Is the black family farm in danger of extinction?

TITLE: Young Negro farmer working on the field of Mr. Miller's farm. Mr. Miller is the only Negro farmer on Rumsey Hill, submarginal farm area near Erin, New York. The number of black-owned farms in the United States plummeted from 925,000 (14 percent of the total) in 1920 to just 18,000 (1 percent) in 1992. And the amount of land belonging to black farmers has dropped from 15 million acres to less than three million acres. White farmers have also seen substantial losses, but the rate of land loss among blacks is much greater.

UW-Madison researcher documents a dying way of life in rural America If the family farm in America is thought of as a threatened species, representing a way of life that is slowly dying out, then the black family farm can be regarded as an endangered species, teetering on the edge of extinction. The black family farm is disappearing in rural America, says Jess Gilbert, a rural sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. It is a victim of legal “shenanigans,” loss of land through heir property, and discriminatory practices by lending institutions and government agencies, according to Gilbert’s research. The1999 USDA Agricultural Economics and Land Ownership Survey revealed that blacks constitute less than two percent of agricultural land owners and own one percent of total ag acreage in the United States. Two-thirds of them do not farm their own land, but rent it to others, mostly whites. Gilbert and his colleagues want to do something about it.

“I work with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and other black farm organizations in the South trying to preserve the land base of rural blacks,” says Gilbert, co-director of the Center for Minority Land and Community Security, a USDA-funded program jointly administered by the UW-Madison and Tuskegee University. The center’s main goal is to help minority landowners retain their land.

Black land ownership in the United States is almost completely confined to the so-called “Southern Black Belt,” a crescent-shaped area of 15 southern states extending from Virginia to East Texas and along the Mississippi river delta. Not surprisingly, this area coincides with former slave states, says Gilbert, who is studying black land ownership issues in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

“This is a huge issue,” says Gilbert. “The peak of land ownership for blacks was World War I, when they owned more than 20 million acres of farmland. In 1920, there were close to a million black farmers, about one-fourth of them land owners. Now there are less than 20,000 farmers who own less than two million acres.”

But not all of the changes have been bad for blacks, says Gilbert. The drop in some of the figures reflects the dismantling of the share cropper system and forced labor in the South.

It’s the unwilling loss of land Gilbert is concerned about. “The disappearance of black farms cannot be explained by general economic trends alone. Blacks are hit harder than other groups because they are small-scale farmers. Black farms tend to be between 50 and 100 acres, with less than $10,000 in gross annual sales. The size of the holding matters. Small farms decline at a more rapid rate than do large farms.

“The loss of land in the South as a result of legal problems still continues today,” says Gilbert. “Over half of black land owners die without leaving a will.”

Gilbert’s research revealed that black landowners experience discrimination by lending agencies that are unresponsive to their needs, reject their loan applications at higher rates than whites, or loan them only a portion of the money they need. In addition, historically blacks have not been represented in local USDA committees nor have they participated in federal government farm assistance programs to the same degree as their white counterparts.

In the article, “The Loss and persistence of black-owned farms and farmland: A review of the research literature and its implications,” published in the journal Southern Rural Sociology in 2002, Gilbert and co-authors Gwen Sharp and M. Sindy Felin found that despite the declining numbers and dire predictions-at one time it was predicted that by the year 2000 there would be no black farmers left in the U.S.-black farmers and landowners want to hang on to their land and make a go of it.

Pride and a sense of well-being are two sentiments blacks list as important dividends of owning land. But Gilbert and his co-authors have discovered even greater implications from their literature review. “The importance of property ownership goes hand in hand with active citizenship and social independence,” they wrote. Black landowners were some of the first to support the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Their children tend to be high academic achievers: many become doctors and lawyers. And blacks who own land contribute to the economy in rural areas by patronizing businesses in their communities and paying property taxes.

Some of the solutions that could potentially keep agricultural land in the hands of black owners include increased access to legal assistance, putting idle land back into production, better utilization of county extension resources and an end to racial discrimination in local USDA offices.

“For black farmers, agriculture must be a viable business, but it is also a way of life. Black land loss is a loss not only of potential income, but even more a loss of wealth, with deep consequences for social inequality and political power, especially in the rural South,” concluded Gilbert and his co-authors. ###

contact Jess Gilbert at (608) 262-9530 WEB: UW-Madison News

New study finds glamorization of drugs in rap music jumped dramatically over two decades

Denise Herd, Ph.D. Associate Professor University of California, School of Public Health Berkeley, Californina Dr. Herd is an associate professor in the school of public health at the University of California, Berkeley. An anthropologist by training, Dr. Herd’s research has led to a greater awareness and understanding of the drinking patterns and drinking problems in African-Americans.

BERKELEY – A new study finds that references to illegal drug use in rap music jumped sixfold in the two decades since 1979, the year Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" hit the charts and introduced to a mainstream audience a music genre born from inner-city America. Moreover, illegal drug use became increasingly linked during this time period to wealth, glamour and social standing, marking a significant change from earlier years, when rap music was more likely to have depicted the dangers and negative consequences of drug abuse, according to the study authored by Denise Herd, associate professor in the division of Community Health and Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health. "This trajectory in rap music raises a number of red flags," said Herd, who also is associate dean for student affairs at the School of Public Health. "Rap music is especially appealing to young people, many of whom look up to rappers as role models.

As a public health researcher, and as a parent of a 7-year-old, I'm concerned about the impact that long-term exposure to this music has on its listeners."

The new study, published in the April issue of the peer-reviewed journal Addiction Research & Theory, is the first scientific survey to analyze the content of rap music over two decades.

Herd and her team examined the lyrics of 341 of the most popular rap songs - as determined by Billboard and Gavin music rating services - from 1979 to 1997. Researchers coded songs for drug mentions, behaviors and contexts surrounding the mention of drugs, as well as the attitudes and consequences stemming from illicit drug use.

Of the 38 most popular rap songs between 1979 and 1984, only four, or 11 percent, contained drug references. In the early 1990s, the percentage of rap songs with drug references experienced a sharp jump to 45 percent, and steadily increased to 69 percent of the 125 top rap songs between 1994 and 1997.

The study found that drug references in early rap songs - "White Lines" by Grandmaster Flash, "Crack Monster" by Kool Moe Dee and "Night of the Living Baseheads" by Public Enemy - often depicted the destructiveness of cocaine and, particularly, of crack, its freebase form.

This cautionary tone about cocaine gave way to rap lyrics in the early 1990s that increasingly portrayed marijuana use as a positive activity. The UC Berkeley study documented a threefold increase between 1979 and 1997 in rap songs' mentions of marijuana and marijuana-stuffed cigars, or "blunts," and noted marijuana's association in those songs with creativity, wealth and status.

Herd noted that the study puts hard numbers to a trend that has long been noted anecdotally among observers of the music industry. She referenced a 1996 article in Vibe, a magazine that covers hip hop culture, highlighting the success of Cypress Hill's 1991 debut album celebrating marijuana use as a turning point in rap music's popularization of the drug. The Vibe article noted that other rap artists, including Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, soon followed suit with their own references to marijuana as an appealing drug to use.

Herd said that after rap albums celebrating marijuana use started going platinum in the early 1990s, drug references became increasingly common in rap music, as if they were a key ingredient to success.

"There is a common perception that drugs and rap music are inextricably linked, but that wasn't always the case," said Herd. "The fact that rap music didn't always have those drug references is compelling because it shows that this music didn't depend on that as an art form. The direction of the music seemed to change with the music's growing commercial success."

Herd's analysis stopped at 1997, but she noted that a recent study suggests the continued prevalence of substance abuse references in contemporary rap music. That study, led by Dr. Brian Primack from the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine, found that of Billboard's 279 most popular songs in 2005, a staggering 77 percent of the 62 rap songs portrayed substance use, often in the context of peer pressure, wealth and sex. He also found that only four of the 279 songs analyzed contained an "anti-use" message, and none of them was in the rap category.

Notably, other music genres had far lower rates of substance abuse references. Country music came in a distant second to rap with 36 percent of songs referencing substance abuse.

Herd noted that the image that rap artists portray of drug use in the African American community distorts reality. "Young black people actually have similar or lower rates of drug and alcohol abuse compared with their white peers, but you wouldn't guess that based upon the lyrics in rap music," said Herd.

The reasons behind rap music's shift in drug references are complex, said Herd. They may reflect the nuanced interplay of changes in the drug use habits of rappers and listeners - particularly the growing popularity of marijuana during the study period - greater commercialization of rap music, and the rise of gangsta rap and other rap music genres. It could also be a reflection of social rebellion stemming from the disproportionate punishment of African Americans in the U.S. government's War on Drugs.

"Rap is inherently powerful," said Herd. "It has experienced phenomenal growth in many sectors of society in this country and even abroad. Rap artists have become key role models and trendsetters, and their music serves as the CNN for our nation's young people by providing them with a way to stay current. But we have to ask ourselves whether there are other kinds of messages rap music could deliver. We need to better understand how this trend got started so we can find effective ways to counter it."

Herd did not study whether rap music's glamorization of illegal drugs actually led to increased drug abuse, but the debate about the potentially negative influence on young people of various media, from movies to music to video games, that depict drug and alcohol use in a positive light is certainly not new.

Herd's paper cited other studies linking certain movies and music videos to the onset of smoking, alcohol and drug use. One study specifically linked greater exposure to rap music videos to a greater risk of alcohol and drug use among adolescents over the next 12 months, while another survey associated the use of codeine-laced cough syrup among some at-risk Houston teens with an emerging form of rap music called "screw music," in which cough medicine abuse was promoted.

"Most adults have very little idea about what's going on in music these days," said Herd. "This new study reinforces the need for adults to pay closer attention to the music children are listening to."

This study is part of a larger research project analyzing changes in rap music funded by the Innovators Combating Substance Abuse program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest philanthropic organization devoted exclusively to health care.

Through this project, Herd published an earlier study that found a significant increase in references to alcohol in rap music over the years, and she is now analyzing rap music's depiction of violence.

By Sarah Yang, Media Relations WEB: UC Berkeley NewsCenter

Marriage In Early African America

Francis Smith Foster - Chair, English Department and Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women’s Studies. She regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in African American literature and culture and in women’s literature and culture. Recent course offerings have been “The Profession of English,” “Family, Marriage and (Sexual) Morality in 19th century America,” “Slavery and the African American Literary Imagination, “Becoming a Woman,” and “African American Prize-winning and Prize-worthy Literature.” She has edited or written more than a dozen books, including Love and Marriage in Early African America, Written By Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892 and Witnessing Slavery: The Development of the Ante-Bellum Slave Narrative. She has edited, alone or jointly, works that include The Oxford Companion to African American Literature and The Norton Anthology of African American Literature as well as editions of several African American women’s texts including Minnie’s Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, and Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and Behind the Scenes by Elizabeth Keckley.

A new anthology about love and marriage in African American history edited by Emory University English professor Frances Smith Foster challenges popular belief that the horrors of slavery are the root cause of family crisis in current African American culture. "Love and marriage were serious investments in the 18th century, and are so in our own contemporary experiences," Foster writes in the newly published "Love and Marriage in Early African America." "I now see how the rhymes and sayings, the folk stories we absorbed, were our heritage being passed down, particular values being enforced or espoused." Foster, a senior fellow of Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR), compiled the anthology as part of the CSLR research project, "Sex, Marriage and Family & the Religions of the Book." Her research uncovered African American writings spanning the 100 years between the slave era and the Harlem Renaissance, and she found the works to be a testament to those who came before, revealing "the strength of African American families and to the many ways in which love lives in them." Many of the writings are taken from publications and newspapers written by African Americans for African Americans, dating back to slave times. "I can't believe I studied African American literature for years without knowing that in the 18th and 19th centuries we had a viable print culture," writes Foster, who is Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and chair of Emory's English department. "Even before Phillis Wheatley's book of poems appeared in 1773, African Americans were writing and publishing sermons and minutes of meetings, poems, essays and autobiographies." By 1817, when the African Methodist Episcopal Book Concern was chartered, "we had black editors and publishers, printers and marketing agents, journalists and correspondents, and enough people who could read and had money to buy books, newspapers and magazines," says Foster. This early print culture was often bound up with the Afro-Protestant church, Foster discovered. The earliest known newspaper, Freedom's Journal, was started by a consortium of African Americans who lived in several states and cities, probably half of whom were ministers, she says.

The book, which Foster intends as a popular volume that will "work for many kinds of people with many kinds of intents and purposes," is arranged into five sections to represent the ideals and models for love and marriage that she sees reflected in 19th- and early 20th-century African American print culture.

"Most of the selections I liked best are funny—affirmative, but not pretentious," she says. And by no means do all of the selections idealize love and marriage. In fact, many offer keen insights into how small slights and careless ways can seal a couple's fate.

Foster says the idea for this anthology came about nearly 20 years ago when she was researching for a different, more academic work on the writings of Frances E.W. Harper, with her sister, Cle, near their parents' home in Ohio.

"Cle, who is a retired deputy sheriff and has little patience with fluffy stuff, kept finding these writings [about marriage, courtship and love] in the archives and reading them and saying, 'Hey, this is interesting! You ought to make a book of it,'" Foster recalls.

"Love and Marriage in Early African America" was the result of that journey. "The stories we tell each other shape how we behave toward each other," says Foster. "These writings show that 'children of the sun' can love romantically and deeply. These writings weren't secret, but they weren't written for outsiders either. They were written for people like themselves, by themselves, so were much more candid and honest." ###

Love and Marriage in Early African America brings together a remarkable range of folk sayings, rhymes, songs, poems, letters, lectures, sermons, short stories, memoirs, and autobiographies. Spanning over 100 years, from the slave era to the New Negro Movement,

this extraordinary collection contradicts or nuances established notions that slavery fractured families, devalued sexual morality, distorted gender roles, and set in motion forces that now produce dismal and dangerous domestic situations. A culmination of twenty years of diligent research by noted scholar Frances Smith Foster, this anthology features selections on love and courtship, marriage, marriage rituals, and family. A compelling introduction places the primary texts in their social and literary context. A bibliography offers suggestions for further reading.

Contact: April Bogle, 404-712-8713, abogle@law.emory.edu Contact: Elaine Justice, 404-727-0643 elaine.justice@emory.edu WEB: News@Emory - University Media Relations

Maternal Respect Stronger Among African-American and Latina Girls

Julia A. Graber, Ph.D. Associate Professor Developmental Area Director & Associate Chair 502 McCarty C (352) 392-7001 (352) 392-7985 (fax) jagraber@ufl.edu Mailing Address: Department of Psychology University of Florida P.O. Box 115911 Gainesville, FL 32611-5911

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Young African-American and Latina girls treat their mothers with greater deference than do whites but their mothers take it harder when tempers flare, according to a new University of Florida study. “Within African-American and Latino families, children follow a cultural tradition that places a high value on respecting, obeying and learning from elders, and in our study they did indeed show more respect for parental authority,” said Julia Graber, a UF psychology professor. However, when African-American and Latina girls do act up, their mothers consider the arguments more intense than those reported by white mothers who clash with their daughters, said Graber, whose study is published in the February issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.

Hispanic and black mothers, who value strong family connections, a deep sense of family loyalty and the importance of extended family and social support networks, seemed to be much more upset if daughters fell short of cultural, good girl expectations, Graber said. “It may be just the kind of issue that pushes their buttons more, thinking of their daughter as no longer being the good, respectful daughter,” she said.

For all girls, discipline was the only factor that influenced how much conflict they perceived in the relationship. The stricter and harsher mothers were, the less conflict their daughters reported, Graber said. However, as girls get older, stricter discipline may lead to greater conflict if girls try to disagree, she said.

The study differs from other research on mother-daughter conflict in that instead of looking at adolescence, it examines girls in middle to late childhood, at an average age of 8½, Graber said. The teenage years are naturally turbulent times for families, but understanding what happens immediately preceding them sets the stage for a smoother or rockier transition, she said.

Teen conflict is a risk for other behavior-related problems, Graber said. “It does seem that when there are higher levels of conflict, those daughters are more likely to have adjustment problems in terms of feeling more depression, sadness, anxiety and those problems,” she said.

The intensity of the conflicts aside, the study found that mothers’ and daughters’ reports of the frequency of conflict were similar, Graber said. The study, which Graber did with Sara Villanueva Dixon, a St. Edward’s University psychology professor, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a Columbia University child development professor, involved 45 African-American, 23 Latina and 65 white girls recruited through fliers while in the third grade and their mothers. The girls and their families were from racially integrated, working and middle-class communities in a large metropolitan area.

The girls’ respect for authority was observed during a series of videotaped interactions with their mothers. Daughters were scored on their listening behaviors, which included attending to their mothers when their mothers were speaking, acknowledging their mothers’ comments and not interrupting their mothers. They also were evaluated for defiant behaviors, such as disobeying their mothers’ requests, being unwilling to cooperate with their mothers and ignoring their mothers during the interaction.

Not only do children need to be more aware of the expectations their parents have for them, but mothers may also want to reassess their feelings about particular issues, she said.

“The challenge for African-American and Latina mothers is they are in an environment where their children are potentially getting messages at school, on television and elsewhere about what normal childhood behavior is like that may conflict with their own expectations for these behaviors,” Graber said.

“In the higher conflict families where mothers and daughters are arguing much more often there seems to be less productive resolution going on and less learning of those skills,” she said. “Everybody feels mad afterwards rather than feeling the potential of moving forward.”

“This is a fascinating study that enhances our understanding of ethnic and racial differences in parent-child relationships,” said Judi Smetana, a University of Rochester psychologist. “One of its strengths is that it examines in a very careful and detailed way how different cultural values are expressed in mother-daughter interactions and how those values influence the quality of family relationships.”

Writer: Cathy Keen, ckeen@ufl.edu, 352-392-0186 Source: Julia Graber, jagraber@ufl.edu, 352-392-7001 WEB: UF College of Liberal Arts and Science

Black Womanhood Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body

Hood Explores Views of Black Womanhood Through Time and Across Continents

HANOVER, NH--This spring, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College will open a major traveling exhibition that explores the historical roots of a charged icon in contemporary art--the black female body. Black Womanhood: Icons, Images, and Ideologies of the African Body was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and will be on view from April 1 to August 10, 2008.

The exhibition will explore the complex perpetuation of icons and stereotypes of black womanhood through the display of over one hundred sculptures, prints, postcards, photographs, paintings, textiles, and video installations by artists from Africa, Europe, America, and the Caribbean. Presented in three separate but intersecting sections, Black Womanhood reveals three different perspectives--the traditional African, Western colonial, and contemporary global--that have contributed to current ideas about black womanhood.

Providing an in-depth look at how images of the black female body have been created and used differently in Africa and the West, the exhibition explores themes such as ideals of beauty, fertility and sexuality, maternity and motherhood, and women's identities and social roles. Collectively, these overlapping perspectives penetrate the complex and interwoven relationships between Africa and the West, male and female, and past and present, all of which have contributed to the inscription of meaning onto the black female body. The first section of Black Womanhood balances traditional African art objects made by both male and female artists.

While some of the objects made by men are used predominantly by men, other are used by women to represent, for example, ideal female beauty, such as a Mende mask, while others teach young boys about womanhood and fertility, such as a Makonde breastplate. African women's traditional arts, which are generally non-figurative, often evoke women's body painting and scarification, which are reproduced as motifs on pottery from the Kabyle, Kurumba, and Ga'anda cultures, for example. As also with men's art forms, women's art forms mark a woman's passage through stages of her life, such as an Iraqw skirt made by a female initiate preparing for marriage and a Zulu apron worn by a pregnant woman. Viewed together, objects made and used by both men and women give us a more balanced understanding of the different ways in which gender defines how African womanhood is expressed in traditional cultural milieus.

Juxtaposing traditional African with Western colonial-era images of African women, the second section of the exhibition reveals how the female form was used in photographic media during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to promote and disseminate racist notions about African women and black womanhood. Visitors will encounter historic photographs and postcards of the black female body created by both Western and African photographers, whose images of African and African-descended women conveyed racist messages, especially when shown out of context in the West. Ranging from ethnographic depictions of sexualized racial "types" to "Mammy" figures, from Josephine Baker in Banana Skirt to an African mother carrying a child on her back, the perpetuation of such colonial icons in the Western imagination contributed to the negative black female body images that continue to impact people today.

The third section of Black Womanhood features works by contemporary African and African-descended artists from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States. New works by emerging South African artists Zanele Muholi, Senzeni Marasela, and Nandipha Mntambo will be exhibited for the first time in this country, as will a new sculpture created especially for this exhibition by the African American artist Joyce Scott. Also featured in the exhibition are well-established contemporary artists living in Africa and Europe such as Hassan Musa, IngridMwangiRobertHutter, Etiyé Dimma Poulsen, Sokari Douglas Camp, Emile Guebehi, Magdalene Odundo, Berni Searle, Fazal Sheikh, Angèle Essemba, Malick Sidibé, Penny Siopis, and Maud Sulter. African and African-descended artists living in the United States include Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Lalla Essaydi, Wangechi Mutu, Kara Walker, Alison Saar, Carla Williams, Carrie Mae Weems, and Renée Cox.

By contrasting historic representations of the African female body with contemporary representations of black womanhood, the exhibition peels back the layers of social, cultural, and political realities that have influenced the creation of stereotypes about black women. Over the last two centuries, representations of the black female body have evolved into obstinate stereotypes, leaving behind a trail of romanticized, eroticized, and sexualized icons. For example, since the end of the nineteenth century the Mangbetu woman, with her elongated forehead and halo-like coiffure, has been an icon of the seductive yet forbiddingly exotic beauty of African women. This is due both to the Western colonials who portrayed the beauty of Mangbetu women in widely disseminated photographs and postcards, and to the innovative Mangbetu artists who capitalized on this European fascination by decorating their non-figurative arts, such as musical instruments and pottery, with the sculptural form of the Mangbetu female head. Today, contemporary artists such as Magdalene Odundo and Carrie Mae Weems are recycling African and Western representations of Mangbetu women from the colonial era to comment on different aspects of black womanhood. While Kenyan-born artist Odundo creates ceramic sculptures that celebrate the enduring beauty of Mangbetu womanhood, African American artist Weems critiques the complicity of colonial-era photography in the creation of stereotypes of black womanhood in her installation From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried.

The exhibition is not an attempt to present a survey of images of the black woman throughout human history, nor is it a survey of black female artists. Rather, Black Womanhood offers a focused examination of a selection of iconic representations of the black female body that reveals how these images have affected African and African-descended artists. In this manner, the exhibition promotes and encourages a deeper understanding of the various ways in which ideas about and responses to the black female body have been shaped as much by past histories as by contemporary experiences. Curator Barbara Thompson states, "The exhibition provides the opportunity to raise awareness about the history of stereotypes of black womanhood and the continued impact they have not just on artists today but on all of us living in the global community."

The exhibition will be accompanied by a 370-page illustrated catalogue published by the Hood Museum of Art in association with the University of Washington Press in April 2008. Curator and contributing editor Barbara Thompson has compiled essays on representations of and ideologies about the black female body as presented through traditional African, colonial, and contemporary perspectives and written by artists, curators, and scholars including Ifi Amadiume, Ayo Abiétou Coly, Christraud Geary, Enid Schildkrout, Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Carla Williams, and Deborah Willis. More than two hundred historical and contemporary images illustrate the essays that reveal the multiple levels through which social, cultural, and political ideologies have shaped iconic images of and understandings about black women as exotic Others, erotic fantasies, and super-maternal Mammies. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue make a valuable contribution to ongoing discussions of race, gender, and sexuality, promoting a deeper understanding of past and present readings of black womanhood, both in Africa and the West.

The exhibition is generously funded by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Hall Fund, the Leon C. 1927, Charles L. 1955, and Andrew J. 1984 Greenbaum Fund, the Hanson Family Fund, and the William Chase Grant 1919 Memorial Fund.

About the Hood

The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College is an accredited member of the American Association of Museums (AAM) and is cited by AAM as a national model. The Hood is located in the heart of downtown Hanover, N.H., in an award-winning building designed by Charles Moore. The museum’s outstanding and diverse collections include American portraits, paintings, watercolors, drawings, silver, and decorative arts, European Old Master prints and drawings, paintings, and sculpture, and ancient, Asian, African, Oceanic, and Native American collections from almost every period in history to the present. The Hood regularly displays its collections and organizes major traveling exhibitions while featuring major exhibitions from around the country. The museum provides a rich diversity of year-round public programs.
General Information

Admission is free of charge. Operating hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday, 12 noon to 5 p.m. The Hood Museum of Art Gift Shop offers items inspired by the collections and exhibitions. The Hood is wheelchair accessible and offers assistive listening devices. For further accessibility requests, please contact the museum. For more information about the collections, exhibitions, and programs, visit www.hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu.

Contact: Sharon Reed, Public Relations Coordinator (603) 646-2426 Sharon.reed@dartmouth.edu On the Web: Black Womanhood Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body

Racism not an issue in firing of NBA coaches

Rodney Fort, Ph.D. Professor, Sport Management, is a recognized authority on sports economics and business, both in the U.S. and internationally. In more than 90 publications, including six books, his work covers sports topics as diverse as cross-subsidies in U.S. sports leagues, predatory behavior by Major League Baseball toward African American Baseball Leagues during integration, and comparative analysis of North American and world sports leagues.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Race is not a factor in the firing of NBA coaches, although white coaches with losing records had somewhat longer tenures before being fired than African-American coaches with more losses than wins, a new study shows. The University of Michigan study looked at differences between firing of African-American and white coaches in the National Basketball Association. The study found no difference in "technical efficiency" by race of coach, and found no evidence that there are differences in firings based on race, says lead researcher Rodney Fort, U-M professor in the Division of Kinesiology.

"The only strange thing about race that we came up with is that of the coaches who were fired, white coaches seemed to have a little bit longer tenure," Fort said. In other words, losing white coaches may get a slight benefit of the doubt relative to African-American coaches. Fort stressed this as an area for future research.

Fort said the NBA is the most integrated professional sport, so the results are not all that surprising, but they are significant.

The market for coaches in the NBA works like any other healthy labor market is ideally supposed to work—coaches must perform. By using the same scoring method researchers used, owners can calculate their current coach's value, or technical efficiency, by how many wins were produced. It appears that many owners already use the score system, since the league average score was about 13 percent higher than the average score of fired coaches, according to the paper. This is a valuable tool when setting salaries, Fort said.

Fort stresses that there are many types of racism in professional sports and the study looked at only one type over a three-year period. It does not mean that racism is absent in hiring or salary decisions in the NBA, or in the more general networking relationships among players and coaches, he said.

Fort and colleagues looked at 27 coaches of color over a three-year period. They chose the NBA because there are enough African American coaches to have a reliable research sample, Fort said. In contrast, an earlier study of hiring and firing NFL coaches found racial disparity, Fort said, but there were only five African-American coaches in the football league sample.

"As the number of coaches of color in football increases into the future, we need to see if they are still being treated in a discriminatory way," Fort said, referring to the earlier study. "This does not mean (racism in hiring coaches) is not a problem in the NFL, it means we need to look at football again."

The paper, "Race, Technical Efficiency, and Retention: The Case of NBA Coaches," appears in the recent issue of International Journal of Sport Finance. Co-authors on the paper include Young Hoon Lee, of Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea, and David Berri of California State University-Bakersfield.

This unique book applies economic theory to the business of sports. It deals mainly with professional team sports (with a section devoted to college team sports), showing how supply and demand join at the market level, and how team owners act together through their leagues (or athletic departments through the NCAA) to facilitate their market power.

This book will help the reader understand the business side of sports and how it impacts the games seen at the stadium or in the arena. Topics covered in this book are: demand, supply, and sports market outcomes; the market for talent and labor relations; government and the sports business; and college sports. With amusing anecdotes and interesting stories about sports business personalities, this book is for anyone who is involved in the economic side of sports and sports management.

Contact: Laura Bailey baileym@umich.edu 734-647-1848 University of Michigan

Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor PODCAST

Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love is the first comprehensive presentation of this remarkable African American artist’s career, which originated at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and has traveled to the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

It has been organized by Walker Art Center’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Philippe Vergne, and Yasmil Raymond, Assistant Curator, in close collaboration with the artist, and arrives at the Hammer Museum on March 2, where it will remain on view through June 8, 2008.

Over the past decade, Kara Walker has risen to international prominence for visually stunning works that challenge conventional narratives of American history and the antebellum South, and is among the most provocative and prominent American artists of her generation. With biting humor, the artist comments on race, slavery and liberation, sexual attraction and exploitation, discrimination, and modernity. The lush sensuality of her work haunts the viewer as it exposes the unofficial and subjugated histories of race and slavery in America.

This is a particularly meaningful exhibition for the Hammer Museum as Kara Walker was in 1999 the first artist to be featured in the Hammer Projects series. Her breakthrough came in 1994 at The Drawing Center in New York where Ann Philbin was previously Director, and Gary Garrels, the Hammer’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs also organized Kara’s first museum show at SFMOMA in 1997.

He is overseeing the installation of this exhibition at the Hammer.

The exhibition features works ranging from the artist’s signature cut black-paper silhouettes and room-size tableaux, to intimate works on paper and her acclaimed recent film animations to narrate her tales of romance, sadism, oppression, and liberation. Walker’s sophisticated command of shading and line evoke the tradition of the cartoon as a preparatory study, while her silhouettes draw from the 19th century cyclorama, large cylindrical paintings without a beginning or an end. Her stunning drawings and silhouettes reflect a profound agility and attention to detail, as she combines forms in complex counterpoints of positive and negative space. Walker’s ability to fuse her technical and formal style with a corporeal aesthetic creates characters and narrative vignettes that are beautiful and tender, yet often grotesque and repugnant as well.

Walker’s scenarios put an end to conventional readings of a cohesive national American history and expose the collective, and ongoing, psychological injury caused by the tragic legacy of slavery. Her work leads viewers through an aesthetic experience that evokes a critical understanding of the past and proposes an examination of contemporary racial and gender stereotypes. Using the genteel 18th-century art of cut-paper silhouettes, Walker’s compositions play off stereotypes and portray, often grotesquely, life on the plantation, where masters and slaves engage in a profoundly unsettling historical struggle. She has said, “The black subject in the present tense is the container for specific pathologies from the past and it is continuously growing and feeding off those maladies.”

Organized deliberately as a narrative, the exhibition articulates the parallel shifts in Kara
Walker’s visual language and subject matter: from a critical analysis of the history of
slavery as a microcosm of American history through the structure of romantic literature and Hollywood film to a revised history of Western modernity and its relationship to the notion of “Primitivism.”

About the Artist - Born in 1969 in Stockton, California, Kara Walker received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. Since that time, she has created more than 30 room-size installations and hundreds of drawings and watercolors, and has been the subject of more than 40 solo exhibitions. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award (1997) and, most recently, the Deutsche Bank Prize (2004) and the Larry Aldrich Award (2005). She was the United States representative for the 25th International São Paulo Biennial in Brazil (2002). She currently lives in New York, where she is associate professor of visual arts at Columbia University, New York.

Catalogue - To accompany the exhibition, the Walker Art Center has published a 418-page illustrated catalogue containing critical essays by scholars and cultural critics on the myriad social, racial, and gender issues present in Kara Walker’s work by exhibition curator Philippe Vergne; cultural and literary historian Sander L. Gilman; art historian and critic Thomas McEvilley; art historian Robert Storr; and poet and novelist Kevin Young. The publication features more than 150 four-color images of the artist’s work, a complete exhibition history and bibliography as well as an illustrated lexicon of the recurring themes and motifs in the artist’s most influential installations by Yasmil Raymond. Kara Walker has contributed a 36-page visual essay to the catalogue, which is distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.

Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love was organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. It is made possible by generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., the Lannan Foundation, the Peter Norton Family Foundation, Linda and Lawrence Perlman, and Marge and Irv Weiser.

Additional support is provided by Jean-Pierre and Rachel Lehmann.
Major support for the Hammer Museum’s presentation is provided by The Broad Art Foundation and The Joy and Jerry Monkarsh Family Foundation.

It is also made possible through the generosity of the Lannan Foundation, Susan and Larry Marx, Harvey S. Shipley Miller, George Freeman, and The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. Public programs for the exhibition are supported by Catherine Benkaim and Barbara Timmer.

RELATED:

• The Whitney Museum of American Art: Kara Walker: - “Ms. Walker’s style is magnetic…Brilliant is the word for it, and the brilliance grows over the survey’s decade-plus span. And then there is the theme: race. It dominates everything, yet within it Ms. Walker finds a chaos of contradictory ideas and emotions.” The New York Times, review by Holland Cotter
• The Art of Kara Walker - This Web site is an educational resource developed in conjunction with the Walker Art Center exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love,
• Hammer Museum: Kara Walker - Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love is the first comprehensive presentation of this remarkable African American artist’s career.
• PODCAST Hammer Conversation: Kara Walker - Artist Kara Walker discusses her work in the exhibition My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love with Hammer Museum Chief Curator, Gary Garrels.

contact: sstifler@hammer.ucla.edu WEB: Hammer Museum

African American Votes are Up for Grabs

Fredrick C. Harris's research interests include American Politics with a focus on political participation, social movements, religion and politics, political development, and African-American politics. Publications include Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism (Oxford University Press, 1999), which was awarded the V.O. Key Award for the Best Book on Southern Politics by the Southern Political Science Association, the Distinguished Book Award by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Best Book Award by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists; Countervailing Forces in African-American Civic Activism, 1973-1994 with Valeria Sinclair-Chapman and Brian McKenzie (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which received the 2006 W.E.B. DuBois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists; and Black Churches and Local Politics: Clergy Influence, Organizational Partnerships, and Civic Empowerment with R. Drew Smith (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). Fredrick Harris

Survey Determines African American Votes are Up for Grabs; Political Scientist Also Finds Strong Support for Reforming the Nomination Process Slight majority of blacks feel they should stand together in politics, but a significant majority feel they should not always vote for a black candidate New York, January 29, 2008-An opinion survey on "Racial Attitudes and the Presidential Nomination," conducted by Fredrick Harris, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and director of the Center on African American Politics and Society, has determined that African-American votes are up for grabs for both leading candidates of the Democratic Party and the skin color of the candidate will not automatically translate in African-American votes. One of the largest racial differences in attitudes was in response to whether the tradition of New Hampshire holding the first primary should continue. Nearly 60 percent of blacks, compared to 44 percent of whites think the tradition should be eliminated. "The study reveals the enormous value black voters place on diversity in evaluating the effectiveness of the presidential nomination process," said Fredrick Harris. "Like most voters, blacks value the process producing a candidate that can win the general election, but they place far greater emphasis on the process giving minorities a voice, and producing an ideologically and regionally diverse ticket. Clearly, black voters are both pragmatic and idealistic, balancing candidates' electability with candidates' commitment to racial, regional and ideological diversity." Electability is a value deemed as important by both blacks and whites, with blacks placing a greater emphasis on the system producing a candidate who can win the general election. About three quarters of blacks (76%) compared to 65 percent of whites think that producing a winning candidate is very important. However, the starkest difference in responses is the importance placed on giving minorities a voice in the nomination process-blacks and other minorities want their issues and interests addressed during the nomination process.

This also means for blacks having influence in the outcome of the Democratic Party's nominee, since about 90 percent of blacks identify with the Democratic Party. About three quarters of blacks (76%) view this value of having a voice and influence in the nomination process as compared to 56 percent of whites, a difference of 20 percentage points.

In the survey, 61 percent of blacks identified as Democrats, only 6 percent as "Republicans" and 24 percent said they were independents.

Diversity is a value that blacks emphasized in different ways throughout the survey. Regarding regional diversity on the ticket, 61 percent of blacks compared to 42 percent of whites believe that the presidential and vice-presidential nominees representing different regions of the country is very important. Also, blacks distinguished themselves from whites by 63 percent recognizing a need for ideological diversity compared to 40 percent of whites.

For blacks, a strong majority favor having a presidential and vice-presidential ticket in which the nominees do not hold the same ideological views, but rather a mixture of liberal and conservative views are represented.

About the Survey

The survey presents the results of a rare survey exploring racial attitudes toward the presidential nomination process. The study examines racial differences in opinions on the current system of selecting presidential nominees and gauges attitudes on whether the current process should be reformed.

The study reports findings on how feelings of group solidarity among blacks influence their candidate preferences as well as citizen's perceptions on whether the 2008 election cycle will produce a fair and accurate count of the vote. In the context of African American politics, the 2008 presidential election cycle presents black voters with a unique opportunity to play a pivotal role in determining the outcome of the Democratic presidential primary, as well as the November general election.

Contact: Tanya Domi, 212-854-5579 or td207@columbia.edu Web: Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy

Thurgood Marshall wins against separate but equal with Brown v. Board of Education

Thurgood Marshall, attorney for the NAACP, 1957 Sep. 17.

The Case of the Century Marshall wins against separate but equal with Brown case By Michael Jay Friedman Thanks to Marshall and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund, the federal courts had ruled that "separate but equal" schools really had to be equal. That was a real achievement, but not the best tool to effect broad change. Poor African Americans in each of the hundreds of school districts in the South could hardly be expected to litigate the comparative merits of segregated black and white schools.

Only a direct ruling against segregation itself could at one stroke eliminate disparities like those in Clarendon County, South Carolina, where per pupil expenditures in 1949-50 averaged $179 for white students and only $43 for blacks. Marshall and his team stepped in to get just such a ruling with the Brown case, and in the process changed the face of American society.

When it reached the Supreme Court, the litigation known as Brown v. Board of Education included five consolidated lawsuits from four states, including South Carolina (from Clarendon County, see photos of Paxville, Clarendon County, schools) and Kansas. The Topeka, Kansas, case involved grade-schooler Linda Brown, who had been obliged to attend a black school 21 blocks from her house. There was a white school only seven blocks away.

Significantly, the trial court had denied the Kansas plaintiff (technically, the plaintiff was Linda Brown's father, the Rev. Oliver Brown) relief by finding that the segregated black and white schools there were of comparable quality. This gave Marshall the chance to urge that the Supreme Court at last rule that segregated facilities were, by definition and as a matter of law, unequal and hence unconstitutional.

Marshall's legal strategy relied on social scientific evidence. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund assembled a team of experts spanning the fields of history, economics, political science, and psychology. Particularly significant was a study in which the psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark sought to determine how segregation affected the self-esteem and mental well-being of African Americans. Among their poignant findings: Black children aged three to seven preferred white rather than otherwise identical black dolls.

Photograph shows a young African American boy watching a group of people, some carrying American flags, march past to protest the admission of the "Little Rock Nine" to Central High School.

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Brown on two separate occasions. At the second, December 8, 1953, many people realized that history might be in the making. Lines for the 50 general public seats were long. The fortunate heard Assistant U.S. Attorney General J. Lee Rankin offer the federal government's endorsement of the plaintiffs' argument. He asserted that the justices possessed the "power and duty" to rule that segregation violated the Constitution. Those present also heard Thurgood Marshall's powerful summation: The question, Marshall told the Court, was "whether or not the wishes of these [segregationist] states shall prevail or whether our Constitution shall prevail."

On May 17, 1954, a unanimous Supreme Court vindicated Marshall's strategy. Citing the Clark paper and other studies identified by plaintiffs, the Supreme Court ruled decisively:

... in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated ... are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Education attorney Deryl W. Wynn, a member of the Oxford University Roundtable on Education Policy, has said of the significance of Brown,

Here was the highest court in the land essentially saying that something was wrong with how black Americans were being treated. ... I remember my father, who was a teenager at the time, saying the decision made him feel like he was somebody. ... On a personal level, Brown's real legacy is that it serves as a constant reminder that each child, each of us, is somebody.

The Court did not specify a timeframe for ending school segregation, but the following year, in a group of cases known collectively as "Brown II," Marshall and his colleagues secured a Supreme Court ruling that desegregation proceed "with all deliberate speed."

Even then, resistance continued in parts of the South. In September 1957, when black students were forcibly turned away from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, Marshall flew to the city and filed suit in federal court. Marshall's victory in this case set the stage for President Dwight Eisenhower's declaration of September 24: "I have today issued an Executive Order directing the use of troops under Federal authority to aid in the execution of Federal law at Little Rock, Arkansas. ... Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts."

Ultimately, Marshall would obtain another Supreme Court decision, this one ordering the immediate desegregation of the Little Rock public schools.

In 1956, Marshall – using Brown as the key decision – came to the legal rescue of Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. The boycott began on December 1, 1955, sparked by Rosa Parks' brave refusal to relinquish her seat on a segregated municipal bus to a white man. It was Marshall and the NAACP's legal team who argued for Montgomery's blacks before the courts. A November 13, 1956, Supreme Court ruling held unconstitutional the policy of relegating blacks to the back of the bus. The city of Montgomery yielded and the boycott succeeded at last.

Although many dedicated professionals worked with him, no American contributed more than Thurgood Marshall to the dismantling of legal segregation. Few could boast of a greater record of achievement, but Marshall's career of public service had only begun. He would support the cause of civil rights for all at the highest federal level, as the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court.

[Michael Jay Friedman is a staff writer with the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs. He holds a doctorate in U.S. political and diplomatic history.]

IMAGE RIGHTS INFORMATION: No known restrictions on publication. (PUBLIC DOMAIN)

NASA Engineers Lorna Graves Jackson, Marceia Clark-Ingram and Tawnya Plummer Laughinghouse Honored with National Women of Color Award

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Lorna Graves Jackson, an engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and a native of Everett, Mass., has received a National Women of Color Technology Award for exceptional professional and community service.

Career Communication Group's Women of Color magazine and the IBM Corporation presented Jackson with its "Technology All-Stars" award, recognizing accomplished women of color who are advanced in their careers and have demonstrated excellence as leaders at work and in their communities.

Jackson leads several employees as branch chief of the Avionics Systems Integration Branch in the Systems Engineering and Integration Division of the Space Systems Department, part of the Marshall Center's Engineering Directorate mentoring other minorities in this role. The branch includes avionics lead systems engineers that integrate various launch vehicle avionics hardware and software systems that support the Constellation Program, a NASA initiative to create a new generation of spacecraft for human spaceflight, including the Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles.

Jackson came to Marshall in 1986 as a lead engineer for in-house electrical power systems test beds for the Hubble Space Telescope mission. She took on additional responsibilities in 1990 when she joined the technical support team at the Chandra X-ray Observatory as Electrical Power System lead engineer and Electrical Design Integration lead.

From 2001 to 2003, Jackson served in several roles with the Second Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle Space Launch Initiative Program, including avionics lead sub-system engineer for Space Launch Initiative Vehicle Integrated Performance Analysis activities and Integrated Vehicle Health Management requirements lead for Marshall's Systems Engineering and Integration Office. The Space Launch Initiative was designed to develop technologies and lead to the creation of a second generation reusable launch vehicle.

Jackson moved to Marshall's Orbital Space Plane Program Office in 2003, where she was co-lead of the Exploration System Mission Directorate Ground Infrastructure Integrated Discipline Team. She helped identify NASA facilities, facility systems and support equipment for manufacturing, testing and logistics activities to assess ground infrastructure capabilities, risk implications and development plans.

In 2005, she was named acting branch chief of the Design Integration Branch of the System Design and Analysis Division in the Spacecraft and Vehicle Systems Department. Jackson led more than 50 civil servants and contractors that supported systems engineering and integration for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Constellation, Shuttle External Tank and Expendable Launch Vehicle Programs. She became deputy branch chief in 2006.

Jackson was named branch chief of the Systems Management Branch of the Systems Engineering Division in the Spacecraft and Vehicle Systems Department in June 2007, where she led a team of more than 60 employees in configuration, data and risk management, and engineering planning to support complex launch vehicle systems. She began her current role as Avionics Systems Integration Branch chief in November 2007.

Jackson earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1982. She has earned numerous honors and awards during her career, including a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2000 for technical excellence and personal dedication on the Chandra X-ray Observatory Electrical Power System development.

Jackson received the "Technology All-Stars" award in November 2007 at the 12th annual National Women of Color Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Conference in Atlanta. The conference is for minority women in information technology, computer science, information science and digital arts.

Jackson and her husband, Kurt, have two children and live in Huntsville.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Marceia Clark-Ingram, an engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and a native of Detroit, has received a National Women of Color Technology Award for exceptional professional service.

Career Communication Group's Women of Color magazine and the IBM Corporation presented Clark-Ingram with its “Technology All-Stars” award, recognizing accomplished women of color who are advanced in their careers and have demonstrated excellence as leaders at work and in their communities. She was nominated for her “professional dedication and enthusiasm” on projects for the Materials and Processes Laboratory at the Marshall Center.

Clark-Ingram is a senior material and processes engineer and advanced materials science specialist in the Laboratory Lead Engineers Office of the Materials and Processes Laboratory, part of the Marshall Center’s Engineering Directorate. She also is the primary Materials and Processes Laboratory's technical lead for interfacing with Marshall’s Propulsion Systems Engineering and Integration Office and the Shuttle Environmental Assurance initiative. This initiative supports mission execution through the life cycle of the Space Shuttle Program by identifying materials that may become obsolete as result of environment, health and safety regulations and mitigating these risks through teamwork.

Clark-Ingram began her career at NASA in 1987 when she participated in NASA's Professional Internship Program, working in the Corrosion Branch of the Materials and Processes Laboratory as a chemical engineer. From 1988 to 1992, she served as an analytical chemist in the Analytical and Physical Chemistry Branch of the lab. In 1991, she performed project management duties for the NASA Operational Environment Team as an experimental manufacturing techniques engineer in the Process Engineering Division of the Materials and Processes Laboratory.

She joined the Materials Compatibility and Environmental Engineering Branch of the Materials and Processes Laboratory in 1992 as an aerospace materials engineer, where she supported the development of a NASA-wide program plan for responding to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Air Act regulations and routinely presented NASA’s materials usage data to the EPA.

In 1995, she served as a structural materials engineer for the Materials and Processes Chemistry Group in the Materials and Processes Laboratory. She was a technical lead for the NASA, Environmental Protection Agency and Air Force Interagency Depainting Project, which tested technologies to be used as paint-stripping processes that did not adversely affect the environment.

Clark-Ingram was promoted to team lead in the chemistry group for the Materials Replacement Technology team in 2000. Her duties included technical oversight and program planning for the NASA Principal Center for the Review of Clean Air Act Regulations effort. This effort provided a proactive approach for the evaluation of potential impacts and risks to NASA’s programs due to usage restrictions of targeted materials. Additional responsibilities encompassed technical oversight for the testing operations at Marshall's Materials Combustion Research Facility and Materials Environment Test Complex.

During 2004, she was a test engineer for the Structural Strength Test Branch of the Engineering Directorate. She provided technical support for testing conducted on thermal protection systems at the Materials Environment Test Complex in support of the Space Shuttle Return to Flight effort.

Clark-Ingram earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Ala., in 1985, and a master's degree in 1995 in management sciences from the Florida Institute of Technology at Redstone Arsenal’s satellite facility.

She has earned numerous honors and awards during her career, including a NASA Blue Marble Award in 2005 for excellence in environmental and energy management demonstrated in support of NASA’s mission and an exceptional service medal for outstanding technical contributions to NASA programs in 2000.

Clark-Ingram received the "Technology All-Stars" award in November 2007 at the 12th annual National Women of Color Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Conference in Atlanta. The conference is for minority women in information technology, computer science, information science and digital arts.

Clark-Ingram and her husband, Neal, have two children and live in Madison, Ala.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Tawnya Plummer Laughinghouse, an engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and a native of Huntsville, has received a National Women of Color Technology Award for exceptional professional and community service.

Career Communication Group’s Women of Color magazine and the IBM Corporation presented Laughinghouse with its “Rising Star” award, recognizing young minority women who have excelled quickly in technology-driven professions.

Laughinghouse is a materials engineer in the Nonmetals Engineering Branch and provides ceramic and ablative material expertise in support of NASA projects, such as the small solid propellant motors associated with the Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster, the Ares First and Upper Stages and the Orion Launch Abort System.

She began her career at NASA in 1990 when she participated in NASA’s Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program. From 1991 to 1996, she served as a NASA Women in Science and Engineering scholar, which provided her a full-tuition college scholarship and summer internships at the Marshall Center.

After graduating college in 1996, Laughinghouse was a process chemist at Daubert VCI Inc. in Cullman, Ala., and in 1999, she joined Aerovox Inc. of Huntsville as a product engineer. She returned to the Marshall Center in 2004 as a materials engineer.

Laughinghouse earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Spelman College and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, both located in Atlanta, in 1996. In 2006, she received a master’s degree in management, with a concentration in management of technology, from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

She has earned numerous honors and awards during her career, including selection into the 2008 NASA Foundations of Influence, Relationships, Success and Teamwork, or NASA FIRST, leadership development team. The program helps participants develop foundational leadership skills.

Laughinghouse received the Rising Star award in November 2007 at the 12th annual National Women of Color Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Conference in Atlanta. The conference supports and recognizes the accomplishments of minority women in information technology, computer science, information science and digital arts. Laughinghouse and her husband, Scott, have one daughter, and live in Huntsville.

Betty Humphery Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. 256-544-0034 betty.b.humphery@nasa.gov Web: Marshall Diversity News Releases

Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits

Martin Luther King Jr. stands with his wife, Coretta, and daughter Yolanda in 1956. (© Sandra Weiner/National Portrait Gallery)

African Americans’ Struggles, Triumphs Shown in Photo Exhibition, Museum’s inaugural exhibition shows U.S. history from unique perspective By Lauren Monsen Staff Writer Washington -- An exhibition of 100 striking black-and-white photographs evokes the personal stories and hard-won victories of influential African Americans who helped shape the life of their nation over the past 150 years.

Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits -- the inaugural exhibition of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) -- traces the history of the United States from the vantage point of people who have suffered discrimination, oppression and injustice. Even now, after decades of social progress, the images from Resistance still challenge America to live up to its own highest ideals, according to Deborah Willis, curator of the exhibition.

The portraits of abolitionists, artists, writers, scientists, statesmen, entertainers and athletes illustrate the theme of “resistance” to negative stereotypes of African Americans, Willis says. “Resistance is not just physical combat, but also takes the form of visual images” that promote recognition and equality, she told America.gov. The exhibition is housed at the National Portrait Gallery, because the NMAAHC (authorized by Congress in 2003) has not yet been built. While the new museum is awaiting its eventual site on Washington’s National Mall, its first curated show provides a glimpse of how museum officials hope to illuminate the African-American experience.

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass posed for this portrait, by an unknown photographer, in 1856. (National Portrait Gallery)

The response to the exhibition has been “overwhelmingly positive,” said Willis. “I’ve received so many wonderful e-mail messages [from museumgoers] thanking me for introducing them to images of people they didn’t know of. Some young people said they felt there was a gap in their education.”

Much of the feedback has been surprising, Willis added. “Paul Robeson Jr. [son of the renowned entertainer and activist] told me he had never seen that image of his father.”

“I’ve been contacted by people from abroad who’ve seen the show,” she said. For example, “Polish viewers related to the civil rights images” because African-American activism affected their own pro-democracy movement.

The appeal of the portraits transcends race, culture or nationality, said Willis. “These images resonate with people everywhere,” she said.

The photographs date from 1856 to 2004; the oldest is an ambrotype portrait of the 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whose penetrating gaze attests to his forceful personality and confirms the aptness of his nickname, The Lion of Anacostia. That nickname is a reference not only to a neighborhood in Washington, but to Douglass’ stature as orator, author and champion of universal human rights.

Nearby is a photograph of Sojourner Truth, a female contemporary of Douglass who campaigned fearlessly against slavery and for women’s rights. Truth favored a plain Quaker style of dress intended to convey respectability and seriousness of purpose to a 19th-century audience that granted women far less latitude than men, said Willis.

Author, educator and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, captured in a sepia-toned image, is shown in profile, looking thoughtful and introspective. In contrast, actor/singer/activist Paul Robeson is turned directly to the viewer.

The exhibition features a mix of formal studio portraits and seemingly unposed photographs, such as a dynamic image of operatic soprano Jessye Norman singing with eyes closed and gesturing expansively with one hand. Jazz musician Louis Armstrong, flashing his trademark grin, lifts his trumpet in mid-performance, surrounded by members of his band. Dancer and choreographer Gregory Hines is a study in fluid grace as he pivots barefoot against a seamless backdrop. Pioneering figures in the civil rights movement also make their appearance, including Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Malcolm X.

In all of these photographs, African Americans are consciously presenting themselves as they wish to be seen, instead of accepting the identity imposed on them by the larger society, said Willis. The images created “a communal portrait of prestige and power that resisted the stereotypes of the time.”

Glamorous studio shots of film actresses Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne, for example, make it clear that African-American women were every bit as alluring as their white counterparts. These photographs employ “beauty as a political statement,” said Willis.

She cited a few images that are her personal favorites, including a photograph of politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael conversing in the hallway of a congressional building. The two men are relaxed and jovial, with Powell -- a congressman -- and the much younger Carmichael personifying two generations of the civil rights struggle.

Another favorite photograph, of singer Nat “King” Cole, shows the entertainer performing at a fashionable nightclub, entirely at ease and clearly in command of the room.

Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits opened October 19, 2007, and will be on display until March 2, 2009. More information about NMAAHC and its activities is available on the museum’s Web site. National Museum of African American History and Culture

Gee’s Bend Quilters Create Art from Scraps of Fabric

Mary Lee Bendolph quilt, 2005, features blocks, strips, strings and half squares. (The Walters Art Museum)

Women descended from slaves gain fame from boldly patterned quilts By Louise Fenner USINFO Staff Writer. Washington -- Generations of black women in the tiny, isolated town of Gee's Bend, Alabama, have created quilts with stunningly beautiful geometric designs and colors, but until the late 1990s, the quilts were little known beyond the community.

Most of the 750 residents of Gee’s Bend are descendants of slaves who worked on a local cotton plantation and became sharecroppers and planters after slavery was abolished in 1863. Throughout the decades, the women of the community made quilts from whatever was available to them, using their imagination and fabric cut from worn-out dresses and work clothes, remnants from a corduroy factory, flour and fertilizer sacks, and even scraps of cloth they found by the road. They used leftover lint from a cotton gin as filler. Many worked in the cotton fields during the day and quilted at night.

“Whatever we had, we made the best of it,” says Creola B. Pettway in the documentary “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.”

Loretta Pettway says she used to come home from the fields, do chores and then quilt until two or three in the morning. “I would get tired but I had to do it. I had a family and I had to keep them warm.” “When we gathered our crop,” says Arlonzia Pettway, “that’s the only pleasure we had was to sit around the quilt and talk and sing.” Now, the art world has taken notice, and prices for the quilts range from a few hundred dollars to more than $20,000. The quilts have been exhibited in more than a dozen American museums as well as U.S. embassies in Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Their images are printed on U.S. postage stamps.

Photograph of quilter Arlonzia Pettway from Linda Day Clark's Gee's Bend Series (The Walters Art Museum)

“This is art that deserves to be recognized,” said Bernard Herman, chair of art history at the University of Delaware. “It speaks to something that we lose sight of, which is the presence of art in everyday life.”

In 2007, Herman, who spoke at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where 45 Gee’s Bend quilts were on exhibition, described how some quiltmakers, such as Mary Lee Bendolph, make the entire quilt at home, while others take pieced-together fabric squares to the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective for finishing. Most now purchase their fabrics. The quiltmakers pass on their techniques and the tradition of quiltmaking to their daughters, granddaughters and other girls in the community.

“Quiltmaking is as much about the construction of community and kin networks as it is about learning to make bed coverings,” Herman told USINFO.

“So many things now are mechanized; this is handmade,” said Tosha Grantham, co-curator of the Walters exhibition. “Even if you use a machine to piece the little [fabric] squares together, a lot of people still do all the topstitching by hand.” The women come together as a community to quilt, sing and tell stories, Grantham said, “and that’s also a part of this.”

In The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, Essie Bendolph Pettway, Mary Lee’s daughter, says her brother went to college on earnings from their mother’s quilting. For Essie, quilting is a pastime. Sitting at her sewing machine, she says “I love my quilts when I make them. They be beautiful to me.”

And it is gratifying, she adds, “to think that I did some work that somebody thought was good enough to put on a wall.”

In 2003, about 50 quilters, with the assistance of Tinwood Alliance, a nonprofit foundation supporting African-American vernacular art, formed the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective to market their quilts. Proceeds are shared by members of the collective, although some quilters also sell their work independently. Many quiltmakers have made repairs to their homes, bought appliances and donated money to their church with their earnings.

Nonetheless, Gee’s Bend (officially called Boykin, Alabama) remains economically depressed, said Herman. “They don’t just lack money, they lack the basic services.”

One reason has been its isolation. Forty-five miles from Selma, it is bounded on three sides by a bend in the Alabama River. It is an hour’s drive to Camden, the county seat and nearest place for supplies, schools and medical services. In 1962, white local authorities shut down the ferry to Camden to prevent blacks from registering to vote. Most didn’t have cars at the time. For economic reasons, the ferry service was not restored until November 2006.

Despite these circumstances, or perhaps inspired by them, Gee’s Bend quilts are “one of the most remarkable artistic practices in the United States today,” said Herman. “I’ve looked at between 800 and 900 quilts. I’ve never seen two the same.”

“What a great thing it is for [the quiltmakers] to receive this type of critical success and attention at this point in their careers,” after lacking “the material resources many Americans benefit from,” Grantham told USINFO.

“Out of necessity, the women of Gee’s Bend made these really beautiful objects that weren’t necessarily art for them, but were ways to keep warm,” said Grantham. “I think it’s a very triumphant story of perseverance and faith and creativity.”

The exhibition concluded it's run in the summer of 2007, but you may read more about the exhibition of Gee’s Bend quilts, which traveled to seven U.S. cities, on the Web sites of The Walters Art Museum and the Tinwood Alliance. The exhibition was sponsored by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Tinwood Alliance. The Walters exhibition (June 15-August 26, 2007) included a gallery of 25 photos by Baltimore resident Lynda Day Clark taken in Gee’s Bend.

See U.S. Postal Service press release with photos of Gee’s Bend stamps.

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov