Williamson Co., TN–Joycelin Marie Blackmun, 65, loving wife and mother of three children, passed away on Saturday, June 12, 2021. Mrs. Blackmun was born on May 7, 1956, to Latham and Mary (Johnson) Mills. She received a pre-med degree from Fisk University and worked at Sears as a human resource specialist before retiring and working at the IRS for six more years. She married Nathaniel Blackmun on Aug. 5, 1978, and they had three children, Natonya (John), Courtney and Nathaniel “J.R.” Joyce was an active member of Shorter Chapel AME Church her entire life. She was president of the choir…
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Nashville, TN (TN Tribune)–Dixie Vodka, one of America’s fastest growing spirit brands, has been named the Official Vodka of Nashville Superspeedway, track officials announced today. Guests attending Nashville Superspeedway’s NASCAR tripleheader on Father’s Day weekend will have the opportunity to taste samples of Dixie Vodka’s products in the FanZone. In addition, Dixie Vodka ambassadors will visit track’s campgrounds throughout the weekend to interact with fans. Nashville Superspeedway’s June 18-20 weekend includes the inaugural, sold-out “Ally 400” NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday, June 20 (2:30 p.m. CT, NBCSN), the first Cup Series race in Middle Tennessee in 37 years. Founded…
WASHINGTON — President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris signed into law a bill establishing Juneteenth National Independence Day, a celebration designating the end of slavery in the United States, as a federal holiday. “By making Juneteenth a federal holiday, all Americans can feel the power of this day and learn from our history, and celebrate progress, and grapple with the distance we’ve come but the distance we have to travel to,” Biden said during remarks Thursday in the East Room of the White House. The last federal holiday was created in 1983, when former President Ronald Reagan established Martin…
NASHVILLE, TN ( June 17, 2021) Responding to concerns from neighborhood groups, developer Marquette Companies has withdrawn their planned use of the name of historic Nashville sculptor William Edmondson in connection with a development they hope to build in Edgehill. Chris Yuko, Director of Development and Acquisitions (Southeast) at Marquette made the announcement Tuesday evening at a community meeting. Earlier on Tuesday, Yuko met with leaders of the Friends of the William Edmondson Homesite and informed them that he would be making that change in response to the objections that had been raised. “We are happy that Chris heard the community’s concerns and took immediate action. He also asked to visit with us at the historic Edmondson homesite park,…
By Tameka Greer On the eve of Juneteenth, the day enslaved Africans in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free, a collective of Black women leading organizing work in the South issued the following statement. The leaders are Nse Ufot (Georgia), Ashley Shelton (Louisiana), Tameka Greer (Tennessee), Rev. Rhonda Thomas (Florida), Stephanie Strong (Alabama), and Akilah S. Wallace (Texas): “Louisiana, where I’m from, has some of the most regressive laws in the nation, which leave Black people feeling that we are still in proverbial chains,” said Ashley Shelton, executive director of the Power Coalition. “With 680 incarcerated individuals per 100,000 people, Louisiana has the highest…
By Katelynn White Tennessee State University has teamed up with the Metro Public Health Department to offer residents 12-years-old and up an opportunity to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. TSU is one of many Universities that have made their campus a vaccination site for Nashville residents. The Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccine is being offered at the TSU’s downtown location, Avon Williams campus. June 15th was the University’s first day offering COVID-19 shots. TSU will continue to offer COVID vaccinations on specific days. On July 6 between 9 a.m. to 12-noon vaccinations will be offered. The date for Fall…
They began arriving by the busloads on May 12, 1968 to demand economic justice. The Poor People’s Campaign, the brainchild of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), drew a diverse coalition of white, Latino, Indigenous and Black Americans to Washington, D.C., from across the country. They came from big cities, both coasts, Appalachia, the Deep South, the Midwest and the Southwest, then all settled in to become residents of “Resurrection City.” The makeshift tent city spread across 15 acres near the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument in an encampment designed as a multi-day protest against government inaction…
Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday. Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House two months earlier in Virginia, but slavery had remained relatively unaffected in Texas—until U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3: “The people of…
Murfreesboro, TN (TN Tribune)–Middle Tennessee State University’s Brelinda Johnson and Daniel Green are among the 21 faculty and staff members from Tennessee colleges and universities selected to participate in the 2021-22 class of the Maxine Smith Fellows program. Johnson is Scholars Academy manager for the Office of Student Success while Green is director of Intercultural and Diversity Affairs in the Division of Student Affairs. The Maxine Smith Fellows program provides professional development, training and advancement opportunities for participants from traditionally underrepresented groups at Tennessee’s locally governed public universities as well as the community and technical colleges governed by the Tennessee…
Nashville, TN (TN Tribune)–Vanderbilt University Medical Center will participate in a new federal initiative aimed at improving the use of polygenic risk scores (PRS) to predict complex diseases in diverse populations. This week the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it will fund grants totaling $38 million over five years to establish and support a PRS Diversity Consortium. VUMC researchers will co-lead two of the consortium’s six PRS centers. Polygenic risk scores provide a genetic estimate of disease risk. Because most PRS were developed using data from European ancestry study samples, they perform poorly in predicting disease risk when applied to other racial…