Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick has confirmed that President Joe Biden will deliver the commencement address at the historically Black university’s 155th ceremony.

Officials have scheduled commencement activities for 10 a.m. on May 13 on the Upper Quadrangle of the main campus.

Erica Loewe, the White House’s Director of African American Media, stated that in addition to Biden’s address at Howard University, administration officials plan to attend commencements at HBCUs nationwide.

According to the White House, President Biden’s impending visit to Howard, the alma mater of Vice President Kamala Harris, follows the administration’s record-breaking investment of nearly $6 billion through the U.S. Department of Education to support HBCUs since 2021.

“Securing funding for the more than 100 HBCUs in the United States has been a prominent feature of Biden’s domestic agenda,” Loewe wrote on Twitter.
In addition, the visit coincides with the publication of new data showing the lowest Black unemployment rate in U.S. history.

“It is an honor and privilege to welcome President Biden to deliver the 2023 commencement address and celebrate the 2023 graduating class,” Dr. Frederick said.

Biden will also receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree during the commencement.

“This honorary Doctor of Letters is much deserved for his years of transformational service as U.S. Senator, Vice President, and now as President of the United States,” Dr. Frederick stated.

“We are excited to receive the president as this year’s distinguished guest and recognize him for his relentless work uplifting our communities that have been historically left behind.

“I look forward to honoring President Biden, our honorary degree recipients, and graduating seniors at the Commencement Convocation.”

Biden was the first of four children born to Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr., in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The Biden family relocated to Claymont, Delaware, in 1953.

Biden attended the University of Delaware and Syracuse University School of Law and served on the New Castle County Council.

The Wilmington, Delaware, Amtrak station bears Biden’s name.

The president was among the youngest individuals ever elected to the United States Senate at age 29.

At 80, Biden has confirmed his candidacy for re-election, and a victory would make him the oldest elected president in American history.

Harris became the first African American and female vice president.

Biden would be the seventh incumbent U.S. president to deliver Howard’s commencement speech.

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We all have a secret, but are you ready to spill yours? Well, now you can at contemporary painter Sonya Sklaroff’s new exhibition Secrets of New York, which portrays the little-known treasures of NYC.

The exhibition invites New Yorkers to turn away from the city’s iconic landmarks and instead take a look at some of the city’s lesser known gems.

A series of oil-on-canvas paintings depict locations around the city that aren’t immediately recognizable, giving an almost behind-the-scenes look at NYC’s many clandestine happenings.

Think: a small garden oasis tucked away in the heart of SoHo, a tennis court on a garage rooftop on the East Side, and a dead-end street overlooking the East River 4th of July fireworks.

And, if you’re willing to spill a secret of your own, Sklaroff may just bring it to life!

A box at the exhibition allows guests to drop their own secrets in to then be pulled out and painted by Sklaroff. The painting will be on display for the second half of the exhibition.

“Through my Secrets of New York series, I wanted to show the unfamiliar spots in New York that people tend to overlook. There are not only places that are hidden in plain sight, but also at every moment secrets are happening around us” said Sklaroff.

Through the exhibition, Sklaroff takes viewers on a tour through the city’s ephemeral scenes, presenting a vibrant yet esoteric look at New York–a look that many of us miss out on as we go about our hectic lives.

“Making art is my purpose.  More than just what I do, art is a big part of who I am.  Painting is how I express my true self, the authentic me,” reads Sklaroff’s website.

Secrets of New York is running now through Tuesday, May 30 at the Algonquin Times Square, Autograph Collection (59 West 44th St.) You can check it out Tuesday through Saturday, 12 p.m. – 6 p.m. or by appointment.

You can learn more about the artist and her work on her website.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Grace Bumbry, a pioneering mezzo-soprano who became the first Black singer to perform at Germany’s Bayreuth Festival during a career of more than three decades on the world’s top stages, has died. She was 86.

Bumbry died Sunday at Evangelisches Krankenhaus, a hospital in Vienna, according to her publicist, David Lee Brewer.

She had a stroke on Oct. 20 while on a flight from Vienna to New York to attend her induction into Opera America’s Opera Hall of Fame. She was stricken with the plane 15 minutes from landing, was treated at NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens and returned to Vienna on Dec. 8. She had been in and out of facilities since, Brewer said Monday.

Bumbry was born Jan. 4, 1937, in St. Louis. Her father, Benjamin, was a railroad porter and her mother, the former Melzia Walker, a school teacher.

She sang in the choir at Ville’s Sumner High School and won a talent contest sponsored by radio station KMOX that included a scholarship to the St. Louis Institute of Music, but she was denied admission because she was Black. She sang on CBS’s “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” then attended Boston University College of Fine Arts. and Northwestern, where she met soprano Lotte Lehmann, who became her teacher at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, and a mentor.

Bumbry, known mostly as a mezzo but who also performed some soprano roles. was inspired when her mother took her to a recital of Marian Anderson, the American contralto who in 1955 became the first Black singer at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Bumbry became part of a generation of acclaimed Black opera singers that included Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, George Shirley, Reri Grist and Martina Arroyo.

Bumbry was among the winners of the 1958 Met National Council Auditions. She had a recital debut in Paris that same year and made her Paris Opéra debut in 1960 as Amneris in “Aida.”

The following year, she was cast by Wieland Wagner, a grandson of the composer, to sing Venus in a new production of “Tannhäuser” at the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. Bumbry’s casting in a staging that included stars Wolfang Windgassen, Victoria de los Angeles and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau resulted in 200 protest letters to the festival.

“I remember being discriminated against in the United States, so why should it be any different in Germany?” Bumbry told St. Louis Magazine in 2021. “I knew that I had to get up there and show them what I’m about. When we were in high school, our teachers — and my parents, of course — taught us that you are no different than anybody else. You are not better than anybody, and you are not lesser than anybody. You have to do your best all the time.”

Reviews of her Bayreuth debut on July 23, 1961, were mostly positive.

“A voice of very large size, though a little lacking in color. It is a voice that has not as yet `set,’ as the teachers say,” Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times. “She is obviously a singer with a big career ahead of her.”

As a result of the attention, Bumbry was invited by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to sing at a White House state dinner the following February. Debuts followed at Carnegie Hall in November 1962, London’s Royal Opera in 1963 and Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1964.

She appeared at the Met on Oct. 7, 1965, as Princess Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” the first of 216 performances with the company.

“Her assurance, self-possession, and character projection are the kind from which a substantial career can be made,” Irving Kolodin wrote in the Saturday Review.

Bumbry’s final full opera at the Met was at Amneris in Verdi’s “Aida” on Nov. 3, 1986, though she did return a decade later for the James Levine 25th anniversary gala to sing “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix (Softly awakes my heart)” from Saint-Saëns’ “Samson et Dalila.”

In 1989, she sang in the first fully staged performance on a work at Paris’ Bastille Opéra in Berlioz’s “Les Troyens (The Trojans).” In 2009, she was celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Bumbry’s 1963 marriage to Polish tenor Erwin Jaeckel ended in divorce in 1972. Bumbry was predeceased by brothers Charles and Benjamin.

Brewer said memorials are being planned for Vienna and New York.

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President Joe Biden said Monday his administration will write new regulations that will require airlines to compensate air travelers and cover their meals and hotel rooms if they are stranded for reasons within the airline’s control.

The compensation would be in addition to ticket refunds when the airline is at fault for a flight being canceled or significantly delayed. It would give consumers in the United States protections similar to those in the European Union.

“I know how frustrated many of you are with the service you get from your U.S. airlines,” especially after airlines received taxpayer relief to get through the pandemic, Biden said. “You deserve more than just getting the price of your ticket (refunded) — you deserve to be fully compensated. Your time matters, the impact on your life matters.”

Biden’s pledge comes just weeks before the start of the peak summer travel season, when air travel could exceed pre-coronavirus pandemic records.

Officials at the Transportation Department, which will write the new rules, said they didn’t ahve a precise date for when they expect to finish, but indicated they are working to quickly publish a notice that is required to get the process started.

As outlined at the White House by Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the rules would focus on cancellations and long delays caused by things such as mechanical issues with the plane or lack of a crew.

Airlines for America, which represents the biggest carriers, said in a statement that airlines have no incentive to delay or cancel flights. The trade group said more than half of cancellations in 2022 and 2023 have been caused by “extreme weather” or air traffic control outages.

“Carriers have taken responsibility for challenges within their control and continue working diligently to improve operational reliability,” including hiring more workers and reducing their schedules, the group said.

After the pandemic hit, airlines received $54 billion in federal aid that included a prohibition on layoffs, but that didn’t prevent the airlines from paying tens of thousands of workers to quit or retire early.

Airlines have added about 118,000 workers since November 2020 and now have 5% more employees than before the pandemic, according to Transportation Department figures.

The rate of canceled flights has declined to 1.6% so far this year, compared with 2.1% in the same period last year. However, delays are slightly more common and a few minutes longer on average, according to data from tracking service FlightAware.

Currently, when an airline cancels a flight for any reason, consumers can demand a refund of the unused part of their ticket and certain extras that they might have paid to the airline, such as fees for checking a bag or getting a seat assignment. Airlines often try to persuade consumers to accept a travel voucher instead of a refund.

After widespread flight disruptions last summer, the Transportation Department posted an online dashboard to let consumers compare airline policies on refunds and compensation.

The Transportation Department is expanding the site to indicate when airlines offer cash, travel vouchers or frequent-flyer miles as compensation for flight disruptions.

None of the major U.S. airlines offer cash for cancellations or long delays, only Alaska Airlines offers frequent-flyer miles, and only Alaska and JetBlue provide travel credits, according to the dashboard.

Biden and Buttigieg credited the dashboard with pushing the 10 largest U.S. airlines to promise to provide cash or vouchers for meals when a cancellation forces passengers to wait at least three hours for another flight. Nine of the 10 — all but Frontier Airlines — also promise to pay for accommodations for passengers stranded overnight.

Questions arose again around reimbursing consumers for out-of-pocket costs after Southwest Airlines canceled nearly 17,000 flights during a December meltdown in service. The Transportation and Justice departments are investigating whether Southwest scheduled more flights than it realistically could handle.

A report last month from the congressional Government Accountability Office blamed airlines for a surge in cancellations as air travel began to recover in 2021 and early 2022. The Federal Aviation Administration has also created disruptions due to technology outages and staffing shortages. The FAA recently encouraged airlines to reduce flights to and from major New York airports this summer because it doesn’t have enough air traffic controllers at a key facility.

___

Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

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