Joie Cook and I meet at one of my favorite places, the library. We interviewed at the Beaties Ford branch.  Delightful is an understatement of this woman and determined is a given. She entered my presence with her lap top and vision, military style, focused to work. She is an army veteran, a daughter of a military Dad that has plante...

May 22, 2019 was my last day of working at a local school in Charlotte. I was told that they had no positions opened for me after I worked as an Instructional Assistant with a Masters plus and 20 years experience for $23,000 a year starting. Insultive, no. I will work any place legal to feed my kids but they lied and said I would be promoted t...

“We can laugh but also be serious about social change. They are not planning to tell us when the Revolution will begin.” ~Dearest Yolanda Dearest Price, M.Ed, grew up in Long Island, New York. She followed her passion for teaching, attending Howard University and later earning a History and Africana Studies Degree from Stony Brook Univers...

There is a message planted in every father. If you discover it, that will be his greatest gift to you. If you miss it, he will take it to the grave, in hopes that the spirit will see you through.  A real father is the sun of every child. But the sun sometimes misses a plant or two. The sun causes drought and doesn’t ever&nb...

June 19, 2019 will be the 154th anniversary of Juneteenth. This is the final celebration of Emancipation from the confederacy in Texas. Abraham Lincoln, reluctantly issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Slaves transmitted this information through the grapevine, abandoning plantations, seeking refuge with Union forces. Yet in T...

Marsha McLean, LPC, LCAS, CCS, Licensed Professional Counselor in North Carolina/Virginia, Licensed Clinical Addiction Specialists and Certified Clinical Supervisor is the vessel for many dealing with mental heath challenges. She earned a Master’s Degree from Webster University in 2003 where her skills and ex...

God has a way that’s mighty sweet and I always say you can’t persecute, hurt, oppress or victimize people without the universe taking its shot on you. Malcolm X eloquently coined it as, “the chickens coming home to roost”, while some say it’s the bitch of Karma. I like to use the Bible, and say vengeance is the Lord’s.  You see ...

​Fourty one murders in Chicago in one weekend. Eleven murders in Virginia Beach this weekend. West Covina, CA, Cleveland, TX, Reserve, Louisiana, St. Louis, Missouri, Washington, DC have killed, killed, killed, killed, killed and killed. This is only 7 days of war. The killings are too common. We are desensitize. We scroll over ...

​How dare you Facebook,  You try to contain the voice of a people, that were brought here on your slave ships, 200 years of picking your cotton, decades and decades assaulted by your grip, subjected to centuries of rape by your men, tastes of Reconstruction then your chain gangs again, lynched by the rop...

​With so much bad news reported it can be hard combing to greatness. Yet in the case of Jay Charles it wasn’t too hard to do. The beloved coach of the Championship Pee Dee Vikings, devoted husband/father and socially conscious community activist, Coach Charles has been a transformative example of what organized sports,...