If a perfect SAT score is any indication of a bright future ahead, Suncoast High School student Justin Ricketts’ future is gleaming.    

Da’Vion Tatum is making history as he heads to Harvard University! Tatum has not only made history as the first Black male valedictorian of his high school, but he has millions of dollars worth of scholarships and acceptances into 11 various colleges and universities to match. Now, he wants to use his story to inspire and encourage other young men. “My story specifically can help other young Black men to know that just because society may say one thing about you, or there may be a stigma or stereotype that surrounds being a Black man, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re confined to that , ” said Tatum in an interview with Fox 26 Houston earlier last month. Not only is he at Harvard, but the 18-year-old penned his very own autobiography, “Thriving In My Own Lane,” to further share all that it took for him to reach such a monumental milestone in his life. The Westfield High School graduate first began writing the book in eighth grade. “It was to show that regardless of what’s happening...

Dr. Solange Ashby holds a Ph.D. in Egyptology with a specialization in ancient Egyptian language and Nubian religion from the University of Chicago. Now, this Barnard professor wants to share her findings of the divine feminine with a larger audience, using Beyoncé’s “Black Is King” as a soundtrack. The Harvard Museum of the Ancient East will present “Black Is Queen: The Divine Feminine in Kush,” on March 25, 2021, at 6:00 p.m. ET. It will be presented virtually, via a Zoom meeting, and pre-registration is required. However, this isn’t just your ordinary scholarly presentation. Rather, according to the lecture’s official website, “Black Is King” — the modern classic visual album by Beyoncé — will be “interwoven into this presentation on Kushite queens to emphasize the power and centrality of the African queen mother in her royal family and kingdom.” Beyoncé has long served as an inspiration for both rising young entrepreneurs and older people alike — but this is the first time that...

Becoming a Harvard student is a high achievement on its own, but to become the student body president thanks to your peers is an even greater one. Just ask 20-year-old Noah Harris, the first Black man to be elected by the student body to become president of Harvard’s Undergraduate Council, reports Hattiesburg American. Harris is a junior government major from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He succeeds two other Black students who have headed Harvard’s Undergraduate Council. The first to serve in the role, Cary Gabay, was a Black man chosen in 1993 by members of the council, and the second was a Black woman, Fentrice Driskell, who was also elected. “I definitely don’t take that lightly,” Harris said of the confidence placed in him. “Especially with everything that went on this summer with the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, all the protests that went on in this moment of racial reckoning in this country. This is a major statement by the Harvard student body to...

Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley just approved the notion to rename the school’s Holmes Society in honor of the first Black tenured professor at Harvard, physician-scientist William Augustus Hinton. According to The Harvard Crimson , a petition to rename the Holmes Society was formed earlier this year by two medical students, garnering more than 1,000 signatures. Diverse Issues In Higher Education reports s tudents and faculty made up the task force that chose Hinton as the new namesake. “The quality that stood out about Professor Hinton, that I think really moved us toward his selection was that he openly admitted his humanity,” said Director of the Hinton Society and Advisory Dean, Anthony V. D’Amico. “There are times when people fail, and we saw one of his qualities is that he would fall in terms of his research or clinical practice, or in terms of his science, and he wouldn’t give up. And I think that that [is the] kind of tenacity and fortitude, courage, that...

Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow received a letter from members of the Harvard Business School’s African-American Alumni Association (HBSAAA) persuading him to consider diversity and inclusion during the business school’s search for the next dean, according to The Harvard Crimson . In June 2020, the business school’s current dean, Nitin Nohria, will retire after spending ten years at Harvard University. The Crimson reports in Nohria’s retirement email to the Business School affiliates, that during his ten years as dean he strived to make progress toward innovation, intellectual ambition, internalization, inclusion, and integration. “Ten years gave us a good run to make progress on our Five I priorities,” he wrote. The HBSAAA’s letter urges the search committee to select a candidate that will boost African American enrollees in the business school’s Master of Business Administration program, executive education program, and the eight doctoral programs. Black Enterprise...