At an Atlanta church service dedicated to youth Sunday, the presidential candidate compared leadership to a relay race in which each generation must ask themselves “what do we do during that period of time when we carry that baton.”
Then she added with a smile that for “the older leaders, it also becomes a question of let’s also know when to pass the baton.”
The 54-year-old senator — one of the younger contenders for the White House in 2020 — did not mention any other presidential hopeful or tie her remarks to the Democratic presidential scramble. Her spokeswoman said she only wanted to encourage the youth at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Her commentary to the congregation once led by Martin Luther King Jr. comes as former Vice President Joe Biden, 76, considers whether to join a field that already includes Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is 77. Both men have run for president before and fallen short.
‘Biden and Sanders are seen as strong contenders for the Democratic nomination, though other candidates and some voters have emphasized the need for a more youthful approach to try and beat President Donald Trump in the general election. Several other candidates in the race, including two governors, are also in their late sixties.
Harris noted Sunday that King was 26 when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycotts that pushed him to the forefront of the civil rights movement.
Later Sunday, Harris told a rally at Morehouse College in Atlanta that Attorney General William Barr should testify under oath on Capitol Hill, rather than just submit the written summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation.
The Justice Department said Sunday that Mueller’s team did not find evidence that Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mueller also investigated whether Trump obstructed justice but did not come to a definitive answer.
Other highlights of Sunday campaigning:
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND
Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand assailed President Donald Trump as a coward who is “tearing apart the moral fabric of the vulnerable,” as she officially started her campaign for president.
The senator spoke in New York Sunday, feet away from one of Trump’s signature properties, the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
She said that instead of building walls as Trump wants to do along the U.S.-Mexico border, Americans build bridges, community and hope.
Gillibrand also called for full release of Mueller’s report in the Russia investigation. Attorney General William Barr released a summary Sunday afternoon, but Democrats want to see the full details.
Gillibrand is trying to position herself in the crowded field of Democrats seeking the party’s nomination. While some hopefuls have shied away from mentioning Trump, Gillibrand has not hesitated to do so.
ELIZABETH WARREN
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Sunday the National Rifle Association is holding “Congress hostage” when it comes to stemming gun violence.
The Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential candidate tells a campaign rally that if seven children were dying from a mysterious virus, “we’d pull out all the stops till we figured out what was wrong.” But in terms of gun violence, she said the NRA “keeps calling the shots in Washington.”
Warren finished a two-day campaign trip to New Hampshire with an event at a middle school in Conway Sunday afternoon.
Warren focused much of her speech on her approach to economics, but paid special attention to unions Sunday. She said more power needs to be put back in the hands of workers.
BETO O’ROURKE
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke told voters in Las Vegas Sunday that President Donald Trump bears blame for the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border but responsibility lies with everyone in the country to fix the situation.
O’Rourke spoke Sunday to more than 200 people packed into and snaking around a taco shop on the city’s north end. He said immigrant families are leaving their home countries and journeying on foot because they have no other choice.
The former Texas congressman said desperate families were broken up in the U.S. when they were at their most vulnerable and desperate moments, and what happened to them “is on every single one of us.”
Even I ask myself: How can someone who lives with depression like such a depressing time of the church year?
Lent is my favorite liturgical season. I’m not exactly sure why.
I did and did not grow up understanding that many Christian churches follow something called a church calendar. My early years were spent in black Baptist churches that celebrated Easter and Christmas as holy days, but large swaths of spirituals, Sunday school and a row of black-suited deacons in-between.
In Catholic elementary school, I learned about Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Trinity Sunday and All Saint’s Day. I thought these were Catholic-specific things. Like confession and rosaries and the puffy white dress for first communion in second grade. Things I learned about, but couldn’t be a part of. Because I wasn’t Catholic. My parents said that I didn’t have to “give up” anything for Lent, if I didn’t want to.
This is how many people think of Lent. It’s this season before Easter where we focus on the sacrifice that Jesus makes for us on the cross. To honor this sacrifice, we too should experience a measure of sacrifice. Many people deny themselves of something. The proverbial chocolate. A bad habit. Foods filled with butter and sugar – that must be eaten up on Fat Tuesday (aka Mardi Gras). Some people understand these sacrifices as a kind of spiritual practice. These are ways to focus our energy and intent more upon our relationship wit the divine.
Other people decide to “take something on.” By picking up a good habit, being more who they are called to be, giving a good service to the world around them, they develop a spiritual practice that engages them more deeply in the world around them.
Either way, it is a time of spiritual introspection that is traditionally focused on the events of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
Do people who live with depression really need more introspection? I mean, isn’t that part of our challenge? That we are too internal. That our thoughts turn in on themselves – sometimes betraying us, or making us think the worst things about ourselves. If we struggle to make it from one day to the next, need we sacrifice any more of our selves? Can we give any more than we are currently giving? Should we really spend forty days focusing on sacrifice and death?
I think I’m into Lent for Ash Wednesday. I like the ashes. Not because they remind me of my mortality. I’m well aware of that. I like them because of the verse in the 61st chapter of Isaiah. The first verses are repeated by Jesus in the 4th chapter of Luke. Words of a calling to liberate others. The third verse indicates that God also calls Isaiah to comfort those who mourn and “give a crown of beauty for ashes.”
I like this song that comes from these verses:
I understand a life of ashes. I understand grief that lasts long past the time of mourning. I understand how it is to feel as if everything I touch is crumbling. I understand the constant readjustment of expectations and abilities based on a crippling I-can’t-do-this-right-now state of being. I understand ashes.
In my early days in ministry, I discovered beauty in them. The ashes for Ash Wednesday services are traditionally burned from the palms used on Palm Sunday. Members of my church brought in the single palm strip they had saved from nearly a year prior. My pastor, decked in barbecue style apron and oven mitt, placed them in a large foil tray and lit them on fire. He tossed them until they became ash and used them to place a cross on our foreheads. Soon enough, the service was over, the congregation had left, and the ministered cleaned the sanctuary. As we left, my pastor whispered to me. “Come back early in the morning. Trust me.” Using my key, I returned at 6:30 am Thursday morning to a strong sweet pungency that hung invisible over the chairs, altar, hallway and musical instruments. All those ashes, given time, smelled amazing! It was … beautiful.
And I like that there are openings to find beauty in ashes. Lent gives me the chance to look for those opportunities. It gives me a season – every year – to turn over rocks, crouch down and look under the bed, sweep together the remnants of my last year, of my life, of the current day in search of whatever beauty may be there. It’s my chance to look for the life that can be found in the midst, or something after, death.
Last Lent, I led an online reading group through my book Not Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression. I decided that this would be my Lenten practice. Every year, I hope. By sharing my own frustrations, struggles and small victories, I find flashes of grace. I invite you to join me on this journey.
Find more information at www.NotAloneReadingGroup.com
Note: Monica A. Coleman is hosting an online reading group this Lent through her book, Not Alone. Participation includes the eBook of Not Alone, daily inspirational emails, vegan recipes (for those who may give up meat), a resource list and a weekly conference call with the author. Learn more information here. Readers of this blog are eligible for a raffle for one FREE participation. See the information below to enter. This giveaway runs from midnight to midnight on February 28th. Winner will be chosen randomly and notified with 48 hours of the end of the raffle.
Monica A. Coleman is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in southern California. An ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Coleman has earned degrees at Harvard University, Vanderbilt University and Claremont Graduate University. She has been featured as an expert in religion and mental health on NPR, blogtalkradio, BeliefNet.com,PsychCentral.com, Huffington Post and HuffPo Live. She blogs on faith and depression at www.BeautifulMindBlog.com. She is the author or editor of five books, including Not Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression – a 40 Day Devotional.
The Collective of Black Artists (COBA) has been supporting African and Caribbean dance in Canada for 25 years. COBA/Yosseif Haddad
Skin symbolizes identity — its color, shade, and texture influences cultural currency and, by extension, self-identity. When we know who we are, we can honor where we come from and we can dance in our own skins with pride and passion.
The Collective of Black Artists (COBA) is a Toronto-based professional dance company that works to extend this pride and passion through performance, education, and research.
I was one of four Black dancers with roots in the Caribbean who birthed COBA in 1993 to perform our physical and social realities. We worked to create a platform for Black dancers who were underrepresented in mainstream professional dance companies in Canada at the time. My fellow co-founders and dancers were: Bakari I. Lindsay (formerly Eddison B. Lindsay), Charmaine Headley and Mosa Neshama (formerly Kim McNeilly).
COBA injected new artistic blood into the dance scene in Toronto. It was the ‘90s, during the time multiculturalism was actively promoted within the city; it was the city’s response to the federal government’s attempt to promote unity within diversity by encouraging people to learn about other cultures despite differences in ethnicity, religion, social class. This government mandate helped to create an audience for COBA both in schools and in theatres.
COBA positioned itself as a diasporic family within the Canadian dance establishment. As a cultural membrane, COBA embraced over 50 dancers, drummers, singers and artists from Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, and Europe in the rigor necessary to perform appropriate representations of African and Caribbean dance traditions.
With reviews in The Globe and Mail, which said it was “a company that makes you sit up and take notice for all the right reasons,” COBA was a hit.
I am a dancer and Ph.D. candidate in education and I am interested in artistic vulnerability. As part of my research, I conducted interviews with some of the COBA founders and members on the significance and history of COBA. On a personal level, I wanted to explore the idea of COBA as a cultural lifeline to African and Caribbean dance heritage in Canada. What does it mean to have been part of this dance company?
It means remembering, reclaiming and honoring my ancestry and working with peers who took ownership of their history with boundless energy.
COBA’s challenges
COBA faced challenges as an under-resourced collective.
Initial funding applications were denied because an appropriate funding category for COBA’s dance form was non-existent at that time. After years of petitioning and convincing arts councils of COBA’s artistic relevance, the arts councils eventually revised their funding categories. COBA was finally able to secure grants. Still, hiring dancers full-time, year-round was not an option. Dancers still had to earn a living outside the company.
However, working within a collective is not easy. The reality in collectives is that conflicts arise amongst members. Personalities clash. Egos bruise. Some performers anchor and stay a while. Others move on to different artistic ventures, and professional pursuits.
A 2003 poster for a COBA event, celebrating its first decade. COBA Photography, David Hou. Graphic Design, Eric Parker, Author provided
However, despite personnel changes and professional challenges that surfaced within the group, COBA persisted and maintained its integrity and mission. The key principles we followed were: Knowledge, co-operation, authenticity and endurance.
Artistic director, Bakari Lindsay described the COBA process as challenging: “Robust work demands a certain amount of consistent authority — with flexibility — in order to sustain a vision.”
The repertoire, created by Lindsay and Headley, allowed dancers to work with contemporary dance vocabularies, strengthening dancer’s physicality and technical ability. International guest choreographers were invited to stage work allowing the company to expose dancers to new movement aesthetics and fuelling COBA’s artistic growth.
Canada is a diverse country and breaking down social and cultural barriers between communities makes a difference in how we see each other and respond to each other’s differences.
COBA’s performances sparked students’ imagination and raised students’ social awareness.
Keeping stories alive
When the drummer’s rhythms split the air and heat of the spirit rises in the performers, dances take on a life of their own, as if driven by spiritual powers. The energy of warrior spirits in the West African dances, Doun doun ba and the healing shaman in the Kakilambe come alive and transport the dancers beyond the physical realm.
A dance performance of ‘Saraca’ by COBA. David Hou
The social and historical significance of dances COBA performs demonstrates the importance of remaining flexible and adapting to new environments. Keeping stories alive through dance and drumming provides connection and memory for the things we leave behind either by choice or urgency.
While COBA’s current repertoire includes a wide variety of contemporary dance work, earlier dances were the foundation for the quality of COBA’s social and artistic exploration.
Saraca (1994), a thanksgiving ritual pays homage to the African nations who settled in the Caribbean and contributed their rites and dances to the cultural mosaic.
Non-traditional dance performance such as Portrait (1994), addresses themes of race and the human condition, underlines the problem of colourism. Griot’s Jive (2002) draws attention to gun violence which remains an acute social problem.
African perspectives for youth
The company established COBA Youth Ensemble (1994) for older/elite dancers in the children’s dance program. Together COBA and Ballet Creole created Nu-DanCe Training Program, a diverse professional dance training program grounded in an Africanist perspective.
Educating the younger generation in Africanist dance culture preserves the culture. That said, in a fast-moving dance-world social relevance is key. The invasion of hip hop and other urban dance styles commanding the global dance younger generation of dancers within the African diaspora and outside the community must know the origins of the dances they perform.
Classes in Hip Hop and Afro-beat COBA provides, ensures a new generation of dancers enjoy the dances that endorse their social relationships while promoting self-discipline and positive self-image. They will understand that the urban dances they learn and love stand on the shoulders of African dance traditions, allowing students to make connections between their past and present.
Skin imprints
Although all of the other original founders are no longer part of COBA, Bakari Lindsay and Charmaine Headley have led COBA for the past 25 years, blazing a trail from its humble beginnings to chart new ground within Canada’s dance milieu. Touring across Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean, COBA touched, even transformed many people’s lives.
Currently COBA’s adult dance company is on hiatus. The younger generation is at the helm charting a new course for the youth. I feel privileged to have been a member of COBA. It was my diasporic family. It taught me when we dance in our own skins, we radiate our personal, spiritual and social currency.
We’re sorry. We’re experiencing technical difficulties and we are unable to display this article. In the meantime, check out this great piece on Black Millennials and the Church.
In this Feb. 9, 2019 photo, Brig. Gen. Milford H. Beagle, Jr. commanding general of Fort Jackson, speaks to the president of the Sgt. Isaac Woodard Historical Marker Association following the dedication ceremony in Batesburg-Leesville, S.C. Beagle, Jr. who now leads the Army’s Fort Jackson in South Carolina is descended from a soldier who served there in a segregated military more than a century ago. (AP Photo/Christina Myers)
Pvt. Walter Beagles arrived at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, in 1918, an African American draftee in a segregated Army that relegated black soldiers to labor battalions out of a prejudiced notion that they couldn’t fight.
More than 100 years later, his great-grandson now serves as the base’s 51st commanding general.
Brig. Gen. Milford Beagle, Jr., a combat veteran who took command last June, admits that it gets to him, knowing he’s serving where his ancestor served but under vastly different circumstances.
“It does become pretty surreal to know that the gates my great-grandfather came through are the same gates I come through,” Beagle said. “You always reflect back to you’re standing on somebody’s shoulders. Somebody put that stair in place so you can move one more rung up.”
Beagle hails from the same town where his great-grandfather came from: Enoree, South Carolina. The family dropped the “s” from the end of its name during his grandfather’s lifetime.
He says he felt compelled to enter the infantry as a young man at least partly because African Americans once were largely shunted aside — considered inferior and unsuited to combat.
“That was one thing I did reflect on. Somebody at some point in time said your particular race can’t do that,” Beagle said. “At some point our ancestors fought so we could be in those front-line units and those combat units.”
Beagle has served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, among his many postings.
His great-grandfather, who died in 1985 at the age of 94, didn’t talk much about his Army service, Beagle said. But the general enlisted the help of Fort Jackson Basic Combat Training Museum director and curator Henry Howe who found more details about Pvt. Beagles’ military service during the Great War.
“Gen. Beagle gave me a copy of his draft card. He did give me a roster of Fort Jackson, but we were able to find out a little bit more information, specifically the days he came in and the units he was with and that he deployed to … France in late 1918,” Howe said.
At Camp Jackson, Beagles would have learned fundamental drills and how to behave as a soldier with the 156th Depot Brigade, but he didn’t get much training in combat arms. He moved into the 346th Labor Battalion where his jobs included loading and unloading ships, building roads and digging ditches — labor intensive work.
“The majority of the African Americans were pushed off into the support units,” Howe said. “Oftentimes, we in the military look at the combat arms as the glory, but it’s overwhelmingly the support people that give the opportunity for victories.”
The Army that Pvt. Beagles served in was highly segregated, as was the wider society, said American studies professor Andrew Myers at University of South Carolina Upstate.
“As Jim Crow became more instituted in the civilian society, you saw the same thing kind of take over the military,” he said.
Racial tensions were high in some towns surrounding U.S. military camps, leading sometimes to violence.
In Houston, Texas, 1917 a clash between police officers and soldiers led to court martials and the execution of 19 African American soldiers.
“The execution … of the colored soldiers implicated in the Houston riot was one of the dark spots on the escutcheon of the Army, but it did not dampen the ardor of the colored men who went to the front for the Stars and Stripes,” Emmett J. Scott noted in his book, “The American Negro in the World War.” Scott was Booker T. Washington’s secretary before becoming a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of War, serving as a liaison between black soldiers and the War Department.
In October 1918, Beagles was deployed to France. The Armistice ending the fighting was signed the following month.
Following the war, Beagles was honorably discharged in January 1919 and returned to his farm. While many cities and towns, including Columbia, South Carolina, hosted parades welcoming back their soldiers, black veterans did not typically get a hero’s welcome.
“Especially in the South as they were discharged and went back to their homes, they encountered a lot of conflict with various people,” Myers said. Some fell victim to whites who objected to seeing black men in U.S. military uniforms. In 1920, the NAACP noted that nine African American retired soldiers had been lynched in 1919.
However, the mistreatment of African American soldiers during World War I was not a story Gen. Beagle heard from his great-grandfather. Instead, he spoke of hard work, courage, strength and integrity — values that his great-grandson says are woven into his family’s history.
“I remember flexing for Great-Grandpa,” Beagle said with a smile on his face. “He was just a great person, down to earth, hard working.” You could tell that by his hands, Beagle said.
Beagle said his great-grandfather and others contributed significantly to this country, without knowing what their contributions would mean to the future of the military — now a place where people of different races work side by side with the same mission, to protect their nation.
If given one more day with his great-grandfather, Beagle said he would show him today’s diverse soldiers in formation during a graduation ceremony.
“I would turn to him and say hey, was it worth it,” Beagle said. “And I’m pretty sure I’d get a big smile back and he’d say it was absolutely worth it.”
I did and did not grow up understanding that many Christian churches follow something called a church calendar. My early years were spent in 
In my early days in ministry, I discovered beauty in them. The ashes for Ash Wednesday services are traditionally burned from the palms used on Palm Sunday. Members of my church brought in the single palm strip they had saved from nearly a year prior. My pastor, decked in barbecue style apron and oven mitt, placed them in a large foil tray and lit them on fire. He tossed them until they became ash and used them to place a cross on our foreheads. Soon enough, the service was over, the congregation had left, and the ministered cleaned the sanctuary. As we left, my pastor whispered to me. “Come back early in the morning. Trust me.” Using my key, I returned at 6:30 am Thursday morning to a strong sweet pungency that hung invisible over the chairs, altar, hallway and musical instruments. All those ashes, given time, smelled amazing! It was … beautiful.
Monica A. Coleman is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in southern California. An ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Coleman has earned degrees at Harvard University, Vanderbilt University and Claremont Graduate University. She has been featured as an expert in religion and mental health on NPR, blogtalkradio, 
