Elder Atum spoke with Soo Youn of The Lily, a product of The Washingtong Post, on the importance of opening up about struggles with mental health. “As Black women in particular right now, we are feeling at a very deep level a lot of the raw pain and struggle that our community is going through....

Brother George Floyd’s public murder is reviving memories of “strange fruits,” as described by Nina Simone in the sixties. It feels raw and sore, specific to this moment. The scene is the latest dramatization of a 401-year-old memorialized wound inflicted over and over again on Black men and women in America.   The Coronavirus exacerbated preexisting...

The Bridging of Cultures Race is an invention of the mind as are all ideas good and bad. It was invented in a time and context when people were much less aware of themselves than they are now. As a matter of fact, in the 200 years since the US census first came about in...

On Dec. 11, 2019, the Council for Black Male Success and the Cultural Wellness Center held a Manhood Rites of Passage ceremony at the Minnesota Historical Society. The men, who ranged from 11 to 27 years old, completed an 11-week cultural self-study curriculum designed by the Cultural Wellness Center. The curriculum and the Rites of...

Serial entrepreneur and civil rights advocate Anthony Brutus Cassius knew the dreamers of his day needed a place to gather and plan, create and connect. Cassius first found that space at Foster’s Sweet Shop, where he and other prominent black Minneapolitans met monthly and strategized for civil rights in the 1930s. Among friends and fellow...

Seeing the Past But Not Captured by It: The Need for Cultural Healing This Summit will feature important presentations that change the perpetuated narratives around race and mental health to transform how the recognition, acknowledgement, and appreciation of cultural differences influences mental health care provision among people of African descent. Recognizing local knowledge and utilizing...