This Team Of Black Women Rowers Is Making History In A Big Way

By TANYA A. CHRISTIAN  via https://www.essence.com

On December 12 this all-female team of rowers set out to represent the twin islands of Antigua and Barbuda at The Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge, one of the world’s toughest rowing competitions, that could span over 30 days.

Give a Black woman a challenge and watch her rise to the occasion. It’s an undeniable element entwined in her DNA that makes the impossible, possible, turns pain into passion, and flips the downright difficult into her greatest inspiration. Some say it’s “magic.” Some call it “blacknificence.” And others like Elvira Bell, Christal Clashing, Samara Emmanuel, and Kevinia Francis — collectively known as Team Antigua Island Girls — understand that it’s a culmination of hard work, sacrifice, prayer, and grit.

Last week, the women who had no prior rowing experience before this year, set off to make history as the first Black women, and the first all-Black team, to participate in and complete the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge, a transatlantic race dubbed “The World’s Toughest Row.”  

The competition takes crews from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, Spain to Antigua’s …

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