ALICE Celebrates Black History Month

February is Black History Month in the United States, and our DE&I committee came up with wonderful ways to celebrate on a global scale in 2022. The committee created programming for three separate events: Eat & Share, Read & Share, and Art & Share.

Eat & Share –

This event was designed for employees to support local Black-owned businesses wherever home may be by using tools such as Eat Black Owned or finding recipes to cook at home to celebrate Black culture. Everyone shared photos of their meals on Slack and came together to discuss their experiences. Employees highlighted restaurants such as:

• The Grey in Savannah, Georgia
• Rodney Scott’s BBQ in Charleston, South Carolina 
• StreetCar Merchants in San Diego, California
• Dirty Lettuce in Portland, Oregon
• Roscoe’s House of Chicken N Waffles in Los Angeles, California
• Fargo’s Pit BBQ in Bryan, Texas
• Hummingbird Jamaican Cafe in Newport, Rhode Island
• Favor Desserts in Durham, North Carolina
          .    

 Street Car Merchants in San Diego, California.                     

Dirty Lettuce in Portland, Oregon.           Fargo’s Pitt BBQ in Bryan, Texas

Hummingbird Jamaican Cafe in Newport, Rhode Island.    Favor Desserts in Durham, North Carolina

Team members also made homemade dishes such as buttermilk fried chicken and waffles, green beans with bacon, and peach cobbler.

Read & Share – The DE&I Committee picked a few short stories from Black authors for our team to read and discuss as a group, and also included a list of short stories curated by the Chicago Review for further reading:

• False Cognates – about how language and grammar can be weaponized against Black students.
• Anything Could Disappear – “In a short span, a young woman acquires a small boy, an apartment in a new city, a new job, a new boyfriend”
• 28 Stories You Can Read Online for Black History Month

Participants at Read & Share discussing some of the short stories on our reading list. Our discussion was focused heavily on False Cognates by Ladee Hubbard.

Art & Share – For the third event, we viewed the Black Histories, Black Futures exhibit on the Google Arts & Culture site. Three topics on the site were the main points of our discussion:

• Questlove on his perspective of doing the documentary Summer of Soul 
• The We Love You project and how it seeks to raise awareness with a photo series of Black boys and men
• The story of Edmondia Lewis and her path to becoming such a fantastic sculptor, featured in the Smithsonian.
  

Participants at Art & Share

All three events brought the team together to celebrate Black culture and expand the horizons of our palates, minds, and imaginations. Thank you to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee for putting together such an insightful and meaningful month of programming. 

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