Welcome to “How to Act.” A limited-run mini-podcast series produced by the New Mexico Black Education Act Bureau in celebration of Black History Month. Here at H2A we treasure and showcase stories of those who have and continue to enrich the Black educational landscape in New Mexico and beyond. Because Black History isn’t my history or your history…Black History is New Mexico History … and no matter who or where you are, if you are under the sound of this Pod, this history is for you. I’m your host, Hakim Bellamy and this is “How to Act.”

Richard Antoine White and his tuba have been somewhat inseparable since the seventh grade. Not exactly the “sport” of choice you’d expect from a Black kid who spent the first four years of his life sleeping on a piece of cardboard in Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. From being taken in at age 4 by the same folks who served as foster parents as his mother–who by that time was suffering from advanced alcohol addiction–to bandleader for popular music talents like Justin Timberlake and Queen Latifah.

A high school graduate of Baltimore School for the Arts (where he as a classmate of the late Tupac Amaru Shakur), a college graduate of the Peabody Institute, America’s oldest conservatory, and an alumnus of Indiana University's prestigious Jacobs School of Music where he became the first ever African American to earn a doctorate in tuba performance, Professor White is principal tubist for the New Mexico Philharmonic when he is not a full-time tenure track professor and Associate Marching Band Director at the University of New Mexico.

Here, Mr. White unpacks his approach to teaching music and how the discipline of learning to play an instrument develops the same muscles required to excel in school, in sports, and in life.

This podcast is a partnership between the New Mexico Black Education Act Advisory Council and the New Mexico Black Education Act Bureau. Find out more about the New Mexico Black Education Act here https://web.ped.nm.gov/bureaus/student-support-services/black-education-act/

Welcome to “How to Act.” A limited-run mini-podcast series produced by the New Mexico Black Education Act Bureau in celebration of Black History Month. Here at H2A we treasure and showcase stories of those who have and continue to enrich the Black educational landscape in New Mexico and beyond. Because Black History isn’t my history or your history…Black History is New Mexico History … and no matter who or where you are, if you are under the sound of this Pod, this history is for you. I’m your host, Hakim Bellamy and this is “How to Act.”

American educator and philanthropist Mary McCleod Bethune once said, "The whole world opened to me when I learned to read." And who better to compare notes with when it comes to the love of reading, than award-winning children’s book author and retired librarian, Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. With dozens of titles for young readers to her credit, Nelson has been the recipient of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, the Simon Wiesenthal Once Upon a World Children’s Book Award, an Anne Izard Storyteller’s Choice Award, a Carter G. Woodson Honor, and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year recognition.

In the tradition of mystical storytelling (shout out to all my griots out there), we began with our protagonists’ paradox… her origin story, if you will. The prequel, as the kids call it today. Not simply how a young Black girl becomes a librarian…or becomes an award-winning author of books for young readers, but rather what is the make-up of people who can see the past, present, and future through the books they read … how that turns into a superpower of empathy and compassion, that ultimately allows them to start building worlds of their own. So, basically, I asked Vaunda Nelson how she became a Jedimaster at a library in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

This podcast is a partnership between the New Mexico Black Education Act Advisory Council and the New Mexico Black Education Act Bureau. Find out more about the New Mexico Black Education Act here https://web.ped.nm.gov/bureaus/student-support-services/black-education-act/

Welcome to “How to Act.” A limited-run mini-podcast series produced by the New Mexico Black Education Act Bureau in celebration of Black History Month. Here at H2A we treasure and showcase stories of those who have and continue to enrich the Black educational landscape in New Mexico and beyond. Because Black History isn’t my history or your history…Black History is New Mexico History … and no matter who or where you are, if you are under the sound of this Pod, this history is for you. I’m your host, Hakim Bellamy and this is “How to Act.”

Our guest for this second episode is Mrs. Bobbie Boyer. A modern-day matriarch, Mrs. Boyer is the living legacy of the family that founded the first TWO Black settlements in New Mexico: Blackdom and Vado. After migrating west from Georgia in 1901, the Boyers founded the Blackdom settlement in 1903 and later–after Blackdom was abandoned as a result of drought–founded Vado in 1921.

Here, Mrs. Boyer shares what it was like to go to school in New Mexico in 1945 or thereabouts…both before and after integration. Proudly matriculated from Paul Laurence Dunbar Elementary School, Mrs. Boyer gives a shoutout to her favorite teacher (Principal Grimes) and tells us how becoming the first (and possibly only) Homecoming “Princess” in the history of Gadsden Public Schools started out as a joke…until she messed around and won.

This podcast is a partnership between the New Mexico Black Education Act Advisory Council and the New Mexico Black Education Act Bureau. Find out more about the New Mexico Black Education Act here https://web.ped.nm.gov/bureaus/student-support-services/black-education-act/