Aprille Ericsson-Jackson was born the oldest of four daughters in Brooklyn, NY. She spent her childhood growing up in the Bedford Styvesant neighborhood, specifically, the Roosevelt projects on Dekalb Avenue. She was bussed to the elementary school, P.S. 199 in Brooklyn. She first realized she had an aptitude for mathematics and science during her attendance of Marine Park JHS where she was the only black student enrolled in the Special Progress program. In her senior year of JHS, she won second place in the Science Fair and scored in the 90s on all her regent and citywide exams. She graduated with high honors and was a member of the school band, the girls basketball team, the science club and the honors club. She passed the exams for all of New York's Technical High Schools: the Bronx School of Science, Styvesant and Brooklyn Technical.
At the age of 15 years, she moved to Cambridge, MA to live with her grandparents and attended high school at the Cambridge School of Weston. She played basketball and softball in high school and in the Cambridge Recreation Leagues. During her senior year of high school, she was a volunteer Physical Education Teacher for several Cambridge elementary schools. Today she still enjoys playing football, basketball, softball, cycling and tennis. Her coed softball team travels around the country playing.
Upon completion of her education at MIT, she was encouraged by her best friend to attend Howard University (HU) in Washington, D.C. There she obtained a Masters of Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace option. Her research objective at HU has been to develop practical design procedures that can be used in conjunction with optimal digital controllers for future orbiting large space structure systems like the Space Station. Her research at HU has allowed her to travel to Germany, Canada and England to present technical papers. She has won several student paper competitions; the last and most prestigious one was at the 6th International Space Conference for Pacific-Basin Societies were she won first place for the Ph.D. student competition....Read More Here
U.S. prosecutors on Thursday charged four current and former Louisville, Kentucky, police officers for their roles in the botched 2020 raid that killed Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was in her home, in a case that sparked nationwide protests.
The charges represented the Justice Department's latest effort to crack down on abuses and racial disparities in policing, following a wave of controversial police killings of Black Americans.
Former Louisville Metropolitan Police Department Detective Joshua Jaynes and current Sergeant Kyle Meany were charged with civil rights violations and obstruction of justice for using false information to obtain the search warrant that authorized the botched March 13, 2020, raid that killed Taylor in her home, the Justice Department said. Current Detective Kelly Goodlett was charged with conspiring with Jaynes to falsify the warrant and then cover up the falsification.
A fourth officer, former Detective Brett Hankison, was charged with civil rights violations for allegedly using excessive force, U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland said.
"Breonna Taylor should be alive today," Garland told a news conference. "The Justice Department is committed to defending and protecting the civil rights of every person in this country. That was this department’s founding purpose, and it remains our urgent mission."
After being rejected from a job at Target multiple times over the past few years, Naturi Greene decided to try a different approach. She joked to her boyfriend, who had also been denied, that if they changed their names and race on their applications, they would have gotten the job.
To test her theory, Greene, a Black woman from Charlotte, North Carolina, changed her name to "Tori" and listed her ethnicity as "mixed race." After multiple rejections as Naturi, Target offered "Tori" a job interview.
"I'm not sure how it can be proved to be discrimination," Greene told Insider. "But as a person of color in America, I can't help but to think that is the reason."
Greene posted her story on TikTok, where, as of July 20, it has been viewed nearly 264,000 times. She showed Insider screenshots of her application forms from May 18 and July 3, 2022, the first using "Naturi," which was rejected, and the second "Tori," which was accepted.
"After looking into this claim, we found that the two applications were filed several weeks apart and the store was not hiring at the time the application was rejected," Target spokesperson Brian Harper-Tibaldo told Insider.
Former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores and two other Black coaches suing the National Football League were denied their request for evidence and testimony from the league and Commissioner Roger Goodell before a judge decides whether to send the case to arbitration.
Flores and the other coaches are suing over claims of systemic racism in hiring for management jobs. The NFL is seeking to move the dispute out of court into arbitration, based on the coaches’ employment contracts and the league’s constitution.
The coaches claim Goodell can’t act as an impartial arbitrator and asked US District Judge Valerie Caproni to let them take his deposition and pursue other evidence from the league. The judge denied the request in an opinion Thursday, calling it an attempt at an “impermissible fishing expedition.”
The coaches haven’t yet filed briefs opposing the NFL’s bid to move the dispute to arbitration, which would remove it from public scrutiny. But Caproni signaled she may rule in favor of the league on the question.
Two Black Muslim men say they were kicked off an Alaska Airlines flight in 2020 after they were talking and one was seen texting in Arabic and are suing the airline, alleging discrimination.
The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in the Western District of Washington, alleges that Alaska Airlines humiliated and denied Abobakkr Dirar and Mohamed Elamin their rights as passengers by “exploiting the discredited Islamophobic, racist, and xenophobic claim” of another person on the flight.
According to the complaint, the plaintiffs, described as Sudan-born American citizens who predominantly speak Arabic and some English, were sitting in first-class seats on a flight from Seattle to San Francisco in February 2020 when another passenger became upset after seeing one of them text in Arabic. The text conversation was described as friendly banter between one of the men and another person who was not on board at that time.
Lawyers allege that airline employees then engaged in “security theater” by removing the man who was texting and the man with whom he was speaking in Arabic, from the plane. The suit says the men were barred from flying together on the Alaska flights they had already booked, forcing them to board different Alaska flights and arrive hours late to their destinations.
A spokesperson for Alaska Airlines said that the company would not comment on the pending litigation but that it prohibits unlawful discrimination.
For the first time in its 246-year history, the United States Marine Corps has confirmed a Black four-star general.
Lt. Gen. Michael E. Langley was confirmed by the U.S. Senate this week, according to a statement from the Corps.
“At his promoted rank, Langley will serve as the commander of U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany, and will command all U.S. military forces in Africa,” the statement notes.
In his role, Langley will assist African countries in combating climate change, population growth and political instability, according to The Washington Post. He will also help the countries build up their forces and monitor Russian and Chinese activities.
When two young women teamed up to highlight racism in the development sector, and call out the celebrities and aid workers who pushed stereotypes that Africans needed saving, it was seen by many as a welcome intervention.
The two social workers, Olivia Alaso, a black Ugandan and Kelsey Nielsen, a white American, began No White Saviors (NWS) in 2018 and its social media presence grew quickly, attracting a black and white liberal audience. It rose to prominence on the back of several high-profile campaigns.
But earlier this year, NWS publicly imploded amid accusations of the very thing it was designed to tackle – white saviourism and privilege. Nielsen was accused of using her white privilege to control the organisation and of abusing black Ugandan staff. Allegations surfaced of bar brawls.
Now Nielsen, who has since resigned from the organisation she helped to start, has told the Guardian that she acknowledges she behaved in a hypocritical way.
In Uganda, mainstream public conversations about white saviourism began 10 years ago after Kony2012, a student-made film, was launched by the US non-profit group Invisible Children to back a campaign to bring warlord Joseph Kony to justice. The short film sparked a wave of criticism in the country and beyond for its simplistic and outdated account of a complex conflict in highlighting the Lord’s Resistance Army’s abduction of children for use as soldiers.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are working to make the 14th annual Black Business Month one for the record books. The big difference? The U.S. Department of the Treasury is involved. Starting this August, the celebration will be more than an opportunity to support Black-owned businesses but to invest in them. You know the difference. One will feed your children; the other will deed your great-grandchildren’s children. Yes, we’re talking about building generational wealth.
Ahead of a Treasury trip to Raleigh, NC on Friday to hand over a $201.9 million check in funding to focus on increasing access to capital and promote entrepreneurship in traditionally underserved communities, Vice President Harris was in Brooklyn last week to announce historic efforts to catalyze and align public and private investments to address economic disparities and accelerate economic opportunity in communities of color—including the formation of a new Economic Opportunity Coalition (EOC).
“There are still far too many people in our nation who do not have access to the capital and the financial services they need to thrive. And I believe given the breadth of the financial disparities in our nation, the public and the private sector must join forces to take on these challenges. Just consider our capacity when we combine the expertise and the experience of the private sector, with the reach and the scale that only government can provide,” said Vice President Harris, adding that the new private and public sector efforts will align tens of billions in investments in underserved communities. “In the coming months, our administration will work closely with all members of this coalition to make sure that we are maximizing the impact of every dollar that is spent.”
Twenty-one corporations and 3 foundations have come together to create the coalition, committing themselves to aligning major investments in communities of color with investments made by the Biden-Harris Administration. The EOC will coordinate across public, private, and social sector organizations to develop and deploy products that solve challenges in getting resources where most needed and drive towards outcomes for meaningful action.
The founding members of the Coalition include Ariel Investments, Bank of America, BNY Mellon, Capital One, Citi, Discover, Ford Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Google, Key Bank, Kresge Foundation, Mastercard, McDonald’s, McKinsey & Company, Micron, Momentus Capital, Moody’s, Netflix, Next Street, PayPal, PNC, The Rockefeller Foundation, TIAA and Upstart.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
115
