Week of Firsts
Seressia May 16th, 2008
First of all, a big congratulations to romance author Brenda Jackson for being the first black romance author to hit the New York Times extended list at #34 with her black romance novel, Irresistible Forces. It’s the highest opening rank for a series book I believe, so double congrats to her. And she does this while working a day job!
ANother big congratulations goes to Joshua Packwood, 22, for being the first white valedictorian at Morehouse College, a Historically Black College in my town, Atlanta.
Life hasn’t always been easy for Packwood. He grew up in a poor area of Kansas City, Missouri, where he says he found himself gravitating to the black community at a young age.
Adolescence was rough. His mother’s second marriage to a black man ended in divorce and family tension forced him to seek refuge with his best friend’s family - who were black and middle-class.
The experience of living with his best friend’s family had a profound effect on Packwood, who says he saw a “different side of black America.”
He got interested in African American studies and decided that the best way to understand it and learn about it was to experience it honestly, choosing Morehouse over a full scholarship to Columbia University.
“What Morehouse stands for at the end of the day, and what Dr. King epitomized, it’s not about black or white, it’s about the content of [a person’s] character,” says Packwood. “It’s about me, representing Morehouse in that light — not as a white man or a black man.”
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