About Emma Patti Harris

Posts by Emma Patti Harris:

Facing Breast Cancer

Facing Breast Cancer

0 Comment Nation ,

9 Photos

PLANO, TEXAS — The wake-up call did not come with the cancer diagnosis. Or the double mastectomy.

Or news that cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.

For Noelle LeVeaux, it came 10 days before the first round of chemo. The dishwasher overflowed. Water seeped under the wood laminate floor. She loaded her two young daughters into the family car and left for the nail salon. They would escape reality for a while.

She drove her GMC Acadia down the road, through a red stoplight and into a Chevy Escalade. As airbags deployed and her SUV spun, she thought of how the stoplights seemed out of sequence. She looked at her daughters in the back seat.

In that moment, she realized how much she wanted to live.

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From the Vault: Bowie State students stage “study-in” at the State House

From the Vault: Bowie State students stage “study-in” at the State House

0 Comment From the Vault , , ,

15 Photos

ANNAPOLIS, April 4, 1968 – Governor Agnew closed Bowie State College tonight “until I find that conditions there have returned to normal.”

The Governor acted two hours after State Police, on his orders, arrested 227 of the students and a civil rights leader who has refused to leave the State House by the 5:00 p.m. closing time.

The peaceful arrests of more than one third of the full-time student body of the predominately African-American college came after the students demanding to see the Governor and discuss their complaints about decrepit dormitories and underpaid faculty, sat down in the State House lobby, opened textbooks and conducted a 3 1/2 hour “study-in.”

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French ministry hosts dwarf fashion show

French ministry hosts dwarf fashion show

0 Comment World ,

22 Photos

France’s culture ministry hosted an entire dwarf fashion show on Friday evening off the normal Paris Fashion Week calendar.

The government is supporting an initiative to promote alternative standards of beauty in an industry that promotes being tall and thin.

Fifteen women dwarves all measuring under 4 feet 4 inches (1.22 meters, 10.16 centimeters) trod the boards proudly in the latest colorful spring-summer fashions, designed by a team of designers for the show.

Organizers accuse the French fashion industry of “discriminatory diktats” that exclude short people from being considered beautiful.

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The hajj journey of black Americans 50 years after Malcolm X

The hajj journey of black Americans 50 years after Malcolm X

0 Comment Nation, World , , ,

30 Photos

MECCA, SAUDI ARABIA — As Shahidah Sharif, an African-American Muslim, joined millions of fellow pilgrims from around the world on the hajj this year, she felt a renewed connection. To her own “blackness,” she says, but also to humanity as a whole.

“When the human family becomes more important than just myself and my needs, nothing can get in the way of building relationships,” she told The Associated Press in Mecca. “It doesn’t matter if we have different faiths, different races, different nationalities, I can find something in common with you.”

For American black Muslims, this year brought a significant landmark, the 50th anniversary of Malcolm X’s death. A year before his assassination, Malcolm X underwent a transformative experience on the hajj, seeing the potential for racial co-existence after witnessing, as he wrote, pilgrims “of all colors displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe could never exist between a white and a non-white.”

This year’s hajj, which ended Saturday, came at a time when the debate over race in the United States is at its most heated in decades, with the Black Lives Matters movement arising after the deaths of a number of black men at the hands of police were captured on camera and seen widely by the public.

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Life aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier fighting ISIS

Life aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier fighting ISIS

0 Comment World , ,

25 Photos

Every day, the steam-powered catapult aboard this massive aircraft carrier flings American fighter jets into the sky, on missions to target the extremist Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, whose homeport is San Diego, California, is a key element of the U.S.-led coalition targeting the militants. This island of steel in the Persian Gulf some 1,090-feet (330-meters) long is home to some 5,000 U.S. Navy airmen, sailors and Marine pilots, carrying some 70 aircraft involved in the fight against the extremists.

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Remembering 9/11, 14 years later

Remembering 9/11, 14 years later

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10 Photos

Nearly a decade and a half after hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center’s twin towers, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the anniversary continues to be marked with observances around the country.

The Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville in western Pennsylvania is marking the completion of its visitor center, which opened to the public Thursday. At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and other officials will join in remembrances for victims’ relatives and Pentagon employees.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to observe the anniversary with a visit to Fort Meade, Maryland, in recognition of the military’s work to protect the country.

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