All posts by Terry Howard

ADR Advisor Terry Howard is an award-winning writer and storyteller. He is a contributing writer with the Chattanooga News Chronicle, The American Diversity Report, The Douglas County Sentinel, Blackmarket.com, co-founder of the “26 Tiny Paint Brushes” writers guild, recipient of the 2019 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award, and third place winner of the 2022 Georgia Press Award.

Advisors, Authors A-H

9/11, Twenty-Five Years Later – by Terry Howard

September 6, 2026 Terry Howard

Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon while passengers and crew members fought back aboard United Airlines Flight 93 before it crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed. The date remains etched in our collective memory—and in our worst nightmares.

Whenever I revisit that morning, I return to the gift that keeps on giving, the genius of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. His nationally circulated column, published on September 12, 2001, gave voice to a country struggling to comprehend what had happened. Five years later, he reflected on the ordinary day that came before the attack: “On September 10, 2001, we went to bed. We slept in innocence. And then the morning came.”

Continue reading 9/11, Twenty-Five Years Later – by Terry Howard →

Authors A-H, Books

The genius of Oscar and Frank – by Terry Howard

May 1, 2026 Terry Howard

Sorry to disappoint readers – well, maybe some readers anyway – but today’s narrative is not about Tiger Wood’s “driving” (ahem, Land Rovers, not golf balls) skills, Pam Bondi’s firing, the war in Iran, or the Epstein files. It is about my lifelong infatuation with language and how it manifests itself in common types of prose used to educate, criticize, hyperbolize, or just annoy.

Continue reading The genius of Oscar and Frank – by Terry Howard →

Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

Threats to the future of the Black Press – by Terry Howard

April 14, 2026 Terry Howard

As a lifetime reader of Black newspapers – among them the Baltimore Afro-American, Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, New York Amsterdam News – I woke up to the headline, “The Richmond Free Press ceased publication,” a Black newspaper and held onto the fragile hope that someone had played cruel AI hoax on me. I wish I could sit here and say that was the case, but I can’t. Lord knows I can’t.

Continue reading Threats to the future of the Black Press – by Terry Howard →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Politics

Random thoughts on No Kings Day protests – by Terry Howard

April 6, 2026 Terry Howard

“Sorry, but I don’t remember seeing many white faces during civil rights protests and marches in the sixties.
So, I’ll take a pass.”

That was one of the “no thanks” responses I got from “Fernando,” one of several Black folks I invited to attend the recent No Kings Day protest with me. Hold that for now because I want to leave with a full-throated response to “Fernando” in closing.

Now in case you didn’t know, cared to know, or reside on another planet (and much to the chagrin of “someone” who is obsessed with crowd size), in the largest single day of protest in American history, over 8,000,000 people took part in some 3,300 “No Kings” rallies recently spanning every continent on Earth while millions more participated remotely by watching coverage on television or online.

Georgia protesters Virginia protester

So, despite temperatures in the mid-forties, I made the short drive to a local No Kings Day protest. It seemed that the only difference between that protest compared to the one I attended last year was a much bigger turnout, more young people in attendance and more creative posters, some with graphic images and language way too inappropriate to include in this narrative. Plus, given that this an election year a few politicians were there deftly working the crowd. And from what I could glean from some conversations, many protesters were there not necessarily to protest for themselves but for generations to come.

Continue reading Random thoughts on No Kings Day protests – by Terry Howard →

Authors A-H, Of Women

Women’s History Month: Remember Viola Liuzzo – by Terry Howard

March 19, 2026 Terry Howard

Hard to believe that a little over a year ago – April 25, 2025, to be exact – a white woman by the name of Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, if we were blessed to have had her still alive last year, would have been 100 years old.

So, on March 25, 2026, it will be sixty-one years since an assassin’s bullet in 1965 snuffed out her life on an Alabama highway; sixty-one years since, during the interim, the passage of the Voting Rights Act four months after her death; sixty-one years, during the interim, Dr. King was also felled by an assassin’s bullet; and sixty-one years since, during the interim, that the hard earned right to vote was instrumental in the election of the first African American president of the United States. One could make a compelling argument that Liuzzo’s assassination was a factor in the fight for civil rights.

Continue reading Women’s History Month: Remember Viola Liuzzo – by Terry Howard →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Of Women

An African American in Women’s History Month – by Terry Howard

March 2, 2026 Terry Howard

To kick off March, Women’s History Month, I decided to write about Unita Blackwell and her place in both African American and women’s histories. Among so many great women of all backgrounds, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Viola Liuzzo and Susan B. Anthony who advocated for civil and voting rights, I wish that Unita Blackwell was alive and with us today. More than ever, we need her out on the battlefield leading protests and knocking on doors extolling the urgency of exercising our right to vote. Lord knows we need her (and them).

Continue reading An African American in Women’s History Month – by Terry Howard →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

Rewriting History: Playing the Race Card – by Terry Howard

February 2, 2026 Terry Howard

‘DEI Hire’ and other dog whistles

I have something to say and will say it on a few issues I’ll get to shortly.

Why me? Well, I guess it is because I’m blessed with several platforms to educate, elevate, cajole, annoy, encourage, or enrage based on what happens to crop in the latest news or on the sociopolitical menu. And this is a privilege I don’t take for granted. If I win or lose friends, well so be it. It comes with the territory.

Now class, pull out your notebooks and ready yourselves for a lecture beginning with how one migrates from “Rewriting” to “Revealing” to “Amending” History. After lunch, we’ll switch to “Responding to the ‘playing the race card’ nonsense then finish up with boogeyman number three, dubbing someone a “diversity hire.”

Continue reading Rewriting History: Playing the Race Card – by Terry Howard →

Exhausted enough for change

‘DEI Hire’ and other dog whistles

INSPIRE & INSTRUCT