A friend recently sent me an MSNBC article about Trayvon Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, and the trial of George Zimmerman which began last week. As the co-founder of co-parenting101.org and the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce (both in collaboration with my ex-husband), I was particularly struck by a 2012 photo accompanying the article. The photo [...]
Xerox Chief Ursula Burns Predicts ‘Tidal Wave’ of Top Businesswomen
June 14, 2013 | Posted by
Xerox Chief Executive Ursula Burns said the business world would be foolish to ignore the large pool of talented women in America’s colleges. “A tidal wave is coming,” the first female African American chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company told a group at the Prism awards luncheon, a fundraiser for New York University’s [...]
Amid Media Madness, Tiger Pauses to Reflect on Black Golf Pioneers
June 12, 2013 | Posted by
Tiger Woods has a chance to win his fifth U.S. Open this week at the historical Merion Golf Club just outside Philadelphia. The major story lines? He’ll play in an electric group on Thursday and Friday with the No. 2 and No. 3 golfers in the world, Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott. Sergio Garcia, he says, [...]
Bill Cosby: 1st African-American to Co-Star in TV Drama Series
June 10, 2013 | Posted by
Like so many later-comedians, Bill Cosby described himself in school as “the class clown.” Born in 1937, William Henry Cosby worked at several different jobs growing up, including selling produce, stocking shelves in a supermarket, and apprenticing in a shoe repair store. He served four years in the U.S. Navy and later entered Temple University [...]
Will Campbell, Southern White Civil Rights Activist Who Crossed Racial Divide
June 7, 2013 | Posted by
Even a laudatory obituary by Pulitzer-winning journalist Robert D. McFadden in the New York Times doesn’t do justice to the life and times of Will Campbell, a civil rights activist unlike any other. McFadden’s tribute emphasized Campbell’s evident contradictions — “he was a civil rights advocate who drank whiskey with Klansman.” But the essential truth of the man’s life [...]
Misty Copeland: 1st Black Soloist in 20 Years For American Ballet Theatre
June 3, 2013 | Posted by
The prestigious American Ballet Theatre’s first black soloist in twenty years will take the stage this week, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg in the unlikely, groundbreaking life of ballerina Misty Copeland. The 30-year-old beauty hits the stage in “Le Corsaire” at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York on [...]
Air Force’s 1st African-American Female Colonel Buried
May 31, 2013 | Posted by
The first African-American woman to be promoted to colonel in the Air Force was buried on a sultry Wednesday afternoon in Arlington National Cemetery, surrounded by scores of airmen in dress blues and about a dozen friends and family in somber summer suits and within sight of the soaring Air Force Memorial. Ruth Alice Lucas, [...]
Black Women Lawyers Mentor High School Students in LA
May 29, 2013 | Posted by
The first of its kind, the Black Women Lawyer’s Association of Los Angeles (BWLA) launched a mentorship program at Susan Miller Dorsey High School to bridge a gap between students and working professionals. Earlier this month, more than a dozen lawyers with different specialties from criminal law to public sectors, gathered at the Los Angeles campus to [...]
Olivia Ferguson McQueen, Civil Rights Pioneer, Receives Diploma 54 Years Late
May 27, 2013 | Posted by
Olivia Ferguson McQueen received her high school diploma on Saturday, 54 years after finishing high school in a tiny room at the Charlottesville School Board office. In 1958, at age 16, McQueen was the principal plaintiff in a successful lawsuit to integrate Charlottesville City Schools. Despite her victory, McQueen spent her senior year sequestered from [...]
Edward Brooke, 1st African-American Senator Since Reconstruction
May 24, 2013 | Posted by
Edward Brooke was the first African-American to be elected to the Senate since Reconstruction, when, 85 years earlier, Mississippi’s Blanche Bruce would not be reappointed to his Senate seat. The year was 1966 and the place was Massachusetts and Brooke captured the seat of retiring Senator Leverett Saltonstall in an electorate that was just 3 percent black. That wasn’t the [...]
