Check your work. When you were in school, you probably heard that a lot. Look over that math equation. Be sure your spelling is right. Reexamine your answers. Doing those things should result in rewards, then, right? Unless, as in the new business book, “Qualified” by Shari Dunn, someone’s over-checking you. In her experience as a consultant, Shari Dunn firmly acknowledges that being an employee is complicated and not-so-easy. For Black employees, though, there’s additional level of difficulty, “competency checking,” or the constant need to prove themselves and their intelligence. Says Dunn, the demand for competency checking can start before…
Author: Terri Schlichenmeyer
You march to the tun of your own drummer because you like the beat. It’s the same cadence you carry in your heart and soul, and it sets your pace and your path. No one else’s pulse matches yours, no one else’s rhythm will do. You march to your own drummer and as in the new memoir, “Fearless and Free” by Josephine Baker, translated from the French by Anam Zafar and Sophie Lewis, you dance to it, too. When he first met Josephine Baker in 1926, journalist Marcel Sauvage suggested that she might want to write her memoirs and the…
Your mother tells you stories. She talks about things that happened before you were born; Grandpa does it, too, and you like to hear every tale. So why not have these stories about Black History on your shelves? For the boy who loves looking good, “Saturday Morning at the ‘Shop” by Keenan Jones, illustrated by Ken Daley (Beach Lane Books, $18.99) is a great book to have around. One day each week, everything happens at the barber shop, and not just haircuts! This is a fun read and a cultural touchstone for boys ages 4 to 8. Young cooks will…
“Slavery after Slavery: Revealing the Legacy of Forced Child Apprenticeships on Black Families, from Emancipation to the Present” by Mary Frances Berry c.2024, Beacon Press $27.95 184 pages Your kids will have a better life than you had. You’ll make sure of it, saving for their education, demanding excellence from them, requiring discipline, and offering support for their dreams and desires. Their success is your dream and, as parents did in the new book “Slavery after Slavery” by Mary Frances Berry, you’ll fight to see that it happens. In the years after the end of the Civil War, some Southern…
You’re not letting go that easily. No, you’re on the right side of justice and you’re not letting go of the issue. Your heels are dug in, your back is straight, and your resolve is steely. You have a plan and you’ll keep it, and see it to the end no matter what happens. As in the new book “New Prize for These Eyes” by Juan Williams, there are some who’ve gone before you but your effort is what matters now. History disagrees on the exact catalyst for the civil rights movement, but Juan Williams says that “the second Civil…
Throughout history, when decisions were needed, the answer has often been “no.” No, certain people don’t get the same education as others. No, there is no such thing as equality. No, voting can be denied and no, the laws are different, depending on the color of one’s skin. And in the new book, “Resist!” by Rita Omokha, no, those things have not been accepted meekly. In 1995, after she and her brothers traveled from their native Nigeria to join their mother at her new home in the South Bronx, young Rita Omokha’s eyes were opened. She quickly understood that the…
Ever since you learned how it happened, you couldn’t get it out of your mind. People, packed like pencils in a box, tightly next to each other, one by one by one, tier after tier. They couldn’t sit up, couldn’t roll over or scratch an itch or keep themselves clean on a ship that took them from one terrible thing to another. And in the new book “In Slavery’s Wake,” essays by various contributors, you’ll see what trailed in waves behind those vessels. You don’t need to be told about the horrors of slavery. You’ve grown up knowing about it,…
An average oak tree is bigger around than two people, together, can reach. That mighty tree starts out with an acorn the size of a nickel, ultimately growing to some eighty feet tall, with a canopy of a hundred feet or more across. And like the new book, “Affrilachia” by Chris Aluka Berry (with Kelly Elaine Navies and Maia A. Surdam), its roots spread wide and wider. In 2016, “on a foggy Sunday morning in March,” Chris Aluka Berry visited the Mount Zion AME Zion Church in Cullowhee, North Carolina for the first time. The congregation was tiny; just a…
What do you think? You may remember the first time a respected adult asked you in earnest for your opinion, and you felt like you had arrived. Ten feet tall, you were. Suddenly a grown-up with viewpoints and thoughts that mattered. What do you think about sports, fashion, food, school, a new apartment or neighbor? In the new book “If We Are Brave” by Theodore R. Johnson, what do you think about current events? Every summer for most of his childhood, Theodore Johnson traveled with his family from North Carolina to Georgia to visit relatives. There, Johnson always tried to…