Long Live The Legacy Of Comrade Vemula Rohith Chakravarthy : Statement By New Socialist Initiative (NSI)

Alfred Wertheimer’s never-before-seen photos of Elvis when he was a 21-year-old up-and-coming crooner.

After Dylann Roof opened fire on worshippers gathered inside the historically black Emanuel A.M.E Church in Charleston, South Carolina last month, allegedly killing nine congregants and claiming that they “rape our women” and “are taking over our country,” a disturbing image circulated online. A Facebook picture of Roof sitting on top of his car and straddling a license plate celebrating the “Confederate States of America” went viral, stoking an outrage that prompted the South Carolina government to permanently lower the Confederate flag that had long flown over the State House.

For some, however, the debate isn’t over. The Ku Klux Klan successfully petitioned to hold a pro-Confederate flag rally in Charleston last week, resulting in five arrests as white racialist groups clashed with counter-protesters such as the New Black Panther Party. Video footage from the scene shows African Americans angrily tearing up a Confederate flag, while Nazis inveighed against the government’s decision to “delete your history.”

Inside the white supremacist movement

Representation in STEM: Black Women Making Their Mark in Space and Science

Today, there is an increased push for the American education system to improve their STEM programs as well as to get students to show interest in the fields. It is important to bring attention to some of the African-American females that have, and are still, paving the road for future scientists, astronauts or any STEM degree holders.

These women are just some of the many examples of African-American contributions to science. (Descriptions pertain to the women in the order they appear on the photoset, from up down, left right)

Mercedes Richards PH.D is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Originally from Jamaica, Dr. Richards received her Doctoral degree at the University of Toronto. In 2010 Dr. Richards received the Fulbright Award to conduct research at the Astronomical Institute in Slovakia. research focus is on binary stars; twin stars formed at the same time.

Willie Hobbs Moore PH.D is the first African-American woman to earn a PH.D in physics in 1972. She received it at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Her thesis research involved important problems in vibrational analysis of macro molecules.

Beth Brown PH.D (1969-2008) was an Astrophysicist in the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Born in Roanoke, VA, she grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars and was fascinated with space. In 1998, Dr. Brown becoming the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in Astronomy from the University of Michigan.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein PH.D is currently a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at the Observational Lab in Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland. Originally from Los Angeles California Dr. Prescod-Weinstein specializes in theoretical cosmology.

Dara Norman PH.D is a professor at the University of Washington. Dr. Norman grew up in the south side of Chicago Illinois. She went to MIT as an Undergraduate and worked at NASA Goddard in Maryland. Dr. Norman currently specializes in gravitational lensing, large scale structure and quasars (quasi-stellar objects). This year she was honored with the University’s Timeless Award for her contributions and accomplishments to astronomy. In 2009 she was invited to the Star Party at the White House.

Jeanette J. Epps PH.D from Syracuse NY is a NASA astronaut. She received her PH.D in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Marylan in 2000. Dr. Epps was selected in 2009 to be one of the 14 members of the 20th NASA astronaut class. She recently graduated from Astronaut Candidate Training.

Shirley Ann Jackson PH.D is the second African-American woman to earn a PH.D in physics and the first from MIT. In 2009 Dr. Jackson was appointed to serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She is currently the President of the Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute.

Alice Munro: “The Bear Came over the Mountain” : The New Yorker

Be contemporary. Have impact. Strive for it. Be of the world. Move it. Be bold, don’t hold back. Then the moment you think you’ve been bold, be bolder. We are all alive today, ever so briefly here now, not then, not ago, not in some dreamworld of a hypothetical future. Whatever you do, you must make it contemporary. Make it matter now. You must give us a new path to tread, even if it carries the footfalls of old soles. You must not be immune to the weird urgency of today.

Wisdom from Ian Bogost’s commencement address at the University of Iowa, a fine addition to this ongoing archive of timeless advice. Pair with Greil Marcus’s fantastic 2013 School of Visual Arts commencement address.

(↬ austinkleon)

Hips Liberated Because the Feet Have Been Shackled

Hips Liberated Because the Feet Have Been Shackled

Originally posted on COOLIE WOMAN:

Michael Goldberg Collection, U.W.I., Trinidad. http://www.cooliewoman.com

For the new Indian site Scroll.in, I wrote about my affection for chutney music. Here’s the piece:

Bollywood and my mother’s bhajans were the background music of my childhood. Growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s, any and all yearning for lost homelands was set to the score of…

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The Brazilian government has strongly rejected suggestions by two U.S. anthropologists that the only way to protect the country’s isolated tribes would be to establish contact with them.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss)

Gettysburg

Reblogged from Flickr Blog:

"The Battle of Gettysburg was fought on July 1-3, 1863, at a small town in Pennsylvania. With an estimated 50,000 Confederate and Union casualties, the battle was a major turning point in the American Civil War."reads the…

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