- Coming up on "American Black Journal," we'll talk about the lingering effects of COVID-19 five years after the pandemic began.

Plus, we'll meet two recipients of the Michigan Chronicle's Women of Excellence Award.

And we'll remember journalist, community activist, and musician Luther Keith.

Stay right there.

"American Black Journal" starts right now.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm Stephen Henderson.

You know, it was five years ago this month when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

Of course, the virus is still around and it continues to have lingering health, social, and economic effects.

That's especially true in the African-American community.

Joining me now to talk about COVID's impact is Dr. Nancy Fleischer.

She's an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you so much.

- Yeah.

So it's hard to believe, five years ago this month, basically the world shut down.

We all went home and had to stay away from each other for a long time.

And we started to really understand the consequences of the pandemic and the illness.

From your chair, where are we five years later, of course, the virus is still here.

Things are very different than they were in '20.

- Absolutely, the world looks much different than it did five years ago when we all went home.

I think for a large part of society, people have sort of moved on and are kind of continuing with their lives, but there's certainly been long lasting impacts of the virus and the pandemic.

- Yeah.

Let's start with what's happening now.

We still have COVID with us.

My mother was recently diagnosed with COVID, very different circumstances than five years ago.

She's 82 years old.

Someone who's got other health challenges.

That would've been a real red alert five years ago.

Now she's taking a little medicine and staying home.

And she'll be fine.

I mean the progress is one of the things I think we have to acknowledge.

- Yes, absolutely.

I think getting the vaccine out very quickly was a huge success from the pandemic.

And developing treatments that have been effective and all of our additional measures in public health have really made a big impact so that the virus now is not causing as much severe illness or as much death as it was then.

- Yeah, but the lingering consequences from the pandemic itself and the effect that it had on different communities is still something that we're grappling with.

Let's talk about what those differences are, and especially with the African-American community.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So we saw at the beginning of the pandemic that the African-American community was affected very deeply.

They had very high rates of illness and very high rates of death.

And that was due in part to kind of the circumstances of many people being able to go home and work from home or not.

But many African-Americans and other people of color work in jobs where that's just not possible.

And they were in essential industries that kind of kept going.

So I run a study at the University of Michigan called the Michigan COVID-19 Recovery Surveillance Study.

And the study is in partnership with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

And so from the beginning of the pandemic, we started interviewing people to try to understand the impact of the illness, but also the pandemic on people's lives.

And so absolutely we've seen this disproportionate impact on the African-American community.

So for example, we saw that Black adults had a harder time paying important bills.

They also lived in households that were more likely to be laid off or have reduction in work hours.

In terms of the illness itself, during that sort of acute phase, they had more severe illness and had higher rates of hospitalization than people from other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

But then we also see lingering effects.

So we've continued to follow up with people over time, and we just finished interviewing people about three years after their illness.

And we see that African-American adults have the highest rates of long COVID, so these lingering impacts on their health.

- Let's talk about what long COVID is.

I think we hear that term a lot, and people are not sure what that actually means.

What is long COVID?

- Yeah, so it's taken a while to kind of come to a definition of long COVID, but now the consensus is that if people have new or ongoing symptoms for 90 days or more, that that's considered long COVID.

And so some of the symptoms that are kind of the most prominent among people with long COVID include things like fatigue, brain fog, muscle weakness, loss of sense of taste and smell.

But there's a whole host of symptoms that affect different parts of the body.

- And what's the reason, I guess, what's the connection between this long COVID and the African-American community, why are more African-Americans suffering?

- Yeah, I mean I think that we don't totally understand that yet.

But we do see that disproportionate impact.

- Put this in the kind of more the broader public health picture.

Of course, pick the disease, pick the health condition, African-Americans suffer at higher rates than other parts of the population, largely because of other kinds of circumstances that make our lives different.

Is COVID similar or identical to those patterns?

Or is there something particularly pernicious about the COVID-19 virus that makes it different from what we would generally see in those disparities?

- Yeah, I mean, I think COVID-19 is interesting because we see both kind of this acute viral illness.

But then we also see these longer term impacts.

And we see that kind of together.

And so I think it's just been very pronounced, the disproportionate impact in the African-American community.

- Yeah, yeah.

In the research that you're doing, obviously the hope is to learn more about what happened to deal with it differently in the future.

Are there some things you could pull out that are obvious changes we should be making or things we ought to be addressing?

- In public health kind of as a whole?

Yeah.

I mean, I think one important thing is that our public health infrastructure needs to be continuously invested in.

So that means investing in systems and people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at our state health departments, at our local health departments.

And we can't just give funds during emergencies.

We have to be adequately funding that to have the infrastructure to deal with these public health emergencies.

- Yeah, well, and at universities as well, where a lot of the research takes place.

Of course, what we're seeing now is kind of the opposite.

I mean, there's a real pullback in federal spending across the board, but also in terms of research and research at the University of Michigan.

Do you worry that we won't be able to do the things we need to do if we don't make that investment?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, these are very hard times for people in public health and for people in academic research worried about having the resources to be able to continue the work.

- Well, Dr. Fleischer, it was really great to have you here with us.

Thanks for joining us on "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

- All right, up next, we'll meet two of this year's Michigan Chronicle Women of Excellence honorees.

But firs,t we have reached into our archives for a clip from a 1988 "Detroit Black Journal" conversation about health disparities in African-Americans.

- Healthy lifestyles are a product of good information and ability to act on that information.

And we know that a lot of the cigarette advertising and the alcohol advertising and the drug trade marketing is marketed at Black neighborhoods.

And to be able to resist those types of markets and to live a healthier lifestyle is kind of difficult.

If you want to eat right and exercise and all those things, those things take some component of money.

So, as Dr. Vincent said, you do have a lot of control over the risk factors and how healthy you may be.

But for many of our people, or Black people or poor people, that control is not at hand.

- March is Women's History Month, and The Michigan Chronicle recently held its 18th Annual Women of Excellence Awards at Huntington Place in downtown Detroit.

Now this event honors African-American women for their contributions in a variety of industries.

This year, 50 honorees were celebrated for their dedication, their leadership, and their impact on our community.

I am pleased to have two of them here with us today, Megan Madison from Bank of America, and Regina Strong from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, otherwise known as EGLE.

Welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

- And congratulations.

- Thank you.

- It's a very cool honor.

Megan, I wanna start with you.

Talk about what the award means to you, but then sort of talk about what brings you to this moment, the things that lead you to the work that you're doing that's being honored.

- Absolutely.

I appreciate that.

So for me, two years ago, I was Michigan Chronicle's 40 Under 40.

Yeah, So I took that as a challenge.

This is a preview.

So I took that as a challenge.

I said, I'm not done, I'm going to keep going.

And then here we are as a Woman of Excellence.

I know that I have a continued work to do and I am honored and privileged to even be in this seat to be able to say that I can be a driving force of what young girls see, young women coming up behind me.

So I have the opportunity of being able to forge that through financial literacy with Bank of America.

So I repair the relationship between the financial institutions and the community, and I give them a new insight of what we can do to be able to support them, be able to build communities, build families through financial literacy.

So I love what I do, and it's making traction not only for me, but people who need it, absolutely.

- I mean, you can't overstate how critical that work is, especially in our city when you think about the number of people who are completely disconnected from financial institutions and don't really understand the things that they need to about how to manage your money and keep your money and grow your money and all those things, that is everything.

- Those are the big keys.

And it's really building financial wealth.

And I love the fact to be able to see the fruits of my labor through people starting businesses and growing their credit and doing these things.

So I am committed to the cause.

And that's why I'm here.

That's why I can say I'm a Woman of Excellence.

So I love it.

- It's excellent.

- It is, it is, it's beautiful.

- Yeah.

Regina, how about you?

What does this award mean for you?

- You know, the fact that it's coming from the Michigan Chronicle and the historical significance at this time in our history means even more to me.

Because historically, I'm a transplant to Michigan.

I grew up in the Cleveland area.

And my dad was a middle school math teacher.

And my parents came up from Birmingham, Alabama in the great migration from my dad's teaching job.

And one of the things that has always been really important to my father, he used to talk about this all the time, was getting what he called the paper.

The Black news, not just the news of the day from growing up in Cleveland, it was the plain deal.

- The plain deal.

- Right, then it was the Call and Post that was similar to the Michigan Chronicle in that.

So that history of Black media focused on our messaging is so critical.

So that excites me.

I wish my dad was here to see it.

But it is really an honor and a humbling honor because I'm one of those folks who just, head down, do the work.

I'm the environmental justice public advocate for the state.

And Governor Whitmer created that role when she took office to really focus on environmental justice, which is under attack right now on the federal level.

And so we are really continuing to work on the state level.

And so I'm honored to have both an opportunity and a platform through this honor to remind people that equity still matters and diversity still matters, and we're still doing the work.

- And you don't have to look far in our community here in Detroit to the effects of environmental injustice.

The imbalances in terms of where people live.

How close is that to industry?

What effect does that industry have on them?

Talk about clean water in the state of Michigan.

The largest public disaster ever is the Flint water crisis.

We have a lot of work to do to make sure that people, and especially people of color and African-Americans are not subject to injustice.

- Absolutely, historical inequities, government practices, a lot of things put us where we are today.

But people are still experiencing all of that.

And I feel honored to be in a role, to be able to make a difference and work to advocate externally and internally within government to try to change things, to try to make things better for folks.

And so for that to be recognized among this amazing group of women doing such diverse things, it's such an honor.

It is one of those things where I, you know, when I think about why I do the work, and I was asked yesterday in a different setting, talking to some students, what am I the most proud of?

And there's so much of the work that I am proud of.

But I also wanna recognize the people I work with, the people in the trenches, in communities, the water warriors, the advocates fighting for clean air.

Those are the people and working with them, that's the reason that I'm here, is because I have tried to do things through this office to really elevate both their voices, give them voice, and make change.

And that to me is the most important part of this honor.

- Yeah, yeah.

I want both of you to talk about sort of how you got to the place that you are and the people who helped you get there because I think that's part of this too is singling out people who are helping young people now to get where they are.

Regina, I'll start with you this time.

- So one of the things, first, it's the foundation you get from your family.

My mom worked at a hospital.

I mentioned my dad was a teacher and I grew up in the '70s and I grew up at a time of a lot of dishevel and advocacy.

And I was the little red, black, and green wearing afro.

I had my hoop earrings like Angela Davis and I was gonna save the world even as a kid.

So I grew up to work in corporate America.

I started in corporate communications and journalism and I thought that would be my path.

But when I really got into the mission-driven part of the work, I felt like the advocacy was my path.

And there are many people who helped along the way.

I worked with a woman, Pamela Martin Turner when I was working in housing advocacy, who always said to me, "Nothing beats a failure but a try."

So we were always trying things, we were always doing things.

We were working in communities.

And then fast forward to my environmental work, I would say I've never been as inspired in my life to work with people like Rhonda Anderson, who I worked with at the Sierra Club, who taught me so much about environmental justice and the Jemez Principles of Democratic Organizing where you really look at letting communities speak for themselves.

Everybody wants to represent the voice of the community, but she would impress upon me over and over again that the community can speak.

The community can tell you what it was.

And so you have to listen and you have to act and you have to be ready to deal with that.

So I think Rhonda played a key role.

Theresa Landrum, who's also an advocate in 4217 in Detroit, taught me a lot about advocacy as well as Dr. Dolores Leonard and Vicki Dobbins and Monica Lewis Patrick, who is a water warrior, and also on our Michigan Advisory Council for Environmental Justice, as is Theresa, have really helped me get to the point where I understand what it takes to help communities not just survive, but thrive.

Because it's not just about getting through the injustice, it's about what happens next.

And so those folks really motivated me to be the kinda outspoken, passionate advocate that I am on their behalf.

- Wow, wow, that's a great story.

What about you, Megan?

- So for me, I will first and foremost give everything to my parents, my mother and father who have been married over 30 years.

They saw something in me and they continued to support me through everything.

Then I would go to my high school.

I graduated from Winans Academy of Performing Arts.

And one thing in our mission statement that we will always say is discipline and capable, willing to love, learn, and lead my generation.

So I keep that.

That echoes in my ear every single day of my life.

And then coming into Bank of America, I was 20 years old when I was working in finance.

I didn't know what I was doing.

I didn't, I didn't.

But there were a lot of people.

There were the Star Crawfords, the Tiffany Douglas', even people outside of Bank of America, Krista McKinney King and Norma Hutt.

I just have a lot of people that saw possibility, and I was able to act on my passion and get to a place where I am now.

And now I am the person that can return that favor to someone else and say, "I see something in you.

I'm gonna help you get to where you need to be."

So I'm grateful and my faith keeps me grounded.

I am a youth pastor of a church, Higher Ground Ministries, and I deal with kids all the time, and they keep me grounded, keep me where I need to be.

And they keep me praying.

So I'm excited about it and what it does for me.

It keeps me where I need to be.

- Well, it was great to have both of you here.

And again, congratulations on the awards.

- Thanks so much, so much.

- Finally today, we want to acknowledge the recent loss of a Detroit history-maker.

Luther Keith passed away this month at the age of 74.

Luther broke racial barriers as the first Black sports reporter and newsroom editor at The Detroit News.

And after retirement, he founded the nonprofit organization, ARISE Detroit, which grew into a coalition of more than 400 organizations that promote volunteerism and community activism all across our city.

Each summer, Luther joined us here on "American Black Journal" to talk about ARISE Detroit's signature event, Neighborhoods Day.

He was also a guest on a 2018 show about African-Americans in the media.

- I think somebody who started my journalism career back in the '70s when, if you saw the movie "The Post," we actually worked on typewriters when I started.

But I look at it like this.

We're at where we were, we aren't where we should be, but we lost momentum as we heard Cliff Russell say in that clip, in the '90s, there's a point in time when affirmative action was a good thing.

I would go to the (indistinct) or NABJ National Conventions, and there was this great buzz, excitement about diversity.

Then we hit some economic hard times and people start peeling the staffs back.

And Black folks got hit hard, the minorities got hit hard.

And I think quite frankly that we've lost it as a priority with other things have come along.

But I think this is a good time to refocus, and there are a lot of Black folks and other minority folks doing great journalism today, we have editors.

When I started at The Detroit News, there were zero Black editors.

I was the first one and actually didn't want to be an editor, but I figured if I didn't take the job, nobody else would.

So I don't wanna be an editor.

So I think it's important that we have to understand that the media and all this form is the most powerful force on the planet.

The most popular, it elects presidents, it takes down governments.

And so, as I often say, the people who control that have tremendous power.

They affect how we think about other people, how other people think about us, and how we think about ourselves.

And it's only fair and proper, as I've said, if we're gonna have an American society that reflects all these great values, we must have a diverse media with Black folks and people of color in positions of power.

- Luther became the first director of the Journalism Institute for Minorities at Wayne State University in 1985.

And he was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 1995.

And later in life, he found his absolute passion as a blues guitarist performing around town as Luther Badman Keith.

That's how we all knew him.

Luther was not just a pillar in this community, he was a friend.

And it is very difficult to even sit here and think about him not being with us anymore.

We wanna thank him for his dedication to Detroit and the legacy he leaves in journalism.

We will all certainly miss him.

That's gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco: Serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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