May 2012
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Remembering Samuel Sharpe
Before his execution in 1832, Samuel Sharpe—leader of Jamaican’s Baptist War Slave Rebellion—said: “I would rather die among yonder gallows, than live in slavery.”
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Remembering Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the...
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Remembering Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts
On May 15, 1918, the courage and bravery of African-American soldiers resounded throughout Europe and around the world, by the actions of two black soldiers. Badly wounded by enemy German guns, Privates Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, of the 369th Harlem Hellfighters Regiment, were manning a two-man outpost when a German patrol of more than 20 soldiers attached with rifles, bayonets and...
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April 2012
18 posts
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Reclaiming My West Indian Roots
As a young girl growing up in Jamaica — and later in Brooklyn, NY — I often heard the poetry of Louise Bennett (Jamaicans affectionately call her “Miss Lou”) permeate the air. One of my earliest recollections of Miss Lou’s lyricism was hearing the term mout amassi (big mouth). The term comes from the title of one of her most popular poems about a young lady, Liza, who loves to...
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Trial of George Zimmerman Could Trigger Another... →
Join Rodney King at the Schomburg Center on April 24. For free tickets, visit: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3370971667
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Word Rapport: The Riot Within by Rodney King
On Tuesday, April 24 at 6:30 p.m. join Rodney King at the Schomburg center discussing his memoir, The Riot Within.
Rodney King’s The Riot Within is a powerful, revealing memoir in which an unlikely icon tells for the first time the full story of his life, taking the reader through a moment-by-moment account of the experience of the infamous beating and harrowing stories of the widespread...
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Remembering Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson, the youngest of five children, was born in Princeton, New Jersey on April 9, 1898. Robeson attended New Jersey public schools and was one of only two Blacks in high school where he was an outstanding student and a star football and baseball athlete. Achieving an outstanding high school record, he won a four-year state scholarship to attend Rutgers despite his bigoted high...
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Playing the Violence Card →
Schomburg Center Director Khalil Gibran Muhammad penned a recent op-ed in The New York Times on how “The violence card perpetuates the notion that violence against black people is not society’s concern but rather a problem for black people to fix on their own.”
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Remembering Gil Noble
Gil Noble was the Emmy Award-winning producer and host of the public affairs program Like It Is.
As a journalist and television producer, Gil Noble worked to dispel the negative images of African Americans in media. The notable host of the long-running public-affairs program Like It Isalso pushed for clear ethics and objectivity in journalism.—TheRoot.com
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Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
[[MORE]]One of the most visible advocates of nonviolence and direct action as methods of social change, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta on 15 January 1929. As the grandson of the Rev. A.D....
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Remembering Elizabeth Catlett
Art must be realistic for me, whether sculpture or printmaking, I have always wanted my art to service my people—to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential…. I try to tell young artists, black artists, that there’s a great need for their work. Some are only interested in doing what they want to do, not what people need.—Elizabeth Catlett
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Talks at the Schomburg: Alexander McCall Smith
Join Alexander McCall Smith at the Schomburg Center on April 15, 2012—for his ONLY Manhattan appearance—to discuss his new book, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection. Tickets are still available: http://www.showclix.com/event/223525
“In this latest episode in the beloved, best-selling series, the kindest and best detective in Botswana faces a tricky situation when her...
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March 2012
6 posts
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Global Imbalance, Inhumanity, Injustice, Trayvon...
On March 30, 2012, students at the United Nations Global Student Videoconference of The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Honouring the Heroes, Resisters and Survivors, will share local stories and discuss the legacy of slavery and its link to inhumanity and injustice. This live interactive forum aims to link the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade to its impact and influence on today’s world.
In...
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Remembering Walter Rodney
Pan-Africanist Walter Rodney (1942–1980) was born to a working-class family in Guyana. He earned his Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1966. His thesis, published in 1970, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800 has remained a classic.
Teaching in Tanzania and Jamaica, he gained international attention for his advocacy for the working poor. Rodney founded the...
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REMEMBERING BAYARD RUSTIN
One year before Bayard Rustin’s death, he wrote a letter to Joseph Beam, editor of In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology. Rustin declined an invitation to contribute to the project which featured writings and interviews with black gay men, and felt it was necessary to explain why.
“My activism did not spring from being gay, or for that matter, from my being black. Rather it is rooted, fundamentally,...
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February 2012
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Nelson Mandela
On February 11, 1990, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (b. 1918), the iconic leader of the anti-apartheid struggle, was released from prison after 27 years; the whole world watched the moving event live on television.
In a speech that same day, he declared forcefully, “Our resort to the armed struggle in 1960 with the formation of the military wing of the ANC was a purely defensive action against...
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January 2012
8 posts
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GMAD at 25: A History in Words and Images
By Steven G. Fullwood, Co-curator of the exhibition GMAD at 25: A History in Words and Images, and Project Director for the Black Gay & Lesbian Archive, Schomburg Center
I discovered Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD) in 1998, four months after I moved to New York City. At the time GMAD’s office was located in Chelsea, on14th Street. I attended one of its Friday Night Forums and was fortunate...
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Amsterdam News Writes About the Schomburg's Winter... →
We hope to see you here at the Schomburg Center!
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What Does it Mean to be "Post-Black?"
Do you use the term “post-blackness?” Do you consider yourself “post- black?” Or do you pretty much scratch your head because you’re wondering what in the world people mean when they use that term? If any of these apply to you, then you need to come to the Schomburg’s new series, Stage for Debate.
With Stage for Debate, the Schomburg launches a series of...
December 2011
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Remembering Pearl Harbor and Dorie Miller
By Christopher Moore, Author: Fighting For America: Black Soldiers, The Unsung Heroes of World War II.
Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, at 7:55 a.m., Doris “Dorie” Miller was below deck collecting laundry when his ship, the U.S.S. West Virginia, was struck by the first of five aircraft torpedoes and two 1,000-lb bombs. Miller scrambled on deck—under a hail of machine-gun fire from strafing enemy...
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Remembering Frantz Fanon
On this day, 50 years ago, Frantz Fanon passed away. A psychiatrist, Pan-Africanist, writer, and revolutionary, he was born in Martinique in 1925. In 1952 he published Black Skin, White Masks, which exposed the negative effects of colonization on the mental state of subjugated peoples.
As a psychiatrist in Algeria, he joined the FLN (National Liberation Front), which waged a war of ...