When she was a young girl, Queen Mother Falaka Fattah went to a camp meeting in Maryland with her family.
The camp meetings allowed the people who had migrated from the South to the North to visit with family and to savor such foods as sweet potato pie, potato salad, collard greens, and other foods that reminded them of home, Fattah said.
While at the meeting, she was approached by a woman who gave her some advice upon learning her name, Frances Ellen.
“She came up to me and said, ‘Don’t you disgrace that name, Francis Ellen!’ Fattah said. “Now, I don’t know that lady from Adam. But later on, when we got back home to Philadelphia, I told Mom what she said and asked her why, and [her mother] said she said that because that name is significant. That’s the first time I ever heard of Francis Ellen Watkins Harper or the connection.”
That was among the stories that Fattah shared with this year’s cohort of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper fellows. The year-long fellowship is sponsored by The 19th, an independent, non-profit news site that reports on gender, politics, and policy, and is designated for students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to participate in one of three media-related tracks: reporting, audience engagement, and products and technology.
Harper, Fattah’s great-aunt, is considered the matriarch of Black Journalism. In addition to providing money to the Underground Railroad, Harper used her pen to advocate for the end of slavery, to give women the right to vote, and for equal opportunities in education and employment for all.
The fellows are:
Chanel Cain, audience engagement, Howard University;
Amethyst Holmes, product and technology, Howard University;
Alexis Wray, reporting, North Carolina A&T;
Eden Turner, reporting, Savannah State University
Sabreen Dawud, reporting, Howard University.
The group spent the day with the 93-year-old co-founder, president, and CEO of the House of Umoja, a non-profit program created in the 1970s that was instrumental in ending the gang wars of that time and creating a generation of young men who went on to become contributors to the community in ways both big and small.
After watching a documentary about Fattah’s life and the House of Umoja, she took questions from the fellows.
In addition to the anti-violence, education, technology, and literacy programs the organization does, the House of Umoja also publishes Umoja Magazine. She used the magazine to answer a question from one of the fellows about maintaining her legacy.
“I set my goals,” Fattah said. “I write them down for the people that I work with. If they share the vision, I like for them to know what part we’re going to do. Each day, I try to do better than yesterday. That’s what I do with the magazine every year when I start my mission of putting out another issue. I want it to always be better than the last one.”
Because of the House of Umoja’s impact on generations of people in West Philadelphia, one of the fellows asked Fattah if she had any advice for young women like themselves who might want to do the same.
Fattah said that making an impact starts with you and the leeway you give yourself.
“Always trying to do better than you did yesterday is one way,” she said. “I think the other one is patience. You have to be patient. You have to be patient, and not just with other people, but be patient with yourself, you know, because your life is a journey, and you don’t have any idea from one day to the next what your next challenge is going to be.”
Before starting the House of Umoja, Fattah was a reporter for the Philadelphia Tribune, the nation’s oldest, continuously publishing Black newspaper. She shared some of her experiences as a reporter with the fellows and was asked what from that experience she has brought to what she continues to do.
“Research,” she said. “I’m still trying to find answers…solutions…so I’m always reading, you know? Books are our life, you know, and as you know, you have a mind, a body and a spirit, okay? But the book gives you all of that. It gives you knowledge from a person’s experience. So, it’s more than just an educational piece. Books are life.”
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