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Posts tagged as “Baltimore”

How Super Bowl-Winning City Baltimore is Celebrating Black History Month

By goodblacknews on February 4, 2013

baltimoreAll eyes are on Baltimore this week as the Ravens took the Super Bowl title and Beyoncé cranked out perhaps the most electrifying halftime performance in history. It’s a great time to recognize that “Charm City” – a nickname created by then Mayor William Donald Schaefer and a bunch of ad agencies to boost the city’s national profile – is once again on the map as a vacation destination.
In honor of Black History Month, here’s a list of Baltimore’s events and exhibitions that pay tribute to the African-American men and women who helped shape the nation. Baltimore is a city shaped by the contributions of African-American visionaries including the likes of world famous jazz singer Billie Holiday; great orator Frederick Douglass, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; and female abolitionist and “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman.

“Girl with Flag,” Bryan Collier  

“The Mountaintop” and Beyond

“The Mountaintop”
CENTERSTAGE
Through Feb. 24
The Lorraine Hotel. April 1968. In room 306, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. unwinds and prepares. A visit from a hotel maid offers welcome diversion and a challenging new perspective – but also raises profound and surprising questions. 
Already a worldwide sensation and recently hailed in a star-studded Broadway production, Katori Hall’s new play receives its Baltimore premiere. 

Long-Forgotten African-American Cemetery Researched by College Students

By goodblacknews on January 13, 2013
Gus Foley, of Westminster, a senior computer science major at McDaniel College, brushes flour off of head stones at an African-AMerican cemetery. The students rub flour on the head stones to make the carvings easier to read. McDaniel College students, under the guidance of chemistry professor Rick Smith, are working to document grave sites in an African-American cemetery in Libertytown, Md. Photo by: Kenneth K. Lam/The Baltimore Sun
Gus Foley, of Westminster, a senior computer science major at McDaniel College, brushes flour off of head stones at an African-American cemetery. The students rub flour on the head stones to make the carvings easier to read. McDaniel College students, under the guidance of chemistry professor Rick Smith, are working to document grave sites in an African-American cemetery in Libertytown, Md. Photo by: Kenneth K. Lam/The Baltimore Sun

In Libertytown on a steep hillside up the street from an auto repair shop, a group of McDaniel College students are piecing together long-forgotten lives.  The students pull back bramble, trim branches and press flour into tombstones carved a century or more ago. They are trying to uncover the details of the lives of some of the early African-American residents of this small Frederick County town.
“They were forgotten, but we’re bringing their names back,” said junior Emoff Amofa, 21, who is taking professor Rick Smith’s January session class on tracing family histories.  Among those buried on this hillside are Alfred B. Roberts, a sergeant who fought with the United States Colored Infantry in Civil War; Ellen Mayberry, who died in 1885 “in hope of a glorious resurrection”; and little Margaret E. Stanton, who was just 3 when she died in 1886.
For the next three weeks, the students will be seeking to document the lives of inhabitants of John Wesley Church cemetery, many of whom were buried in the decades after the Civil War.

Morgan State’s Students Rally to Retain School’s President

By goodblacknews on January 12, 2013
 Alvin Hill, Student Government Association vice president at Morgan State University. (Photo L. Kasimu Harris)

It was just a month ago when the board of regents of Morgan State University, the historically Black school in Baltimore, voted not to renew the contract of its president, David Wilson. Wilson had served as president for two years and his three-year contract was set to expire in June of this year.

But then something unusual happened. The board’s decision unleashed a torrent of criticism by the school’s faculty, staff and, most notably, Morgan State’s students, who held protest rallies on behalf of retaining President Wilson.
Since then, the board announced something of a reversal, saying it was reconsidering its initial decision. It agreed to negotiate a new one-year contract covering the period from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. The terms of the one-year deal have yet to be negotiated.

‘Great Blacks in Wax’ Museum Features Black Historical Figures

By goodblacknews on January 8, 2013
Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall in the National Blacks in Wax Museum (Courtesy of Joanne Martin)
Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall in the National Blacks in Wax Museum (Courtesy of Joanne Martin)
With Black History Month just around the corner, there’s a more unique way to learn about the African-American experience besides opening up a textbook.

The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore has been featuring African-American historical wax figures for the past 30 years.
When they opened the first African-American wax museum in 1983, founder Dr. Joanne Martin along with her late husband Dr. Elmer Martin were inspired to create this museum when they realized children in their community felt the color of their skin was a negative trait.
“For children, it becomes as close as we can to help them understand that [these historical figures] were real people who had real challenges, who had to make hard decisions in life,” Martin told theGrio in a phone interview. “[The displays] depict their struggles and hardships in a more tangible way.”
Starting with only four wax figures in their store front in the early 1980s, the museum now has moved into a 15,000 square foot facility and houses over 150 African-American wax figures.
From a scene of Harriet Tubman helping to free a runaway slave to a powerful display of a black man being lynched, Martin’s mission for the museum is to depict compelling, realistic scenes to stimulate a public interest for African-American history.
She believes while children learn about these prominent black historical figures in school, many of them do not know what these men and women look like.
“[Our museum] puts a face on history – brings these people up close and personal,” Martin adds. “As a child growing up, I didn’t even know what Booker T. Washington looked like and I’m from the south! He was one of the most well-known and powerful men during his time. I didn’t know what he looked like until I saw the figure in the museum.”
The museum plans on setting up a national traveling exhibit so other cities can experience these one-of-a-kind wax figures. While the schedule for the exhibit is still pending, Martin tells theGrio that they plan on traveling to Dallas, Jacksonville, and Panama City.
The museum is also hoping to expand again to an even larger, more modern facility in April 2017.
While February or “Black History Month” tends to be the museum’s busiest time, Martin also encourages the community to visit the exhibit throughout the entire year, reinforcing the names of these figures in the minds of young people.
“You’re in a position to teach people history that art, pictures, books or other media won’t allow,” Martin says. “So much history, so much struggle, so many people to be honored, therefore it takes more than a month to be able to do justice to black history.”
article by Brittany Tom via thegrio.com

Baltimore Launches Micro-Loan Program for Small Businesses

By goodblacknews on November 29, 2012

To help small businesses in the Baltimore area, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is launching a micro-loan fund to assist owners in hiring and stabilizing their businesses. The program, named BaltimoreMICRO, will enable small businesses with under $1 million in annual revenue to apply for loans that range in amounts from $5,000 to $30,000. To be eligible for the BaltimoreMICRO program, businesses must be based in Baltimore City. The owner of the business must also have a personal credit score of 650 or higher.

“[Small businesses] bring residents together and create a buzz that attracts people from throughout the region,” Rawlings-Blake said in a statement. “We want that to happen in more of Baltimore’s neighborhoods, and we must do what we can to support that. Baltimore’s neighborhoods that have experienced growth and revival in the past few years are known not only for their unique homes and character, but also for their small businesses, including stores and restaurants.”

Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum Opens “African Presence In Renaissance Europe” Exhibit

By goodblacknews on November 9, 2012

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid “The Three Mulattoes of Esmereldas” (1599) is one of the works in “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

BALTIMORE — In a fall art season distinguished, so far, largely by a bland, no-brainer diet served up by Manhattan’s major museums, you have to hit the road for grittier fare. And the Walters Art Museum here is not too far to go to find it in a high-fiber, convention-rattling show with the unglamorous title of “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe.” 

Visually the exhibition is a gift, with marvelous things by artists familiar and revered — Dürer, Rubens, Veronese — along with images most of us never knew existed. Together they map a history of art, politics and race that scholars have begun to pay attention to — notably through “The Image of the Black in Western Art,” a multi-volume book project edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. — but that few museums have addressed in full-dress style.

Harvard Professor Karine Gibbs Wins $875,000 Packard Fellowship

By goodblacknews on November 2, 2012

In 1988 the Packard Foundation established the Fellowships for Science and Engineering. The goal was to allow some of the nation’s most promising young scientists to pursue their work without the worry of financing their work.

Now each year 16 fellows are selected from 50 major research universities. Each fellow receives a total of $875,000 over the ensuing five years. To be eligible, faculty members must be in the first three years of their academic careers in the fields of physics, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, biology, computer science, earth science, ocean science, or in any field of engineering. There are no restrictions on how the fellows use their funds to compliment their research. Since 1988, more than 400 faculty members have become Packard Fellows, receiving more than $230 million in grants.

Karine A. Gibbs, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, is one of the 16 Packard Fellows this year. Her research focuses on identifying the mechanisms underlying self-recognition in the bacterium Proteus mirabilis.

A native of Jamaica, Dr. Gibbs was raised in Baltimore. She is a graduate of Harvard University and holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from Stanford University.

article via jbhe.com

National Science Foundation Gives $7.4 Million Grant to Aid Predominately-Black Baltimore Schools With STEM Education

By goodblacknews on October 16, 2012

Johns Hopkins University recently received a five-year, $7.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to boost STEM education programs in the predominantly Black public school system in Baltimore.  The program, called STEM Achievement in Baltimore Elementary Schools — or SABES for short — will benefit more than 1,600 students in grades three through five in nine city elementary schools and could eventually become a national model for STEM education programs. More details provided in the video below:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENXExkxe0NU&w=560&h=315]
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson