{"id":23402,"date":"2023-02-24T17:02:29","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T22:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=23402"},"modified":"2023-05-11T12:10:28","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T16:10:28","slug":"gloria-goosby-sees-a-lot-of-triumph-in-black-history-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/gloria-goosby-sees-a-lot-of-triumph-in-black-history-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Gloria Goosby sees \u2018a lot of triumph\u2019 in Black History Month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Furman celebrates Black History Month<\/a><\/strong>
\nRead more stories >><\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before she accepted the job offer from Furman, Gloria Goosby needed to Google a few things.<\/p>\n

For nearly 15 years, she had worked at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, whose student body is statistically more diverse \u2013 about 59% of GSU students are white, compared to 77% at Furman. The environment at a smaller liberal arts and sciences university like Furman would be different, said Goosby, who graduated from GSU in 2004.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Gloria Goosby, director of annual giving<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the things Goosby looked up was whether the \u201cDivine Nine\u201d \u2013 the nine historically African American Greek-letter organizations organized under the umbrella of the National Pan-Hellenic Council<\/a> \u2013 were represented on campus. Furman\u2019s chapters of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity were signs that \u201cthe student population could sustain Black Greek life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She also researched the diversity of Furman\u2019s staff, particularly curious to see if there were other people of color in the development office<\/a>, \u201cspecifically Black folks on the front lines asking for money,\u201d she said. Finally, she looked over the \u201cSeeking Abraham<\/a>\u201d report written by Furman\u2019s Task Force on Slavery and Justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Overall, Goosby was impressed. She accepted the offer and became Furman\u2019s new director of annual giving in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that Furman is being intentional about reckoning with its past,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within her first few weeks at Furman, she had seen the school\u2019s first celebration of Joseph Vaughn Day<\/a> and the annual MLK Community Breakfast. Later that year, she also saw how her new school reacted to the news of George Floyd\u2019s murder by police.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read the statement that Furman put out<\/a>, and I was just shocked that it had even been written,\u201d Goosby said. \u201cI was very proud of it. It felt very authentic to me. I\u2019ve seen other institutions that would have maybe put out a statement of some sort, but it wouldn\u2019t have come from senior leadership, and it definitely wouldn\u2019t have come from the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement from Furman University President Elizabeth Davis showed \u201ctrue concern for the belonging of everyone who is here and what the community has been experiencing,\u201d Goosby said, as did other actions the university has taken following the recommendations of the task force, such as the renaming of Furman Hall and the Clark Murphy Housing Complex<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She sees February as a chance for members of the Furman community to \u201cgain empathy \u2013 to take several moments to pause and think and talk about the lived experiences of their African American colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also hopes that Black History Month has helped Furman\u2019s students, faculty and staff \u201ccelebrate with us over the gains that have been made, especially here,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of triumph in the African American story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February is \u201ca time to celebrate over the gains that have been made, especially here,\u201d said Furman\u2019s director of annual giving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":23403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,30],"tags":[2079],"class_list":["post-23402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-top-stories","tag-black-history-month-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}