Latest news with #NABJ
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Two HBCU students selected for prestegious MIT Fellowship
The post Two HBCU students selected for prestegious MIT Fellowship appeared first on ClutchPoints. North Carolina A&T State University rising seniors Kani'ya Davis and Dasia Garner have been selected as the 2026 HBCU Science Journalism Fellows at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Only 10 students across the country were chosen, including Davis and Garner, who are majoring in mass communication and journalism at the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. As part of MIT's Knight Science Journalism Program, the fellowship supports journalists in developing their knowledge of science, health, technology, and the environment while promoting scientific journalism for the general public. Davis is the managing editor of the university's student-run newspaper, The A&T Register, and the director of community service for the campus branch of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). In addition, she serves as the vice president of Black Period Project, a grassroots group that fights period poverty in the state. She is passionate about social and environmental justice and focuses her reporting on how low-income communities of color are affected by climate change in terms of livelihood and health. 'I'm most excited about learning how to research science-related topics and make them accessible to non-scientists,' said Davis. 'As someone who doesn't have a huge science background, I really want to learn how to make important scientific findings understandable for myself and my community.' Garner is executive producer of Aggie News, the student-run news channel at the university, and director of social media for NABJ. Her coverage of nutritional science is centered on the potential of food as medicine and the role integrative medicine plays in promoting a healthy way of living. 'I am excited to connect with science journalists and bring back engaging ways to tell science-based stories to my community,' said Garner. In June, the fellowship year begins with a week-long MIT scientific journalism summer camp. Students will interact with award-winning scientific journalists, take part in practical workshops, and meet editors from prestigious journals. In order to help fellows produce and pitch science-related stories to national and regional publications, expert scientific journalists will coach them one-on-one over the upcoming academic year. The fellowship compensates for all travel-related costs and comes with a $5,000 stipend. For other journalism students looking for similar opportunities, Davis and Garner both advise keeping contact with professors, taking part in extracurricular learning activities, and maintaining confidence in one's journalistic abilities.
New York Times
08-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Kenneth Walker Dies at 73; His Journalism Bared Apartheid's Brutality
Kenneth Walker, an Emmy Award-winning journalist whose reporting for the ABC News program 'Nightline' helped bring the brutality of South Africa's racist apartheid system to the attention of the American public, propelling it onto the agenda of U.S. policymakers, died on April 11 in Washington. He was 73. His cousin and executor, Jeff Brown, said his death, in a hospital, was caused by a heart attack, It was not widely reported at the time. Mr. Walker's weeklong coverage of South Africa's often brutal policy of racial segregation — produced for 'Nightline' with Ted Koppel, the program's anchor, and a team of reporters — won a 1985 Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding analysis of a news story. It was also awarded an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton. 'In the way that only television can, 'Nightline' revealed for viewers the pain, anguish and rage that suffuses the struggles of this divided country,' the duPont-Columbia citation said. 'Masterfully executed and exquisitely produced, it was perhaps the most powerful, certainly the most extraordinary, television of the year.' The National Association of Black Journalists named Mr. Walker journalist of the year in 1985 for that reporting. The association had already given him an award for his work in print journalism — for his four-part series on apartheid for The Washington Star — and when he won the association's top award for radio journalism in 2001, he became the first person to receive its highest honors for print, television and radio. The association later honored him further, with its Frederick Douglass Lifetime Achievement Award. During his four-decade career, Mr. Walker was a reporter for The Washington Star (from 1969 to 1981, when it folded), for 'Nightline' (from 1981 to 1988) and for NPR, where he served as Africa bureau chief from 1999 to 2002. Mr. Koppel recalled in an interview that Mr. Walker 'was one of a number of African American staffers at 'Nightline' who were gently, and not so gently, pushing for more attention being paid to Nelson Mandela when he was still in jail and was anything but a hero to millions of people, including the president of the United States' (Ronald Reagan at the time). Mr. Walker helped persuade ABC executives to spend about $1 million to send the 'Nightline' production crew to South Africa for several weeks, Mr. Koppel said: 'His legacy is that he was instrumental in helping to convince us that is something we ought to do. The program changed minds in the United States and South Africa, and won more awards than just about any program we've ever done.' But Mr. Walker didn't limit his criticism to other countries. He was also outspoken about racism in America and the special responsibility of Black journalists. In 2021, at the annual round table held by Richard Prince, the former Washington Post reporter and editor who writes the online column Journal-isms, Mr. Walker described the United States as an 'active crime scene' that warranted a United Nations investigation into crimes against humanity because of numerous racist incidents that 'the media, including most Black journalists, are ignoring.' He favored reparations for slavery, and he criticized the negative portrayal of Black people on television and in popular music. He also lamented the scarcity of Black reporters; he wrote in a 2022 Facebook post that racist hiring practices had 'made it impossible for the media to keep the public informed.' Kenneth Reginald Walker was born on Aug. 17, 1951, in Washington. His father, William, was a cabdriver; his mother, Lillie, was a government clerk. After graduating from Archbishop Carroll High School in 1969, he worked at The Washington Star as a copy boy while attending the Catholic University of America on a scholarship. He left school before graduating to support his growing family and became a reporter at The Star. Mr. Walker is survived by two stepsisters, Tabia Berry and Vikki Walker Parson, and three grandchildren. His marriages to Jacquelyn DeMesme and Ra'eesah Moon ended in divorce. A daughter from his first marriage, Maisha Hunter, died in 2017. As a reporter for The Star, Mr. Walker covered the White House and the Supreme Court, and also served as a national and foreign correspondent. While he was still at The Star, he began to work in TV, as the host of a weekend public affairs show on the ABC affiliate in Baltimore, focusing on issues of particular interest to Black viewers. After The Star folded in 1981, he was hired at ABC as general assignment reporter. He went on to cover the White House and the Justice Department for the network. When '60 Minutes' broadcast a segment on apartheid in December 1984, Mr. Walker prodded ABC to also cover racial segregation in South Africa. (The 'Nightline' team that eventually won an Emmy for that coverage included the executive producer, Richard Kaplan; three senior producers, William Moore, Robert Jordan and Betsy West; and two reporters, Mr. Walker and Jeff Greenfield.) 'Blacks in the U.S. wrote and called ABC and the other networks en masse, something that doesn't happen very often,' Mr. Walker was quoted as saying in 'Black Journalists: The NABJ Story' (1997), by Wayne Dawkins. 'Also, Black South African resistance had escalated to the point where it could no longer be ignored.' Mr. Walker later briefly anchored 'USA Today: The Television Series'; produced 'The Jesse Jackson Show,' a syndicated talk show that aired in 1990 and 1991; and founded Lion House Publishing, whose books included 'Black American Witness: Reports From the Front' (1994) by Earl Caldwell, a former reporter for The New York Times. After leaving NPR, Mr. Walker remained in South Africa, where he served as communications director for the humanitarian organization CARE. He returned to Washington in 2015, in need of a kidney transplant. A high school classmate, Charlie Ball, with whom he connected through an alumni group, proved a match and donated a kidney. 'Charlie's gift has also been as much a gift of spirit as one of life,' Mr. Walker said in 2019. 'As a member of the last generation of the civil rights movement, I have spent my life on the front lines of America's continuing struggle with its formerly enslaved citizens. Sometimes it seems as if that struggle is being won. Sometimes not. In my lifetime, it has never seemed more out of reach than it is today, when white supremacist terrorism is growing steadily.'
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Given our history, perhaps Black Greeks should consider name changes for their organizations
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks Nov. 6, 2024, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., after conceding the presidential race to Donald Trump. (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector) In a speech at the University of Minnesota in 2002, the late Randall Robinson, best known for his anti-Apartheid and reparations advocacy, said the following: 'Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote 500 years before Christ that everything Ancient Greece was: its calendar, its division of the year into 12 parts, its language, its math, its science, its gods, its mythology, its carving figures in stone, all of it … had been derived from older civilizations to the south, the civilizations of Egypt and Ethiopia.' Years before I found that speech, I met Asa Hilliard, an educational psychologist and Egyptologist, when he spoke at my church in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1976, Hilliard wrote the introduction for a much-maligned book originally published in 1954 titled 'Stolen Legacy.' The book argued that Greek Philosophy was stolen African philosophy. Given this, and years of reading on these subjects, I've long wondered why Black fraternities and sororities, recently highlighted via the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, haven't dropped Greek letters from their names. Maybe the time has come for this discussion. I'm not attacking Black Greek organizations. Just the opposite. Some of the most consequential people in my life belong to these organizations. My brother is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi. My late journalism professor Samuel Adams, a trailblazing Black journalist and someone I called 'Daddy Sam,' was a member of Omega Psi Phi. Betty Bayé, my colleague at the Louisville Courier-Journal, whom I still call 'Queen' and greet with a peck on her cheek, is a member of Delta Sigma Theta. Bayé shared that while her sorority and the other 'Divine Nine' have Greek letters in their name, the practice is like everything Black people have done in our sojourn here in the West — we reshaped it and made it our own. We changed the culture. 'Some ate high on the hog and gave us the scraps,' she said. 'We took the leavings and created 'Soul Food.' The white folks gave us their version of the Bible to create docile slaves. What did we do? We gave birth to Nat Turner and Black Liberation Theology. We went into newsrooms as suspects unworthy of our jobs. What did we do? We created NABJ to encourage and honor our own.' NABJ is the National Association of Black Journalists. Mentor Charles F. McAfee, the famed Kansas architect and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, sponsored my entrance into Sigma Pi Phi, a professional fraternity also known as the 'Boule,' after college. I didn't follow a traditional path into Black fraternity life (I've been inactive for years), but I have some standing in this discussion. Black Greek Letter Organizations' emergence, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, coincided with 'the rise of Jim Crow laws, the popularity of scientific racism, and widespread racial violence.' Today, the nine BGLOs comprise the National Panhellenic Council. Nationwide, these organizations have created community, mentored young professionals and raised scholarship money. These networks uplift entire communities. But I've felt an incongruity with the organizations maintaining connection to the Greeks, who we know traveled to Africa to study. As the 1990s hip-hop group, The X-Clan, said: 'I am an African, I don't wear Greek. Must I be reminded of a legendary thief who tried to make Greece in comparison to Egypt?' This isn't disparagement. I'm invoking a common paradox for African Americans: managing the 'twoness' that W.E.B. DuBois described of people trying to inhabit a larger, hostile society while retaining a sense of self. I'd experienced this sort of cultural awakening as a young adult. I'd read the 'Autobiography of Malcolm X' before my junior year in college. In my dorm room, I played my mother's old Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. records on a loop. Researching a term paper for my History of American Journalism class, in which we each wrote about the year of our birth, I discovered the Black Panthers and the fire-breathing H. Rap Brown. My campus friends and I brought Malcolm X's widow Betty Shabazz and educator Jawanza Kunjufu to campus. We travelled to Kansas City Kansas to hear Yousef Ben-Jochannan, known as 'Dr. Ben.' I earned a journalism degree with an African and African-American Studies emphasis. In Louisville, where I landed my first post-college job, I joined St. Stephen Baptist Church, still led by the Rev. Kevin W. Cosby, who guided me toward more knowledge. St. Stephen offered an Afrocentric lifestyles ministry, where we could adopt African names. But for my father's pride in our family history, I would have taken the surname 'Makalani,' which among varied definitions means 'writer.' We had a 'Rites of Passage' program for youth that I helped lead. We named our Family Life Center after activist Fanny Lou Hamer. We flew a red, black and green flag out front. But meeting Hilliard there left an indelible mark on Mark. Hilliard introduced me to historian John Henrick Clarke's work. Clarke once famously said it was 'impossible to continue to oppress a consciously historical people.' My fraternity brother named his son Asa after Hilliard. Some Black people reject the term African American. They've argued they've never been to Africa and know nothing of it. They consider themselves American, not African. Still, African Americans have increasingly embraced their African heritage. It is no longer unusual to see Jesus depicted as Black in Black churches. More Black people now wear their hair naturally or braided. They wear Ankhs and Kente cloth. Amid this reawakening, maybe it's time to discuss this name change. A 'Stolen Legacy' review included this passage: 'The greatest crime Europe committed against the world was the intellectual theft of Africa's heritage. Empires were stolen, whole countries snatched and named after pirates, rapists, and swindlers. Palaces and monumental edifices destroyed could be rebuilt, but when you steal a people's cultural patrimony and use it to enslave, colonize and insult them, then you've committed unforgivable acts bordering on sacrilege.' Enslavers tortured our names, language, and culture out of us. Few of us can trace our lineage beyond the slave trade. A name change for Black Greek organizations could help with cultural reformation. I recently ran across a 1963 radio interview with Malcolm X where the interviewer asked about his 'X.' Malcolm explained that enslavers ripped away their captives' names, replacing them with a slave master's surname connoting ownership. 'X' signifies the unknown in mathematics, so he replaced his slave name with 'X.' Malcolm said if you saw a Japanese or Chinese person named Barney Murphy (I inserted a first name), it likely would confuse some folks. The same holds true for African Americans with names like Murphy or O'Kelly or McCormick. These names don't reflect our African origins. They typically reflect the horrors we've endured. The humiliations we suffered. The swaths of history torn away. Why should we wear such names? Exactly. Mark McCormick is the inaugural executive director of the Kansas Black Leadership Council, the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum and chairman of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New Orleans Baby Dolls relearn historic French Creole songs
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) —The origins of New Orleans' most beloved organizations are storied. By the early 1900s, women from New Orleans' Red Light District, 7th Ward Creoles of color along with women of color throughout New Orleans found a unique way to express themselves. They were celebrating femininity and freedom, as well as Mardi Gras. 'Baby' had always been used as a term of endearment, but it would gain a new meaning because, by 1912, the New Orleans Baby Doll tradition was born. These women would parade throughout the city, dancing and singing with a spirit like no other. Krewe of Muses announces 2025 honorary Muse Dr. Kim Vaz-Deville is a historian, author and educator and says, 'It's definitely an African American tradition. Women like the Baby Dolls were a group of women who claimed an independent spirit and nature. They weren't afraid to be on the streets of New Orleans on Mardi Gras day having a good time!' The Nous Foundation is an organization that strives to preserve Francophone culture. Over the last few months, they collaborated with Vaz-Deville on a program to reteach the Louisiana Creole language to the Baby Dolls. Baby Dolls from different groups all over New Orleans came together for the project. The idea is that a select group of Baby Dolls can take the songs and language they learned through the program and teach their individual groups. Rudy Bazenet is the founder of the Nous Foundation and says, 'there was this direct banning of the languages for a long time. It was from 1921 to 1974. It very much meshed with Jim Crow. These laws passed were enshrined in the state's constitution. These laws made it illegal to have Creole or French as the primary language of education. You have very few examples of languages in the United States being banned, to the point, where you block transmission.' NABJ to celebrate 50 years of promoting diversity in newsrooms: A look at its origins The Baby Dolls sang in French and recorded a special album for the National Library of Congress recently, to safeguard the history and legacy of Baby Doll culture. There are many Baby Doll groups in New Orleans. Each group of Baby Dolls has its own style. The heritage is a two-way street. On one side, is the integrity of the old ways and language, on the other side is an innovative renaissance of carnival expression. 'These are women who have satin dresses with bonnets and bloomers who carry umbrellas. The umbrellas weren't something they did in the past. This is a newer innovation. It's a real style and signature piece of contemporary women who mask. They like to put their own signature on their umbrella,' explains pledges to take in sick Palestinian children as Trump backpedals on aid threat Judge adjusts ruling blocking Musk, DOGE from Treasury Department payment systems New Orleans Baby Dolls relearn historic French Creole songs King of Jordan urges patience as Trump presses Gaza takeover Durbin calls for investigation into Patel's role in FBI firings Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
