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St. LouiS AmericAn CAC Audited DECEMBER 21 – 27, 2023
Serving, empowering and advocating for equity in St. Louis since 1928
Vol. 95 No. 37 COMPLIMENTARY
stlamerican.com
Metro Boomin
Michael Kennedy Sr., 2024 Lifetime Achiever in Business Retired chairman and CEO of KAI Design & Build
Michael Kennedy Sr., retired chair and CEO of KAI Design & Build, said a “distasteful” experience led him to founding the business as Kennedy Associates in 1980.
By Chris King For the St. Louis American The journey of Michael Kennedy Sr., retired chairman and CEO of KAI Design & Build, to becoming the St. Louis American Foundation’s 2024 Lifetime Achiever in Business began with what Kennedy remembers as a distasteful situation in the early days of minority inclusion. “In the late 1970s, minority participation was being forced on publicly funded developments. In the design industry, majority-owned architectural firms were required to team with a minority-owned firm for 10% of the work.
See KENNEDY, A6
Updated story and photo on A14
Tenacious Tech Boy DeJuan Strickland honored for his ingenuity By Alvin A. Reid St. Louis American Rather than forget a fourth-grade experience that once left him hungry after school lunch time, DeJuan Strickland used it as an inspiration. He didn’t have money in his lunch account, but he remained in the cafeteria. He sat at a lunch table and watched other students eat. It made him wonder why free lunch programs, for all students, do not exist in all districts. “You should have free lunch everywhere because kids need to DeJuan eat. If I can’t eat, then I Strickland can’t work as efficiently as I’m supposed to, my body’s not going to feel right,” Strickland explains. He decided to help eliminate lunch debt for the students at McCurdy Elementary School and created the Teen Tech Boy Lunch Heroes initiative. Teen Tech Boy Lunch Heroes is a fund from which students can draw money when they have negative lunch balanc-
Photo by Wiley Price / St. Louis American
See STRICKLAND, A7
Photo courtesy of the Urban League
You better shop around The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis recently hosted a special holiday shopping and networking event at its regional headquarters to support entrepreneurs in three of its business empowerment programs. The Center for Entrepreneurship, the Women’s Business Center, and Save Our Sisters jointly hosted the event where shoppers were able to find unique gifts for the holiday season from 50 different vendors, all of which receive some level of support from Urban League entrepreneurship programs.
SLPS shows sound improvement during 2022-23 By Alvin A. Reid St. Louis American
read and collect books, said Ymani Wince, owner of The Noir Bookshop in south St. Louis. “How do I ignore the sort of book desert situation happening in my own city?” Wince said. “I just feel like if people have the power to change someone’s lives with the stroke of a pen, or in ways that are not going to harm, why not do that.” In St. Louis, white students at public or charter schools are more than twice as likely to read proficiently in the third grade than Black students. Many of those Black students
The close of her first semester came with a tiding of joy for Dr. Keisha Scarlett, Saint Louis Public Schools superintendent. SLPS has shown improvement in student progress, according to the latest Annual Performance Report (APR) for the 20222023 school year. The advancement is particuKeisha larly evident in progress Scarlett from 3rd to 4th grade in English Language Arts (ELA) and from 4th to 5th grade in Math. There was also a “significant increase in the progression from 8th grade Math to
See NOIR, A7
See SLPS, A6
Noir Bookshop takes books to children a new way By Andrea Y. Henderson St. Louis Public Radio The Noir Bookshop is placing a vending machine in recreation centers and community centers across St. Louis to give book access to children who live in areas where it is hard to find reading materials without transportation. The free book machine will dispense, beginning in January, about 150 paperback and hard copies of children’s books, young adult series, graphic novels and other genres of books for infants through high school students. Not every child can visit the bookstore or any others to
BUSINESS
SPORTS
I Am My Sister makes paths to home ownership
Christmas season brings wide array of basketball tourneys
In addition to helping with establishing credit building and providing financial literacy courses, the organization helps those who face trauma, depression, or anxiety.
There are boys tournaments at Maryville University, MICDS, Collinsville, and St. Dominic while the girls will be playing at Visitation, MICDS, St. Joseph’s, Principia and Mascoutah.
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