(Morristown, NJ) The first national Juneteenth holiday was punctuated by balmy temperatures and an even hotter celebration of Black excellence in the arts, as Empower The Village Inc, a Morristown-based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, hosted For The Love of Art: A Juneteenth Celebration of Justice & Joy, on the beautiful campus of Montclair Art Museum (MAM) last weekend.

Empower The Village, Inc. (ETV) partnered with Zufall Health to offer 100+ doses of the Covid-19 vaccine on Friday, April 2, 2021 at Church of God in Christ for All Saints in Morristown. After successfully offering free Covid-19 testing to the community in 2020 when it was much less accessible in certain communities, ETV was thrilled to be bringing The Village back together to help ‘Stop the Spread’ of Covid-19, which has disproportionately impacted the Black and other underserved communities.

In a roundtable discussion with NJ-11 Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, Empower The Village, Inc. Founder Ayo Sanderson Wilson was among 11 Black community leaders who met virtually with Congresswoman Sherrill to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Black community. During the early part of the roundtable discussion, many of the New Jersey community leaders reiterated the history of documented mistreatment of the Black community by the healthcare system in America, which has been a source of seemingly justified skepticism about the safety associated with the Covid-19 vaccine.