Stories of Community
A collection of stories about people and organizations making strides in changing their communities for the better.
The following essay is adapted from a talk I gave at the YMCA of Greater Richmond 2023 DEI Symposium on May 19, 2023, and is part of my Sojourn, America series of stories and essays. ...
Faith. A word instantly comforting to some and off-putting to others, because it can be deeply intertwined with our upbringings. Some of us enjoyed the faith traditions we experienced growing up, others ran away from ...
Growing up in New York, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were a constant presence in the cityscape – and in the city’s psyche. Bland, boring, monolithic. Nevertheless they became accepted over time, and ...
“Are we just waiting for everyone on the other side to die, so we can declare victory?” This might be the question we ask ourselves as we observe our behavior and the behavior of others ...
365 days later, we are all asking ourselves what the past year has meant. Was George Floyd’s death a wakeup call? Yes, I believe it was. It woke some people up to what more is ...
“You are a Joseph,” my mother used to say to me. It was her way of saying I was a bridge between people. A connector of the unexpected sort. I’ve always known this to be ...
I originally shared this on May 30th. And unsurprisingly, you can substitute “last night” in the first paragraph for any point in time over the past four weeks and it is still relevant. This is ...
My family didn’t have generational wealth – at least the financial kind. My mother didn’t have any retirement to speak of. When we moved her to Richmond after her quadruple career as a professional singer, ...
Listen for the pop of the cork. I was talking with a group of friends, recently. Three of us are Black, two are White. We can rap about almost anything. We’re all engaged in our ...
As a Black man, I’ve lived in a white world my whole life – from prep school in New York, to the Ivy league, to presenting in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies. In some ...
