Standing on the shoulders of Black Legends

On Saturday, Feb. 17, I will be among several individuals inducted into the 2024 Class of the Black Legends of Silicon Valley. This is quite an honor. Previous recipients in the News and Documentary category in which I am being honored include journalists with stellar credentials. Loretta Green, an award-winning reporter for several local papers and a former columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, has been a mentor and role model, not only for her work as a journalist but as someone who is well regarded for her community service. David Early, another seasoned award-winning editor and writer whom I also have looked up to since I arrived in the Bay Area, is a previous Legend. Henrietta Burroughs, executive director of the East Palo Alto Center for Community Media, is 2018 winner of this award and someone I deeply admire for her commitment to the East Palo Alto and Belle Haven communities.

The award recognizes my work as a journalist and communications professional including Essence magazine, where I wrote and edited articles on a variety of subjects, including careers, relationships and travel. At the Boston Globe, my editorials effected policy changes in city and state education reform, child welfare, domestic violence and community development. I also wrote editorials, op-ed articles and features on Haiti and South Africa.

This recognition also honors my community service. In addition to my work at Stanford and in journalism, my significant contributions in Silicon Valley have been in the nonprofit and educational advocacy space. I currently serve as vice president of the board of the Pear Theatre, a performance theater based in Mountain View, Calif. The Pear strives to amplify diverse voices through the performing arts. I served for several years as a board member and board president of Foundation for a College Education, an organization based in East Palo Alto, Calif. that is committed to college access and success. In 2005,  I co-founded the Parent Network for Students of Color, an advocacy group for students attending the Palo Alto Unified School District. That organization has evolved into Parent Advocates for Student Success. I was a founding board member of the Girls’ Middle School, when it was established in 1998, with a core vision  of recruiting and retaining high-achieving girls from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.

We live in an age in which journalists are verbally denigrated as purveyors of “fake news,” and politicians insult our intelligence with “alternative facts.” Journalists across the world are physically assaulted and even killed simply for trying to do their jobs.

Our democracy requires a free press to ensure that our political leaders and public institutions act in our interests and to make sure our tax dollars are used to support, protect and uplift all of us and particularly those most in need. We need well-resourced media organizations to make sure that corporate interests do not harm or exploit us in the name of profit.

At Saturday’s ceremony I will accept the award on behalf of my father, Ebenezer Ray, a journalist for Harlem’s New York Age and the Pittsburgh Courier, whose commitment to truth telling is in my blood.

In the photo above, I’m the one in the middle.

The Black Legends of Silicon Valley awards ceremony takes place Saturday, Feb. 17 at the Hammer Theatre in San Jose, Calif. Visit the website for information.

Here is a list of all of the 2024 inductees and a bit more information about the award vision behind the effort:

The Alexander-Green News & Documentary Award recipient is Elaine Carolyn Ray. This honor is awarded to journalists, historians, photojournalists, documentarians, editors and community people who record local black community history & events, as well as significant world events that have enhanced the quality of life in the Black Community and the broader community.  

The Banks-Gage Education Award recipients are Brenda J. Smith-Ray and Dr. Harriett B. Arnold, (Ed.D). This honor is awarded to individuals who had outstanding careers as teachers, administrators, and policymakers, who had a significant impact on the quality of educational services for the community, and who enhanced the lives of people in the Black community.

The Clay-Williams Business & Entrepreneur Award recipient is Reginald Swilley. This honor is awarded to those business owners and entrepreneurs who created successful businesses or services in the community and used their success to enhance people’s lives in the Black community.

The Dean-Greene S.T.E.M Award recipient is Donald G. James. This honor is awarded to individuals who helped produce, enhance, and improve today’s social network and were instrumental in landmark changes in S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) to enhance and improve the general public’s lives and those in the Black community.

The English-Higgins Health & Medicine Award recipient is Dr. Carol A. Somersille, (M.D.) This honor is awarded to those doctors, nurses, and health practitioners who provided healthcare to people in the broader community and enhanced the lives of people in the Black community.

The Joyner-Stroughter Community Service Award recipients are Angela Warren and Robert Hoover. This honor is awarded to businesspeople and volunteers who created and/or volunteered for non-profit agencies that provide essential services to enhance the quality of life for people in the Black community.

The Piper-Whye Art/Theater/Music Award recipient is Ron E. Beck. This honor is awarded to individuals who have distinguished themselves and have had outstanding careers in art, theater, television, or movies in the broader community and have used their influence to enhance people’s lives in the Black community.

Community Organization Award recipients are Santa Clara County Black Lawyers Association and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. San Jose Alumnae Chapter. This honor is awarded to Black organizations that have served and enhanced the lives of people in the Black community and Silicon Valley.

Black Legend Awards Silicon Valley also celebrates the publication of Legacy: The History and Stories of African Ancestry & African Americans in Silicon Valley. More than a history book, it is the must-have missing piece of the puzzle that firmly reinserts African Ancestry and African Americans back into the halls of history. Legacy is available in Hardcover and Paperback and can be purchased on site at the Hammer Theatre before the event begins. It can also be purchased online at Barnes & Noble, Amazon and various bookstores. For bulk purchase for schools and other organizations, please contact Black Legend Awards Silicon Valley at 408.320.2111 or info@blacklegendawards.org. The books are available for individual purchase online or at bookstores.

Nearly 200 will gather for the Brown, Kell, Tildon, Williams Family Reunion

While we continue to unearth the mysteries of our father’s origins in Barbados, the expansive family tree on my mother’s side will gather for a family reunion this weekend. Nearly 200 members of the Brown, Kell, Tildon, Williams family are getting together in Aberdeen and Havre de Grace, Maryland starting tonight, August 4.

I’ll try to post updates, but in the meantime, check out the Reunion website to learn more.

“Good Trouble” nominated for a GLAAD Media Award

This evening, I’ll be looking out for Zuri Adele, who plays Malika Williams, and Sherry Cola, who plays Alice Kwan, on the Freeform/Hulu drama Good Trouble, which is a nominee in the Outstanding Drama Series category at the 34th Annual GLAAD Media Awards.

Watch Zuri and Sherry talk about the show’s fifth season.

Harriet Tubman at the Crossing

Artist Cheryl Derricotte created an eight-foot, larger-than-life likeness of Harriett Tubman, who was five-feet tall. The project was a collaboration of the the City of Milbrae, San Mateo County NAACP, BART, and Republic Urban Properties.

On Thursday morning, I heard an announcement on KQED, my local pubic radio station, that there would be a dedication of a monument to Harriet Tubman at the Milbrae, Calif. train station.

“That’s interesting,” I thought, as I hustled to get dressed and out the door to make it to the unveiling, which was taking place in a couple of hours. Milbrae is a Bay Area town just south of San Francisco with a Black population of 0.5 percent. I’ve always regarded it as a pass-through place where I park to take the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train into San Francisco or San Francisco International Airport. Or it’s where I switch from the Caltrain to the BART train to go to Oakland or Berkeley. Interesting that the town would honor Tubman with a permanent monument.

And that, it turns out, is the point.

In February, in recognition of Black History Month, a street at the BART station was renamed Harriet Tubman Way.

The monument, created by Cheryl Derricotte and titled “Freedom’s Threshold,” is a 12-foot aluminum A-frame “house,” featuring an eight-foot-tall image of Tubman printed on powdered-glass tiles.

Derricotte explains that in addition to Tubman’s many heroics, from freeing countless enslaved people via the Underground Railroad, serving as a scout and spy for the Union Army during the Civil War, and being active in the woman’s suffragist movement, Tubman was a property owner, rare in her day. The sculpture represents Tubman in her home.

Of course, Tubman is not only a hero for Black America. She is a hero for all of America. So the demographics of the city of Milbrae are irrelevant. Millions of travelers from all over the world make connections at that station. Placing the monument at the intersection of real trains is a perfect metaphor.

Inside Essence: “Zuri Adele Is Teaching, Learning, And Storytelling Through Her Role On ‘Good Trouble'”

Growing up in a household with a newspaperman, our coffee table displayed the full range of publications: Of course, there was the Pittsburgh Courier, where my father spent the last years of his career. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette landed on our front porch every morning, and the Pittsburgh Press arrived in the afternoon. My parents were subscribers to Life and Look magazines and to Ebony.

I was a freshman in high school when Essence published its first issue. in May 1970. A magazine devoted solely to the concerns of Black women? That was major.

These days, seeing Black women on the covers of so-called “mainstream” publications is not such a big deal. The May 2022 issue of Vogue features a resplendent and pregnant Rihanna. But she’s been on the cover of Vogue alone more than a few dozen times. We’ve become accustomed to all kinds of magazines featuring the full range of Black women from Beyoncé to Michelle Obama.

Even back in the day, there were rare sightings of Black beauties on mainstream covers. I still have a copy of Life published Nov. 1, 1954, the week I was born. It features Dorothy Dandridge on the cover. Black model, Donyale Luna, appeared on the cover of Vogue UK in 1966. But it was not until 1974 that Beverly Johnson became the first Black model to appear on the cover of American Vogue.

Still, beginning in May 1970, Essence was the one publication I could count on to embrace every aspect of our unique experience as a Black women — as political activists, as artists, as romantic parters, as parents, as professionals. Essence celebrated and examined our beautiful and unique bodies, our hair, our skin and our style.

When I was an undergraduate at Chatham College, Marcia Ann Gillespie, then the magazine’s editor-in-chief, gave a keynote, and I wanted to follow in her footsteps. I would not have imagined that in less than 10 years, I’d be working on the editorial staff of Essence myself.

And now, 35 years after I moved on from the magazine, Zuri Adele is featured in its pages in an article titled “Zuri Adele Is Teaching, Learning, And Storytelling Through Her Role On ‘Good Trouble.'”

Essence‘s impact has always been personal, and that legacy continues.

Zuri Adele (Photo Credit: Jennifer Johnson Photography @JenJphoto)

What happens to rage repressed?

I was on a Civil Rights tour and wrote this essay. My trip coincided with President Joseph Biden’s signing the Antilynching Act into law and came on the heels of the Will Smith Oscar slap. The Boston Globe published it on April 1.

Living History

In the months leading up to a tour titled “On the Road to Freedom: Understanding the Civil Rights Movement,” I was on the fence. Despite the waning Covid infection numbers, the easing of mask mandates and the fact that my fellow travelers would all be fully vaccinated and boostered, I wasn’t sure. After all, we were traveling by bus through Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, states with lower vaccination rates than California. I’d managed to dodge the Covid bullet for two years. Was I ready to let my guard down?

I like to think of myself as an intrepid traveler, but the thought of navigating airports and ground transportation, all in an N 95 mask, gave me pause. Still, I was intrigued by the idea of a trip to U.S. historical sites I’d only read about.

In the end, I decided to go for it. After all, I told myself, you’re not getting any younger.

What occurred to me once the trip began, was that the people we would meet, foot soldiers who had been on the front lines of the movement, weren’t getting any younger either. As I note in my op-ed, “What Happens to Rage Repressed?” published in The Boston Globe on April 1, I got to meet Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine. But she was just one of the treasures who shared their time and wisdom with us.

Elizabeth Eckford

There was Hezekiah Watkins, who describes himself as Mississippi’s youngest Freedom Rider. His first arrest and incarceration at 13 years old is a harrowing tale.

Hezekiah Watkins

We spent several hours with Rev. Carolyn McKinstry as she recounted how at 15 years old she was handling Sunday School paperwork at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, when the Ku Klux Klan set off the blast that killed four of her friends, injured others and terrorized the Black community.

Rev. Carolyn McKinstry

We visited the Montgomery, Alabama, home of Dr. Valda Harris Montgomery, which was down the block from the parsonage of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as pastor from 1954 to 1960. Dr. Harris told heartwarming stories of the two families socializing in each other’s homes and how her own home was a sanctuary and a strategizing space for civil rights activists.

Dr. Valda Harris Montgomery

The tour, sponsored by the Commonwealth Club of California, included time to take in good music and enjoy delicious food. The state-of-the-art interactive museums that document the history of the African diaspora alone were worth the trip. Still, it was the living monuments to this history that I will remember the most.

‘The Donna Collection’

My short story, “The Donna Collection” is included in the new anthology 166 Palms 2020. Buy the anthology on Amazon.