Executive director, Sankofa Community Development Corporation, Lower Ninth Ward After Rashida Ferdinand earned her master’s degree in ceramics, she considered moving to New York for its energy and professional opportunities. “But I wanted to also be in a warm environment, physically and culturally,” she says. “Being around blue, purple, yellow houses. Being around my family. My grandmother was getting older. So it was a no-brainer.” … Continue reading Rashida Ferdinand
Rosina Philippe, an elder from the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe, resides in Grand Bayou Indian Village, an Indigenous community facing environmental challenges. As traditional food sources diminish and storms increase, she emphasizes the importance of policy inclusion for community input and inspires others to advocate for their heritage and future. Continue reading Rosina Philippe
Ebony Woodruff, an agricultural attorney from Chalmette, Louisiana, uses her legal expertise to combat Black land loss, a legacy of discrimination and heirs’ property issues. Inspired by her professors, she combines her passion for food and civil rights, helping families retain land and raise awareness about systemic injustices in agriculture. Continue reading Ebony Woodruff
This year we partnered with the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) as they were working to build deeper conversations around race and how to be a more welcoming, inclusive community. Dr. King famously said that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours in Christian America. And as a member of the ELCA, I can … Continue reading included or excluded?
We’ve been working in North Minneapolis the past few weeks. A partnership with Northside Culture and the Center for Leadership and Neighborhood Engagement. We installed our American Stories exhibit to set the stage for storytelling, then we held several community studios and invited people to respond to the question, “When have you found strength in the midst of struggle?” People shared stories of losing loved … Continue reading Strength
There’s so much to share from this conference I attended in New Orleans last week. NCORE is the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education. Thousands of DEI professionals, practitioners, and activists convened on the edge of the French Quarter to learn, connect and compare notes. It’s an interesting time to be doing this work. In some ways, more people than ever are … Continue reading NCORE
Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar is chief of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. She has spent decades helping her community fight for federal recognition of their tribe and finding resilient solutions to the political and environmental challenges that have seen their traditional lands literally wash away into the Gulf of Mexico. We did this interview on the front porch, on a windy … Continue reading Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar
April Grayson was born and raised in Mississippi. She left the state after college and returned again 10 years later to tell stories about her home state and, in particular, about the Civil Rights Movement and the history of race in Mississippi through oral history and documentary films. April is the director of Community & Capacity Building at the Alluvial Collective, formerly the William Winter … Continue reading April Grayson
Last night, Karen and I went to see Till, the movie of the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till. It is a powerful retelling of a difficult and important story in our nation’s history. I’ve been twice to the site where Emmett Till’s body was found , and I wrote about it in Portraits of Peace, Searching for Hope in a Divided America. The passage below … Continue reading Till
Afton Thomas is the Associate Director for Programs at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. Afton talks about Oxford as the progressive south, and the importance of continuing to share stories of the past so we can live better today and in the future. At the time of this interview, Afton’s involvement and voice in the community … Continue reading Afton Thomas
