Tag Archives: journalism

Standing on the shoulders of Black Legends

15 Feb

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.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

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

13 Apr

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)

Tags: , , ,

Happy 120th birthday

24 May

 

May 24 would have been my father’s 120th birthday.

I don’t know what would resonate with him today, but back in the 1930s, when he was in his mid-to-late 30s, he was given to quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on his birthday.

For three consecutive years, in columns that ran near May 24, Ebenezer would quote the same lines from Longfellow’s “The Spanish Student,” a play in three acts.

s-l300

“Approaching one of those inevitable milestones imposed by Father Time, this paragrapher pauses in reflection and does a little audible thinking. Methinks Longfellow was correct when he wrote of persons born on May 24. ‘The strength of thine own arm is thy salvation.’ But I think he stretched his optimism a bit far when he said, ‘Behind those riftless [sic] clouds there is a silver lining [sic]; be patient,’” my father wrote in the New York Age, May 28, 1934.

Longfellow actually wrote “rifted clouds,” and in at least one edition, that one line was not about a silver lining. It was, “there shines a glorious star!” Also, I could not find any verification that the 19th-century poet and essayist was specifically referring to those who were born on May 24.

But, ok, Dad.

More often than not, my father used his weekly column for a little of this and a little of that. In one paragraph, he would rail against racially discriminatory hiring practices in Harlem and in the next, he would chide an acquaintance for falling under the spell of Father Devine. Then he’d wax about a social event or musical performance that moved him. Often, he used his column to express his outrage about lynchings and the trumped-up charges against the Scottsboro Boys. During the years when my father was quoting Longfellow in his birthday columns, the United States was in the throes of the Great Depression; Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party had begun their reign. You couldn’t fault him for seeing no rift in the clouds.

These days, the press is literally being punched and kicked simply for the “crime” of asking questions.

A Republican Congress is poised to denude health care, the environment, public education and women’s agency over our bodies.

Our president and his family are raiding our treasury.

Law enforcement officers who kill unarmed black and brown civilians, including children, do so with impunity.

Immigrants are being harassed, deported and maligned.

White supremacists in this country have been given license to spew hate and kill.

Has anyone seen a glorious star lately?

Actually, yes.

When a Supreme Court majority (that includes Justice Clarence Thomas!) rejects North Carolina’s voter suppression efforts.

When reporters fight back with fierce investigative journalism.

When constituents yell “you lie” at those to try to sell us alternative facts.

When we forge authentic alliances strong enough to demolish and deconstruct silly walls.

When we vote like our lives depend on it, because apparently, they do.

So, in honor of Ebenezer’s 120th birthday, I will take a few liberties of my own with Longfellow:

Only the strength of [OUR] own [COLLECTIVE] arm[S] will be [OUR] salvation.

Let’s get to work.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Happy Birthday, Ebenezer

24 May

My father would be 117 years old today. Eighty years ago his birthday wish was for a typewriter with the same configuration of keys as a Linotype machine.  I wonder what he would think of our writing implements and communications platforms today.  A dear friend recently gave me a bracelet made of typewriter keys. I’m wearing in honor of my Daddy’s birthday today.

 

Bracelet courtesy of Brenda Starr
Royal typewriter, circa 1934
Linotype Keyboard

Tags: , , , ,

Dottings on a presidential reelection: Hate me if you dare

11 Nov

I’m re-posting an entry I originally published in February of 2011, which seems like ages ago. Last Tuesday, We The People overcame voter suppression campaigns, lies, bungled debates and obscene amounts of campaign spending to reelect President Barack Obama and to put down efforts to make him a one-term president. Now that the Florida vote has been counted, I thought I would add this year’s final electoral map.

The New New Deal, 2008, Photo illustration by Arthur Hochstein and Lon Tweeten. ( F.D.R. photo by Associated Press. Obama photo by John Gress, Reuters.)

“Never before have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt said of Republicans during his reelection campaign in 1936.
Sound familiar? I wish.
Perhaps President Obama will take a page from FDR as he gears up for the 2012 campaign.
After all, these fightin’ words turned out to be winning words for FDR.
In honor of Presidents’ Day, I offer a column published by my father, Ebenezer Ray, on Nov. 14, 1936, shortly after the shellacking Roosevelt doled out to his opponent, Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas,  in 1936. Prior to the election, my father had written columns endorsing Roosevelt. But his support was not a given.  His employer, The New York Age, was a traditional supporter of the Republican Party.  The paper opposed the Democratic Party nationally because of its tolerance  of southern segregation.

FDR’s 1936 landslide.    Credit: 270toWin

Referring to himself in typical self-deprecating fashion, Ebenezer wrote: “This newcomer and political dunce failed to be convinced (1) that President Roosevelt was not the fit and proper person to guide the destiny of this country for the next four years and (2) that the Republican candidate was the better man.
. . . With his avalanche of votes in favor of the New Deal went the Negro vote, local and national, despite the fact that President Roosevelt represents the Party which disenfranchises the Negro in the South. Wherefore the Negro vote?
According to the man in the street, in the barbershop, in the restaurant and other proletariat among whom this writer moves, prosperity is the paramount issue. Up to 1929, they contend there was discrimination in the South, but we also had prosperity. Since 1929, and especially during the last Republican regime, there was still discrimination in the South but NO prosperity. In President Roosevelt is seen the capability of bringing prosperity from around  that elusive corner, made popular by Mr. Hoover.”
To illustrate his community’s support of the New Deal, Ebenezer described the changing atmosphere in the bank at the corner of 135th Street and Seventh Ave.
“In these premises, until president Roosevelt’s bank holiday, was situated the unlamented Chelsea Bank.  During its declining months one could easily race a bull about the premises without harming a depositor.  Nowadays, occupied by the Dunbar National Bank, during business hours the premises resemble a market rather than a bank. Of great concern to the poor man is the knowledge that whatever part of his earnings he is privileged to save is SAFE.
The great majority has reelected Roosevelt. ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God,'” Ebenezer concluded.
Robert Reich, former secretary of labor in the Clinton Administration, who is now a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote a column before the midterm election last fall, titled “Why Obama should learn the lesson of 1936, not 1996,” In it, Reich said: “The relevant political lesson isn’t Bill Clinton in 1996, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936.”

Library of Congress

Reich continued:”By the election of 1936 the Great Depression was entering its eighth year. Roosevelt had already been president for four of them. Yet he won the biggest electoral victory since the start of the two-party system in the 1850s.” Reich wrote that while the key to Clinton’s victory was a booming economy, the key to Roosevelt’s was setting himself apart from the greed of the Republicans and their financiers and standing up for and with everyday people.

Back to Ebenezer’s column: At the end he offers a brief review of the theater adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here, about a Hitler type character who attempts to dominate the United States:
“The capacity crowd which attended the Adelphi Theatre on West 54th Street Thursday evening last . . . is better testimony to the entertainment value of It Can’t Happen Here than any reviewer can write. For, after all, ‘It is the guest who is the judge of the meat,'” Ebenezer wrote.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries