TANANARIVE DUE is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. She is an executive producer on Shudder's groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. She and her husband/collaborator Steven Barnes wrote "A Small Town" for Season 2 of "The Twilight Zone" on CBS All Access. A leading voice in black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: a Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.

*Source: https://www.tananarivedue.com/

Click on the link below to listen to her speak about one of her novels, The Between.

https://youtu.be/cgAnhCLRvRU

Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still lives in Jackson, Mississippi. A former teen rapper, she holds a BFA in creative writing from Belhaven University. Her award-winning, acclaimed debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a #1 New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Fox 2000, starring Amandla Stenberg and directed by George Tillman, Jr. Her second novel, On the Come Up, is a #1 NYT bestseller as well, and a film is in development with Paramount Pictures with Angie acting as a producer. In 2020, Angie released Find Your Voice: A Guided Journal to Writing Your Truth as a tool to help aspiring writers tell their stories. In 2021, Angie returned to the world of Garden Heights with Concrete Rose, a prequel to The Hate U Give that focuses on seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter.

*Source: https://angiethomas.com/

Click on the link below to listen to her speak about her latest book, Concrete Rose.

https://youtu.be/FcytelnS2Qg

Jason Reynolds is an American author who writes novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audiences, including Ghost, a National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.

Born in Washington, DC and raised in neighboring Oxon Hill, Maryland, Reynolds found inspiration in rap to begin writing poetry at nine years old. He focused on poetry for approximately the next two decades, only reading a novel cover to cover for the first time at age 17 and publishing several poetry collections before he published his own first novel, When I Was The Greatest, in 2014. He won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent for this first work of prose and seven more novels followed in the next four years, including Ghost (2016) and two more books in what became his New York Times best-selling Track series, Patina (2017) and Sunny (2018); As Brave As You (2016), winner of the 2016 Kirkus Prize, the 2017 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth/Teen, and the 2017 Schneider Family Book Award; and a Marvel Comics novel called Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2017).

*Source:https://www.jasonwritesbooks.com/

Click here to listen to his powerful interview with Stephen Colbert about his latest book Stuntboy.

https://youtu.be/nNzYE_4DdtA

Kenya Barris has created numerous television shows, including the critically acclaimed Black-ish. He was a writer for The Game, Girlfriends, and Soul Food. Barris co-created and produced America's Next Top Model with Tyra Banks. He also penned the film Girls Trip. He co-produced the 2019 film Little and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2019 theatrical release Shaft.

In 2020, Barris made his acting debut in #BlackAF, a series he developed for Netflix, co-starring Rashida Jones and Iman Benson. In October 2020, Barris announced that he will write, produce and direct a biopic on comedian Richard Pryor for MGM.

*Source: IMDb.com

Stacey Abrams is a political leader, voting rights activist and New York Times bestselling author. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Democratic Leader, in 2018, Abrams became the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, winning at the time more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. Abrams was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States.

*Source: https://fairfight.com/about-stacey-abrams/

Oprah Winfrey is a talk show host, media executive, actress and billionaire philanthropist. She’s best known for being the host of her own popular program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011. In 2011, Winfrey launched her own TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and received honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard. Winfrey has won many accolades throughout her career which includes 18 Daytime Emmy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman's Award, two Prime Time Emmy Awards, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, a Tony Award, a Peabody Award and the Jean Hersholt Award, awarded by the Academy Awards and two additional Academy Award nominations. Winfrey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.

*Source: biography.com

Kimberlé W. Crenshaw is a pioneering scholar and writer on civil rights, critical race theory, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. In addition to her position at Columbia Law School, she is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Crenshaw’s work has been foundational in critical race theory and in “intersectionality,” a term she coined to describe the double bind of simultaneous racial and gender prejudice. Her studies, writing, and activism have identified key issues in the perpetuation of inequality, including the “school to prison pipeline” for African American children and the criminalization of behavior among Black teenage girls.

To find out more about what Critical Race Theory actually is, click on the link below:

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05

*Source: https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/kimberle-w-crenshaw

Ella Baker became one of the leading figures of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s. Following her early work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. Three years later, she helped launch the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

While not as well known as Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, or other famed leaders of the civil rights movement, Baker was a powerful behind-the-scenes force that ensured the success of some of the movement's most important organizations and events.

Her life and accomplishments were chronicled in the 1981 documentary Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. "Fundi" was her nickname, from a Swahili word that means a person who passes down a craft to the next generation.

*Source: biography.com

James Farmer was educated at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas (1938), and at Howard University in Washington, D.C. (1941), where his father taught divinity. In 1942 he cofounded CORE, which originated integrated bus trips through the South, called Freedom Rides, to challenge local efforts to block the desegregation of interstate busing. Farmer, who sought racial justice by means of nonviolence, was often a target of racial violence himself.

He resigned from the leadership of CORE in 1965, and in 1968 he lost a run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to Shirley Chisholm. In 1969–70 he served as assistant secretary of health, education and welfare under President Richard M. Nixon. In 1985 Farmer published his autobiography, Lay Bare the Heart, and in 1998 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was also portrayed in the well-known film, The Great Debaters.

*Source: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/farmer-james

Fritz Pollard attended Brown University, where he majored in chemistry and played halfback on the football team. He was the school’s first Black player and led Brown to the 1916 Rose Bowl.

After serving in the Army during World War I, he joined the Akron Pros of the American Professional Football Association, which later became the NFL. He was one of only two Black players in the new league. In 1921, while he was still a player, the team also named him its coach – the first African American head coach in league history.

Over the next seven years, Pollard coached four different teams and founded a Chicago football team of all-African American players. Later, he launched a newspaper and ran a successful investment firm. Pollard was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.

*Source: https://www.profootballhof.com/players/fritz-pollard/

The Philadelphia native was the first Black person in the nation to earn a Ph.D. in economics in 1921. Three years later, she earned a law degree and went on to become the first Black woman to pass the Pennsylvania bar and practice law in the state.

In 1947, President Harry Truman named her to his Committee on Civil Rights, whose report became a blueprint for the civil rights movement. Some 30 years later, President Jimmy Carter appointed her chair of the White House Conference on Aging, which sought to address the social and economic needs of the elderly.

*Source: https://archives.upenn.edu/exhibits/penn-people/biography/sadie-tanner-mossell-alexander

Jacob Lawrence was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem. He brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors. He also taught and spent 16 years as a professor at the University of Washington.

Lawrence is among the best known twentieth-century African-American painters, known for his modernist illustrations of everyday life as well as narratives of African-American history and historical figures. At the age of 23 he gained national recognition with his 60-panel The Migration Series, which depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. The series was purchased jointly by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Lawrence's works are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Reynolda House Museum of Art, and the Museum of Northwest Art. His 1947 painting The Builders hangs in the White House.

*Source: https://www.moma.org/artists/3418

Ms. Johnson (Social Studies) would like to recognize Deiara. She stated, "Deaira has improved in many aspects of her academic performance. She is highly involved in each lesson and makes special effort to complete assignments by the assigned deadline. As a result her overall grade in American History has improved this quarter. Deaira, please continue to EXCEL as a Riverview Gardens SCHOLAR!!!!"

Ms. Jiles would like to recognize Jocelyn for consistently participating and doing well in her math class.

The RGHS Ram-ily would like to congratulate Kourtney for being awarded a Drum Major Scholarship from Christian Hospital. Keep up the great work!

Senora Bradley-Madkins would like to recognize Enoryt for doing excellent work in her Spanish I class. She stated, "He is excellent, always learning and has a positive attitude".

Mrs. T. Williams (Reading Specialist) would like to recognize Mia. She stated, "Mia is an outstanding young lady. She is hardworking, respectful and responsible. She makes sure she attends all of her learning sessions if possible, even virtual ones. One can always count on her to show up. She helps out at home as well by helping to take care of siblings."

Senora Bradley-Madkins would also like to recognize Nekaybaw for doing excellent work in her Spanish I class. She also has a positive attitude and consistently participates.