Journey to Juneteenth: Reset America

When asked how he envisions the world in 2040, Lomax said, “I expect to see that the South, where most HBCUs are located, is really the economic center of the U.S. . . . This is an economically burgeoning area, and it’s an area where talent is valued.” How does the South get there? By enrolling more students in college and investing in HBCUs. As CEO of the UNCF, Lomax has dedicated much of his life to providing education to Black students in America. It’s about time that HBCUs get the recognition they deserve; Lomax describes them as “engines of mobility” and “creators of great talent.”

OZY Genius Award recipient Marcinia Johnson has been motivated by her life experience to make low-income housing more secure and affordable. Her project focuses on gentrification in Charlotte, North Carolina. As one part of her plan, she aims to make transportation vouchers to help people who have been pushed out of their communities by gentrification so they can get to work and stay connected to their friends and family. “Because of gentrification, people have to relocate, and they may be relocated far from their jobs, and they need transportation,” Johnson says.

Let the market guide you. For Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, the pressure to create a vaccine was immense. “The important thing for me was the pressure of billions of people [who] suddenly had invested their entire hopes in us,” he says. “And we had to deliver.” So what was the key to speedy vaccine creation? Cutting through the bureaucracy and not relying on outside funding. “I didn’t take the money from the government because when you take their money, then they have to be in operational committees.” Bourla cites the free market and the lack of reliance on government funding and obligations as crucial to the Pfizer vaccine’s success. Creating a vaccine wasn’t about supporting one president or another. It was about following the pace of science, free from intervention. So, do we have capitalism to thank for the vaccine, and can this lesson be applied elsewhere?

The financial market is an oft-overlooked avenue for social change. According to OZY reader Phil Temple, an end to the disenfranchisement of people of color comes from the realization that “[Black people] own a slice of this economy, and we can reset once we understand the power of our pocketbooks.” Choosing to support racial minority-owned businesses or boycotting businesses that take advantage of people of color is imperative to helping “reclaim our rightful place in America,” a country founded on the economic bedrock of slave labor.

Stewart, who has worked on several Republican campaigns, used her OZY Fest panel, “What Does a Fair Criminal Justice System Look Like?” to share how she was introduced to the legal side of criminal justice. It happened through her job in journalism, which had her interacting regularly with police and covering trials. “No one can look at the George Floyd video . . . and walk away thinking everything’s OK,” she says. What does Stewart think is the most important thing to do? “Take the politics out of it. Let’s get bipartisan legislation passed that addresses [racial inequality in the criminal justice system].”

During the panel “How to Combat Anti-Asian Hate” at OZY Fest, the self-described “baddest bitch” in the room, Sophia Chang, spoke about how race has been leveraged to divide communities. “The model minority myth was created to drive a wedge,” Chang said, explaining that it was devised to pit the Black community against the Asian community. She called for communities of color to stop “hating the player” when they need to be “hating the game” and to build a cross-cultural coalition to fight white supremacy.

According to Sammy Jaye, Generation Z “takes action on things.” While Gen Z and social media might get a bad rap, Jaye, a recent OZY Fest guest, is no stranger to finding community online and using social media to find her voice. “You set your fate. You don’t have to wait for someone else to determine what is going to happen to your future,” she told the OZY festivalgoers. You heard it here first: Social media can be used as a force for good.

In 2019, Noname (whose given name is Fatimah Warner) did a highly unusual thing for a rapper: She started a book club. With the tagline “reading material for the homies,” the club features two books by authors of color each month, and it has ballooned to 700,000 total followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Noname also uses her social media accounts to advocate for the dismantling of the oppressive, patriarchal state — and she’s more than willing to mix it up. As she told The New York Times, “I want people to think radically.” This month’s selections on the road to radical thinking are The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale and Facing the Rising Sun by Gerald Horne.

Getting into college is hard, especially if you can’t afford an SAT or ACT tutor or a private counselor. And while tests are important, so is the college essay. But not everyone has access to a writing coach who can help them package their story into a killer essay that makes college admissions officers swoon. OZY Genius Award recipient Dyllen Nellis wants everyone to write that winning essay, especially low-income students. Her project aims to promote “education equity and equal access to higher education.” She’s planning to use the award to deliver the online college essay writing course she created to 10,000 students across the country.

In 1921, a white mob razed a neighborhood known as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now, Damario Solomon-Simmons is pursuing a new avenue for reparations for the families impacted by the violence 100 years ago. The attorney’s novel tactic uses Tulsa’s public nuisance law. There is no statute of limitations, so he is seeking compensation from the city for the victims and their families. For Solomon-Simmons, if America is to live up to its promise of greatness and equality for all, it needs to reckon with its past honestly. If a wrong has occurred, “you have a responsibility to abate it, to fix it, to stop it,” he says. “And your responsibility continues until the nuisance is corrected — it doesn’t matter if it’s five years, 50 years or 150.” If his case is successful, look for it to become a national model for reparations.