Spelman College Names Dr. Helene D. Gayle President. Rebecca Kelliher / Diverse Issues In Higher Education

On Monday, the Spelman College Board of Trustees unanimously voted to appoint Dr. Helene D. Gayle, a public health leader, as the 11th president of the historically Black women’s liberal arts college.
“This is a moment where HBCUs are once again being recognized for the importance that they bring to every sector of this country,” said Gayle in a statement. “The idea of giving back to generations of students through cutting-edge academic programs and facilities, increasing college affordability, raising financial aid support and increasing the endowment, and developing new career pathways and opportunities is what invigorates and excites me about this new role.” Read more 

Related: Morris Brown College, an Atlanta HBCU, has accreditation restored after 20 years. By Amir Vera / CNN 

Ethics / Morality / Religion

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From the Pilgrims to QAnon: Christian nationalism is the “asteroid coming for democracy.” By Kathryn Joyce / Salon

Scholar Samuel Perry says the myth of a “Christian nation” has distorted American history from 1690 to Trump

In “The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy,” Gorski and Perry argue that in the years around 1690 — when Puritan colonists began envisioning their battles against Native Americans as an apocalyptic holy war to secure a new Promised Land, when Southern Christians began to formulate a theological justification for chattel slavery — a new national mythology was born. That mythology is the “deep story” of white Christian nationalism: the notion that America was founded as a Christian nation, blessed by God and imbued with divine purpose, but also under continual threat from un-American and ungodly forces, often in the form of immigrants or racial minorities.  Read more 

Related: ‘Healing Haunted Histories’ outlines church’s responsibility to address America’s settler past. By David E. De Cosse / NCR

Related: How race and religion have always played a role in who gets refuge in the US. By Laura E. Alexander,  Jane Hong Karen Hooge Michalka and Luis A. Romero / The Conversation

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American Muslim women are finding a unique religious space at a women-only mosque in Los Angeles. By Tazeen M. Ali / The Conversation 

The Women’s Mosque of America was founded in 2015 by two South Asian American Muslim women – comedy writer M. Hasna Maznavi and attorney Sana Muttalib. It was conceived as a space to empower Muslim women to take on active roles in their individual community mosques and influence changes in a mosque culture that is often unwelcoming to women. Read more 

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What Rodney King Understood About Getting Along. By Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic

At a fraught moment, he urged his fellow Angelenos to think of the common good.

Thirty years ago this week, Los Angeles was burning amid riots that ultimately killed 63 people, injured 2,383, and destroyed hundreds of businesses. And perhaps the last person in the city that anyone could reasonably expect to call for calm, comity, and forbearance—the person with more fresh cause than anyone else to be furious at the city—was Rodney Glen King. Yet on May 1, 1992, King called a press conference in hopes of stopping the death and destruction. “I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?” he implored everyone watching. “Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?” Read more 

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Muhammad Ali: What his conviction teaches us today. By Ken Makin / CS Monitor

On April 28, 1967, 55 years ago this week, Ali refused to be drafted into the United States Army to fight in the Vietnam War. His Muslim faith and his anti-war commentary came to a head when he arrived in Houston for his scheduled induction. He refused to step forward when his name was called and was told that he would be arrested if he continued to refuse. A man known for his trademark shuffle stood firm that day. “It is in the light of my consciousness as a Muslim minister and my own personal convictions that I take my stand in rejecting the call to be inducted,” he offered in a statement. Read more 

Historical / Cultural

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Here is a hard historical truth: Slavery powerfully shaped Harvard. By Lawrence S. Bacow and Tomiko Brown-Nagin. Wash Post 

In his groundbreaking 1935 book, “Black Reconstruction in America,” W.E.B. Du Bois eloquently described the tragedy and triumph intertwined in American history. Nations “make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things,” he wrote. “And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?” We now know that Harvard leaders, faculty and staff enslaved more than 70 people of African and Native American descent. Some of these enslaved people labored at and for the university, including in the households of Harvard presidents. Read more 

Related: Why Harvard’s report demands our attention. By Peniel E. Joseph / CNN

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Harriet Tubman led military raids during the Civil War as well as her better-known slave rescues. By Kate Clifford Larson / The Conversation

Harriet Tubman was barely 5 feet tall and didn’t have a dime to her name. What she did have was a deep faith and powerful passion for justice that was fueled by a network of Black and white abolitionists determined to end slavery in America. “I had reasoned this out in my mind,” Tubman once told an interviewer. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.” Though Tubman is most famous for her successes along the Underground Railroad, her activities as a Civil War spy are less well known. Read more 

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Boston breaks ground on a Martin Luther King memorial. By Tovia Smith / NPR

More than seven decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived, studied and preached in Boston, the city will soon have a memorial honoring him and his wife Coretta Scott King, who met each other there. While countless monuments around the nation already memorialize King for his civil rights work, the Boston structure is meant as a tribute to both he and Coretta Scott King. It’s intended to be a “symbol of love” as much as one of “equity, inclusion, belonging and justice,” says Imari Paris Jeffries, executive director of King Boston, the nonprofit behind the project. The 22-foot-tall bronze sculpture of the couple’s arms intertwined, called “The Embrace,” was inspired by a photo of the two hugging after King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Read more 

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House unanimously passes Asian American and Pacific Islander museum bill. By Kimmy Yam / NBC News

“Creating a national museum would ensure there is a physical space to commemorate and share our story with future generations,” Rep. Grace Meng said in a statement.

The House passed a bill Tuesday that would help establish the first national Asian American and Pacific Islander museum. The bipartisan legislation, which was co-sponsored by 120 Democrats and Republicans, passed unanimously by voice vote. The bill, reintroduced in May by Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., would create a commission to study the potential to establish and operate a museum dedicated to the community in Washington, D.C. Read more 

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Black Perspectives Summer Books Preview, Part II. By Robert Greene II / AAIHS

Yesterday, Black Perspectives published part I of a Summer Books preview, covering a select number of books published in April and May. Today, we shift our attention to the month of June, which also sees several critical works in the realm of Black intellectual history, and Black history more broadly speaking. These works include historians who have written extensively for Black Perspectives, and others who have already left an indelible mark on the history profession. All of the themes mentioned in this essay have been critical hallmarks of scholarship published on Black Perspectives. In addition, all of the works written about here share one commonality: expressing the continued importance of Black history to the larger tapestry of historical scholarship.  Read more 

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The Evolution of Tyler Perry. By Candace McDuffie / The Root

From working the “Chitlin’ Circuit” to becoming a self-made billionaire, we take you through the makings of the Hollywood mogul

Over the course of his career, Tyler Perry has made himself a pillar in Black entertainment. As of 2020, his famed “Madea” persona made him a billionaire. The screenwriter, producer, director and actor has transformed the way Black stories are told on the silver screen. In honor of his contributions to the culture, here is the evolution of Tyler Perry. Read more 

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Viola Davis’ ‘Finding Me’ Reveals Fight for Success: Review. By Stephanie Zacharek / Time  

To read Davis’ elegantly written but sometimes harrowing memoir, Finding Me, is to understand just how hard this spectacular performer has worked to build the career and life she has today—and to acknowledge that even for a performer as outrageously gifted and dedicated as Davis is, the ingredient X known as luck can never be underestimated. Davis opens the book with a telling scene from her childhood, an upbringing marked by trauma that would take years for her to process. Read more 

Related: Watch Oprah + Viola: A Netflix Special Event. In this special event, Oprah Winfrey sits down with actor Viola Davis for an interview about her memoir, “Finding Me.” 

Sports

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How a former NBA player and activist became a far-right media darling. By David Gardner / Wash Post

Royce White, 31, has publicly rebranded himself as a far-right populist. He has embraced conspiracy theories ranging from the origins of the coronavirus to the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and satanic influences in the federal government. White was raised by a single mother in Minneapolis, he said, before becoming a standout college basketball player and a first-round NBA draft pick. In February, White announced that he would run as a Republican in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, a Democratic stronghold held by Rep. Ilhan Omar since 2019. Read more

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Nike honors Serena Williams with building named after the tennis star. By Jaz Garner / CBS News

Serena Williams is known for her extraordinary grand slam legacy — she has 23 titles, to be exact. Now her legacy has been cemented in a 1-million-square-foot building at Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. In an Instagram post Wednesday, Williams said it was a childhood dream of hers to have a building at Nike. “When I was just a kid, I visited the Nike campus and I saw that athletes get buildings,” she wrote to her 14.6 million followers. “After that visit, I knew I wanted two things: to be a Nike athlete and to have a building.” Read more 

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Dick Barnett’s efforts have helped preserve Tennessee A&I’s rich basketball history. By Jerry Bembry / Andscape

For decades, Dick Barnett expressed his frustration to anyone who would listen about the lack of recognition for his historic college basketball team. Tennessee State, named Tennessee A&I until 1968, was the first historically Black college and university (HBCU) to win a national college basketball tournament. “I spoke to [Ed Peskowitz, former owner of the Atlanta Hawks] and he asked me, ‘Whatever happened to those Tennessee A&I teams?’ ” Barnett recalled. “That conversation is when I decided that I didn’t want what we accomplished lost to history.”  The Dream Whisperer, a documentary sparked by that column and the conversation with Peskowitz, will premiere this weekend at Danny Glover’s Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles. Read more 

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Trae Young: Your Hair Is an Unsolved Mystery. But a Magnificent One. By Wesley Morris / NYT

The complex ’do of the Hawks player has been debated, dissed and memed. But our critic pays respect to its “confusion, awe and strength.”

What now? He’s gone. I mean, it’s gone. The single most fascinating thing about the N.B.A. playoffs hasn’t been, “Were the Nets ever really a team?” Or: “Whose death wish is better: Charles Bronson’s or Philly’s?” It’s not even: “Lord. What. Is. Ben Simmons. Wearing. To-night?” The single most fascinating thing about the last two postseasons has obviously been Trae Young’s hair. Read more 

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