Split (1)

train · 25k rows

text stringlengths 13 991
In addition to P.T.S.S. theory, DeGruy co-developed the African American Adolescent Respect Scale, to serve as a practical measure of prosocial attitudes held by male adolescents. Other published work by DeGruy includes a chapter in "Should America Pay? Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations," edited by Raymond Winbush. She has participated in a wide array of public speaking engagements for non-profit organizations, colleges, and universities and has featured in publication lineups alongside the likes of Angela Davis. She is represented as a public speaker by the national organization Speak Out: The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture.
Valorie Burton is a life coach, author, motivational speaker and entrepreneur. She is the founder of the Coaching and Positive Psychology Institute (CaPP).
Burton has been featured on the TODAY Show and the Dr. Oz Show and has made regular appearances on CNN and HLN. She has written for Oprah Magazine, Essence Magazine and many others. She was a columnist for BlackAmericaWeb.com and is a frequent guest on CNN's "Reclaim Your Career" segment.
Burton co-hosted the Emmy-award-winning television program Aspiring Women, which aired on the Total Living Network (TLN). She has also co-hosted the national television program The Potter’s Touch with T.D. Jakes which aired weekdays on the TBN and BET.
Burton is a former Miss Black Texas USA, Miss Black USA "top 10" finalist, and a runner-up to Miss Texas. Ms. Burton is a credentialed member of the International Coach Federation and a member of the National Speakers Association.
Burton graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master's degree in applied positive psychology. She is also a graduate of Florida State University and has a master's degree in journalism from Florida A&M University.
Burton is author of several books including "Successful Women Think Differently", "What's Really Holding You Back", and "Happy Women Live Better", "Rich Minds Rich Rewards", "How Did I Get So Busy", "Listen to Your Life", "Why Not You? 28 Days to Authentic Confidence", "Start Here Start Now", "Get Unstuck, Be Unstoppable", and "Where Will You Go From Here?", and "Successful Women Speak Differently".
In "Rich Minds, Rich Rewards" (2001), she describes ways to focus "on what's truly important in life." In "What's Really Holding You Back?" (2005), Burton tackles fear, uncertainty and anxiety and how people can free themselves of fear. "Library Journal" calls "How Did I Get So Busy?" (2007) more than a "quick fix." Her book "Why Not You?" (2008), contains practical tips and a questionnaire for readers to "identify which four confidence levels they embody."
In 2020, Burton released her most recent book, "Life Coaching for Successful Women" and advice on New Year's resolution to loudly tell your goals and start with baby steps. Burton also gave decision-making advice, "Without understanding God deep in our hearts, there is no success".
Ashanti Omowali Alston (born 1954) is an anarchist activist, speaker, and writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. From 1974-1985 he spent time in prison for bank robbery which caused him to become further engaged in politics. He is currently on the Steering Committee of the Jericho Movement to free what they refer to as “political prisoners” in the US. Alston resides in Providence, Rhode Island.
Both Malcolm X's assassination and the Newark riots influenced Alston's decision to join the Black Panther Party at age 17, as he believed the Panthers were "taking Malcolm's teachings to the next level". At this time, Alston attended Nation of Islam meetings despite not being a member himself. He also felt a strong disdain for white people; however, upon joining the Panthers he changed his views.
Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army, and prison.
Alston observed much sexism during his time in the Black Panther Party, despite the group's stated intention of gender equality, which he didn't fully realize until his stint in prison. However, he has acknowledged that some women still felt empowered by the Black Panther Party to fight sexism despite experiencing it within the party, recalling, "Sisters would tell you that because everybody had guns there were certain ways that they could tell a brother, 'you're not going to fuck with me, I'm not going to be your sexual object because I got a gun'."
In 1984, Alston married fellow BPP and BLA member Safiya Bukhari.
Jeannette Caines was an American author of children's books, most notably "Abby", "Chilly Stomach" and "Just Us Women", a "Reading Rainbow" book. She was born and raised in Harlem, New York and worked as a Manuscript Coordinator. In 1989, Jeannette retired and relocated to Charlottesville, VA. She was the recipient of the National Black Child Developmental Institute's Certificate of Merit and Appreciation and the Charlottesville Lifetime Achievement Award (2004). In addition to this, Jeannette was the owner/operator of a small book store located in Charlottesville named THE PURPLE ALLIGATOR. Later in 2004, she was diagnosed with cancer and died on July 11. She had two children Alexander (deceased 2015) and Abby who still resides in New York.
Augusta Braxton Baker (April 1, 1911 – February 23, 1998) was an American librarian and storyteller. She was known for her contributions to children’s literature, especially regarding the portrayal of black Americans in works for children.
Augusta Braxton Baker was born on April 1, 1911, in Baltimore, Maryland. Both of her parents were schoolteachers, who instilled in her a love of reading. During the day while her parents worked, her grandmother, Augusta Fax (from whom she received her name) cared for her and told her stories. Baker delighted in these stories, carrying her love for them throughout her life. She learned to read before starting elementary school, later enrolling in the (racially segregated) black high school where her father taught, and graduating at the age of 16. Baker then entered the University of Pittsburgh, where she both met and married James Baker by the end of her sophomore year.
After graduation, Baker taught for a few years, until she was hired in 1937 as the children's librarian at the New York Public Library's 135th Street Branch (now the Countee Cullen Regional Branch) in Harlem. Moore applied three times before the head of children’s services, Anne Carroll Moore, took a personal interest in her application. Moore later berated the director of the library for not passing along the application, as she was interested in anyone who showed an affinity for children's work
In 1939, the branch began an effort to find and collect children's literature that portrayed black people as something other than "servile buffoons," speaking in a rude dialect, and other such stereotypes. This collection, founded by Baker as the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Children's Books, led to the publication of the first of a number of bibliographies of books for and about black children. Baker furthered this project by encouraging authors, illustrators, and publishers to produce, as well as libraries to acquire, books depicting blacks in a favorable light.
In 1946, she published an extensive bibliography of titles relating to the black experience titled "Books about Negro Life for Children." In a 1943 article Baker stated her criteria for selection. The books included should be ones, “that give an unbiased, accurate, well rounded picture of Negro life in all parts of the world.” The lists and the standards were freely distributed from 135th Street Branch in Harlem. Many librarians, editors, and authors of the time used the lists in conjunction with their own work. In 1971, it was retitled "The Black Experience in Children's Books," and its criteria played an important part in bringing awareness about harmful stereotypes in Helen Bannerman's The Story of Little Black Sambo.
In 1974, Baker retired from the New York Public Library. However, in 1980, she returned to librarianship to assume the newly created Storyteller-in-Residence position at the University of South Carolina; this was also the first such position in any American university at the time. She remained there until her second retirement in 1994. During her time there, Baker cowrote a book entitled "Storytelling: Art and Technique" with colleague Ellin Green, which was published in 1987.
After a long illness, Baker died at the age of 86 on February 23, 1998. Her legacy has remained even today, particularly through the "Baker’s Dozen: A Celebration of Stories" annual storytelling festival. Sponsored by the University of South Carolina College of Information and Communications and the Richland County Public Library, this festival originated in 1987 during Baker’s time at the University, and is celebrated still to this day.
When asked: “What do you tell your students when you conduct your workshops?” Baker stated:
“I tell them what I’ve always said. Let the story tell itself, and if it is a good story and you have prepared it well, you do not need all the extras - the costumes, the histrionics, the high drama. Children of all ages do want to hear stories. Select well, prepare well, and then go forth, stand tall, and just tell”
Her legacy also continues through the Augusta Baker Collection of Children's Literature and Folklore at the University of South Carolina. The collection, donated by her son, James H. Baker III, contains over 1,600 children's books, including materials from her personal and working library, as well as papers, illustrations, and anthologies of folktales Baker used during her career.
From Janice M. Del Negro, former Editor of "The Bulletin for Children's Books":
Kevin Brown (born September 3, 1960) is a biographer, essayist and translator who has authored or contributed to three books.
Kevin Brown has published brief lives of Romare Bearden and Malcolm X. He was a contributing editor to "The New York Public Library African American Desk Reference"
Since 1978, many of Brown's essays, articles and reviews on the visual arts, cinema, dance, literature, music and politics have appeared in "Afterimage", the "American Book Review", "American Visions", the "Chicago Review", the "Kansas City Star", "Kirkus Reviews", the "Times Literary Supplement", "The Nation", "New York Newsday", the "Oakland Tribune", the "Threepenny Review". and the "Washington Post Bookworld", among others.
Brown's 2005 translation into Spanish of Virginia Woolf's little known essay "Reviewing" appeared in the Iowa University journal of literary translation "eXchanges". His profile of translator Gregory Rabassa was published in 2006 by the University of Delaware's "Review of Latin American Studies".
Brown's mother, Duan Nimmons, was born (1940) in New York City, where her family had been active in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s. His maternal great-grandmother was Ida Mae Roberson (later, Ida Cullen-Cooper), widow of Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen. Countee Cullen was a teacher at Frederick Douglass Junior High school, where James Baldwin was among his students. Prior to his marriage to Ida Mae Roberson, Countee Cullen had briefly been the son-in-law of W.E.B. Du Bois.
From 1980 to 1984, in San Francisco, Brown studied Latin and Greek with a private tutor, reading widely in the works of the ancients and the French as well as contemporary post-war writers like Gore Vidal. He began publishing book reviews on writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Samuel Pepys and Virginia Woolf in newspapers such as the "Oakland Tribune" as well as longer essays on Spanish cinema and James Baldwin in the "Threepenny Review"
In 1986, Brown moved to New York, attending the Columbia University School of General Studies for one year before transferring to the City University of New York. There, he double-majored in Spanish as well as Translating & Interpreting, completing his undergraduate degree in the CUNY Baccalaureate Program for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies, headquartered at the Graduate Center. He studied with literary translator Gregory Rabassa, among others.
Brown lived in New York for 22 years, from 1985 to 2007, during which time he married and had a son. His son has rose to notoriety for being the youngest person to ever simultaneously whip and nae-nae. Brown returned to California in 2007, and currently lives in San Diego.
In 1985, Brown worked as an editorial assistant in the publishing industry in New York, and contributed to the "London Times Literary Supplement". From 1987 to 1989, Brown was a regular contributor to "Kirkus Reviews", where he published book reviews on subjects as various as Africa, African-American writers, 20th century American poetry, Anglo-American common law, Australian-New Zealand writers, French history and literature, the Harlem Renaissance, music, photography, politics. During the 1990s, he traveled in Central America and Eastern Europe, contributed to the "American Book Review", "American Visions" and "New York Newsday", and contracted to begin work on a series of biographies on Romare Bearden, Malcolm X and Countee Cullen.
Commissioned in 1993, just after the release of Spike Lee's movie on the same subject, Brown's second book attempts to chronicle the rise and fall of Malcolm X as well as that of rival leader Martin Luther King against the backdrop of the civil rights and black nationalist movements.
At Queens College and other campuses throughout the 23-college CUNY system, Kevin Brown studied both literary as well as technical translation with Gregory Rabassa and other faculty from Spain and Latin America. His profile-interview of Rabassa appeared in the University of Delaware's "Review of Latin American Studies".
William Patrick Foster (August 25, 1919 – August 28, 2010), also known as The Law and The Maestro, was the director of the noted Florida A&M University Marching "100". He served as the band's director from 1946 to his retirement in 1998. His innovations revolutionized college marching band technique and the perceptions of the collegiate band. Foster was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, the National Association for Distinguished Band Conductors Hall of Fame, the Florida Music Educators Association Hall of Fame and the Afro-American Hall of Fame among others. He also served as the president of the American Bandmasters Association and was appointed to the National Council on the Arts by President Bill Clinton. Foster wrote the book titled "The Man Behind the Baton".
The original FAMU Band was organized in 1892 under the leadership of P.A. Van Weller. At that time, the school was still known as the State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students. When Foster became the director of bands in 1946, the school was known as the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. Foster brought over 30 new techniques to the band, which have now become standard procedure for high school and college bands nationwide.
Under his direction, the Marching "100" appeared in films, commercials, numerous magazine and newspaper articles, nationally televised performances. In 1989, the French chose Foster and his band as America's official representative in the Bastille Day Parade, celebrating the bicentennial of the French Revolution. On January 27, 1996, the Marching "100" was the center-piece of the Opening Ceremonies of the Walt Disney Indy 200. The Band was also the featured attraction at the Fifteenth and Twenty-fifth Anniversary National Telecast of Walt Disney World in 1986 and 1996. In January 1993 and 1997, the band appeared in the Inaugural Parade of President Bill Clinton.
The collective style of the FAMU marching band evolved by happenstance during band practice in 1946. "Our first dance routine, I don't know how or why it came about," said Foster, in his book "Band Pageantry, A Guide for the Marching Band". Foster's break with tradition was a fanfare that trumpeted the changing of the guard in marching band style and forever changed the look, feel and emotion associated with halftime performances. The block, militaristic, corps style immediately became secondary to Foster's upbeat, high-energy shows and, by the '60s, bands such as Grambling, Southern and Tennessee State in addition to Florida A&M began to garner national attention.
Foster's innovations made for a quantum leap for a U.S. marching band scene, which had already witnessed lagging interest in live band concerts as the numbers of radio and vinyl-record fans began to soar. While educators saw bands as a way to teach music to large numbers of students, few college bands existed around the turn of the century. Those that did were usually either small and informal club-like organizations modeled on the community bands, or ROTC bands modeled on the music of the military.
"I don't know what possessed me to go to the dean's office, but I was there and he asked me what I wanted to do," recalled Foster in his book on marching band technique. "I told him I wanted to be a conductor, but he said, 'You should rethink that. There are no jobs for colored conductors.' And he was right! So I wanted to develop a band that would be better than any white band in the country."
At FAMU, Foster began redefining band pageantry with a showy style—rapid tempos, high-stepping, dancing, etc., which was eschewed by some band directors who continued to cling to more staid military tradition and its emphasis on correct carriage and marching precision.
Foster has been credited with developing at least 30 new marching band techniques, including the double-time marching step of 240 steps per minute or four steps per second, and the triple-time marching step of 360 steps per minute, the death-slow cadence of 20 steps per minute or one step every three seconds, and memorization of all music played in stands, parades, pre-game and halftime shows.
Foster authored 18 articles for professional journals, 4 published marching band shows, and the textbook, "Band Pageantry", considered "The Bible" for the marching band. He is the composer of "Marche Brillante", "National Honors March", "March Continental", and "Centennial Celebration".
Foster was the first recipient of the United States Achievement Academy Hall of Fame Award and the Outstanding Educator Award presented by the School of Education Society of the University of Kansas Alumni Association. In 1992, "Sports Illustrated" declared The 100 as the best marching band in the country. In 1998, Foster was inducted as a Great Floridian by the Museum of Florida History. He was also a director of the prestigious McDonald's All-American High School Band (1980–1992).
President Bill Clinton nominated and the United States Congress approved Foster as a member of the National Council on the Arts. Foster was a member of the Hall of Fame of the following organizations: Music Educators National Conference; the Florida Music Educators Association, Florida A&M University Sports, the National High School Band Directors, and the Afro-American Hall of Fame.
He was a Board member with G. Leblanc Corporation, John Philip Sousa Foundation, International Music Festival, Inc., and the Marching Musician. On December 17, 1998, the Board of Electors in Chicago, Illinois elected Foster to the National Band Association Hall of Fame of Distinguished Band Conductors, the most prestigious honor a bandmaster can receive.
On August 23, 2010, Foster, who had been a resident of Miracle Hill nursing home in Tallahassee, Florida, was admitted to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital's Intensive Care Unit. He died on August 28, 2010 at 12:01 AM. His funeral was held in Florida A&M University's Lee Hall on September 4, 2010. He was 91 years old.
John Henrik Clarke (born John Henry Clark; January 1, 1915 - July 16, 1998) was an American historian, professor, and pioneer in the creation of Pan-African and Africana studies and professional institutions in academia starting in the late 1960s.
He was born John Henry Clark on January 1, 1915, in Union Springs, Alabama, the youngest child of John Clark, a sharecropper, and Willie Ella Clark, a washer woman, who passed away in 1922. ). With the hopes of earning enough money to buy land rather than sharecrop, his family moved to the closest mill town in Columbus, Georgia.
Counter to his mother's wishes for him to become a farmer, Clarke left Georgia in 1933 by freight train and went to Harlem, New York as part of the Great Migration of rural blacks out of the South to northern cities. There he pursued scholarship and activism. He renamed himself as John Henrik (after rebel Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen) and added an "e" to his surname, spelling it as "Clarke". He also joined the U.S. Army during World War II.
Clarke was heavily influenced by Cheikh Anta Diop, which inspired his piece "The Historical Legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop: His Contributions to a New Concept of African History". Clarke believed that the credited Greek philosophers gained much of their theories and thoughts from contact with Africans, who influenced the early Western world.
Clarke was a professor of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York from 1969 to 1986, where he served as founding chairman of the department. He also was the Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Visiting Professor of African History at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center. Additionally, in 1968 he founded the African Heritage Studies Association and the Black Caucus of the African Studies Association.
In its obituary of Clarke, "The New York Times" noted that the activist's ascension to professor emeritus at Hunter College was "unusual... without benefit of a high school diploma, let alone a Ph.D." It acknowledged that "nobody said Professor Clarke wasn't an academic original. " In 1994, Clarke earned a doctorate from the non-accredited Pacific Western University (now California Miramar University) in Los Angeles, having earned a bachelor's degree there in 1992.
By the 1920s, the Great Migration and demographic changes had led to a concentration of African Americans living in Harlem. A synergy developed among the artists, writers, and musicians and many figured in the Harlem Renaissance. They began to implement supporting structures of study groups and informal workshops to develop newcomers and young people.
Arriving in Harlem at the age of 18 in 1933, Clarke developed as a writer and lecturer during the Great Depression years. He joined study circles such as the Harlem History Club and the Harlem Writers' Workshop. He studied intermittently at New York University, Columbia University, Hunter College, the New School of Social Research and the League for Professional Writers. He was an autodidact whose mentors included the scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. From 1941 to 1945, Clarke served as a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army Air Forces, ultimately attaining the rank of master sergeant.
In the post-World War II era, there was new artistic development, with small presses and magazines being founded and surviving for brief times. Writers and publishers continued to start new enterprises: Clarke was co-founder of the "Harlem Quarterly" (1949–51), book review editor of the "Negro History Bulletin" (1948–52), associate editor of the magazine, "Freedomways," and a feature writer for the black-owned "Pittsburgh Courier".
Clarke taught at the New School for Social Research from 1956 to 1958. Traveling in West Africa in 1958–59, he met Kwame Nkrumah, whom he had mentored as a student in the US, and was offered a job working as a journalist for the "Ghana Evening News". He also lectured at the University of Ghana and elsewhere in Africa, including in Nigeria at the University of Ibadan.
Besides teaching at Hunter College and Cornell University, Clarke founded professional associations to support the study of black culture. He was a founder with Leonard Jeffries and first president of the African Heritage Studies Association, which supported scholars in areas of history, culture, literature, and the arts. He was a founding member of other organizations to support work in black culture: the Black Academy of Arts and Letters and the African-American Scholars' Council.
Clarke's first marriage was to the mother of his daughter Lillie (who died before her father). They divorced.
In 1961, Clarke married Eugenia Evans in New York, and together they had a son and daughter: Nzingha Marie and Sonni Kojo. The marriage ended in divorce.
In 1997, John Henrik Clarke married his longtime companion, Sybil Williams. He died of a heart attack on July 16, 1998, at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City. He was buried in Green Acres Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia.
Henry Walton Bibb (May 10, 1815 in Shelby County, Kentucky – 1854) was an American author and abolitionist who was born a slave. After escaping from slavery to Canada, he founded an abolitionist newspaper, "The Voice of the Fugitive". He returned to the US and lectured against slavery.
Bibb was born to an enslaved woman, Milldred Jackson, on a Cantalonia, Kentucky, plantation on May 10, 1815. His people told him his white father was James Bibb, a Kentucky state senator, but Henry never knew him. As he was growing up, Bibb saw each of his six younger siblings, all boys, sold away. Bibb was also very attached to his original owner's dog, which he named Geels, but the dog passed away at only 5 years of age.
In 1833, Bibb married another enslaved mulatto, Malinda, who lived in Oldham County, Kentucky. They had a daughter, Mary Frances.
In 1842, he managed to flee to Detroit, from where he hoped to gain the freedom of his wife and daughter. After finding out that Malinda had been sold as a mistress to a white planter, Bibb focused on his career as an abolitionist. He traveled and lectured throughout the United States.
In 1849-50 he published his autobiography "Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself", which became one of the best known slave narratives of the antebellum years. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the danger to Bibb and his second wife, Mary E. Miles. It required Northerners to cooperate in the capture of escaped slaves. To ensure their safety, the Bibbs migrated to Canada and settled in Sandwich, Upper Canada, now Windsor, Ontario.
In 1851, he set up the first black newspaper in Canada, "The Voice of the Fugitive". The paper helped develop a more sympathetic climate for blacks in Canada as well as helped new arrivals to adjust. Due to his fame as an author, Bibb was reunited with three of his brothers, who separately had also escaped from slavery to Canada. In 1852 he published their accounts in his newspaper.
He died on August 1, 1854, at Windsor, Canada West, at the age of 39.
When she was 13, Clarke crossed a picket line of African-American activists protesting segregation at Woolworth's on 14th Street, believing that this was a rebellious act. However, when she came home her mother, a staunch union member, told her never to cross a picket line again, educating her about the role of direct action politics in the civil rights movement. At 16, Clarke was allowed by her parents to attend the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with them, despite their concerns that there might be violence. The day before the march, on the way downtown to acquire information about the route, she ran into Martin Luther King Jr., who would deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech the next day.
Clarke is the author of four collections of poetry: "Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women" (originally self-published in 1981 and distributed by in 1982); and for Firebrand Books "Living as a Lesbian" (1986), "Humid Pitch" (1989) and "Experimental Love" (1993).
She also published "After Mecca — Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement" (Rutgers University Press, 2005), the first study of its kind that made more visible the contributions of black women to a field that traditionally recognized black men, and "Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980–2005" (Carroll & Graf Publishing, 2006), a collection that represented 25 years of published writing.
Clarke has served on the editorial collective of "Conditions", an early lesbian publication, and has been published in numerous anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers, including "Conditions 5, The Black Women's Issue" (1979), ' (1982), ' (1984), "The Black Scholar", "The Kenyon Review", "Feminist Review of Books", "Belles Lettres", "The Gay Community News". Clarke's iconic articles, "Lesbianism: an act of resistance" and "The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community", published in "This Bridge" and "Home Girls", respectively, are often included in women studies, black studies, and English studies curricula.
Clarke's fifth book of poetry, "By My Precise Haircut" (2016), is published by The Word Works Books of Washington, D.C., a press committed to the publication of contemporary poetry.
“The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community” (1983).
Clarke concludes that Black people must be committed to eliminating homophobia in the community by engaging in discussion with advocates for gay and lesbian liberation, educating ourselves about gay and lesbian politics, confronting homophobic attitudes within ourself and others, and understanding how these attitudes prevent us from being totally liberated.
Clarke has served on a number of boards and community organizations, including New York Women Against Rape (1985), New Jersey Women and AIDS Network, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Currently, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Newark Pride Alliance, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to LGBTQ advocacy and programming in the city of Newark, New Jersey. She lives and writes in Jersey City, New Jersey.
(Bishop) Yvette A. Flunder (born July 29, 1955) is an American womanist, preacher, pastor, activist, and singer from San Francisco, CA. She is the senior pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland, California and Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries.
Flunder was born in San Francisco, California and raised between the Bay Area and Mississippi. She graduated High School from Church of God in Christ’s Saints Academy in Lexington, Mississippi before returning to California. She was raised in the Church of God in Christ. In 1984 she began singing and recording with Walter Hawkins and the Love Center Choir, where she was the lead singer. She was later ordained by Hawkins.
Flunder earned an undergraduate degree from College of San Mateo. She then went on to receive a Certificate of Ministry Studies and a Master of Arts in 1997 from the Pacific School of Religion, before earning her Doctor of Ministry degree from the San Francisco Theological Seminary in 2001.
In 2000 she founded the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, a trans-denominational coalition of Christian churches who "desire to celebrate and proclaim the radically inclusive love of Jesus Christ", and was appointed its Presiding Bishop in 2003.
Flunder identifies as a womanist and a reconciling liberation theologian. In 2005 she authored a book, "Where the Edge Gathers: Building a Community of Radical Inclusion". Carlton Pearson cites her among the first religious leaders to embrace and encourage him after he was declared a heretic due to coming out in support of universal reconciliation.
In 2013 she was named as a Distinguished Alumna of the Pacific School of Religion. On December 1, 2014, Flunder was a keynote speaker in the White House for World AIDS Day, where she described the harmful effects of stigma and homophobia on those living with HIV and on AIDS education in general.The following year she was a guest speaker at the American Baptist College's Garnett-Nabrit Lecture Series.
Since 2015 Flunder has been a member of the board of trustees of the Starr King School for the Ministry and also served as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.
Flunder's spouse is Shirley Miller, the cousin of Walter Hawkins; they have been committed partners since the mid-1980s.
Bishop Flunder was raised in the "womb" of the church coming from church founding families in the Bay Area.
From a young age, Flunder's life reflected her beliefs to treat people with value and equality. In 1986, Flunder was moved to minister to people with HIV/AIDS in response to the epidemic of the 1980s. She founded several not-for-profit enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area, providing services for people affected by HIV: Hazard-Ashley House, Walker House and Restoration House, through the Ark of Refuge, Inc., which later became the Y. A. Flunder Foundation, and is now City of Refuge.
In 1991, she founded the City of Refuge under the United Church of Christ, "in order to unite a gospel ministry with a social ministry". She describes the City of Refuge UCC as an effort to "create a spiritual community that will embrace our collective cultures, faith paths, gender expressions, and sexual/affectional orientations while simultaneously freeing us from oppressive theologies that subjugate women, denigrate the LGBT community, and disconnect us from justice issues locally and globally". The Transcendence Gospel Choir was a community choir affiliated with the City of Refuge and was the first all-transgender choir in the United States.
Flunder's work expands into digital spaces. In 2021 she was a panelist for "Fire and Desire" the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture's Center for the Study of African American Religious Life as they discussed "Black Male Gospel Music Performance"
Flunder was portrayed by actress Phylicia Rashad for the final 3-part episode as part of the Dustin Lance Black mini-series "When We Rise" on March 3, 2017 on the major television network ABC. The Bishop's role in the show highlights the compassion of the church, the commitment of its leadership and the loving home the church provides to minister in the tough, primarily African-American community in San Francisco.
Flunder was also depicted by Joni Bovill in the Joshua Marston drama film "Come Sunday", which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and was released on Netflix in April 2018.
Flunder is active on many social media platforms using her platforms to consistently advocate for black lives, queer lives, medical accessibility, and destigmatization of HIV+ lives.
in 2021, Flunder was featured in PBS's "The Black Church: This is our story, this is our song."
Birthing the Sermon: Women Preachers on the Creative Process
Queer Christianities: Lived Religion in Transgressive Forms
The Niggerati was the name used, with deliberate irony, by Wallace Thurman for the group of young African-American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. "Niggerati" is a portmanteau of "nigger" and "literati". The rooming house where he lived, and where that group often met, was similarly christened Niggerati Manor. The group included Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and several of the people behind Thurman's journal "FIRE!!" (which lasted for one issue in 1926), such as Richard Bruce Nugent (the associate editor of the journal), Jonathan Davis, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Aaron Douglas.
The African-American bourgeoisie tried to distance itself from the slavery of the past and sought social equality and racial integration. The Niggerati themselves appeared to be relatively comfortable with their diversity of gender, skin color, and background. After producing "FIRE!!", which failed because of a lack of funding, Thurman persuaded the Niggerati to produce another magazine, "Harlem". This, too, lasted only a single issue.
Whilst Hughes, Hurston, and Thurman were comfortable with the appellation, others were less so. Cullen, for example, found Carl Van Vechten's novel "Nigger Heaven" so offensive that he refused to talk to him for 14 years. Hurston, though, had no trouble with language that challenged the sensibilities of others. She dubbed the well-heeled white liberals who were involved in the Harlem Renaissance "Negrotarians" (c.f. rotarian).

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.