Young, Gifted & Black Series
By Taki S. Raton
Anala Beevers
What young person do you know under the age of five who never leaves home without a map of America in their book bag; who would rather learn how to count to ten in Spanish over memorizing lyrics to a hip-hop beat, or spend their free time learning the capital of every state in the nation rather than watching BET?
She is young, gifted and Black and according to Dr. Boyce Watkins in his January 29, 2014 account in Financial Juneteenth, 4 year-old Anala Beevers is just simply “amazing.”
Our New Orleans native learned the alphabet when she was only four months old and could recite numbers in both Spanish and English by the age of 18 months.
And as revealed in a July 29, 2013 article by Barry Beard, Jr. in Black Blue Dog, our young genius also knew quite a lot about astronomy.
Writes Dahvi Shira in People on July 27, 2013, this brilliant preschooler without any hesitation can recite the name of every state on the map and their capital.
In a YouTube clip as reported by Sadie Whitelocks in Mail Online dated also on July 29, 2013, Anala can additionally call the name of capitals of such countries as China, Greece, The Czech Republic, Russia, UK, Japan, Spain, New Zealand, Kenya, and the Netherlands just to name a few.
The names of planets and dinosaurs are her current occupation as noted in Whitelocks.
“She’s a handful, I’ll tell you she is a handful,” says her father Landon Beevers.
“She keeps us on our toes,” he adds and further suggest in the Online quote that, “she should have her own reality show.”
Published reports reveal that Anala has an IQ over 145.
In his July 30, 2013 account, Dylan Stableford in Yahoo News post that she was last year invited to join Mensa, the highly upscale high-IQ society for people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on the standardize intelligence test.
More specifically, according to Watkins, Mensa attracts intellectuals in the top two percent of all human beings on earth.
Anala even jumped this bar, cites Watkins, “with fl ying colors.”
She scored in the top one percent thus placing her in the 99th percentile range, as stated in Yahoo, towering her in the top 1 percent of all IQ scoring. Anala is very aware of her gifts.
When asked by a reporter in Shira if she’s smart, she nodded her head “yes.”
When asked, “How smart are you?” she replied, “Really smart.”
Mensa currently has 2,800 members under the age of 18 as noted in Online, the youngest at present being 3 years-old.
The organization list 110,000 members from more than 100 countries worldwide as noted by Alicia Maule in The Grio.
Maule reports that Mensa was founded in 1945 by attorney Roland Berrell and Dr. Lance Ware, a scientist and lawyer, who wanted to form a society in which membership was determined solely by a person’s IQ.
Additional factors as accounted in the Grio such as race, color, creed, national origin, age, politics, educational or social background “are irrelevant” in membership consideration.
Having received her invitation to join at the age of 4, Anala was just two years shy of the Mensa record breaker Emmelyn Roettger, a 2 year-old from Washington, D.C. who joined the organization last year.
This past June, Adam Kirby, a 2 year-old from London, became the youngest boy ever to join Mensa.
When not exercising her astute intellect, Anala enjoys playing in the company of her big sister and, writes Maule, is still the baby of the family and enjoys a fruitful childhood.
In the YouTube interview, Anala says that she would like to become a nurse in her adult profession because, “I want to help people.”
She is continuing her schooling at the Marrero Academy for Advanced Studies in New Orleans and, says Burch, “will continue learning, growing, and presumably making the world a better place for grammar lovers.”