Dr. Tonja L. Ringgold, an educator and Life Member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated® (AKA), was installed as North Atlantic Regional Director during the organization’s 72nd Biennial International Convention on July 23 in Las Vegas.

Dr. Ringgold will serve a two-year term overseeing one of the Sorority’s largest and most historic regions. With more than 17,000 members, the Notable North Atlantic is the birthplace of the sorority, which was established on Jan. 15, 1908, at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

“I am excited and humbled by the faith placed in me to lead,” said Dr. Ringgold. “I welcome the opportunity to give back to this illustrious Sisterhood that has poured so much into me.”

The North Atlantic Region, one of the sorority’s 10 regions in the United States and abroad, comprises undergraduate and graduate chapters in Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, eastern New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

As the 36th Regional Director, Dr. Ringgold will serve on the Alpha Kappa Alpha  18-member Board of Directors and will assist in the implementation of policies and programs under the leadership of International President and Chief Executive Officer Charletta Wilson Jacks.

Her previous sorority leadership includes serving as the North Atlantic Regional Representative to the International Program Committee and as North Atlantic Region Program Chairman. She also served as president of Epsilon Omega Chapter in Baltimore, Maryland.

Dr. Ringgold represents four generations of Alpha Kappa Alpha women, all initiated into the Alpha Delta Chapter at Morgan State University. She was initiated in 1982, following in the footsteps of her cousin and Alpha Delta Charter member, Mary Anita Short Wheatley, and her mother, Mary Jane Briscoe Short, a life member of the Sorority with 67 years of service. Her daughter Ashley R. Davy was initiated into the Alpha Delta Chapter in 2011.

A nationally recognized educator, Dr. Ringgold has spent more than three decades in higher education. She is a retired Vice President of Academic Affairs within the Community College system and is a faculty member in the Morgan State University’s Community College Leadership Doctoral Program. She also serves as president and CEO of En-Sight Educational and Management Consultants.

She holds a doctorate degree in education, master’s degrees in Applied Psychology, Management, Business Administration, and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology.

In addition to her Alpha Kappa Alpha service, Dr. Ringgold is president of the Baltimore County Chapter of The Pierians, Incorporated; a member of the National Council on Black American Affairs; and a member of the Coalition of 100 Black Women.

She resides in Parkville, Maryland.

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With just over three months before the midterm elections, the NAACP at its 117th annual convention in Chicago announced an unprecedented $20 million voter registration campaign ahead of the midterm elections.

The announcement kicked off the NAACP’s national convention at McCormick Place where thousands of visitors and delegates participated in workshops and seminars that stressed the organization’s theme of “We the People” and purpose of educating Blacks about their constitutional rights.

Throughout the week-long convention, vendors sold merchandise, media organizations held onsite interviews in “The HUB,” and visitors signed a massive “We the People” mural.

Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson were among the dignitaries who reinforced the NAACP’s message during the convention’s opening plenary.

Black voting rights have been under attack in the last several months when Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida gutted historic Black congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such districts were unconstitutional and were no longer needed in modern times despite protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, is concerned those decisions will roll back political and economic gains Blacks have made in the last six decades.

NAACP Board Chairman Leon Russell told the opening session that the NAACP would undertake a $20 million voter registration and mobilization drive “to motivate six million to 10 million voters” who did not cast ballots in the last two elections to do so.

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As part of the campaign, the NAACP plans to recruit “tens of thousands of volunteers to join the crusade to turn out millions of us this November.”

The plan will target voters in 14 states and 33 congressional districts, with the full list expected to be disclosed later.

“We must move 60 percent or more of all eligible voters to the polls,” Russell said.

The NAACP has a history of leading voter registration drives in Black neighborhoods across America.

In his speech, Pritzker said, “In Washington and across the country, extremists holding high office are working to erase Black history rather than learn from it, to take away voting rights instead of strengthening them, to divide us rather than unite us,” he said.

He added, “These are not simply disagreements over policy. These are challenges to the very idea that democracy belongs to all of us. Challenges to the very idea that we are all created equal.”

Pritzker said the phrase “We the People” reflects America’s ongoing effort to expand equality, noting that the nation’s founding ideals initially excluded enslaved people, women and other groups.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said, “For 117 years this incredible organization has helped bend the arc of history towards justice. And not because progress was inevitable, but because ordinary people made the extraordinary decision to organize, advocate and refuse to accept injustice as the reigning form of governance. That work has never been easy, and today it remains as urgent as it has ever been.

“Across this country we are witnessing wicked efforts to undermine fundamental rights, weaken Democratic institutions, and to turn neighbors against one another.

“We see attempts to silence the truth and erase our history and convince people that somehow division is stronger than solidarity. But history has taught us something very different. Every time people have been told to accept injustice, they have risen together to reject it. “

During Trump’s second term in office, the NAACP has filed more than 70 lawsuits to stop his grasping and often unconstitutional moves to grab total power.

Pritzker said “Illinois has been at the forefront of the struggle for freedom and equality” ever since Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a non-white, was the first permanent resident of what is now Chicago, Pritzker noted.

Pritzker also said Illinois also gave the nation the crusading African American journalist Ida B. Wells, and it elected more African American members of Congress than any other state. He said Illinois gave the nation the late civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and “a young community organizer” who eventually went from Chicago to the White House, Barack Obama.

“But such progress is not inevitable,” the governor warned. “It requires people willing to sacrifice. None of this is by accident. It is because Black America shows up, reminding us of the painful part of our history while giving us hope for the future.”

Based on reporting by Gary Crusader.

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By Emil Amok Guillermo

I came to Winnipeg to perform my one-man show, 69, Emil Amok: Anchorman—The News Made Me Do It.

I didn’t expect to leave with another lesson about America.

It came over dim sum.

After the show, Shirley—a Chinese Canadian—and her friend Chris, a Sri Lankan-Mauritian Canadian—insisted on taking me to a restaurant in Winnipeg’s Chinatown.

A Filipino American. A Chinese Canadian. A Sri Lankan-Mauritian Canadian.

The United Nations, if it served dumplings.

Then Shirley told me about her father.

He arrived from China at 14 years old, speaking no English. The school put him in second grade just to learn the language. Once he caught up, they skipped him to ninth grade.

Two years later, he was working.

He opened a restaurant.

It burned down.

He opened another.

Eventually he bought a café in rural Manitoba serving chop suey, burgers, steaks and fries.

The Good Way Café became the place everybody gathered. Rock and roll played from the jukebox until midnight.

Her father, Arthur Mar, built a business, employed people and became part of his community.

Sound familiar?

It should.

It’s the same immigrant story Americans love to celebrate.

Until politics gets involved.

Because before Arthur Mar could build anything, Canada made him pay a $500 Chinese head tax—a fortune in the 1920s.

When that didn’t keep enough Chinese out, Canada passed its own Chinese Exclusion Act.

Different country.

Same racism.

Canada has spent decades admitting what it did.

The Trump administration wants America to do the opposite.

The White House recently released a report criticizing the Smithsonian for supposedly promoting “anti-White activism” and other ideological sins.

Buried inside is something even more troubling.

The report argues Americans shouldn’t think of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 primarily as a racist law.

Instead, we’re told it was about national security.

Funny how those two words have always been available whenever politicians want to discriminate against somebody.

Black Americans have heard that song before.

Slave patrols became public safety.

Jim Crow became states’ rights.

Mass incarceration became law and order.

Same melody.

Different verse.

History has a way of putting racism in a respectable suit.

When politicians begin sanitizing one chapter of history, they’re coming after the whole book.

Communities of color don’t have identical histories.

But we recognize familiar tactics.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, commentator and comic monologist. He performs “69, Emil Amok: Anchorman—The News Made Me Do It” at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, July 16–26.

Get Tix: https://www.winnipegfringe.com/performer-detail.aspx?kw=Emil+Amok+Productions

Follow him at YouTube.com/@emilamok1.

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