New York Theological Seminary President LaKeesha Walrond on June 25, 2019. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks
Sitting in her office on Manhattan’s far west side, the new president of New York Theological Seminary, the Rev. LaKeesha Walrond, recalled how she once was reprimanded as a youth for crossing the pulpit area of her church during a choir rehearsal.
Back then, she was taught, and believed, that women could not be preachers. After a career as an educator, executive pastor of a Harlem megachurch and, since June 3, the first African American woman president of the 119-year-old seminary, Walrond sees her trajectory as a sign that “God had this plan.”
After serving at First Corinthian Baptist Church, where her husband, the Rev. Michael A. Walrond Jr., is senior pastor, she views her leadership of a 300-student multidenominational seminary focused on urban ministry as a reason for hope for other women.
Walrond, 47, spoke with Religion News Service about her diverse student body, her concerns about child sexual abuse and her support of open-mindedness among her students.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What does it mean to you that you’ve been chosen as the first African American woman president of New York Theological Seminary?
It is such a blessing. It’s such an honor. When I started my career, I was planning on presidency being part of it, but presidency at Spelman College. As I received my call into ministry and began working full time, I thought that would just be one of those dreams that never really came to fruition. So, for me, this feels like a coming together, a fulfillment of possibility and opportunity to work both in ministry and education in a way that transforms humanity.
What were your connections to Spelman?
I did my undergraduate education (there) and my president at the time was Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, and she changed my life forever. She was the first person I ever heard talk about heroes and “sheroes.” And not just history, but “her-story.” She made me believe that I could do absolutely anything. And not only that I could do it, but I had a responsibility to do it.
New York Theological Seminary President LaKeesha Walrond on June 25, 2019. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks
So you did pursue academia in some ways?
Absolutely. I did my master’s in school administration and my Ph.D. in special education and literacy. But I got this call into ministry. We relocated from North Carolina to New York, and I said, “God, you got jokes, right?” (Laughs) ‘Cause now I got to go back to school to get the Master of Divinity so that I can be prepared to preach and teach in our church.
But this kind of merging of the two, it just seems like God had this plan. We talk about how God knows the plans that God has for us, plans to prosper us and not harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future. And so this is that moment for me, where I understand that sometimes in order to receive the dreams or plans that God has for us, we have to be willing to release the dreams and plans we have for ourselves.
There are at least four other African American women leading theological schools and divinity schools. Does that say something about the state of theological education or the growing role of women, including black women, and its future?
One, I think it identifies the importance of diversity within leadership and in our institutions. And, two, we now have more African American women going to divinity schools or theological schools than we’ve ever had before. For them to be able to see a face in leadership that looks like them also opens up the different kinds of possibilities. It speaks to possibility for my daughter, for the daughters coming behind her, that there are still these glass ceilings that need to be broken, and it’s possible to do it in our lifetime.
Your seminary includes students from a wide range of religious and life backgrounds, including some who are incarcerated.
Our Sing Sing (Correctional Facility) program was started by (then-NYTS president) Bill Webber back in 1982. Last year, we graduated our 500th student. The gentleman who represented his class and spoke has a life sentence, but still found our Master of Professional Studies degree to be valuable for his life inside the facility. So not only does that program prepare those men for what’s waiting for them when they re-enter society, it helps them to live and to love and to serve and to mentor and to learn and to grow while they’re there.
You wrote a 2017 book for children called “My Body Is Special.” How will you help your seminarians prepare for work in denominations that are grappling with how to address abuse?
That book is really a testament to my surviving molestation by my stepfather, in my mother’s home. I’m grateful that as soon as she found out about it, she left so that I could grow up in a safe environment. There are so many children out there who have experienced this, particularly within the context of faith, whether at a church or by a minister or a deacon or a trustee or a lay leader. We need to have conversations that prevent this from continuing to happen over and over and over again.
So this book is an act of prevention on my part. It helps children to understand what to say, what to do, where to go and who to tell if they are ever approached in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable. It’s my way of saying hands off our children. Hands off.
How can you help your students develop as leaders who are open to those in circumstances like the ones you faced?
The goal, really, at any educational institution ought be to expand the minds of those who are entering so they can make an informed decision. We’re able also to engage people of other faiths and other traditions so that we can have a better understanding of the belief systems of others as well.
I grew up in a church that did not believe God called women into ministry. When I went to Spelman College I took a class with Dr. Flora Wilson Bridges — “Women and the Bible.” She began to talk about women preachers. And so I’ve come to understand that my pastor back then was doing the best he could with what he had been given. And we have a lot of pastors who are out here doing the best that they can with what they’ve been given.
At NYTS, we hope to give them more so that they can grow from what they already think they know, to understand that God cannot be put in a box. And if we can stop focusing on what we think we know absolutely and be open to the spirit and the movement of God, we’d be surprised of the types of things we can discover.
The weekend before Christmas, Rebecca Alemayehu was volunteering in Tijuana, helping migrants who planned to seek asylum in the United States – something she’d done often.
Up until that weekend, most of the migrants Alemayehu had worked with in Tijuana were Central American or Mexican. But as Alemayehu was walking into the offices of Al Otro Lado that day – the organization with which she was volunteering – she noticed two Eritrean men standing nearby. Alemayehu, whose family is Habesha from Ethiopia, made eye contact with the men. They bowed their heads toward each other – a greeting.
It turned out the men spoke some Amharic, a language spoken in Ethiopia that many Eritreans also speak or understand, as the countries neighbor one another.
The men explained they had been waiting in Tijuana for weeks. There was a large group of them in a hotel in Tijuana, he told her. He went to get the others and they came back to the offices.
That’s when Alemayehu began to realize just how many Eritreans were in Tijuana. She met about 25 that day and was told that there were probably around 100 in the city at the time.
But the Eritreans – and many black asylum-seekers, particularly those from Africa – remain under the radar in Tijuana.
They haven’t tapped into many of the resources available to Central American and Mexican migrants for a variety of reasons, including language and other cultural barriers. They also encounter unique hurdles when navigating the asylum process in the United States.
“When you think of migration and the border, you’re thinking Central Americans,” Alemayehu said. “You don’t think of black migrants.”
Instead of staying at shelters for migrants in Tijuana, they often pool their money to live in hotels – many of them in dangerous parts of the city, where they stay several people to a room.
Central Americans still remain the highest numbers, by far, of migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border. But the share of migrants from other countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, has been growing. They now make up just under 10 percent of total migrant detentions in Mexico. The number of Africans overall has fluctuated over the past five years, but migrants from Eritrea, Cameroon, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo made up the highest proportions in 2019. So far this year, there have been 1,044 detentions of African migrants in Mexico.
Since that weekend, Alemayehu has been trying to find Eritrean asylum-seekers in Tijuana. She’s been gathering community support online to help them with food and shelter, traveling around the United States to press their asylum cases and working with other organizations to try and get them legal counsel while they’re in Mexico. She and several other attorneys and advocates, including groups like the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the Haitian Bridge Alliance, are trying to marshal resources for and shed light on black migrants from Africa and the Caribbean.
The number of Haitians arriving in Tijuana was much larger in 2015 and 2016 than the number of African migrants has ever been, said Guerline Jozef of Haitian Bridge Alliance. Some Haitians decided to stay in Tijuana, rather than go to the United States, and start lives there. Now there is some infrastructure for Haitian migrants in Tijuana – churches, a shelter and a community where they can seek help. African migrants have no such community to turn to because their numbers have always been smaller and because most haven’t chosen to put down roots in Tijuana.
Cameroonians have been able to access the Haitian community to some extent because like the Haitians, they speak French. Some have signed up for Spanish classes at places like Espacio Migrante in Tijuana that work with Haitian and other migrants, while they wait to seek asylum in the United States. But most Eritreans speak Tigrinya – and sometimes other languages, like Amharic – that aren’t as widely spoken.
“Their guard is up,” Alemayehu said. “They’ve been through a lot already – they’ve seen people die on the journey. They’ve been robbed at gunpoint, raped. On top of that, they’re thinking, ‘There’s no one who speaks my language or looks like me.’”
Jozef and Alemayehu are trying to bridge some of those cultural gaps to bring all the black migrants into a community in Tijuana. It’s been difficult to build trust between the advocates and asylum-seekers, but their trips to Tijuana every few weeks have started to pay off.
“When it comes to the black migrants, there is no spotlight on their ordeal,” Jozef said. “We have to literally go find them, which is very disconcerting and heartbreaking. We have a community of black migrants since 2015 who have never been a central focus of the immigrant justice movement. There is a lack of narrative. Therefore, there are no services for them.”
Kidane Tesfagabriel often gets calls from Eritreans in Mexico.
Tesfagabriel is an Eritrean who came to San Diego as a refugee in the 1980s. He began working with a local immigration attorney, Nanya Thompson, as a translator about two years ago after she took on one of his cousin’s asylum cases.
Word spread that he helped Eritreans at the border, translating and visiting them in detention. He would get calls to pick people up from detention. They would spend a night or so at his house before getting on a bus or plane to meet family elsewhere in the country. When he got desperate calls from some young Eritreans who were homeless in Tijuana, sleeping on the street near the border while they waited for their turn to request asylum, he would bring them blankets and money.
Long waits to request asylum in Tijuana began a few years ago, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers began taking in a limited number of people each day, citing capacity issues.
In April 2018, as a Central American caravan arrived, an unofficial system sprung up in which migrants write their names in a notebook, which dictates the order in which they can request asylum in the U.S. Each morning, numbers are called from the notebook, which is managed by migrants in El Chaparral – the Tijuana side of the San Ysidro West Port of Entry border crossing – and whoever’s numbers are called can request asylum that day.
Several weeks ago, Tesfagabriel got a call from a young Eritrean man in Tijuana. He was with a group of about 10 other men in a hotel. They were running out of money and still appeared to have a weeks-long wait before it would be their turn to request asylum. Someone had given them Tesfagabriel’s phone number.
Tesfagabriel and I went to meet the men that weekend.
Some of them had been there for a month, some for two weeks.
The Eritrean men told us – in Tigrinya translated to English by Tesfagabriel – that they’d been told the wait would be three weeks, but they felt that there was something off about how the numbers were being called and that their turn was being pushed back.
They were paying 300 pesos a night – roughly $15 – for their room, and were running low on money. They can’t work legally in Mexico. Some had family in the United States who would send them money every so often that they would pool.
“When one of us gets money, we share it, all of us,” said one of the men, who spoke a little English. Voice of San Diego is withholding the names of the men because of security issues in Tijuana and since they are seeking asylum in the United States.
The conditions in the hotel were bad, they said. But it was cheap.
The men were all between 21 and 34 years old. They were escaping mandatory military service in Eritrea.
Eritrea’s leader, who has been in power for decades, instituted compulsory military service in 1995. Everyone under the age of 50 is enlisted for an indefinite period, many living in vast barracks in the desert, where they earn little money and can be indiscriminately punished, including at times being tortured. The United Nations has said the indefinite military service amounts to mass enslavement.
Eritrea’s authoritarian government tortures, forcibly disappears and indefinitely detains its citizens, who lack an array of civil rights and freedoms, according to the State Department’s 2018 report on human rights in the country. Nearly half a million Eritreans have fled in recent years, according to the UN.
Most of the men said they escaped to Ethiopia or Sudan, then flew to Brazil and made the journey to Tijuana through Central America and Mexico, including the deadly, dense jungle in the Darien Gap of Panama.
As the men were telling their stories, Tesfagabriel began to cry. Many of them are his son’s age.
“Things are really, really bad in that country,” he told me after we left them. “It is really destroying the people.”
A week later, Tesfagabriel and Alemayehu returned to help the men. But the owners of the hotel told them the men had suddenly checked out the night before. It’s possible they left because they had been threatened or robbed and were fearful to remain there or that they had checked out to cross the border, Alemayehu said. Security concerns in Tijuana, a lack of money and the uncertainty of when asylum-seekers will be able to cross can keep migrants constantly in flux, often trying to keep a low profile.
They spent all day walking around Tijuana trying to find them.
They never did.
Tesfagabrial went to El Chaparral twice that week, hoping to run into them as they waited for their numbers to be called.
He never did.
Long Detentions and Tough Cases Await on the Other Side
Eritreans have a long history of seeking refuge in the United States. Roughly 25 percent of Eritrean asylum-seekers’ claims are denied, according to the Transactional Records Clearing House at Syracuse University. That’s a lower denial rate than other nationalities, like Mexicans, Hondurans or Guatemalans.
Japann Tesfay Yared is one of them. His denial illustrates some of the systemic barriers Eritreans have to overcome to gain asylum.
Tesfay Yared, who is now 22, arrived in Tijuana in August 2017. He fled Eritrea after being harassed and threatened by the government because they were looking for his father, who had left long ago. Tesfay Yared said he was jailed repeatedly, though he had no knowledge of his father’s whereabouts.
“If I go back to my country, they will kill me or they will put me in the jail for a long time,” he told me.
He spent one year and seven months in detention at the Otay Mesa Detention Center waiting for his case. He is now living with his half-sister in Ohio, who had come as a refugee.
Refugees at United Nations camps come to the United States through a separate process. There are caps on how many refugees the United States will take each year. There is no cap on asylum-seekers and they can come from anywhere in the world, but they need to set foot on U.S. soil and express fear of returning to their country.
Eritrea has refused to receive Eritreans deported from the U.S. and in September 2017, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would stop issuing a wide range of U.S. visas to Eritreans as a response.
Because of this, even though Tesfay Yared lost his case, the United States hasn’t yet deported him. He has an ankle monitor and regular check-ins with local Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
“I’m not a criminal,” Tesfay Yared said of the ankle monitor. “I’m not a drug guy. I’m not a killer. It’s a very big shame. I can’t meet with people, my friends, my family.”
Thompson, who represented Tesfay Yared in his appeal, said judges have a lot of leeway and often don’t take into account cultural differences or the way people deal with trauma.
“Credibility is the No. 1 reason why people are denied,” Thompson said.
It often comes down to perceived inconsistencies in an asylum-seeker’s testimony or simply a perception of their demeanor while they’re recounting the circumstances that led them to flee, she said. That could mean someone doesn’t cry while telling a border official their story or that someone says their mom is a doctor when she’s actually a nurse because in their culture, there isn’t any meaningful distinction.
In early interviews, before he had an attorney, Tesfay Yared simply said he’d received threats. He later specified that they were death threats, but the immigration judge in his case viewed that as a discrepancy and used it to question the credibility of his case. Tesfay Yared represented himself while in detention and lost. His family then hired Thompson for the appeal, but lost that effort, too.
Identification issues also come up often with Eritreans. You can’t get an ID in Eritrea until you turn 18, and Tesfay Yared left before his 18th birthday.
His mother had also left the country, and Tesfay Yared tried to use her UN High Commission on Refugees documentation to prove his identity, but because of translation issues, her name is spelled slightly differently on her national identity card and the UNHCR record. Another discrepancy.
Alemayehu said in general, translators are also a reason why Eritreans and other African migrants lose their cases. Translators and attorneys who speak languages like Tigrinya or Amharic are rare.
“It’s a struggle,” Alemayhu said. “These cases shouldn’t be lost.”
Maya Srikrishnan is a reporter for Voice of San Diego. She writes about the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration issues in San Diego County. She can be reached at [email protected].
Former Boston Red Sox infielder Elijah “Pumpsie” Green, the first black player on the last major league team to field one, has died. He was 85.
The Red Sox said Green, who lived in California most of his life, died Wednesday at in a hospital in San Leandro, near Oakland; no cause of death was immediately available. The team observed a moment of silence before its game against the Toronto Blue Jays.
“Pumpsie Green occupies a special place in our history,” Red Sox owner John Henry said. “He was, by his own admission, a reluctant pioneer, but we will always remember him for his grace and perseverance in becoming our first African-American player. He paved the way for the many great Sox players of color who followed. For that, we all owe Pumpsie a debt of gratitude.”
A light-hitting second baseman and shortstop, Green brought baseball’s segregation era to an end of sorts when he entered a game against the Chicago White Sox as a pinch-runner for Vic Wertz on July 21, 1959 — more than a dozen years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Green joined the team on a road trip and had played nine games before taking the field at Fenway Park for the first time. Green said this year in an interview with NESN, the Red Sox TV network, that he remembered receiving a standing ovation when he came to the plate, batting leadoff.
“It was heart-warming and nerve-wracking,” he told reporters in 1997, when he returned to Boston to take part in ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of Robinson’s debut. “But I got lucky: I hit a triple off the left-center fence.”
Born in Boley, Oklahoma, he moved with his family to California at a young age and met his wife Marie Presley at Contra Costa Junior College. He made his professional baseball debut at 19 years old for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League and was named the California League’s Most Valuable Player in 1955.
The Red Sox purchased his contract, and he attended his first spring training with the club in ’56. He was added to the club’s 40-man roster in September of 1958.
Green didn’t have the talent of Hall of Famers like Robinson and Larry Doby, who was the first black player in the American League. The Red Sox infielder reached the majors as a role player, just once playing more than 88 games, and never hitting more than six homers or batting better than .278.
Green played parts of four seasons with the Red Sox before finishing his career with one year on the New York Mets. In all, he batted .246 with 13 homers and 74 RBIs.
But his first appearance in a Boston uniform ended baseball’s ugliest chapter, and the fact that it took the Red Sox so long left a stain on the franchise — and a void in the trophy case — it is still trying to erase.
The Red Sox had a chance to sign Robinson in 1945, before the Dodgers, and Hall of Famer Willie Mays a few years later; they chose not to, decisions that help explain the 86-year World Series championship drought that didn’t end until 2004. Last year, acknowledging the poor racial record of longtime owner Thomas A. Yawkey, the team expunged his name from the street outside the ballpark.
A few days after Green was called up, the Red Sox added Earl Wilson, a black pitcher. Green said there was an informal quota system that required teams to have an even number of black players so they would have someone to room with on the road.
They were among the few blacks in the clubhouse, the front office or the crowd, Green said in ’97.
“Most of the time it was just me,” he said. “It was almost an oddity when you saw a black person walking around the stands.”
But unlike Robinson, Green said, he received no death threats. “It was mostly insults,” he said then.
“But you can get those at any ballpark at any time,” he said. “I learned to tune things out.”
Green returned to northern California after his baseball career ended and earned a degree in physical education from San Francisco State. He worked as a counselor and coach at Berkeley High School before retiring in the 1990s.
The Red Sox honored him again on Jackie Robinson Day in 2009 and ’12, but he was unable to attend the ceremony in 2018 when his debut was recognized as a historic moment by the Red Sox Hall of Fame.
Upon his return to Fenway in ’97, he noticed that things had improved but still saw work to be done.
“Baseball still has its problems, and so does society,” Green said. “I don’t believe things are that much better in baseball or society. Hopefully, it will be shortly.”
Green is survived by his wife of 62 years, Marie; one of three brothers, Cornell Green, was a star safety for the Dallas Cowboys. He had one daughter, Heidi; his son, Jerry, died last year. He had two granddaughters and four great grandsons.
Do you feel like nutritionists are always changing their minds? Do you want science-based information about diet but don’t know whom or what to believe?
If you’re nodding in agreement, you’re not alone: More than 80% of Americans are befuddled.
Yet it’s a lament that’s getting quite tiring – if you’re a nutrition scientist, that is. So much so that I refocused my career to shine scientific light on today’s critical food conversations, which have profound impacts on public health and the environment. My mantra: From farm to fork, what we eat matters.
In fact, did you know that 80% of chronic diseases are preventable through modifiable lifestyle changes, and diet is the single largest contributing factor?
Science says plants are better for you and our planet
Scientists agree plant-based diets are better for both you and the planet. casanisa/shutterstock.com
Clean eating or keto? Paleo or gluten-free? Whole 30 or vegan? Forget fad diets, because science has the answers – there is far more agreement about diet and health than you may know. The scientific report from the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, for example, concluded that a plant-based diet is best for human health and the environment alike. More than 75% of your meal should comprise vegetables, fruits and whole grains, and protein sources should include beans, peas, nuts, seeds and soy.
While it may sound like a fad, a “plant-based” diet has been studied for decades. Awareness escalated as it addresses two urgent public health challenges: the chronic disease epidemic and the climate change crisis. It’s a win-win for human health and the environment. Plant-based diets can be adapted to suit your taste preferences, traditions and cultures, as the Blue Zones, or regions of the world where people typically live longer than average and with fewer chronic diseases, indicate.
If science has the keys to a health-promoting, disease-preventing, planet-saving diet, why are people so confused? A closer look will arm you with the skills to sort fact from fiction.
Celebrities garner enormous platforms, often clouding the truth (or drowning it completely); the deal between Netflix and Gwyneth Paltrow, whose company Goop was sued over a certain jade egg, suggests that science is losing the battle.
One needn’t be a celebrity to hold sway, however. A list of the Top 100 influencers showed that most were bloggers or athletes with no expertise. (None were scientists.) These voices gain considerable traction on social media. Health Feedback, a network of scientists who review the accuracy of online content, conducted a study with the Credibility Coalition and found a minority of articles received a positive rating, with most “exaggerating the benefits and harms of various foods.”
And science journalism has taken a hit, and is perhaps why CNN interviewed an anti-science zealot. Or why the Los Angeles Times tweeted that there’s a “growing belief” about the health benefits of celery juice. (Pro tip: It’s not a thing.)
Nonetheless, there are knowledge gaps: 57% of Americans have never seen the dietary illustration from the U.S. Department of Agriculture called MyPlate or know little about it, and 63% reported it was hard to recognize sustainable choices. Shoppers also claimed that identifying healthy food was difficult (11%) or moderate (61%). Unsurprising, perhaps, since 48% looked to crowded food packages for guidance: Some labels are meaningful while others are little more than marketing. (All natural, anyone?) Indeed, powerful food and agriculture lobbies still exert influence on dietary guidelines and obscure the science.
Through all of this, I believe the nutrition science community has tacitly contributed by failing to participate collectively in the public discourse. Nor have we adequately defended our discipline when attacked, whether by journalists, physicians or food writers.
Changing the conversation
Potent societal powers create a culture of nutrition confusion that not only obfuscate the truth about diet, they undermine science as a whole. Three steps will help eaters navigate this rocky terrain.
Begin by asking critical questions when digesting diet news. Does the writer have an advanced degree in nutrition, or does she or he have expertise in science journalism? Are there references to peer-reviewed studies or scientific organizations? Is the source credible? Are miracle cures or quick results promised? Are there expensive price tags for magic bullets? Does it sound like clickbait? Questioning the who-what-where-why-how is paramount.
Second, remember that what flits through our newsfeeds often comes via algorithms that enable news to careen through our echo chambers and elicit confirmation bias, factual or not. Offline, too, we are more likely to share beliefs with friends and family, our tribe. Getting curious about what you eat and why it matters beyond your comfort zone is necessary: You may need to “unlearn what you have learned.”
Finally, try this on for size: Nutrition. Isn’t. Confusing. We all have cherished traditions and values – what we eat isn’t just about the science. (At least, I hope not.) But it is time to learn the fundamental food and nutrition facts that will inspire you to harness the power of food to promote health, prevent disease and protect the planet. Change is possible – and the truth is out there.
