California school district names elementary school after Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama’s name will grace the building of a second California school.

What began as a proposal from the PTA to the school board and grew to widespread support from parents, students and community officials, the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board in Richmond, California voted unanimously to change the name of Wilson Elementary School to Michelle Obama Elementary School, according to CNN.

READ MORE: Michelle Obama’s high school puts her name on new multimillion-dollar athletic complex

The West Contra Costa school becomes the second school in California to be named after our forever FLOTUS. The first school to be named Michelle Obama Elementary is in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“We wanted to choose someone on a global level,” Wilson PTA President Maisha Cole told CNN. “With a new school and new learning environment, we want our children to think beyond Richmond, to think beyond California, and remind them that they can make a difference locally and globally.”

The school will also be rebuilt for the 2020-2021 school year.

“We have the opportunity to have a beautiful new school named after a person who really represents our diversity and values,” Principal Claudia Velez added to CNN. “Our school is diverse, modern and innovative, and the things that the kids will be doing will prepare them for a very strong and successful future in whatever career they choose.”

This has so far been a banner year for Michelle Obama.

In January, she won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for her audio recording of her bestselling memoir, Becoming. Since it was released in 2018, Becoming has sold more than 12 million units worldwide and has been published in 46 languages. The audiobook has also been on the New York Times Audio Nonfiction Best Seller List for 14 straight months since its publication, including 7 months in the #1 slot.

And she along with her husband, our forever President Barack Obama, can also add Oscar winner to their long list of accomplishments.

READ MORE: Barack and Michelle Obama’s first Netflix film wins Oscar for Best Documentary

Last Sunday, American Factory took home the Academy Award in the category of “Best Documentary Feature” on Sunday night, besting The Edge of Democracy and For Sama. In American Factory, filmmakers Steven Bognar, Julia Eichert and Jeff Eichert followed the story of an Ohio factory that was reopened by a Chinese billionaire inside of an abandoned General Motors plant.

The Obamas’ production company, Higher Ground, produced the documentary.

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Black Portland man awarded settlement in racial discrimination lawsuit

A Black man from Portland recently won a racial discrimination settlement against the city of West Linn after he was unlawfully surveilled at work by police and arrested as a favor to his former boss.

Michael Fesser, 48, was recently awarded $600,000 by the City of West Linn— one of the largest racial discrimination lawsuits ever paid out by the state of Oregon.

READ MORE: Detroit man who won a racial discrimination settlement, now suing bank for not cashing the check

In 2018, Fesser also settled a lawsuit against his former employer, A&B Towing of Southeast Portland, for $415,000. Fesser had filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Portland against the city and West Linn Police Department for false arrest, malicious prosecution, defamation, and invasion of privacy, saying a 2017 incident caused him emotional distress and economic hardship, according to The Oregonian.

Three years ago, Fesser was working for A&B Towing when he raised concerns about racial harassment to his boss, Eric Benson, who owned the company at the time. Fesser reported that his co-workers called him racist slurs and asked his opinion on a Confederate flag draped from a pickup truck in the company lot.

Instead of investigating those claims, Benson instead contacted former West Linn Police Chief Terry Timeus, his fishing buddy, to see what could be done. West Linn is a suburb of Portland.

Then, Benson made an unsubstantiated claim to Timeus that Fesser was stealing money from car auctions. Fesser managed the company’s car auctions at the time, and received and handled payments from bidders. Benson told Timeus that his company was short money from the auctions but Portland police had not responded to his request for an investigation, The Oregonian reports.

Timeus instructed officers to secretly videotape Fesser at work, which they pulled off without a court order or warrant, with the help of one of Benson’s associates who used an audio app called “Swann View.” Benson watched the surveillance feed and relayed information back to West Linn Detective Tony Reeves, according to The Oregonian.

Ultimately, Reeves had Fesser arrested without cause, although Reeves later admitted the video recording showed no crime was committed.

“My game my rules,” Reeves wrote to Benson, according to The Oregonian.

READ MORE: Portland woman kicked out of restaurant for making whites uncomfortable files lawsuit

Paul Buchanan, Fesser’s lawyer, said the case proves that good ole’ boy racism is still around.

“This case vividly illustrates a ready willingness on the part of the West Linn police to abuse the enormous power they have been given, and a casual, jocular, old-boy-style racism of the kind that we Oregonians tend to want to associate with the Deep South rather than our own institutions,” Buchanan told The Oregonian.

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Maryland legislators unveil bronze statues of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass

In the same room where slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864, life-sized bronze statues of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass were unveiled by state legislators.

During a ceremony on Monday night in the Old House Chamber, a special joint session of the Maryland General Assembly dedicated the statues.

READ MORE: Harriet Tubman Museum set to open in 2020 in New Jersey

“A mark of true greatness is shining light on a system of oppression and having the courage to change it,” House Speaker Adrienne Jones, Maryland’s first Black female House speaker, said in prepared remarks, according to ABC News. “The statues are a reminder that our laws aren’t always right or just. But there’s always room for improvement.”

Tubman and Douglass were both born on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The statues show Tubman and Douglass in the same dress and age that they would have been in 1864, ABC News reported.

Just as statues of the abolitionists were celebrated in the statement, in recent years Maryland has removed the statue of Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court justice from Maryland who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision upholding slavery and denying the right of Black Americans to be citizens. That ruling established the “separate but equal” doctrine that stood for decades before the Brown v. Board of Education decision upended it in 1954.

Maryland officials voted to remove Taney’s statue a few days after Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia following a protest by white nationalists upset that a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was being removed. Heyer was supporting the removal of Lee’s statue when a man rammed his car through a crowd of people, plowing her down.

READ MORE: OPINION: It’s time for Mayor Pete Buttigieg to resign and shut down his 2020 presidential campaign

And last month, the Maryland Senate removed a portrait of a white governor who had been on the wall for 115 years and replaced it with a painting of Verda Freeman Welcome, who was elected to the Maryland State Senate in 1962 becoming America’s first Black female state senator. Welcome’s portrait is the first of a Black person to be put up on the walls of the Maryland Senate.

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Lynn Whitfield endorses Joe Biden for president because public service is his ‘North star’

I grew up in Baton Rouge at a time that feels very different from the world we know today. In my family, public service was woven into everything we did. We’d sit around the kitchen table and talk about politics at just about every meal. I grew up around people who were aware that you’re supposed to serve. It was a part of my training. 

And even as I was developing a love of entertainment, watching legends like Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier light up the stage and screen, I was inspired by their activism as much as their acting. 

READ MORE: Symone Sanders viewed as Millennial force for candidates

It helped that my mother was a volunteer driver for the Baton Rouge bus boycott that preceded Montgomery and was an active member of the NAACP, like my aunt, whose name appeared on the longest-running school desegregation suit in the country. And my grandfather was a country doctor whose commitment to serving the community was so great that when patients couldn’t afford his services, he would take produce for payment and do all that he could for free. Because we are all in it together. 

In the era of Donald Trump, that kind of thinking can sometimes feel like ancient history. But there’s one candidate in this race who understands the fabric that used to hold American communities like mine together — and can unite our country once again. 

For me, that candidate is Vice President Joe Biden, because public service has been the constant in his life too. 

READ MORE: (WATCH) Congress Members Respond to President Donald Trump’s Tweets

Since he first entered the Senate at 29 years-old, through tragedy after tragedy, Joe has never lost sight of his North Star: serving the country he loves. 

There’s no moment that better captures his spirit of service than the day he stood at Barack Obama’s side as the Affordable Care Act was signed into law—a victory for Americans that was more than a century in the making. 

Because of the ACA, more than 100 million Americans no longer have to worry that their insurance company will deny coverage or charge higher premiums just because they have a pre-existing condition—like cancer, diabetes, heart disease or depression. There are no more annual or lifetime limits on coverage, and young people can now stay on their parents’ plans until they’re 26 years old. 

However, ever since that historic day, the Republican Party has done everything in its power to undermine these protections. President Trump is running on eliminating them altogether. 

READ MORE: Trump courts Black voters, but opposition remains deep

That’s why Democrats need to nominate someone who can not only defeat President Trump but build on the Affordable Care Act when he does. Joe has the best plan to do just that. Rather than starting from scratch and getting rid of private insurance, as some Democrats are proposing, Joe would build on the ACA by providing Americans with more choices, reducing health care costs, and making our health care system much more simple to use. 

At a time when African-American women are still three times more likely to die in childbirth in the wealthiest country on the planet, we cannot afford to wait to make sure our health care system is not only more effective but more just. 

I know this issue is personal to Joe. He has experienced devastating losses in his life, and since he left the White House, he has continued his work to end cancer as we know it. Like his son Beau, my father and aunt succumbed to this dreadful disease, while my mother and another aunt are, thankfully, cancer survivors. More than his spearheading research, he understands that too many Americans lie awake at night, wondering how they will continue to make ends meet if one of their loved ones becomes ill. And just like my grandfather, Joe is committed to making sure no one goes bankrupt because they get sick. 

All of our progress on health care, and all the other issues we care about, depend on one thing above all else: our ability to cast our vote. And the long struggle for civil rights and voting rights is what first inspired Joe Biden to run for office. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an important first step in our nation finally living up to the promise of its founding, but that was only the beginning of the fight. As Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe successfully led the fight to extend its protections for 25 years in 1982. 

This fight is what inspired my family to get involved in game-changing civil rights efforts in our community when I was younger because we could all see Jim Crow was still alive and well in Louisiana. Unfortunately, as we know all too well across the country—and especially in the South—not enough has changed since then. Our hard-won rights have been under constant assault from the Supreme Court on down to state and local election officials. 

As president, Joe Biden will stand up to these attacks, and restore the Voting Rights Act, because he understands that every American, no matter what they look like or what zip code they live in, deserves a voice in our democracy. He will make it easier to exercise our sacred right to vote, count every vote equally, and make sure those votes cannot be undermined by anyone aiming to meddle in our political process—whether foreign or domestic. 

The right to vote is the right upon which all others depend, but it can only be preserved for as long as we are willing to fight to keep it. So in the face of Donald Trump, and a political system that all too often feels like it’s spiraling out of control, we must hold fast to hope. To that end, there’s a poem that was greatly loved and embodied by my hero, Ruby Dee. In the coming election, I’ll be keeping it in mind: 

The world is wrong, let’s right it. The battle is hard, let’s fight it. The road is rough, let’s clear it. The future vast, don’t fear it. Is faith asleep? Let’s wake it. Because today is ours, let’s take it. 

I believe that the moment Joe Biden enters the White House, today can be ours once more. 

It’s just on us to take it. 

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Sommelier Titus Green is Breaking Barriers in the Wine Industry

Sommeliers possess unique knowledge and experience that allows them to pair food and wine with unmatched skill. While all must undergo rigorous preparation, few become credentialed by the renowned Court of Master Sommeliers, which sets the gold standard of excellence for beverage service within the hospitality industry with integrity, exemplary knowledge, and humility. Even fewer are black. Titus Green is one such extraordinary sommelier.

BLACK ENTERPRISE caught up with Green to explore what it means to be a sommelier and highlight his unique experiences in the food and wine industry.

Titus Green, Sommelier at Washington DC’s Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse

Black Enterprise: Can you explain what a sommelier is and how you became one?

Green: An academic definition of a sommelier is someone who is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional (normally working in fine restaurants) and who specializes in all aspects of wine service, as well as wine and food pairing. In fine dining, the role is far more specialized—it’s not the same as a “wine waiter.”

I became a sommelier because I’ve long had a passion for exploring this ancient beverage and truly enjoy helping others to do the same. I fell in love the hard way—a trial by fire. Four years ago, I took a professional opportunity with Del Frisco’s Double Eagle steakhouse in Washington D.C. When I examined the wine list, I noticed it was two inches thick, 40 pages long, and approximately 2,000 bottles in variety! Intimidation set in almost immediately. So, instead of capitulating to fear, I decided to strengthen my knowledge and understanding of wine.

I began by researching the countless authors, articles, websites, and social media sites where I could absorb engaging content. I took my self-study seriously and applied myself. Eventually, I sat for The Court of Master of Sommeliers exam and passed it. But my enthusiasm for studying did not end with my pinning ceremony. I am a true believer in lifelong learning. Reading daily and applying the skillset makes learning fun and captivating for me. Along with that, just talking to friends and mentors about wine supports the learning process. I’ve also found that one of the most vital components of learning is finding opportunities to taste wine and develop my own playbook. This helps me to expand my understanding of terroir, tasting structure, and pairings as a matter of course.

Titus Green with Master Sommelier Fred Dame and Del Frisco’s Double Eagle DC wine staff

What were some of your biggest professional challenges and how did you overcome them?

Some of my biggest professional challenges included finding ways to digest, dissect, and store wine-related information, along with allocating time to do all of the above. One of the ways I overcame these challenges was learning to ‘study’ the information in multiple ways: writing, drawing, singing, listening, reading, referencing pictures, maps, etc. Additionally, I found the best way to work with time constraints was to just keep absorbing knowledge on a daily basis and then set daily and weekly goals. I also found that working like I had a final exam each week was a solid technique that helped me make excellent use of my time.

We’re assuming you have access to a great deal of wine. About how much time do you spend tasting during the week?

It takes me about 2 minutes to fully feel like I have tasted or grasped a wine. That said, I usually end up ‘tasting’ and enjoying a few 6-ounce glasses during a focused wine study session. I love wine, so I will taste anytime I get the chance, which amounts, on average, to approximately 2-3 hours per week. Sometimes it’s in a classroom format, other times it’s more or less “on the fly” in more casual settings for only a few minutes. I specifically take time out each week to taste and blind taste wines with colleagues, which gives me access to 40+ wines per week.

Titus Green executing private cognac tasting for VIP clients

Have you ever felt different or been treated differently as a black man in this industry?

There have been plenty of times where I did not feel differently, where I’ve felt completely comfortable in my own skin as an accomplished expert in the room. There have also been other times where I have certainly felt awkward and uncomfortable—like I was an anomaly. What I have learned over time is to approach cynics (and the internal critic) this way: Once I get suited-up, nothing else matters. I leave my pride (and doubt!) at the door and let the knowledge, skill, and experience do all the talking.

What’s your best advice to someone interested in becoming a sommelier or entering the food and wine industry in a professional capacity?

I’m in love with what I do. If you have a passion for something you love, don’t waste time thinking about it. Do your research and pursue it. If wine and food are what drive you, find places and people who can inspire you and push you to new heights. Opportunities in wine are virtually endless and with so many facets and ways to explore it, there is a place for almost every conceivable hospitality professional. D.C. is growing as a foodie city and making leaps and bounds toward becoming a wine capital, so if you’re in the area, you’re going to be inundated with opportunities. Also, remember that there are vast resources available, inclusive of literature, courses, and websites that you can leverage to get a head start on your wine lover’s journey—today. Take advantage of them. Most people don’t. Cheers!

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