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.

Related posts:

1. Stephen L. Carter: Law Professor, Policy Writer, Columnist, Novelist
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

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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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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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.

===

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

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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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