As Maryland residents commemorate Black History Month, what’s being called the racial reckoning of 2020 is barely in the rearview mirror. The Baltimore Sun asked residents to respond in short essays: What will it take to move the region ahead in 2021 and beyond?
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Wordsmith, a Baltimore-based songwriter and performer, wrote an essay for Black History Month telling Black people to raise youth to tell the truth and be a voice for reconciliation.
- It is our intention to follow the sage advice of Malcolm X, who once observed that if a man knocks you down unprovoked, you only have two choices. You can wait until the man who knocks you down to help you up or you can decide to get up on your own.
- Nneka Nnamdi of Fight Blight Bmore shares her thoughts on racial inequity for Black History Month.
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- After the racial reckoning of 2020, Oyin Adedoyin, a senior at Morgan State University, says she is working to share stories about reducing health disparities in the region.
- Perry Jones, 68, Union Bridge mayor, says it is important that today's generation learn more about African-American history and the Black community.
- Kim Dobson Sydnor, dean of the School of Community Health and Policy at Morgan State University, will lead the new Center for Urban Health Equity.
- The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, discusses reparations and says: If you steal something from somebody, you pay it back. You cannot hope to achieve reconciliation until you attempt to make that right.
- Ellington West, co-founder and CEO, Sonavi Labs, says she is working to improve the health of people in Baltimore by creating technology that is affordable and accessible for all.
- Kelli McCallum, lead nurse practitioner and operational field manager on MedStar Health’s mobile unit, says in a Black History Month essay, she's working to provide health care education and create health literacy to create an astronomical ripple effect.
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GAMES & TRIVIA
- Janice Moorehead Grant, 87, former Harford County NAACP president, says after a year of conflict and division, people need a change of heart.
- Northeast Baltimore’s Stonewood-Pentwood-Winston neighborhood is a deep-rooted, if aging enclave of 238 residences, most of them row homes like that owned by Frank Cherry, who settled here in 1974.
- Lawrence Brown, director of the Black Butterfly Academy, says in his Black History Month essay, that it's time for the Baltimore region to reckon with its 110-year legacy of apartheid.
- Danita Tolson, president of the NAACP Baltimore County Branch says in her Black History Month essay, all talk and no action, makes no change and does not bring justice.
- Vanessa Geffrard, who has degrees in community and public health, leads candid conversations about sexual health with women of color in Baltimore region.
- Janese Murray, founder and president of Inclusion Impact Consulting, says in her Black History Month essay, that Black people have had to figure out how to live and thrive in a system that is not built for them.
- The man running the show behind Baltimore County’s vaccine clinics has spent decades training and coordinating emergency preparedness at the state and local levels — and yet he credits much of his skill to his years as a road tech for Twisted Sister.
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Michel Modell wants name removed from Baltimore’s Lyric, severing family’s relationship with theater
The Modells want their name off the city’s Lyric, marking a potential bitter breakup for the Mount Royal Avenue performing arts center and the family that brought the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore.
- Mezcal Inc., a Baltimore-area restaurant owner, has paid nearly half a million dollars in back wages and damages to 62 workers after federal officials say he bilked employees through a phony tip pool.
- Don't let media determine your personal process of reflection as we reach the one-year mark of life under COVID. This is too profound and existential a moment for that.
- They couldn’t silence Billie Holiday’s voice, a voice that took her from an Upper Fells Point alley to New York City concert halls and into the annals of history as a performer and civil rights icon.
- Thousands crowd the Howard County Fairgrounds to scope out alpacas, check out products they generate, and learn about a growing trade.
