Coffee Con MS Black Women's Roundtable

This special episode held on Thursday, August. 13, 2020, highlighted National Black Women's Equal Pay Day and featured guests Dr. Wilma Mosley Clopton, filmmaker; Dr. Safiya Omari, City of Jackson, MS Chief of Staff; Mrs. Geraldine Bender, AFT-MS; Dr. Akemi Stout, president of the Jackson Federation of Teachers; Erica Jones, MS Association of Educators president.

MS-BWR’s efforts coincide with a national push to encourage conversations about key issues impacting Black women in the United States. Along with MS-BWR’s signature events in Mississippi, various organizations across the country are hosting their own unique events in their respective states to bring awareness to the cause. Mississippi is the only state in the U.S. without an Equal Pay Law.

"The pay gap for black women in Mississippi is extreme: 56 cents to the dollar. The typical Black woman must work until August 2020 to be paid what the typical White man was paid at the end of December 2018. Over a 40-year career, the average black woman in Mississippi will lose $849,480 to the wage gap. As a result, Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the country for women overall (20 percent, compared to 12.4 percent nationally)."

Our goal with Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is to educate the public and empower black women with additional information about these challenges and what they mean for our families. We also want to provide insight into some of the ways we can address them, including critical policy changes, more civic engagement, coordinating our efforts and holding our leaders more accountable for improving our state and nation for everyone.

MS-BWR address critical issues related to the pay gap in Mississippi and provided some possible solutions in a 2019 report Women Driving Change: A Pathway to a Better Mississippi that was co authored with the National Women’s Law Center. Other key statistics from the report include:


For Black women who live at the intersection of race and sex biases, the poverty rate in Mississippi (36.2 percent) is nearly three times the rate for white women (13.3 percent).
Mississippi families headed by single mothers face the worst poverty rate in the state and one of the highest poverty rates in the country (49.6 percent, compared to 34 percent nationally.)

These barriers are not only holding women back; they are holding back Mississippi families, businesses, and the entire state economy. But it doesn’t have to be that way. For example, if women in Mississippi received equal pay with comparable men, the poverty for working women would be cut by more than half, the poverty rate among children with working mothers would be reduced by one-third, and the Mississippi economy would have added $4.15 billion in wage and salary income (equivalent to 3.9 percent of 2016 GDP) to its economy.

This episode features a discussion on Black Maternal Health with Wengora Thompson, program director of the MERCK at Mississippi Public Health Institute. Black women in Mississippi experience unacceptably poor maternal health outcomes, including disproportionately high rates of death related to pregnancy or childbirth. Both societal and health system factors contribute to high rates of poor outcomes. and maternal mortality. We will discuss the barriers these women have to obtaining quality care, resources for Black expectant mothers in Mississippi and information for advocacy on their behalf. Also learn more about our pregnancy accommodations legislative agenda and how it impacts Black mothers in Mississippi.

This episode centered on hair care in quarantine 2020 and how we are managing our tresses as hair salons have yet to fully reopen for business. What can you do to protect and manage your hair at home? We heard from hair care experts. Also, this episode featured Candace Saulsberry, a yoga instructor who taught us ways to stay moving and centered during these difficult times. 

Program Notes:

Guest 1 was Sharie Catrice, hairstylist and owner of The Beauty Bar. She can be contacted on Instagram - @beautybarllc and via Facebook @Sharie C. Wilson

Guest 2 was Leonette Henderson, Director of Development and Partnerships with Higher Purpose Co. She can be reached at www.higherpurposeco.org

Guest 3 was Candace Saulsberry, a yoga instructor with The Yoga Kickback. She can be found on Instagram as @theyogakickback

Additional information on the Census can be found at www.2020census.gov

Today's Episode of Coffee Con Podcast features a deep dive into protecting your mental health during COVID-19. Guests include Dr. Jerrilyn Dixon and Kim Stokes of Progressive Therapy, LLC. who offer listeners a virtual Mental Health Workshop. Along with answering questions about dealing with anxiety and trauma, Dixon and Stokes help us to keep everything in perspective, with practical reminders on self-care, breathing techniques, stress-busters, and more. 

To enjoy Progressive Therapy's special resource guide for our Mental Health Workshop, visit https://wp.me/aafvYu-1Jn to download it. 

Also, be sure to connect with us via social media at:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/msblackwomensroundtable/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/msblackwomensroundtable/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/msblackwomensr1