Caf's Executive Committee votes not to renew the mandate of Fifa's Fatma Samoura who had been working as General Delegate for Africa for the past six months.
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Sunday, February 2, 2020
5 Moments In Black History That Will Motivate You to Accomplish Career Success
Imagine being treated less than human, with no civil rights or no choice in the type of work you perform, all while earning less than minimum wage and oftentimes nothing at all. Being restricted from knowing how to read, write, learn, or even dream of a life beyond mental and physical enslavement.
Black history can be upsetting but it can also be encouraging. Consider the accomplishments of so many under so much racism and strife. Black History Month symbolizes progression in the black community.
African Americans are in a position to make decisions of their choice when it comes to their career pursuits. We must take advantage of the resources that are available to us, and be proactive when it comes to obtaining employment. So whether you’re a nine-to-fiver, business owner, freelancer, etc., the key is to stay motivated and practice consistency so that you can succeed.
Here are five black history reminders to keep you motivated as you pursue your own career goals.
- Carter G. Woodson encouraged the study of black history when he founded Black History Week in 1926. His work left such a long-lasting impression that in 1976, Black History became a federally recognized celebratory month. As a result of Dr. Woodson pursuing his passion and advocating for a cause beyond himself, others recognized it and supported it, which ultimately accomplished his goal.
- Frederick McKinley Jones received over 60 patents during the course of his career pertaining to refrigeration technologies as well as others related to X-ray machines, engines, and sound equipment. He is most notable for his design of a portable air-cooling unit for trucks carrying perishable food. An orphan with little education, he was able to defy the odds. He found work doing odd jobs as a janitor in an automobile shop where he developed an interest for auto mechanics. He worked daily and studied his craft in his spare time. Jones is a great example of not letting your circumstances limit your ambition.
- Black Wall Street was an affluent black community in the early 1900s located in the Greenwood district neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. At a time when segregation was at an all-time high, the community opened their own highly successful schools, churches, theaters, and nightclubs. Today, African Americans have the option to start their own businesses, pursue career opportunities of their choice, and patronize businesses of their choice. Let this piece of history serve as motivation for you to design and create what you wish existed and be certain to utilize your network to build and create it.
- Anne Lowe was the first credited African American fashion designer. Lowe was born in 1898 in Clayton, Alabama, during the Jim Crow era. However, due to her grandmother and mother being great dressmakers, her family moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and started their own business. Lowe was a natural at her craft and later attended design school in New York City, although she was segregated from her white classmates. After finishing design school, she reopened her business. Lowe is famously known for creating Jacqueline Kennedy’s wedding dress. Let this be motivation for you to use your natural talents and gifts to create a growing career.
- President Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States and the first African American to serve in this role. He accomplished something that many believed would never be done. Let this be motivation to you that regardless of what others may think of your dreams, don’t allow it to affect the vision that you have for yourself. Keep working to make your vision a reality.
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on February 7, 2018
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The 18 Best Black Books of All Time for Black History Month
Black History Month is underway, and black people are getting all the feels that come with historical blackness. The month of February signifies a celebration of all things black. Together, we collectively acknowledge the African American experience—dating back to 1619 when the first enslaved African pressed his feet onto American soil. It is only right to pay homage to our ancestors’ malleability, black excellence, and those who have impacted our history as well as the culture. It is also a good time to soak up all the unknown stories and marvels of our heritage. Plenty is surfacing online via social media. However, black books are the ultimate source to immerse ourselves in the resilience and wonderment of blackness past and present.
18 Best Black Books for Black History Month
1. Incidents in the Life Of A Slave Girl
This slave narrative by Harriet Ann Jacobs was originally published in 1861 just as the American Civil War began. Jacobs fictionalized her own story on the horrors of slave life as a young girl, specifically one having to deal with the sexual harassment projected by her slaveholder and the physical violence of his jealous wife.
Incidents in the Life Of A Slave Girl, Thayer & Eldridge
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2. The Marrow of Tradition
Charles W. Chesnutt was a prolific black writer who could very well pass for white but refused to. This historical text, published at the turn of the century, depicts the Wilmington Race Riots in 1898. It focuses on racial politics, violence, and blackface during Reconstruction, and sadly, echoes events happening today.
The Marrow of Tradition, Haughton, Mifflin, and Company
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3.The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man
James Weldon Johnson, the creator of the black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice And Sing,” shares the story of being raised by a black mother, but also believing that he was as white as his school-age peers due to his biracial heritage. His loss of innocence comes as he is discriminated against by his teacher. Throughout the text, Johnson gives firsthand accounts and observations of occupying two racial spaces, fitting into neither, yet being forced to choose one.
The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man, Sherman, French & Co.
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4. Mules and Men
Zora Neale Hurston flexes her anthropology chops in this book that published in 1935. She gathers and documents cultural information from her native Florida, and New Orleans, and brings forth the beauty of common folk; their voice, their diction, their living, their way.
Mules and Men, Harper Collins
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5. Invisible Man
This existential text told the story of a lone, nameless black man navigating a white world and, eventually, we find him so isolated from society to align and protect himself from the powers that be. It is an allegory for the entire black race, which is mistreated, objectified, commodified, and cast aside in such a way that it may as well be invisible.
The Invisible Man, Random House
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6. Go Tell It On The Mountain
Christianity has close ties to the black American experience, and in many instances it is inextricable. Baldwin puts the beauty and the problematic on the page by way of a young man attempting to negotiate being black, religious, unloved, and possibly gay. Go Tell It On The Mountain is an exploration of identity and migration.
Go Tell It On The Mountain, Knopf
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7. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
We are blessed to have this book in the world. Alex Haley documented X’s life-changing story for two years prior to his assassination. The book posthumously was published in 1965.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ballantine Books
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8. Dopefiend
Long before the crack era of the 1980s, heroine wreaked havoc on black communities. Donald Goines, a brilliant writer of street literature captures the pain of addiction perfectly.
Dopefiend, Holloway House
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9. Roots
Alex Haley’s family tree is the context for Roots. It tells the story of his matriarchal forefather’s journey from Africa, through the middle passage, and through chattel slavery and is carried on by his descendants. The text was integral to African Americans wanting to know their family roots, and sparking interest in genealogy.
Roots, Doubleday
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10. For colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf
Ntozake Shange took the Black Arts movement by storm when her collection of choreopoems hit theaters. These monologues are rooted in black feminism and speak specifically to the intersectionality of race and sexism black women experience.
For colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, Bantam Books
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11. Song of Solomon
This Nobel Prize-winning book traces the history of a black family and shows the nuance and complexity of black community rarely highlighted in mainstream literature—through Morrison’s remarkable storytelling and beautiful words.
Song of Solomon, Alfred Knopf
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12. The Color Purple
If there has ever been a story told about black trauma, toxic masculinity, and survival, The Color Purple by Alice Walker will likely come up. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book made it to the big screen three years after its 1982 publishing date.
The Color Purple, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
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13. How to Succeed in Business Without Being White: Straight Talk on Making It in America
This list would be remiss without this text from BLACK ENTERPRISE founder and publisher Earl G. Graves Sr. His shoot-from-the-hip commentary on what it takes to be a great, black entrepreneur in a white world is just the prescription the black business world needs.
How to Succeed in Business Without Being White: Straight Talk on Making It in America, Harper Collins
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14. The Coldest Winter Ever
The cold, harsh reality of drug culture bleeds off these pages. It effectively captures the allure of the game while serving its consequences as well.
The Coldest Winter Ever, Simon & Schuster
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15. The New Jim Crow
Mass incarceration has long plagued the black community. While representing just 13% of the nation’s population, black people make up 40% of the prison population. Michelle Alexander links this disparity to the war on drugs created to militarize police and fracture black communities, but also exposes its lasting effect as well as its ongoing nature.
The New Jim Crow, The New Press
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16. The Underground Railroad
If you ever thought the Underground Railroad was an actual railroad when growing up, don’t feel ashamed. Colson Whitehead puts that perspective in play in this Pulitzer Prize-winning, historical text. It is a refreshing fictional look at slavery.
The Underground Railroad, Doubleday
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17. The World According To Fannie Davis
Numbers playing is a part of the black culture that is common, yet elusive. The life of a black woman numbers runner is written alongside the historical events and the backdrop of black Detroit.
The World According To Fannie Davis, St. Martin’s Press
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18. Heavy: An American Memoir
This is the story of a life filled with contradictions, tragedy, and resilience. Kiese Laymon lays out parts of his life in intricate detail, taking the reader through observations of a range violence committed against black folk and a range of violence committed by them as well. This memoir is a reckoning of the internal and external conflict with, in and around blackness.
Heavy: An American Memoir, Simon & Schuster
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Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on February 14, 2019
Please note: Black Enterprise makes a small commission when you purchase one of these products via the embedded Amazon links.
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Saturday, February 1, 2020
Singing for joy and service
Swarna Jeewajee grew up loving music — she sings in the shower and blasts music that transports her to a happy state. But until this past year, she never felt confident singing outside her bedroom.
Now, the senior chemistry and biology major spends her Saturdays singing around the greater Boston area, at hospitals, homes for the elderly, and rehabilitation centers, with the a cappella group she co-founded, Singing For Service.
Jeewajee says she would not have been able to sing in front of people without the newfound confidence that came after she had transformative ear surgery in the spring of 2018.
Jeewajee grew up in Mauritius, a small island off the east coast of Madagascar, where she loved the water and going swimming. When she was around 8 years old, she developed chronic ear infections as a result of a cholesteatoma, which caused abnormal skin growth in her middle ear.
It took five years and three surgeries for the doctors in Mauritius to diagnose what had happened to Jeewajee’s ear. She spent some of her formative years at the hospital instead of leading a normal childhood and swimming at the beach.
By the time Jeewajee was properly diagnosed and treated, she was told her hearing could not be salvaged, and she had to wear a hearing aid.
“I sort of just accepted that this was my reality,” she says. “People used to ask me what the hearing aid was like — it was like hearing from headphones. It felt unnatural. But it wasn’t super hard to get used to it. I had to adapt to it.”
Eventually, the hearing aid became a part of Jeewajee, and she thought everything was fine. During her first year at MIT, she joined Concourse, a first-year learning community which offers smaller classes to fulfill MIT’s General Institute Requirements, but during her sophomore year, she enrolled in larger lecture classes. She found that she wasn’t able to hear as well, and it was a problem.
“When I was in high school, I didn’t look at my hearing disability as a disadvantage. But coming here and being in bigger lectures, I had to acknowledge that I was missing out on information,” Jeewajee says.
Over the winter break of her sophomore year, her mother, who had been living in the U.S. while Jeewajee was raised by her grandmother in Mauritius, convinced Jeewajee to see a specialist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital. That’s when Jeewajee encountered her role model, Felipe Santos, a surgeon who specializes in her hearing disorder.
Jeewajee had sought Santos’ help to find a higher-performing hearing aid, but instead he recommended a titanium implant to restore her hearing via a minimally invasive surgery. Now, Jeewajee does not require a hearing aid at all, and she can hear equally well from both ears.
“The surgery helped me with everything. I used to not be able to balance, and now I am better at that. I had no idea that my hearing affected that,” she says.
These changes, she says, are little things. But it’s the little things that made a large impact.
“I gained a lot more confidence after the surgery. In class, I was more comfortable raising my hand. Overall, I felt like I was living better,” she says.
This feeling is what brought Jeewajee to audition for the a cappella group. She never had any formal training in singing, but in January, during MIT’s Independent Activities Period, her friend mentioned that she wanted to start an a cappella group and convinced Jeewajee to help her launch Singing For Service.
Jeewajee describes Singing For Service as her “fun activity” at MIT, where she can just let loose. She is a soprano singer, and the group of nine to 12 students practices for about three hours a week before their weekly performances. They prepare three songs for each show; a typical lineup is a Disney melody, Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up,” and a mashup from the movie “The Greatest Showman.”
Her favorite part is when they take song requests from the audience. For example, Singing For Service recently went to a home for patients with multiple sclerosis, who requested songs from the Beatles and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” After the performance, the group mingles with the audience, which is one of Jeewajee’s favorite parts of the day.
She loves talking with patients and the elderly. Because Jeewajee was a patient for so many years growing up, she now wants to help people who are going through that type of experience. That is why she is going into the medical field and strives to earn an MD-PhD.
“When I was younger, I kind of always was at the doctor’s office. Doctors want to help you and give you a treatment and make you feel better. This aspect of medicine has always fascinated me, how someone is literally dedicating their time to helping you. They don’t know you, they’re not family, but they’re here for you. And I want to be there for someone as well,” she says.
Jeewajee says that because she grew up with a medical condition that was poorly understood, she wants to devote her career to search for answers to tough medical problems. Perhaps not surprisingly, she has gravitated toward cancer research.
She discovered her passion for this field after her first year at MIT, when she spent the summer conducting research in a cancer hospital in Lyon, through MISTI-France. There, she experienced an “epiphany” as she watched scientists and physicians come together to fight cancer, and was inspired to do the same.
She cites the hospital’s motto, “Chercher et soigner jusqu’à la guérison,” which means “Research and treat until the cure,” as an expression of what she will aspire to as a physician-scientist.
Last summer, while working at The Rockefeller University investigating mechanisms of resistance to cancer therapy, she developed a deeper appreciation for how individual patients can respond differently to a particular treatment, which is part of what makes cancer so hard to treat. Upon her return at MIT, she joined the Hemann lab at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, where she conducts research on near-haploid leukemia, a subtype of blood cancer. Her ultimate goal is to find a vulnerability that may be exploited to develop new treatments for these patients.
The Koch Institute has become her second home on MIT’s campus. She enjoys the company of her labmates, who she says are good mentors and equally passionate about science. The walls of the lab are adorned with science-related memes and cartoons, and amusing photos of the team’s scientific adventures.
Jeewajee says her work at the Koch Institute has reaffirmed her motivation to pursue a career combining science and medicine.
“I want to be working on something that is challenging so that I can truly make a difference. Even if I am working with patients for whom we may or may not have the right treatment, I want to have the capacity to be there for them and help them understand and navigate the situation, like doctors did for me growing up,” Jeewajee says.
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Black History Month Facts of the Day: Feb 1st
On every single day of Black History Month this February, we will provide you with a daily fact that occurred on the same day in a past year in history.
Today’s Black History Month facts focus on the great Langston Hughes and countless other individuals and events.
Check out the facts below:
– In 1902 on this day in black history, one of the most famous poets, Langston Hughes was born in the year 1902. Hughes came from the Harlem Renaissance, the early stages of the Black Arts Movement.
– In 1965 on this day in black history, the Selma, Alabama demonstration ends in 700 arrest, including the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
– In 1967 on this day in black history, legendary poet Langston Hughes passed away at the age of 1862 – District of Columbia abolishes slavery
– In 1974 on this day in black history, the legendary show “Good Times” premiered on TV.
– In 1997 on this day in black history, the first 24-hour black movie channel BET Holdings and Encore Media Corp., launched BET Movie/Starz, the first 24-hour black movie channel.
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