BLACK HISTORY MONTH ROD LIBRARY DISPLAY
Main Display Case - Basement (throughout February)
BLACK HISTORY MONTH CME DISPLAY
Throughout February 2007, everyone is invited to visit our BHM Display in the CME lobby (109 MAU).
LATE NIGHT AT THE CME:
Malcolm X (201 min.)
Wed., Feb. 7, 2007 @ 7:30 pm-11:00 pm at the CME (109 MAU):
You are cordially invited to view a special one-time screening of this film based on actual events. Filmmaker Spike Lee and actor Denzel Washington (a New York Film Critics Award winner and Academy Award ® nominee as Best Actor) join other top talents to bring to the screen the life and times of Malcolm X. “Here’s a man who rose up from the dregs of society, spent time in jail, reeducated himself and, through spiritual enlightenment, rose to the top,” says Lee. “This is an incredible story and I know it will inspire people.”
Free popcorn. Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKER
U.S. Senator Barack Obama
Date and Time to be determined, CME (109 MAU): You are cordially invited, pending acceptance to invitation, to hear this dynamic public servant discuss the issues confronting our nation today.
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
GUEST ARTIST:
Michael Parola
Workshop: The Story Behind “Ain’t I A Woman”
Thurs., Feb. 20, 2007 @ 12:30 – 1:30 pm, CME (109 MAU): You are cordially invited to hear this renowned performer talk about his story, background, and art; as well as the history of the four women characterized within the performance [Ain’t I A Woman]
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
Performance: Michael Parola (Ain’t I A Woman!).
Thurs., Feb. 20, 2007 @ 7:30-9:30 pm MAU (Lang Hall): Ain’t I A Woman! Is a Chambers Music Theatre work for actress and trio (cello, piano, percussion). It celebrates the life and times of our African American women: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist Sojourner Truth, renowned novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, exuberant folk artist Clementine Hunter, and fervent civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer. The musical score is drawn from the heartfelt spiritual of the Deep South, the urban exuberance of the Jazz Age, and the contemporary concert music by African Americans.
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
BHM FILM SERIES:
Eyes on the Prize Video Schedule
Tuesday, February 6, 2007 @ CME (109 MAU) 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Volume-1: Awakenings & Fighting Back (120 min.)
(1954-1956) Emmett Till… Rosa Parks… Martin Luther King, Jr. In Mississippi, one courageous Black man stands up to racial injustice. In Montgomery, Mrs. Parks and a young Rev. King spark a year-long boycott by thousands to desegregate city buses. To expand this mass movement, Rev. King and other ministers form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)…
(1957-1962) Little Rock… “Ole Miss”… the 1954 Supreme Court decision… In the schools of the South battle lines are drawn with unforgettable images: in Little Rock, 9 Black teenagers dare to integrate Central High School, aided by U.S. paratroopers; in Mississippi, James Meridith and NAACP lawyers face mob violence integrating the University of Mississippi. From the schoolhouse to the White House, the confrontation between state and federal governments escalates.
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007 @ CME (109 MAU) 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Volume-2: Ain’t Scared of Your Jails & No Easy Walk (120 min.)
(1960-1961) Sit-Ins… SNCC… Freedom Rides… CORE… Thousands of young people join the ranks of the movement, giving it new direction. Students across the South organized lunch counter sit-ins and nationwide boycotts, and form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Students and veteran activists are attacked on the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress of Racial Equality to end bus segregation below the Mason-Dixie line.
(1961-1963) Georgia… Alabama… the March on Washington. Mass demonstrations become a powerful protest vehicle. In Albany, GA, a police chief wages a sophisticated challenge to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent tactics. In Birmingham, children march and are met by violent fire hoses and snarling dogs. At the University of Alabama, Gov Wallace challenges President Kennedy over school integration. The triumphant March on Washington brings together 250,000 people, capturing worldwide attention and helping to shift federal policy.
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
Thursday, February 8, 2007 @ CME (109 MAU) 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Volume-3: Mississippi: Is This America? & Bridge to Freedom (120 min.)
(1962-1964) Freedom Summer… Assassinations… Medgar Evers… Mississippi becomes a testing ground of constitutional principles as civil rights activists focus their energies on the right to vote. In 1963, NAACP leader Medgar Evers is silenced by an assassin’s bullet. In freedom Summer 1964, tensions between White resistance and movement activists climax in the murder of three young civil rights workers. Amidst the horror, the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 is passed and the seeds of political change are planted.(1965) Selma… Montgomery… The Voting Rights Act. National television is by now a major player in the struggle for civil rights. In the spring of 1965, a young civil rights activist is shot and the nation is horrified by TV images of troopers gassing demonstrators on a Selma bridge. From across the nation 25,000 people amass to make the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, helping to ensure the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
Thursday, February 8, 2007 @ CME (109 MAU) 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Volume-4: The Time Has Come & Two Societies (120 min.)
(1964-1966) In the South and the urban North, leaders emerged who helped transform the civil rights movement into a broader struggle for human rights. Their message was direct: ”The Time Has Come.” Thus urgency was best articulated by Malcolm X, who exhorted African Americans to build a base of power founded on self-respect, self-reliance, and independent Black institutions. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) responded to Malcolm’s call by launching an independent political party in Alabama, using the symbol of a black panther to counter the existing Democratic Party’s white rooster. Malcolm X’s influence also reverberated in the call for “Black Power,” raised by SNCC Stokely Carmichael during a march through Mississippi.
(1965-1968) “two Societies” reveals the divisions that existed between African Americans and Whites in America’s cities, where African Americans had gained little from the southern freedom movement by the 1960’s. In Chicago, one of the most segregated cities in the country, we see the southern civil rights movement movement’s attempt to bring the nonviolent movement north. DR. King and his Souhern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led protest marches through White suburbs, where its nonviolent methods were sorely tested… In Detroit, tensions exploded during the summer 0f”67”, and more than 100 cities shared the pain of racial violence. A presidential commission warned that America had become “two societies, separate and unequal.”
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007 @ CME (109 MAU) 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Volume-5: Power! & The Promised Land (120 min.)
(1966-1968) Solutions to the problems of inequality were as diverse as America itself. Communities mobilized for change in strikingly different ways, but their ultimate goal was the same—power… In Cleveland, Ohio, Carl Stokes sought power through the ballot box, and became the first Black mayor of a major city. In the streets of Oakland, California, where tensions were high between the community and the police, activists formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense to advocate community empowerment and social programs, and to monitor the police. And in Brooklyn, New York, African American and Latino residents elected an interracial governing board to control their children’s education.
(1967-1968) The escalating Vietnam War further divided America, and the government’s War on poverty began to suffer. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the war, facing a firestorm of anger from across the nation. King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined others in the movement seeking to expand the struggle for civil rights to include economic equality. SCLC organized a multiracial Poor People’s March to Washington, D.C. to force government response. They also joined a peaceful protest in support of striking Memphis sanitation workers, which was shattered when an assassin’s bullet took King’s life. A hundred cities exploded in riots, and the murder of Robert Kennedy shortly after only added to the darkness. The promised land now seemed more difficult to reach, but the legacy of the 1960’s activism provided a foundation for future action.
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007 @ CME (109 MAU) 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Volume-6: Ain’t Gonna Suffer No More & A Nation of Law
(1964-1972) Muhammad Ali… Howard University… Gary, Indiana… Through these names, African Americans reclaimed their heritage in different ways. At the pinnacle of his success, the young boxer Cassius Clay announced his conversion to the Muslim faith and became Muhammad Ali. He embodied the spirit of resistance to war in Vietnam by refusing army service, sacrificing his heavyweight title and fighting for his principles up to the Supreme Court. At Howard University, the nation’s premier Black institution, many students felt that the school was too slow in developing courses with an African American perspective. When angry students took over the administration building in protest, a new chapter in Black education began. And at the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, 8,000 African Americans ratified a sweeping agenda, setting the stage for unprecedented Black political participation.
(1968-1971) The Black Panther Party… Fred Hampton… Attica… These names equaled controversy in the America of law and order promised by President Nixon. Urban rebellion and campus unrest had brought cycles of protest and reprisals, leaving many wondering if America was in fact “a nation of law.” For some, the Black Panther Party’s vow of self-defense “by any means necessary” evoked the memory of Malcolm X and overshadowed the Party’s community service activities. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared the Panthers the United States’ number one threat to internal security. With the help of an FBI informant, police raided the apartment of Illinois chairman Fred Hampton, killing him and another leader. The law and order crackdown also had tragic results at New York’s Attica State Correctional Facility, where state troopers and guards stormed the prison after an inmate rebellion. Thirty-nine people were killed, all by gunfire from government weapons.
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
Thursday, February 15, 2007 @ CME (109 MAU) 10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Volume-7: The Keys to the Kingdom & Back to the Movement
(1974-1980) Busing… Maynard Jackson… Affirmative Action… From South Boston to Atlanta, Americans sought remedies for the problems of discrimination. In Boston, the issue was busing. White parents reacted violently to court-ordered busing, and Black parents steeled their children for their role in this next civil rights battle. For both Blacks and Whites, busing proved an unpopular means of integrating schools, but, in the words of one Black parent, “there was no turning back.” Undoing the wrongs of past discrimination proved equally complex in the workplace. Though fifty percent of Atlanta was African American, less than one percent of city contracts were awarded to African American firms. Following his election as Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson aggressively pursued affirmative action in hiring and warding city contracts. Even so, Atlanta’s persistently high poverty rate showed the limits of what local government could accomplish. Affirmative action faced its first crucial test in the Supreme Court when a white man sued a university on grounds of “reverse discrimination.”
(1979-Mid 1980’s) The powerlessness that was felt in many Black communities in the third decade of the civil rights movement provoked both rage and activism. In Miami’s Overton section, a young Black salesman died after being beaten by police for a traffic violation, and the officers were acquitted by an all-White jury. Overtown exploded in the worst riot in a decade… In Chicago, the first female mayor gained great publicity by moving into Cabrini Green, a predominantly Black housing project. But in the eyes of many African Americans, Jane Byrne did little to change the problems of Chicago’s inner city. Despite severe opposition, the Black community mobilized a grassroots campaign to elect U.S. Congressman Harold Washington to serve as Chicago’s first Black mayor. Their success became a symbol of hope and a model for change.
1st Showing: 10:00am – 12:00pm; 2nd Showing: 12:00pm – 2:00pm
Free Event: Arrive early, as seating is limited.
Be sure to check out the Hearst Center for the Arts events as well. |
