Kendra Yoshinaga
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON (WMAL)– On Google’s homepage today, one D.C. high schooler is in the spotlight.
10th-grader Akilah Johnson won Google’s annual “Doodle 4 Google” contest, where Google asked students from around the country to submit designs for its homepage.
Johnson’s doodle, titled “Afrocentric Life,” was an answer to the contest’s theme: “What makes me… me.”
Johnson said that attending Roots Public Charter School in Northwest D.C. had taught her to connect with her African heritage. “As I grew older, I realized that the black people that came before us have made us into what we are today,” she wrote in a blog post.
Johnson’s doodle is rich with symbolic nods to African history, including the names of African-American leaders like Sojourner Truth and Thurgood Marshall.
It also includes drawings of the Washington Monument and D.C.’s flag– because, Johnson writes, “I’m a Washingtonian at heart and I love my city with everything in me!”
Copyright 2016 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (PHOTO: Google)
