Black Excellence – Page 4

Black Excellence: Martin Luther King, Jr formerly known as Michael Luther King, Jr

This month’s Black Excellence piece concerns famous African Americans who either changed their names or had their names changed by someone else.

With your child, choose someone from this list and try to do a little independent research on that individual and the names they’ve had. Have a conversation with your family about these name changes and why they happened. After that, have a conversation about your own names, their meanings and the reasons why any of your names may have changed. You’ll discover that people change their names for many different reasons.

Did you know Martin Luther King, Jr’s name was changed when he was five years old? His father, for whom he was named, made a visit to a Baptist World Alliance convention in Berlin, Germany in 1934. While there, he learned about the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. King Sr was so impressed by Martin Luther that he changed his name from Michael to Martin. Even though Martin Jr’s name was changed when he was five, his birth certificate wasn’t amended until he was 28!

Note: If you have the TRJ Conversations cards, they can guide you in these discussions about names. Stay tuned for a new and improved edition of June in April conversation cards coming soon!

See April's Conversation Cards

Black Excellence: Daryl “DMC” McDaniels

contributed by Jennie Rosenstiel

Hip Hop turns 50 this year and when it comes to hip-hop’s influence on American music and culture, there are few names as celebrated as Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. Frontman to pioneering new-school hip-hop trio Run-DMC from 1983 until 2002, DMC is beloved to music fans worldwide. But when it comes to DMC, being a musical icon is only part of the story. He’s also a writer, activist, and advocate for adoptees and foster (and former foster) youth.

Born and raised in Hollis, Queens, NY, DMC grew up in a middle-class family and spent his days in Catholic schools. He was still in high school when he taught himself to DJ, a developing passion that would lead him to 3 platinum albums. Though he was bullied at school, DMC reflected that at home it “felt like Christmas every day.” That picture of the past became unimaginably complicated when DMC was researching his early life for his autobiography, King of Rock: Respect, Responsibility, and My Life with Run-DMC. It was then–at 35–that DMC learned of his own experience in foster care and ultimate adoption. As a late discovery adoptee, he has spent the better part of two decades grappling with the truth of his past and all of the many emotions and questions it brought up for him. But through therapy, building community with other adopted persons, and his art, DMC has worked hard to integrate his previously hidden truth.

In the years since learning of his adoption, DMC has joined with fellow adoptee and casting agent, Sheila Jaffe to form The Felix Organization, providing mentorship and summer camp experiences to foster youth. He’s become a voice for the rights of adoptees to access original birth certificates. He’s collaborated with fellow adoptee Sarah McLachlan on “Just Like Me.” And he’s authored even more books–a memoir entitled Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide, children’s books including Darryl’s Dream, and multiple comic books.

Today, DMC is still making music, but his work as an advocate for adoptees and foster youth is arguably just as important. While no adoptee is obligated to disclose their trauma, DMC’s sensitive handling of his own past and present have turned an unknown history into an opportunity to help and inspire others. Through his art and activism, DMC has become one of the most important voices for adoptees and foster youth in America. DMC is a prolific and accomplished musician, writer, producer, and now comic book publisher. It’s difficult to imagine a better representative of the complexities inherent in the “lucky adoptee” narrative nor a more accomplished example of Black Excellence.

Darryl and his wife Zuri joined us (virtually) for camp in 2020.

For more, you can listen to a beautifully honest and nuanced conversation between DMC and our own April Dinwoodie from her podcast here.

Black Excellence: Spotlight on blackhistorymonth.gov

This month, we shine our spotlight on blackhistorymonth.gov, a website created with contributions from:

The Library of Congress
The National Archives and Records Administration
The National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Gallery of Art
The National Park Service
The Smithsonian Institution
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

On this website, you’ll find curated compilations of the contributions and lived experiences, both historic and contemporary, of Black people in the United States. Collections of images, audio and video along with links to beautiful exhibits created by the aforementioned institutions populate this online tribute to Black History Month. Please take the time to visit the site and share some of its content with your children as well as with their teachers. Take some time to acknowledge and celebrate Black History Month this February with your family.

Black Excellence – Kiese Laymon

Considered to have written one of the best 50 memoirs of the past 50 years by the New York Times, Kiese Laymon is an American author who is currently on the faculty at Rice University His memoir, “Heavy”, has received multiple accolades and awards including the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Award for Excellence. The autobiography is about growing up Black, bookish and overweight in an abusive home in Jackson, Mississippi.

Why write about Laymon for January’s Black Excellence? Well, last year, “Heavy” was chosen as one of the “15 Books to Read During Black History Month and Beyond” by the Innocence Project. To commemorate Black History Month this year, consider reading Laymon’s book.

Currently teaching at Rice University as the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of Creative Writing and English, Professor Laymon also works with and founded the Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative which promotes reading and writing with children in Mississippi.

Black Excellence – Chris Kennedy, the Black Santa

Two years ago, Chris Kennedy put up an inflatable, seven foot tall, Black Santa in his front yard. An angry community member responded with a racist note stating:

“Please remove your negro Santa Claus yard decoration,” the letter, signed by an anonymous “Santa Claus,” read. “You should try not to deceive children into believing that I am negro. I am a caucasian (white man, to you) and have been for the past 600 years.”

In response to the note, Mr. Kennedy did not remove his Santa and added a second Black Santa. He posted about the incident on Facebook and his neighbors and community responded by decorating their front lawns with Black Santas too.

Inspired to further action, he stated,

“I couldn’t let hatred win,”...“You don’t like me having a Black Santa in my front yard? I will go and be the Santa Claus for the entire city.”

So he rented a Santa suit, began taking photos with his daughter and then traveled across the country from his home in North Little Rock, Arkansas to attend a Santa Camp run by the New England Santa Society in New Hampshire. At camp, he was the only Black Santa. His experience at camp is portrayed in a new HBO documentary “Santa Camp” along with the stories of a disabled man and a transgender man. Get your hankies on hand before you watch!

(Rated TV-MA for mature audiences. The content is intended for adults, and isn't really suitable for children under the age of 17.)

Black Excellence: Daniel Smith 3/11/1932-10/2022

Being raised the child of a former enslaved person along with his 5 siblings, he later came to acknowledge seeing his parents as,

“...followers of the “twice as good” philosophy — the futile belief that black people must perform twice as well as whites just to be considered equal. And beneath the sunny message of how extraordinary the Smith children were lay Abram Smith’s stories of slavery with their frightening symbols of brutality.”

As a young man, he served as a medic in the Korean War. Upon returning to his home in Winsted, CT in 1955, he was dubbed, “Danny Smith, the Negro hero of the town,” for rescuing a drowning man from a flood.

He later attended the Tuskegee Institute to pursue a career as a veterinarian but he left the program after the KKK bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL in order to join the Civil Rights Movement. Then, Mr. Smith went on to work on many endeavors related to race equity and civil rights. One such accomplishment was his work as a literacy advocate with migrant workers. This provoked retaliation from the KKK but it didn’t stop him from continuing to work on behalf of the movement, as his life was filled with similar endeavors until his retirement in 1994.

Click on the links to read more about this man’s remarkable life.

Black Excellence: Serena Williams

Uppermost in the news today regarding tennis star, Serena Williams, is her very recent retirement from the sport. Over the course of her career, she has won 21 Grand Slams but now, she’s leaving her tennis career with plans to grow her family. “If I have to choose between building my tennis resume and building my family, I choose the latter.”

In a recent interview with Selena Gomes on her new website for mental health awareness, acceptance and support, Wondermind, Serena stated that you have to “put yourself first mentally”.

She detailed that for her, "mental fitness" is learning how to "shut down," and she said: "I have serious boundaries, and I don't let anyone cross those boundaries."

Related Posts:

Venus and Serena Williams – Black Excellence

Reveal: The Masks We See and Those We Don’t

Book Corner – Mental Health Month

Black Excellence: Colin Kaepernick and Nessa Diab

In 2016, Kap launched the non profit Know Your Rights Camp that teaches, supports and nourishes African American children to have a brighter future.

Nessa is a well known radio and TV host. She’s also an activist! She helped found the Know Your Rights Camp, hosts an annual prom for disadvantaged girls in New York City centered around female empowerment and launched a mentoring and scholarship program for girls too!

Congratulations to this powerful and beautiful duo on the arrival of their baby!

Black Excellence: Todd Kennedy

Todd Kennedy is our camp counselor and athletic director extraordinaire. Our children have come to love taking tumbling classes with Mr. Todd over the past several years, and he’s looking forward to seeing his kids and welcoming new families to camp this summer.

Mr. Todd has a special ministry with youth and has taught tumbling to over 9,000 kids in Cleveland, East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights. He started tumbling at the age of eleven and grew up learning on grass, streets and old mattresses. He went on to become an acro-gymnast and a power tumbler. He has dedicated his life and his career to forming loving and inclusive communities via his tumbling program.

Of camp, Mr. Todd has said,

“I did not know I had other family members outside my family until I joined Transracial Journeys.”

We love you, Mr. T!

Black Excellence: Maya Angelou

Born in 1928, Marguerite Annie Johnson grew to be one of the most important American literary figures of the 19th and 20th centuries. You may better recognize her as Maya Angelou, author of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”.

She was also known for her work as a civil rights activist, a Calypso singer, a dancer, a poet and more. Over the course of her life, she was awarded more than 50 honorary degrees as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom which was presented to her by President Barack Obama in 2010.

In a collection of her published essays entitled “Letter to My Daughter” she wrote, “The birth of my son caused me to develop enough courage to invent my life.” She went on to also say, “I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters." In this collection, she serves up lots of advice to women that stems from her own lived experience. It’s beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, wise and more.

In early 2022, the United States Mint honored Dr. Angelou by featuring her as part of the American Women Quarters Program. Her coin if the first one launched in the series and is also the first U.S. coin to depict a Black woman.