Community
Urban One Honors 2021: “Women Leading the Change”
“These women aren’t the Real Housewives of you name the city. These women are working on improving the lives of Black folk,” media mogul and entrepreneur Cathy Hughes said in a recent interview. Please encourage your young women to watch this show. We don’t know who the next Kamala Harris will be, a Black woman who became the nation’s first woman vice president or someone who changes the voting structure like Stacey Abrams.”
And while many might consider those individuals able to spend more than seven decades with their mother as fortunate, Hughes said such longevity also created a startling realization. “The longer God blesses you with having your mother in your life, the more difficult it is to adjust to life without her,” she said.
By Keith L. Alexander for the NNPA
For media mogul and entrepreneur Cathy Hughes, this year’s Mother’s Day was going to be difficult.
Last July, Hughes’s mother, Helen Jones Woods, 96, died from complications of Covid-19. For the 74-year-old Hughes, multi-millionaire and founder and chairperson of Urban One Inc., this year marks Hughes’s first Mother’s Day without her mother present.
And while many might consider those individuals able to spend more than seven decades with their mother as fortunate, Hughes said such longevity also created a startling realization. “The longer God blesses you with having your mother in your life, the more difficult it is to adjust to life without her,” she said.
It was during Hughes’s mourning, that she birthed an idea to not only celebrate her mother’s life with a national TV program, but to also celebrate and honor the lives of other African American women who -specifically during the pandemic – worked at protecting and spotlighting Black Americans.
On Sunday, May 16, 2012 at 9 p.m. (EST) Hughes’s cable TV networks, TV One and its sister network CLEO-TV, will air the network’s annual “Urban One Honors” celebration. The two-hour program this year will be a first; all honorees are African American women. The show is themed “Women Leading the Change.”
Hughes said the women honored left an indelible mark on the country last year, one of this nation’s darkest and most challenging periods in American history due to the deadly pandemic.
The show is co-hosted by Grammy-award winning singer and syndicated gospel radio show host Erica Campbell and award-wining journalist and news commentator Roland Martin. The recorded, virtual awards show will feature live performances by R&B saangers, Avery Sunshine and Jazmine Sullivan, gospel powerhouse Le’Andria Johnson and legendary rapper, Da Brat.
The program will honor six Black female leaders in business, politics, journalism and humanitarian efforts including Atlanta’s political powerhouse and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stacey Abrams and Rosaline “Roz” Brewer, chief executive officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance and the nation’s third Fortune 500 company ever led by a Black female executive. The program will also honor the four African American, Greek sororities; Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc., Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., Sigma Gamma Rho, Inc. and Zeta Phi Beta, Inc.
The show will also pay tribute to Hughes’s mother, who before becoming a wife and mother, was a famed trombone player who played with an all-girl, integrated swing music band called the International Sweethearts of Rhythm in the 1930s and 1940’s. Hughes called her mother’s group, “the original Freedom Fighters” who traveled by bus through the South playing for audiences and even played clubs overseas. At one point, white and Hispanic band members had to wear dark makeup to look like their Black bandmates to avoid being stopped by police for promoting integration, Hughes recalled. The segment will be introduced by a longtime fan of the group, political activist, author and college professor Angela Davis.
Hughes’s excitement about the upcoming evening is electric. An hour before “Urban One Honors” airs, TV One will broadcast an exclusive, hour-long interview with legendary rapper DMX. The interview was recorded for the network’s weekly show “Uncensored” about three weeks before DMX’s sudden death April 9 at age 50. The show’s producers said DMX spoke, at times through tears, about his life, his music and his legacy. The producers said hearing DMX’s commentary just weeks before his death, is more sobering and haunting today.
After the celebration of one of the kings of rap music with “Uncensored,” the TV network will then celebrate its queens with the “Urban One Honors.”
“I think it’s going to be the biggest night in TV One’s history,” Hughes exclaimed.
Hughes, along with a group of Urban One executives chose the honorees because they wanted viewers, especially young girls, to see Black women who were not celebrated singers, dancers or actresses, but instead who were ideological firebrands, making differences in their communities and around the nation.
“These women aren’t the Real Housewives of you name the city. These women are working on improving the lives of Black folk,” Hughes said in a recent interview. Please encourage your young women to watch this show. We don’t know who the next Kamala Harris will be, a Black woman who became the nation’s first woman vice president or someone who changes the voting structure like Stacey Abrams.”
Hughes described Abrams as “voting rights champion” who not only changed the political landscape of Atlanta, but also helped ensure all voters were recognized on behalf of two U.S. Senate Democratic candidates and helped flip Georgia from majority Republican to majority Democrat.
When Walgreen’s selected Spelman College graduate Roz Brewer as its newest CEO in January, Brewer became the nation’s second Black female executive to ever lead a Fortune 500 company. Before being tapped by Walgreen’s, Brewer served as chief operating officer for Starbucks. Prior to that, she served as CEO of Sam’s Club which is owned by Walmart. In 2009, Ursula Burns, became the nation’s first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company when Xerox Holdings selected her as its CEO. Burns retired in 2017. The third Black woman CEO to lead a Fortune 500 company, Thasunda Brown Duckett, was named president and CEO of the retirement and investment managing company TIAA in February, a month after Brewer.
The TV One program is also honoring Ala Stanford, a Philadelphia-based physician and surgeon who last year founded the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium and used her own funds to ensure Black residents of the city – a group that was quickly becoming Philadelphia’s hardest hit by the pandemic – were able to be tested for the coronavirus.
Urban One, is based in Silver Spring, Md. about 30 minutes from downtown Washington, D.C. Last year, Hughes and other Urban One executives watched as Kim Ford, president and chief executive of Martha’s Table, provided healthy meals and fresh produce to needy residents in the nation’s capital during the pandemic.
For more than 40 years, Martha’s Table has ensured the neediest of Washington residents had healthy meals and clothing. Martha’s Table was named after the Biblical figure Martha who offered food to Jesus when he visited the home she shared with her sister Mary.
As a youth growing up in Washington, Ford volunteered serving and handing out meals with the non-profit organization. Then in 2019, she was chosen as the company’s president and chief executive. Prior to being named Martha’s Table chief executive, Ford served as deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education where she oversaw management of more than $2 billion in career and technical education, adult education, correctional and re-entry education and community college initiatives for more than 25 million students a year. Ford previously served as a member of President Obama’s Recovery Implementation Office, which was responsible for implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Last year, Martha’s Table reported a 400 percent increase in need from users, as thousands of residents sought assistance for themselves and their families enabling the program to feed as many as 2,200 residents a day, Martha’s Table reported recently.
Another honoree, Robin Rue Simmons, is an alderman in Evanston’s fifth ward in Louisiana. A champion of Black residents in the city, Simmons was elected alderman in 2017. Simmons then led Evanston to becoming the first U.S. city to approve a reparations program. Since taking office, Simmons led the passing of the nation’s first reparations program, which will be funded by the first $10 million of Adult Use Cannabis sales tax revenue. Simmons is also the director of the city’s innovation and outreach at Sunshine Enterprises, which has supported more than 1000 neighborhood entrepreneurs – 98 percent of whom are African American and 74 percent of whom are women – in starting or growing their own business ventures.
Also being honored is New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. Hannah-Jones covered racial injustice for the Times’s magazine before convincing the paper’s top editors to create an entire investigative series tied to the U.S. slave trade. The enterprise was called the 1619 Project which was published by the magazine in 2019. Last year the project won Jones the coveted Pulitzer Prize. The series is now the subject of a documentary produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and Lionsgate and is scheduled to air on Hulu.
“We wanted to spotlight Sisters who were getting the change accentuated and making sure the change occurs,” Hughes said.
The show will also feature several noted Black men honoring the sisters. Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson makes his debut appearance on TV One. Also providing commentary on the honorees include Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Urban One CEO and Hughes’s son Alfred C. Liggins III and former Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond.
As co-host of the evening’s program, Campell said she hoped families with young daughters and young sons watch the program together and discuss the awardees and their work.
“I can have a conversation with my daughters to show them there is more to do than just look cute and wear nice makeup,” Campbell said. “They can literally shake up the world. Far too many of our girls look up to one dimensional type of celebrities or influencers. There is so much more than what we can be or what we can do. Offer this wide range of women who are changing the world.”
That was the impotence of the show, says Hughes. “Young people are so focused on celebrities. I wanted to focus this awards’ show on actions. The entertainment industry was shut down for the year. But these individuals we are honoring continued to work during the year,” Hughes said. “During the pandemic, these women were actively engaged.”
And while this year was for the ladies, what about the men? “Who knows maybe next year it will be brothers only,” Hughes said.
Community
Golden State Valkyries Become Bay Area Legends Winning WNBA Championship on Halloween Night
In only their second year as a franchise, the Golden State Valkyries captured the 2026 WNBA Championship with a 68-63 victory over the Atlanta Dream. Playing before a sold-out crowd at Chase Center on Halloween night, Gabby Williams delivered a historic 30-point performance to earn Finals MVP honors. The victory marks a rapid rise for the expansion team, which has already set league attendance records and surpassed a $1 billion valuation. Fans gathered by the hundreds of thousands this week to celebrate the new Bay Area legends, read more.
In only their second year as a franchise, the Golden State Valkyries became the WBNA 2026 Champions, with Gabby Williams named WNBA Finals MVP. A Halloween night movie of magic and there was no surprise that the game was sold out, with more than 18,000 fans inside Chase Center while thousands more packed the open space at Thrive Center from hours preceding the game through the final buzzer.
In the decisive Game 7, Williams delivered a legendary performance, scoring 30 points to lead the Golden State Valkyries to a 68-63 championship victory over the Atlanta Dream. Remarkably, 28 of her 30 points came in the second half, setting a WNBA postseason record for points in a half and earning her Finals MVP honors.
The team celebrated its victory on Wednesday with a rally in Oakland followed by a ferry ride to San Francisco’s Embarcadero and then a two-mile parade that drew about 400,000 fans.
Williams has become a symbol of the Bay Area’s impact on the team. Although born in Nevada, Williams has deep family roots in Oakland and has often said the city’s culture, community, and basketball traditions shaped her identity and playing style.
After signing with the Valkyries, she began calling the city home and noting that “there’s no Golden State without Oakland.”
The Valkyries have several ballers who made an impact on winning this series, including Veronica Burton, Tiffany ‘Tip’ Hayes, Kayla Thornton, Kaila Charles, and Cecilia Zandalasini.
Veteran center Kiah Stokes brought championship experience and defensive leadership when she signed a multi-year free-agent contract with the franchise on April 13. A former first-round draft pick out of UConn and a three-time WNBA champion with the Las Vegas Aces before joining Golden State, Stokes was recruited by head coach Natalie Nakae, with whom she had previously worked in Las Vegas.
Known as one of the league’s premier rim protectors and rebounders, Stokes quickly became a defensive anchor for the expansion franchise and played a major role in leading the Valkyries to their historic championship run.
The Valkyries have accomplished something extraordinary, proving that a new franchise can make an immediate impact both on and off the court. In their first year, the Valkyries became the first WNBA expansion team to reach the playoffs in its inaugural season and set all-time league attendance records. The franchise sold out all home games, reporting 18,064 attendees per game in both seasons — the highest attendance figures in WNBA history. The Valkyries’ success has also translated into extraordinary franchise value. After entering the league by paying a $50 million expansion fee, the organization generated record revenues and rapidly became one of the most valuable franchises in women’s sports, valued at over $! billion.
The WNBA Finals’ deciding game averaged 3.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched WNBA playoff game in league history and the most-watched finals game since 1999.
The record audience reflects the league’s growing popularity and has major implications for its future, including higher media rights value, increased advertising revenue, stronger sponsorship opportunities, rising merchandise sales, and greater ticket demand.
The Finals also featured sold-out arenas and record postseason viewership, demonstrating that the WNBA is expanding its commercial reach, attracting new fans, and strengthening its position as a major professional sports league.
Black History
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi Honors local ‘Women of the Year’ at Annual Awards Ceremony
Congressman John Garamendi recently honored 52 remarkable women during his 13th annual Women of the Year ceremony in Benicia. The event recognized leaders from California’s 8th District for their significant contributions to public service, education, business, and community life. The honorees, including 16 women from West Contra Costa County, were officially commemorated in the Congressional Record for their dedication to the region. The diverse group includes veterans, educators, and community advocates who have shaped the local landscape through decades of service. Read more about these influential leaders.
Sixteen women from West Contra Costa County were among 52 honorees recognized by Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA-08) at his 13th annual Women of the Year ceremony in Benicia on Oct. 23.
The 2026 honorees from Solano and Contra Costa counties were recognized for contributions to public service, education, business and community life.
“Every year, I’m honored to recognize the remarkable women of California’s Eighth District who serve as the backbone of our community,” Garamendi said.
Their contributions were also recognized in the Congressional Record. The following profiles summarize the ceremony remarks and supporting biographies.
Richmond
King-Meredith was honored for six decades of community service. An engineer and project manager whose professional career included defense-industry work, she has served organizations including the North Richmond Municipal Advisory Council and Shields-Reid Neighborhood Council. Her contributions also include environmental justice advocacy and artwork addressing social injustice.
Bolds was recognized for supporting Richmond youth and families and organizing community events. She established the annual “Put the Guns Down” event about 20 years ago in response to neighborhood violence. Through her organization, Visions of Hope, she brings together families, service providers, community leaders and public safety partners to address bullying and violence prevention.
Martinez Luna was honored for her work supporting businesses and families along Richmond’s 23rd Street corridor. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, she became the first person in her family to graduate from high school. A longtime Rigo’s Auto Sales employee and secretary of the 23rd Street Merchants Association, she helps organize community events, supports immigration information forums and works with local partners on neighborhood concerns.
Dawkins-Padigela was recognized for her professional and community leadership. A U.S. Air Force veteran who served seven years as an aircraft mechanic, she later pursued graduate studies in marriage and family therapy and professional clinical counseling. As president of East Bay CAMFT, she supports professional education, networking and collaboration among mental health practitioners.
Padilla, a dean at Contra Costa College, was honored for advancing educational equity and student success. A Richmond High School graduate, she began her higher education at Contra Costa College before earning a bachelor’s degree in applied physics from UC Davis and a doctorate in neuroscience from UC Berkeley. She later returned to CCC to lead initiatives expanding opportunities for students pursuing STEM careers.
Milam was recognized for a public service career that began as a teenager with the East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership. As crime prevention manager for the Richmond Police Department, she has worked with government and community partners on violence prevention and homelessness response. Her congressional tribute credits her with helping secure nearly $30 million for outreach, shelter, treatment, encampment resolution and pathways to housing.
Nmereole was honored for supporting immigrant communities, young people and elderly residents throughout Contra Costa County and the greater Bay Area. Her volunteer work includes GED tutoring, vocational nursing exam preparation, computer instruction and youth mentorship. She also helps immigrants navigate services and assists elderly residents with transportation, prescriptions and groceries.
Curl was recognized for more than two decades of service to Richmond, beginning with the city’s redevelopment agency. She became interim city manager in November 2021 and permanent city manager in April 2022 before retiring in 2026. Garamendi credited her with helping secure more than $300 million in grants for infrastructure, housing and education, strengthening city finances and helping Richmond exit the state auditor’s high-risk designation.
Community
Richmond Neighbors Put Pantry Power on the Map
Richmond Area Mutual Aid has released a new digital map identifying Little Free Food Pantries across the city to help residents combat rising grocery costs. These neighborhood outposts operate on a mutual aid model, encouraging community members to leave shelf-stable goods and fresh produce for those in need. While some locations began as small pandemic-era projects, they have evolved into essential hubs supported by local families, retirees, and nonprofit organizations. Organizers are now seeking new hosts to expand this autonomous network further. Read more.
In Richmond, a small cabinet can carry a big message: dinner is here, no questions asked. Richmond Area Mutual Aid (RAMA) has created a map of current Little Free Food Pantries across the city. The neighborhood outposts encourage anyone to take what they need and leave what they can.
The map connects residents with pantries that may be as simple as a shelf, box or cabinet outside a home or business. According to RAMA’s website, the spaces can hold shelf-stable groceries and fresh produce that can safely spend some time outside refrigeration. The operating principle is as clear as the group’s motto: “Give what you can, take what you need.”
One of the map’s sites is near 34th Street and Roosevelt Avenue, where Achala Jayagoda and her family host a pantry that began as a Little Free Food Table during the pandemic. Her son, Eagle, founded it. The pantry has since grown into a lasting neighborhood resource. Amid the high cost of food, Jayagoda said supplies can disappear with startling speed.
“It continues to serve the community with everyone’s support,” Jayagoda toldTthe Richmond Standard. She said the people who contribute are not only nearby neighbors, but donors from elsewhere in Richmond and, at times, beyond the city. A few nonprofit organizations pitch in, too.
Jayagoda has also heard from retirees who collect end-of-day giveaways from grocery stores and bakeries and bring them to the pantry. Sometimes the deliveries include fresh food. At first concerned about leaving perishables out, she said it turns out those items move quickly. It’s a sign, in her view, of how urgently people need the help.
In fact, the pantry can be emptied within hours. Then the same community that uses it swings back into action. “Thankfully, the community helps restock it as quickly as possible so people can continue getting food,” Jayagoda said. As the holidays approach, she hopes that circle of giving will widen to reach more families.
RAMA describes itself on its website as a group of neighbors from Richmond and nearby communities working toward a place that is “safe, joyful and thriving.” The pantry project turns that broad aim into something concrete: a can of beans, a bag of rice, a loaf of bread—and a nearby place to share it.
Keeping each pantry going takes more than a sturdy box. RAMA’s website says every location needs an individual or organization willing to place the pantry on its property, and a team of stewards who can stock and clean it. A host may also serve as a steward. That local team is the point: RAMA wants each pantry to become an autonomous neighborhood hub supported over time by people who live nearby.
For residents ready to start one, RAMA says it can guide or support pantry construction and installation, share reclaimed food and help hosts adapt shelving or other materials into a workable setup. RAMA has announced free pantry build days Nov. 14 and Dec. 12; residents can email Richmondareamutualaid@proton.me for details.
Check out the Richmond pantry map below and get more information from RAMA at https://www.wegotusrichmond.org/pantries/. Visit RAMA on Instagram at @RichmondAreaMutualAid.
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