WE ARE greater Mankato’s resource for diversity, equity, and inclusion!
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We at the Diversity council strive to make change within the communities that we reach. Our commitment goes beyond just education. We always look for the best way to promote understanding, assimilation, and tolerance.
Mohamed Alsadig, Executive Director
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Black History Month is here! And what better way to start off this symbolic month than to remember the historic speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. right here at Mankato High School on November 12, 1961. Dr. King - "the basic thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamentals. Not the texture of his hair or the color of his skin, but his eternal dignity and worth’’.
And this is what GMDC is all about. As we take the time to reflect on the history of and celebrate the achievements of our black brothers and sisters in this great country, let us aim to show the same respect, acceptance and love to all others as well. Dr. King in his Mankato speech couldn’t have said it better. He said, "we must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools, which is the challenge of the hour. No individual can live alone. We are interdependent.’’
As we enter mark symbolic month, let us preach and share the community spirit of love and peace. Values that make that the Greater Mankato community a welcoming and accommodating environment to be in. This is because we understand that regardless of race, color or creed, we are all the same and deserving of dignity and worth.
As part of events to mark Black History Month this year, the Kessel Peace Institute of Minnesota State University, Mankato and True Façade Pictures put together a 40-minute documentary of the historical speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on November 12, 1961 at Mankato High School. Showing at the Blue Earth County Historical Society on February 4, from 11am to 12.30pm. Make sure to add to your calendar!
IT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
Article by Reke Evuleocha
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 Introducing our new intern Reke Evuleocha. Reke is currently an intern at the Greater Mankato Diversity Council where she helps and supports the organization’s core projects. She is also a second-year graduate student of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato and a graduate teaching assistant where she teaches a first-year undergraduate course about theories and concepts of communication and facilitates speech days.
Reke has a range of experience and skills in leadership, customer service, sales, coordinating, motivating and encouraging people. She is looking forward to learning more about GMDC and contributing relevant skills and knowledge where necessary.
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 GMDC BOOK CLUB: It has been suggested that we start a Book Club that highlights books on Diversity. We are still trying to figure out the format and are open to any ideas. For Black History Month we would like to suggest this book. It is a long and interesting read.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration is a historical study of the Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book was widely acclaimed by critics.
Subject: The Great Migration, Second Great Migration
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glittering successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
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Stay tuned to our new series of podcasts, “We Are One” Where we interview, have honest conversations and learn more about our communities. And hear the voices of the people interested in improving our communities.
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Kuma's Quiz Korner Answers!
1. D: 68 million (about 1 out of 5.)
2. Spanish (61.6%), Chinese (5.2%), Tagalog (2.6%), Vietnamese (2.3%),
Arabic (1.9). in parenthesis is the % among people who spoke a language other than
English at home.
3. 57% of people who speak Vietnamese at home spoke
English “less than well”.
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