But dressing to fit the mold didn’t sit well with everyone. While Black Ivyists suited up in tweed and flannel to peacefully fight for their rights, members of the ever-growing and often misunderstood Black Panther Party chose another uniform designed to “present an image,” says Russ. But instead of the power, respect, and equality that Black Ivyists were dressing for, Russ says that members of the Black Panther Party “wanted to present an image of power, resistance, and a celebration of Black aesthetics and culture.” According to her, both groups used fashion to visually represent their power in different ways.
Eventually, though, following the assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968, some activists came to realize that respectability politics—and with it, dressing in Ivy—wasn’t working out in the way that they’d hoped it would. “Dashikis and berets would replace button-downs and trilbies as the clothing of rebellion,” Jules writes in Black Ivy, referring to the pieces associated with the Black Panther Party. According to Russ, the uniform of the organization “was a way to give a proverbial middle finger to white America and the policing of Black bodies,” she says. “They stood strong in not conforming to societal standards or bowing to respectability politics and this showed through their all-black clothing, Afros, and African inspired dress.” As time went on, this mode of dress became the look most associated with the movement, and thus, as Jules noted in the book, replaced the Ivy style that had once defined it.
Of course, Ivy style, and therefore Black Ivy, never really went away. In the decades since, the sartorial pendulum has swung countless times in favor of Ivy, a look that, today, is one of fashion’s most ubiquitous, specifically in menswear. Modern and heritage brands such as Drake’s, Ralph Lauren, Aimé Leon Dore, Rowing Blazers, Gant, Lacoste, Hackett, and G.H. Bass, have all experienced highs in recent years. And while the role the Black community played in shaping Ivy remains a quieter part of the conversation surrounding the overall preppy trend, its influence can be easily spotted when you look at the way these brands are designing Ivy fashion today. In turn, the discussion around it grows louder by the day.
In 2022, Ralph Lauren collaborated with Black Ivy League universities including Morehouse and Spelman, leading to the over 50-year-old brand’s first-ever all-Black campaign. Later that year, Drake’s released a capsule collection inspired by Black Ivy in collaboration with Jason Jules, who acted as the model for the associated campaign. It’s through these examples and more that people, specifically the fashion industry, are beginning to acknowledge and appreciate the role that the Black community played in shaping the Ivy preppy look that, as Take Ivy notes, was the “unwritten dress code” and the “one and only orthodox school of fashion” during the mid-twentieth century. Look around—in many ways, it still is.
I’ll always a strong believer in the idea of looking to the past to better recognize its impact on our present (and, ultimately, our futures). A prime example of this is taking the time to highlight the beauty of the past that graced our silver screens. By providing inspiration for today’s looks, they also encourage appreciation for the women who wore the iconic looks of the past. Unfortunately, many of the Black women who were at the helm of Hollywood during it’s golden years were not recognized for their contributions due to the rampant racism and discrimination of the film industry.
As a melanin-blessed beauty editor, one of my biggest goals is to shed light on the individuals who deserve recognition for their role in redefining and challenging beauty trends. Keep reading to meet the four brilliant Black women that come to mind when I think of the beauty of Black Hollywood and the modern-day products you can use to recreate their looks.
Do you think that beauty trends or aesthetics offset progress in the industry?
It’s a very nuanced and layered conversation because it’s hard to think about what I enjoyed and ingested culture-wise growing up. Whether it’s MTV, the J.Crew catalog in the age of Jenna Lyons, or the Delia’s catalog, you saw these jovial, carefree girls with their wispies (fake eyelashes), straight hair, and all these things. Not to mention how huge the French-girl beauty aesthetic became, where the focus was on having clean skin and not trying too hard, and we never really had permission to do that. It’s an aesthetic that I wanted, but wasn’t what I saw around me. I saw my aunties, and mom wearing the classic red lip and the classic red nail polish and pressing their hair every Sunday. And seeing how important aesthetics was a part of her routine, I did not see that replicated outside of my home. I feel like we, especially Black culture, when it comes to clean girl aesthetics, we’re the microcurrent and the underbelly of what moves that and what’s inspired that. Unfortunately, those small microtrends bubble up to the top, and suddenly, everyone just sees the surface level. No one has any idea what’s going on at the root of it or where it comes when it gets to that stage it’s very hard to trace it back because some people don’t want to hear it.
I remember working at a huge conglomerate, and we were selling haircare products. At the time, we were creating tutorials on how to get box braids, and the marketing collateral was “how to get Kim Kardashian–inspired braids.” I remember the uproar that happened in the comments, and it’s ironic that I was working for this brand, on that team, obviously, being a part of the problem. But on the flip side, having experiences as a woman of color, who grew up as a salon baby in a hair braiding shop understanding the problem. I was watching my team fight tooth and nail, like, “No, Kim Kardashian made this popular,” even though it was rooted in Black haircare routines. So part of me feels like the conversation sometimes is so counterproductive because some people just don’t want to see it, especially when said influencer doesn’t attribute it to the source. Then the other part of me is like, “Hey, maybe it’s our job to scream from the rooftops and showcase the true DNA and fabric of it.” I think everyone shares this frustration, it’s a constant state of tug-of-war, every few days when there is a “new” trend.
It was 2012, and Beatrice Dixon was running out of patience. She’d been dealing with chronic bacterial vaginosis that returned almost monthly, and doctors continued to prescribe medication that was more of a quick fix than a long-term solution.
Dixon felt she wasn’t being heard, so she began to do some research on her own — which was overwhelming in its own right.
“I was in this perpetual state of taking medicine, going back to the doctor and getting another prescription,” Dixon says, “which then led to the doctor’s office of Google. Which is not the one that you want to be in. You don’t want to be on Google trying to figure out what’s going on with you.”
Dixon began alternating between medication and holistic remedies she researched online, but she saw no significant results. Then, her grandmother spoke to her in a dream.
She describes how her grandmother (whom she never got to meet) was sitting across from her at a round table. The room was all white, with just the two of them at the center.
“I remember her telling me, ‘I’m not here for us to have a conversation. I’m not going to be here long,’” Dixon recalls. “‘You need to memorize what’s on this paper, because this is going to solve your problem.’”
Dixon woke up with a kind of urgency she’d never experienced and began immediately jotting down the ingredients that came to her in her sleep. Dixon began collecting the aforementioned ingredients at Whole Foods, where she worked at the time, and after a few days, she created her own formula.
After the fifth day of using the formula, Dixon was entirely cured of her BV.
“It had literally gone away,” she says. “It was crazy. That was the moment when I realized that this is what I was going to be doing for the foreseeable future.”
“It got to the point where people were saying, ‘Look, I can’t take this for free anymore.’”
After Dixon perfected her formula, she knew she had to share her discovery. Because Dixon had only raised financing from family and friends and had created the product in her own kitchen, she couldn’t afford a clinical trial — so she ran her own.
Dixon didn’t ask for money in exchange for her homemade product, which ultimately became The Honey Pot’s bestselling The Honey Pot Co’s Normal Wash. Instead, she asked that people review the formula and give her feedback on how well it worked or didn’t.
Her friends and family were hooked.
“It got to the point where people were saying, ‘Look, I can’t take this for free anymore, take some money,’” Dixon says.
That’s when Dixon knew she was onto something, so when news hit that the Bronner Brothers Beauty Show was coming to Atlanta, she took it as her chance to expand her reach.
“It felt like the best place for us to launch because there was nothing but humans with vaginas walking around,” Dixon laughs. “So we went to the hair show. We made 600 bottles. We sold 600 bottles. It was insane.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of The Honey Pot
“There was no plan B either, so this s**t had to work.”
This was in early 2014, only about a year and a half after Dixon made her first Honey Pot product. The business began to grow, and despite increasing demand, The Honey Pot company continued to operate out of Dixon’s kitchen for another two years while Dixon kept her full-time job at Whole Foods to make ends meet.
Through 80-hour weeks and tireless work, Dixon never wavered from her mission, certain that women needed her product in their lives. “It was really hard,” she recalls, “but I always knew that no matter what, we were going to be okay. There was no plan B either, so this s**t kind of had to work.
In the early days of Honey Pot, the team traveled to trade expos and natural hair shows where they’d give out products to people who were interested in their plant-derived approach to feminine care. One of those early recipients was a hairdresser, who was so impressed with the product that she told her client about it. That client was a buyer from Target — the rest is history.
The retail giant got wind of the company by 2016 and presented Dixon and her small team with a proposition to sell their products in their stores. It was the expansion Dixon had always dreamed of — literally. By the time Target decided to sell the products in stores nationwide, the company had produced around 24,000 bottles and made nearly $250,000.
From there, The Honey Pot continued to grow not just as a business, but as a platform to empower other women of color to “reclaim their wellness.”
Dixon and The Honey Pot launched its Reclaiming Wellness campaign in 2020, wherein the company — in partnership with Target — travels to historically Black universities and hosts seminars and talks on wellness and encourages women to “reclaim” their power when it comes to their bodies.
Image Credit: Courtesy of The Honey Pot
“As you grow as a business, it’s important for you to understand where you are, but also understand where you want to go when you have more resources.”
One of Dixon’s main initiatives is to address societal stereotypes when it comes to being a woman of color in the U.S. — particularly, she says, fighting against the problematic belief that “Black women are stronger.”
“That’s the mantra that creates an environment for Black women to be dying [during] childbirth more than anybody else,” she says. “We’re helping women understand that [they] don’t have to continue to die.”
Although the Reclaiming Wellness campaign is only in its third year, the initiative has been Dixon’s goal since starting the brand in 2014. Before 2020, Dixon didn’t have the capital to launch Reclaiming Wellness, so as the company grew, she jumped at the opportunity to finally carry out what her overarching mission was from the start.
“As you grow as a business, it’s important for you to understand where you are, but also understand where you want to go when you have more resources,” she says.
Now, in its third annual campaign, The Honey Pot is partnering with Target and traveling to Clark Atlanta, Howard, Prairie View A&M and North Carolina A&T to host panel discussions with specialists in both medicine and education to help women gain ownership of their well-being.
Dixon hopes that The Honey Pot will continue to not only serve as a resource for women to understand their bodies and find the treatment they need but also become a vehicle to pass information down to future generations.
“It is a very tribal thing, to be able to pass information down, and that is literally built into the fabric of Honey Pot — us being able to educate and empower women on what they need,” Dixon says. “From the beginning, we were focused on it being a generational thing. But what that’s grown into now is that it needs to be a generational thing as it relates to education, to self-love, to self-respect.”
Electricity, heat and water under attack in Ukraine; Sanna Marin: Finland’s millennial prime minister; The HistoryMakers: Documenting Black history through first-person accounts.
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At a time when we’re having a national discussion about how Black history fits into the American mosaic, we discovered that many stories of Black achievement are slipping away, going unpreserved for future generations. A nonpartisan, nonprofit organization called the historymakers is hoping to change that, by creating an expansive digital archive of first-person accounts. Founder Julieanna Richardson told us she’s determined to document the Black experience in America, one story at a time.
Julieanna Richardson: In society today, what is being debated? Who has value and who doesn’t? You preserve what has value, you throw away what doesn’t. That’s why the preservation is so critical.
Julieanna Richardson and Jonathan Holloway
Julieanna Richardson has been preserving Black American stories for the past two decades. One day, she’s interviewing the first Black president of Rutgers University, Jonathan Holloway.
Julieanna Richardson in HistoryMakers interview: What things did you find out about?
Jonathan Holloway in HistoryMakers interview: Well, the sort of the daily racism my siblings dealt with.
Another day, it’s Brandeis University professor Anita Hill.
Anita Hill in HistoryMakers interview: In three counties, the census takers actually bothered to list the slaves by name. And that’s how I met and found out who my great, great grandparents were.
Hill, known for her testimony against Clarence Thomas, wasn’t easy to get.
Richardson interviews Anita Hill for the HistoryMakers
Julieanna Richardson: It’s been a long time coming. I’m really happy to have you here.
Bill Whitaker: Why is it important to have these first-person accounts?
Julieanna Richardson: How else are you going to know what really has happened in the Black community if you don’t allow the community to speak for itself?
Bill Whitaker: You’ve called these America’s missing stories.
Julieanna Richardson: They are. They’re America’s missing stories. And American history won’t be complete without them.
Richardson and her small staff in Chicago have created the country’s largest collection of African American oral histories. There are more than 3,500 interviews so far. Each one is transcribed then posted online. It’s a who’s who of Black America. There are luminaries like poet Maya Angelou.
Maya Angelou in HistoryMakers interview: I’m not speaking to Blacks and Blacks alone, or tall women, or fat, thin or sh– no, I’m to everybody.
And there are rising stars, like a young Barack Obama.
Julieanna Richardson in HistoryMakers interview: Who would you say has influenced you most in your life?
Richardson interviewed him when he was an Illinois state senator.
Barack Obama in HistoryMakers interview: Not just Dr. King or Malcolm X, but Bob Moses, and Fannie Lou Hamer, and– Rosa Parks.
Julieanna Richardson: Think about this. This is, like, 2001. By 2008 he’s president of the United States. It’s extraordinary.
Correspondent Bill Whitaker and Julieanna Richardson watch Barack Obama’s 2001 HistoryMakers interview
Extraordinary is a good way to describe the breadth and depth of the collection.
William Warfield in HistoryMakers interview: You wanna hear somethin’ real crazy?
Julieanna Richardson in HistoryMakers interview: Yes.
Not long before he died, bass-baritone William Warfield gave an impromptu performance in German while recounting his Vienna performance of showboat that brought down the house.
William Warfield in HistoryMakers interview: [Sings Old Man River in German]
Julieanna Richardson: Everybody who sees this is sort of enthralled.
Julieanna Richardson says, as a child, all she knew of Black history was that her great grandfather had been enslaved. She grew up in a predominantly White Ohio town and told us when she was 9, she was the only Black student in her class.
Bill Whitaker: You had not been taught anything about Black American history in school—
Julieanna Richardson: Nothing. Unh-uh. But I’m not the only one.
Bill Whitaker: No, I w—I wasn’t either.
Julieanna Richardson: It’s a common story.
Julieanna Richardson
As a sophomore at Brandeis, she traveled to New York’s Schomburg Library for a project on the Harlem Renaissance. She had an epiphany while listening to a song.
She thought was about President Harry Truman.
Julieanna Richardson: I learn for the first time that this song is written by a Black songwriting team of Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake in the 1921 production of “Shuffle Along” on Broadway. I mean, it was, like, “Whoa. And I’m listening to the music. (SINGS) “I’m just wild about Harry, Harry’s wild about me.” And it was, like– it opened the appetite. And I’m reading, and I’m studying, and I’m listening, and I’m hearing. I’m hearing these things that I had no knowledge of, for the first time.
The spark was lit, but didn’t catch fire. Her father had wanted her to be a lawyer. After Harvard Law School, she had a successful career as a corporate lawyer and cable entrepreneur. But she was restless.
Julieanna Richardson: I was in my mid-40s. I didn’t have children. You get to a point in your life when you start asking, you know, what is gonna be your leave behind. What is gonna be your legacy? And I wanted to do good in my life.
As she mulled her future, she went to a legal conference in Memphis and heard the Reverend Billy Kyles, who was on the hotel balcony with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he was assassinated. Richardson realized there were lots of important stories like his.
Julieanna Richardson: At that moment the name, “HistoryMakers,” came to me. And I came back and I was like, “I know what I’m gonna do. It’s called the HistoryMakers, and it’s gonna be an archive of Black people.”
Bill Whitaker: In the beginning did you have a lot of– encouragement–
Julieanna Richardson: Well, they– they– my friends did an intervention. They literally did an in– intervention.
With no money, no formal training in oral history or professional archiving, she launched the HistoryMakers in 1999. At first, it wasn’t easy to get people to share their intimate stories with a stranger. But she convinced a Tuskegee Airman, Col. Bill Thompson.
Col. Bill Thompson in HistoryMakers interview: We were flying now with White guys.
Julieanna Richardson: He says– “Have you heard of the Golden Thirteen?” And I said, “No, Col. Thompson, I’ve never heard of the Golden Thirteen.” And he said, “Well, they were the Navy’s version of the Tuskegee Airmen.” And he said, “Four are left living in this country, and one lives upstairs. And he wants to talk to you also.” And it was just at that point that I– you know, I knew we were at a point of discovering.
By 2012, she had discovered so much, the archive had grown so vast, the collection so significant, the Library of Congress agreed to become its permanent repository. Alongside the only other project of its magnitude – the WPA Slave Narratives, recorded during the Great Depression.
Julieanna Richardson: I go, “Oh my God. The stories of the formerly enslaved and the stories of the progeny of the formerly enslaved are all together.”
Bill Whitaker: In the Library of Congress—
Julieanna Richardson: In the Library of Congress. Doesn’t get better than that.
Julieanna Richardson is not one to rest on her laurels. When she’s not conducting interviews, or researching new subjects – she’s even working on me – she’s fundraising.
Julieanna Richardson: Every interview costs us $6,000 to process.
When she realized the archive needed more athletes, she persuaded the NFL to donate hundreds of hours of its own interviews with Black players. Last year, she landed Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice, who couldn’t believe he got the call.
Jerry Rice
Jerry Rice: Because it’s almost just like going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. This is big for me.
Rice showed us the 49ers museum in their home stadium.
Bill Whitaker: So what’s with all these footballs?
Jerry Rice: Well, these represent– all my touchdowns.
Bill Whitaker: All of this?
Jerry Rice: Yeah, all of this right here.
He scored 208 touchdowns over 20 seasons, still an NFL record. He played in four Super Bowls, won three, and snagged a Super Bowl MVP. But Rice said the HistoryMakers wanted to know as much about his upbringing in rural Mississippi.
HistoryMakers Interviewer: Did you have plumbing, indoor plumbing?
Jerry Rice in HistoryMakers interview: No, we didn’t. It was outdoor.
He told us poverty fueled his drive for success.
Jerry Rice: We were very poor. Very poor. My father was a bricklayer. And he would take me to work with him during the summer. Very demanding work. I used to be up on this scaffold that was probably about 20 feet in the air. And my– my brothers down below, they would toss the bricks up. And I would snatch the bricks outta the air. And I always prided myself on, you know, being that s– really strong link.
Bill Whitaker: What’s important about your story for anybody who starts searching for you?
Jerry Rice: With the younger generation, when they see someone, you know, who looks like them and say, “Hey, look, that guy, he made it,” that might be that little- that little kick, that little nudge to make them work a little bit harder.
Julieanna Richardson believes stories of struggle and success are powerful motivators for all races, especially young minds. So she’s convinced more than 180 colleges and universities to subscribe to HistoryMakers. And she recently rolled out a new curriculum for schools in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and Charlotte.
Bill Whitaker: Did you know immediately that you wanted to use it in the classroom?
Rachel Davis: Yes, I did.
Rachel Davis
Last spring, we visited teacher Rachel Davis and her social studies class at O.W. Huth Middle School, near Chicago. The student body is largely African-American and many had lost family members in the pandemic.
Rachel Davis: Sometimes in one household, it was three or four. A grandparent, an aunt, a cousin. And then we had students who were starting to have a lot of anxiety, depression.
Davis saw the perfect salve in the HistoryMakers curriculum “from loss to thriving.” She had her students browse the archives and pick HistoryMakers who had overcome adversity.
Bill Whitaker: Who did you end up choosing for your project?
Loren Rounds: I chose The Honorable Blanche M. Manning. She’s– a United States– district court judge.
Tyler Rush: Lena Williams. She was a sports reporter.
Andre Samuel: Rodney Adkins. He’s a part of the IBM industry.
Andre Samuel, Loren Rounds, and Tyler Rush
Andre Samuel, Loren Rounds, and Tyler Rush told us they found the record of Black achievement to be richer and more diverse than they had ever imagined or been taught.
Tyler Rush: From maybe kindergarten to sixth grade, we heard the s– MLK, Rosa Parks–
Andre Samuel: Yeah.
Tyler Rush: –Malcolm X–
Loren Rounds: Every single year, I was like–
Tyler Rush: –the same people.
Andre Samuel: Every year.
Tyler Rush: Madame C.J. Walker. The same people.
Bill Whitaker: Has it changed now that you’ve met some people who may not have been in the history books?
Loren Rounds: It’s a lot– easier to actually see what we went through, and how we persevered through it, and it just shows how strong we are, really.
Julieanna Richardson: And think about this. What if I had had our archives back when I was nine–
Bill Whitaker: When you were that nine-year-old girl.
Julieanna Richardson: Think about that. I mean, there was actually Black history in my town, just yards from where I was. There was a man named Shackleford who sat at– with his gun point, daring the White community to tear down his school for Black kids. The fifth president of Liberia was born in Newark, Ohio in eight—
Bill Whitaker: In your hometown–
Julieanna Richardson: –in my hometown, in 1815. I’m thinking there’s no Black history, but it was all around me. And that’s what the kids– it’s all around them, but they don’t know it. They don’t touch it, so they can’t aspire to be what they don’t really see.
Bill Whitaker: But now because of your archives, they can know.
Julieanna Richardson: They can.
Bill Whitaker: That’s gotta be rewarding.
Julieanna Richardson: Yes, it is. But our work is not done.
Julieanna Richardson is now on a mission to collect and digitize the papers of HistoryMakers – these belonged to entertainer Eartha Kitt – and she found a willing partner in Ford Foundation President Darren Walker.
Darren Walker: This organization is, indeed, a national treasure. And you, Julieanna, are a national treasure. And so I’m very, very happy to make this pledge of $1 million to your great work.
Julieanna Richardson: I’ve worked 24/7 for 22 years. And I’m surrounded by these– such rich stories. Till I take my last breath, I mean, they will always be a part of me. And the little girl– I mean, I’m now– a very richly endowed person that no one can tell me that me and my people don’t have tremendous value. No one can tell me that, ever.
Produced by Marc Lieberman. Associate producer, Cassidy McDonald. Broadcast associates, Eliza Costas, Natalie Breitkopf and Annabelle Hanflig. Edited by Robert Zimet.
A Congressional Gold Medal posthumously awarded to Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie, will be on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture near Till’s casket. Scott MacFarlane shares more.
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What constitutes an “It” item in fashion? While some might point to celebrity endorsements, sales, or even of Instagram likes, I wouldn’t use any of those things as measurements. If you ask me, “It” items are those pieces that everyone has silently agreed are the ones to know. They’re the pieces that, when you see someone wearing them, you automatically know they “get it”, kind of like a secret language that we use to communicate our knowledge of what’s cool and exciting to us right now.
While there still isn’t one universal set of benchmarks for defining an It piece, I have a pretty good idea of a few that have earned the title—five items, to be specific.
When the push for racial equity and “buying Black” came knocking on our doors in the summer of 2020, the designers of color behind countless smaller and emerging brands saw an unprecedented spike in attention—and most importantly, sales—that projected their labels to new levels. Flash forward nearly three years and the five names we’re sitting down with today include ones who have taken that moment in time and ran with it, building long-lasting brands out of the success of the “It” items that put them on people’s radar in the first place.
It’s not to say that some weren’t already creating beautiful bags, jewelry, and clothing well before this moment. Mateo’s pearl pieces have been gracing red carpets on the likes of Zendaya and Anne Hathaway since 2016. But for designers like Brandon Blackwood, that summer of 2020 saw the meteoric rise of his “End Systemic Racism” bags that the internet went wild for. So regardless of how, each of these five brands have experienced at least one big breakthrough moment that catapulted them from emerging to It status. Sure, you can argue that a single viral moment doesn’t ensure longtime success, but if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that the designers behind these five brands have that special sauce.
Whether it be celebrity-adored jewelry or gender-obliterating basics, scroll to get to know these five Black-owned fashion brands, the buzzy items you might know them for, and the next It pieces they already have up their sleeves.
Celebrity clients: Tracee Ellis Ross, Alicia Keys, Gabrielle Union, Michael B. Jordan, Daniel Kaluuya
Top makeup tip of all time:
I love to custom-make my own rollerball for de-puffing and hydrating my skin in the morning. It’s an inexpensive, luxurious self-care morning ritual. I use a whiskey ice ball mold (very inexpensive), and after filling it with water, I add jojoba oil, essential oils, and strained chamomile tea. The results are tightened, glossy skin that often allows me to skip foundation afterward. That said, if I do wear or apply a medium-coverage foundation, I always have to powder to set the foundation. My trick for making it look very light and clean is to go back in and whisk a bit of foundation on your cheeks, forehead, and chin back over the powder with a loosely bristled brush. One would think adding more coverage would make it seem overall very heavy, but whisking a little foundation back over the powder breathes a little bit of glow and texture back into the skin.
One standout moment or memory you’ve had since making it in the beauty industry:
Two memories stand out in a career where I constantly live beyond my wildest dreams every single day. It’s very rare to have a client perform at the Oscars. I’ve now been back several times, but the first time so clearly stands out in memory. I was working with Florence Welch. She was also performing with Elton John at his annual Oscar party, so we had a lot of logistics to sort out during the day, including having a police escort to make it to both red carpets with a change in between. We were moving very fast. A door closed and locked behind me, and I somehow ended up walking the entire red carpet, casually drinking champagne. Later, I was standing right behind the main curtain backstage doing touch-ups, and I looked out into the front row and at the theatre. It was the first time I paused all day and took it all in. That’s when the moment fully sunk in. Later that night, I had the same feeling standing just offstage watching her and Elton sing “Tiny Dancer.”
Touring with Jill Scott was also a dream. I’ve seen her perform “He Loves Me” countless times in countless countries across the globe. She moves me every single time. No matter how hectic things are backstage, when the chords to the song start, I run back just off to the side behind the curtain. Touring is hard on the body and hard on the mind. You’re living on the road with no schedule. You’re moving from country to country and city to city at odd times, in the middle of the night, by plane, bus, and car. Hearing her sing “He Loves Me” when the key changes to opera restores me every single time. Occasionally, I’ll zone out and watch someone in the audience watch her, and the look on their face reminds me… that while Jilly’s a dear friend and client, I’m working with living legend Jill Scott.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give artists who are just starting out?
Have your own point of view—your own aesthetic and style. Be authentically and unapologetically you in your art. The right clients will find and appreciate you. It’s a terrible place to be as an artist when your art doesn’t fully reflect your instincts and you’re aware of it. You can’t fully create and thrive in that space. Be you. The world needs more you.
What beauty products can you not live without when working on your clients?
I use Chanel’s Baume Essential Multi-Use Glow Stick on every face every time. It’s like painting with light. It brings a sheen back to skin that powder or foundation can dull down, so it’s also the perfect trick to hide a fuller coverage into looking like bare skin. I like to apply it where the sun would naturally hit—the tops of cheekbones, the bridge of the nose, and the chin. I’ll even apply a dab in the center of the eyelids to “wake up” powder eye shadow. A little on the décolletage extends the glow and makes the sheen on the face look so natural. I don’t like the face to look too made up, per se, and eyeliner can sometimes be a bit too much when you’re trying to strike a delicate balance with a bolder lip. I do, however, also love definition around the eyes. Enter Le Volume Stretch de Chanel Mascara. The 3D-printed brush lets me get right up to the lash line, so I get my definition without the added product buildup. The eyes pop, and it really wakes up the whole face.
Feb. 13, 2023 – It’s not often that a high school brawl with gang members sets you down a path to becoming a Harvard-trained doctor. But that’s exactly how Alister Martin’s life unfolded.
Alister Martin, MD, had initially planned to follow in his stepfather’s footsteps, managing the drug store in Neptune, NJ, township where he was raised. But a fight changed his prospects.
In retrospect, he should have seen the whole thing coming. That night at the party, his best friend was attacked by a gang member from a nearby high school. Martin was not in a gang but he jumped into the fray to defend his friend.
“I wanted to save the day, but that’s not what happened,” he says. “There were just too many of them.”
When his mother rushed to the hospital, he was so bruised and bloody that she couldn’t recognize him at first. Ever since he was a baby, she had done her best to shield him from the neighborhood where gang violence was a regular disruption. But it hadn’t worked.
“My high school had a zero-tolerance policy for gang violence,” Martin says, “so even though I wasn’t in a gang, I was kicked out.”
Now expelled from high school, his mother wanted him out of town, fearing gang retaliation, or that Martin might seek vengeance on the boy who had brutally beaten him. So, the biology teacher and single mom who worked numerous jobs to keep them afloat, came up with a plan to get him far away from any temptations.
Martin had loved tennis since middle school, when his eighth-grade math teacher, Billie Weise, also a tennis pro, got him a job as a court sweeper at an upscale tennis club nearby. He knew nothing then about tennis but would come to fall in love with the sport. To get her son out of town, Martin’s mother took out loans for $30,000 and sent him to a Florida tennis training camp.
After 6 months of training, Martin, who earned a GED degree while attending the camp, was offered a scholarship to play tennis at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. The transition to college was tough, however. He was nervous and felt out of place. “I could have died that first day. It became so obvious how poorly my high school education had prepared me for this.”
But the unease he felt was also motivating in a way. Worried about failure, “he locked himself in a room with another student and they studied day and night,” recallsKamal Khan, director of the Office for Diversity and Academic Success at Rutgers. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
And Martin displayed other attributes that would draw others to him – and later prove important in his career as a doctor. His ability to display empathy and interact with students and teachers separated him from his peers, Khan says. “There’re a lot of really smart students out there,” he says, “but not many who understand people like Martin.”
After graduating, he decided to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor. He’d wanted to be a doctor since he was 10 years old after his mom was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. He remembers overhearing a conversation she was having with a family friend about where he would go if she died.
“That’s when I knew it was serious,” he says.
Doctors saved her life and it’s something he’ll never forget. But it wasn’t until his time at Rutgers that he finally had the confidence to think he could succeed in medical school.
Martin went on to attend Harvard Medical School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government as well as serving as chief resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He was also a fellow at the White House in the Office of the Vice President and today, he’s an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
He is most at home in the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he works as an emergency medical specialist. For him, the ER is the first line of defense for meeting the community’s health needs. Growing up in Neptune, the ER “was where poor folks got their care,” he says. His mom worked two jobs and when she got off work at 8 p.m. there was no pediatrician open. “When I was sick as a kid we always went to the emergency room,” he says.
While at Harvard, he also pursued a degree from the Kennedy School of Government, because of the huge role he feels that politics play in our health care system and especially in bringing care to impoverished communities. And since then he’s taken numerous steps to bridge the gap.
Addiction, for example, became an important issue for Martin, ever since a patient he encountered in his first week as an internist. She was a mom of two who had recently gotten surgery because she broke her ankle falling down the stairs at her child’s daycare, he says. Prescribed oxycodone, she feared she was becoming addicted and needed help. But at the time, there was nothing the ER could do.
“I remember that look in her eyes when we had to turn her away,” he says.
Martin has worked to change protocol at his hospital and others throughout the nation so they can be better set up to treat opioid addiction. He’s the founder of GetWaivered, an organization that trains doctors throughout the country to use evidenced based medicine to manage opioid addiction. In the U.S. doctors need what’s called a DEA X waiver to be able to prescribe buprenorphine to opioid addicted patients. That means that currently only about 1% of all emergency room doctors nationwide have the waiver and without it, it’s impossible to help patients when they need it the most.
Shuhan He, MD, an internist with Martin at Massachusetts General Hospital who also works on the GetWaivered program, says Martin has a particular trait that helps him be successful.
“He’s a doer and when he sees a problem, he’s gonna try and fix it.”
February is Black History Month, and to celebrate, the Stony Brook-based Jazz Loft is featuring a series of concerts during which it will highlight wines from Black winemakers and vineyards.
It’s all part of the venue’s “Acoustic in the Main Room” series. The series showcases small ensembles in the Jazz Loft’s main performance room, which is set up like an intimate living room.
“This theme was chosen in an effort to elevate awareness and support the growth of African Americans in the wine industry,” Laura Landor, the venue’s director of education, said in a statement.
Landor selected the wine pairings.
“Of the more than 11,000 wineries in the United States, less than 1% of them are Black owned or have a Black winemaker,” Landor said. “We are excited to introduce these wines to our Jazz Loft patrons during Black History Month and hope to add a selection of them to our regular list of wines that are available by the glass or bottle.”
Tastings will include a red and white selection, with full glasses available for purchase.
“Our ‘Acoustic in the Main Room’ series is a unique opportunity to hear some of the most talented singers and musicians that perform regularly at the Loft in a relaxed setting, reminiscent of the New York City loft scene of the 1950s, which inspired the Jazz Loft’s name,” Jazz Loft Founder Tom Manuel said in a statement.
“If you don’t know any jazz performers personally to invite into your own living room, then this is the next best thing,” he added.
The series lineup is as follows: Feb. 9 features Mala Waldron on piano and vocals; with Mike Hall on bass; and Tom Manuel on cornet; wines from McBride Sister. On Feb. 10, Houston Person performs on tenor saxophone; Steve Salerno on guitar and Tom Manuel on cornet; wines from Brown Estate. On Feb. 24, Buddy Merriam performs on mandolin; Steve Salerno on guitar and Tom Manuel on cornet; wines from Longevity. On Feb. 25, Grammy-nominated singer Nicole Zuraitis performs, with Steve Salerno on guitar and Tom Manuel on cornet; wines from LVE.
Tickets are $40 each and will be limited to just 85 people and start at 7 p.m. Each concert features two sets with a brief intermission.
TAMPA BAY, Fla — Fred Hearns isn’t just the first Curator of Black History in Tampa. He’s the first Curator there to end up in an upcoming exhibition.
What You Need To Know
February 15: Talk on historically Black neighborhoods in Tampa
February 24: Reception and sneak peek at summer exhibition
February 25: Talk on Roger’s Park Golf Course
Hearns is working on the summer exhibition– “Travails and Triumphs,” about people of African descent in the Tampa Bay area.
One of the donated pieces in the exhibition is a 1960s yearbook for Middleton High School—where Hearns went to school himself. He pointed out his picture in the marching band—he played clarinet—and his individual school picture as a sophomore.
“We focus on the black high schools,” said Hearns, “Segregation from kindergarten all the way through high school. That’s the Tampa I grew up with in the 1960s.”
A curator at the History Center now for nearly two years, it was nearly two months before Hearns realized his own history in his office hallway.
“These are the blueprints for the colored high school in Hillsborough County, 1935,” said Hearns, reading off the titles on the framed piece of history. Again–it’s Middleton High School A high school which burned down three times by 1968.
Their newer campus– built in 2002 –sits three blocks from the original site on North 22nd Street in Tampa. The former high school is now home to another. Hearns leads us from downtown Tampa to the campus for a look.
“This is a wonderful dream come true because the Alumni Association fought for 10 long years to get Middleton High School rebuilt,” Hearns explained, walking under the shade of oak trees in the school’s courtyard.
For his part in the fight for the school—Hearns’ name is on it. “The ‘Fred Hearns Pavilion’ that’s right outside the cafeteria,” said Hearns, walking by it. “The alumni, the community paid me this honor. I’m still humbled by it.”
And now his work bringing the Tampa Bay community together continues–fitting for the retired head of the Community Affairs for the City of Tampa. Different career, same goal.
“It’s history. American history made by black people, and everybody needs to know more of it,” said Hearns.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Did you know that in 2019, 46.8 million people in the United States identified their race as Black, alone, or as part of a multiracial or ethnic background? While this is only about 14% of the United States population, their influence will continue to grow as their buying power does — which is projected to reach $1.8T by 2024. This sharp increase in buying power can be attributed to the forecasts for the Black population growth. Between 2020 and 2060, the Black population is expected to increase by 22%. What does this mean for marketers? There is projected to be a substantial shift towards multicultural marketing over the next few years instead of a more traditional, generic approach.
We are already seeing this shift play out in advertising, in the first half of 2022 alone, more than 6,000 advertisers spent over $1.2 billion trying to connect with Black and African American consumers across traditional media, including television, magazines and radio. This shift towards a multicultural approach allows for more authenticity in marketing and provides greater exposure for historically marginalized groups. Black consumers (like many other minority consumers) are looking for authenticity, representation and most importantly — action. They want brands to be their voice and partner in fighting injustice. This is critical when considering how to implement a marketing strategy that attracts instead of alienates the Black consumer.
Are you looking to ramp up your multicultural marketing efforts, specifically your Black marketing efforts? Here are three ways your marketing department can authentically celebrate Black History Month and Black culture year-round:
1. Amplify Black creators, leaders and changemakers
Organizations traditionally have a much larger reach than individuals. Therefore, it is recommended to leverage those social media channels to shine a light on those with a limited social media reach. By spotlighting changemakers, activists and other key players in the Black community, your organization will transition from being a company that celebrates Black History Month and to being seen as an ally and partner in the Black community. An excellent example of an organization that did just this is Target. The organization launched an initiative called “Black Beyond Measure,” where it created a YouTube series that highlights leaders within the Black community. There is also a section of its website dedicated to buying Black, thus leveraging its platform and its traffic to spotlight those with a limited reach.
2. Show the face behind the logo
It’s imperative to show the people who make your organization and company culture what it is. Those individuals include social media fans, customers and employees. All of them have ultimately played a role in the success of your organization and deserve to be spotlighted. Black consumers want to engage with diverse content and buy from brands featuring Black talent. In fact, 69% of Black viewers are more likely to watch content in which they’re represented, and 55% are more likely to buy from brands that advertise in representative content.
A great example of a company showing the face behind the logo is GymShark’s “To the Heroes” campaign, which celebrated three community heroes for the barriers they broke and their overall impact on the community. In addition, the campaign’s creative was made by an entirely Black team, from the camera crew to the makeup artists and health and safety officers.
If your company has an ongoing campaign, it is recommended to leverage it by including it in your overall Black History Month campaign. This will help your brand maintain authenticity while naturally incorporating Black History Month into your content mix. An example is Adobe, which leveraged its weekly social series, “Women Create Wednesday,” to feature four Black creators who inspired change in their community. This was a seamless way to incorporate Black History Month into their overall marketing strategy.
Another thing to remember when creating a Black marketing campaign is that the Black community is extremely brand loyal, with 66% of Black consumers more likely to return to a brand with advertising that authentically reflects their race/ethnicity. This is critical because when the Black community sees your brand consistently celebrating their culture, including them in DEI marketing campaigns and overall traditional campaigns, getting involved in the community and exhibiting cultural empathy, your company will gain their trust, and eventually, their loyalty.
Black History Month is here and should be treated as a launchpad to a 365-day multicultural marketing approach. Brands must remember to be vocal not only during the shortest month out of the year but also year-round. This will, in turn, prevent your marketing tactics from appearing performative and will position your organization as an ally and advocate. By truly understanding the communities’ pain points, serving as a voice for the voiceless and shining a spotlight on those leading change within the community, you will develop a lifelong customer and a partner in the success of your organization.
Facing accusations of whitewashing history after his administration blocked a new Black studies course for high-achieving high schoolers, Gov. Ron DeSantis has countered that Florida students already must learn about the triumphs and plight of African Americans.
“The state of Florida education standards not only don’t prevent, but they require teaching Black history,” DeSantis said last week. “All the important things, that’s part of our core curriculum.”
Indeed, Florida has required its schools to teach African American history since 1994, long before the recent push in many states to move toward a more complete telling of the country’s story. The stated goal at the time was to introduce the Black experience to a generation of young people. That included DeSantis himself, then a student in Florida’s public school system when the mandate became law.
But nearly three decades later, advocates say many Florida schools are failing to teach that history. Only 11 of the state’s 67 county school districts meet all of the benchmarks for teaching Black history set by the African American History Task Force, a state board created to help school districts abide by the mandate. Many schools only cover the topic during Black History Month in February, said Bernadette Kelley-Brown, the principal investigator for the task force.
“The idea that every Florida student learns African American history, it’s not reality,” Kelley-Brown said. “Some districts don’t even realize it’s required instruction.”
The persistent focus in Florida on instruction of African American topics comes as DeSantis has partially built his Republican stardom by targeting public schools for signs of progressive ideologies. His administration has forced K-12 schools to comb their textbooks and curriculum for any evidence of Critical Race Theory or related topics and he championed a new law that puts guardrails on lessons about racism and oppression. Both measures were cited in the state’s decision last month to block a new Advanced Placement class on African American Studies from Florida high schools. (On Wednesday, the College Board, which oversees AP courses and exams, released an updated framework of African American Studies class that did not include many of the authors and topics DeSantis had objected to. His administration said it was reviewing the changes to see if the course now complies with state law.)
Black Democratic lawmakers say the state Department of Education under DeSantis has shown far more zeal in enforcing these new restrictions on how race can be taught in schools than the state, in almost 30 years, has ever demonstrated toward ensuring that Black history is taught at all.
“If we say that the speed limit is 70 and someone goes 80, the Highway Patrol is there with some consequences,” state Sen. Geraldine Thompson said at a recent press conference. “But there have been no consequences for not teaching African American history.”
The governor’s office and the Florida Department of Education did not respond when asked about the state’s efforts to enforce the mandate to teach Black history. But DeSantis recently elaborated on how he expects the subject to be taught.
“It’s just cut and dried history,” DeSantis said. “You learn all the basics. You learn about the great figures, and you know, I view it as American history. I don’t view it as separate history.”
For a state that had to be dragged to desegregate all of its schools well into the 1970s, the move to require African American history in Florida classrooms was notably unceremonious. Lawmakers unanimously approved the mandate in 1994 with little debate. Few newspapers covered then-Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles signing the bill into law.
After it passed, the state created the African American History Task Force to help school districts with this new directive and to come up with a strategy for implementation. But neither the law nor the Florida Department of Education set a deadline for districts to comply.
Former state Rep. Rudolph Bradley, the Black lawmaker who sponsored the bill to require African American history back then, now says there was a major flaw in the legislation that kept it from accomplishing what he set out to achieve: Lawmakers didn’t set aside any money for school districts to update their textbooks, buy new instructional materials or train teachers.
“The mistake on my part, being a freshman, I didn’t understand the importance of attaching appropriations,” Bradley told CNN in a recent interview. “I didn’t understand what an unfunded mandate was and how difficult that would make it for school districts to incorporate it.”
Even districts that had sought to comply with the law faced hurdles. Among those early adopters in 1994 was Pinellas County, where efforts to incorporate African American history into their lessons were underway prior to the law’s passage – and where a teenage DeSantis was entering sophomore year of high school that fall.
At Dunedin High School, a predominantly White school within walking distance of Florida’s gulf shores, DeSantis should have been among the first wave of students to be exposed to this more complete telling of history. The school already offered African American history as an elective and the district had tapped the teacher of that class, Randy Lightfoot, to guide Pinellas schools into compliance with the new law. (Lightfoot said DeSantis was not a student in his African American history class.)
Lightfoot and his team met after school for three hours a day, four times a week for months to forge a plan to incorporate Black history, culture and figures into every grade level, he told CNN in a recent interview. They printed a blueprint called “African American Connections.”
The accurate teaching of African American studies, the document said, “explains the causes of racial division in society, including prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination” and the “systematic oppression perspective of Africans and African-Americans and their resistance to that oppression.”
The state heralded Lightfoot’s efforts as a model for adhering to the new law, according to news accounts from the time. The Florida education commissioner liked it so much he handed a copy to every school district, Lightfoot said. DeSantis more recently has called the idea of systemic racism “a bunch of horse manure.”
By 1996, Lightfoot was warning that his efforts were being stymied by lack of resources. Lightfoot struggled to convince the Pinellas school board to acquire textbooks that included the new lessons on Black history, according to the St. Petersburg Times, which also noted that the district cut his staff.
The attempts to expand the curriculum to teach African American history also came during a period of racial strife in Pinellas County. In 1996, riots broke out in St. Petersburg, the city 20 minutes south of DeSantis’ suburban home, after the police killed an unarmed Black teenager during a traffic stop, and again when the officers involved were cleared of charges. Meanwhile, graduation rates for Black male students remained stubbornly low in Pinellas, the Times reported, and the county school board had broached the controversial idea of curbing forced busing to desegregate the public schools, leading to a period of distrust between the board and Black residents.
By the time DeSantis graduated in 1997 – having earned recognition as a decorated Advanced Placement history student, according to his senior yearbook – getting African American history in Pinellas schools was still a work in progress, Lightfoot said.
Statewide, only a handful of schools had earned “exemplary” status from the African American History Task Force by the end of that decade, meaning they had reached benchmarks for compliance. “Exemplary” school districts must demonstrate their curriculum included African American topics beyond Black History Month, training for teachers in the subject, involvement of parents in the learning and collaboration with a local university for support. In 1999, a bill that would have required public school textbooks to include African American history went nowhere in the state legislature.
Carlton Owens, a Black classmate of DeSantis’ at Dunedin High, said he only saw people like himself reflected in the curriculum during Black History Month or lessons around slavery and the Civil Rights movement.
“There’s so much more history that’s inspiring that is interwoven in the American story as a whole,” Owens, now a lawyer and small business owner, said. “And that wasn’t highlighted then, and that needs to be happening now.”
The state “put the material out there for districts,” said Lightfoot, now a history professor at St. Petersburg College. “But they didn’t put the kind of money in to check and make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”
“We were trying to fill in the gaps and the holes in history,” he added. “At the same time, we had Black male students who we thought we could help improve their grades if they saw their stories in history and science and literature. Where it worked, we had pretty good success with it. But we had the support of state leaders to do it. It was a different climate then.”
In a 2019 press release, the Florida Department of Education announced it would require districts for the first time to report how they were teaching required subjects including “Holocaust education, African American history, Hispanic heritage, women’s history, civics and more.”
A CNN review of those reports for the 2021-22 school year found wide discrepancies in how districts lesson-plan around the subject of African American history. Some districts provide lengthy plans for weaving the African American experience into social studies from kindergarten through high school graduation; others suggest exploration comes primarily during Black History month. More than a dozen submissions largely parroted the requirements listed in state law without including any details of the instruction.
Leon County, declared an exemplary school district by the African American History Task Force, included details like its lessons on African American scientists, songwriters and artists during grades K-5. Dixie County, near the Florida Panhandle, submitted 1,600 words on how it teaches African American history to high schoolers. Madison County, a school district near the Florida-Georgia border, simply wrote: “Courses are taught on a daily basis by a Florida certified teacher. The district also stresses Black History Month with daily mini-lessons for all grade levels.”
The Florida Association of School Superintendents did not respond to a request for comment.
Democrats and advocates contend the state has done little with this information. They also say the administration has not yet indicated how it will ensure schools are complying with a new state law signed by DeSantis that requires annual instruction of the 1920 Ocoee massacre, when dozens of Black Floridians were murdered in a horrific Election Day racial cleansing.
Democratic lawmakers say they intend to introduce legislation that would require the state to enforce whether school districts are teaching African American history as the law intends, though its supporters acknowledge any bill is unlikely to gain traction in a statehouse controlled by Republicans.
“It won’t go anywhere,” said state Sen. Shevrin Jones, a member of the legislature’s Black caucus. “But it’ll be a helluva message that we’re getting behind true and accurate Black history being taught in the state of Florida.”
Early in his first term, there was some hope from the state’s Black community that DeSantis would forge a different path than some of his Republican predecessors. In one of his first acts as governor, DeSantis voted to pardon the Groveland Four – two Black men who were lynched and two who received lengthy sentences for allegedly raping a White woman in 1949 – widely considered one of the darkest episodes in Florida’s violent past. Former Gov. Rick Scott, who served two terms prior to DeSantis taking office, had refused to pardon the four men despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence.
But DeSantis’ posture changed following the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. DeSantis responded to the national unrest by mobilizing the state’s national guard and pushing through what he called an “anti-riot” law that included harsh new penalties for protesters if a demonstration turns violent.
DeSantis then turned his attention to schools. In June 2021, he urged the state Board of Education to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory, an academic framework based around the idea that systemic racism is embedded in many American institutions and society. His administration then rejected math textbooks on the grounds that they included Critical Race Theory and other forbidden topics. Last year, lawmakers approved one of DeSantis’ top legislative priorities: the so-called “Stop WOKE Act,” which said schools cannot teach that anyone is inherently racist or responsible for past atrocities because of their skin color. The bill, which DeSantis signed into law, also said schools could teach that oppression of races has existed throughout US history but not persuade students to a particular point of view.
The controversies around these actions have catapulted DeSantis into the national conversation on teaching race and helped fuel his rise as a potential presidential contender. Throughout these episodes, DeSantis has often maintained that African American history is built into Florida’s education framework.
“Florida statutes require teaching all of American history including slavery, civil rights, segregation,” DeSantis contended during his debate against his Democratic opponent last year, Charlie Crist. “It’s important that that’s taught. But what I think is not good is to scapegoat students based on skin color.”
Reginald Ellis, a professor of History and African-American Studies at Florida A&M University, said if students were adequately learning Black history, he would see it first hand in his classroom.
“What I find, even at a historically Black college, the vast majority of students have not really been exposed to much African American history and experience,” Ellis said. “It is a law on the books. There is a task force. But, for the most part, it clearly isn’t a curriculum that is being enforced. School districts effectively have the option to opt-in or opt-out.”
Bradley, the original bill sponsor, said the law’s shortcomings fall on those who have held power in Tallahassee and in school districts for the past three decades, and not DeSantis. Bradley, who changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican later in his political career, said he was supportive of DeSantis’ education agenda and accused activists of using schools to “drive a wedge between Blacks and Whites.”
“The law is still a work in progress, but if we want to use it as a tool to divide then that is a total violation of the spirit of the law,” Bradley said. “When I passed that bill, it was designed to bring people together, not divide.”
In honor of Black History Month, the Vanity Fair fashion team is celebrating some of our favorite Black-owned fashion brands. From streetwear to evening wear, investing in Black businesses means building a continued legacy for Black creators. Below, we’ve curated a list of 20 Black-owned fashion brands that are making an impact. Shop and support these brands, not just this month, but every day of the year.
All products featured on Vanity Fair are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
We live in a world where Black excellence is everywhere. Entrepreneurs like Oprah, Rihanna, Michael Jordan, Jay-Z and Beyonce dominate the airways, TV stations and retail outlets. Each of these stars entered the arena in different ways and all managed to embody Black excellence to grow their businesses to unimaginable heights.
But why is it that excellent qualities revered in celebrities are so often overlooked — and sometimes even stifled — within everyday white and eurocentric workspaces? It doesn’t take a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) expert like myself to tell you that Black employees get a bad rap at work. Racism, stereotypes, inequity and cultural clashes make it so that employers and coworkers alike may exclude, diminish and at times target Black workers while downplaying their excellent qualities.
Despite the systemic reasons why some Black workers may retreat and lose their shine in the workplace, there are others who hone in on their excellent qualities, break through barriers and shoot for the moon. Today, we’ll discuss five qualities of Black excellence, how they are cultivated in Black communities and the myriad of ways they manifest in the workplace.
1. Black culture encourages building meaningful connections
In many Black households, family and community are one and the same. One person’s grandmother is everyone’s grandmother and often holds the role of making sure no one is left behind, alone or without guidance. Black entrepreneurs coming from traditional Black households understand that building meaningful connections and looking out for one another is essential to survival.
This shows up in the workplace as Black employees seeking to connect with individuals at varying levels of the organization, networking across departments, social statuses, races, genders and nationalities to build connections that feel reciprocal, meaningful and welcoming. Lifting others up, checking on them and making sure they’re included is a quality of Black excellence that eurocentric workplaces would be wise to recognize and value in their Black employees.
2. Black culture cultivates creativity
When all Black folks had was each other and the hope they would surpass the confines of slavery, Jim Crow and now the prison industrial complex, many folks cultivated a sense of creativity. Whether inventively using food scraps left by white plantation owners during the slavery era or making music and art during segregation, Black folks hadto be creative to find upward mobility, bypass restrictions from the wider society and most importantly, survive.
Black culture encourages us to see obstacles and find ways around them. We’re encouraged to find new opportunities, think outside of the box, and innovate on new solutions–even if the existing culture tries to stop us. Creativity could be the secret sauce to why so many Black entrepreneurs experience success.
3. Black culture invites joy and humor as resistance
Despite all that’s happened to the Black diaspora, many people still find a reason to smile and find joy. Instead of weeping and retreating into sadness, many of us had to find a way through the most difficult parts of our lives and cultivate an inner strength that showed up as joy, humor, and wit.
This isn’t simply a sign of someone who enjoys humor, but someone who is resilient in the face of difficulty and who can turn a hard situation into something joyful. Some who experience trauma in the workplace may exemplify anger, hatred or sadness. But facing triggers and difficulties with satire, improvisation or wordplay to create a humor-filled moment and create something positive is a soft skill that should be recognized in more Black employees.
4. Black culture calls for fairness
The vast majority of folks calling out workplace racism or inequality are people of color, in particular Black folks. Many Black individuals have had to collectively fight for their rights which produced a sense of righteousness and justice-mindedness that’s pervasive throughout the Black culture.
In the workplace, a passion for fairness can look like speaking up when a biased comment is spoken. It can also look like holding leadership accountable for implementing programming and initiatives equally amongst all employees.
Black workers are often passionate and vocal about fairness because it was a necessity in our families and communities. This quality helps us advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across communities, companies and workplaces.
5. Black culture encourages people to project confidence
“Keep your chin up” is a common phrase heard in Black households. The idea is to never let the dominant culture see you sweat. The goal was to work hard and project confidence even if you were feeling low. Freedom, safety, jobs and other opportunities may not always be available, but Black culture tells us to project confidence, stand tall and keep moving forward.
At all levels of the organization, Black folks attempt to show pride in their work. They can strive for excellence in their corner of influence even if it’s not the most powerful position in the company. It can show up as being strong at work even if things in one’s personal life are not in great shape. Demonstrating resiliency and projecting confidence are qualities of Black excellence passed down through the generations and are deserving of recognition.
Final thoughts
Whether it’s Beyonce, Jay-Z, Michael Jordan or Oprah, all of the Black entrepreneurs we know and love have qualities rooted in Black culture. While all Black entrepreneurs are inherently gifted with qualities of Black excellence to one degree or another, some have yet to reach their full potential, while others have truly embraced and embodied them to break through barriers and skyrocket to success. Now is the time for conventional, white, and eurocentric workplaces to finally recognize the unique qualities that come from Black culture and lift up employees who exemplify these qualities.
TikTok has obviously made a huge space for itself in the fashion-and-beauty sphere within the past year. With new viral challenges and trends popping up every day, it’s clear that there is no shortage of talent on the social media platform. The fashion-media industry has taken quick note of the growth of the predominantly Gen Z platform, and while we’ve already seen a variety of headlines featuring TikTok users like Addison Rae and the D’Amelio sisters, it’s important to acknowledge the Black creators of the app, who have often been at the forefront of the video trends you scroll through on a daily basis.
As individuals, we may not be able to completely reform industries, but it’s important to give Black creators a voice in the space we’re in, especially in the world of fashion and beauty, where the mainstream tends to gravitate toward white creators. Ahead, scroll through to find Black TikTokers who you can start following and supporting right now.
The road to becoming a successful entrepreneur is a lot less bumpy when someone who has been down that path is guiding you. In this webinar, two-time Emmy Award winner Mario Armstrong will elaborate on the profit-first mentality that led him to become the successful entrepreneur he is today.
Mario Armstrong is a two time Emmy Award Winner, Entrepreneur, Public Speaker, TV and Podcast Host. He teaches Creators & Entrepreneurs how to build their brand, monetize their passions and build profitable businesses. He’s the Creator and Host of the Emmy Award Winning Never Settle Show filmed at Nasdaq studios in Times Square. Mario is an NBC TODAY Show Contributor and appears regularly on NPR, Inside Edition & more. He is a public speaker with Daymond John’s Shark Group’s Speaking Division. His new podcast “Parents Making Profits” is available on the HubSpot Podcast Network. Mario’s latest venture is the Never Settle Academy, which provides creators and entrepreneurs the blueprint to closing sales and getting paid brand sponsorships.
