Berkeley Voices

"People know about Rosa Parks. People know about Martin Luther King Jr. And they know that it's the Montgomery bus boycott that ignited a certain kind of Southern civil rights movement," says Ula Taylor, the chair of the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. What people often don't know, she says, is that the boycott was started by the Women's Political Council, a group made up of more than 200 black women led by Jo Ann Robinson in Montgomery, Alabama.

In the last of a four-part series that highlights a different African American leader on campus for our podcast, Fiat Vox, Taylor talks about the women activists that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence and how she encourages her students to harness the leader within themselves to create the world they want to live in.

Read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/02/28/podcast-black-history-month-interview-ula-taylor/

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Like a lot of leaders, Sidalia Reel started young. In fifth grade, she ran her household, making sure her four younger siblings didn't get into too much trouble. Now, she's the director of staff diversity initiatives in the Office of Equity and Inclusion at UC Berkeley, making sure more than 9,000 staff feel like a valued part of campus. To some, it might seem daunting. But for Reel, it's a natural fit. This is part of a series for Black History Month highlighting the work of African American leaders on campus.

See photos and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/02/21/staff-diversity-leader-our-differences-make-us-stronger/

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As a kid, Alfred Day would spend hours holed up indoors reading comics. He loved Batman and Superman, but the character who really spoke to him — who taught him that he could be smart and powerful — was Black Panther. Day, the director of student affairs case management at UC Berkeley, is a co-founder of Berkeley HEROES, a staff club that meets once a month to talk about comics and graphic novels on their list. In February for Black History Month, they're reading the first volume of Ta-Nehisi Coates' current Black Panther series.

Read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/02/14/the-life-changing-power-of-black-panther/

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As an undergraduate in Colorado, Kenly Brown was one of only a few African Americans on her campus. She felt isolated in the classroom, often expected to speak on behalf of all black people. Now, as a Ph.D. candidate in African American studies at UC Berkeley, she’s made it her priority to be a mentor to students of color.

Read the transcript and see photos on UC Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/02/12/black-history-month-interview-with-graduate-student-kenly-brown/

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Before Clothilde Hewlett became the executive director of the Cal Alumni Association in 2016, she had lived many other lives. She spent years of her childhood in tenement housing in Philadelphia's inner city before she and her family were called to San Francisco by a Rice-A-Roni television commercial. She attended UC Berkeley, became a lawyer, climbed the ranks of the government of corporate America, then came back to her alma mater, where it all began.

Read the story and see photos of Hewlett on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/02/05/podcast-black-history-month-series-interview-cloey-hewlett/

This is part of a 2018 series for Black History Month, featuring interviews with African American leaders at UC Berkeley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.