Russell Maroon Shoatz is out of solitary confinement! Hugo Pinnell had his first contact visit in 40 years last weekend. Kiluu Nyasha announced this wonderful news at a reception following the second Public Hearing on Solitary Confinement called by Rep. Tom Ammiano, February 16, 2014. Robert H. King, Free Angola 3, was also in San Francisco that week along with representatives from Amnesty International, England office and Teenie Miller the widow of slain 23-year old Angola prison guard Brent Miller whom Herman Wallace (A3) was accused of killing (1974). She has denounced the accusation publicly and was in conversation with Robert King about this, freeing Albert Woodfox (A3) and justice Louisiana State-style (Feb. 26, 2014). See http://solitarywatch.com/tag/tom-ammiano/
Is Orange the New Black? Who are California Women Prisoners?
Congratulations to California Coalition for Women Prisoners and Justice Now for a wonderful inspiring and heart rending program with phenomenal panelists, among them Misty Rojo and Piper Kerman, “Is Orange the New Black: A Conversation about California Women Prisoners.” The Humanist Hall was full to capacity as women on stage and via recorded interviews and others in the audience (many recently released after 10-15-20+ years) spoke of their experiences behind the bars in California’s prisons. One panelist, whom I’d met at Valley State prison, was incarcerated as a teen, now 35, she was released just a month or so earlier. I met many women and (a man) in the audience, who were also recently emancipated. Moderated by Shanelle Matthews, ACLU Northern California, the women spoke of imprisonments effect on family stability, health, both mental and physical and how despite this mistreatment and attempt to break their spirits they kept rising. Visit www.womenprisoners.org
Event for CCWP
Cuntained: A Dance Party Extravaganza Benefiting California Coalition for Woman Prisoners, March 15th, 3-8pm at El Rio, 3158 Mission St, San Francisco, $5-100 sliding scale
Salute to Amiri Baraka
It is a traditional African belief that one has never died until there are none among the living to remember them. Sunday March 2nd at 7 p.m. at The Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno St, San Francisco, is a very special tribute to the great Amiri Baraka featuring an unforgettable ensemble of poets and musicians that includes five of San Francisco’s six poets laureate.
The event is free with delicious complimentary food. Featured musicians include Nic Bearde (Jazz vocals), George Long (saxophone), Destiny Muhammad (harp/vocals), Colin O’Leary (guitar/vocals), Jorge Molina (traditional instrument/vocals), and Keenan Webster (Kora).
Poets include Dee Allen, Mahnaz Bahidian, Lincoln Bergman, Charlels Curtis Blackwell, Neeli Cherkovski, Boadiba, Diane Di Prima, Agneta Falk, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Maketa Groves-Smith, Gary Hicks, Jack Hirschman, devorah major, Karen Melander Magoon, D. Scott Miller, David Meltzer, Alejandro Murguia, Dottie Payne, Ramu, Kevin Simmonds, and Michael Warr.This event is sponsored by ArtInternationale! Art Lounge, The Emerald Tablet, and The evolutionary Poets Brigade.
Black Arts Movement Conference Feb. 28-March 2
Also March 1-2 weekend (beginning Feb. 28 at a free reception) is the historic convening of a who’s who among Black Art Movement poets and artists, at UC Merced. Register athttps://www.facebook.com/events/206503536195057
International Day in Solidarity with the Haitian People
Haiti Action Event
Commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 2004 coup, celebrate Haiti’s revolution, Saturday, March 1st – 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Humanist Hall, 390-27th Street, in Oakland. The featured speaker is Paulette Joseph, Coordinator of the grassroots women’s organization “Oganizasyon Fanm Vanyan.” OFAV was founded in 1996 and has been active in the struggle for women’s rights, democracy and justice in Haiti. Vanyan in Creole means someone of principle, conviction, brave, strong above all of moral character, steadfast in struggle.
There will also be eyewitness reports, drums, film, food, music Visit www.haitisolidarity.net
Dance
10th Anniversary of the Black Choreographers Festival Here and Now
Black Choreographers Festival Here and Now continues at Laney College and ODC in San Francisco 8 p.m. (Reception Saturday begins at 7 p.m.) Congratulations to Kimara on his new book, a collection of photos of BCF (smile). Also congrats to all the awardees at the BCF Awards night, March 1 at Laney College, 900 Fallon Street. Visit http://www.bcfhereandnow.com/
Robert Moses interview on Wanda’s Picks Radio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2014/02/28/wandas-picks-radio-show-morehouse-college-president-dr-wilson
Theatre
Marcus Gardley’s The House that Will Not Stand at Berkeley Rep through March 23
Freedom is on black folks’ minds throughout the Western Diaspora. Locally, Oakland born, nationally acclaimed playwright, Marcus Gardley’s returns with another episode in the Black Diaspora saga. He takes us to New Orleans, not long after the Louisiana purchase and the impact of this economic move on the politics of a household where Madam Beatrice (actress Lizan Mitchell) –free woman of color holds court in her master’s house, Lazare (actor Ray Reinhardt) whom we meet when we enter the parlor, I mean theatre.
Did I say free? Well, freedom is a product that one constantly has to negotiate the terms in 1836. The terms were often bondage, a kind of sexual servitude with perks like inheritance or a benefits package prearranged. Called plaçage, these common law marriages were recognized as legal agreements under French law; however, when Thomas Jefferson purchased Louisiana at sale price, the deal connected to France’s need to liquidate—France losing its war against enslaved Africans in Haiti under the leadership of Generals Jean Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe and Alexandre Sabès Pétion.
Thereafter, the law changed, and with it the power welded by African American women with such status. Elegant Madam Beatrice wants her three beautiful daughters to be free. This idea is contested by her master, who does not agree, neither do her daughters who only know servitude, the type they have been reared to accept. They don’t understand that they are really as much enslaved as Makeda, (Harriett D. Foy) who is working steadily towards a day when she will be free— a colorful and delightful character, she is about as focused as Madam and will not let anything or anyone dead or alive keep her from her goal—
In “The House That Will Not Stand” this family of free women is juxtaposed against that of an enslaved woman, and Madam Beatrice’s sister, Marie Josephine (actress Petronia Paley) who is kept locked up, because she keeps trying to escape to go to Congo Square to dance to the rhythms of a blue black drummer who has won her heart, a heart (when we meet her) she lost as a young girl.
Standing with a foot on both sides of the crossroads, Makeda loves the girls whom she helped raise and their mother whose plight she understands. “The House That Will Not Stand” is a metaphor, as are many elements in this play which is beautiful to the eyes—costumes, set, as it is on the ears, original music—to the story which is not neatly packaged at the end and keeps one wondering. Skin color is as much an issue in this household as it is today. The three girls are all different hues –Agnès and Maude Lynn lighter complexioned than their sister Odette, who doesn’t notice this until she and her big sister become rivals. The three actresses, Joniece Abbott-Pratt as “Odette,” Flor De Liz Perez as “Maude Lynn,” and Tiffany Rachelle Stewart as “Agnès,” whose portraits hang on the living room wall before we see the actual visions of loveliness approach from church with their mother singing, bring the reality of the impossible situation to us as they wrestle first with this father’s death, then with their mother’s unreasonable idea that they not go to the ball where eligible white men make bids on suitable black girls.
Directed by Patricia McGregor, one wonders what kind of world exists where slavery is preferred over freedom, where love is the first casualty when offered little choice for happiness? Bitterness fills the mouth of Beatrice who tries unsuccessfully to manage with dignity the fates of her girls; it litters the floor, falls from the magnolia tree, falls from the sky. What kind of world exists where one assumes bondage is preferred to freedom? Caught, must Beatrice’s girls surrender or are there unexplored options? I had a great interview with the elder women in the cast—look for the broadcast late February, early March on Wanda’s Picks Radio. At that time I learned that the play has been extended to March 23, 2014 with performances Tuesdays-Sundays, at the Berkeley Repertory TheatreThrust Stage, 2025 Addison Street @ Shattuck, Berkeley, CA 94704. For tickets and information: (510) 647-2949 and www.berkeleyrep.org Half price tickets available for anyone under 30 years of age; $10 discount for students and seniors one hour before curtain.
Love Don’t Hurt
Love shouldn’t hurt, but often in dysfunctional circumstances or power relationships like slavery and neocolonialism what masquerades as love destroys. Oakland is the epicenter for sexual trafficking and at a powerful community event at the East Oakland Youth Development Center, last month entitled: “Love Don’t Hurt,” a community panel and discussion which featured Regina Evan’s powerful Best of Bay Area Fringe 2013 Award-winning play about sex-trafficking “52 Letters,” and panelists who were victims now emancipated as well as young abolitionists, Oakland City Attorney and an Oakland Public School psychologist. The program sponsored by EOYDC, Love Never Fails, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. and Oakland Public Schools also had a panel following the play moderated by Vanessa Scott, director of Love Never Fails. The discussion was informative, passionate and horrifying as we learned first hand from the trafficked and abolitionists what is sexual trafficking is, what can be done to both prevent child sexual trafficking and how to join the freedom movement.
Art
Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Steles at UC Berkeley Art Museum February-April 2014
Barbara Chase Riboud’s Malcolm X steles grace the galleries at the University Art Museum, one of several exhibitions which close this edifice until the new museum opens at a later date. Her reception February evening was like an old homecoming, the who’s who at the talk and reception afterward with Mildred Howard, Arthur Monroe, Neshormeh Lindo, Raymond Saunders, Hubert Collins, and many others, including the founding curator of UCBAM who commissioned Chase-Riboud so many years ago.
What is striking about the art and artistry of Barbara Chase-Riboud, equally well known for her figurative sculpture Africa Rising (1998) which marks the sacred African Burial Ground National Monument site in Lower Manhattan as for her poetry and prose, is the subtle elegance of the petite woman whose visage belies the 40 years she has been making or creating art. The Malcolm X Steles exhibition, (the series created between 1969-2008), Chase-Riboud’s first exhibition in ten years closes the curtain on an institution experiencing a makeover soon to be unveiled.
In her 1973 solo exhibition BAM/PFA’s founding director Peter Selz commissioned the work Confessions for Myself (1972) from the BAM/PFA collection that introduced Chase-Riboud’s fine art to the West Coast. It is amazing, yet not amazing considering UC Berkeley’s radical and politicized history that Malcolm X Steles or monuments would conclude this phase of the BAM journey.
The steles represent lives –the lives of public servants and stateswo(men) and artists, who Chase-Riboud lifts literally in work which combine seemingly incompatible elements—silk and bronze. She works big, the braided cord skirts are hand stitched or woven then attached to the metal bodies – the process is one of philosophical reinvention. The metal pieces varies from warm red to bronze and black; the skirts red, tan and black.
Drawings and sketches are also a part of the exhibition, many of these portraits include stories one cannot always decipher (smile). It’s a good thing there is a wonderful catalog available. In reading about her life and listening to her speak, I learned that not only did the artist participate in the First Edition of the World Festival of Black Art and Culture, where she met presiding Negritude founding member, President Léopold Sédar Senghor, poet and statesman (1960-80), after she left Senegal, Chase-Riboud also attended the Pan African Festival in Algeria where she met Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver and other BPP members; a friend of the Party, I can understand better the warm embrace she shared with Sister Elaine Brown that evening, whom she knew well from Ms. Brown’s sojourn in Paris, France (Chase-Riboud’s home for many years).
(Sister Elaine Brown is everywhere. I saw her recently at the protest against police brutality and Kamala Harris, California District Attorney, mandate to stop, “killer cops.” Ms. Brown spoke and marched with family and friends. Just a week or so before that, I saw her at a policy breakfast called by Supervisor Carson at Geoffrey’s in Oakland).
Chase-Riboud’s books are sojourns into a Pan African past—where thankfully she is calling names and marking important moments in our collective histories. Chase-Riboud’s art takes us along aesthetically across multiple landscapes and provinces from her first experience at eighteen or nineteen lost in Cairo, Egypt to her state’s dinner with Chairman Mao (1965) –the first American to do so, to her literary career launched, with From Memphis to Peking, by friend and at that time editor, Toni Morrison in 1974.
Her mastery of the classics begins with Kemet or Egypt and her experiences there remain one of her biggest influences as she trekked the world— doing comparative artistic study, finding everything else—Rome, Greece . . . except perhaps China (smile) paling in comparison.
“The [artist’s] travels to Africa and Asia influenced not only her literary career but also her works of art. Her sculptures are a combination of geometric bronze forms and braided silk fibers.Her best-known 1970s sculptures also reflect African Masks. For example her 1972 freestanding sculpture Confessions for myself was made of black bronze and black wool. The hanging braids and fibrous stands allude to the supernatural, the rites and magic of Africa, and other non-Western realities. In parallel, during the same year, she wrote the poem, ‘Soledad,’” Charles Henry Hall writes on the blog Black World History. This is the year on March 27 the two surviving Soledad Brothers— Fleeta Drumgoole and John Clutchette —were acquitted by a San Francisco jury of the original charges of murdering a prison guard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soledad_Brothers).
An only child born into a middle class African American family in Philadelphia. Her father, Charles Edward Chase, a contractor, and her mother Vivian May West, a medical technician, this precocious and talented child was taking dance lessons, playing the piano and writing poetry before ten. Hers was a life, is a life of “yes” – “Yes this is possible.” “Yes, you can do this, if you are disciplined and exhibit mastery and creativity.” And in this encouraging environment, Chase-Riboud excelled.
This thoughtful woman spoke that evening February 11, with Lawrence Rinder her distinctive use and choice of materials, and how her visual art practice aligns ideas of monument with memory. What I loved about her work and person is the intentional nature of her life; nothing is left to chance and she doesn’t mind being the only women or only black woman at the party (smile). Chase-Riboud captures in her person what it means to be a Diaspora citizen.
Born in this nation’s first capital, Philadelphia, her historic novels, Sally Hemings (1979) and Echo of Lions (1989) both characterized by lawsuits. In the first, the Jefferson’s, the white Jefferson’s did not want to be associated with their black relatives— this work “earned Chase-Riboud the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best novel written by an American woman and sold more than one million copies in hardcover” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Chase-Riboud). It took from 1979 to 2001 for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and the National Genealogical Society to announce their conclusions that Jefferson had in fact fathers Hemings’s children. “Chase-Riboud having been the catalyst in changing Jeffersonian scholarship forever” (ibid).
Chase-Riboud, sued DreamWorks for using her book Echo of Lions (1989) as the basis of the screenplay for its film Amistad. DreamWorks’s argument was the since the novel is based in historic fact, which no one owns the rights to, Chase-Riboud could not own the rights to her work. Not only did she get a satisfactory settlement in 1991, Granville Burgess vs. Chase-Riboud. This copyright decision is an important one that now safeguards one’s rights to creative work based on historic fact.
“Judge Robert F. Kelly concluded that while ‘laws were not enacted to inhibit creativity . . . it is one thing to inhibit creativity and another to use the idea-versus-expression distinction as something akin to an absolute defense — to maintain that the protection of copyright law is negated by any small amount of tinkering with another writer’s idea that results in a different expression’” (ibid).
The resulting decision constituted a significant victory for artists and writers, reinforcing protection for creative ideas even when expressed in a slightly different form. Other historic works include Hottentot Venus (2003) completed after France in 2002 finally released Sara Baartman’s remains to South Africa where she was buried nearly 200 years after her birth, August 9, 2002.
Chase-Riboud is known internationally probably because whether it is her sculpture or writing, fiction or poetry, one can find residual elements of her expansive personal landscape on her philosophical or practical walking shoes (smile).
Look for an expanded piece on her visit in a later article (smile).
Action Alert! New York’s First Slave Market Signage
The Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations will hold a hearing on Int. No. 36- A Local Law in relation to requiring the placement of an informational sign near the intersection of Wall and Water Streets in Manhattan to mark the site of New York’s first slave market on Friday, February 28, 2014 at 10:00 a.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall. For those who plan to attend contact Tai Meah, Legislative Attorney, New York City Council, Tel: 212.788.9063, Fax: 212.788.9112 or email: TuMeah@council.nyc.gov
Morehouse College President, Dr. John Silvanus Wilson Jr. speaks on the “Cradle to Prison Pipeline”
Freedom continues as a theme when one looks at the tenure of Morehouse College’s 11th president whom I had a great conversation with, alumnus Dr. John Silvanus Wilson Jr. Of all the Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Morehouse is one that has a visibly long history of excellence. When I think about HBCUs, Howard University comes to mind because this is where DJ Spooky’s, composer of Birth of Nation Remix— mother taught (smile). This is also where Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) became politicized. I also think about its medical center and the cutting edge work of its physicians there around HIV/AIDS research and care, not to mention the researcher whose work on black DNA became what is now African Ancestry. Florida A&M is dear to my heart because of a wonderful conference I attended on the Hip Hop Nation, an example of a bloodless global coup. I know Dillard University in New Orleans because it has an English Language exchange program for school teachers in Brazil developed by my friend Dr. Kimya Dawson-Smith, Xavier (also in New Orleans) because Paradise Free Ja Love (a.k.a. Richard Moore) who just celebrated an important birthday—Happy 60th!, played basketball there and my sister attended the institution for short while. I know Spelman because of the sisters who held a rap artist’s heels to the fire who’d dare denigrate black women and expect praise. Alice Walker, while a student, met her friend and teacher the late Howard Zinn there; Wiley College for the great debate team which became the subject of a film directed by Denzel Washington. I know Lincoln University in Philadelphia because Gil Scott Heron attended there, as did Langston Hughes, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe.
But there is something about Morehouse—maybe it’s David Roach or his Mo’Bettas Foods, who represents his alma mater well here in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay that make me think so favorably about this institution (smile).
Dr. Wilson, class of ’79, is certainly of a caliber of man fitting of this institution that boasts much success in its graduates. From Philadelphia, the child of parents who also attended HBCUs, the president knew from an early age the power of an educated populace, especially black men.
While listening to his inaugural address in Atlanta, February 14, 2014, and reading it more closely, I was impressed by his attention to our tradition of calling on the ancestors, and his respect for women’s leadership later when he acknowledged his grandmother and mother for their guidance and foresight prepared him to step into his current role once it became available. His impressive track record (beginning in 1985) speaks to his ability to develop capital for institutions he is connected to such as MIT, where over a 16 year tenure he managed two record-breaking capital campaigns with combined results approaching $3 billion (https://www.morehouse.edu/about/presidentfranklin/presidentsbio.htm )
While at MIT, Dr. Wilson was also president of the “Greater Boston Morehouse College Alumni Association (GBMCAA) which raised more than $1 million in support of scholarships and community outreach” (https://www.morehouse.edu). Before he left there to take an appointment at George Washington University for eight years, as executive dean of the university’s Virginia campus and associate professor of higher education, he was given Morehouse College’s Benjamin Elijah Mays Leadership Award in 1998. The GBMCAA also established the John Wilson Leadership Award to recognize current Morehouse students who exhibit similar transformative leadership qualities (https://www.morehouse.edu). So when Dr. Wilson called in his talk February 14 for a shift in thinking from poverty to wealth, from making do to doing a whole lot better, this was no idle chatter.
In a phone interview a week after his historic speech, we spoke on an equally historic day, that of Malcolm X’s killing. Though we did not speak of this fact directly, we did talk about how apathy and low expectations make the cradle to prison pipeline trajectory for young black men acceptable. Since when is it a sign of relief when 65-70 percent high school dropout rate is a norm we can live with? He called on this “nation to commit itself to achieving his and President Obama’s goal of making a cradle-to-power pipeline real for black men.”
As President Obama’s point person on HBCUs, he helped craft the new legislation unveiled Feb. 27 connected to subsequent symposiums to be held around the country, one in Oakland at Laney College. Dr. Ortiz, Chancellor of Peralta Community Colleges said at the “State the District Meeting,” this spring, that our charge is to help African American men and Latino men complete their education, which means transfer and graduate. Right now the numbers are very low for both populations.
Dr. Wilson began his tenure as the 11th president of an institution where its namesake coined the term “talented tenth,” though Dr. W.E.B. DuBois popularized it. Morehouse College president’s sound plans are couched in a vision that seeks to develop Morehouse Men from the inside out. Dr. Wilson wants the Morehouse model set by its students and alumni and staff to be a model of what it means to be a man imitated throughout the nation regardless of that man’s race.
With degrees in Liberal Arts from Morehouse and one’s in Theology, Education Administration and Policy from Harvard, January 2013 when Dr. Wilson took office it was a seminal year for black America—the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In his February 2014 speech he reflected on freedom and imagination.
2013 was also the year the film “12 Years a Slave” was released, Samuel Northup’s story. Not politicized until sold into a system he hadn’t questioned until he experienced it first hand, any unexamined life could produce similar ambivalence to national events as long as such atrocities do not cast shadows across our doorsteps—
Not on Dr. Wilson’s watch though, he is a man whom as a student voiced his displeasure with campus policies in a weekly column which echoed Dr. Mays’s book by similar title Disturbed about Man, became the young Wilson’s column, “Disturbed about Morehouse.” As an undergraduate told Dr. Mays, then president when asked that he loved Morehouse, but didn’t like everything about its policies and operation.
He quotes Dr. Howard Thurman, also a Morehouse man, yes, I know—impressive (smile), who spoke of “progress as recovery,” recovery of a self one might not be proud of because one doesn’t know who he is. Dr. Wilson has been having students read certain books, character shaping material like Ayi Kwi Armah’s The Beautiful Ones Are Not yet Born and more recently, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson.
Dr. Wilson states: “One of the best things about this Morehouse experience has been our ability to help our students to answer that precious question at the heart of all education and all theology: Who am I?
“For years, at the center of our campus pedagogy has been the belief that the journey to a noteworthy, call-answered life starts with an authentic answer to that question. Who am I? Like few other institutions, Morehouse has understood that somewhere in each man’s answer must be what Howard Thurman called “the sound of the genuine.”
“Thurman said everyone must hear that sound, and if you hear it and do not heed it, it would have been better for you and the world had you never been born.”
So how does the notion of beauty fit with this “sound of the genuine”? Langston Hughes speaks of beauty in his poem, “I too.”
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I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
“Ayi Kwei Armah insists that we need more people who will not be so drunk with the wine of the world that they forget who and why they are. He says we need men who will live according to a different set of ideals and values and hopes.
“He might have said we need more Morehouse men!
“We just bought 2,000 copies of Armah’s book to ensure that every current Morehouse student will read it and commit to being a part of why, on this campus, the beautiful ones are shaped and reshaped every day.
“This new and beautiful embrace — a “world-of-our-dreams embrace” — is not for students alone. We need a new embrace of faculty and staff as well. And that won’t happen until more of us, through pure self-examination, first embrace the warning Dr. DuBois had for all of us when he said, “Unless we conquer our current vices, our current vices will conquer us!”
“So this is a war for preeminent values too!”
Dr. Wilson interviewed about his tenure, speech and the Cradle to Prison Pipeline on Wanda’s Picks (last guest): http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2014/02/28/wandas-picks-radio-show-morehouse-college-president-dr-wilson
To watch President Wilson’s inaugural given Feb. 14, 2014, speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWiLgPRWQ90
To read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-silvanus-wilson-jr/the-world-of-our-dreams_b_4809872.html
To see President Obama’s Initiative Launch: http://www.whitehouse.gov/my-brothers-keeper
http://www.thenation.com/blog/178581/obama-himself-my-brothers-keeper-admirable-flawed
The White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for African Americans and Ebony Magazine invite you to participate in the 2014
Summits for Educational Excellence for African Americans. Visit
March 28-29, 2014 at Morehouse College (Registration opens March 3)
With the Morehouse Research Institute on the African American Male
Morehouse College, Ray Charles Performing Arts Center
830 Westview Dr. SW
Atlanta, GA 30314
[If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in this event, i.e. sign-language interpreter, captioning services, Braille, large print or CD Rom, please contact AfAmEducation@ed.gov no later than March 23, 2014.]
April 25-26 at Jackson State University, Jackson, MS
(In collaboration with the Coalition zunchof Schools Educating Boys of Color)
Topic: Mental and Physical Health and Well Being
June 13-14 at Laney College, Oakland, CA
(In collaboration with Frontline Solutions 3rd Annual Gathering of Leaders)
Topic: Education and Employment
October 24-25 at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
(In collaboration with the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education)
Dance
Collage des Cultures Africaines! March 6-9
Diamano Coura West African Dance Company presents Collage des Cultures Africaines! March 69. Collage 2014 African Cultural Festival sets the stage to present an unprecedented roster of World Class Artists, Master Instructors and Dance and Drum Power Houses vital to cultivating the Bay Area’s African cultural landscape. Located at the historic Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, Diamano Coura boasts a 19th-year presenting season with this year’s theme: “Bah Be Sonlu – “Let’s Play the Drums. Tickets for the March 8th Saturday Gala performance are on sale at “brown paper tickets”- http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event or available at Diamano Coura’s Saturday class from 2:30pm-5:30pm at the Malonga Center.
Schedule highlight locations: Thursday-Sunday, Mar. 6-9, Conference and classes $17 each (early bird savings through Mar. 1) @ the Malonga Casquelourd Center, 1428 Alice St, Oakland, CA. Saturday, March 8 in Oakland Technical High School Auditorium, African Marketplace/Documentary 6 p.m., box office opens at 5 p.m. Showtime at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 9, is a Community Breakfast 10 a.m.-11 a.m. For complete schedule and information call: 510-508-3444
More on highlights
Oakland Technical High School Auditorium will serve as the location of Saturday’s Gala celebration to accommodate the usual over flow crowds; opening with an African Marketplace at 6 p.m. to feature a short-documentary screening encompassing the oral narratives of “Knowledge Transformers”, rare interviews collected by Dr. Esailama Diouf. Diouf remarks upon her father, Dr. Zakarya S. Diouf the company’s Founder and Director as being “A Missionary of the Arts.”
Collage Cast
Collage 2014 will showcase a stellar cast of Cultural artists par excellence sure to lift the spirits of its International audience and bring them to their feet. Headliners include Julia Tsitsi Chigamba & Chinyakare from Zimbabwe, Savage Jazz Dance, Mahea Uchiyama, 40 years of black dance -Dimensions Dance Theater, Quique and Maria, and Diamano Coura West African Dance Company; and special Guest Artist presentations.
On the Fly!
African American Shakes presents Medea
Medea. African-American Shakespeare Company stages Euripides’ infamous Greek tragedy about a jilted wife exacting the ultimate revenge on a cheating husband. Dawn Monique Williams directs, with Leontyne Mbele-Mbong in the title role. Medea plays Saturdays and Sundays, March 8-30 at the Buriel Clay Theater at the African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street (at Webster) in San Francisco. Opens Saturday March 8 at 8:00 p.m. Plays Saturdays, March 15, 22, 29 at 8:00 p.m. Sundays, March 9, 16, 23, 30 at 3:00 p.m. African-American Shakespeare Co. Buriel Clay Theater, 762 Fulton Street (at Webster), San Francisco. Tickets $12.50-$37.50. 800-838-3006 or www.African-AmericanShakes.org.
Theatre — The Final Days of Negro-Ville by Keith Josef Adkins
Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in association with the African American Art & Culture Complex presents The Final Days of Negro-Ville by Keith Josef Adkins directed by Michael Gene Sullivan 2pm – Saturday, March 1 at the African American Art & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street , San Francisco, CA. Synopsis: Cornell Gates is Ivy-League educated, black and charming. He’s also the mayor of an exclusive all-black suburb nicknamed Negro-Ville. In this clever satire, when the Recession hits, Cornell Gates is torn between keeping up the town’s exclusive lifestyle or figuring out a way to save it from poverty. With humor, The Final Days of Negro-Ville puts a spotlight on a community that can’t imagine a life without new cars, new clothes and money. Admission: FREE
Other Theatre
Brava! for Women in the Arts presents the West Coast premiere of Lottie’s Ghosts, written and performed by Shakiri to benefit directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe
Brava Artist In Residence and Izzy award-winning choreographer, Shakiri, brings an innovative, original work for the stage to Brava Theater. Adapted from her novel by the same name, Lottie’s Ghosts showcases Shakiri’s skills as a storyteller, dancer – and as a visual artist with originally crafted, ‘larger than life’ stick figures she created to populate the stage and bring Lottie’s Ghosts
to life.
In the play – set amid the backdrop of 1960’s Oakland, California when the Black Panthers are active, civil rights are being sought, and the Vietnam War is in full swing – Lottie’s ancestors piggy back a ride with her dead mother, clamor to be heard and, as a result, wreak havoc on her life. In the safety of her sub-basement, she secretly paints them into existence. When Lottie’s adoptive son gets into trouble, she is forced to let go of her quiet demeanor, the unassuming library lady she’s become, and act.
Brava Theater Center is located at 2781-24th Street at York, San Francisco, CA 94110. Previews March 20. Runs March 21 – April 6, 2014*. Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 p.m. There are no show on Fri, March 28. Tickets are $20. For information and tickets log on to www.brava.org or call 415-641-7657.