UVA's Dean Michael Mason Rocks Use of the Digital Archive with Dick Gregory Clip:
Raw Turkey Delivery Service
|
|
Comedian Dick Gregory was interviewed by
The HistoryMakers
on July 29, 2007.
|
|
This week,
The HistoryMakers
Newsletter is doing something a little different; Our feature article below is taken from a piece by Michael Gerard Mason, Associate Dean of the Office of African-American Affairs and
Director of the Luther Porter Jackson Black Cultural Center
at the University of Virginia. Dean Mason presented a version of this story at our 2020 Higher Education Advisory Board Meeting in February to demonstrate how he used
The HistoryMakers Digital Archive
in the classroom. Thanks Dean Mason!
|
|
Michael Mason
Associate Dean of the Office of African-American Affairs & Director of the Luther Porter Jackson Black Cultural Center at the University of Virginia
|
|
"Each year for the last five years, I have started off one of my classes by explaining why I felt compelled to create and teach it in a particular way. Until this past semester, I started out my course, "Peer Counseling Theory and Skills," with a self-disclosure similar to the one that follows":
|
|
"When I was your age, I decided to give two years of service to my community through teaching. I took a job teaching math and science at a small Catholic school, St. David School, in the lower 9th Ward, in New Orleans. I remember my first days of school as a teacher there. I felt confident. On the first day of class, I administered a math and science assessment that my mother, an experienced teacher, and I worked on. It felt great. The students worked diligently; I applauded them for their hard work. At the end of the day, I gathered up all of the assessments, my bag full of red pens--and the answer keys for the assessments."
|
|
African American male teaching African American students
|
|
"I graded papers all that evening. My hands ached from marking so many problems wrong. So much red ink. So many missed problems. I quickly discovered that my students across grades 5 through 8 were performing roughly 3 to 4-grade levels below where they should have been in math and similarly for science."
|
|
"The next day, I walked into the school and handed back all of the assessments for the students to take home. The following morning, when I arrived, around 6:45 am, there was a long line of parents waiting to meet with me. Each parent had the assessment in hand. 'Why did my kid go from making straight A's last year to making an F on the first day of class? What did you do to my child?'"
|
|
"I remember confidently saying that their inability to answer that single multiplication fact was the explanation of ‘why’ and ‘what'. But with each passing day, I, too, became less convinced I was going to single-handedly fix these problems. By October, we had a drive-by shooting near the school. Then, one of my students lost a sibling in another shooting.”
|
|
"Twenty years now of being a counselor educator, working with thousands of students in academic settings, and thousands more in individual counseling have helped me understand that I had not answered any of their questions. Instead, I had only perpetuated a broken system."
|
|
"In little over five minutes, the clip of Dick Gregory had given voice to the pain of the young 11-year-old girl in my parent-teacher meeting, the humiliation endured by the young mother, and the absurdity of my delivery of the math assessment to the students--of my delivery of a raw turkey to the students who didn't have the necessary conditions to make use of it. He had shown me how I, too, was a well-intended thug."
|
|
African American boys in classroom, circa 1930's
|
|
"Granted, before seeing the interview, I understood that those early experiences were more complicated than I had initially realized, but I had not yet grappled with the reality that I had inflicted a very particular pain on my students."
|
|
"The story of raw turkey delivery is compelling. However, it is the duration of the story that makes it most potent. Dick Gregory's family received their "raw turkey" in the winter of 1939. He was 7 years old. When I delivered my "raw turkey," it was the Fall of 1999. Sixty years later, because of his interview, it became clear that I was working in the same raw turkey delivery business as other well-meaning Black educators educated by a broken social system. Decades later and despite his and other Black champion's efforts, the industry was alive and booming."
|
|
Students in Dean Mason's "Peer Counseling Theory and Skills" class
|
|
"As hopeful as I am, I know that without similar experiences, many of our students will take up positions that I and many others have left vacant. As educators, we must model for our students. We must encourage them to work hard to grow beyond who they are as students. We must put them in relationship with these Black video oral histories in hopes of preventing them from delivering raw turkeys to our kids.
The HistoryMakers Digital Archive
gives them a chance to be better than raw turkey delivering thugs."
|
|
The HistoryMakers
Honor Eric Johnson’s
$1 Million Gift
|
|
On Wednesday, March 11, 2020,
The HistoryMakers
hosted a reception at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in Miami, Florida to honor Eric G. Johnson, who gifted
The HistoryMakers
$1 million as part of the 20@2020 campaign.
The HistoryMakers
20@2020 celebrates
The HistoryMakers
20th year of existence. Among the 80 attendees were 19 HistoryMakers, pictured below. Also in attendance was Pérez Art Museum Miami director Franklin Sirmans, Jamaica's Ambassador to the United States Audrey Marks, Deryl McKissack and Eric McKissack.
|
|
From left to right: Ivan Yaeger, Regina Jollivette Frazier, The Honorable Donald L. Graham, Dianne Hudson, Marilyn Holifield, Alma Dodd, Dinizulu Gene Tinnie, Enid C. Pinkney, Eric Johnson (Honoree), Andrew Ingraham, Dorothy Terrell, Leatrice McKissack, John E. Oxendine, Alexandria Holloway, Peter London, Joyce Moorehead, Earnie Ellison, Challis Lowe, and Rodney Adkins.
|
|
Eric Johnson is president and chief executive officer of Baldwin Richardson Foods Company, one of the largest African American-owned businesses in the food industry. In 1989, Johnson, following in his father’s footsteps, became chief executive officer of Johnson Products Company, the nation’s first African-American owned publicly-traded company. Having turned around the company’s performance in 1991, it was the seventh best performing stock on the American Stock Exchange and earned the American Management Association’s “Turn Around” award.
|
|
A business entrepreneur, in 1992 he purchased Baldwin Ice Cream Co., a small company established in Chicago in 1921. Johnson expanded the distribution and sales of the company, and in 1997, completed the acquisition of Richardson Foods from the Quaker Oats Company. The company produced Nance’s mustard and condiments, Mrs. Richardson’s famous dessert toppings, and liquid products for McDonald’s.
|
|
Baldwin Richardson Foods is a major producer of products and ingredients for McDonald’s Corporation, Kellogg, General Mills, Dunkin Brands, Starbucks, and Frito-Lay Quaker Oats. The company also has retail brands and food service products that it distributes nationally. Today the company employs 323 people with sales of $274 million.
Johnson received his Bachelor of Arts and Science degrees in Finance and Management from Babson College. In 1971, as the student representative to the management department, he worked with Professor John Hornaday on the evolution of the entrepreneurial studies program.
|
|
Eric Johnson speaking
to audience
|
|
He has served on the Babson Corporation and two terms as a Trustee of the College. Each year a four year, full tuition scholarship is awarded for the Baldwin Richardson Foods Scholars Program. The company has a sister program at Spelman College in Atlanta for women in food science.
|
|
Johnson says that “
The HistoryMakers
is one of the most significant initiatives of our time. It is important that we work to support it.”
The HistoryMakers
will always be indebted to Eric G. Johnson for his generous contribution. With his support,
The HistoryMakers
is destined to have a long lasting and positive effect on educating generations of people while elevating the cultural equity and correcting the missing historical record of African Americans.
|
|
"The More You Sweat During Times of Peace, The Less You Bleed During Times of War."
Ronald Brown
Investment Chief Executive
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
