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

Start here, with Episode #1:

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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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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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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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While most news stories explain the tragic death of Derrion Albert, The Black Scholars Index celebrates his life and his status as an honor roll student at Christian Fenger Academy High School on Chicago’s South Side. We send our prayers to his family and friends and will remember him as a Great Scholar in the Making!

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