Black History

Black Love Day

THE AFRO — Black Love Day, founded by Ayo Handy-Kendi, the Breath Sekou, is celebrating 26 years.

Published

5 years ago

February 19, 2019

By AFRO Staff

Black Love Day, founded by Ayo Handy-Kendi, the Breath Sekou, is celebrating 26 years of creating healing, loving solutions for rebuilding relationships, in countless, Black and White communities, locally, nationally and internationally.

The commemorative holiday, recognized on Feb. 13, offers a spiritual alternative to the commercialized Valentine’s Day. This year’s celebration, which calls for a 24-hour demonstration of using love to heal relationships, kicks off a year’s campaign of conscious raising, cellular memory cleansing and generational trauma healing around our 2019 theme: “Heal a Woman, Heal a Nation.”

This initiative focuses on the 400th Anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to be sold into bondage in North America in 1619 at Jamestown, Va. Campaign efforts will help heal the inequalities that Black women have dealt with from the impact of the institution of slavery and the structural racism that evolved from it, creating deeply rooted issues for them, their families and communities that still exist today.

“For a real ‘wake up’ solution-based, demonstration of generational/cellular clearing techniques which will help support many current issues and change the legacy of slavery’s impact on Black women’s relationships with their man, their children, other women and the self-love/self care that Black women need for themselves to stay resilient – [I] encourage you to promote this alternative Valentine’s Day message,” said Handi-Kendi, steward of the non-profit African American Holiday Association (AAHA) and the founder of the Ritual of Reconciliation. She is the author, of “The Black Love Book- the definitive guide to the Wholyday” and “Applied Breathology.”

Handy-Kendi is also a professional Breathologist and Breathworker of over 40 years, who has used her transformative practice of Optimum Life Breathology (O.L.B.) to heal her own cellular memory of childhood physical and sexual abuse, along with other serious adversities.

Thanking you in advance, in the Spirit of the Akoma (the heart).

This article originally appeared in The Afro.

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Black History

Remembering the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

The “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” brought an unprecedented throng to the National Mall on Aug. 28, 1963. From every corner of the U.S., marchers came to demand fair wages, economic justice, an end to segregation, voting rights and long overdue civil rights. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his incomparable “I Have a Dream” speech on that day.

Published

18 hours ago

September 27, 2023

Oakland Post

March on Washington, August 1963

By Gay Elizabeth Plair Cobb

Gay Plair Cobb

Editor’s note: The “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” brought an unprecedented throng to the National Mall on Aug. 28, 1963. From every corner of the U.S., marchers came to demand fair wages, economic justice, an end to segregation, voting rights and long overdue civil rights. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his incomparable “I Have a Dream” speech on that day. Below, Gay Plair Cobb shares her remembrance.

“Sleepy eyed, joining the early morning-chartered bus ride from New York City to Washington, DC … exhilarated, but not knowing what to expect in the late August heat

…. the yearning for justice, solidarity with others on the journey, the possibility of new legislation, and also the possibility of violence … We just did not know.

In the end, there were an amazing 250,000 of us, awed and inspired by Mahalia Jackson, John Lewis, Dorothy Height, James Farmer and, of course, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Dream that became our North Star is still our North Star 60 years later and into eternity. Grateful to have been a foot soldier then. Still grateful now.”

Poster for March on Washington.

Black History

Guy Bluford: First African American in Space

Following Sally Ride (America’s first female astronaut) by just two months, Guy Bluford’s spaceflight aboard Space Shuttle Challenger provided another visible moment when more young people could see and be inspired by people like themselves flying into space. Bluford served as a mission specialist on the STS-8 mission and his jobs were to deploy an Indian communications-weather satellite, perform biomedical experiments and test the orbiter’s 50-foot robotic arm.

Published

1 day ago

September 27, 2023

Oakland Post

Dr. Col. Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. Image courtesy of NASA.

By Jennifer Levasseur, Vickie Lindsey, and Amy Stamm

Forty years ago, on Aug. 30, 1983, Guy Bluford flew into history as the first Black American in space.

Despite launch delays totaling six weeks, the spectacular first night launch of a Space Shuttle brought full circle NASA’s promise of a more inclusive astronaut corps.

Following Sally Ride (America’s first female astronaut) by just two months, Bluford’s spaceflight aboard Space Shuttle Challenger provided another visible moment when more young people could see and be inspired by people like themselves flying into space.

Bluford served as a mission specialist on the STS-8 mission and his jobs were to deploy an Indian communications-weather satellite, perform biomedical experiments and test the orbiter’s 50-foot robotic arm.

Following that first mission, he flew three more times to space on STS-61A, STS-39, and STS-53. By the time of his retirement from NASA in 1993, Bluford had spent more than 28 days in space over the four missions.

At the time of his first mission, Bluford was a 40-year-old Air Force officer with a doctorate in aerospace engineering.

Reluctant to be in the spotlight, his goal was not to make history, but fly into space, do his job, and return safely.

Growing up in a middle-class household in the 1950s and 1960s with educated parents (his mother was a teacher, and his father was a mechanical engineer), Bluford was raised to believe that he could do anything he wanted despite racist social restrictions.

He enjoyed math and science, particularly in school. Ignoring the advice of his high school advisor to learn a trade or skill, Bluford went on to college to earn his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at Penn State University in 1964, also finishing as a distinguished Air Force ROTC graduate.

After his decades of service to the aerospace community in a variety of roles, having spoken dozens of times about his astronaut career and work in aviation, Dr. Guion Bluford was recently appointed by President Joseph Biden as a member of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Advisory Board.

Editor’s note: Jennifer Levasseur, Vickie Lindsey and Amy Stamm are writers for a NASA blog