Black History

Erica Loewe Helping to Open Doors for Black Press, Others at White House

In Erika Loewe’s all-too-important job as director of African American media, she has ensured that the Black Press and other media of color have enjoyed unprecedented access to the White House and top administration and cabinet officials. “President Biden and Vice President Harris promised an administration that looks like America, and they have fulfilled that promise,” Loewe said during a recent visit to the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s (NNPA) headquarters at the Thurgood Marshall Center in Northwest, Washington, D.C.

Published

3 years ago

May 22, 2022

Oakland Post

(Pictured left to right): Karine Jean-Pierre, the nation’s first Black press secretary, Erica Loewe, director of African American media and outgoing press secretary Jen Psaki.

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

As Karine Jean-Pierre prepares to make history as the first Black press secretary at the White House, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have continued to ensure that African Americans – particularly Black women, helm crucial posts.

Alongside Jean-Pierre, there’s chief of staff to Kate Bedingfield, Khanya Brann, outgoing press secretary Jen Psaki’s chief of staff, Amanda Finney, and senior regional communications director, Rykia Dorsey.

Then, there’s Erica Loewe.

In Loewe’s all-too-important job as director of African American media, she has ensured that the Black Press and other media of color have enjoyed unprecedented access to the White House and top administration and cabinet officials.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris promised an administration that looks like America, and they have fulfilled that promise,” Loewe said during a recent visit to the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s (NNPA) headquarters at the Thurgood Marshall Center in Northwest, Washington, D.C.

There, Loewe sat for an interview with NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., for his PBS-TV show, “The Chavis Chronicles.”

“Since day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has valued diversity, empowered Black voices, and taken a whole-of-government approach to advance racial equity,” she told Dr. Chavis during the episode scheduled to air later this year.

Loewe grew up in Miami after her mother gave birth to her in South Carolina.

She attended the University of Florida and later interned at the White House for President Barack Obama.

A prolific volunteer, Loewe has worked as press secretary and deputy communications director for U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and as deputy communications director for Congressman James Clyburn (D-S.C.).

“Jim Clyburn is one of my favorite bosses, and he’s been very clear that I need to tell people that I’m from Charleston even though I grew up in Miami,” Loewe stated.

“He’s a great man, and I’ve learned a lot from him,” she remarked.

Her early influence came from her parents, particularly her mother and grandparents.

Loewe’s father worked in the nonprofit sector and helped her to gain a focus on economic empowerment and business development.

Her mother worked for a city commissioner, allowing Loewe to spend time at City Hall.

“I have always been around people who lead and serve, to some extent,” she said.

“My parents split up, but I lived with my mom and grandparents in a house full of love and laughter,” she said.

While working in the Obama White House, Loewe lived with her family and worked under the director of African American outreach.

Now, as director of African American media, she said her life had come full circle.

“I’m back at the White House, and my mother lives with me,” she said.

Loewe said her mother battles Alzheimer’s disease, but “somewhere inside, she’s there, proud of me.”

Loewe said she has enjoyed returning to the White House and tries to stay out of the crosshairs of secret service.

“We have fun. They take their jobs very seriously and we do as well,” Loewe said.

The fulfilling part of her job is allowing access to Black media and the American public, Loewe offered.

“There’s nothing like being able to grant access to the White House for the very first time,” Loewe declared. “It’s a building people have seen on television and thought they may never get inside. But, our job is to provide access to people.”

She exclaimed that the Biden-Harris administration had provided access never before experienced by the American public.

The administration also has remained the most inclusive in American history.

“Never has there been an administration that has uplifted and supported Black women as much as President Biden and Vice President Harris,” Loewe asserted.

“It’s just a fact. Numbers don’t lie. The Honorable [Kamala] Harris is a Black woman who has lived experiences… She attended Howard University, and she’s a member of the Divine Nine, the Black Church, and an advocate for Black maternal health and accurate home appraisals for Black people.”

Loewe continued:

“There are more Black people in first time positions in the President’s cabinet. You have the war in Ukraine and Gen. Lloyd Austin, the first Black to head the Department of Defense and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Two Black people you see every day making sure that we’re providing aid to Ukraine.”

She noted the Environmental Protection Agency’s Michael Regan as the first Black person to lead there, and HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, as examples of other Black appointees in the administration.

“These are not symbolic positions,” Loewe concluded.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

GOP Candidate for State Controller Lanhee Chen Known for Bipartisanship

Don't Miss

Black Women & Wealth: How to Move from Financial Fear to Financial Freedom

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Four Bills Focus on Financial Compensation for Descendants of Enslaved People

This week, CBM examines four more bills in the package — each offering ways for Black Californians to receive restitution for past injustices — from housing assistance and reclamation of loss property to fairer pay and the establishment of a state agency charged with determining eligibility for reparations.

Published

3 hours ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

Edward Henderson
California Black Media

Last week, California Black Media (CBM) provided an update on four bills in the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) 2025 Road to Repair package.

The 16 bills in the Black Caucus’s 2025 “Road to Repair” package focus on “repairing the generational harms caused by the cruel treatment of African American slaves in the United States and decades of systemic deprivation and injustice inflicted upon Black Californians,” said the CLBC in a release.

This week, CBM examines four more bills in the package — each offering ways for Black Californians to receive restitution for past injustices — from housing assistance and reclamation of lost property to fairer pay and the establishment of a state agency charged with determining eligibility for reparations.

Here are summaries of these bills, information about their authors, and updates on how far each one has advanced in the legislative process.

Assembly Bill (AB) 57

AB 57, introduced by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood), would require that at least 10% of the monies in the state’s home purchase assistance fund be made available to applicants who meet the requirements for a loan under the home purchase assistance program and are descendants of formerly enslaved people.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee is currently reviewing the legislation.

Assembly Bill (AB) 62

AB 62, also introduced by McKinnor, would require the Office of Legal Affairs to review, investigate, and make specific determinations regarding applications from people who claim they are the dispossessed owners of property seized from them because of racially motivated eminent domain. The bill would define “racially motivated eminent domain” to mean when the state acquires private property for public use and does not provide just compensation to the owner, due in whole or in part, to the owner’s race.

AB 62 is currently under review in the Judiciary Committee.

Senate Bill (SB) 464

SB 464, introduced by Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), aims to strengthen the existing civil rights laws in California concerning employer pay data reporting. The bill mandates that private employers with 100 or more employees submit annual pay data reports to the Civil Rights Department. These reports must include detailed demographic information — including race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual orientation — pertaining to their workforce distribution and compensation across different job categories. Furthermore, beginning in 2027, public employers will also be required to comply with these reporting requirements.

The Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment, and Rules is currently reviewing SB 464. A hearing is expected to be held on April 23.

Senate Bill (SB) 518

SB 518, introduced by Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson (D-San Diego), establishes the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery to address and remedy the lasting harms of slavery and the Jim Crow laws suffered by Black Californians.

SB 518 is under review in the Senate Judiciary Committee. A hearing is expected to be held on April 22.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

Published

3 hours ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

Published

3 hours ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.