“Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s” is the culmination of a seven-year collaboration between the Victoria & Albert Museum and Brixton’s Black Cultural Archive to increase the number of black British photographers and images of black Britain in the V&A collection. It aims to raise awareness of the contribution of black Britons to British culture and society, as well as to the art of photography.
Over the last seven years the V&A has been working with Black Cultural Archives to acquire photographs either by black photographers or which document the lives of black people in Britain. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), the Museum has been able to collect 118 works by 17 artists. To complement the photographs, Black Cultural Archives have collected oral histories from a range of subjects including the photographers themselves, their relatives, and the people depicted in the images.
Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s is at the Black Cultural Archive (bcaheritage.org.uk) until June 30th and at the Victoria & Albert Museum from February 16th to May 24th (vam.ac.uk). Some of the images on display follow below:
article via guardian.com; additions by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow@lakinhutcherson)
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The American Legion has named Verna Jones its new executive director, making her the first woman to lead the veterans’ organization in its nearly 100-year history.Jones, an attorney and Army veteran who served as a personnel sergeant, stepped into her new role on Nov. 1. Legion spokesman Marty Callaghan said he believed that Jones is the organization’s first African-American executive director, but he couldn’t confirm it absolutely. Previously, she served as the director of the Legion’s veterans affairs and rehabilitation division.
“We’re still focused on the [Department of Veterans Affairs], the quality of health care, timeliness, the backlog, benefits — all the things that we’ve been focusing on, and the things that veterans need. Access to health care is huge for us,” Jones said in an interview with The Huffington Post in her new office.
Jones became the most animated when asked about sexual assault in the military, an issue that several members of the Legion, including Jones, have testified about before Congress. The organization has said the military needs to have a “zero tolerance policy” on the issue.
“To those people who may assault people, [we need to] let them know that we’re not going to stand for that, and there are some very serious consequences the first time,” said Jones. “So we’ve got to create programs, we’ve got to create awareness, and we have to be willing to say that military sexual trauma exists. Stop sweeping it under the rug and pretending it’s a small thing, because it’s not.
“There needs to be punishment,” she added. “Something punitive needs to happen. If you’re in the military and you sexually assault somebody, then you don’t need to be in the military anymore.”