CLASSACT NEWS

Immigration Stories

Marilyn Go

Since retiring from the federal bench, Marilyn Go has pursued her interest in redistricting and voting rights as a member of the New York City Districting Commission, the Justice and Civic Engagement Committee of ClassAct HR '73 and two Asian Pacific American voting rights organizations.                                                            

I served as a United States Magistrate Judge for over twenty-five years in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) in Brooklyn.  Created under an Act enacted on February 25, 1865, the EDNY was the last court that President Abraham Lincoln established. 

One of the most coveted duties of EDNY judges was, and still is, administering the oath of citizenship to new Americans in naturalization ceremonies.  The Ceremonial Courtroom where proceedings are conducted has walls adorned by giant murals that Edward Laning painted as part of a series entitled "The Role of the Immigrant in the Industrial Development of America."   Commissioned during the depression by the Works Progress Administration for Ellis Island, the murals depict immigrants "engaged in building railroads, farming, mining and beginning their lives in America."  

Like the workers captured in Laning's paintings, the new citizens naturalized in the EDNY come from all corners of the world, ready to leave the Court House to continue the efforts to build America.  With joyful faces and great enthusiasm, they give life to the phrase "We the People" – for it is The People who give substance to American "democracy," a term with origins in ancient Greek from demos ("people") and kratos (rule). 

In 2015, as part of the Court's celebration of its sesquicentennial, judges of the EDNY shared stories of when they or their forebears first immigrated to the United States.  Like new naturalized citizens in the EDNY, the judges or their relatives emigrated from many different places:  Antigua, Austria, Belarus, China, Czechoslovakia, England, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Lithuania, Russia, Ireland, Japan, the Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. 

One judge had ancestors who arrived in the late 1700s, coming from England shortly after our nation had  been formed and long before creation of the EDNY.  One judge had great-grandparents who emigrated from Italy and Ireland to settle in Richmond, Virginia, with one great-grandfather serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, an act that may have been dangerous for anyone then residing in Richmond.  A number of judges are second or third generation Americans – i.e., judges whose parents were born abroad and immigrated to America or whose grandparents were the first to come to the United States.  Some judges are first generation Americans, as am I. 

I emigrated to America with my parents when I was almost six.  I was fortunate compared to many of the immigrant parents or grandparents of judges who were children when they came to America.  Like most other new immigrants, they had to begin working despite their age.  One judge's father came with his mother through Ellis Island at age nine and began working 10 hours a day selling fruit and vegetables from a street cart.  A grandmother of another judge was 14 when arriving with her family in the U.S.  She worked in a sweatshop in Manhattan making ladies’ garments during the day and went to school at night to learn English. 

The grandfather of another judge came to America alone when 16 and knew little English.  He worked at many different jobs (including delivering milk), but was able to save and eventually pay the way for his parents and all nine siblings to join him.   Another judge's grandfather supported his family first by operating a bar, but when Prohibition was passed, opened up a laundry. 

The immigration stories of the EDNY judges are the stories of all immigrants coming to America.  Some came to escape poverty while others were fleeing religious persecution or political upheaval.  Some simply wanted a better life.  Whatever the reasons for leaving their homelands, people coming to America held the same dreams of having a better life for themselves and their families.  America is a nation of immigrants and what better example than the stories of judges of the EDNY!.  That is what democracy is all about – when a ten year old boy selling fruit in the streets of New York would one day have a son who would become a judge. 

Immigration is an important component of American democracy and has often demonstrated that  rule by The People will not inevitably be rule by the wealthy or already powerful or the well connected.  However, as we know so well today, immigrants are convenient political targets, as they have been.  One hundred years ago, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which was intended to limit immigration from eastern and southern Europe, and essentially stopped almost all immigration from Asia.  This was but one of many discriminatory immigration acts.  The Chinese had already been barred from immigrating to the U.S. with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.  Until the repeal of the Exclusion Act seventy years later, Asians living in the United States were subject to state and federal anti-Asian laws prohibiting them from being naturalized as citizens or from owning land under various Alien Land Laws.  The Immigration Act of 1952 (the Walter-McCarran Act) repealed the prior exclusionary immigration laws and permitted people from Asia to immigrate to the United States.  One judge whose Japanese grandparents had emigrated to the U.S. in 1902 could finally become citizens.  However, the 1952 Act put into place a national origins quota system which effectively limiting the number of Asians immigrants to around 1,000 people annually, less than 3% of the total number of immigrants. 

Finally, in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed and amended immigration laws to favor family reunification, employment needs and refugees.  When signing this Act, President Lyndon Johnson stated that the Act supports entry of “those who can contribute most to this country – to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit.”  Irrespective of the intended goal of the Act, there is little doubt that immigrants who have come to the United States in the past have contributed greatly to our country.

Democracy and the Arts

Meredith Ann Palmer

Art Dealer, Foreign Service Art Specialist, Independent Filmmaker

“Cultures get transformed not deliberately or programmatically but by the unpredictable effects of social, political, and technological change, and by the random acts of cross-pollination.”

--Louis Menand, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War 

For those of us in the U.S. and the Free World, art for art’s sake seems to be a given.

We can extol the virtues of art to transport us to a spiritual level, to capture the sublime, to reflect the critical ideas of our time, to anticipate the rhetoric and social changes of current society, and yes, to provoke us to think outside of the norms.  In democratic societies, artists can freely paint, or write, make films, dance or act as they wish. However, when art bumps up against the restrictions of totalitarian societies, creative expression becomes all about freedom of the individual, or rather the lack thereof.  The state mandates what the artist can say, even the technique and subject matter that is acceptable or not in support of the current political position and propaganda of the state.  (In the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution, artists were not even allowed to paint plum blossoms because the plum is the first of the trees to flower even amidst the snow of winter.  Symbolically, this was equated with hardiness and “revolutionaries,” so the Communist state forbid artists from painting these subjects.) In a totalitarian state, the individual can no longer freely express his or her own ideas as in a democracy, but must follow the mandates of the state or seriously jeopardize his/her own well-being. 

It was in my first job directly out of college, as an art specialist in the Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., that I witnessed firsthand this inseparable notion of art and politics firsthand when I was asked to manage the first official art exchanges for the Department of State between the U.S. Government and China (P.R.C.).   In 1974-75, “The Chinese Archeological Exhibition,” took place and reciprocally in 1981, “American Paintings from the Boston Museum,” after we signed a Cultural Accord with the opening of diplomatic relations in 1979.  I learned what it meant for art and politics to be intertwined in a way that one rarely sees in the democratic U.S., i.e. until the Culture Wars of the 1970s raised its ugly head when Congressional funding for the National Endowments questioned what the artists were allowed to paint or perform.

Of course, there are those courageous artists in these societies who stand up to the edicts of the current political state, who risk being accused of sedition or insurrection, even treason if they express ideas that are contrary to the state mandates -- or that are judged by authorities to challenge the political positions of the current leadership.  Naturally, out of a sense of survival and with savvy experience, many such artists can become adept at maneuvering around the government’s mandates by couching their rhetoric in subtle or more obscure ways so as to avoid the authorities.  (Filmmakers often depict everyday life as it appears to them in their narratives, sometimes showing the corruption of elements in the society, and even daring to illuminate the injustice of the government punishing its citizens who buck the system.  As long as the work of art is not viewed as direct criticism of the state, they can often avoid government interference.  However, when political winds shift, what is acceptable and what is not, can change just as quickly.

One of the most successful films that the USG sent to Poland and to other E.European countries--where filmmaking stands at the top of the intellectual artistic hierarchy--was One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest.  Couched in this brilliant film of 1975 by Milos Forman, the psychiatric hospital served as a metaphor for power over the vulnerable, for the repressive society under Soviet control.  Thus, it was indirect enough to get through the censors, but electrifying for the public and artists in Eastern Europe who saw implications for their own situation.

In 1980, when Poland and other E.European countries were coming out from under the Soviet bloch and developing new political structures, encouraged by our State Dept., my office in Washington sent a festival of films to several of these countries (E. Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Romania if my memory serves me correctly) by the prominent film director Sidney Lumet.  His programs were sponsored jointly by the American Embassy and the new progressive labor union Solidarity.  It included the recently released Prince of the City (a criticism of the NY Police Dept. and its corruption), among his other socially-relevant films, including even The Wiz with its black cast.

I recall that at Lumet’s debriefing in our office, he commented that he used to “give lip service to cultural exchange”, but now he “recognized how important these exchanges were” and said that every question he was asked by his peers on this trip was about “freedom” down to what lens he was allowed to use in making his films.  He offered to go overseas again for the U.S.G. any time and anywhere that we wished, but sadly we did not sponsor him again, which was unfortunate.  His films continued to champion the freedom of the individual, and I often wondered how that overseas trip had influenced him with new insights.

In the visual arts, renegade artists in China during the violent, volatile and repressive time of the Cultural Revolution (1967-1976), would secretly meet in the parks to paint intuitive small, expressionist landscapes, not the mandated social realism of workers in the factories, farmers in the fields or soldiers fighting to uphold Communist ideals. They would make these “experimental” paintings only big enough so that they could quickly hide them in their small “army” bags should authorities come upon them in practice.  This first rebellious group in the late 1970s and early 1980s was known as the “No Name” group, who also held private, surreptitious exhibitions for each other in their own apartments, thus later dubbed by scholars “apartment art.”  In 1979, the first group of “avant-garde” artists, titled Stars (XingXing), was not allowed to hang their paintings even on the fence around the National Gallery in Beijing, so in protest they joined the famous “Democracy Wall” marches, espousing creative freedom as a democratic right.

By the time the Dept. of State/USIS  sent the landmark “American Paintings Exhibition from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts” to China in 1981, the Chinese were starved for information from the West after 10 years of being cutoff from the world during the Cultural Revolution.  While their own art schools had reopened in 1978, original American paintings had not been seen, except in small postage-stamp-sized reproductions in a few of the art publications.  Thus the Boston Show was “culture shock” to the artists and to the public.  At the last minute before it opened, even with a Congressional delegation and Chief Justice Warren Burger in Beijing as the opening U.S. delegation, the Chinese objected to one dozen abstract paintings of the 70 paintings in the collection.   In a diplomatic success, but not without some tense days before the opening in which I participated, our Embassy guided the Boston Museum who managed to keep all of the paintings in the show, avoid censorship, and display a unique, unfiltered picture of American history and its art from Colonial times through Color Field painting. Many would agree that this was one of the most successful cultural exchanges ever presented by the U.S.  Coming from places as far as Xinjiang province in the West, nearly 300,000 Chinese saw the exhibition in Beijing and 250,000 attended the show later in Shanghai over only two months.We sold out 30,000 catalogs in the first week and printed a second run of the same number which also sold out quickly.  To this day, they have not forgotten it.

As a result of the impact of these programs in Communist and other authoritarian countries, I paid even closer attention to the way to respect the arts in developing the State Department program.  Despite the program’s mission to influence our country’s effectiveness in foreign relations, I established a policy to keep the arts independent, by presenting them for themselves first, before making any political gains in our international arts program.  We made sure that we selected the artists and exhibitions for their merits in achievement and quality, calling on museums and their curators to organize these exhibitions, thus keeping selection at an arm’s length from the government official.  This also reflected how our professional arts community -- museums and galleries --was structured, highlighted the staff’s expertise and well-honed practices, and gave a picture of how our professional arts community actually worked.  Public diplomacy, indeed, was established to “tell America’s story,”  (especially after the Cold War of the 1950s), and we wanted to tell it accurately and dynamically as part of a free and democratic society.  To many of us, this was the best way to show our values and support other aspects of our foreign relations.

Thoughts On Democracy and the Arts

David Fichter

Muralist and Public Artist

The Frost Elementary School, Lawrence, MA, created by and courtesy of David Fichter

“Art is not just to show life as it is but to show life as it should be.” --Paul Robeson

“In the dark times will there be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times.” --Bertolt Brecht

I support community cultural participation, cultural pluralism, and the integration of culture with our democratic aspirations. The struggle for democracy is both political and cultural. In a democratic society, we are each entitled to a name, a song, and a story, regardless of our backgrounds or our wealth. The concept of democracy should include not just political expression, but also cultural expression in whatever form it takes, preferably at a community, grassroots level, leading to healthy relationships based on mutual respect and fundamental values, including respect for our differences.

Last night I watched a beautiful film – Sing Sing - based on the true story of a prison theater program, “Rehabilitation Through the Arts.” What its inmate actors/theater artists made beautifully clear by the end of the film is how essential storytelling and cultural expression are to the human identity and spirit, and how they build a foundation for community. Even in a harsh environment like a maximum-security prison, cultural expression reinforces democratic values of listening and mutual respect. Former President George W. Bush was not someone I could support politically, but one important thing he did was to appoint a director to the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) who started a program to bring Shakespeare to the military and to other underserved communities. My daughter, a theater artist, has led workshops at West Point, where every cadet must perform a monologue from Shakespeare; she feels it is an invaluable and perspective-shifting experience for both the artists and the cadets. I believe we are all more fully human when we have opportunities to explore and share our stories, to have our cultural expressions respected and supported in our communities. Democracy is best served and preserved when the arts are an integral part of our lives.

When I started my career as a public artist in the early 1980’s, I was commissioned to paint a mural on the outside of a neighborhood health center in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Lawrence is known as the “Immigrant City” because of its long history as a textile industry powerhouse. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Lawrence attracted waves of immigrants from Europe to work in the textile mills. Since the 1950’s the immigrants have come mostly from Latin America. I was interested in telling the stories of these two waves of immigrants from different parts of the world who both faced similar challenges of prejudice, conflict, and poverty. During the 1980’s, conflicts between those older generations of immigrants and the newer ones (who were fast becoming the majority) broke out in violence. I felt the goal of the mural was to tell the stories of these different generations of immigrants, who faced similar challenges, as a means of bridging divides in Lawrence. The biggest challenges are the issues of power, representation, and democracy. The arts can play a dynamic role in fostering connection and community, the foundation of democracy. Painting outdoors directly on the health center walls, I was constantly interacting with the surrounding community, receiving curious interest and feedback. Young people were especially interested in participating, so I decided I would continue the collaboration over the next 15 years by working directly in Lawrence public schools to create many murals and mosaics with the children of immigrants, providing opportunities for cultural expression which is essential.

Highlights include:

-Meet Our New BBLP Fellow, Waheed Ahmad

-Fall 2024 Programming with ClassACT

-The Balance of Power in Wisconsin Could Shift Because of Fairer New Maps­

Read

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Harvard-Radcliffe Democracy '24 Town Hall Presented by the Class of 1975’s Marching Towards Justice Sunday, September 15th @7pm ET, on Zoom

Democracy '24 Town Hall is a live, online video series featuring notable individuals in American politics, journalism, education, faith, healthcare, culture and the law. Our weekly, Sunday-night, online conversations (7-8:30 PM ET) seek to promote electoral engagement and positive change among alumni, students and the extended Harvard community. With an expanding list of topics, the series will focus on issues of social, economic, racial and environmental justice, and the increasing threats to traditional institutions. Future guests will include Susan Glasser '90, Staff writer, The New Yorker; former NY Times executive editor Jill Abramson '76; best-selling author Kurt Andersen '76; DNC Deputy Finance Director and Women for Harris co-chair Kinney Zalesne JD '91; Morgan Mohr, Harris chief spokesperson on reproductive rights; Washington Post Columnist E.J. Dionne '73; Biden and Harris pollster Geoff Garin '75; NYT Magazine writer and Yale Law lecturer Emily Bazelon, and many others yet to be announced or scheduled over 16 weeks. As we approach one of America’s most consequential presidential elections in our history, we look forward to discussing, among other things, our judiciary in crisis, gerrymandering and inequities in our electoral system, the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia, the danger of “alternative facts” in news coverage, and, above all, the 2024 presidential campaign.

On deck, Sunday Sept 22nd: E.J. Dionne '73 Author and Washington Post Columnist Professor, Georgetown University, and a surprise guest!

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The Right Question Institute: Voting Forum Webinar Thursday, September 5th, 7-8pm ET, on Zoom

How can we increase motivation and determination to vote in low-income communities? In 2020, the Right Question Institute (RQI) shared its nonpartisan “Why Vote?” Tool with social services, adult literacy programs, and nonprofit voter engagement efforts in 38 states around the country. On Sept. 5, we will introduce you to the “Why Vote?” Tool and explore ways that you can share it with nonprofit programs and services in your communities and states. Developed by Dan Rothstein (class of 1977, HGSE 1985) and Naomi Campbell (HLS 2017) and colleagues at RQI, the nonpartisan “Why Vote?” Tool is a free resource that makes it possible for people to name for themselves the value of voting. It has a simple design that helps people see the connection between services they need — such as food assistance, income support, and child care — and decisions that elected officials make. Direct service providers, educators, community organizers, and volunteers integrate use of the tool into their work with people and their efforts to encourage people to vote. Rothstein and Campbell, along with RQI’s co-founder Luz Santana, create active and participatory webinar experiences. We encourage you to come learn about the “Why Vote?” Tool and consider how you can play a role in making sure it reaches into communities with traditionally low voting rates.

About the presenters: Dan Rothstein '77, is one of the co-founders of the Right Question Institute (RQI) and the co-author with Luz Santana of Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions (Harvard Education Press, 2011). He is also an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where he teaches, teaching a course on "Building Nimble and Democratic Minds." Dan has helped develop RQI's voter engagement resources and trained staff of adult literacy programs and nonprofit organizations working in low-income communities to engage low-propensity voters around the country. Naomi Campbell, HLS 2017, is director of RQI's Legal Empowerment Program, partnering with legal professionals and other service providers working in low-income communities who use RQI's methods to build clients' agency and self-advocacy skills. Naomi also helped develop RQI's unique "Why Vote?" Tool, trained staff of organizations around the country, and supports Executive Director Betsy Smith in promoting RQI's current "Why Vote?" Initiative.

Meet Our Bridge Partner: The Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) Ruth Mullen Memorial Scholarship Program

A scholarship program for undergraduate students attending a historically Black college or university (HBCU) and HBCU alums attending graduate school. 

About the EFA: Founded in 1970, the Editorial Freelancers Association is a national nonprofit professional organization with approximately 3,200 members, including writers, editors, copy editors, proofreaders, indexers, translators, and others who work in publishing, communications, and related fields. The EFA advances excellence among our dynamic community of freelance editorial professionals by providing opportunities for business development, learning, and networking. Our resources help our members and their clients build successful collaborations.

Origins of the EFA scholarship program: The impetus for the program came from EFA members Andrea Reid and Andrew (Andy) Huston, who together formed an ad hoc committee on HBCU scholarships in early 2021. Later that year, the committee proposed to the EFA Board of Governors that the EFA establish and fund a scholarship program for undergraduate students attending an HBCU and HBCU alums attending graduate school.

Andrea Reid—Chairperson, EFA Committee on HBCU Scholarships

“The 2020 societal epiphany that racial inequity had to finally be addressed on a national scale did not mark a racial reckoning, just the beginning of one. The EFA should play a part in the reckoning process by supporting educational equity,” the committee stated in its report to the board. “The entire publishing industry has not equitably provided careers for marginalized groups, and especially not for African Americans. An EFA HBCU scholarship program would be one way to help right that wrong.”

At its November 2021 meeting, the EFA Board of Governors approved the proposed scholarship program.

Program parameters: The EFA provides $5,000 scholarships to undergraduate students attending an HBCU and HBCU alums pursuing a graduate degree. The scholarships are available to students who are Black, African American, or of Black African descent and enrolled in a degree program leading to (1) employment in the publishing or communications industry, or (2) a career that could lead to their becoming a member of the EFA.

Each $5,000 award is paid directly to the scholarship recipient’s HBCU or graduate school in two annual installments of $2,500.

The scholarships, which are awarded in partnership with the UNCF (United Negro College Fund) are named in memory of Ruth Mullen, longtime EFA member and volunteer who died tragically in September 2021. At the time of her death, Ms. Mullen was serving as an EFA co-executive.

The EFA Ruth Mullen Memorial Scholarship program is administered by the UNCF, the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization. Founded in 1944, the UNCF is a groundbreaking organization made famous by its slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” More than 500,000 students have earned degrees with the help of UNCF scholarships.

First cycle: For the first scholarship cycle (2022–2023), the EFA provided two scholarships, both funded by the EFA itself. Mauranne Vernier of Evanston, IL, received the undergraduate scholarship, and Kristen Shipley of York, PA, received the graduate scholarship.

At the time of her application for the scholarship, Mauranne was a junior at Spelman College majoring in English. She served as editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper and as an editorial intern for Spelman’s Blue Record podcast. She also worked as a scripted television publicity intern at Warner Bros. Discovery.

Kristen applied as a 2018 graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), where she studied journalism and mass communications with a concentration in public relations. She was an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School and worked for Google, YouTube, and Obvious Ventures.      

And now we are pleased and proud to announce that Mauranne and Kristen recently graduated from their respective schools. Read about their accomplishments and future plans at Our First HBCU Scholarship Recipients Have Graduated!

Second cycle: For the second cycle (2023–2024), the EFA funded two scholarships itself, and through the generous donations of individuals inside and outside of the EFA, we raised enough money to fund a third scholarship. Gabrielle Heyward of Rock Hill, SC, and Makiydah Berry of Hartford, CT, were the recipients in the undergraduate category, and Jordan Turner of Lawrenceville, GA, was the recipient in the graduate category.

Makiydah Berry, Jordan Turner, and Gabrielle Heyward

Ms. Heyward is a communications major at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T) in Greensboro, NC, where her focus is journalism and media studies. Since receiving the EFA scholarship, she has become a Rhoden Fellow with ESPN and Andscape. Gabrielle has also been inducted into Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, and she will serve this year as president of the NCAT Section of the National Council of Negro Women and editor-in-chief of the A&T Register (NC A&T newspaper).

Ms. Berry is pursuing a degree in strategic communications with a concentration in advertising at Howard University in Washington, DC. During the past year, she was inducted into Lambda Pi Eta, the national honor society for communications majors. She was also invited to the Vice President’s HBCU Student Leaders celebration for Black History Month.

Mr. Turner is a graduate of Savannah State University in Savannah, GA, the oldest HBCU in the state. He completed his first year as a graduate student at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he is pursuing his MFA with a concentration in screenwriting.

All three of our scholars have successfully completed the first of their two EFA scholarship years and are about to begin their second. Read more about Gabrielle, Jordan, and Makiydah at 2023 EFA Ruth Mullen Memorial Scholarships Awarded.

Third (current) cycle: The 2024–2025 application window for the EFA Ruth Mullen Memorial Scholarship program opened on April 30 and closed on June 17, 2024. This cycle, we are offering four $5,000 scholarships, three of which will be funded by the EFA and one by private donations. Three of the scholarships will be for undergraduates attending an HBCU, and one will be for a graduate of an HBCU attending graduate school. We and the UNCF are currently reviewing this cycle’s applications, and we expect that the awards will be made at the end of August.

Project Goals and Needs: For the inaugural year of the program, we had 54 applicants for the two scholarships the EFA funded. For the second cycle, 157 students applied for the three available scholarships. This cycle, we had 323 applications for the four available scholarships—for every candidate awarded a scholarship, we’ve had to turn down 80 others! We’re thrilled with the response to the program, of course, but saddened that we are not able to provide more than four scholarships a year.

Each $5,000 scholarship requires $5,750 in funding (including UNCF’s 15% admin fee). The EFA has committed to funding three scholarships per year itself. We are aiming to provide at least six scholarships per year, so we need to turn to outside sources to fund the additional three scholarships annually.

ClassACT has already been helpful, by connecting us with classmate Fred Bartenstein, who has shared his extensive knowledge of fundraising and given us many good ideas. We could also benefit from the knowledge of an experienced grant writer, especially one who can suggest individuals or entities whose mission aligns with the EFA’s and who might be especially receptive to a grant application from the EFA Ruth Mullen Memorial Scholarship program.

To any classmate who might be able to guide us in grant writing, or anyone who has any money-raising ideas at all, we’d love to hear from you. Our email address is hbcuscholarships@the-efa.org.

We have also established a Donate page on the UNCF website. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation, and feel free to post the Donate link on your social media and share it with friends and associates. Thank you!

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The upcoming national, state, and local elections in November 2024 provide opportunities and responsibilities for all citizens to address and improve our environment. In addition to supporting candidates who are strong advocates of protecting and restoring biodiversity, it is critical to also learn about and encourage the passage of numerous environmental initiatives on the ballot. This forum will bring together leaders who will provide information and insights on the most important biodiversity, conservation, climate change, and energy alternative issues that will be presented to voters in the upcoming elections.