Black America and Covid

Listen to Bronx native Osumanu Adamu share about living and working in New York City during the Covid-19 pandemic. He worked in-person from June 2020 until he caught the coronavirus at the end of 2020. He endured it for three months. When he finally recovered he went back to working in-person in 2021. He still works for his employer, which paid him while he was out sick for three months. He talks about what life was like working in-person and returning to college in-person during as the pandemic slowly ended.

Listen to Bronx native Ray Walker—the founding director of New York City's first urban boarding school for young men in Brooklyn, New York—share about living and working during the pandemic. He talks about his ancestors who trace back to Jamaican, Irish, and Scottish descent. He describes the opportunity to become a first-time homeowner in the pandemic, transitioning to focusing full-time on the mission of The Stokes Foundation, and overcoming Covid-19 twice.Time Stamps:1:24 Ray talks about his ancestry, family lineage, and growing up in The Bronx12:00 Ray talks about Prep 9 and matriculating to Deerfield Academy boarding school14:45 Ray talks about what life was like before the pandemic25:22 Ray talks about returning to New York City in September of 201930:29 Ray talks about having a cough in early 2020 and transitioning to working-from-home39:12 Ray talks about his return to Stokes Foundation full-time and his mission44:53 Rays talks about a young man named Oshane Davis who earns a 5-year scholarship at Northeastern University48:31 Ray talks about what it was like to buy a home during the pandemic51:51 Ray talks about attending the Santa Clarita film festival in California54:10 Ray talks about a film titled “Vaccinate Watts” with Dr. Jerry P. Abraham58:40 Ray shares the website for anyone who is interested in learning about The Stokes Foundation at stokesfoundation.org1:06:08 Ray shares about his experience getting vaccinated and then catching Covid-191:11:51 Ray talks about having Covid fog/brain after battling Covid for 3 weeksOn catching Covid-19 twice:“The whole household caught Covid, including the baby. The baby processed it the quickest, but it was the most painful for us to watch as parents because he was just devastated by what COVID did to his little body: the coughing, the inability to breathe, the fever. And all we wanted to do was comfort him even though Cindy and I were both sick. Cindy's body processed it within like three to four days. For me it was like lingering…cough and other things…like four to five days of the worst ailment that I've ever had in my life. So it just gave me this like healthy respect for people who had to be intubated…”

Listen to photographer Sean Waltrous whose family emigrated from The Caribbean—Trinidad, Barbados, and Jamaica—and who is from Brooklyn, New York share about his life at the beginning, middle, and (approaching the official) end of the pandemic. At the beginning of the 2020 lockdown Sean was tending to his sourdough starter and gardening and binge-watching television. Then, when the murder of George Floyd video came out, Sean documented the events of 2020 and 2021 and went outside… [The "Explicit" rating is for just a few cuss-words in this episode.]While listening to Sean take us on a photographic journey of protests in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and D.C. click on his Instagram page @seanwaltrous and follow along as he talks about the events of the pandemic. Then click over to his website seanwaltous.com and experience the Insurrection of 2021 and the Inauguration of 2021 through his historical photographs as he describes documenting the events.“I had for a long time always gone out to protest actions and photographed them, but I never really, you know I never really, you know, posted them. It's more just, you know, a thing I did for myself personally. The first protest that I photographed was actually when I was in college. It was in 1996 or 1997—around there—and it was a it was also a police brutality protest. So, when the protests started to happen, because of COVID I was a little reticent to go outside, you know. Still a lot wasn't known about how much transition could happen outside and I was, you know, trying to be cautious and I am also slightly older now than when I first started out going to these actions. So, I, you know, it was kind of my, the idea for me was like, ‘The kids got it.' You know. It's gonna be okay…you know they seem to be out there and it's in their hands, and then I just started seeing more and more reports of like you know vicious brutality with these protesters and then the curfews started to happen, and it felt more like an all-hands-on-deck situation. So, I got myself together and loaded up my backpack like a doomsday-prepper and had all of the Purell and the wipes and the extra masks and so on and so forth and I started to go out and photograph actions that were happening in New York City.”"Cancel Rent. Defund NYPD." Housing Justice Is Racial Justice Rally and March. Crown Heights, Brooklyn. 7/2020. (Posted July 24, 2020 on Instagram).While in D.C. at the 2021 Insurrection:“…The Trump supporters then turned around and started filming me and asking me if I was doxxing people and it became a little chaotic…because I was also on a livestream on Instagram too, and people were like, ‘Get out of there! Get out of there!”Sean's photography memorializes the lives of the many Black people murdered by the police, including, but not limited to Ahmaud Arbery, Brianna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Listen to Adjunct Professor and writer Kevaughn Hunter who was born in The Bronx and raised in Brooklyn, New York share about living in New Jersey during the pandemic. His family is from the island of Jamaica and he identifies as either Black or African American. “I remember actually being in class teaching, and I think it must have been the beginning of spring semester, when the news was coming out. This is the earliest memory that I have, because I remember sitting on my desk in an English class and the students were talking about, I think, that the college was thinking about closing or postponing or something and we were like, ‘I don't think that will happen,' because it'll only be maybe a week or two and then we'll be back. And then we weren't back for a couple years…” “…In Jersey when the when the mask mandates were out and if we were to go to a store, pretty much everyone would be wearing something. Especially if we were near Asian areas...I studied Japanese. I went to Japan. This is part of why the mask stuff to me wasn't a bother, because when I was in Japan in high school for example, if someone was sick they wore a mask. It's not like a big deal. So, I never grew up thinking that was a big deal. But, and so, in that same vein people would wear masks and no one really would treat it very differently, because of the area I guess. But then the one or two times we did go to the city in my area in Canarsie in Brooklyn almost no one was wearing masks going into stores, and people were going to like beef patty stores, and like super crowded areas. If you've been to places like that and no one's wearing a mask and it's like okay, well, that's not, some things might spread worse that way…”

Listen to filmmaker, photographer, and writer Jahmani Perry of Brooklyn, New York—whose parents are from Jamaica, West Indies—share about living and working during the Covid-19 pandemic. He identifies as Black and Caribbean American. In early 2020 Jahmani was living on Long Island. When the coronavirus began spreading in March of 2020, he shared: “I was looking for a new place…to move into the city and…and then I was like, wait a second, ‘What's going on here?' You know? They kept talking about shutting down the city…It was very disorienting, you know?” On photographing New York City during the pandemic:“I did take photographs. Yeah. Yeah. In the beginning it was like, ‘I gotta document this…as much as I can… This whole series project that I'm working on is about New York for the last...people about New York for the last 30 years. So…of course I have to document what I see, what I experience, you know? …That was surreal… There's a part of me that said, ‘Oh my God you gotta be careful. I was going on subways. I was going everywhere. I did go to many different places to try to document and to photograph as much as I can and to not be afraid.” On including photographs of New York City during the pandemic in his upcoming exhibition, Asphalt Spirits NYC Part II: 1999-2022:“…That would be part of the show yes. Yes…things that happened during the Black Lives Matter movement…It was amazing… At first, I was like, ‘Should I go out with all these people?' Then I put on my mask… I had to be there… I went to a number of demonstrations… My photographs are about people…whether it's Black Lives Matter, whether it's a protest, or everyday life… I've been photographing since 1976. I'm very much about being in people's faces…But, you know, my work is about, you know, seeing people with the fullness of who each each human being is and, and, you know, intimate way and, and, and, how do we begin just, you know, to see each other, you know, beyond the biases that, you know, can creep into our thought process, and even brain and see each other as, you know, as really fellow human beings.” On meeting Gordon Parks:“…I had met Gordon Parks and Gordon Parks actually saw my work. When I was in college a professor of mine knew him very well. She and Gordon were good friends. And she brought me to his house and we spent an afternoon with him and me showing him my work and him talking to me about my work and giving me advice and encouragement.” Jahmani Perry is continuing Gordon Parks' legacy of photographing New York. Check out Jahmani's photographs on his website: https://www.jahmaniperry.com

Interview 074 with Norma W. Listen to retired educator Norma Williams of Queens, New York—whose parents are from Guyana and their ancestors are from Barbados—share about living, working, and retiring during the Covid-19 pandemic: “I was born a negro and then I became Black…I identify as Black or…Afro-Caribbean…and I'm first generation American. So, my parents came here in 1950. They got married here. They were both the first of their siblings to come here [the U.S.]… I'm American… I'm Black… I'm a New Yorker… which is a whole different thing in and of itself…” “My intention was to retire in 2023 and in January of 2021 I decided, ‘Nope, I'm not going to make it till 2023, I'll go to 2022,' and in May of 2020 I was like, ‘Nope, I'm good. I'm done. As soon as I can go, I'm going.' So I retired August 1st 2021… and it was just overwhelming, because I was actually doing more work from home than I would actually be doing in the office… So, it was a hard adjustment for all of us…” On transitioning to working-from-home:“So, I was managing a team of people. So, everybody had to check in and all… I felt like we had we had a team where, you know, people were gonna do what they were supposed to do. But…throughout the city, you know, they put things in place. So it's like, well: ‘How are we going to know they're working? They have to check in. We have to have these meetings.' So. I felt like there was a lot of meetings going on for the sake of having meetings and it just was like…I don't enjoy that type of work so you know it was it was hard to adjust…” On early signs of Covid before the outbreak:“…I remember being on a train and, you know, the train was fairly empty. It was on the Long Island Railroad, actually, and there was a woman on the on the train that was sitting not far from me and she was coughing and coughing and she was on her phone saying. ‘I don't know what this is, they have to figure out what this is, I feel like I'm going to die.' And I'm like, ‘Oh my God, let me hold my breath for the rest of the ride or whatever,' and I think, eventually…a month later we started getting Covid reports…”

Listen to Caribbean-American Lauren W. of Queens, New York—whose parents are from the island of Jamaica—share about going to school in Washington D.C. during the Covid-19 pandemic. She talks about moving back home in the spring of 2020 during her sophomore year of university. She did her junior year online from her home in New York and she returned to D.C. for her senior year in 2022. On distance-learning during the pandemic:“I think I learned more in person. I think the interesting part was like, I guess was the will to learn, because I feel like for me like I could pass my classes and do well in my classes. But, then am I retaining any of the information past the end of the class? So, I feel like that was harder in zoom-era, because it was just like, okay, I have to do this. I'm taking this class from my bed. So let me just finish this. Where, like in school…everyone around you is, is working towards the same goal as you. So, it's kind of like a—it's kind of like a community push, like ‘Oh, we're all learning,' I guess…Yeah. I think in school it was definitely—not definitely—but it was more so, learning the goal was ‘Oh, I'm interested in this, so I want to learn more about this.' Where in zoom-school it was more ‘I want my degree now'…” “I had a couple of friends who did, like, really hands on work, like, labs and stuff. So they got sent lab kits with, like… I know there was a dissection lab and people were sent, like, vacuum sealed animals…” On returning to in-person classes at college:“Senior year was interesting…We had a lot of like Covid outbreaks all the time…Because I think like a lot of people didn't wear masks and then the classrooms were still very much regular classrooms and it was still elbow-to-elbow still, which was interesting…” “So Covid happened a lot. I think I caught it once. I know a couple of people that had it twice. Or even three times.” On studying abroad during the pandemic:“I was supposed to study abroad summer of 2020…or…yes… Summer of my sophomore year. Either summer of my sophomore year or my junior year and I was supposed to go to London for the summer and do, like, an internship program. Um, but then they had the restrictions where if we went we would have to be under lockdown for like a while and, yeah, I think I realized that I wasn't gonna go after I had paid $400 to get my passport expedited…Because I think it was like a crazy number to go to London and be in isolation, and so I said that I was not gonna go, and then for some reason they said that because I said I'm not gonna go too late, I guess, I'm still gonna have to pay back the entire amount of the trip…So I'm still paying for a trip to London that I never went on.” On January 6th 2021:“GW dorms are on the same…block as The White House. If you just walk down you're in front of The White House…I think GW sent out a message saying, like, ‘lock your doors, stay inside.'…I remember being home…I know that people were on campus, because I remember getting the GW, like, broadcast text message telling people to like barricade themselves inside… I was in New York.”

Listen to Sabine Gedeon—who resides in San Diego, California, grew up in Connecticut, was born in Haiti, and migrated to the East Coast when she was 4-years-old—share about working in California during the Covid-19 pandemic. She identifies as Haitian: “Being born in Haiti and growing up in Haitian culture I've always identified or been very aware that I was Haitian…” She moved to Los Angeles in December of 2019 and worked in-person until the week before the shut-down in March of 2022 when she transitioned to working from home.On the virus, our mortality, and the murder of George Floyd:“…so I think the first few months for me it was more of a trauma response of ‘It's go time,' Right? And so I was in it. Things weren't affecting me as much. Then George Floyd murder happens, right? And so it's another opportunity to take a pause and to reassess like, Who am I? Right? Like, what am I doing? Like, where am I that I could live in a place where someone could maliciously treat another human being like that? Right? So, you know, we go from grappling with our own mortality, right, with this unknown virus to you know grappling with our own mortality just because of the color of our skin…On creating her podcast:“…the pandemic happened and [my podcast] became really a saving grace for me during that time frame, because it was a creative outlet, it was a way for me to…not have to worry about, you know, what was happening in the world. I guess that was my moment of privilege… I could just focus on creating something that, you know, could uplift, could empower, could help other people who might have been in the valley moment to see, okay, you know what, I'm here now, but at some point I'm going to reach…on top because if she could do it, then I could do it…That was The Journey to Becoming…[which I literally launched on January 6th 2021]…Then I launched She Leads Now…”Check out Sabine's Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-journey-to-becoming/id1546108390https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/she-leads-now/id1598455202Motivational Quote:“How you do one thing is how you do everything.” –Sabine Gedeon

Listen to medical assistant and Black American Chanel L.— raised in New York and resided in Queens during the Covid-19 pandemic—share about working in-person as an essential worker during the pandemic. On working-from-home during the pandemic:“…At the beginning of the pandemic I was working at an urgent care and we were kind of at the center of the testing… We were swabbing people and really putting ourselves at risk… I worked the entire time. We never transitioned to working from home. So, at the beginning of 2020 when we got the stay-at-home order the urgent care was definitely at the epicenter of swabbing people, and we really got to see the best of people and also the worst of people… They were calling people that worked in our field superheroes and we had people who really believed that and they were super grateful… During this time the urgent care that I worked at was only testing essential workers and there were people who really weren't fond of that stipulation. So, we got to see the worst of people too. So, a lot of our centers had to have security or police on standby, because people were getting cursed out or assaulted or spit on…”

Listen to playwright, professor, and Black American Daaimah Mubashshir, MFA from Columbia University — born in Alabama, raised in Texas, resided in New York during the Covid-19 pandemic — share about working from home during the pandemic, participating in a survey of Black people's experiences working in theater, and experiencing racism when waiting in the very long lines to grocery shop in New York City. On working-from-home during the pandemic:“…It was beautiful. I got to work at home… I did a lot of walking. I took up hiking. I did a lot of resting. Um, I did a lot of reading and a lot of meditating. And it was really, really beautiful… I think that this is political… Black bodies resting.. and I found it… it was a really abundant time for me to collect my thoughts… Without all the death, I wish we could schedule that like once every couple years…”

Listen to Black American Kia Barbee from Queens, New York share about living and working during the Covid-19 pandemic. She shares how her great-great grandmother on her maternal side was a slave and her grandmother's dad was Indigenous American. She memorializes the life of a relative who was hospitalized in April of 2020 for a non-Covid-related ailment and then sadly passed away in November of 2020. On working from home:“I loved it. I thought it was great, because I felt secure that I still had an income and I didn't have to go out and transport to work.” Kia says.

Listen to Black American Marilyn Wilson, MSW — from St. Louis, Missouri, and currently living there — share about living and working there during the Covid-19 pandemic.“So the beginning of the pandemic was very scary for me. Very, very scary for me.” Marilyn recalls.“I want to knowledge that this is something I've never ever experienced in my life, you know, and it's, it's funny. You're asking these questions because I'm still asking questions about it. When… 2020… the beginning of the pandemic came, as I recall, I left work, which my, my boss started that we were just gonna be out a couple of weeks. I'm sure that a lot of people thought that as well and I remember the date so clearly, March the 13th is when he said we need to pack up my stuff, you know, enough to work from home at least for a couple of weeks and you'll hear back from me. I was working at the university at the time…” Marilyn shares.“So this pandemic, I always tell people, let's say it is a blessing actually in disguise." Marilyn reflects. "It slowed us down. Actually, take a look at ourselves, take a look at our surroundings. You know, we got an opportunity to evaluate a lot of things in our lives. You know with the great resignation, I equate that to the pandemic. You know because people didn't sit down enough to say: is this where I really should be? How important is family? Family is extremely important to me. Extremely important. To have that work like balance is extremely important to me.”

Listen to Black American Eryan Cobham from Queens, New York and now living in Chicago, Illinois share about working-from-home and living with his wife and two children in 2020 and three children in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic. His parents are from Panama and he identifies as Black, African American, and Latin American. Eryan memorializes the lives of two Black Americans who sadly passed away during the pandemic: his cousin Ricky in February of 2020 and his prep school friend Jason Forde in March of 2022.

Listen to Black American Sonja Killebrew from the South Side of Jamaica, Queens, New York share about working as an online professor at City College of New York and briefly as a substitute teacher in New York City during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her father was African American and Indigenous American. Her mother is Jamaican American. Sonja and Starr Davis met in the MFA program at City College of New York.

Listen to Black American Jerome A. Parker — from The Bronx and living in Brooklyn, New York — share about moving his parents' possessions from The Bronx, New York to North Carolina in 2020 because they contracted Coronavirus and they were quarantining in their new home. Jerome shares about sadly losing an aunt to the virus during the pandemic. “Covid has been an interesting time… It's been a rollercoaster. But I think a lot of people feel that it wasn't all negative. There was some treasure in that darkness.” Jerome shares. “We're taking back our narrative.” Jerome says about the podcast, Black America and Covid. Jerome and I met in the Prep 9 program when we were in the 7th grade. He matriculated to Choate Rosemary Hall and I went to The Taft School.

Listen to nurse Erachie Brown – born in Jamaica, Queens, New York – who is the descendant of a Foundational Black American share about her ancestry: her mother was from South Carolina and her family protected their land from the KKK; her father was from Jamaica, West Indies and he migrated to New York City where he met Erachie's mom at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. On being a Foundational Black American:“We are called Foundational Black Americans, because we are the descendants of the African slaves who were brought here, early in the 1600s, and Africans had been here even before then. So, we are the true indigenous people. We have a culture, because we're ripped from the homeland and brought to this country and many other places in the Caribbean and across the world, and stripped of our identity, our culture…” Erachie talks about being a Foundational Black American. Erachie and I, Sonja, met through the Zip Code Memory Project — https://zcmp.org — where we participated in community-based ways to memorialize the lives lost to Coronavirus. You can read about Erachie Brown here: https://zcmp.org/brown-erachie/ On working in a New York hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic:“I was put into a very hazardous condition. In fact, I was forced to, basically. But, with my own resourcefulness I got my own PPE… So I was put in this isolation unit for men. Air vents. They were all on vents, because of their breathing…had to pump oxygen into them as well as take away the virus and be filtered throughout this system. So it wouldn't go throughout the hospital air conditioning system. But, these men was in so much torment that they would rip their face masks off, and now they got those germs flying all over, and you know, I'm an LPN or PCA, Patient Care Tech, same thing. The RNs would refuse — white women refused to go in there, and there was… an Asian man in there and there was an Hispanic man and there was an old white man and I think there was someone else, and they were in torment, and not only where they in torment they were filled with feces and urine and nobody would change it for two shifts. I worked the night shift. What, what is humanity?” “…Well, uh, it started 2019, yeah 2020 – that's January – by time June came – by time we got into spring the trucks – the trailer – for refrigeration trailers were outside. Again working at night, and you know, I really didn't pay much attention 'cause you know it's a hard job, to tell you. It's not an easy job when you have somebody – like I said – It's very racist… Some bosses are not liking Black folks – I hate to say it, but it's true. So they give you all these dirty, rotten grunt work, and try to make you quit. So… I know… You know, I wasn't really paying attention. But then I start seeing the makeshift emergency, emergency center outside the building – like tents and stuff, I said okay something serious is going on…” Erachie recalls working in a hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Listen to Black American Kiki Orr – born and raised in Harlem, New York – share about her 2022 television debut on the family-friendly HBOMAX reality dating show: “My Mom, Your Dad” with host Yvonne Orji from “Insecure.” Hear Kiki interview a cast-mate from the show on her podcast: Just Bloom. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/just-bloom-w-kiki-orr/id1483512753 Watch her interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MvNIUjeir0s Kiki also memorializes her aunt who was a retired nurse who returned to work to train nurses and caught Covid-19 from one of her students: “I just want to give some love to my aunt for her service and the work that she did, being one of the frontline workers and her commitment to nursing students and her commitment to her career. And I just want to honor her. She actually passed a couple of weeks after my mom passed.”

Listen to Black American Kiki Orr – born and raised and residing in Harlem, New York – share about living in Harlem and working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.Sonja: “And what would you like to share about your ancestry?”Kiki: “'You know it's so interesting, because I was listening to one of the interviews that you did before, and I always get a little bit emotional at the question, because for me it feels like a constant reminder of how much I don't know about my ancestry…”“I'll always remember the pandemic and yet it feels like a distant memory…I'll never forget it, like, I think part of it also is that I'm carrying a lot of a lot of it in my DNA… I think it has left some residual effects that I'm actually experiencing at present day moment, and we'll talk about that later.But starting in 2020, I'll actually never forget it, because I remember being in the office and there was some mention of the possibility of us having to go home, but not really, right? At first they were like, let's do staggered schedules: we'll start staggering people in…”On having her child go to school from home:“I felt like I was the dean of students. I did not sign up to be the dean of students.”On gathering on Zoom:“So we did a 'We Got Family' talent show, and my family was on Zoom. Everybody could choose to share…or watch and clap or they could actively do something. Most of them did. What was nice was that some did it as individuals and some did it as a collective — like as a family unit. My sister and my… I'm getting emotional… I'm thinking back on that time, because it probably was one of our last family gatherings before my mom passed…”On death:“There were moments of sadness. I was working to be very intentional about creating joy. I was very intentional because there was so much death that was happening. Every single day, so much death…”Listen to Part Two where Kiki talks about her television debut on the family-friendly HBOMAX reality dating show: “My Mom, Your Dad.” The host is Yvonne Orji from “Insecure.” The show will make you laugh out loud as parents try a second chance at love.

Listen to Black American Heather Kollar — originally from The Bronx, New York and now living in Newark, New Jersey — share about living and working as an entrepreneur during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her company, h2ocleanse, specializes in state-of-the-art water and air purification. We are both alumna of Prep 9. Heather attended Philips Exeter Academy and I attended The Taft School.“I've always been an entrepreneur…" Heather shares. "So, I stopped working in my last corporate job, financial services, in April of 2019, and I had a company I had already that I was just growing, so… one reason or another I had decided to slow down my in person meetings, I think, before the pandemic, maybe the winter of 2019, I just started feeling unproductive running around. So, I actually made a really conscious decision to just work from home more. So, ironically by the time the pandemic hit, I was already in that work-from-home independent mode. That's for my company, h20cleanse, where we specialize in state-of-the-art water and air purification, ironically. So, I've been in the water space for 10 years now, and in air purification since 2017…”Heather shares about sadly losing a dear friend during the pandemic:“The first person that I lost was arguably one of the most beautiful people that I've ever met in my life… Sherry was the first person… She died at a point where nobody knew what was going on. It was like, she went in the hospital, and she died… My girlfriend — her brother died. She found out he died and was sick on social media. That was pretty horrible… yeah… I know several people whose losses were above 30 people... they were personally family members. Yes, so, you know, a lot of those people were inner-city people in close proximity…”

Listen to Black American Justin Jehriko Turner — from New York and living in New York — share about remote-teaching English to college students at City University of New York during the Covid-19 pandemic. He is an educator, writer, fashion photographer, publicist, and founder of Metropolitan Couture Media Group, a boutique Fashion PR Firm based in NYC. Justin also co-hosts the BDorm Podcast reminiscent of his conversations at Amherst College.“When COVID hit I was teaching English for City University of New York and as any educator would tell you it was a nightmare. Uh, just switching to remote learning, dealing with the challenges of some people not having the devices or not having the WIFI or having to share connections or having to share devices with other people in the family…it was gross. It was so disheartening for me as an educator…” Justin Jehriko Turner shares about teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic.“You know, I personally lost like 40% of one class and like 60% of another class, just because they couldn't maintain their online presence enough to, you know, get their attendance up.” Justin recalls.

Listen to African American Carla M. Cherry — a native of Bronx, New York — share about living and working as a New York City teacher and attending graduate school online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Carla and I met through the City College of New York MFA Reading Series where she performed her poetry. In 2020 I organized the reading series along with a few other MFA candidates: Kristine Esser Slentz, S.E. Hamlet, Dilan Schulte, and Matthew Gahler. Carla shares about her family ancestry: her father's family is originally from North Carolina and they migrated to New York in the 1930s and her mother's family is from Kentucky and they migrated to Queens in the 20th Century. “I did start taking the subways during the pandemic. If I had doctors' appointments…and I have to say, I've never seen the subways so clean, you know, until the pandemic, because, you know, they really were doing a good job of trying to keep everything clean…” Carla shares about living and working in New York City during the Covid-19 pandemic. “…Sometimes, you know, a whole bunch of us would be crowded in several [subway] cars, because the other cars were being occupied by people who were sleeping who had spent the night on the train…”

Listen to Jamaican American Dwight Dale — originally from Queens, New York and now living in Orlando, Florida — share about living with his wife and four daughters and running a business in Florida during the Covid-19 pandemic. “…All the news of COVID-19 started coming about roughly about March or so. The girls went on to spring break in March of 2020 and it was the longest spring break they've ever had in their life. It lasted about years, and they said, you know, we still we still joke about the longest spring break they've ever had…”

Listen to Jamerican Keisha Fullerton — originally from New York and now living in Atlanta, Georgia — share about working and running her business during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her parents are from the island of Jamaica. She is a designer and owner of her own apparel collection, Raiment. Keisha shares about pivoting to create fashionable and durable masks during the Covid-19 pandemic. I bought over a dozen masks from Keisha for me and my mom after seeing my sister post on Instagram about buying beautiful masks from a Black-owned, woman-owned business online. Keisha shares about her dad sadly losing a neighbor of 30-years to Covid-19.Keisha also shares about how making masks “was a way for me to still feel creative, and sure enough, as you know, I got into the whole Instagram story thing. Like, okay, let me show me making my masks, just to give content, you know, like this is what I'm doing during the pandemic. People were doing home renovations. I was also doing that. But, then, I was also working on my business. So, I put it on Instagram. Friends started seeing it. Then, your sister shared with you. You ordered, you know, and it just started going from there, and before I know it I had stores. My store started ordering something from me, from my work-work. Personally, I try not to merge the two, but they wanted some, and I tell you my mom was helping me cut orders, something like, ‘Hey, we need 100 by next week.' So, I'm, on top of that I'm still working, I'm still working, you know, with my regular 9 to 5. So, I'm up ‘til 3:00 o'clock in the morning. As soon as I signed off the computer at work, I was like, okay, I'm at the machine. I had my mom cutting fabric to kind of help me…”“I tell you, literally over night, the orders just kept coming… And thank God for, you know, Instagram. I'm telling you, social media, man. Social media can either make or or break a business, especially if you use correctly.” Keisha recalls.Check out her beautiful masks on https://www.houseofraiment.com

Listen to African-American Joseph Lemare Jr from Brooklyn, New York and now living in Shreveport, Louisiana share about working in retail in-person in New York City during the Covid-19 pandemic, catching Covid-19, and moving to Louisiana in 2022. He is of Haitian descent. He shares about catching Covid-19 and about sadly losing his frat brother to the virus.“…They were like, yeah, you're positive." Joseph recalls. "That was when Omicron came around. So it was Omicron that I caught. So, I'm saying that, like, in my own experience it was…it was surreal, because in a sense I knew that as messed up as I felt, I did not get it to the extent those people literally needing an oxygen mask and everything… Although it sucked. I was lucky, I guess to get a lesser version of it… But I wouldn't wish it on anyone. You literally feel like if you close your eyes, you're not gonna wake up… So, then I had to quarantine, and then… Well, what was funny… what was even more of a hard experience… I told you my aunt had passed. So her apartment was available… So now I had to quarantine in my aunt's house who just passed for 14 days…”

Listen to Black American Leslie Gilliam — originally from Wilmington, Delaware and now living in Los Angeles, California — share about living with her two kids (10 and 4) and working as a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist during the Covid-19 pandemic.“It was incredibly stressful…Online school was hell. But we managed.” Leslie shares about her two children going to school online during the pandemic.On the summer of 2020, Leslie recalls: “I would go see my mom in the mask… Then George Floyd happened… and I remember seeing that.. and like going to my mom's house and watching that on the TV, you know, talking to her about it, and crying about it, 'cause I watched the video. She didn't. But I couldn't hug my mom, because of all, you know, because we were just so uncertain, about how it's [Covid-19] transmitted… So, I couldn't hug her…”“So I start my private practice during the pandemic and figured out Zoom. Figured out a portal. I used Simple Practice. It was just kind of like a little bit of trial by error… The only therapy that I knew was being in a room with somebody, reading someone's body language. All of that. I'm sitting there having to navigate a screen, having to navigate technology, you know, all of this why like… My children are in a different room…where usually…my kids will be at school… I would be in the office…”“…I built a private practice quite quickly than I think I normally would, because a lot of Black folks were ready to do therapy. I think there was something between the pandemic, racial reckoning, or whatever we want to call it. I think people being able to be at home, to perhaps being isolated, or especially couples, 'cause I work with individual couples, I think they were just like, ‘It's time,' and so many clients — everyone all of a sudden wanted a Black therapist.”“A lot of my clients, they don't live close to me. So, I think Zoom is here to stay.” Leslie states.

Listen to Black American Reverend Onaje Crawford, M. Div., MSW, from North New Jersey share about living with his wife and children and working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic. Reverend Crawford is a pastor, educator, and social worker.He shares how 2021 was “interesting… So the drop off is typically early enough that I didn't have much work stuff to do, you know, dropping kids off at school at 7:45, 8:00, 8:15 in that range. So, there's not too much work stuff that early. But the pickup was interesting. I took a lot of meetings in the car where I had to say to my kids, ‘I need you guys to sit quietly in the back,' which, you know, even for the most well-behaved kid after a day of school when they haven't seen you all day, it's gonna be… they want to talk to you and tell you about stuff. ‘So, yeah, I really wanna hear this story, but actually I actually have to have this meeting right now…'”“…Bedtime routine, which is really, really hard getting kids to bed at night in the pandemic. It was hard 'cause they really couldn't separate activity and play from rest and sleep 'cause they have been in the house all day. So that was 2020…”“…I was in a funeral home at a funeral. It's hard not to hug somebody. Very, very hard not to. Even though you're like, ‘I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I'm just gonna go ahead and give you a little hug 'cause I think you need it right now.'” Reverend Crawford shares about conducting a funeral in March of 2020.“I think it is very important… often times when it comes to just the residual effect of any major happening… We talk about the kids, you know, the kids and learning loss, these years of school, and how would they recover, and what would they do? But the truth is we've all lost something in this experience and to just move on as though it never happened is, is… It's traumatic. It doubles down on trauma. So, we have to talk through and express ourselves and the things that we lament and the things that we came to love during that time, 'cause, you know, to say that it was all bad would not be true. I think, again, as someone who works so much — I work all the time — just to have the opportunity to be in the house with my kids that much for a year, you know, 15 months that's rare… I think it's great in that respect.”We met at The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut where we were both students.

Listen to Black American screenwriter and novelist Toni Ann Johnson — from upstate New York and a long-time resident of Los Angeles, California — share about working and living during the Covid-19 pandemic. Toni Ann shares:“I am technically mixed. So I have as much white European blood as Black, but I don't identify as a mixed race person. Although I look like a mixed race person. I identify as African American. I grew up in an all-white area where I was routinely called the N-word, and so I'm Black, and I now live in a mostly Black, but also some Latinx area, and it's gentrifying, so there's white people here too. But, when I bought my house, it was mostly Black and Latinx.” “So in 2020 I was teaching at USC…I had two classes a week. So, I was going to campus, which I don't live that far from USC. It's like 6 miles. But, I was on campus and then I didn't know what Zoom was, but like all of a sudden it was like ‘Okay, this Wednesday we're gonna teach on Zoom,' and I was like, ‘What is Zoom?' and I had to learn that really fast…” Toni Ann talks about winning the Flannery O'Connor Award for her linked story collection “Light Skin Gone to Waste,” forthcoming from UGA Press in the fall of 2022.

Listen to licensed real estate salesperson Peter-Charles Bright — born and residing in Brooklyn, New York — talk about living and working during the Covid-19 pandemic and having quality time with his daughter in 2020 when daycares and offices closed to prevent the spread of the virus.When asked if he identifies as Black, he responded: “I'd say Black, but I think over the past couple of years it's become more evident that Black is the name the police call you when they need you. So there's the idea of cultural Blackness… There's an idea of ethnic Blackness, and then there's just phenotypic Blackness. But there's also judicial Blackness. So I think, you know, there's times when I'm like, yeah, that Black, yes. But other times I try to be, you know, as human as possible without delineation.”Peter-Charles and I met in Prep for Prep which prepared us to attend boarding schools. He attended Philips Exeter Academy and I attended The Taft School.“I think you also have — for those who did have the option [to work from home] — I think you have a crystallization of what matters and who matters most.” Peter-Charles shares about work-life balance during the pandemic.“‘Show me a million Black people, and I'll show you a million different ways to be Black.'” Peter-Charles quotes his Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Listen to Black American Ginny share about living and working in Shanghai, China during the Covid-19 pandemic. She identifies as Black, African American, and Caribbean American. Her mother's family is from Jamaica, which is how we're related. We're cousins and we met when I was living in Shanghai in 2014. Her father's side is from North Carolina and Virginia, which is her namesake. “Well, it's an interesting time that we're talking, Sonja, because of the way China has approached and treated the pandemic for the citizens and the people living in this country and I feel like I'm going through a reset.. In 2020 when Covid was first recognized in Wuhan, China there was a lot of panic, of course, because people didn't understand much about the virus…” “…So from June of 2020 until…this a month of April and until February, I guess, of 2022… mainland China pretty much operated normally, like we wore masks often and sometimes we did have some closures, like pocket closures, like shut down schools or businesses, because you heard of outbreaks in one community or another… So, I had been living relatively normally between that time, but a lot had changed for other types of expats in Shanghai. I don't know if you heard… but there was a CNN report around 2020… I forget what month it was, maybe it was February of 2020… But there was an African — Black people — who are accosted and basically taken out of their apartment complexes… in Guangzhou, China, which has the majority of African people in China there — most of them are in southern China because it's probably easier to get there, but there's a lot of trade and a lot of business in that region. So, there is a lot of discrimination and people were targeted — racism — and people were targeted severely at that time and it wasn't until, like, actual videos showed the incidents that things started to change.So that was how some people had been affected and as a as a result of that some people left… So there is a big, I guess you could say, exiting of non-mainland Chinese people in 2020 and now you're seeing something similar happening in 2022.” “Sonja: I'm curious. I was teaching online and in the States they don't require students to keep their cameras on because they're big on privacy. Is it similar where you are with students required to keep the cameras on or off?Ginny: Actually, I don't know… That's a good question. So with our school we don't have a requirement, but children put on their cameras because they wanna see each other. They're social beings. So if they're not able to physically see each other, the second best is to visually see each other. So they don't turn off their cameras. Originally we did not have a requirement either for or against, but they're eager and they light up when they see their friends on screen.”

Listen to Dr. Daryl McCartney, MD, FAAFP, who is a family physician in Statesboro, Georgia share about working in a hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic. He is a graduate of Howard University College of Medicine.“At the time I was a Chief Medical Officer for a Health Center in southern Georgia and we had several meetings with regional, as well as internally, at the Health Center trying to brainstorm what exactly we knew of the of the virus at the time, what to expect when it came, and how we would tackle that situation… When it became noticeable that this virus was really becoming a crisis…meetings became more frequent, and our plan became more serious. I was also working as a hospitalist on weekends at the Community Hospital, so I had meetings at the Health Center as well as meetings at the hospital where we all were discussing/ brainstorming what was going on. In reality we didn't know what was going on. At that time our thought was: okay, the main issue is that when you came to the hospital was that well we needed was ventilators…” Dr. McCartney shares about the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in Statesboro, Georgia in 2020.“…We started doing mass testing everywhere… In general we kind of shut down the actual day-to-day primary care management of patients and focused a lot more on testing patients. We had drive-thru testing.. We even went to the farms and the testing on farm workers there, and that was a lot of what we were doing in the first few weeks: just testing.” Dr. McCartney recalls.“Through the end of 2020 in the beginning of 2021 we thought we knew what we were doing. After all those meetings when we were updating protocols.. We, in the medical community, thought we knew basically everything we needed to know about this virus… Then with the Delta variant all that was thrown out, or at least most of it was thrown out, because here we found that this was a much more vicious virus than the original. It spread much faster and it was more deadly…” Dr. McCartney recollects.“Unfortunately then came Omicron at the end of November, beginning of December 2021. Omicron was much more transmissible than the Delta variant… With the Delta variant we were having Code Blues five times a day. I mean, it was to the point you where you were working on a patient who was Coding and in the middle of that Code half team had to break off to go and see another patient who was Coding. Then when you are all finished, and you think everything's good, all of a sudden you get another Code, at another end of hospital, so you were running consistently…” Dr. McCartney remembers.“From what I understand the number of lives lost in the U.S. is close to a million. It's hard to believe that in just two years we've lost a million souls.” Dr. McCartney states.“Personally, my godfather's wife in Jamaica died from a result of being ill during the time of Covid. She herself did not get Covid, but she was in the hospital setting during the time of Covid and she was quite sick, but with the resources being low with everything that was going on; it was very difficult to manage her there and so she became a victim of the COVID pandemic. Even though she didn't die from COVID, she was in involved with all that was going on during that time, and so she's considered a COVID related death…” Dr. McCartney memorializes losing a relative during the pandemic.“…She died in the hospital and her family was not able to visit her because of the limitations of going into hospital, restrictions going into hospitals, and so she was only able to communicate with family via video-chat in her last days, as I had actually experienced first-hand dealing with patients first-hand… That was really touching…" Dr. McCartney shares.

Listen to Dr. Gail Young, PhD in Health Behavior, share about living with her husband and two young children in Florida during the Covid-19 pandemic. She was born in Jamaica and lived there until she was 19-years-old when she matriculated to Howard University. She shares that part of her ancestry is Scottish descent, Indian (from India), and African. She identifies as Black Caribbean American. Dr. Young shares: “Twelve years ago I was a PhD graduate in public health… During the pandemic it was such a hard time for me, because everything that I had been trained to do and everything I knew... I'm literally now a stay-at-home mom... And so, I was like, I'm not being used… I need to be volunteering, or I need to be getting a job that I can help in that capacity and…it was very, very challenging for me to not be able to serve in that way I was trained… So, everything I knew I just kept seeing unravel in the pandemic… I saw every social media campaign you were trained to do or not do happening. I saw the interaction of the CDC and the government and that strain…that caused… just me so much turmoil, because I feel like to whom much is given, much is expected…” “…Now I just feel supercharged and that I really have to take that scripture to heart and remember that ‘to whom much is given, much is expected;' So, you really have to use a talent that you've been given and make a difference, so that's where I am now just really recharged, rejuvenated… I definitely didn't come out to the pandemic depressed or anything like that... During the pandemic I was sad… There's a scripture that I held on to during the pandemic and it says, ‘Bare each other's burdens,' but then there's also the scripture that says, ‘Cast your cares on Him.' So, I truly didn't hold those burdens. I truly just gave them back to God and allowed Him to take care of them, because I know that He loves each of us in a way that we, no matter how much we think we love each other, we can never love each other like that, and so, for me those scriptures, I just really held firm to… So, I felt like I was sad in the pandemic, but at the same time not depressed… Sad for our nation, for our country, for our world as a whole. But, coming out of it, just recharged… wanting to really continue making a difference and use a little time that we have on earth with the best we have…” “So, to address the other issue about the vaccination whether you're Christian or not Christian… That's not the issue, because I truly feel as a Christian that God will protect me. The scripture says that He is not gonna promise us that we're not gonna have trouble. We will have trouble. But what God does promise us is that He will be with us every step of the way during that trouble. So, I have nothing to fear.” Dr. Young shares her perspective as a Christian. “As a public health professional I would definitely promote getting vaccinations.” Dr. Young states. She memorializes a cousin who was a frontline worker who lost his life to Covid-19 early in the pandemic in 2020.

Listen to Black American Actor, Comedian, Impersonator, and Improv Specialist Dion Flynn, Master of Arts in Acting from NYU — who lived in Michigan until he was 2-years-old, then lived in Maryland until 17-years-old, and enlisted in the U.S. Army, then lived in Albany, New York, then New York City, and now currently lives in Brooklyn — share about his ancestry that he learned through 23 and Me, which is British, Irish, and Sub-Saharan African. He shares about founding “The Improviser's Mindset” during the Covid-19 pandemic where Dion helps people connect with themselves and others using the powerful skills of improv.“So, to bring the metaphor back to what is 24 hours like in our home during the pandemic, I just saw that I never had the option to just sit down in the snow and die. I had two entities upstairs who were depending on me and to find new ways to use the technology and become more savvy with online forms of collecting payments for whatever the things I'm doing. All these things. All these adaptations came from the offers of the pandemic. You know, Sonja, in improv we talk about offers: anything that someone does on onstage, like my scene partner, they do something, we call it an offer rather than a thing or you did something. We call it an offer, because it already has the energy of it being a positive thing. Oh, I can see what you're doing. I can see this. So, the pandemic arrives and my brain had been trained to look at everything that life brought as an offer. And some people, through religious terminology, will call it God's will. Everybody's got a way of shaping the reality with language that helps them navigate it. So, for me, this improv stuff really helped, because I saw the arrival of the pandemic in all of its component parts, both the external offers... you know, sickness, quarantine, you can't go anywhere, you can't travel, you can't travel work abroad the way you used to. The internal offers like our own fear coming up, us having to get closer as a family and really learn how to navigate a small NYC apartment, when we really can't go out even freely like we used to do..."Dion memorializes losing his mentor, Jerold Mundis, to Covid-19 in 2020. Mundis was an author who reached many people through his books, especially “How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously.”

Listen to Black American Melissa C. Potter — born in Jamaica, Queens, raised in Rockland County, New York, and residing in Westchester County — share about pivoting into social impact and strategy work in TV from the music industry. She shares about how the 2020 Q3 and Q4 was a gift and curse for a lot successful professional Black folks where companies were scrambling to hire heads of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Social Impact. She also talks about buying a home during the pandemic when interest rates were very low. Prior to the pandemic, “On the work front much of the work that I did was in person: hosting film screenings and panel discussions; so, it was all hands-on deck, very high stress, figuring out how to adapt this in-person company model to a virtual space.” Melissa recalls. “So much of the messaging at the time was surviving isolation for those that lived alone or just weren't accustomed to virtual-work-life and how could we strive for togetherness.” Melissa remembers. “Working in the social impact space, for myself in particular, it proved to give opportunity for companies to address issues of unconscious bias that I think had been accepted as the norm and okay for far too long. And I remember the company that I was with having an open space for us to unpack it as employees and to come to Zoom, and I was one of two Black women working at a small company, and obviously I felt a duty for my voice to be heard and my experiences to be heard and my fears to be heard and understood by my colleagues; and I think that was the first time for so many of them, so many, you know, non people of color to hear from their peers and to hear from their colleagues what life was really like for us, or is really like for us, on a day-to-day basis, and that this threat is something that even in your best most successful living in moments is looming and something that could impact any one of us or our loved ones. So, I appreciated that the company that I worked for allowed that open space, allowed time off for us to process what happened; and I don't take for granted that that was a gift that a lot of people were not given at that time until the public pressure continued to mount corporations to face what was happening and that was like a groundswell moment as we went into July…” “And after being stuck in the house for so long, you know during Covid, was like, no, we really need to space. We really need some fresh air. Crime had increased in our area. We were just going stir crazy. We wanted to be outside and wanted to get into something… The interest rate dropped to 2.4 for us, and so, we like everybody else in New York City were fighting to get into the suburbs to have that space, because we knew what being stir crazy looked like… So it took us about nine months 30 + bids that we lost out on cash offers, buckets of money coming from Wall Street, coming from the Upper East Side, trying to get into Jersey suburbs, Westchester suburbs, and after seeing so many homes I kind of felt like the Princess and the Pea…”

Listen to Black American Muhammad Yasin — from Ohio and living in Indiana — share about working as an executive in tech and the organic development of remote work for employees in his company that began in 2019. They asked questions like: “How do you collaborate when everyone's not together?” “We found we were more productive in the six months following going home than we had ever been... I think a part of that was when you have control over nothing, you try to find something to get control over, and producing a thing or making a thing was the one thing we could all feel like we could control, while we were stuck in our house.” Muhammad recalls. “We bought a house a year in [to the pandemic]… It was interesting… So, one, the housing market really boomed…starting eight months into the pandemic… Then the actual going out and finding a place… It was challenging because, one, houses were generally going off the market within 24 hours… And, two, no one wanted to be in a space… Everyone was masked. But it was usually one realtor going into a house at a time with their client, walking through, leaving, then the next person coming in. What that means, though, is that in a suburban area you have lines literally out into the street and cars up and down the road with people cued up and waiting to walk into the house… So a lot of pressure if you find something, cause you know when you walk out there's like 20 people literally standing outside about to go in there and you don't know what's going to happen.” Muhammad remembers. “I will note that we are recording on a milestone day for Covid… Today they loosened more of the masking guidelines, including on airplanes.” Muhammad notes.

Listen to Black American Natasha Herring, MFA, from The Lower East Side of New York City and now living in Harlem share about living in New York City during the Covid-19 pandemic and working for a part of an organization that trained homecare workers and nursing home workers. “So that was really tough and very dark.” Natasha recalls. “I was a manager. So, I was managing my team…Managing them…helping and assisting with our homecare workers and the nursing home workers and their losses…and then also my team who lost loved ones and trying to keep it together for myself and my own family. So, when I tell you it was hit after hit after hit. It was really, really though.”Natasha Herring:“And also, I had a friend who was working security at a hospital in Brooklyn and who, unfortunately, had to witness a lot of the bodies… People's passing and their bodies just being shipped out overnight…” “And here in Harlem…I'm not sure if you heard about it, but they had caskets laid out… That's how bad it was up here. They had wooden caskets outside of the funeral homes…standing up outside… They were so overwhelmed.” “I did speak to someone who was a mortician who was working during that time and he said it was just horrendous… He said that what was the saddest is that you would find someone who would come in for a funeral and weeks later they would come back in for another person in their family.” Natasha memorializes 11 people who passed away during the pandemic. She stopped counting after 11 deaths, because it became too morbid. She memorializes Annie Lorine Pressley and several others: friends, family members, acquaintances, and colleagues. “I remember going to a funeral… and I was like, oh my goodness, I've already been here. I remember I was on the eleventh person that had passed away. I remember counting. At one point I was like, I need to stop counting. This is not good for me.” Natasha recalls. “Livestreaming a funeral felt like you were living in an apocalyptic novel… We write about this stuff. We read about this stuff. But it's no fun to live it.” Natasha shares.

Listen to Black American Sean Fields — from Far Rockaway, Queens and now living in Rosedale, Queens, New York — share about living and working in-person during the Covid-19 pandemic. His family ancestry is African American. Sean shares about living in a multi-generational household and navigating protecting the seniors in the home, while commuting to work on the subway. He shares about family members contracting Covid-19 and recovering. He also shares about sadly losing someone to suicide during the pandemic. “A lot of my friends didn't march. But they did contribute. They donated. Marching is a young man's and a young woman's game.” Sean shares about participating in Black Lives Matter marches with his friend Sean who is a photographer. He was in the march that shut down the West Side Highway in Manhattan. He recalls drivers honking their car horns in support and drivers yelling at the protesters to go home. “I think this is a wise thing to do. As communities of color, we're talked about, but not talked to.” Sean shares his thoughts on the oral history project.

Listen to Black American Lovey Roundtree Oliff — originally from Brooklyn and raised in Queens, New York — share about living in Exeter, New Hampshire with her husband and two sons during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her mother was born in Haiti and her father was born in Virginia. Lovey worked as a squash coach part-time and a physical fitness instructor while serving on The Select Board of the Town of Exeter, which functions as the mayor of the town. She was elected in March of 2020.“I am a Black woman raising two Black children living in the State of New Hampshire.” Lovey states.“I think things are more transparent. I think now you know what people feel and think more than you did before. Like, there were people that I would never have considered in the party of anti-mask-wearing or the people who would respond with ‘Why does everything have to be about race?' …And it's like…I don't know…because there's a Black man dead again…and it's becoming a bit of a pattern…Tell me why it's not?” Lovey share about the Black Lives Matter movement in New Hampshire.“The novelty [of Zoom] wore off and that definitely had an effect on social interactions…on social interactions becoming somewhat closed in because you felt so exposed…So there was a lot of that…Like maybe this is too much of me out there. Because when you're teaching, when you're talking to large groups… when you're doing it live you feel the feedback. You feel the responses. You feel the vibe of the room. When you're doing it on Zoom and everyone is muted or off camera, you are talking into an abyss…and you're talking to yourself in a way that feels rather uncomfortable and lonely. You're lonely in a [Zoom] room full of 100 people.”We know each other through Prep 9. Lovey attended Choate Rosemary Hall and I attended The Taft School.

Listen to eCommerce entrepreneur Michael Singleton from Queens, New York share his experience living in Manhattan, New York during the Covid-19 pandemic. He shares about gaining a roommate from Kazakhstan and also about losing a really good friend during the pandemic. Michael talks about spending time in the Hamptons, New York in 2020, driving to visit Bish Bash Falls in Massachusetts and waterfalls in Saratoga, New York in 2020 and 2021, and driving to Miami, Florida in 2021 to surprise-visit a friend.“It was the best of times for some people and the worst of times for some people.” Michael describes life during the Covid-19 pandemic.“I remember some people who didn't make it. It was very scary. You would see somebody on a Monday and then on a Thursday they're not here with us anymore.” Michael recalls losing people to Covid-19.“Dilara taught me that there was always another train coming.” Michael memorializes his friend Dilara. Her favorite song was “Hey There Delilah,” by Plain White T's, because Delilah rhymed with Dilara.He also memorializes his friend, Tom Dylan, who sadly passed away during the pandemic.

Listen to Black American Lorna Martin — from Brooklyn and now living in Queens, New York — talk about living as a retired New York City public school teacher during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her experience was “one of renewal: mind, body, and spirit.” She describes how learning to schedule her time using Google calendar allowed her to schedule poetry slams, poetry classes, book club events, and dance classes. She wrote a digital book with her grandchildren: “Conversations with G-Ma.” She scheduled weekly read-alouds with her grandchildren on her Google calendar. She also participated in “Art Across America” with friends and family, which included virtual Sunday gallery walks and Discord displays of their work. Listen to Lorna Martin talk about participating in a protest of the killing of George Floyd in 2020. In 2021 she drove to Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia visiting her son and family and friends. She flew to California to surprise visit her son and grandchildren. In February of 2021 she flew to Peru and climbed Machu Picchu. In May of 2020, sadly Lorna Martin lost a friend who fell in an airport in Florida and never came out of her coma. In 2021 Lorna Martin flew to Peru for her friend's memorial. In December of 2020, sadly Lorna Martin's only sibling passed away in South Carolina. She honored his life with a video and virtual memorial with family. She found her brother's manuscript about his life story in his home, which she shared with her family. “I took an unhealthy situation and made it healthy.” -Lorna Martin sums up her pandemic experience. “We've got to hold on to our joy. Our joy is deep within…and if we hold onto our joy during those times, then we can also understand that we can move forward to help other people overcome what they're going through.” -Lorna Martin

Listen to Black American Akim St. Omer — born and raised and residing in Brooklyn, New York — whose grandparents migrated from Trinidad to Brooklyn in the 1960s/1970s talk about how working during the Covid-19 pandemic “has been the most challenging yet rewarding times professionally” for him. He shares about the “importance of being comfortable with change and being able to pivot” and about how his work shifted in 2020 after George Floyd's murder when his organization asked him to co-chair an equity task force, which lead him to become the Director of Diversity at his organization.

Listen to Black Caribbean American Shelly share about living in Shanghai, China during the Covid-19 pandemic. She describes buying masks in the winter of 2019 to wear while taking the metro to and from work. She shares about catching a flu-like virus in winter of 2019 and feeling very ill. She also describes the precautions the government took to stop the spread of Covid-19, which included closing the borders in March of 2020, requiring foreign visitors to quarantine in hotels for two weeks, and requiring everyone to use an app called AliPay (which allows people to pay for things with their cellphones and to store their identification there) to show a green code, which means you're negative and you can travel and enter restaurants and stores. At the end of April of 2020 schools reopened in Shanghai, China. She describes the lockdowns in 2021 and 2022 in different cities to stop the spread of Covid-19.

Listen to African American Taiquan Coleman — born and raised and residing in Brooklyn, New York — whose ancestors migrated to Brooklyn three generations ago, share about working for a New York State Senator in March of 2020 and giving out flyers about Covid-19 to seniors centers at the beginning of the pandemic in New York. He talks about speaking with hundreds of constituents as the Director of Constituent Services in 2020 and 2021 and connecting people with food and necessities, such as diapers through the nonprofit Little Essentials in Brooklyn, New York. He also talks about attending graduate school online during the pandemic and what is was like to campaign in 2020.“The budget of a city or a state is a moral document." Taiquan quotes his professor of public policy from graduate school

Listen to microbiologist and science teacher Yolanda Moreland who identifies as Black and Panamanian American share about living in Arizona in 2019 and hearing about people experiencing the symptoms of Covid-19. She talks about teaching from home in her living room while her son was in school on the other side of their living room and having a drive-by birthday parties for her son in the summer of 2020. That year Yolanda began making Tik Tok videos to connect with her students. In 2021 she began teaching a hybrid of in-person and online science class where some students were in the classroom and some were at home in front of her on two screens. Sadly, Yolanda lost two loved ones during the pandemic and she believes their deaths may have been Covid-19 related.

Listen to African American attorney Joshua Bloodworth who also identifies as Black share about living and working from home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York during the Covid-19 pandemic. He shares the positive outcomes of his two Black teenaged sons' 2020 transition to going to school online while at home and visiting their elders in their walk after school in their neighborhood. He also talks about sadly losing an older family member, Butch Jackson, during the pandemic.

Listen to African American Farayi Wiley share about living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California during the Covid-19 pandemic. She shares about the joys of working from home in finance and gaining back three hours on weekdays from her commute to work. She studied economics and political science at Princeton University and her ancestors were slaves in Alabama and Georgia during American chattel slavery. Her grandparents were part of the Great Migration. They migrated up north to Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to work in the steel mills. We met working at Prep for Prep in New York City.Farayi: “So, when you ask me: Will the pandemic be a major historical event? I can't tell you, because I just don't know who's going to have the power to tell their story.”Sonja: “This is also why I'm doing this podcast. As a teacher, I'm like: Who am I to go out collecting oral history? But then, who else is doing it? It's not my job. I mean, I still have a job. I just thought: It's really important that people in the future hear that whatever narrative is being told about Black people, that we can counter it.”Farayi: “Your project is very important, because I think that people need to realize that everyone — you said, like, who am I to collect stories and to share stories — everyone needs to own that they have the power to tell the story — whether they're telling their own story or they're helping to facilitate someone else tell their story.”

Listen to Courtney Martin talk about working in-person in San Diego, California throughout 2020 and 2021, while living with his wife and two elementary-school-age children and having backyard-outdoor gatherings with a diverse group of close friends with children. During the Covid-19 pandemic he discovered Twitch as a place to virtually enjoy live music with DJs all around the world. He shares about the process of buying a car during the pandemic, when car prices were on the rise, due to a chip shortage and a used-car shortage. Courtney talks about catching Covid-19 and quarantining in his bedroom and playing videogames and watching Netflix and Hulu and Letterkenny. He recounts how his wife and children found a black kitten at an empty school playground and they named the cat Rosa Parks (after the school). Sadly, Courtney lost a close family-friend to Covid-19 during the pandemic. He and I are both alumni of Prep 9. He attended Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts and I attended The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut.

Listen to Elisheba Fowkles, MFA, from Brooklyn, New York and now living on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois with her husband and two young children talk about living in the Midwest during the Covid-19 pandemic. She was laid off just before the stay-at-home orders in 2020 and she was able to stay home with her son when daycares closed while her husband who is a frontline worker continued to work in-person. She listened to updates from Dr. Arwady and Dr. Ngozi Ezike in the Chicago area.Elisheba and I are both alumni of Prep for Prep. She attended Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, New York. We met at Smith College where we both lived in Lamont House. We reminisced about prep school friends we have in common.We also memorialized the life of Jason Forde who sat beside Elisheba Fowkles in assemblies when she was in Prep for Prep. Jason sadly passed away on March 21st 2022 and we watched his funeral, which was streamed online on April 1st 2022.Elisheba Fowkles founded the nonprofit www.blackmarigolds.org to increase “access and participation in the arts for youth living in under-resourced communities within the Chicogaland area.”

Listen to Janèa Twine share about living and working in New York during the Covid-9 pandemic. She talks about working in person and following the New York Covid-19 office protocols. She shares how she and her boyfriend grew closer during the pandemic. Sadly, she lost her boyfriend's dad at the beginning of the pandemic because the hospital didn't have the resources to help the many patients coming in, in addition to the Covid-19 patients.

Listen to Black American Esosa Ogbahon, M.Ed., — born in Nigeria, raised in Brooklyn — talk about living with his family in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, New York during the Covid-19 pandemic. He speaks about working as a school administrator and the process of transitioning to school online for New York City students. He recalls the loud fireworks going off at all hours in 2020 and how his two children acclimated to online learning.Esosa and I met in Prep 9 — a rigorous academic program that prepares students of color to attend boarding school — when we were 13-years-old. He attended The Hotchkiss School and I attended The Taft School in Connecticut.

Listen to Malene Chandler – born on Long Island – resident of Rochdale Village, Queens, whose family is from Jamaica – talk about getting laid off from a job in 2019 and aiming to find remote work in 2019 for the flexibility to travel with her daughter who is a competitive tennis player. Malene identifies as Black culturally. She started remote work in February of 2020. In April of 2020 she and her family moved to her mother-in-law's house in North Carolina. They went where they would have outdoor space to bike ride, and where their daughter was able to play tennis while going to school online. Malene describes in detail how it felt to contract Covid-19 in 2020 and to survive.

Listen to Queens-native Iman Ninos share about her experience travelling in India in 2020 when the former president instituted a ban to prevent flights into the U.S. from Europe. Prior to the closing of all theaters when the stay-at-home orders were instituted in New York, Iman was working part-time at a theater. She began working remotely in 2020. In November of 2020 she flew to Aruba for a month with her mom and sister. Then, in 2021 Iman went to Mexico in June with her sister. In September of 2021 Iman flew to New Orleans with her sister for her birthday. In December of 2021 Iman travelled to Georgia with her parents. Over Christmas of 2021 she caught the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Sadly, Iman had three uncles pass away. In April of 2020 her Uncle Fred Childs passed away in Georgia (most likely from Covid-19). In August of 2020 her Uncle Harry Childs passed away. In November of 2021 her Uncle Thurondie Chisholm, passed away from the Delta variant of Covid-19.