Historian ~Speaker ~ Professor ~AKAdemic 💕💚 ~ Author of the award-winning A Chance for Change (UNC Press 2016) & A Forgotten Migration (UNC Press 2024)
I work at a bridal consignment shop where we sell secondhand wedding dresses.
Last week, a young woman came in completely alone.
No friends. No mom. No champagne.
She found a dress she absolutely loved.
It was $400.
She quietly placed $200 on the counter and asked if she could put it on layaway because she was trying to save little by little after her fiancé recently lost his job.
I looked at the tag and remembered the original owner had been trying to sell that dress for months.
At one point she even told me:
“I honestly just want it out of my closet.”
So I pretended to check the computer and then said:
Joanna is one of my former students & I served on her honors thesis committee. Her speech today on being a present, engaged, & intentional community member or villager (“it takes a village”) was phenomenal. I am proud of her & look forward to seeing how she changes the world.
As Class Orator, Joanna Louis-Ugbo is the only student speaker at today's Commencement.
Having learned the value of creating community at home, she reminds #Emory2026 grads of their responsibility to offer, not just seek, support to build their village: https://t.co/HM8AEfbGm7
Lauryn Carter was in sixth grade when she lost her mother to cancer. By eighth grade, she set her sights on Georgia Tech — even though the schools in Americus, Georgia, didn’t offer much engineering curriculum.
On Friday — with the aid of a Tech Promise scholarship — she will graduate debt-free as a first-generation college student with a degree in industrial systems and engineering. At the end of the ceremony, Lauryn will turn a special tassel that features a picture of her and her mother, whom she says has been with her every step of the way.
After graduation, she’s headed to Texas to work for @pepsi. #WeCanDoThat #GT26 💪🎓💛🐝
There is no higher honor than receiving a vote of confidence from your students. I am elated to have been selected as faculty member of the year by the Emory NAACP. I love teaching history and I am grateful that my students find value in my lectures and mentorship.
Rawlin Lee Tate Jr. from Woodland High School in Stockbridge, Georgia takes 31 AP courses & becomes the school’s first black Male valedictorian. He earned over $1.3 million in college scholarship offers & he had no grade below a 98 in high school and was top of his class for years.
"Do you have an idea of how we could solve the Black maternal mortality crisis if we can't say 'Black?'"
I could watch Democratic House Rep. Summer Lee bat around RFK Jr. all day.
She's magnificent.
Greer issued a direct challenge to the audience on HBCUs, calling on individuals to think of themselves as philanthropists regardless of wealth.
https://t.co/RX5wXwcEgC
My wife is traveling with a layover in Nashville and saw this ad from @MeharryMedical . I AM HERE FOR THIS! If you are going to do an airport ad, really any ad, if it isn’t something people will share and talk about, you’ve wasted your money. This is how you do an ad.
Spelman is moving from Reconstruction to Reconstruction with a historic $500M campaign, called Spelman Forward. We’re committing $325M (65%) to scholarships to ensure student access and opportunity remain at our core. The future is here! And we are Future-Ready! Read more: https://t.co/MYm5R0RlgN #SpelmanFoward
The homeless man outside my University had a PhD in literature.
I only found out because I dropped my book walking past him one day.
He picked it up, looked at the cover, and said, "Ah, Virginia Woolf. Have you read her essays on consciousness?"
One medical bankruptcy and a series of cascading disasters later, he's been on that corner for three years.
"The difference between us," he said, "is about six months of bad luck."
I think about that every time I complain about my problems.
Read All About It: African Americans, Marriage, and the Politics of Wedding Announcements in Black and White Newspapers https://t.co/sVNZDZQjQ6 #BlackHistory#BlackLove
Food. HBCU swag giveaways. Amazing short films about HBCU history and culture. JASMINE GUY. Join us April 10 at Emory University. https://t.co/dnRzCa8qtj