Author Archives: dana1227

Fisk Jubilee Singers Concert and Reception

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ImageFriday, April 19, 2013 Fisk Jubilee Singers Concert and Reception

On Friday, April 19, 2013 at 7:00 pm, the Avery Research Center presents the renowned FISK JUBILEE SINGERS in concert at the Circular Congregational Church, 150 Meeting Street, Charleston, SC. There will be a reception immediately following the concert with desserts from Sugar Bakeshop.

Tickets are $25.00/$10.00 12 and under or CofC students. Purchase tickets at alumni.cofc.edu/jubilee.  Checks payable to the Avery Research Center also accepted.
Mail to: Avery Research Center, 125 Bull Street, Charleston, SC 29424; Attn: Fisk Jubilee Concert

Sponsors for this program are:
suntrust_logo_smallSunTrust Bank, College of Charleston School of the Arts, College of Charleston Friends of the Library, College of Charleston Office of the President,  the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture and Charleston Friends of the Spiritual.

All proceeds to benefit the Avery Research Center’s Public Program Funds. Full details at http://avery.cofc.edu/fisk-jubilee-singers-concert-and-reception.

Filed under: Charleston, SC, Jubilee Project, Upcoming Events

PURE Theatre Presents The Mountaintop with Kyle Taylor and Joy Vandervort-Cobb

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March 29–April 20 PURE Theatre Presents The Mountaintop with Kyle Taylor and Joy Vandervort-Cobb

Performances at 7:30 pm April 4-6, 11-13, 18-20; Matinee at 2 pm Sunday, April 7. 477 King Street, Charleston, SC 29403.

Set on April 3, 1968, The Mountaintop is a gripping reimagining of the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King retires to his room at the Lorraine Motel while a storm rages outside. When the hotel maid visits Room 306 with room-service coffee and some surprising news, King is forced to confront his destiny and his legacy to his people. Full details at http://puretheatre.org/ or(843) 723-4444

Filed under: Charleston, SC, Civil Rights Movement, Jubilee Project, Upcoming Events

Summary of “The History of Education and the Black Freedom Struggle”

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The College of Charleston and the School of Education, Health, and Human Performance was proud to host a series of talks on the history of education and the black freedom struggle on February 20th and 21st, “The History of Education and the Black Freedom Struggle: Resistance, Desegregation, and the Continued Struggle for Quality Education.” The lecture series featured renowned historians Dr. James Anderson and Dr. Christopher Span of the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. The lecture series addressed unfulfilled promises of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision and the pressing demand for quality education and the continued need for continued educational reform in Charleston and across the country. This extended lecture series generated an important discussion about how the community can move forward in providing a quality education to all students.

Professor Christopher Span provided a thorough analysis of the achievement gap, the statistical differentiation in academic achievement between white students and students of color. His talk, “Addressing the Achievement Gap: Understanding Educational Inequality in American Education” also analyzed how the history of segregation continues to impact the quality of education in schools failing to meet the needs of all students. His analysis looked toward an intra-generational approach to understanding the achievement gap in an attempt to move away from the language of failure that stigmatizes many students of color.

Professor James Anderson addressed the role of Affirmative Action in educational policy at colleges and university in his talk, “Affirmative Action and the New Color Line: Fisher v. University of Texas and Public Discourse about Race in Educational Policy.” Anderson has served as an expert witness for the Supreme Court in the Michigan cases and shared his insights about why this policy is considered controversial and why it continues to be challenged today. His talk encouraged institutions like the College of Charleston to continue to promote diversity through institutional policy aimed at not only recruiting but retaining higher levels of enrollment among studnets of Color.

The series also included a panel discussion with some of the first students to desegregate Charleston area schools. Dr. Millicent Brown, Ms. Clarice-Hines-Lewis, and Ms, Oveta Glover spoke about their experiences desegregating Charleston Country School District in 1963, nine years after the Brown decision. Minerva King also spoke about her experiences as being the first plaintiff on the case that eventually desegregated the schools in Charleston. Mrs. Joann Howard and Mrs. Alifay Edwards recounted their experiences desegregating Mt. Pleasant area schools as well. Memories of the historic desegregation of South Carolina public schools illustrate both the promises and problems of civil rights era educational reform. In commemoration of the historic desegregation of public schools, Dr. Nancy McGinley, superintendent of the Charleston County School District, concluded the panel discussion by issuing a formal apology to the panelists. Dr. McGinley then read a proclamation from Mayor Joseph P. Riley declaring February 21st as “School Access Toward Equity Day.” The transcript of the apology and proclamation can be found below.
The discourse generated around issues of educational reform and continuing the movement to provide a quality education to all students continues today. The Charleston County School District is hosting the students who desegregated Charleston schools on April 12. The College of Charleston continues to engage in the important work of educational reform. Please contact Jon Hale for more information, halejn@cofc.edu (843)953-6354

Transcript of the Apology for Desegregation and the Proclamation of School Access Toward Equity Day, as read by Dr. Nancy McGinley, February 21, 2013:

“Thank you Dr. Howard and thank you to the College of Charleston for hosting this event. This event for me, and I’m sure for many of you, is both a wonderful and a sad event to attend and an emotional story to listen to. And in my nine years here in Charleston, six as superintendent, I have read many books about segregation. I have read the very, very painful school board transcripts. I have seen some of your pictures and I have been enormously saddened by the pictures that I saw of you walking into James Simmons for the first time, with your father I believe. The fear in your face, what courageous children you were, I am honored to meet you finally face to face. So today before I read the proclamation I want to say that this is a day of reconciliation, as they say in South Africa. And reconciliation begins with an apology. And on behalf of the Charleston County School District, I want to say, we were wrong, we discriminated against children, represented by these ladies here today. We treated you badly. We will do better. We must do better. But let give you something that you’ve waited 50 years for, and that’s a personal apology.

Whereas in the 1950s, the State of South Carolina constructed over 200 “separate but equal” schools for African Americans, also known as equalization schools, in anticipation of a judicial order from the Supreme Court to desegregate; and

Whereas, the State of South Carolina stalled and avoided the process of desegregation until 1963 despite the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to do so; and

Whereas in 1963, Millicent E. Brown, as chief plaintiff, and Cassandra Alexander, Eddie Alexander, Gerald Alexander, Ralph Dawson, Jacqueline Ford, Barbara Ford, Gale Ford, Oveta Glover, Clarisse Hines, and Valerie Wright, as co-plaintiffs in a case against Charleston County School Board District 20, were the first African American students to desegregate South Carolina’s public schools; and

Whereas 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the pioneering act of these brave “first children”, many of whom have yet to be personally identified or publicly recognized, who courageously entered segregated schools alone or in small groups because the forces of history demanded that young African American children carry forth the struggle for a quality education; now

Therefore, I, Joseph P. Reily, Jr. Mayor of the City of Charleston do hereby proclaim February 21, 2013 as School Access Toward Equity Day.”

Filed under: Charleston, SC, Civil Rights Movement, Desegregation, Jubilee Project

ASALH Call for Papers, 2013 Conference

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From ASALH:

Association for the Study of African American Life and History

March 2013

Marking the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History invites papers, panels, and round-tables on these and related topics of black emancipation, freedom, justice and equality, and the movements that have sought to achieve these goals. Submissions may focus on the historical periods tied to the 2013 theme, their precursors and successors, and other past and contemporary moments across the breadth of African American history.

The submission deadline is May 15, 2013!

Scroll down and read through the Call for Papers to learn more.
***

At the Crossroads of Freedom: The Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington

The year 2013 marks two important anniversaries in the history of African Americans and the United States. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation set the United States on the path of ending slavery. A wartime measure issued by President Abraham Lincoln, the proclamation freed relatively few slaves, but it fueled the fire of the enslaved to strike for their freedom. In many respects, Lincoln’s declaration simply acknowledged the epidemic of black self-emancipation – spread by black freedom crusaders like Harriet Tubman – that already had commenced beyond his control. Those in bondage increasingly streamed into the camps of the Union Army, reclaiming and asserting self-determination. The result, abolitionist Fredrick Douglass predicted, was that the war for the Union became a war against slavery. The actions of both Lincoln and the slaves made clear that the Civil War was in deed, as well as in theory, a struggle between the forces of slavery and emancipation. The full-scale dismantlement of the “peculiar institution” of human bondage had begun.

In 1963, a century later, America once again stood at the crossroads. Nine years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed racial segregation in public schools, but the nation had not yet committed itself to equality of citizenship. Segregation and innumerable other forms of discrimination made second-class citizenship the extra-constitutional status of non-whites. Another American president caught in the gale of racial change, John F. Kennedy, temporized over the legal and moral issue of his time. Like Lincoln before him, national concerns, and the growing momentum of black mass mobilization efforts, overrode his personal ambivalence toward demands for black civil rights. On August 28, 1963, hundreds of thousands of Americans, blacks and whites, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, marched to the memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, in the continuing pursuit of equality of citizenship and self-determination. It was on this occasion that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech. Just as the Emancipation Proclamation had recognized the coming end of slavery, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom announced that the days of legal segregation in the United States were numbered.

For more information, or to submit a paper proposal, visit ASALH’s website.

Filed under: Jubilee Project, Upcoming Events

ASALH Call for Papers, 2013 Conference

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From ASALH:

Association for the Study of African American Life and History

March 2013

Marking the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History invites papers, panels, and round-tables on these and related topics of black emancipation, freedom, justice and equality, and the movements that have sought to achieve these goals. Submissions may focus on the historical periods tied to the 2013 theme, their precursors and successors, and other past and contemporary moments across the breadth of African American history.

The submission deadline is May 15, 2013!

Scroll down and read through the Call for Papers to learn more.
***

At the Crossroads of Freedom: The Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington

The year 2013 marks two important anniversaries in the history of African Americans and the United States. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation set the United States on the path of ending slavery. A wartime measure issued by President Abraham Lincoln, the proclamation freed relatively few slaves, but it fueled the fire of the enslaved to strike for their freedom. In many respects, Lincoln’s declaration simply acknowledged the epidemic of black self-emancipation – spread by black freedom crusaders like Harriet Tubman – that already had commenced beyond his control. Those in bondage increasingly streamed into the camps of the Union Army, reclaiming and asserting self-determination. The result, abolitionist Fredrick Douglass predicted, was that the war for the Union became a war against slavery. The actions of both Lincoln and the slaves made clear that the Civil War was in deed, as well as in theory, a struggle between the forces of slavery and emancipation. The full-scale dismantlement of the “peculiar institution” of human bondage had begun.

In 1963, a century later, America once again stood at the crossroads. Nine years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed racial segregation in public schools, but the nation had not yet committed itself to equality of citizenship. Segregation and innumerable other forms of discrimination made second-class citizenship the extra-constitutional status of non-whites. Another American president caught in the gale of racial change, John F. Kennedy, temporized over the legal and moral issue of his time. Like Lincoln before him, national concerns, and the growing momentum of black mass mobilization efforts, overrode his personal ambivalence toward demands for black civil rights. On August 28, 1963, hundreds of thousands of Americans, blacks and whites, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, marched to the memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, in the continuing pursuit of equality of citizenship and self-determination. It was on this occasion that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech. Just as the Emancipation Proclamation had recognized the coming end of slavery, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom announced that the days of legal segregation in the United States were numbered.

For more information, or to submit a paper proposal, visit ASALH’s website.

Filed under: Jubilee Project, Upcoming Events

The 2013 Geography Lecture Features Dr. Derek Alderman on “Pressing the RESET Button on Southern Hospitality: African American Belonging and Tourism Justice”

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March 26th, 2013 at 4:00pm in Physician’s Auditorium, College of Charleston campus

Dr. Derek Alderman, Geographer from the University of Tennessee, will speak at this year’s annual Geography lecture hosted by the Department of Political Science.
Alderman has long worked on issues of justice in the South.
Alderman co-coordinates the RESET (Race, Ethnicity, and Social Equity in Tourism) Initiative in addition to several other associations.
See a full list of Dr. Alderman’s published works and accomplishments at http://web.utk.edu/~utkgeog/faculty/alderman.htm

“I am a cultural and historical geographer interested in public memory, popular culture, and heritage tourism in the U.S. South. Much of my work focuses on the rights of African Americans to claim the power to commemorate the past and shape cultural landscapes as part of a broader goal of social and spatial justice.”
–Dr. Alderman

Sponsored by College of Charleston Departments of Hospitality and Tourism Management  Political Science, and Historic Preservation and Community Planning

Filed under: Charleston, SC, Jubilee Project, Upcoming Events

Recap of the Tenth International CAAR Conference

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Reflections on Dreams Deferred, Promises and Struggles: Perceptions and Interrogations of Empire, Nation, and Society by Peoples of African Descent
The 10th International CAAR Conference

Like all CAAR conferences, the 10th biennial conference in Atlanta provoked deep analysis of the cultural, emotional, mental, and socio-economic state of Black people throughout the African diaspora. Spanning a wide array of topics, the papers made us laugh, cry, strategize, and ponder deeply the importance of our work as scholars, teachers, and what Toni Cade Bambara called “cultural workers.” Indeed, the inaugural CAAR conference in the US accomplished its mission, and thus was a watershed moment in this important year that commemorates such important milestones in the African American historical narrative—the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 50th years anniversaries of the March on Washington, the death of W.E.B DuBois, and the desegregation of South Carolina public schools.

Filed under: Civil Rights Movement, Desegregation, Emancipation, Jubilee Project

The Collegium for African American Research Celebrates Its 10th International Conference

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The Collegium for African American Research’s 10th International Conference:
Dreams Deferred, Promises and Struggles: Perceptions and Interrogations of Empire, Nation, and Society by Peoples of African Descent
Musings from Hotlanta

With well over two hundred conference participants, the 2013 CAAR conference in Atlanta has proven to be a successful collaboration between international scholars and local and regional institutions of higher education. The College of Charleston is one such collaborating partner, sponsoring today’s keynote address by esteemed theater professor and radical thinker, Dr. Frank Wilderson of University of California-Irvine. His talk, “Afro-pessimism and the Paradox of Political Engagement” will be given this evening at the Atlanta Fulton Library.

The wide breadth of paper topics has touched on just about every area of Black history, life, and culture. One of my favorites so far has been “Blackness, Sexuality, and Gender in Transcultural Spaces featuring Dr. Charles Nero of Bates College, whose paper, “ A Democracy of Sin: the Failure to Transform in E. Lynn Harris’ Queer Black Nationalism,”:
Professor Gayle Baldwin ( University of North Dakota), whose paper, “ The Black Gay Quilt as Theological Resistance” chronicles the Black Church response to the murder of Sakia Gunn, a black lesbian teenage in Newark, New Jersey; and finally, the work of Dr. Pekka Kilpelainen, University of Eastern Finland, whose paper, “ Like the Sound of Crumbling Wall: Transcultural Spatiality in James Baldwin’s Just Above My Head was engaging, creative, and a tribute to the genius of Baldwin and his contribution to Black liberation epistemologies.

Other highlights include the screening of Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years, and the SCLC exhibit sponsored by MARBL ( Manuscripts and Rare Books Library) of Woodruff Library at Emory University.

Filed under: Jubilee Project

African American Heritage Day Sets New Attendance Record

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Approximately 1,300 elementary and middle school students braved a very rainy day to celebrate African American Heritage Day at Wannamaker County Park.  The children experienced Sierra Leonean drumming, Gullah storytelling, Wo’se African dancing, Capoiera martial arts, and other performances. In addition, the children learned about Carolina Gold rice cultivation and processing by pounding rice in mortars and pestles, observing a rice trunk model, and fanning rice in baskets. The 54th Massachusetts re-enactment group also spoke about the role of this legendary unit in the attack on Battery Wagner and in other Charleston area battles. Vera Manigault, an award winning sweetgrass basket maker, also spoke with the children about the long history of Charleston area baskets from their roots in West Africa to their utility on plantations to their evolution as a highly regarded and collectible art form.

Filed under: Charleston, SC, Jubilee Project