Posts published in “Landmarks”

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to Receive $22M Renovation Including Outdoor LED Screen

By goodblacknews on December 20, 2015

The ambitious renovation project includes installing a high-definition LED screen on the facade, new benches and landscape on Lenox Avenue, expansions to the gift shop and research spaces, and adding a new exhibition space for children. — Schomburg Center Renovation Project includes installing a high-definition LED screen on the facade, new benches and landscape on Lenox Avenue, expansions to the gift shop and research spaces, and adding a new exhibition space for children. (image via dnainfo.com)

HARLEM — The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is getting a $22 million facelift, officials announced Friday.
The ambitious renovation project includes installing a high-definition LED screen on the facade, new benches and landscape on Lenox Avenue, expansions to the gift shop and research spaces, and adding a new exhibition space for children.
“All of this makes for a really terrific start into the 21st Century and puts the Schomburg on its way its next 90 years,” said Director Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
The renovation comes at a time of growth at the research library, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary. Over the last three years their attendance has increased by 26 percent and program attendance by nearly 40 percent, according to NYPL President Tony Marx.
This is the most significant investment in the library named after Arturo Schomburg since its 1979 expansion, said the founder’s grandson Dean Schomburg.
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“I’m standing here thinking what my grandfather would have felt with what’s going on here today,” he said. “It would’ve been an enormous, enormous pleasure for him as it is for me to see what is happening.”
The research library’s reading room will get a makeover as will the video division. New storing and presentation equipment will make it easier for people to access historic recorded equipment, said Muhammad. “Some of the Schomburg’s greatest treasures are locked in hiding in those spaces and will begin to see the light of day again,” he said.
Scaffolding is already up on the south side of the building. The project is expected to be completed sometime in 2017.
article by Gustavo Solis via dnainfo.com

America's 1st Slavery Museum Shifts the Focus from Masters to Slaves

By goodblacknews on November 16, 2015

Dr. Ibrahima Seck points toward a marble Wall of Honor, where the names of 350 enslaved people at Whitney Plantation have been engraved. (All photos by Michael Patrick Welch via Vice.com)

When you arrive at Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, you’re given an enslaved person’s image and story to wear for the day. Mine was Ann Hawthorne, who was 85 years old when the Library of Congress’s Federal Writer’s Project recorded her personal story of growing up enslaved on the Whitney Plantation, one of many plantations along the Mississippi’s winding River Road. Each story is printed on a laminated card that you wear around your neck—a physical manifestation of the history of slavery; a reminder that real people lived here, died here.
Billed as America’s first-ever museum dedicated exclusively to American slavery, Whitney Plantation sits amid acres of sugar cane that, on the late afternoon of my visit, swayed in a wild wind from a passing tropical depression. The plantation’s swampy land lay heavy with ankle-deep water and hummed with voracious mosquitos. A long row of black and white umbrellas leaned against the visitors’ center and gift shop so that those who had paid $22 a head to tour the grounds were not made uncomfortable by the day’s fine, cool mist of rain.
As I waited for my tour guide, a black woman with long braids led a tour group past a white church, where statues of a young Ann Hawthorne and a dozen other enslaved children seemed to stare directly at—or, really, into—the visitors, who watched a video featuring their testimony.

The entire museum is similar: You walk the same pathways that victims of chattel slavery walked, you listen to their stories in their own words, you see and hear the pieces of history that aren’t printed in textbooks or told on other plantation tours. You won’t find much information on the wealthy slaveowners on this plantation. Instead, Whitney presents slavery through the stories of those who experienced it.
The museum’s creation is owed in part to Dr. Ibrahima Seck, a tall, dark man with a florid African accent, who built the museum along with Whitney’s owner, white New Orleans attorney John Cummings. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Antebellum South, and it’s clear that everyone working at Whitney regards him as a living exhibit.
“According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Database, 60 percent of the people in Louisiana came from Senegambia, my area of Africa,” Dr. Seck told me. “So there are very strong ties here from my home.”
Seck had agreed to give me a private tour, so we climbed into his golf cart and drove past a small, rusty jail. Through its cage bars, we could see the slave masters’ 220-year-old “Big House” in the distance.
“This jail wasn’t on this plantation,” said Dr. Seck, driving faster now so the mosquitos wouldn’t catch up. “It was found in Gonzales, Louisiana, buried in the mud. At the slave markets in New Orleans, this is where the slaves were locked up before being sold.”

There is no fiction here. There is nothing you can deny here. — Dr. Ibrahima Seck

Past seven small cypress wood cabins, which at one time slept dozens of slaves apiece, Seck stopped the cart at the marble Wall of Honor, which displays the names of over 350 people who were once enslaved at Whitney, plus how much each sold for and why. Seck, who originally gleaned all this information from documents found on the property, pointed out enslaved people who were deemed less valuable: a one-armed driver, a mentally-disabled woman, an old man with a hernia. Their prices were lower, but their fate was the same.
“Mentally-disabled or old slaves might be assigned to watch the master’s toddlers or something,” Dr. Seck said. “They sold for less, but were never retired. You worked till you died.”

Five African-American Museums to Visit in the U.S.

By goodblacknews on November 6, 2015

Black culture is found all across the country. Whether you’re in the rolling fields of the Midwest or the quiet back roads of the South, here are five inexpensive (or free) museums that feature art, music, and culture from the African diaspora.

experience.com — California African American Museum (photo via experiencela.com)

WEST
What: California African American Museum
Where: Los Angeles, CA
How much: Free
This museum is home to some of the most fascinating exhibits of African and African American culture. Check out Toward Freedom: A Photo Exhibition of the Beta Israel Community in Israel and the Ethiopian Community in Los Angeles, photojournalist Irene Fertik’s images of Ethiopian communities establishing themselves in Israel and Los Angeles. Or, view The African American Journey West: Permanent Collection, which features art and artifacts that show the African American journey from the shores of Africa to America’s western frontier. Wherever your interests are, this museum is sure to have something that’ll satisfy your intellectual craving.

DuSable Museum of African American History (Photo: wttw.com)

MIDWEST

What: DuSable Museum of African American History
Where: Chicago, IL
How much: $10
This museum is a crux in Chicago’s black community. Home to several after-school programs, the museum has a history of engaging with the community on current topics. Current popular exhibits include Freedom, Resistance, and the Journey Towards Equality, Red, White, Blue & Black: A History of Blacks in the Armed Services, and The Freedom Now Mural.

Buffalo Soldiers Museum (Photo: wikipedia.com)

SOUTHWEST

What: Buffalo Soldiers Museum
Where: Houston, TX
How much: $10
The Buffalo Soldiers Museum has one of the most highly-curated museum collections of black soldier life. Founded in 2000 by a Vietnam veteran and African-American military historian, it’s currently the only museum primarily dedicated to the African-American veteran experience. Check out the memorabilia, fine arts collection and videos here.

Tubman African-American Museum (Photo: grouptravelleader.com)

SOUTHEAST

What: Tubman African American Museum
Where: Macon, GA
How much: $10
This museum, which calls itself an “educational adventure through time,” houses one of the most diverse collections of African-American historical artifacts in the country. Currently, visitors can see areas such as Folk Art, the Inventors Gallery, and a special area for Black Artists of Georgia.

Museum of African American History (Photo: timeinc.net)

NORTHEAST

What: Museum of African American History
Where: Boston, MA
How much: $3
This museum — which is the 1834 African American Meeting House — has both rotating and permanent exhibits on local African-American history. The Black Books exhibit examines the historical and cultural implications of forbidding enslaved Africans to read or write. It also traces the evolution and recovery of their written voices. You can also see the Abiel Smith School, the first public school built to educate black children.
article by Kayla Stewart via blavity.com

National Museum of African-American History and Culture To Become Five-Story Screen to Show 3D “Commemorate and Celebrate Freedom” Video Nov. 16-18

By goodblacknews on November 1, 2015

The building of the National Museum of African American History and Culture is now complete, with interior work underway. Now marks the final countdown to the museum’s grand opening next Fall (exact dates have not yet been announced). Though an actual visit to the long-awaited museum is still many weeks away, visitors to the National Mall next month will get a taste of what’s to come when the museum’s façade will be transformed into a lively and spectacular display of video, music and light.

When the sun goes down each evening between November 16 and 18, the museum’s south exterior, facing Madison Drive, and its west exterior, on 15th Street near the Washington Monument, will be illuminated by a seven-minute video, entitled “Commemorate and Celebrate Freedom.” Produced by the renowned filmmakers Stanley J. Nelson and Marcia Smith of Firelight Media, and animated by Quixotic Entertainment, the video projection will transform the museum into a five-story, block-long 3D canvas, according to museum officials.
“What we wanted to do was to metaphorically have the museum speak even before we open next year,” says Kinshasha Holman Conwill, deputy director of the museum.
“And the signal design element for our building is the corona: the three-tiered bronze colored element that has references in African sculpture and African American life and that identifies this building as something unique on the Mall. So to project on to that façade really gave us that opportunity to make the museum speak.”
The display, which the museum’s director Lonnie Bunch has called a “dynamic event,” will be accompanied by a soundtrack of historical music and spoken word, and will pay tribute to three significant moments in history: the culmination of the Civil War with the surrender at Appomattox on April 8, 1865; ratification of the 13th Amendment, which officially ended the institution of slavery on December 5, 1865; and the passage of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.
“One of the things that [the film connects] to is the notion and the vision that the museum would be a place for those who already revel in African American history and culture,” says Conwill. “But most importantly,” she adds that the museum seeks to also provide a unique “lens into what it means to be an American and that those milestones in American history, as viewed through that lens, really amplifies that notion.”
On its opening night, November 16, the state-of-the-art digital projection imagery will also be accompanied by a live, outdoor program, produced and directed by Ricardo Khan, former artistic director of the Tony Award-winning Crossroads Theatre Co. Actor Erik Todd Dellums will serve as master of the ceremonies, which will include remarks by other dignitaries, including Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser; and U.S. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute to Top Confederate Memorial on Stone Mountain in GA

By goodblacknews on October 13, 2015

Stone Mountain in Georgia, which was once known for its Ku Klux Klan cross burnings, will soon be adding something very interesting: a tower/memorial in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The tower will feature a replica of the Liberty Bell. And accordingly it will give a literal interpretation to the line “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia” from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association, the authority that maintains the mountain and surrounding Stone Mountain Park, said in a statement that the “King Monument Bell” will “facilitate a more complete telling of the mountain’s history and an expansion of the park’s educational offerings.”
The statement also said additions will include a permanent museum exhibit to recognize contributions of African-American soldiers in both the Union and Confederate armies.

Though the association’s board has yet to take any formal action, its CEO, Bill Stephens, told Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jim Galloway that the King tribute is “a great addition to the historical offerings we have here.”
Galloway was instrumental in pushing for the idea.
In the aftermath of the killings of nine African-Americans at Charleston, South Carolina’s, historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June, Galloway proposed that Stone Mountain — “a three-dimensional history lesson (that) has pushed a one-sided view of America’s bloodiest conflict,” in his words — be made more representative of Southern history.
Stone Mountain, he observed, is within a predominately African-American community just outside Atlanta. The mountain and surrounding Stone Mountain Park are popular gathering spots for multicultural metro Atlanta, with much-hiked trails to the 825-foot summit and bucolic landscaping.

Get the rest of the story at CNN.
article via eurweb.com

Texas City Votes to Leave in Place Street Name Changed to Honor Sandra Bland

By goodblacknews on September 27, 2015

screen_shot_20150826_at_8.19.57_am.png.crop.rtstoryvarlarge.19.57_am — Sandra Bland (photo via FACEBOOK)

The newly-minted Sandra Bland Parkway in Prairie View, Texas, will keep its name.

The Prairie View City Council voted Tuesday to keep the name for a road that leads into Prairie View A&M University and was renamed this summer in honor of Bland, who died at the Waller County Jail in July after she arrested during a traffic stop, according to KHOU.

Police said Bland was found hanging in her cell after the July 10 arrest. But suspicions arose after the release of a police dashcam video of Bland’s traffic stop and arrest. An officer had stopped Bland for failing to signal a lane change, but their encounter became confrontational, and the officer arrested her for allegedly assaulting him.

To ease tensions in the community, the City Council voted in August to change the name of University Boulevard to Sandra Bland Parkway. It is the same stretch of road on which she was stopped and arrested. Not everyone agreed with the name change, and city leaders on Tuesday heard from a divided community on the issue. But lawmakers decided to keep the new name in honor of Bland, who had moved back to Texas in July to take a job with her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University.

“The whole world is talking about Sandra Bland,” said one supporter from the council podium, reports the news outlet. “And Sandra Bland is putting Prairie View on the map.”

When the street was renamed in August, ABC 13 reported that hundreds of Prairie View A&M alumni gathered with current students to march from the student-union building to the site where Bland was stopped, and then on to City Hall, where the street was renamed.

“If every time they pull over a student, they have to be reminded of what took place here, then that will help the relationship to be more respectful between the officers and the students,” protester Hannah Bonner told the news station in August.

Read more at KHOU.
article by Lynette Holloway via theroot.com

Richard Pryor, Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx to Be Inducted into Apollo Theater's Walk of Fame

By goodblacknews on September 23, 2015

The Apollo Theater in Harlem will induct famed comedians Richard Pryor, Moms Mabley and Redd Foxx into its Walk of Fame.
The ceremony, to take place on Oct. 1, will mark the first time that non-musical artists will be inducted. All three had long-standing relationships with the venue. The historic theater also is launching a new comedy series on the same night. The Apollo Comedy Club will feature emerging comics.
Its fall and winter season also includes the return of the international hip-hop dance festival Breakin’ Convention that will feature French dance duo Les Twins.
Read more at http://www.eurweb.com/2015/09/richard-pryor-moms-mabley-redd-foxx-headed-to-apollos-walk-of-fame/#ZpJgecujOC5oZrfe.99

Obama Will Restore Mt. McKinley's Name to Denali on Alaska Trip

By goodblacknews on August 30, 2015

President Barack Obama (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Monday will officially restore Denali as the name of North America’s tallest mountain, ending a 40-year battle over what to call the peak that has been known as Mount McKinley.
The symbolic gesture comes at the beginning of a three-day trip to Alaska where Obama hopes to build support for his efforts to address climate change during his remaining 16 months in office.
The peak was re-named Mount McKinley in 1896 after a gold prospector exploring the region heard that Ohioan William McKinley, a champion of the gold standard, had won the Republican nomination for president.
But Alaska natives had long before called the mountain Denali, meaning “the High One.” In 1975, the state of Alaska officially designated the mountain as Denali, and has since been pressing the federal government to do the same.

Alaskans had been blocked in Congress by Ohio politicians, who wanted to stick with McKinley as a lasting tribute to the 25th U.S. president, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. Under Obama’s action, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will use her legal authority to end the long debate and rename the mountain, which has an elevation of more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).
“This designation recognizes the sacred status of Denali to generations of Alaska natives,” the White House said in a statement.
article via huffingtonpost.com (Additional reporting by Steve Quinn in Juneau, Alaska; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Street Sandra Bland Stopped On Renamed in Her Honor

By goodblacknews on August 28, 2015

Prairie View City Council members in Texas are hoping a road renamed after activist Sandra Bland will serve as a constant reminder of the injustices they say she suffered in Waller County, USA Today reports.
City officials are also hopeful that the road, which leads to Bland’s alma mater, Prairie View A&M University, will also encourage law enforcement to make better choices and always follow best practices when making stops on University Drive, which will become Sandra Bland Parkway for three to five years before the council votes on the matter again.
“I am overwhelmed, and I am just truly thankful to the city of Prairie View,” Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland’s mother, said in a press conference here after the decision to rename the road.
“This is the first step, the very first step,” Reed-Veal said. “There’s still so much more that needs to be done.”
Bland, 28, was stopped on the same road July 10 for allegedly failing to signal a lane change. When Texas state Trooper Brian Encinia felt his power threatened by Bland’s wit and matter-of-fact tone, he arrested her on a charge of assaulting a public servant.
She was found hanging in her jail cell three days after her arrest, a death that has been ruled a suicide but is also being treated like a murder investigation. According to CNN, the Texas Rangers and the FBI are investigating Sandra’s death.
“It is very much too early to make any kind of determination that this was a suicide or a murder because the investigations are not complete,” Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis told reporters. “This is being treated like a murder investigation.”
Mathis said the case would go to a grand jury.
“There are too many questions that still need to be resolved. Ms. Bland’s family does make valid points that she did have a lot of things going on in her life that were good,” Mathis said.
Earlier this month, family members filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against arresting officer Encinia and two guards at the Waller County Jail where Bland died, along with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the county. The New York Times reports that the lawsuit states Encinia made up a reason to arrest Sandra and that jailers failed to react when she refused meals and “had bouts of uncontrollable crying.”
Bland’s family maintains that she never should have been stopped and arrested and they want the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.
article via blackamericaweb.com

CUNY’s Preparatory High School Renamed to Honor Derrick Smith, its Founding Principal

By goodblacknews on July 17, 2015

The City University of New York has renamed its preparatory high school in The Bronx in honor of Derrick Griffith, its founding principal. Dr. Griffith was killed in the Amtrak train wreck in Philadelphia this past May.
In a resolution renaming the school, the board of trustees of the City University of New York said that “Dr. Griffith transformed thousands of lives of young New Yorkers who were uplifted by his encouragement as they found the resolve to pursue education and build personal beliefs in their own ability to persevere. He was a true visionary whose compassion and intelligence were paralleled only by his sense of humor and love for his students, colleagues, friends and family.”
At the time of his death, Dr. Griffith was dean of student affairs at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York. He joined the staff at Medgar Evers College in 2011 as an assistant provost. He served as the founding principal at the Preparatory Transitional High School of the City University of New York from 2003 to 2010.
One month before his death at the age of 42, Griffith completed work on a doctorate in urban education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
article via jbhe.com

Posts published in “Landmarks”

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to Receive $22M Renovation Including Outdoor LED Screen

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America's 1st Slavery Museum Shifts the Focus from Masters to Slaves

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