As this is Black History Month, it seems like a good time to post an article about TheGrio, which I just learned about by accident earlier this month. Some of you, I assume, know about TheGrio, but my guess is that most of you know little if any about it.
TheGrio
is “an American television network and website with news, opinion,
entertainment and video content geared toward African-Americans.” It can be
watched free on the internet, and it is also available on local TV in many
cities across the U.S.*
TheGrio’s
name comes from griot, a Western African word that designates a musician-entertainer
who plays a vital role in preserving their people's oral traditions and
histories.
Although
I rarely watch local TV, I happened to turn on CBS on the evening of Feb. 3 and
theGrio’s Icon Awards program was being telecast. I listened with interest to
speeches by three of the Icon recipients, the three I am briefly introducing below.
Al Sharpton received the Justice Ikon Award. According to Wikipedia, Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (b. 1954) is “an American civil rights and social justice activist, Baptist minister, radio talk show host, and TV personality, who is also the founder of the National Action Network civil rights organization.”
Sharpton
has been a leading, and controversial, civil rights leader for nearly 55 years
now. He has also sought various political offices, including that of POTUS (in 2004),
but was never elected.
At the end of his theGrioAwards speech,
Sharpton said, “The only thing that I really live for is I get up with this
dream: every bigot, every racist, everyone in this country that hates will say
damn, he’s up again.”
TheGrio online article concludes, “He loves to have them know
that they can’t stop him. He loves knowing that Black resistance to oppression
is unstoppable. That’s why the Rev. Sharpton deserves the Justice Icon Award.”
Those who commemorate recent Black history
forty years from now will surely remember Al Sharpton along with many other
exemplary civil rights leaders such as him as well as the next two theGrio Ikon
Awards.
The Scientist Ikon was awarded to Kizzmekia Corbett, born in 1986 in North Carolina. In 2008, she received a B.S. in biological sciences and sociology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).**
In
2014, Corbett earned a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at the University
of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and since June 2021 she has been an assistant professor
at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Corbett
was awarded the Scientist Ikon because of her great contribution to the
development of the covid-19 vaccination, which probably saved as many as five
million lives—and some sources put that figure as high as 20 million—around the
world.
Please
click
here to read the article about the reason Corbett was chosen for the
Scientist Ikon and listen to her acceptance speech last November.
The recipient of the Inspiration Ikon Award was Dwayne Johnson. I never thought I would post a blog article in admiration of a man whose main claim to fame is professional wrestling, for I am the very opposite of a fan of that “sport.”
Johnson’s
father was a Black Nova Scotian and his mother (whose first name is Mataniufeagaimaleata
(!) but she went by the name Ata) is Samoan. Both parents were professional
wrestlers.
Citing
Wikipedia again, Dwayne Douglas Johnson (b. 1972), “also known by his ring name
The Rock, is an American actor, businessman, and professional wrestler. He is…widely
regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time.”
Recently,
however, Johnson has been in the news because of teaming up with Oprah to raise
and provide much-needed financial and housing relief for the many people
suffering from the Maui, Hawaii, wildfires in 2023, the deadliest U.S.
wildfires in at least 100 years.
Here is the link to
Johnson’s impressive (and brief) acceptance speech for his Inspiration Ikon,
which was also awarded in November 2023.
Black
History Month every February is an important time to recognize prominent
African Americans of the past as well as contemporary Black people of
distinction who are shaping Black history that will be remembered decades from
now.
_____
*
This is the opening sentence
of the Wikipedia article on TheGrio (often written as theGrio)—and it needs to
be updated as African-American is now not generally used as a hyphenated word
nor used as much as Black. Here is a link to theGrio’s webpage with their
explanation about themselves—and I encourage you to take a look at that website.
(Note that Grio is pronounced grī/ō.) I was a bit surprised to learn that it is
available on channel 62-2, a free local channel, here in the Kansas City area.
**
I was interested to see
that, for my granddaughter
Naomi is currently a student at UMBC.
