Latest news with #AssociationfortheStudyofAfricanAmericanLifeandHistory
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Meet Nannie Helen Burroughs, a lesser-known Black labor activist
(NewsNation) — This Black History Month, 'African Americans and Labor' is the front and center theme put forth by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin are well-known figures celebrated during Black History Month, but by highlighting labor this year, the association hopes to educate people about lesser-known activists like Nannie Helen Burroughs. Dr. Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, an associate professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, told NewsNation the lesser-known activist is 'one of the most influential Black labor leaders of the 20th century.' 'Most labor movement histories highlight the contributions of white men and sometimes even white women, but Black women have been fighting for labor rights since slavery,' Phillips-Cunningham said. 'And Nannie Helen Burroughs continued that tradition.' Nannie Helen Burroughs, born in Virginia around 1880 to a formerly enslaved couple, was a lifelong educator and labor activist. She and her mother moved to Washington, D.C., following her father's passing, where she attended and excelled in school. In Washington, she met other like-minded Black women like Anna J. Cooper and Mary Church Terrell, both notable suffragettes in their own right. 'Although Nannie Helen Burroughs is not known by many people, it is very important that we know her story, especially regarding the overlapping Civil Rights Movement and the labor rights movement,' Phillips-Cunningham said. Burroughs founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in 1909, giving Black women access to an education not led by white missionaries. This was especially important as racism infiltrated scientific ideas of the time, with claims that Black women 'were incapable of learning academic subjects' or working outside of domestic service or sharecropping. Burroughs rejected that notion, according to Phillips-Cunningham, and her school featured 'an extensive curriculum that offered a litany of academic subjects.' With a certification in domestic science from Burroughs' school, women were able to leverage their employers for better working conditions and a living wage. 'Burroughs had this saying that really drove her curriculum,' Phillips-Cunningham said. 'She said, 'We must idealize the real before we realize the ideal.'' Other courses included horticulture, stenography, beauty culture, printing and more. 'She was sending a loud message to the labor market and to the U.S. political economy, and saying, 'Hey, Black women are skilled workers, and they should be hired for any position that they want to have and that they are qualified for,'' Phillips-Cunningham said. Though Burroughs passed away in 1961, Phillips-Cunningham believes she 'directly influenced the Civil Rights Act of 1964.' 'She laid an important foundation for that act, which outlawed employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex and nationality,' Phillips-Cunningham said, adding that Burroughs impacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. For Phillips-Cunningham, Burroughs' impact on the educational world hits close to home. 'It's women like her that paved the way for women like me,' she said. 'Without Burroughs and other women like her, I wouldn't have a Ph.D, and many other Black women wouldn't either.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How AI, federal job cuts could impact Black workforce
(NewsNation) — Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a crowded room of union workers back in 1961, warning the rise of automation would disproportionately impact African Americans in the auto industry. 'Automation cannot be permitted to become a blind monster which grinds out more cars and simultaneously snuffs out the hopes and lives of the people by whom the industry was built,' he said. Nearly half a century later, as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History celebrates its 2025 Black History Month theme, 'African Americans and Labor,' artificial intelligence is stoking similar fears. 'I feel that kind of the next large struggle for, especially the Black labor force in the country, is in these ongoing discussions around artificial intelligence and how it'll impact the American workforce at large,' said Christian Collins, a policy analyst at The Center for Law and Social Policy. He told NewsNation the tenets of King's speech ring true today, including that tech innovations like AI cut costs without 'concern for the humanity of the workers.' 'The indispensable nature of Black labor has always been requisite to the development and wealth of the United States, to the point that it is valued more than the lives of the Black people performing the work,' Collins wrote earlier this February. Black-owned pie shop celebrates 40 years in business In 2024, nearly 60% of U.S. companies implemented software, equipment or technology to automate tasks previously done by employees, a survey from Duke University and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Richmond found. Goldman Sachs estimates that 'roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation.' Collins and other experts worry that AI — and federal job cuts from the Trump administration — will impact the Black workforce disproportionately. King's automation concerns were mainly targeted toward blue-collar workers, but the newest tech innovations are putting white-collar jobs at risk as well. Tasks in office and administrative support roles — bookkeepers, customer service representatives, office clerks — are especially likely to be automated, a recent Brookings Institution report posited. Other professions like insurance underwriters, tax preparers and legal secretaries also face high automation risk. Fighting for the Right to Fight: The National WWII Museum's dedication to Black soldiers Estimates from the McKinsey Global Institute point to the overrepresentation of African Americans in three categories — office support, food services and production work — all of which are likely to be first displaced. The institute's calculations found that African Americans have one of the highest rates of potential job loss by 2030, with a 23.1% displacement rate. 'Even though AI is such a popular topic now and has been for quite some time, that's not really what's being discussed, either publicly in regards to AI or, honestly, even in some of the private policy decision rooms,' Collins said. President Donald Trump and his tech billionaire ally Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency, have targeted civil servants in an effort to slash federal workforce sizes. DOGE launched an overhaul of government to save what he claims could be trillions of dollars. The Trump administration faces a myriad of legal challenges questioning the White House's unilateral ability to cut spending. Dr. Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, an associate professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, said the recent orders have 'significantly rolled back and threatened' what 'Black labor leaders fought for.' 'The targeting of federal workers is a targeting of Black people,' Phillips-Cunningham said. 'As we know, people from many different races are employed by the federal government, but the federal government is an area of employment where a lot of Black people work.' Pew Research data shows that the federal workforce relatively mirrors the overall workforce makeup, though with two notable exceptions: A bigger share of federal workers are Black — 18.6% compared to 12.8% nationally, while a smaller share is Hispanic or Latino (10.5% vs. 19.5%). Phillips-Cunningham said some of the president's orders violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically in regard to employment discrimination. 'This is why labor organizers and labor unions are at the forefront of lawsuits filed against the presidential administration,' she explained. 'Because a lot of what labor leaders have fought for are being threatened and dismantled as we speak.' NewsNation's Michael Ramsey and Andrew Dorn contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
2025 Black History Month theme recognizes labor activists
(NewsNation) — 'African Americans and Labor' is the 2025 Black History Month theme, dictated by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History to highlight the ways that work has intersected with 'the collective experiences of Black people.' Labor is a fraught topic, often evoking images of slavery, sharecropping and segregation, of unpaid labor that moves the country forward with no thanks. ASALH defines work as all 'free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary' positions. Lost recording of MLK speech resurfaces decades later Two years ago, a policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, Christian Collins, wrote, 'Black labor is the cornerstone of U.S. global hegemony.' This year, he told NewsNation that's as true as ever. The United States' current prestige, says Collins, is thanks to the 'uncompensated and undercompensated' labor of Black communities throughout the nation's history. 'It's pretty easy to grow economic profit, especially for high value crops like cotton, like tobacco, if you're not paying the workers who are maintaining those crops,' Collins said. Labor has been a catalyst for societal change and civil rights victories throughout United States history, from labor strikes to the organization of unions. 'When you think about some of the events that really changed the course of American history, it can't be told without the role of the labor movement,' said Ryan Jones, director of History, Interpretation and Curatorial Services at the National Civil Rights Museum. One of the most iconic public addresses of all time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream,' was delivered during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The labor conditions in Memphis, Tennessee, got the reverend involved in the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike. King would later be assassinated during his April 1968 trip to Memphis, just one week before then-President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 into law. Why is Black History Month in February? One century ago, another prominent labor organizer, A. Philip Randolph, established the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. It was the first Black labor union to be recognized by the American Federation of Labor. Randolph tied Black labor to the Civil Rights Movement by establishing that 'the most effective weapon against racism is solidarity,' said Collins. Randolph, who called for the 1941 March on Washington alongside Bayard Rustin, also fought for desegregation in the armed forces and fair working opportunities for African Americans. His efforts forced President Franklin D. Roosevelt's hand, leading to the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee. 'The solidarity that he built in specific labor advocacy really laid the like help lay the early groundwork for how leaders after him would follow, like Martin Luther King, like Medgar Evers,' Collins said. Black-owned pie shop celebrates 40 years in business A lesser-known labor activist, Nannie Helen Burroughs, founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in 1909, giving Black women access to an education not led by white missionaries. Dr. Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, an associate professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, credits Burroughs' tenacity and dedication to academia as a legitimizing factor for many Black women in the 20th century. With a certification in domestic science from Burroughs' school, women were able to leverage their employers for better working conditions and a living wage. 'Burroughs had this saying that really drove her curriculum,' Phillips-Cunningham explained. 'She said, 'We must idealize the real before we realize the ideal.'' As of 2023, more than 21 million Black Americans were in the United States labor force, roughly 13% of the nation's workers. A 2023 Pew Research poll found that while workers' experiences were varied, there were some major takeaways that shed light on the African American workplace experience. Black workers were abundant in certain jobs, like postal service clerks (40.4%), nursing assistants (36.0%) and transit and intercity bus drivers (36.6%), Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2022 shows. Chicago bookstore bridging literacy gap for minority students In turn, they're underrepresented in some agricultural and STEM fields, with earlier surveys pointing to barriers in those fields regarding discrimination and lack of mentors. Pew data also found that Black Americans are the most likely to report being discriminated against — around 25% of respondents said their race or ethnicity makes it harder to succeed in the workplace. Black workers also, in general, earn less than the average American worker among all education levels, BLS data revealed. The next steps, and maybe the next frontier for Black labor movements, are on the horizon, multiple experts told NewsNation. Collins pointed to artificial intelligence as the 'next large struggle' for the Black labor force, telling NewsNation, 'I feel that kind of the next large struggle for, especially the Black labor force in the country, is in these ongoing discussions around artificial intelligence and how it'll impact the American workforce at large.' Phillips-Cunningham warned that recent executive orders from the Trump administration could also be threatening labor progress. She said the orders have 'significantly rolled back and threatened' what 'Black labor leaders fought for.' David Walker: Boston's impassioned abolitionist author Whether it's tech innovations or political motivations, moving forward and making change requires an acknowledgment of the past, said Jones. 'It could be a difficult history to interpret and to comprehend, but it happened, you know? And so I think that we'll be going backward if we don't acknowledge those stories in the manner that they occurred,' Jones said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Diversity, equity and inclusion are values worth saving. Let's raise our voices.
As faith and community leaders, we come together in this moment to remember history and challenge the present and fight for the future. During Black History Month, we reflect on the enduring struggle for freedom, justice and dignity – and we know that we cannot separate our past from our present reality. The attack on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) by the current administration is not just political; it is a moral failing. It is an attempt to erase hard-fought progress, to silence truth-telling and to reassert a system that has for too long privileged a few at the expense of the many. We have seen this playbook before. More: Sociology's 'woke ideology' no longer a general education course at Florida universities The same forces that once justified segregation, voter suppression and economic disparity are now repackaging those injustices under the guise of 'merit' – as if America has ever functioned on an unbiased, level playing field. But let us be clear: the dismantling of DEI is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to entrench inequity and white supremacy. Just as the words 'End Racism' were quietly removed from the end zone during the recent Super Bowl game, this administration seeks to strip away efforts that foster belonging, justice and repair. They call for unity, yet their actions divide. They speak of fairness, yet their policies exclude. The message is clear: Diversity is a threat. Equity must be undone. Inclusion is expendable. But we refuse to be silent. The legendary Black author James Baldwin once wrote, 'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.' This moment demands that we face the truth: racism and exclusion are not relics of the past – they are realities shaping our present. To dismantle DEI is to deny the truth of this nation's history and to betray its future. Indeed, this is the work that the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and the subsequent Manasota Branch strives to do as they promote the teaching of accurate Black history and to confront legislation ostensibly passed to protect children from feeling guilty for slavery and its attendant horrors. We believe the truthful, age-appropriate teaching of our history is essential for all children. DEI is not a threat to this nation; it is its redemption. Our strength has never been found in uniformity but in the boldness of our diversity. A nation that acknowledges past harms and builds policies that uplift historically marginalized communities is a nation that thrives. When Black voices, immigrant voices, Indigenous voices, queer voices and all voices from the margins are heard, we are all stronger. As faith and community leaders, we declare unequivocally that DEI is not just a political strategy – it is a moral imperative. It is a reflection of our deepest values: that all people are created with inherent dignity, that justice requires action and that our faith envisions the world as one of equity, not exclusion. So today, in the face of these attacks, we lift our voices not in despair but in defiant hope. We call on our communities to speak out, to resist and to defend the sacred work of inclusion. We urge businesses, schools, places of worship and civic institutions to refuse to cave to the pressures of whitewashing history and restricting diversity initiatives. We will not allow the progress of the past to be erased. We will sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. And together, we will march on till victory is won. This guest column was jointly authored by the following Sarasota-area faith and community leaders: David G. Wilkins, Manasota ASALH Rev. Alex G. Evangelista, pastor, Pine Shores Presbyterian Church Rev. Dr. Wes Bixby, pastor, First Congregational UCC Rev. Ashley Nicolls, pastor, St. Paul Lutheran Church Rev. Dr. Laurie Etter, SURE, co-chair Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen, pastor, Faith Lutheran Church Mel Gosselin, executive director, ALSO Youth Rev. Ryan McBride, pastor, 12 Springs Church Karlenna (KK) Burchell, Harvest Sarasota Church Rev Stephen Hoffman, United Methodist Clergy Rev. Dr. Paul T. Reiter, Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Clergy The Rev. Carla McCook, St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church The Rev. Wayne F. Farrell, St. Boniface Episcopal Church Rev. Dr. Mary Alice Mulligan, minister, St. Andrew United Church of Christ JT Priar, young adult minister, Church of the Trinity MCC Dr. John W. Walker, Jr., retired pastor, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Rev. Jay Wolin, Minister, Unitarian Universalists of Sarasota Rev. Elder Lillie Brock, senior pastor, Church of the Trinity MCC Rabbi Jennifer Singer, Liberal Yeshiva Kristopher Wise, United Methodist Church Rev. Sarah Robles Wise, United Methodist Clergy Rev. Dr. Jeff Jones, retired seminary professor, Andover Newton Rev. Dr. Tim Boggess, pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Sarasota This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Destroying DEI is about restoring white supremacy | Opinion
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
KCAU 9's Honoring Black History special
KCAU 9 is celebrating the highlighting siouxland's African-American history-makers of Siouxland, both past and present with a Honoring Black History Special. Watch a replay of KCAU 9's Honoring Black History special in the player above. While Black History Month was first designated in 1976 by President Gerald Ford, the history of the month dates back almost a century, and the way it is celebrated and evolved has created history in itself. Black History Month wasn't always a monthlong celebration. Historian and author Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week in February 1926. The weeklong celebration efforted to teach people about African-American history and the contributions of Black people. This effort was made under the umbrella of an organization he founded in September 1915 called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, or ASALH. Why is Black History Month the shortest of the year? The celebratory week was set in February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln. Douglass, whose birthday is Feb. 14, was an escaped slave and influential abolitionist. His 1845 autobiography is still taught in U.S. schools today. Lincoln, born Feb. 12, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all enslaved people free in the Confederate states. After Woodson passed away in 1950, the members of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, which Dr. Woodson was a member of, did a lot of groundwork to encourage celebrating the week. The fraternity was also responsible for the push to extend the celebrations to a full month. Eventually, in 1976, President Gerald Ford became the first president to issue a message recognizing the month. Stories highlighting local impacts can be found below. The Sioux City Ghosts softball team entertained crowds from Iowa to the west coast, Canada and Mexico from 1925 to 1956. They were dubbed the 'Harlem Globetrotters' of softball. Click here to read the full story. Sandra Pearson and her husband Andrew have dedicated their free time to bringing unity and harmony to Siouxland. While some may not have heard about the MLK choir, it's been around for over 40 years. Click here to read the full story. Black-owned businesses are thriving across America, and the same is true in Siouxland. While some are home-grown, others are adding to our culinary landscape with recipes form afar. Click here to read the full story. For more stories about Black History Month, visit our Honoring Black History page. The Associated Press contributed to this story. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
