GROCER SET TO AWARD $1,500 SCHOLARSHIP TO MISS ELIZABETH CITY STATE UNIVERSITY, BRITTANY WHIDBEE

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Food Lion has announced Miss Elizabeth City State University, Brittany Whidbee, as the 2013 Food Lion Miss CIAA.

The queen will be crowned Saturday, March 2, 2013 at the CIAA Tournament, McDonald’s Super Saturday event at 10:30 a.m. McDonald’s Super Saturday is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Time Warner Cable Arena, TWC Arena . Doors open at 8:30 a.m.

Food Lion has sponsored the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) Tournament for more than 19 years and is the title sponsor for the ever-popular Miss CIAA scholarship competition. Food Lion also sponsors the 2013 Women’s Tournament.

The media is invited to conduct interviews directly after the crowning at 10:45 a.m. on Saturday, March 2, at the TWC Arena.

Whidbee is a native of Elizabeth City, N.C., and is the daughter of Lionel and Venita Whidbee. She attends Elizabeth City State University where she is a senior majoring in criminal justice with a minor in pre-law. Brittany has been a member of several university organizations since her freshman year. Currently, she is the President of the Criminal Justice Club and a member of the Student Government Association.

The Food Lion Miss CIAA competition winners are given scholarships based on their GPA, community and school involvement, biography, video essay and online popular vote. 

As winner of the 2013 Food Lion’s scholarship contest, Whidbee will receive a $1,500 scholarship. The first runner up, Karmesha Tuck of Virginia State University, will receive a $700 scholarship and the second runner up, Barbara Henry of Fayetteville State University will receive a $300 scholarship.

The CIAA is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II athletic conference consisting mostly of historically African-American institutions of higher education. This year, the CIAA Tournament will take place Feb. 26 through March 2.

Black history in America has certainly had its ups and downs. It’s troubling when, for political theater, those who should know better fail to emphasize the inspirational stories that highlight the strengths of blacks and the humanity of whites. While it is undeniable that cruelty and suffering are part of this country’s history, at some point it is counterproductive to paint blacks as weak victims of the white man’s callousness.

There were always free blacks in America (including my family). Indeed, in 1641, Mathias De Sousa, an African indentured servant who came from England with Lord Baltimore, was elected to Maryland’s General Assembly. The first census of 1790 counted 19 percent black Americans, 10 per cent of whom were free.

Black Americans served on both sides during the Revolutionary War. The British promised freedom to slaves belonging to Patriot masters who served. Because of his manpower shortages, George Washington lifted the ban on black enlistment in the Continental Army in January 1776, creating his so-called “mixed multitude,” which was 15 per cent black. Economist Walter Williams is so correct that necessity can overcome prejudice.

Nestled in the back of some folks’ minds was (is?) the notion that blacks were not as intelligent as whites. They certainly couldn’t have had the smarts to be doctors. James Derham (c. 1757-1802?), born a slave in Philadelphia, proved the naysayers wrong. He was the first known black American physician, although not professionally trained in medical school. As was common at the time, physicians were trained in apprenticeships. Young Derham was fortunate that his three early masters were physicians who taught him to read and write.

Derham’s third owner taught the young teen how to mix and administer medicines. After this owner, who had been arrested during the war for being a Tory, died in prison, Derham was sold to a British officer, and he served as a doctor to soldiers. After the war, he became the property of a Scottish physician (appropriately named Dr. Love) from New Orleans, who hired him to work as a medical assistant and apothecary.

By 1783, Derham quickly saved enough money to buy his freedom, and he set up his own medical practice in New Orleans. Derham, who spoke English, French and Spanish, was a popular and highly regarded doctor, who treated both black and white patients. By age 30, Derham earned more than $3,000 annually.

Derham’s medical paper on his success in treating diphtheria caught the attention of Benjamin Rush, a physician who signed the Declaration of Independence, served as surgeon general of the Continental Army, and has been called “the father of American medicine.” Rush invited Derham to Philadelphia in 1788 and was so impressed that he encouraged him to stay. There, Derham became an expert in throat diseases and in the relationship between weather and disease.

In 1789, Derham returned to New Orleans, where he saved many yellow fever victims. He stopped practicing medicine in 1801, when the new city regulations required a formal medical degree to be considered a doctor. Nothing is known of his whereabouts after 1802.

The first university-trained black American physician was James McCune Smith, born in 1813 to slave parents who were emancipated by New York law. Despite his scholastic achievements at the Free African School of New York, he was denied admission to American medical schools. When he was 19 years old, the Glasgow Emancipation Society helped Smith enroll in Scotland’s University of Glasgow. He received his B.A. degree in 1835 and his M.D. degree in 1837. A skilled debater and lecturer, Smith was a founding member of the New York Statistics Society in 1852, and was elected as an early member of the American Geographic Society.

The first American medical degree was conferred on David J. Peck, born circa 1826 into a free black family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1846, after studying for two years with a private physician, he enrolled in Rush Medical College and graduated in 1847. Peck practiced medicine in Philadelphia for two years before moving to Central America to start a homeland for free blacks in Nicaragua.

Thank you, doctors, for paving the way for my grandfather, my father and me.

Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD is a board-certified anesthesiologist and Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) member. 

Montpelier, Vermont— When it comes to diversity in this nation, Vermont has a strong history of Firsts. Vermont was the first to abolish slavery in its constitution, and the first state to enroll and graduate a black student, who went on to serve in state legislature.

Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing honors Vermont’s African American heritage with the new Vermont African American Heritage Trail; 10 sites that explore museums and exhibits where films and tours illuminate the lives of African Americans for whom the Green Mountain State played an integral part of their lives. Visitors will meet teachers, storytellers, activists, ministers and legislators— people unique in history for being the first to attain positions formerly held only by Americans of European descent.

“Vermont is defined not only by the varied people who made our history, but also by our distinct geography. This trail anchors the stories of African descended Vermonters to our landscape and, as such, does a great service in helping to change the history of our state from a predominately white story to what it has always been from the beginning, a multicultural endeavor,” said Elise Guyette, author of “Discovering Black Vermont: African American Farmers in Hinesburgh, 1790-1890.” 

The trail includes one of New England’s best documented underground railroad sites, Rokeby Museum, the Old Stone House Museum, which includes the school built by African American Alexander Twilight, Hildene, the Lincoln family home and exhibits about raconteur Daisy Turner.

“Vermont’s cultural organizations and historians have been eager participants in the development of the Vermont African American Heritage Trail,” Vermont Dept. of Tourism and Marketing Commissioner Megan Smith said. “This speaks to Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin’s intent to showcase our state’s cultural heritage and diversity to residents and travelers alike.”

When Lisa Jackson leaves her post as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) later this month, she will be remembered for taking on oil industry groups and Republican lawmakers, and pushing to give African Americans a greater voice on environmental issues.

“Early on we set out to expand the conversation on environmentalism and environmental justice,” said Jackson who was born in Philadelphia, Pa. and raised in New Orleans, La. “As the first African American to lead the agency, it seemed that it was time, once and for all, to disprove the myth that the face of an environmentalist is a White face.”

Jackson said that the American myth is that an environmentalist grows up in the great outdoors, relishing horseback riding in the morning or hiking through Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. like President Theodore Roosevelt.

“I didn’t come to the environment from that side,” said Jackson. “I came to environment through the absence of that. I do not sleep outside. I do not camp. I don’t wear Birkenstocks. I will eat a granola bar from time to time,” she said joking with members of the Black press during a recent media roundtable at the EPA headquarters.

Despite the whitewashed American myth about who really cares about the planet, Blacks have always been actively involved in environmental issues.

Stephen Bishop, a slave from Kentucky skilled in geology, explored underground streams, discovered “eyeless and colorless river animals” and led tours at the Mammoth Cave in 1838, which is now the site of a national park.

Solomon G. Brown, built exhibit cases, cleaned furniture and studied natural history from 1852 to 1906 at the Smithsonian Institution. Brown, the first African-American employee at the world-renowned museum also lectured about natural history in the Washington metro region.

As he worked in agriculture and botany, scientist George Washington Carver viewed nature through a religious lens and worked with Black farmers to grow sustainable crops and to conserve natural resources.

In 1985, Norris McDonald founded the African American Environmentalist Association focused on protecting the environment, utilizing natural resources economically and bringing more blacks into the environmental movement.

More recently Jerome Ringo an environmental activist with a background in the petroleum industry chaired the National Wildlife Federation from 2005 to the 2007, becoming the first Black to head one of the most important conservation groups in the U.S.

According to a study by Paul Mohai, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, despite conventional wisdom, blacks are more likely than whites to weigh the environmental costs of everyday actions.

The study, titled “Dispelling Old Myths: African American Concern for the Environment,” found that 37 percent of blacks buy pesticide-free foods compared to 29 percent of whites. Blacks also eat less meat than whites (15 percent of blacks vs. 8 percent of whites) and drive less (16 percent versus 10 percent). The study found that whites recycled at higher rates than blacks (64 percent to 44 percent).

Although blacks joined environmental groups at similar rates as whites, they were less likely to join mainstream groups like the Sierra Club or the World Wildlife Fund.

“People that fished to put the fish on the plate, didn’t join clubs! They fished to eat,” said Jerome Ringo in a 2005 interview with Mother Jones. “So, therefore, the organized movement was mainly made of those sportsman and did not include people who couldn’t afford to join clubs and who were off feeding their families.”

As blacks and poor people were off feeding their families environmental groups grew in popularity sorely lacking in diversity.

A 2007 study by the Center for Diversity and the Environment found: “Thirty-three percent of mainstream environmental organizations and 22 percent of government agencies had no people of color on staff.

The study went further suggesting that people of color “feel unwelcome and uncomfortable in institutions because of the homogeneous culture both within organizations and the movement,” adding that, “organizations that want to diversify often do not know what to do, where to start, and eventually either do nothing or venture down a path destined for failure.”

  Minorities don’t always connect their creative money-saving acts to saving the planet or conservation, making it harder for them to connect to the mainstream environmental movements.

That’s because green issues are not always tree hugger issues, said EPA Administrator Jackson. She shared the story of one of her staffers who had a grandmother that lived in the northeast. As soon as the early winter winds started to blow, the grandmother would get up on a ladder and tack plastic sheeting to the windows.

“That was energy efficiency, that’s home retro-fitting. She didn’t call it that. She was keeping the cold air out and keeping her utility bill down,” Jackson said. “We need to embrace that as something that we can do and society should be helping lower-income people do.”

According to a report by the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan research and policy group, embracing environmental movements could mean the difference between life and death for many blacks living in the U.S.

“For many people of color, this air pollution is an unavoidable feature of daily life because they are more likely to live and work in the nation’s most polluted cities,” stated the Center for American Progress report.

The report found: “A startling 68 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, compared to only 56 percent of the white population.”

Not only do carbon emissions contribute to global warming, the pollutants also exacerbate symptoms related to asthma.

According to the CAP report, blacks suffer from asthma “at rates 35 percent higher than whites.”

African American youth were also more vulnerable to asthma symptoms than their White classmates. Black children lived with the chronic disease at double the rate suffered by white children and died from asthma-related illnesses at a rate that’s four times higher than white children.

Nearly $14 billion is lost each year in productivity due to asthma.

According to the CAP report, blacks suffer from asthma “at rates 35 percent higher than Whites.” Black children chronic respiratory disease 16 percent double the rate suffered by White children.

During her tenure at the EPA, Jackson fought to bring environmental justice issues to the forefront, developing Plan EJ 2014 to address how pollution affects communities of color. The plan includes guidelines for assigning new permits for power plants to regulation enforcement and outreach programs.

“At the end of the day, environmental issues are health issues and if you have health disparities, because of the environment that becomes a moral issue and that’s a story that needs to be told,” said Jackson. “These communities are suffering.”

In 2012, Jackson worked with the White House to develop an action plan to decrease racial and ethnic disparities associated with asthma and to increase asthma management through education.

Taking her father’s advice, Jackson said that she’s leaving the EPA while she’s having the most fun.

She said, “You don’t set out doing these jobs thinking about the mark you leave, but it is joyful to think that my work had the benefit of inspiring young African American women to not be put into the box that society might want them in.”