I could write an entire blog about the damage a teenage boy can do by forcing a girl to lose herself in his attentions, because right now, in this particular situation, my 18-year-old Little Sister is about to lose her chance at college… all because of a boy. She has gotten into 3 schools and has a free ride. But he’s trying to talk her out of it, for reasons that make no sense to me. I am trying to put my foot down, but love can lead to madness… and very poor decisions. At a dinner the other day, a colleague was telling me about a young man who decided that he wanted to play in a rock band in ..read more

I live just south of Baltimore and the Francis Scott Key Bridge is only three exits away from me along the Baltimore I-695 Beltway. And yet, I almost never used it. My memory of going over the bridge is a special one. I had brought my 21-year-old niece up from Texas to say goodbye to her estranged father; he was living with us while he was in hospice. I drove two loops around I-695, crossing the Key Bridge twice, as I let her tell her story, and give me a chance to know her. We had never met before. The Key Bridge was a magnificent bridge. Over a mile and a half long, spanning the Patapsco Riv ..read more

The stories of black women who have taken the national stage in politics are often told. Some people have heard of Fannie Lou Hamer, a proud sharecropper who dared to take on the Democratic Party in 1964 by attending the convention as an alternate delegate with the Freedom Democratic Party. Many have seen the recent movie of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman in Congress in 1968 and the very first African-American to run for president in the Democratic Party in 1972. Southerners, especially Texans, know about Barbara Jordan, the first black woman in Congress who hailed from the South. And ..read more

When I was a child, I read voraciously. I picked out the word “the” from my older sister’s picture books and was off and running by age 3. My mother fed my hunger for books with trips to the library and later, Scholastic Book subscriptions. The book The Snowy Day was in my repertoire, and I loved it, not realizing that it was the only book with a black character to have won a Caldecott Award in 1962 for best illustrations. Nor did I know that the author, Jack Ezra Keats was a Polish-Jewish New Yorker who was noted for multicultural characters. I just liked the book. It wasn’t until 1976 that a ..read more

Okay, I cheated. I wanted to do a blog on black women’s health for Women’s History Month. Actually, what I wanted to do was go to a website chat board dominated by men and start a post about women’s health… for men. But I wanted to generate something that wasn’t snarky. So I turned to Jasper – my AI machine. I gave it the topic, and I said the audience was men.  Jasper wrote the perfect blog. Not snarky at all. But I couldn’t save it. Darn! It was impossible to get it back. I tried, but no matter how I spun it, I couldn’t get Jasper to duplicate the original blog.  So, I gave up on d ..read more

As part of Women’s History Month, I wanted to do a blog on five black millennial women who are living life differently in the 21st century. Millennials are the generation that transitioned into cellphones and social media.  They can remember disposable cameras, and phones on the wall, listening to the radio for their favorite songs. But they have also seen the change to selfies and music downloads.  When millennials started voting, a black candidate was running for president – and won.  Millennials have seen barriers eradicated for the LGBTQ community, and for the disabled. They ..read more

Back in 1989 when I first began teaching myself about black history, I read a book called Blacks in Science by Ivan Van Sertima. It had two sections. The first half was about examples of science and technology in Africa, and the second was about black technologists and their accomplishments in the US. The section on African developments “before Columbus”, included some that I knew, and some that I didn’t know: building cities, charting stars, casting metal with 3,000° furnaces, and of course, all of the many creations of the Egyptians. I later learned about the 200+ pyramids of Nubia – in Suda ..read more

Well, the short answer of course is – thank the economy. The investments of multi-millionaires surged in the 2020’s, moving several people up in the food chart. Twelve of the black billionaires on the list are recent additions. But, it’s important not to diminish the work that they did to become millionaires to begin with. I want to make special mention of Bob Johnson. He is no longer a billionaire, but in 2001, this BET founder became our nation’s first black billionaire when he sold BET to Viacom. Many were disappointed in his sale, hoping to keep BET under black ownership, but obviously, th ..read more

I will never forget when I was in middle school and my social studies teacher was trying to do her part for Black History Month. She was telling us about Frederick Douglass, the great orator and abolitionist… who couldn’t read or write.  My mother, bless her heart, had been making sure that we knew the basics of black history, so of course I raised my hand and said – ‘cause I was quite impertinent as a child, disdainful of ignorant teachers and quick to correct them – “You’re wrong. Frederick Douglass could read and write. He wrote several books.” When both Nikki Haley (a minority in her ..read more

Many years ago, when I took a cruise to Jamaica, I overslept and missed my paid-for excursion. So, I got off the ship and walked around the port. There were taxi drivers lined up to take people places, and I said to one, “show me around the island. The *real* island.” So, we drove along back roads, I saw a school with lots of children in uniforms, I saw small houses, I saw a beach with a conch stand that was more common to the citizens of the island. I felt like I had a small taste. But I am struck by the reality that I know virtually nothing about the Caribbean countries, many of whom are par ..read more