Duchess Harris's Blog, page 2

Are Michelle Obama or Gabourey Sidibe our only role models?

On September 8, First Lady Michelle Obama traveled to New Orleans to participate in a game of flag football with some kids and even caught a pass. She has teamed up with the NFL's Play 60 clinic, a program that promotes up to 60 minutes a day of exercise for children to curb obesity. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy and New Orleans Saints running back Deuce McAllister were on hand to help out.

"We're here because of you," she told about 70 students f...

Shirley Sherrod for President

Exactly one year ago, I published a book entitled, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton. My publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, has decided to re-print in paperback and they'd like me to change the title to "…from Kennedy to Obama" and add a chapter about the President.

I've been blogging since April 2009 and haven't written much about President Obama, a deliberate choice, because I am reflective in nature.
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By chance, my publisher asked me to write about the Obama administration's treatm...

Sister Law Student Part II: Elena Kagan

(The author wishes to thank Kathleen Wells and Lori Stee)

No one is more delighted than I am that esteemed presidential historian, Annette Gordon-Reed will join the faculty at Harvard Law School. Despite the fact that she was recruited by then Dean Elena Kagan, I respectfully disagree with Charles Ogletree that Elena Kagan is a good choice for the Supreme Court.

Ogletree argues that from 2003 until the end of Kagan's deanship in 2009, the number of African American students matriculating rose...

Race and the law in the age of Stevens & Sotomayer

For the members of William Mitchell's Law Raza Journal Editorial Board, the appointment of Puerto Rican judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination and ascension to the Supreme Court, along with the subsequent news that Justice Stevens is retiring and will be replaced forthwith, are key indicators that affirm the need for this journal.

The significance and the symbolism of the Sotomayor appointment are profound; the first African American president conferring the mantle of Supreme Court Justice on the ...

Incarcerated Motherhood: "Precious" in real life

(The information in this blog has been modified to protect my client and to comply with the Minnesota Rules of Professional Responsibility.)

When I launched my blog a year ago today I wrote, "My goal is to provide legal assistance to disenfranchised women and their families. This will benefit women who are leaving prison, and their children; it will also benefit me, the law student, who is learning how to advocate for them. Women who have been incarcerated need advocates and I know what it's ...

Incarcerate Motherhood: "Precious" in real life

(The information in this blog has been modified to protect my client and to comply with the Minnesota Rules of Professional Responsibility.)

When I launched my blog a year ago today I wrote, "My goal is to provide legal assistance to disenfranchised women and their families. This will benefit women who are leaving prison, and their children; it will also benefit me, the law student, who is learning how to advocate for them. Women who have been incarcerated need advocates and I know what it's ...

Stepping Into Women's History

If anyone asks me, "When did you feel like you had made it?" I know what I'll say. March 4, 2010. A rainy, snowy, and otherwise dreary day in New York. But the day that I gave my first book reading.

For the past twenty years I've been a student of Women's History, I've followed in the footsteps of the magnificent women who pioneered the field, women like Shirley Chisholm, Alice Walker, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Flo Kennedy, and Mary Frances Berry, just to name a few.

And on March 4, I found mys...

Black History Month and Religion: Why Lord?

On February 24th Eddie Glaude, Jr., Ph.D. posted an article on The Huffington Post, "The Black Church is Dead." Glaude, a Christian and Religious Studies Professor at Princeton, reminds us that,

Black America stands at the precipice. African American unemployment is at its highest in 25 years. Thirty-five percent of our children live in poor families. Inadequate healthcare, rampant incarceration, home foreclosures, and a general sense of helplessness overwhelm many of our fellows.

Claude lament...

In the Nov./Dec. issue of Utne Magazine, Alexes Pauline G...

In the Nov./Dec. issue of Utne Magazine, Alexes Pauline Gumbs was recognized as a "media activist" in an article entitled "50 People Who Are Changing Your World." I initially discovered her work in a November 2009 op-ed piece, "The Revolution Will Be Blogged" for Wiretap Magazine, a re-envisioning of Gil Scott Heron's famous 1970's poem/song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

I have to admit, forty definitely feels old when people are recognized for things that you haven't even heard of (me...

Nine Memorable Days between 2000 and 2009

On September 17, 2006 I called my Dad to wish him well. He was going in the hospital the next day to get a fibrillator.

"Are you nervous?" I asked him.

"Not at all," he responded.

So we moved on to talk about our favorite subject: politics. We were both excited for the probable election of Keith Ellison to Congress. Even though my Dad was living in North Carolina, he was following the story every day. I told Dad that I planned to drop off my law school application the next morning, and we wer...