October 10, 2013

African-American Students May Improve Grades if Teachers Convey High Standards

WASHINGTON — African-American students who need to improve their academic performance may do better in school and feel less stereotyped as underachievers if teachers convey high standards and their belief that students can meet them, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

In three studies conducted at suburban or inner-city schools, African-American students improved their grades after receiving a simple, one-sentence note from their teachers or an online pep talk. The exercises were designed to dispel students’ fears that criticism of their academic work could be caused by different treatment of African-American students rather than their teachers’ high standards. The study was published online in August in APA’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

The findings contradict a common trend in education of praising students for mediocre work to help raise self-esteem before delivering critical remarks. That method may seem patronizing and could backfire and lower self-esteem, especially when white teachers praise African-American students, said lead researcher David Scott Yeager, PhD, an assistant professor of developmental psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

“We’ve learned that self-esteem isn’t the key reason why African-American students fail to utilize critical feedback from their teachers. They may not always trust the person who is criticizing them,” Yeager said. “Our studies are the first test of whether this approach can increase students’ motivation in the real world.”

In the first study at a suburban public middle school in Connecticut, 44 seventh-grade students (22 African-American and 22 white) wrote an essay about a personal hero that was critiqued by their teachers for improvements in a second draft. The students were randomly assigned to two groups with the experimental group receiving a hand-written note with their critiqued essay that stated, “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations, and I know that you can reach them.” The control group got a note that stated, “I’m giving you these comments so that you’ll have feedback on your paper.”

For African-American students who received the high-expectations note, 71 percent revised their essays, compared to 17 percent in the control group. The findings were even more pronounced for African-American students who had reported low trust in their teachers in surveys, with 82 percent revising their essays in the high-expectations group, compared to none in the control group. White students who received the high-expectations note also were more likely to revise their essays, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant compared to the control group.

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/08/african-american-grades.aspx

October 10, 2013

African-American Heritage Day Parade set for today

African-American heritage will be celebrated with a parade in Downtown Pittsburgh today, starting at 11 a.m.

The African-American Heritage Day Parade, which will be held rain or shine, is being organized by the African-American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania. Organizers, however, announced only that the parade would take place Downtown and could not be reached Friday for details regarding the start location and specific route.

Pittsburgh police also said they had not been informed of any street closures before and during the parade.

Nationally acclaimed sculptor Thaddeus G. Mosley will serve as the parade's grand marshal.


First Published October 5, 2013 1:02 am

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/african-american-heritage-day-parade-set-for-today-706310/

October 10, 2013

Students’ mural depicting African American history to reappear after 20 years

A piece of UCLA’s history will soon be shared — for the second time — with the campus community. Efforts are currently underway to bring "The Black Experience," a detailed mural created and displayed by seven African American art students in 1970, back into public view.


The mural, which measures 10 feet high by 27 feet wide, is located on a wall next to Panda Express on the first floor of Ackerman Union. A false wall erected in front of it during some renovations in 1992 has kept it hidden for 20 years.


"It was important in 1970, as it is today, to address issues of racial disparity on the UCLA campus, the entire University of California and on campuses across the United States," said Helen Singleton, one of the artists who helped design and create the art piece over an intensive three-week period in the spring of 1970. At that time, said Singleton, UCLA had taken several steps to increase campus diversity, including hiring qualified professors and administrators, and admitting qualified students of color. 　

"Our mission in creating ‘The Black Experience’ mural was to expand and enhance that effort with a visual representation of the history and experience of African Americans in the United States," said Singleton, who graduated from UCLA in 1974.

Each of the seven art students, including Singleton, Marian Brown, Neville Garrick, Andrea Hill, Jane Staulz, Joanne Stewart and Michael Taylor, is depicted in the mural, along with a young man on the far left who was not a student, said Singleton. Their heads, necks and shoulders are overlaid with myriad silk-screened graphics showing, among other images, a poster advertising the sale of slaves and pictures of African American leaders, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Angela Davis...

http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/students-mural-depicting-african-248823.aspx

October 10, 2013

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean to host fundraiser for African-American music museum

The planned National Museum of African American Music, which has long struggled to raise money, will get a boost from Mayor Karl Dean and some other Nashville movers and shakers this month.

Dean will host a $250-per-ticket fundraiser for the museum at his Green Hills home on Oct. 21. Councilwoman Megan Barry, who hopes to succeed Dean, and a few other people who could join her in the 2015 mayor’s race, such as businessman Bill Freeman, Sheriff Daron Hall and councilmen Jerry Maynard and Ronnie Steine, also are on the list of hosts. So are former Tennessee Titans running back Eddie George and Ryman Hospitality Properties CEO Colin Reed.

The news comes in the same week that the museum shook up its day-to-day management and board leadership. H. Beecher Hicks III, who had been serving as the organization’s board chairman, was named the new president and CEO, and banker Kevin Lavender took Hicks’ spot as chairman.

The city set aside $10 million for the museum more than six years ago. Earlier this year, Dean agreed to give the museum space in the city’s old convention center, and his administration said any proposals to redevelop the facility must include the museum.

“The National Museum of African American Music will be an important attraction in our city and a fitting tribute to Nashville’s musical history,” Dean spokeswoman Bonna Johnson said Wednesday. “Mayor Dean is supportive and appreciative of the work being done, and the city is a supportive partner as the project moves forward.”

Johnson said the city’s $10 million commitment to the project has not changed, even though the museum will no longer need to build a new facility.

http://www.lohud.com/article/DN/20131010/NEWS01/310100073/Mayor-Karl-Dean-host-fundraiser-African-American-music-museum

October 10, 2013

Duke honors first African-American students

DURHAM (WTVD) -- Duke University celebrated five trailblazers who changed the course of the school's history Saturday.



Fifty years ago, they became Duke's first African-American undergraduate students, and on Saturday, a special town hall meeting was held to honor them.

The town hall meeting commemorated the integration of Duke University in 1963 and gave past and present students a chance to hear about a campus without racial diversity.

"For many years, Duke was a school that did not admit black students, did not recruit black faculty. It had black workers but did not open its more prestigious ranks to black people," said Duke University President Richard Brodhead.

Half a century later, those restrictions are a memory.

Pioneers who broke Duke's color line talked about support they found from the community in the early years of social change at the university.

"People on the ground in Durham, people who worked on the campus, who were just like the people who raised us at home, took us in, embraced us and prayed for us. And there's a whole list of those names," said Reverend Dr. William Turner, Class of 1970.

"We got the signal from the cafeteria workers, from the maids at the time. We did have maids, which was unusual for us! But always silently encouraging us, and not so silently, to be and to do, and you can and you will," added Nathaniel "Nat" White, Class of 1967.

Those five students paved the way for all African-Americans and can now provide inspiration for today's students earning degrees at Duke. It is still a tough and competitive university, but it is now open to all who have what it takes to make it there.

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=9276134

Ironically Duke Power was a party to this famous USSC case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Company

October 10, 2013

Black and Depressed: Two African-American Women Break the Silence

According to Raymond DePaulo, Jr. M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, African American populations do not have higher rates of depression in the US. However, the statistics may be skewed because African Americans are much less likely to report their symptoms of depression.

The stigma and prejudice toward mental health issues in Black communities is especially thick, making it very difficult for persons suffering from depression or anxiety (or any mood disorder) to acknowledge it, let alone seek treatment. When I participated in a six-week outpatient program at Laurel Hospital, half the group was African American. The stories horrified me. Most of the African Americans could not reveal to any member in their family what they were doing (the outpatient program) because the stigma was so deep and tall and wide.

Awhile back I interviewed professor and blogger writer Monica Coleman, Ph.D., on Beyond Blue. She described the stigma in this way:


In many ways, I do think that there is a greater stigma among African American culture than among white cultures. I live in southern California, and many white people will freely reference “seeing a therapist” in normal conversation. Black people don’t do that. Seeing a therapist is generally seen as a sign of weakness or a lack of faith. There is still an active mythos of “the strong black woman,” who is supposed to be strong and present and capable for everyone in her family – and neglects her own needs. In the midst of a depressive episode, I had a friend say to me, “We are the descendants of those who survived the Middle Passage and slavery. Whatever you’re going through cannot be that bad.” I was so hurt and angry by that statement. No, depression isn’t human trafficking, genocide or slavery, but it is real death-threatening pain to me. And of course, there are those who did not survive those travesties. But that comment just made me feel small and selfish and far worse than before. It made me wish I had never said anything at all.

So without support from the community, or at least family and friends, how does a person begin to recover?

http://psychcentral.com/lib/black-and-depressed-two-african-american-women-break-the-silence/0008294

October 10, 2013

Women Writers Celebrate African-American Fatherhood In Unique Essay Anthology

ince President Barack Obama’s election as the first African-American president of the United States in 2008, he’s become a dream personified of many things—from the top example for young African-American children, particularly boys, who desire to become the leader of the free world to a commander-in-chief who balances his duties with his personal life to a dedicated and publicly affectionate husband. Most of his admiration comes from what he says is his most important job as father to his two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

Kenrya Rankin Naasel, writer and editor, explores the state of African-American fatherhood during this never-before-seen era of an African-American president and father in Bet on Black: The Celebration of Fatherhood in the Age of Barack Obama. Inspired by a speech given about his deep commitments to rearing his daughters and breaking the cycle of absenteeism started by his own father, the anthology of personal essays is not a contrast to Obama’s shining example, but a celebration of fatherhood and its effects on the writers’ lives and relationships.

“I didn't want to read another treatise about why they are terrible, or be bombarded with statistics that prove they don't stick around,” Naasel, who was raised by a single father, says. “Instead, I wanted to share stories like my own that proved that Black men are capable of not only standing by their offspring, but helping them thrive as well.”

Twenty notable women writers, such as Karen Good Marable, Corynne L. Corbett, Hillary Crosley and Harriette Cole and share their stories about the impact their fathers and step-fathers have had on their lives, some funny, others insightful or tear-jerking. More than write love letters to their fathers, they each examine their own relationships, while many imperfect, all have been nurturing and fulfilling. Each writer tackles climatic moments in their relationships with their fathers that showed memorable examples of fatherhood in their own way, including overcoming absenteeism, fathering while incarcerated, remarrying and maternal death.

Contributor Hillary Crosley discusses the effects of her father’s death in her essay. She has no memory of him at all, even asking her family members why they were crying en route to his burial. “I contributed to Bet On Black for an opportunity to share what it feels like to live in his shadow,” she says, “and my hope that he's looking down and smiling.”

http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/women-writers-celebrate-african-american-fatherhood-333#.UlbnMqTD_cs

October 10, 2013

15 African American Art World Game Changers

Last week we featured 30 African American artists who are shaping and defining the contemporary art landscape. But even the most inventive and fearless of artistic revolutionaries follow in the footsteps of those before them.

This week we're revisiting an earlier generation, the artists who paved the way for today's contemporary masters. From collage visionary Romare Bearden to Abstract Expressionist Norman Lewis, the following artists broke into existing artistic genres while creating some of their own. A collection of groundbreaking works from the Postwar era, dating from as early as the 1940's to as late as 2010, are heading to auction as part of "Point of Departure: Postwar African-American Fine Art."

Behold, 15 pieces of game-changing African American artworks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/african-american-postwar-art_n_4031104.html

October 10, 2013

The forgotten godfathers of black American sport

(CNN) -- Think of the greatest American sports stars of all time and names like Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali and Serena Williams will likely spring to mind.

But long before these champions smashed the record books -- and blazed a trail in the public's imagination -- the first generation of black U.S. athletes dominated an unlikely sport.

The godfathers of Owens, Ali and Williams weren't stereotypical towering, musclebound men found on basketball courts or in boxing rings.

Instead, they were the jockeys of the race track and their dizzying success -- and dramatic fall -- is one of the most remarkable buried chapters in U.S. sporting history.

When the country's most prestigious horse race, the Kentucky Derby, launched in 1875, 13 of the 15 jockeys were African-American.

Much like the NBA today, black athletes dominated horse racing for the next three decades, winning 15 of the first 28 Derbies.

"They were the premier horsemen in the world," says Joe Drape, author of "Black Maestro," which tells the story of champion jockey Jimmy Winkfield.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/22/sport/black-jockeys-horse-racing-sports-stars/index.html
"It was the first professional sport for black athletes in America. They were at the forefront of horse racing and it was a place where they could earn a good living."

Decades before Jackie Robinson made history in 1947 as the first black major league baseball player, African American jockeys forged a name as the first sports heroes of post-Civil War America.

October 10, 2013

Industrial Bank, D.C.'s Last African American-owned Bank, Receives $1M Investment

The last remaining African American-owned bank in the Washington area got a boost last month when it received $1 million from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

The foundation purchased $1 million worth of certificates of deposit from Industrial Bank as part of a new initiative to help make loans more readily available to underbanked communities and minority-owned business.

Read the whole story at www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/industrial-bank-dcs-last-african-american-owned-bank-receives-1m-investment/2013/10/04/de5ab232-27bc-11e3-b3e9-d97fb087acd6_story.html