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As we know, Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump has been putting in work for a while now. Last week, he won an NAACP award. His acceptance speech is here: The quotable at the 5:30 mark for which he might be remembered is, "we have to be prepared to fight for our children's future until h8ll freezes over. And then, we have to be ready to fight on the ice."🤣 I have clowned brotha Ben Crump for his public speaking. But, I also give credit when it's due. Ben Crump went hard in the paint at the NAACP awards and delivered. 😎

Okay, I just broke down a begin my first foray into TicTok. Everyone is telling me I need to be on the platform. So I'm starting in earnest today. I still can't image it helping, but I hope I'm proven wrong. My goal is to post a short video several times a week. I'm open to any suggestions. The video is raw, I did not bother to shave or wear anything special -- if I did it would be too much work. I figure I could invest 15 minutes a week to post a few sub-two-minute videos to the platform.

Sanyu Dillon, Black Executive CMO Alliance Founding Member, will head up Random House Publishing. According to the New York Times, the publishing company's former chief marketing officer will now lead Random House, the Dial Press, and One World imprints. One World is described as having a multicultural focus. And its editor-in-chief, Chris Jackson, has worked with literary luminaries such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, the civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson and emcee Jay Z. From Forbes, "Dillon is also extremely passionate about driving inclusiveness in publishing, which is why she launched, "All Ways Black" a community and platform that celebrates Black literature. The Instagram account is curated by Cree Myles. Note: NYT link is a gift article. No paywall.

Wow, this is incredible news @Mel Hopkins -- thanks for sharing! I have not read the article yet but will get to it. I believe this may make Sanyu the most senior Black person in Publishing! This reminds me of a conversation from 5 years about when I posted an article, published 10 years before that conversation, sharing the people behind Black books: We talked about how publishing was dominated by white people. Sanyu's promotion is a step in the right direction 🙂 This is a change that Random House did not have to make. I was not previously familiar with "All Ways Black," but I'm not active on Instagram... Though I did start Tiktoking (is that a verb?) a few minutes ago 😉

I know you weren't asking the resident agnostic but the answer is...nope.🤣😎