(TriceEdneyWire.com)—May we take a moment to mourn the transition of the Honorable Alexis Margaret Herman (1946-2025), the first African American woman who served our nation as Secretary of Labor. Nominated by President Bill Clinton, her confirmation was no easy feat. During her hearings, members of our sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Incorporated, crowded the Senate chambers in our unmistakable red and white. We made a point—Black women are here, and we have her back. Ultimately, they succumbed to our presence, with 85 of them voting in her favor.
Alexis was a southern Belle, a velvet hammer. She was full of grace, with graceful ways, but anyone who encountered her should know that grace was not to be confused with weakness. She was grace and she was grit, because who, without grit, could manage a strike between UPS and its unionized workers. Package delivery was hobbled for fifteen days, only settled when Secretary Herman moved into the same hotel that Teamsters leaders and UPS management stayed. She shuttled between conference room, not trying to be graceful, but simply direct. Yet she was graceful, because she carried herself that way, and a 1997 commerce-crippling strike was settled.
Alexis was grace, always grace, often administered with a bit of a southern twang. It’s not fay-ar, she sometimes drawled when losing a card game. It ain’t riiight, she sometimes said, when losing. Win or lose, she was always gracious, always ready with the pat on the shoulder, the generous hug. She was, indeed, the perfect daughter of her mentor, Dorothy Irene Height, the longest-serving President of the National Council of Negro Women.
Alexis took her Height legacy seriously. After leaving government service, she created consulting firms that dealt with diversity and minority hiring issues. She served on Fortune 500 boards, including Coca-Cola and Exelon. She mentored hundreds of young people and helped place them in impactful positions. And she was the glue that brought people together.
If you attended a gathering in her sprawling home in Northern Virginia, you’d not only connect with friends and colleagues, you’d eat well, connect fulfillingly, celebrate milestones like new books, impending births or more, but you’d also observe Alexis taking a person or two aside for a private conversation. She was glue. She brought people together. She was committed to the collective.
I never heard Secretary Herman raise her voice, but I often saw her firm. She was grace, but she didn’t play. She was kind but she didn’t roll over. She attracted a coterie of loyal friends and colleagues, because she was, indeed loyal and graceful.
I am among the many mourning the loss of the Honorable Alexis Margaret Herman, among the many grateful for her legacy. As labor is being attacked in the graceless shadow of this feckless administration, her voice is missed and her legacy looms large. She was committed to women’s empowerment, especially Black women’s empowerment. And she was committed to diversity, having worked to convince corporate America that Black women were more than cooks and maid. She passed the baton to Black women leaders, who will lift her up as they do the work of advancing women in the workplace.
Her loss is a national loss, but for me it is also a personal loss. I met her as an undergrad, and she welcomed me to Washington, DC when I moved here in 1994. She graced me with her presence when I left Bennett College in 2012. She was present during many of my milestones, gracious, kind, supportive, amazing. She will rest in grace and power, her legacy a blessing and lesson for each of us.
(Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a DC based economist and author. Juliannemalveaux.com.)
This pope was an advocate for social and economic justice, frequently addressing the economic gap between developed nations and those still developing. He embraced the concept of climate justice, releasing an encyclical on climate change, He wrote. “Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years.” The encyclical (papal letter) was issued in 2015 and called for urgent action to combat climate change, protect the environment, and promote sustainable development.
Leaders, said the Pope, must hear “both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”. Pope Francis was a spokesperson for the least and the left out, visiting prisons wherever he went, and washing the feet of prisoners to emphasize mutual humanity. He was an advocate for immigrants, stating in 2024 that those who knowingly and intentionally harm immigrants are creating a “grave sin”. He called for a “global governance based on justice, fraternity and solidarity”.
While countries around the world, the United States among them, are closing border and instituting harsh measures against migrants, Pope Francis advocated for their rights.
Pope Francis was also a strong proponent of DEI. He appointed 163 cardinals since he assumed his papacy in 2013, diversifying the College of Cardinals by including members from countries that had never been represented, including cardinals from Mongolia, South Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania and Cote d’Ivoire. This diverse set of cardinals will choose the next Pope. Will they embrace the Pope Francis approach to inclusion, advocacy, and equity, or will they revert to the narrow white approach to the papacy, with the majority of leaders being European?
African Americans have a distinct, if not large, presence in the Catholic church. Just six percent of us are Catholic. But the Catholic church has had an impact on Black Americans, especially in its role in education. Often Catholic schools were not as harshly segregated as public schools, and in some case schools that focused on Black students were much better equipped than other schools
For example, my mom, Proteone Marie Alexandria Malveaux attended Our Mother of Sorrows High School in Biloxi, Mississippi. The school was administered by the Josephite Fathers, a religious order dedicated to serving African American Catholics. The nuns who staffed the school were the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, an order dedicated to serving Native American and African American communities. Partly because of her experience at Our Mother of Sorrows, Mom was a devout Catholic. She was impatient with my criticism of the Catholic Church as colonizing oppressors, encouraging me, to “find the good” in the church, despite its many flaws.
Pope Francis was radically different from the colonizing popes who encouraged European powers to “civilize” Africans. In many instances, instead, Pope Francis has denounced racism and discrimination, and expressed solidarity with the murdered George Floyd, the slaughtered congregants at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, and many others. In many ways, President Francis was an anti-Trump, embracing immigration, climate change, DEI, and economic justice. In making a decision, the Cardinals will decide whether to move forward with a dynamic Pope Francis agenda, or whether they will move backwards to the exclusionary values of the past.
Black America had an advocate in Pope Francis. Will we have another in the next Pope.
(Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a DC based economist and author. She may be reached at juliannemalveaux.com)
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