black leaders – Transracial Journeys

Black Excellence – Rachel Noerdlinger

Rachel Noerdlinger was born in 1970 in New Mexico, and adopted by white parents as a baby. Noerdlinger has made significant contributions in public relations and social justice. Known for her tenacity and expertise, she served as the Chief of Staff for New York City’s First Lady, Chirlane McCray, where she advocated for social programs and community empowerment. Noerdlinger also played a key role in organizing national events, including the public communications for George Floyd’s funeral, demonstrating her commitment to civil rights and social justice. She later became a partner at Mercury Public Affairs, marking her as the firm’s first Black woman partner—a groundbreaking achievement that speaks to her influence and leadership in the industry.

Noerdlinger speaks openly about how being a transracial adoptee has shaped her views on identity and belonging. She has spoken candidly about the nuances of transracial adoption, which has been a source of insight into the complexities of race and family. Her openness on this topic has been inspiring to many who face similar experiences, offering perspectives on self-acceptance and resilience. Noerdlinger has advocated for understanding and empathy, urging others to look beyond stereotypes and foster real conversations around race and inclusion.

Noerdlinger’s voice has been a guiding one for social justice and advocacy. She has expressed the importance of diversity, urging organizations to genuinely listen to communities rather than respond only in times of crisis. Her fearless approach to addressing tough issues and her drive for inclusivity have made her a respected figure. Her career reflects a commitment to making a positive impact, using her platform to challenge systemic inequities and advocate for underrepresented communities.

Noerdlinger’s latest venture is becoming partner at Actum, LLC, a leading communications and strategy firm that works with individuals, politicians, companies and organizations with advocacy mobilization, government relations, storytelling and narrative development and much more.

Learn more:

April Dinwoodie’s interview with Rachel Noerdlinger in 2018

PR and Media Activist Rachel Noerdlinger Stands on the Frontlines of Social Justice

Rachel Noerdlinger Makes History as the First Black Woman to be Named Partner at Mercury

Photo credits to: Rachel Noerdlinger

Black Excellence: Keegan-Michael Key

Keegan-Michael Key is an actor, comedian, writer and producer, known for his sharp social satire and innovative sketches in shows like Key & Peele, which he co-created and starred in with Jordan Peele, and Schmigadoon, as well as his work in television, film and on Broadway.

Key was born in Detroit, Michigan, to parents Carrie Herr and Leroy McDuffie. He was adopted at a young age by Patricia Walsh and Michael Key. His mother of origin and his adoptive mothers are white, and his father of origin and his adoptive father are Black. Being biracial and raised in a biracial household played a significant role in his upbringing and helped shape his understanding of identity and race, themes that often appear in his work.

Being biracial and raised in a biracial household played a significant role in his upbringing and helped shape his understanding of identity and race, themes that often appear in his work.

In interviews, Key has shared that his adoption journey and being biracial gave him clarity about identity from an early age. He learned to appreciate the diverse perspectives of both communities, and this duality helped him find empathy and understanding in his personal and professional life. He has said that his background allows him to see situations from multiple points of view, which has influenced his approach to comedy, particularly in exploring social and racial dynamics. Key has also mentioned that his experiences with adoption and race helped him develop resilience and self-awareness, giving him the tools to address topics like race, identity and privilege with nuance and humor in his work on Key & Peele and beyond.

For more from Keegan-Michael Key:

On adoption: https://youtu.be/XlQV7P6yj-M?si=5En-fE2K6hhCcdhT

On comedy: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/10/1204833725/keegan-michael-key-breaks-down-how-he-sets-up-a-joke

Black Excellence: Colin Kaepernick

On August 26, 2016, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took his first knee during the national anthem at an NFL preseason game. This action was part of his protest against racial inequality and police brutality in the Unites States. His actions made the whole country pay attention, and helped ignite the national debates around Black Lives Matter and what role athletes can play in social activism, as well as the meaning of patriotic gestures during sports and elsewhere.

After the 2016 season, he lost his position as an NFL player, and no team has been willing to let him play since. He has continued his advocacy work, including community outreach and education initiatives.

Kaepernick’s resolve and bravery, to be one of the most visible leaders in contemporary efforts to end police brutality and race discrimination, and his willingness to risk his job and passion, have inspired people all over the world.

Colin Kaepernick is also transracially adopted. He grew up with his adoptive family and excelled in sports, played college football at the University of Nevada, Reno, and was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 2011. Kaepernick feels a strong connection to his biological roots, and has spoken openly about the complexities of identity and cultural heritage, and has used his platform to advocate for greater awareness of adoption issues and the importance of embracing diverse backgrounds. His upbringing has had an important impact on his social activism.

To Learn More:

Colin Kaepernick: Hopes of a 2022 NFL Comeback, from I am Athlete:

Change the Game, written by Colin Kaepernick, with Eve L. Ewing, illustrated by Orlando Caicedo: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0Z8YawR1Ae/?igsh=Z2lkeTF4eW1kd2Vo
Colin Kaepernick describes how he embraced his blackness as a teenager, from NPR 2023: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/08/1161925892/colin-kaepernick-nfl-graphic-novel-teen-identity

Photo credits:

Ted S. Warren-AP/Shutterstock.com
Blair Getz Mezibov Qiu
Blair Getz Mezibov Qiu

Black Excellence: Viola Davis

Viola Davis is a highly acclaimed American actress known for her powerful performances on stage and screen. She was born on August 11, 1965, in St. Matthews, South Carolina.

She is known for her impactful roles in movies like “Doubt” in 2008, “The Help” in 2011, “Fences” in 2016, and “Windows” in 2018. She is also a trailblazer in the entertainment industry for being vocal about addressing issues related to racism, gender inequality and representation in Hollywood. Davis has used her platform to emphasize the importance of telling stories from historically ignored, erased or tokenized communities. She has highlighted the importance of creating opportunities for actors and filmmakers from marginalized communities to share their stories and be seen on screen. She is an outspoken supporter of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the need to end police brutality. She is a strong supporter of arts education programs, and believes in the transformative power of the arts.

Viola Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, adopted her daughter, Genesis Tennon, in 2011, and has been open about her experiences as a mother and the joys and challenges of parenthood.

Davis has spoken about the significance of raising Genesis with a deep understanding of her heritage and roots, acknowledging the importance of cultural pride and self-acceptance.

She wrote the book, “Corduroy Takes a Bow,” a picture book illustrated by Jody Wheeler. The story follows Corduroy the bear and his friends as they find the excitement, magic and friendship in theater.

Learn more:

Viola Davis: “My Entire Life Has Been a Protest”

Photo Credits:
Viola Davis
Dario Calmese

Black Excellence: Austin Channing Brown

“The work of anti-racism is the work of becoming a better human to other humans. We are saying: I think you have capacity to be a better human, would you accept that invitation? And I can’t tell you how often the response is, ‘But I would rather just be nice and polite if that’s okay.’”

-Austin Channing Brown, from an interview with Brene Brown, 2020

Photos: credit Austin Channing Brown

Austin Channing Brown is a prominent voice in the world of anti-racism and justice work. Brown challenges societal norms and sheds light on the complexities of navigating race in America. She gives practical insight into breaking down how we go about doing anti-racism work in our own lives without putting the burden of white education onto black people.

As a speaker and advocate, Brown travels extensively, engaging audiences with her compelling storytelling and thought-provoking insights. Through her work, she emphasizes the importance of confronting uncomfortable truths about race and privilege, fostering authentic dialogue, and actively pursuing equity and justice. Brown's approach is both empowering and compassionate, encouraging individuals and organizations to confront bias and work towards meaningful change.

Photos: credit Austin Channing Brown

Her acclaimed book, "I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness," offers a poignant narrative of her own journey as a black woman, grappling with identity, belonging and systemic racism.

Austin Channing Brown is involved in various initiatives aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion in workplaces, schools and communities. Her work serves to inspire introspection and action, challenging individuals and institutions to dismantle systems of oppression and cultivate environments where all people are valued and respected.

Austin Channing Brown's impact resonates far beyond her written words, inspiring countless individuals to embark on their own journeys towards understanding and dismantling racism.

Black Excellence: Taraji P. Henson – Actress

Taraji P. Henson began her professional acting career in the late 90’s after graduating from HBCU, Howard University. For nearly three decades she has lite up our screens with her talent and grace. She has won a Golden Globe Award as well as being nominated for an Academy Award and four Primetime Emmy Awards.

Taraji made her film debut in the crime film Streetwise (1998), gained recognition for her role in Hustle & Flow (2005). For her role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button she earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2016, she portrayed mathematician Katherine Johnson in Hidden Figures. She has also acted in Baby Boy (2001), The Karate Kid (2010), Think Like a Man (2012), Acrimony (2018), What Men Want (2019), and The Best of Enemies (2019). Henson has also been prolific in television acting. From 2011 to 2013, she co-starred as Joss Carter in the CBS drama series Person of Interest. From 2015 to 2020, she starred as Cookie Lyon in the Fox drama series Empire, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama and was nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards in 2015 and 2016. Her other Emmy-nominated roles were for the Lifetime movie Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story (2011) and for her guest role in the ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary (2023). In 2016, Time named Henson one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Later that year, she released a New York Times best-selling autobiography titled Around the Way Girl. In 2019, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Most recently, Taraji stars in the Color Purple playing Shug Avery, the beautiful, vivacious, and flamboyant blues singer. For this role, Henson adds singer to her list of gifts and talents she shares with the world. During the media interviews for the film, Henson has been vocal about the heavy lift that professional Black women have in Hollywood (and generally) and the inequities in pay they face. “I’m just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do, getting paid a fraction of the cost,” Henson told Gayle King on December 19. “I’m tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over. You get tired. I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ I have to.”

The beauty, strength and grace from Taraji P. Henson is Black excellence personified and there are so many reasons to hold her up as an example for us all.

Black Excellence: Marcus Samuelsson

Marcus Samuelsson is a renowned chef, restaurateur, and author who has made a significant impact on the culinary world. Born in Ethiopia in 1971, he and his sister were adopted and raised in Sweden by parents who taught him confidence and humility. Samuelsson's empowering perspective on the power of blackness has given him the motivation and strength to stand out among his peers, while his multicultural background has been a driving force behind his innovative and diverse approach to food.

After honing his skills in several European restaurants, Samuelsson moved to the United States, where he gained prominence and has become widely recognized for his commitment to celebrating the rich tapestry of flavors and culinary traditions from around the world, blending his African, Swedish, and American influences into his cooking.

Samuelsson is a prolific author of books including a memoir, "Yes, Chef," which chronicles his journey from losing his mother to a tuberculosis epidemic that swept their village to becoming a celebrated chef and TV personality in the United States. As a Black chef in a predominantly White culinary industry, he has confronted challenges related to racism and discrimination, and he has used his platform to address these issues. Samuelsson has spoken about the disparities in opportunities and recognition that Black chefs and culinary professionals face, and throughout his career Samuelsson has worked to create opportunities for underrepresented groups in the culinary world.

Samuelsson uses food as a way to bridge cultural gaps and challenge stereotypes, and believes that his passion for cooking and the respect for hard work his parents taught him have helped him rise above the insecurities that can come from navigating life as a transracially adopted, Black, African immigrant.

By openly addressing racism, celebrating diversity, and advocating for change, Marcus Samuelsson has not only become a respected and influential chef but also a role model for those who aspire to overcome obstacles and contribute to a more inclusive and equitable world.

Learn more:

Watch Marcus Samuelsson speak with April and friend Louis Johnson in this powerful interview: Talking Adoption, Identity, and Family with Chef Marcus Samuelsson and guest-host Louis Johnson Jr.

Black Excellence: Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt is known for popularizing the iconic Christmas song, “Santa Baby,” as well as her role as Catwoman in the 1960s tv show, Batman. But she was so much more. Her career spanned almost 70 years, and most of those were during a time when racism and sexism created insurmountable obstacles for any Black and Native American woman pursuing a career of any kind.

Born in 1927 in South Carolina. Her mother was a Black and Cherokee sharecropper and her father, the white son of the plantation owner, did not seek a consensual relationship with her mother. Kitt picked cotton before moving to Harlem when she was 16, where she became a dancer and toured with the Katherine Dunham Company for five years.

Eartha Kitt wore a literal mask in her role as Catwoman, but how many other invisible masks did she wear in her life? Code switching is a form of masking that many find helpful while navigating workplaces and social gatherings where respectability politics control whether or not you will encounter discrimination.

Kitt went on to perform on Broadway, become a popular singer and recording artist, be nominated for two Tony Awards, write three autobiographies, and was an actor and voice actor in film and tv right up until just before her death in 2008. It’s impossible to endure the rejection (perceived or real) of a parent, the violence and discrimination caused by racism and sexism, and grow as a creative public figure without hiding parts of yourself nearly constantly in some way. But Eartha Kitt also generously took her masks off in order to advocate for marginalized groups, despite intense political and economic consequences. Most notable are her ongoing public support of the LGBTQ+ community as well as the time when she spoke against the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon in 1968. These remarks effectively ended her career in the United States for ten years, during which time her LGBT supporters kept her name alive.

Kitt performed in numerous nightclubs and was active in Civil Rights communities throughout her life. Eartha Kitt was a strong, independent artist unwilling to let discrimination dictate how far she could go.

Each person in the transracial adoption community has potentially many intersections of identity to navigate in a world that often does not honor all of them at once, and at times none at all. When is it good to have a mask on and use it as a tool? For preserving energy, for protection or for art or even just for fun?

Learn more:
● When Eartha Kitt Condemned Poverty and War at the White House
● 1982 Documentary: All By Myself, The Eartha Kitt Story
● NYT Obituary: Eartha Kitt, A Seducer of Audiences, Dies at 81

Books, Books and More Books featuring Black protagonists!

by Avril McInally and Vicki Richards

August is the month we prepare our children for going back to school and April’s August card for Facing and Embracing Differences of Race and Culture asks some introspective questions that might prepare our families for the school year to come.

What can you do to better prepare me for what I might face at school?
How do you think your experiences in school were different from mine?

To help us adults to remember and to introduce our children to a range of possibilities and experiences that might unfold for them in the academic year ahead, we choose to focus on differences of race and culture via our recently-launched Transracial Journeys Bibliography. This bibliography has been a year in the making and prepared for our families by myself (a professional adult librarian) and my friend and colleague Vicki Richards, a professional children’s librarian. From birth through adulthood, we’ve curated a collection of titles that share experiences (fictitiously and non-fictitiously) that touch on topics and stories shared from the perspective of African Americans. Whenever we could find them, we also included stories and experiences of adoption, fostering, blended families, and LGBTQ+ people. There isn’t a lot out there about adoption, but there is more now than there has been in the past. Vicki and I are searching for more for next year’s bibliography.

In this Transracial Journeys Bibliography 2023, back-to-school and school themes are prevalent as stories like the following unfold:

Vanessa in “Becoming Vanessa” grapples with her name on the first day of school
“Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn” depicts a multicultural society experiencing the change of season
“Henry at Home” illustrates what happens between siblings when one of them leaves home for the first time to attend kindergarten
In “Class Act” we see our Black protagonist enter 9th grade in a mostly white school
Dax Devlon-Ross in “Letters to My White Male Friends” shares a lot about transitioning from an all Black school to an all white private school as a child in D.C.. His memoir imparts glimpses into racial situations our own children might be navigating but don’t want to talk about.

In most of the fiction for teens or young adults, there are lots of school scenarios depicting not only first love but also attending Black Lives Matter marches or children coping with racism and/or bullying.

Between us, Vicki and I have read every single title on this bibliography and either one or both of us has wholeheartedly endorsed the books that made it to our list. It’s in your hands to promote, support and share this growing, beautiful body of Black authors and illustrators. It’s in your power to create a reading experience for your children populated with bedtime stories, humor, comics, memoirs and literary experiences featuring Black characters and protagonists. There is a literary African American canon, unfolding and building momentum, of authors and illustrators we should be sharing with all of our children (Black and white). It would be a loss to not grow up experiencing the books of Kadir Nelson, Sharon Flake, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Sharon Draper, Kwame Alexander, Justin Reynolds, Jason Reynolds or L.L. McKinney to name a few.

It’s our hope that you not only share these titles with your children, but that you (the grown ups) read them too in order to get some insight into the landscapes our children navigate away from home and away from us (their parents, their teachers, their neighbors, etc.). We also would ask that you share these books with non Black or non adopted children and adults to help promote more understanding of the sometimes invisible challenges of racism or phobias our children encounter. These books help us get back to Facing and embracing differences of race and culture. Sometimes this embrace can be as simple as cracking open a book, turning the page and sharing it with a loved one.

With a love of and wonder in reading,

Vicki Richards and Avril McInally

(click here to open/print/download Transracial Journeys Bibliography 2023)

Black Excellence: Victor Hugo Green

Victor Hugo Green and The Travelers’ Green Book

“There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.”

Born in Manhattan, New York City in 1892, Victor Hugo Green grew up to become a postal carrier with the U.S. postal service. He married Alma Duke, a woman from Richmond, Virginia, and they settled in Harlem at the same time the Harlem Renaissance was blossoming.

Mr. Green had spent most of his life in Hackensack, NJ and in New York City, but after his marriage, he began to travel to Richmond with his wife. He then realized the need to find safe places to stay, eat, use the toilet and put gas in his car while on his travels, and he realized a lot of other people had this same need too. It was then, he had the idea of creating a small guidebook to not only support Black-owned businesses, but also to support the safety of Black travelers and holiday-goers in the United States.

“He found a model for his publication in the guides for Jewish travelers that appeared in Jewish newspapers.” His first installation of the “Green Book” appeared as “The Negro Motorist Green Book” in 1936. The first edition was a small, 15-page booklet which listed businesses that were Black-owned and/or friendly to Black travelers and diners. It included places to stay and places to eat. “By the early 1940s, thousands of establishments nationwide - identified as either black-owned or verified to be non-discriminatory - were listed in the Green Book.”

Over the years, the guide grew to cover much more territory in the United States as well as as places in Canada and Europe. Using the nationwide help of fellow postal carriers, he used their input to expand and promote safe travel for Black people in the Jim Crow era.

“By the early 1940s, thousands of establishments nationwide - identified as either black-owned or verified to be non-discriminatory - were listed in the Green Book.” Although the guide ceased publication during WWII, it was re-started and eventually grew to have a print run of 15,000 copies per year. Mr. Green died in 1960, but his wife continued as editor publishing the guide until its cessation in 1966.

You can watch a short video about the impact of The Green Book and some of the experiences of Black travelers in the 20th century here: The real story of the Green Book.

Learn more:

Photo Credit: Ted S. Warren-AP/Shutterstock.com

Photo Credit: Blair Getz Mezibov Qiu

Colin Kaepernick Changes the Game

To Learn More:

Victor Hugo Green and The Travelers’ Green Book