As an inclusive, diverse publication, we are glad to be featured in NewsMax, a conservative American news and opinion website, which is often considered right of center. We work to create a big tent of Port Of Harlem readers and proud to be included in the big tent of others.

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Wayne Young is the publisher and editor of Port of Harlem, a publication celebrating the diversity found in the African and Indigenous diaspora. He strives to feature articles from the point of the local diaspora view, not necessarily the African-American point of view. Young has immersed himself in the beauty, challenges, and culture found in the small African nation of The Gambia. A man of action, he has several philanthropic projects there.

Hailing from Gary, Indiana and now living in metro D.C., we interviewed him by telephone.

TF: Tell me about your latest projects.

WY: The biggest focus is on building some mini libraries in The Gambia, one is already built. The government doesn’t have money to do much of anything, to tell the truth. The government has always relied on different governments, post-Colonialism. The 1863 Conference, the European conference, split up Africa into artificial nations that served their colonial interests. The Gambia served the British interests, in that it’s a river with land on either side. Senegal (the nation that surrounds The Gambia except for a small bit of Atlantic Ocean coastline) is more French orientated. We say, "It’s two governments, one people."

I am also a curator, the creator of "West Africans in Early America," an exhibit at the Slavery Museum in Juffureh. Juffureh was the birthplace of Kunte Kinte. It focuses on people of Sene-Gambian heritage.

I also work with the YALI network, the Young African Leadership Initiative. It’s a comprehensive program for Africans to study an issue intensely for 9 weeks at U.S. colleges and universities, different areas like leadership, business, networking. They keep in contact with each other. We support one young man from there who is under 30, energetically supporting his community. The U.S. program reinforces his intelligence, his goodness, resources, networking.

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