Looking back on the organization’s ten year anniversary, Founder and CEO Susan Taylor of the National Cares Mentoring Movement hosts The HistoryMakers Year in Review—2010. The year offered robust STEM programming as part of The HistoryMakers ScienceMakers program funded by the National Science Foundation. It was the year that Ariel Investments Founder and Chairman John Rogers was honored in A Night With John Rogers. It was also the year that The HistoryMakers hosted its first Back to School With The HistoryMakers with over 170 HistoryMakers participating at 100 schools in 25 states and 50 cities and towns, encouraging students to commit to their education. COMMIT: Telling America’s Stories, Celebrating Our Future would also be the theme of The HistoryMakers tenth anniversary celebration that featured Melba Moore, Denyce Graves, Dionne Warwick, Cathy Hughes, and Reverend Al Sharpton. George Faison served as producer with The HistoryMakers content center stage. 92 HistoryMakers were interviewed in 2010. The evening includes a performance by Maimouna Youssef aka Mumu Fresh, provided courtesy of the John K. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and never before seen behind-the-scenes footage. A Night With John Rogers, A Conversation with Henry Louis “Skip” Gates and An Evening With The HistoryMakers also streams this evening.
Susan L. Taylor, best-selling author of four books, and editor of eight others, is a fourth-generation entrepreneur, who grew up in Harlem working in her father’s clothing store. At 24, she founded her own cosmetics company, which led to the beauty editor’s position at Essence, the publication she would go on to shape into a world-renown brand with more than 8 million readers. It was that enterprising spirit wedded to a deep love for her community that led to the founding of the National CARES Mentoring Movement in 2005 as Essence CARES. With local affiliates in 58 cities, National CARES has recruited, trained and deployed more than 150,000 mentors to schools and youth-support and mentoring organizations like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, as well as to its own culturally rooted, academic- and social-transformational initiatives. A community-mobilization movement, National CARES is the only organization dedicated to providing mentoring, healing and wellness services on a national scale for Black children.
Ms. Taylor is a recipient of more than a dozen honorary doctorates and hundreds of awards, including the Phoenix Award, which is the highest honor given by Congressional Black Caucus. A lifelong activist who has worked to ensure people across the globe, from South Africa to those who struggled in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Susan Taylor says that securing our vulnerable children is her highest calling and the big business of our nation and Black America today.
Maimouna Youssef (aka Mumu Fresh) is a Grammy Award-nominated singer, MC, songwriter, activist, and acclaimed hip hop artist who's been called a "quadruple threat" by the Roots' Black Thought and "groundbreaking" by Oscar-winning artist, Common. She has been awarded the post of "Musical Ambassador for The United States," and has collaborated with numerous philanthropic leaders, including W.K. Kellogg Foundation, IMAN, Congressional Black Caucus, and Global Citizens Festival. Behind the scenes, Youssef serves as a Governor for the DC chapter of the Recording Academy’s Grammy Board as well as a mentor for several Grammy U affiliated young aspiring artists. She has received recognition from several local non-profit organizations such as One Common Unity, Bmore News, & Womb Work Productions as well as international awards from Mayor Luis Fernando Castellanos Cal of Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico for her outstanding service and commitment to the youth worldwide.
Taped: Friday, November 19, 2010
An Evening With The HistoryMakers: Tenth Anniversary Gala was an hour-long, live-to-tape program that celebrated The HistoryMakers’ first decade of groundbreaking work. The evening was themed COMMIT: Telling America’s Stories…Celebrating Our Future. In attendance were over 150 HistoryMakers from across the country including The Honorable Eric Holder; ninety-eight year old civil rights pioneer Amelia Boynton Robinson; Little Rock Nine members Ernie Green and Carlotta Walls LaNier; founder of the Trumpet Awards Xernona Clayton; and the Jazz Lady, Geraldine de Haas. This historic program, co-produced by The HistoryMakers Executive Director, Julieanna Richardson, and Tony Award-winning producer and choreographer, George Faison, featured performances by Dionne Warwick, Nikki Giovanni and Melba Moore as well as appearances by Denyce Graves, Reverend Al Sharpton, Gwen Ifill, Cathy Hughes, Roland Martin, and Susan Taylor.
Taped at The Art Institute of Chicago’s Rubloff Auditorium, An Evening With The HistoryMakers documented the story of the archive from beginning to present day. With the use of performances, speeches and archival video and photos, An Evening With The HistoryMakers recounted the organization’s history as only it knows how. Featured celebrities of past An Evening With… programs like Nikki Giovanni, Denyce Graves, Cathy Hughes, Gwen Ifill and Dionne Warwick shared their experiences with The HistoryMakers while supporters Roland Martin, Melba Moore, Reverend Al Sharpton, Kephra Burns and Susan Taylor talked about the importance of the archive.
Taped: Saturday, October 2, 2010
A Night With John Rogers provided a rare and insightful look into the life and career of civic and business entrepreneur John Rogers Jr. Taped on October 2, 2010 in front of a live audience at The Art Institute of Chicago, Rogers was interviewed by U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan and President and COO of the McDonald’s Corporation, Don Thompson.
Rogers told lively stories of his unique childhood in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and reminisced on his time as a Princeton University basketball player. The program also included Rogers describing the launch of Ariel Investments, the first African American investment management firm with publicly traded mutual funds, and the founding of Ariel Community Academy, a Chicago public school with an innovative financial literacy program. Rogers shared his insights on business and corporate boards and talked about his involvement with the historic presidential campaign of President Barack Obama.
Taped: Thursday, February 18, 2010
A Conversation With Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. was a live to tape interview program featuring Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. being interviewed by CNN reporter Suzanne Malveaux. The taping occurred on February 18, 2010 at the West Virginia Culture Center in Charleston, West Virginia. The Harvard professor was interviewed about his life and experiences including growing up in West Virginia and his trip to the White House to meet with President Barack Obama. The interview was taped to air on PBS-TV. The event's title sponsor was Verizon.