One year ago on this day, I offered up We Rise: Love Bigger, a virtual choir video in response to COVID-19.
Read MoreI have often wondered what it must have taken for my forebears in the civil rights movement to place their children in the eye of the storm. Even knowing the power of symbols to shape our historical narratives. Even after committing oneself to the struggle, how could a mother or a father look at their child and say, "She will be the one. We will go."
Read MoreI’m honored and grateful to be receiving this award. I never could have imagined when I first arrived here from New York in 1997 – a young jazz pianist, starting my first University teaching job, and looking for a place to build community, – that I would be standing here more than 2 1/2 decades later, so bountifully surrounded by what I hoped to discover.
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