Hearing Legacy's Drumbeat [Leading Forward]

July 22, 2026  |  By Dr. Kyra Shahid

Part of the "Leading Forward: Leadership Insights with Dr. Kyra" blog series

 

I had the honor of being invited to give remarks for Celebrating 50 Years of UMBA, an event commemorating 50 years of the University of Michigan Black Alumni Association. This blog includes a portion of those remarks, recaptured and expanded to explore the leadership principles that help me move forward in challenging times. May you--the reader, find connection, affirmation, and perhaps reassurance in your own leadership journey, whoever and where ever you may be.

Remarks adapted from June 11, 2026: 

When we think about legacy, we often think about what we leave behind. But I wonder if legacy is actually something else. Perhaps legacy is what refuses to be lost. There is a story I return to often. Across many parts of the African diaspora, the drum was more than an instrument. It was language. It carried warnings, celebrations, grief, and hope across distances. It connected villages and families. It reminded people they belonged to one another. And because it was so powerful, it became dangerous.

In many British colonies, enslaved Africans were forbidden from using drums because those in power understood something profound: communication creates community, and community creates the possibility of freedom.

So the drum was taken.

But the message wasn't.

We found new ways to communicate. We sang. We prayed. We braided maps into hair. We spoke in double meanings. We turned porches into classrooms, kitchens into strategy rooms, churches into organizing spaces, music into memory, and culture into curriculum. Creativity became more than expression. It became survival. That is our inheritance.

It is why, generation after generation, Black people have not only adapted, we have pioneered. We have reshaped music, transformed science and technology, expanded democracy, reimagined education, and taught the world new ways to build community and care for one another. We know how to navigate change because we have rarely had the luxury of standing still. But there is a cost to constant evolution.

Sometimes, as we become what the moment requires, it becomes harder to remember where we began. The farther the branches grow, the harder it can be to see the roots that nourish them. That is why gatherings like the celebration of 50 years for the Black Alumni Association matter.

Over the last fifty years, every Black alumnus has a different origin story with this university. They arrived in different decades, encountered different challenges, built different communities, and left different marks on the University of Michigan. Some of them were there when simply finding one another was an act of resilience. Others arrived to opportunities created by those who came before.

Different stories.

Different seasons.

The same enduring thread.

At the William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center and within the Office of Multi-ethnic Student Affairs, we think often about that thread. Our work is not simply to preserve history, it is to help each generation recognize itself within a much longer story. We create spaces where students can build community across difference, reconnect with culture and one another, engage difficult conversations with courage, heal, imagine, and remember that they are part of something far larger than themselves.

Because legacy is not a monument.

It is a relationship.

It is something we inherit, strengthen, and then place into someone else's hands. So, as we celebrate fifty remarkable years of the Black Alumni Association, I am faced with a set of questions:

If the first fifty years were about proving what was possible, what will the next fifty years make possible because of those who are choosing to lead forward despite the challenges of the day?

What bridges will we build? What drumbeats, perhaps in forms we cannot yet imagine, will carry this legacy forward for generations still to come?

Creating space, building community, expanding equity, and disrupting patterns of inequity is the legacy of UMBA, of Trotter, of MESA and of many other organizations, units, and individual people who lost the ability to use their drum and made their own. Who connected the rhythms of communities across difference, across space, across time, and across the divides that often make forward seem impossible. I lean into the celebratory energy of 50 years for UMBA as another opportunity to lead forward. My contribution to the legacy of leaders here is the rhythm of healing, the rhythm of integrity, and the rhythm of creative excellence found in the songs of those who have always known that a different future is possible.

Can you hear the drum?