Mayor Franklin speaks at annual Holmes-Hunter lecture

If you didn’t know, I love Shirley Franklin. She’s classy and sassy, and runs a tight ship as mayor of the City of Atlanta. So, of course I was excited when I found out that she was going to be the speaker at the annual Holmes-Hunter lecture which celebrates Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, the first African American students to enroll at UGA.

However, my excitement was short lived when…I realized that I couldn’t attend the lecture because I had class. In all honesty, I was expecting my history professor to cancel class (seriously, it’s a class that studies the historical survey of African-American political thought). But, she didn’t…so I sat in class wondering what Shirley Franklin talked about, while making cynical observations about the leadership style of Marcus Garvey (which is another discussion for another time).

Nevertheless, while I consistently and confidently believe that UGA has a ways to go in its attempt to be a truly inclusive community, I will say that they have done a phenomenal job with programming this year. Andrew Young has come, Shirley Franklin has come, and Elaine Brown is coming. Pretty impressive…and hopefully, they’ll keep up the good work.

…black people participate in recreational activities other than sports. This article on MSNBC.com spotlights black chess players in the Maryland-DC Metro Area.

Excerpt from the article:

“Chess defines us in ways other than the way we are often defined in newspapers and on television with the negative images… it [chess] knocks the stereotypes and shows that we are intellectual, cerebral people and that we are interested in something other than basketball.”

I love it. And I’ve been waiting for somebody to teach me how to play chess for years…