Crews | Day 21 | The Ultimate Crew
We did it! Today marks the end of our first official month of walking and organizing for the 2022 GirlTrek season. We hope you are inspired as we head into the weekend. If so, plan to join us live tomorrow for the last day of Black History Bootcamp, The Crew Edition! Tomorrow will be a […]
Crews | Day 20 | The Freaknik Crew
It began in 1983 as a small picnic in a public park near the Atlanta University Center. It grew to become a cultural phenomenon, and the signature defining event for a generation of college students who were embracing freedom and challenging the status quo. Freaknik. The notorious street party. The ultimate spring break. A meeting ground […]
Crews | Day 19 | Oscar Micheaux and Black Hollywood
Sylvia Landry is adopted by Black sharecroppers. She is mixed-race. Her new parents love her as their own. Despite the rigors of sharecropping, they raise her well. Sylvia becomes a schoolteacher. She travels to Boston to raise money for a new school and on her trip, she is hit by a car. The white woman […]
Crews | Day 18 | The Sojourners for Truth and Justice
The manifesto for the Sojourners for Truth and Justice starts with: “A Call To Negro Women! Negro women of every town and state arise, come to Washington DC September 29 – October 1, and demand of the President, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Congress absolute, unconditional redress of grievances.” The year was 1951, […]
Crews | Day 17 | Black Teachers of The Freedman’s Bureau
1863. The Emancipation Proclamation freed 4 million people from human bondage. Southern whites would illegally hold hostage our family members for two more years. Once defeated in the most un-Civil War, free Black men, women, and children would become their biggest threat. With the 15th Amendment, our forefathers were guaranteed the vote, equal representation in government, and 40 acres […]
Crews | Day 16 | The CEO’s
It does not escape me that I am standing on the shoulders of giants, including the cooks and janitors and others who look like me and were first to enter corporate America. They created the space for me to have this opportunity. My hope is that corporate America realizes that talent is created equally but […]
Crews | Day 15 | The Royal Families of Gospel – The Clark Sisters & The Winans
You know what I’m talking about. You’re at a birthday party. You’re almost finished singing. And on the very last line, for effect, your sister breaks into soprano and your mama hits that tenor – for something undeniable… Family Harmony “Haaaappy birthday to youuuu!” Poof. In a 3-part harmony, you are transported to childhood on a vocal carpet ride. It is […]
Crews | Day 14 | Bad Boy
Yeah! Today’s walk is dedicated to all the teachers that told us we’d never amount to nothin'. To all the people that lived above the buildings that we were hustlin' in front of. Called the police on us when we was just tryin' to make some money to feed our daughter. And all the n*** […]
Crews | Day 13 | Grace Jones and the First Black Supermodels
People will tell you she doesn’t make the cut. She wasn’t a true supermodel. Too androgynous. Too loud. Not pretty enough. Her own boyfriend said she had a grotesque beauty. Boy bye. Yet, Grace Jones somehow made it from the pews of a holiness church in Jamaica to bearing her gorgeous body on the cover […]
Crews | Day 12 | The Buffalo Soldiers
“In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky — her grand old woods — her fertile fields — her beautiful rivers — her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the […]
Crews | Day 11 | Fela Kuti and the Birth of AfroBeat
The year is 1971. You are standing outside of the New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria. Waiting. The line is long. The air is thick with a tenor of brassy soul and a gut-churning rhythm that makes you drop into your own hips. The jolt of the familiar. You are here. There. The birth […]
Crews | Day 10 | Toni Morrison and Angela Davis
“I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change…I'm changing the things I cannot accept.” – Angela Davis In a memo to her boss at Random House Publishing, where Toni Morrison worked as an Editor, she wrote of Angela Davis, “she is the fiercest woman I know. And I come from a long line of fierce […]
Crews | Day 9 | Gordon Parks
A different kind of click. More powerful than a gun. He pointed and shot. In his crosshairs – the lies told by the American media about Black men, women, and children. Lies that we were savage, dangerous, ugly. Photographer Gordon Parks bodied that plot with a portfolio for the people. Thousands of crystal clear images of perfect Blackness. Telling the […]
Crews | Day 8 | Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the Freedom Summer Movement
“There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.”– Fannie Lou Hamer By November of 1963, activists in Mississippi were exhausted and discouraged. Their efforts and strategies had inspired a movement, but not increased the number of Black voters. Refusing to back down from their fight for […]
Crews | Day 7 | Bass Reeves and the U.S. Marshals
There is a rumor that the Lone Ranger was a Black man. His name was Bass Reeves. One legend says he won a card game. …against his slave “master.” …during the Civil War. And when the white man got mad (we BEEN knowing how to play Spades!) and started an altercation, Bass opened a can of […]
Crews | Day 6 | Roc Nation
This is the story of the most famous crew in the rap game. This is the story of a dynasty. Of hood legends. The story of Black men who knew their worth and were willing to go to battle in any arena, from the block to the boardroom. This is the story of money, power, […]
Crews | Day 5 | P-Funk and AfroFuturism
Listen, the P is for parliament and Funk for Funkadelic. Two bands united. Under a groove. Getting down (for what?) …just fooooor the funk of it. We ready. Today’s conversation will explore the father of Black futurism as he convened a crew of bands (with a dash of Bootsy Collins), to inspire a new generation’s imagination […]
Crews | Day 4 | The Masons
Crews | Day 3 | Tuskegee Legends: Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver
Brick-by-brick, crop-by-crop, farm-by-farm, today’s crew of Black men did the unglamorous work to build an economic future for our people. They built an institution, an infrastructure and an entire new economy to revive the American South. They called him The Black President. He didn’t ask for dignity and equal rights. He assumed them. Booker T. […]
Crews | Day 2 | Black Panther Party
The most powerful Black men in America. Then and now. Did you know that Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Duke Ellington, Medgar Evers, Paul Robeson, Nelson Mandela, Louis Farrakhan, and both Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father and grandfather were all Prince Hall FreeMasons? And these are just the names […]
Crews | Day 1 | Zora and The Niggerati
They called themselves the Niggerati and named their newspaper FIRE.The Origin Story: It was the height of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston was one of the most popular writers and one of THE founders of the very field of anthropology at Columbia University. A brilliant mind. She sat in the middle of her glamorous […]
