand he was asking me to come watch Sponge Bob with him. So it was bittersweet to let him go.”

Brown-Stafford wondered if there were other parents who shared her experiences with a gifted child, so she helped found a support group: www.gifted-spirit.com.

And the Morehouse family has become a support group for Stafford, personifying the African proverb about it taking a village to raise a child. Stafford is too young to stay on campus, so his mother picks him up and drops him off each day. The students protect him and make a point not to curse or discuss certain mature issues around him, according to his mother and Stafford. Even the staff of Jazzman’s Café, where Stafford tutors Crawford, helps nurture Stephen into becoming a “Morehouse Renaissance Man”–well-spoken, well-dressed, well-read, well-traveled, and well-balanced. The cafe’s general Manager, Darren Page, added an unofficial principle: well-fed. “A Morehouse Man cannot study on an empty stomach,” said Page. So whenever Stafford comes to Jazzman’s, Page gives up his own employee meal for the 13-year-old.

It seems that everyone wants to be a part of helping Stafford graduate in 2012, and go on to Morehouse School of Medicine. And because of a Georgia law that requires a student to be 16 to graduate high school, he’ll be getting his high school diploma the same year he receives his college degrees in math, computer science and pre-med.

“Kids will live up to your expectations. But I ultimately want Stephen to be happy,” said Stephen Stafford Sr. Brown-Stafford added, “I want him to be well-rounded and still connect with kids his own age, so we put him in DeKalb County’s 4-H Club and other programs.” She added that she’s thankful to the Morehouse family for embracing her son.

“I want to see what Stephen becomes 10 years from now,” said Crawford. Page added, “I want to be at his graduation. And then I want to walk by and touch the [campus] statue of Dr. Martin Luther King and recognize I had a role in [Stephen] walking in Martin Luther King’s footsteps.” And how fitting, since Dr. King entered Morehouse at age 15.

So to put a spin on Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Stephen is being judged by the content of his character, not by his age.

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Courtesy of Champion Newspaper, Dekalb County, Ga

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Anténor Firmin (1850-1911) was born and educated in Haiti. He studied law and held several political offices before being posted as a diplomat to Paris, where he was admitted to the Societé d’Anthropologie de Paris and wrote De L’Égalité des Races Humaines. He was a Haitian anthropologist, journalist, and politician. Firmin is best known for his book De l’Égalité des Races Humaines (English: On the Equality of Human Races), which was published as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau’s work Essai sur l’inegalite des Races Humaines (English: Essay on the Inequality of Human Races). Gobineau’s book asserted the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of blacks and other people of color.

Firmin’s work argued the opposite, that “all men are endowed with the same qualities and the same faults, without distinction of color or anatomical form. The races are equal” (pp. 450).

It is a substantial work of early anthropology that presaged in the 19th century most of what became accepted anthropological science about race in the 20th century. It is also an early work of Pan-Africanism that highlighted the civilizational achievements of African cultures, from ancient Egypt and the Nile Valley countries of Sudan and Ethiopia, to the first ‘Black’ Republic of Haiti, as evidence of the fundamental equality of African peoples.

One hundred and fourteen years later, this is the first appearance in English of Firmin’s trailblazing work in Anthropology and Pan-Africanist thought.

Born in Cap-Haïtien, Firmin worked in teaching, politics, and diplomacy. He founded Le Messager du Nord, a political and literary publication.

He later returned to Haiti and served as minister of finance, commerce, and foreign relations.

Known as the Haitian Scholar who predicted Obama’s Presidency over a century ago, Antenor Firmin is believed to be the first anthropologist of African descent.

Antenor Firmin wrote about the day when Barack Obama would become president of the United States in a book he published in Paris back in 1885 De l’Égalité des Races Humaines (English: On the Equality of Human Races).

Here is what Antenor Firmin said in the chapter “The Role of the Black Race in the History of Civilization”

Appearances to the contrary, this big country is destined to strike the first blow against the theory of the inequality of the human races.

Indeed, at this very moment, Blacks in the great federal republic have begun to play a prominent role in the politics of the various states of the American union.

It seems quite possible that, in less than a century from now, a Black man might be called to head the government of Washington and manage the affairs of the most progressive country on earth, a country which will inevitably become, thanks to its agricultural and industrial production, the richest and most powerful in the world.

These are not utopian musings. We only have to consider the increasing participation of Blacks in American society to cast aside our skepticism.

Besides, we must remember that slavery in the United States was abolished only twenty years ago.

Although not much is printed in english about Antenor Firmin, we found a bit more information about him thanks to a gentleman by the name of Bob Corbett.

• Firmin, Joseph-Antenor. Journalist, author, lawyer, cabinet minister, rebel and a Haitian exile in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. In 1905, he published a book, M. Roosevelt, president des Etats-Unis, et la Republique d’Haiti. The theme of the book is that Haitian had nothing to fear from the United States unless the Republic fell into anarchy, in which case intervention might be welcome. Haiti could escape that experience through reform, he said.

• Firmin had formerly been Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Hyppolite and successfully fought off U.S. efforts to acquire a naval base at Mole-St. Nocholas.

• Firmin believed that the executive power should be the servant, not the master of the state, that class divisions should be eliminated, and that the rural masses of Haiti should be brought into Haitian society.

Read here for more from Bob Corbett’s notes.

Selected Works:

• De l’Égalité des Races Humaines – published 1885
• Haïti et la France – published 1891
• Une Défense – published 1892
• Diplomate et Diplomatie – published 1898
• M. Roosevelt, Président des Etats-Unis et la République d’Haïti – published 1905
• Lettres de Saint-Thomas – published 1910

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Dr. Dorothy Cowser Yancy, a native of Alabama, has joined the Shaw University family as interim president. Dr. Yancy served as the twelfth president of Johnson C. Smith University and was the first female elected to hold that post. In keeping with this standard, Dr. Yancy is now the first woman to serve as President of the prestigious Shaw University.

Education

Dr. Yancy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and social science from Johnson C. Smith University, a Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Ph.D. in political science from Atlanta University (Georgia), with further study at the University of Singapore, Hampton University, Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago), Northwestern University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Yancy earned certificates in management development from Harvard University and she is listed as an arbitrator with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services and the American Arbitration Association. She also is a Special Magistrate with the Florida Public Employee Relations Commission.

Accomplishments at Johnson C. Smith University

During her tenure as president of Johnson C. Smith University, Dr. Yancy completed two significant capital campaigns. The first campaign, ‘Campaign for the 90’s,’ took place from 1993-1998 with a goal of $50 million. At the close of the campaign she exceeded this goal, raising $63.8 million. The second campaign, ‘Pathways to Success,’ was launched in October 2000 with a goal of raising $75 million. At the close of the campaign in June of 2007, she exceeded the goal again, raising $81.5. Under her leadership the University endowment more than tripled from $14 million to $53 million. For these achievements, she has been heralded as one of the best fundraisers nationally.

In 2000, Johnson C. Smith University became the first HBCU “Laptop” university, issuing IBM Thinkpads to all of its students. Prior to this historic feat, she led the University during a three-year period of strategic planning in technology and faculty/staff development, resulting in an integrated approach to a liberal arts higher education. This, too, was nationally recognized by her testifying before Congress in 2000 about the status of technology in higher education. As a result of her leadership, the University was ranked in 2001 by Yahoo Internet Life Magazine as one of the Top 50 most wired small colleges in the nation. In 2007 JCSU was ranked in the top ten of HBCUs by U.S. News and World Report.

Career

Dr. Yancy has earned the respect of the higher education community throughout her career. She served as a professor of history, technology and society and in the School of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta) from 1972-1994. At Georgia Tech, she was the first African American to be promoted and tenured as a full professor. She also served as associate director of the School of Social Sciences. Previously she taught at several institutions including Albany State University, Hampton University, Evanston Township High School, and Barat College, where she was the director of the Afro-American Studies Program.

Dr. Yancy was the first American to lecture at the Academy of Public Administration and Social Studies of the Small Hural in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, in 1991.

Scholarship

In scholarship, as well as leadership, Dr. Yancy has excelled. She has published over 40 articles and labor arbitration cases in academic journals as “Dorothy Bolden, Organizer of Domestic Workers; She was Born Poor and She Would Not Bow Down,” Sage, “Public Sector Bargaining in the South: A Case Study of Atlanta and Memphis,” Industrial Relations Association Proceedings, “William Edward Burghardt Dubois – Atlanta Years: The Human Side – A Study Based upon Oral Sources,” The Journal of Negro History, and several articles in Black Women in America: A Historical Encyclopedia.

Service

In addition to her scholastic contributions, Dr. Yancy has contributed widely to civic and professional communities. She was the first African American to be appointed Special Master for the Florida Public Employee Relations Commission, was a member of labor delegations to the Soviet Union and Europe in 1988 and 1990, is the former president of the Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists and of the Atlanta Chapter of the Industrial Relations Research Association, and is a former member of the Executive Council of The Links, Inc. In 2001, she became the first female to be elected President of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA). Further, Dr. Yancy is a former president of the Members Presidents of UNCF (2004-2006), a former member of the board of the Council of Independent Colleges, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History.

She is a former member of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities Commission on Financing Higher Education, the American Council of Education Commission on Women in Higher Education, and the U.S. Air Force Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority Institution (HBCU/MI) Board of Advisors. She is also a former member of the North Carolina Post-Secondary Eligibility and served as the chairperson of the 2005 HBCU Congressional Forum Steering Committee. She was also a member of the Association of Governing Boards Task Force on the State of the Presidency in American Higher Education in 2006. She served on the Board of the YMCA of Greater Charlotte, the Board of Directors of Bank of America of the Carolinas, the Board of Charlotte Urban League, the Board of Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, and the Board of Opera Carolina.

She presently is an advisor to the Mint Museum of Art, member of the Board of Levine Museum of the New South, the Chamber of Commerce Board of Advisors, a member of the Corporate Board of UNCF, a member of the Executive Committee of UNCF and President of the North Carolina Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. She is also a member of The National Association of HBCU Title III Administrators, Inc. Presidents Advisory Board.

Award

As a valued member of various publics, Dr. Yancy has received numerous awards: Outstanding Teacher of the Year, Georgia Tech; Undergraduate Faculty Member of the Year, Georgia Tech Student Government; Outstanding Faculty Member by the Georgia Tech Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity; listing in Outstanding Young Women in America, Outstanding Professional in Human Service, Who’s Who in Black America, Who’s Who Among American Women, the World’s Who’s Who Among Women in Education and selected as “one of the Six Best Teachers in the U.S.” by Newsweek on Campus in 1988. Other honors include membership in ANAK (a Georgia Institute of Technology leadership organization), The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Alpha Kappa Mu National Honor Society, Sigma Rho Sigma Honor Society, and Omicron Delta Kappa. She was inducted into the most prestigious honor society in the nation, the Delta of Georgia Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, in May 2002.

Since 1996, she has been widely recognized: Belle Ringer Image Award, Bennett College; National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame in Education; Black Issues in Higher Education, Twentieth Century Educator; Lifetime Achievement Award, North Carolina 4-H Club; W.E.B. DuBois Award, Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists; Maya Angelou Tribute to Achievement/UNCF; Torchbearer Award in Education; first woman to become the 10th Benjamin E. Mays Lecturer, Morehouse College; 2000 Person of Prominence, The Charlotte Post; and 2001 Outstanding Educator of the Year by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee. In the July 2002 issue of the national publication Savoy Magazine, she was listed as a “leader to watch.” In 2004, she received the Harold E. Delaney Exemplary Educational Leadership Award from the American Association for Higher Education.

In 2005, Dr. Yancy was recognized by the Charlotte Business Journal as one of the Top Women in Business in the region and received the Old North State Award from the State of North Carolina. In January 2007, she received the Sisters Delany Honor Society Achievement Award, North Carolina Women of Distinction, and St. Augustine’s College. Also in 2007 she received the Horizon Award from Leadership Charlotte and the William J. Stanley Award from Georgia Institute of Technology.

In 2008, she was inducted into the Women’s History Hall of Fame by the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and the Levine Museum of the South. She also testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor on “America’s Black Colleges and Universities: Models of Excellence and Challenges for the Future.”

More information can be found on Answers.com.

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Dr. Cynthia Winston is an Associate Professor in the Howard University Department of Psychology and Principal Investigator of the Identity and Success Research Laboratory. She also is the Principal and founder of Winston Synergy L.L. C., a psychology and research consulting firm.

Career & Awards

As a leading edge narrative personality psychologist, Dr. Winton’s profession career is devoted to understanding identity, as well as the psychology of race, racism, and success within lives. Dr. Winston has received several professions awards including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Professor Fellowship from Brown University, the Emerging Scholar Award for the Howard University Faculty Senate, the Howard University Syllabus of the Year Award, and the National Science Foundation Early CAREER Award.

Dr. Winston conducts interdisciplinary psychology, science, and engineering education research. Adopting a novel interdisciplinary approach, her research integrates personality psychology, narrative psychology, and psychology engineering. She also has a special interest and expertise in mixed methods research design and data analysis. Through integrating digital technology with narrative, survey, and case study research methods, she has created the Identity and Success Life Story Research Method to stimulate the construction of autobiographical memories, life review, and personality assessment.

Currently, Dr. Winston is engaged in five psychology and education research projects funded by the National Science Foundation, Howard University, and Winston Synergy, L.L.C.: the Identity and Success Life Story Project; the Narrative Engineering Project, the Personality and Narrative Identity Study: the Howard University Mathematics and Science Middle School Academic and Psychological Development Success Project, and the HBCU-UP Black Excellence in Science Teaching Project.

Dr. Winston is the former Director of Educational, Fellowship, and Internship Programs at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and Program Director for the SNF Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate at Howard University.

Education

Dr. Winston earned her Master’s degree in Psychology and Ph.D. in Psychology and Education from the University of Michigan. She earned a Bachelors of Science degree from Howard University.

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Taylor Yarborough, a freshman, pre-med/biology major at Spelman, was among 100 young adults honored recently by the Tavis Smiley Foundation for being an example of positive youth engagement, volunteerism, community service and leadership. The New Orleans native was presented with a $5,000 scholarship at the Foundation’s annual Salute to Youth Leadership Benefit and Auction in Los Angeles, CA.

Taylor is also currently serving a three year term as a member of the Tavis Smiley Foundation’s National Youth Advisory Council, and has received several scholarships including, but not limited to, the UNCF/NAACP Agness Jones scholarship and the NextGen Scholarship.

A talented writer and Spelman Glee Club member, Taylor graduated with honors from Lusher Charter School in New Orleans, where she also received a certificate of artistry in creative writing. She is a contributing poet for the Guernica Online Magazine of Art and Politics, and contributing author for Hope, Change and Obama (NLS Publishing).

The daughter of Courtney Nelson and Gason Nelson, a personal chef for New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush, Taylor is considering a career in sports medicine, and is currently a trainer for the Morehouse College football team.

Read more about Taylor and the Tavis Smiley Foundation

Tavis Smiley Foundation’s Youth to Leader (2008)

Information obtained from Spelman’s website.

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Dave Drummond is the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and the Chief Legal Officer of Google, Inc. He initially joined Google in 2002 as VP of Corporate Development. Since then he has served as Senior VP of Corporate Development since January 2006 and as Chief Legal Officer since December 2006.

Career

David was first introduced to Google in 1998 as a partner in the corporate transactions group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, one of the nation’s leading law firms representing technology businesses. He served as Google’s first outside counsel and worked with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to incorporate the company and secure its initial rounds of financing.

Previously, David served as Chief Financial Officer of SmartForce, an educational software applications company. Prior to that, David was a partner at the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. During his tenure at Wilson Sonsini, David worked with a wide variety of technology companies to help them manage complex transactions such as mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings.

Education

David holds a J.D. from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Santa Clara University.

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Valerie Bowman Jarrett (born November 14, 1956) is a senior advisor and assistant to the president for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs for the Obama administration. She is also a Chicago lawyer, businesswoman, and civic leader. Prior to that she served as a co-chairperson of the Obama-Biden Transition Project.

Education

Jarrett graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon, a New England boarding school, in 1974. She earned a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1978, and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. As a child she spoke Persian and French.

Personal

Jarrett was born to American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman in Shiraz, Iran, where her father, a pathologist and geneticist, ran a hospital for children as part of a program where American doctors and agricultural experts sought to help jump-start developing countries’ health and farming efforts. When she was five, the family moved to London for one year, returning to Chicago in 1963.

In 1966 her mother, Barbara Taylor Bowman, was one of four child advocates that created the Erikson Institute. The Institute was established to provide advanced knowledge in child development for teachers and other professionals working with young children.

In 1983 Jarrett married Dr. William Robert Jarrett, son of famed Chicago Sun-Times reporter Vernon Jarrett. She attributes her switch from a private to a public career to their daughter Laura’s birth and her own desire to do something that would make the daughter proud. Laura is a graduate of Amherst College and a Harvard Law School student.

To one reporter’s e-mailed question about her divorce, she replied, “Married in 1983, separated in 1987, and divorced in 1988. Enough said.” In a Vogue profile, she further explained “We grew up together. We were friends since childhood. In a sense, he was the boy next door. I married without really appreciating how hard divorce would be.” William Jarrett died of a sudden heart attack in 1993.

Career

Jarrett got her start in Chicago politics in 1987 working for Mayor Harold Washington as Deputy Corporation Counsel for Finance and Development.

Jarrett continued to work in the mayor’s office in the 1990s. She was Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Richard Daley, during which time (1991) she hired Michelle Robinson, then engaged to Barack Obama, away from a private law firm. Jarrett served as Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development from 1992 through 1995, and was Chair of the Chicago Transit Board from 1995 to 2005.

Business Administration

Until joining the Obama Administration, Jarrett was the CEO of The Habitat Company, a real estate development and management company which she joined in 1995. She has been replaced by Mark Segal, a lawyer who joined the company in 2002, as CEO. Daniel E. Levin is the Chairman of Habitat, which was formed in 1971. Jarrett was a member of the board of Chicago Stock Exchange (2000–2007, as Chairman, 2004–2007).

She is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago Medical Center, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago and a Trustee of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Jarrett serves on the board of directors of USG Corporation, a Chicago based building materials corporation.

Jarrett’s previous year’s income, in a 2009 report, was a $300,000 salary and $550,000 in deferred compensation from The Habitat Executive Services, Inc. The Wall Street Journal also reported she disclosed payments of more than $346,000 for service on boards of directors that reflect her political ties, and work in Chicago real estate and community development. She was paid $76,000 for service as a director of Navigant Consulting, Inc. a Chicago-based global consulting group with governmental clients. She received $146,600 from USG, and $58,000 to serve on the board of Rreef American REIT II, a real estate investment trust based in San Francisco. The Chicago Stock Exchange, Inc., paid her $34,444.

Advisor to President Barack Obama

Jarrett is one of President Obama’s longest serving advisors and confidantes and was “widely tipped for a high-profile position in an Obama administration.”

On November 14, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama selected Jarrett to serve as White House Senior Advisor and for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs.

Jarrett is one of three Senior Advisors to President Obama. She is Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement, managing the White House Office of Public Engagement (formerly the Office of Public Liaison), Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Office of Urban Affairs, and Chairs the White House Commission on Women and Girls, and White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic, and Youth Sport.

Obtained from wikipedia and youtube.

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Khadijah Williams was in third grade when she first realized the power of test scores, placing in the 99th percentile on a state exam. Her teachers marked the 9-year-old as gifted, a special category that Khadijah, even at that early age, vowed to keep.

“I still remember that exact number,” Khadijah said. “It meant only 0.01 students tested better than I did.”

In the years that followed, her mother, Chantwuan Williams, pulled her out of school eight times. When shelters closed, money ran out or her mother didn’t feel safe, they packed what little they carried and boarded buses to find housing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ventura, San Diego, San Bernardino and Orange County, staying for months, at most, in one place.

“I have felt the anger at having to catch up in school . . . being bullied because they knew I was poor, different, and read too much,” she wrote in her college essays. “I knew that if I wanted to become a smart, successful scholar, I should talk to other smart people.”

She finished only half of fourth grade, half of fifth and skipped sixth. Seventh grade was split between Los Angeles and San Diego. Eighth grade consisted of two weeks in San Bernardino.

At every stop, Khadijah pushed to keep herself in each school’s gifted program. She read nutrition charts, newspapers and four to five books a month, anything to transport her mind away from the chaos and the sour smell.

At school, she was the outsider. At the shelter, she was often bullied. “You ain’t college-bound,” the pimps barked. “You live in skid row!”

Khadijah Williams - Graduation

In 10th grade, Khadijah realized that if she wanted to succeed, she couldn’t do it alone. She began to reach out to organizations and mentors: the Upward Bound Program, Higher Edge L.A., Experience Berkeley and South Central Scholars; teachers, counselors and college alumni networks. They helped her enroll in summer community college classes, gave her access to computers and scholarship applications and taught her about networking.

When she enrolled in the fall of her junior year at Jefferson High School, she was determined to stay put, regardless of where her mother moved. Graduation was not far off and she needed strong college letters of recommendation from teachers who were familiar with her work.

This soon meant commuting by bus from an Orange County armory. She awoke at 4 a.m. and returned at 11 p.m., and kept her grade-point average at just below a 4.0 while participating in the Academic Decathlon, the debate team and leading the school’s track and field team.

“That’s when I was really stressed,” she says, at once sighing and laughing.

Khadijah graduated Friday evening with high honors, fourth in her class. She was accepted to more than 20 universities nationwide, including Brown, Columbia, Amherst and Williams. She chose a full scholarship to Harvard and aspires to become an education attorney.

Early adversity

She tried her best; she never smoked or drank, never did drugs, and she never put us in abusive situations. However, that was the best she could do.

There are questions about her mother Khadijah is not ready to ask, answers she is not ready to hear. How did her mother end up on the streets? How come she never found a stable home for her daughters? Why wasn’t there family to turn to, no father, no grandparents? And what will become of her little sister?

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” is often her response. Ask personal questions about her mother and the fire in Khadijah’s eyes turns dim. She knows when she arrives in Cambridge, Mass., she will need to seek counseling. So much of her life is a blur.

She knows she was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a 14-year-old mother. She thinks Chantwuan might have been ostracized from her family. She may have tried to attend school, but the stress of a baby proved too much. When Khadijah was a toddler, they moved to California. A few years later, Jeanine was born.

She has chosen not to criticize her mother. Instead Khadijah said she inspired her to learn. “She would tell me I had a gift, she would call me Oprah.”

When her college applications were due in December, James and Patricia London of South Central Scholars invited Khadijah to their home in Rancho Palos Verdes to help her write her essays.

When they went to return her to skid row, her mother and sister were gone.

Khadijah accepted the Londons’ invitation to spend the rest of her school year with them.

In their comfortable hilltop home, Khadijah learned a new set of lessons. The orthopedic doctor and nurse taught her table manners, money management and grooming.

She won’t be the first homeless student to arrive at Harvard.

Julie Hilden, the Harvard interviewer who met with Khadijah to gauge whether she should be accepted, said it was clear from the start that Khadijah was a top candidate. But school officials had to make sure they could provide what she needed to make the transition successful.

They plan to connect her with faculty mentors and potentially, a host family to check in with every so often. She will also attend a Harvard summer program at Cornell to take college-prep courses.

“I strongly recommended her,” Hilden said. “I told them, ‘If you don’t take her, you might be missing out on the next Michelle Obama. Don’t make this mistake.’ ”

Seeking connections

“I think about how I can convince my peers about the value of education. . . . I have found that after all the teasing, these peers start to respect me . . . . I decided that I could be the one to uplift my peers . . . . My work is far reaching and never finished.”

Khadijah expected to feel more connected after nearly two years at Jefferson, to make at least one good friend.

Students flock to the smart girl for help with homework and tests and class questions. She walks through campus tenderly waving and smiling and complimenting everyone she knows.

But when prom pictures arrive, they show her posing alone in a silky black and white dress. In her yearbook, hundreds of familiar faces look back, but the memories are missing.

“It’s a nice, glossy, shiny, colorful yearbook,” she said. “But it feels like they’re all strangers. I’m nowhere in these pages.”

In the last six months, she saw her mother only a few times and on Thursday tried to find her. Khadijah headed to a South-Central storage facility where they last stored their belongings.

She found Chantwuan sitting on a garbage bag full of clothes.

“Khadijah’s here!” her sister Jeanine yells. Chantwuan’s face lit up.

She explained the details of her graduation, the bus route to get there and gave her mother a prom picture. She said she would leave for summer school Friday.

There is no talk of coming home of for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Proudly, Khadijah modeled her hunter green graduation cap and gown and practiced switching the tassel from right to left as she would during the ceremony.

“Look at you,” her mother says. “You’re really going to Harvard, huh?”

“Yeah,” she says, pausing. “I’m going to Harvard.”

For more information visit, http://www.khadijahwilliams.com.

Obtained from LA Times. Recommended by BSI FB Fan Page Member Isaiah Imani.

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