By Janita R. Stewart U.S. Small Business Administration’s Southeast Acting Regional Administrator As we move into March, we continue to celebrate women entrepreneurs in honor of Women’s History Month. This year we are celebrating the small business successes as well as the incredible challenges that entrepreneurs have overcome in light of the global pandemic. This year is like no other year in history. The American Express 2019 State of Women-Owned Businesses report, which makes its projections based on data from the most recent U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Business Owners, claims that there are nearly 13 million women-owned firms in the United States. …
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NASHVILLE, TN — African-American woman state senator in Tennessee. She was elected in 1991, is the longest-serving female State Senator in Tennessee history. She the first woman to preside over the Senate and first African-American woman to serve as the Chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee holding that position during the 102nd, 103rd, 104th, and 105th General Assemblies. She served as Vice Chair of the Senate State and Local Government Committee during the 97th and 101st General Assemblies and the first Senator to serve as Chair of the Tennessee Black Caucus. She began her public service in 1980 when…
NASHVILLE, TN — Tennessee law firm Lewis Thomason recently fulfilled a priority of its strategic plan by forming InclusivLT, a diversity, equity, and inclusion committee (DE&I). The committee will be chaired by John R. Tarpley, a Nashville attorney whose practice focuses on complex litigation in the areas of transportation, tort, product liability, and a wide range of insurance-related matters in both state and federal courts. Reflecting the diversity of the firm, committee members include Robyn Askew, Ray Babaoglu, Christen Blackburn, Ryan Clark, Brian Faughnan, Tania Freeman, Preston Hawkins, Whitney Henry Kimerling, Lynn Peterson, Kaya Grace Porter, Margaret Cooper Roney, Mary…
By ReNika Moore ACLU Director COVID-19 is still ravaging many parts of the United States, but nowhere more than in Black communities. Early data from the Midwest and the South reveal that Black people are contracting and dying from the virus at far higher rates than whites. Louisiana just released data which shows that African Americans account for 70 percent of all deaths in the state. In Milwaukee County, 81 percent of those that have died are Black. In Chicago, 70 percent of COVID-19-related deaths are Black. This disease threatens us all, but the Black community has seen the worst…
Washington D. C.–The House on Wednesday passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, an expansive policing overhaul measure named for the 46-year-old Black man who died last Memorial Day after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee against his neck for over nine minutes. The bill passed 220 to 212 along mostly party lines, with two Democrats, Reps. Jared Golden (Maine) and Ron Kind (Wis.), voting against it, and one Republican, Rep. Lance Gooden (Tex.), accidentally voting for it. Soon after the vote, Gooden tweeted that he had pressed the wrong button and had meant to vote “no.” He…
NASHVILLE, TN –Relief workers in India, Central America, and Yemen distribute food staples to the world’s poorest and hungriest people. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) operates in 88 countries and feeds 100 million people every year. “We respond first to natural disasters,” said Steve Taravella, senior spokesperson at UN World Food Programme. Secondly, the WFP delivers food to warzones like South Sudan, Syria, and Burkina Faso. “Violence and conflict is the single biggest driver of hunger right now,” he said. Aid workers had hoped to end famine in the world by 2030 but Taravella said hunger has been…
NASHVILLE – On Wednesday, March 3, 2021, Mayor John Cooper will participate in a virtual ceremony and moment of silence in remembrance of the March 2020 tornado. The event can be viewed at 11 a.m. on Mayor John Cooper’s Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/MayorJohnCooper Attendees include: Mayor John Cooper Pastor Harold Moses Love Jr. – Pastor of Lee Chapel AME Council Member Brandon Taylor – District 21 Alisha Haddock – Long-Term Recovery Group’s Advocacy Committee Deirdre Nicole Childress…
By TRAVIS LOLLER, JONATHAN MATTISE and GILLIAN FLACCUS Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ Rita Fentress was worried she might get lost as she traveled down the unfamiliar forested, one-lane road in rural Tennessee in search of a coronavirus vaccine. Then the trees cleared and the Hickman County Agricultural Pavilion appeared. The 74-year-old woman wasn’t eligible to be vaccinated in Nashville, where she lives, because there were so many health care workers to vaccinate there. But a neighbor told her the state’s rural counties had already moved to younger age groups and she found an appointment 60 miles away. “I…
Washington—Vernon Jordan, a civil rights leader and close adviser to former President Bill Clinton, died Monday evening. He was 85. A cause of death was not immediately released. Jordan died peacefully at his home surrounded by his wife and family, Jordan’s niece Ann Walker confirmed. According to Walker, Jordan had his favorite dinner and dessert — chocolate chip ice cream — before he went to bed. “It was just the way he would have wanted it,” Walker told CNN. The former president of the National Urban League rose to prominence as a civil rights activist with close connections in all…