2022 events

Camille Thurman and the Darrell Greene Quartet is a dynamic musical organization. Thurman is a saxophone player, whose gorgeous vocals garnered her second place in the Sarah Vaughn Vocal Competition. She is also a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and has She has performed extensively with artists that include Dr. Billy Taylor, George Coleman, and Lew Tabackin.

The Clifton Anderson Sextet will bring its special kind of swing to the Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn. With a repertoire of jazz classics and original music—some of which highlights the need for social justice—Anderson, an outstanding trombonist and bandleader is straight out of Harlem, and is Sonny Rollins’s nephew. He has worked with musical giants that include Frank Foster, McCoy Tyner, Clifford Jordan, Stevie Wonder, Dizzy Gillespie, Merv Griffin and the Mighty Sparrow to Lester Bowie, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Paul Simon, Terumasa Hino, Keith Richards, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wyclef Jean, Geri Allen, T.S. Monk, Charlie Haden, Slide Hampton , Wallace Roney, and others. 

The Steven Oquendo Latin Jazz Orchestra is a nineteen-piece powerhouse that playing in the tradition of two powerful art forms. Oquendo, a Dominican and Puerto Rican Washington Heights native, is a trumpeter, composer, arranger, educator and the leader. 

The Sugar Hill Quartet —Patience Higgins, Marcus Persiani, and David F. Gibson— is the longest-running house band in New York City, having performed for more than two decades at St. Nick’s Pub, Minton’s, Lenox Lounge, and Smoke. The members of the quartet kept the Harlem jam-session tradition alive and have laid down the musical foundation for the likes of Stevie Wonder, Wynton Marsalis, and Bono. As of this writing, the bass chair is rotating.

Art In the Moment: Life and Times of Adger Cowans

The year’s author-interview series features Adger Cowans and Dr. George Preston, visual artis and collector. They will revisit Cowans’s career, including having Gordon Parks as his mentor, as well as the early formation of Kamoinge by Lew Draper and Roy DeCarava.

Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn
155th Street and Edgecombe Avenue  Harlem, NY

A photo exhibit

Kamoinge’s Harlem: Then and Now brings together artists whose works bear photographic witness to the changes that have occurred in Harlem, over the course of nearly seven decades.

Through unbridled, singular creativity, authenticity, and respect, the photographers’ chronicles of Harlem are definitive representations of the community’s many facets, through the eras, until the present day.

Kamoinge’s mission is to “HONOR, document and preserve the history and culture of the African Diaspora with integrity and insight for humanity through the lens of Black Photographers.”

This exhibition reminds us that the significance of Harlem transcends geography and resides in the spirit and cultural fabric of its history and those who lived and shaped it. These selected photographic works of the Kamoinge Collective are evidence that we are the custodians of Harlem’s spirit and soul, then and now.

Everybody needs housing. Read a great NYC housing story!

The greatest tenant organizing story never told… until now....

Sheila holds a master's degree in education, is a college professor, actor, oral historian, ordained unconventional minister, theologian, and she's a licensed New York City and international tour guide.
Sheila will be interviewed by Karen D. Taylor.

The tickets for this event are $50. It includes a signed book and a delectable dessert mailed directly to you.

An online discussion with Paula Marie Seniors.

J. Rosamond Johnson and his brother, James Weldon Johnson, are renowned for their most famous composition, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” However, the adage, "Behind every great man there is a great woman," applies to both men. Their mother, Helen Louise Dillet, and the respective women that they married, Grace Nail and Nora E. Floyd, were highly accomplished themselves.

Paula Marie Seniors will offer an engaging discussion about these important figures whom history has relegated to the background.

The SIGNS OF THE TIMES | Harlem Heritage Markers Project will install twenty-five historic markers throughout Harlem, beginning in September 2022. SIGNS OF THE TIMES honors individuals, organizations, and events that imbue Harlem with its unique character.

The Unknown, Fantastic Lives of the Johnson Women is a pre-marker-installation program that takes a deep dive into the wives of James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, and the woman who birthed these two extraordinary men.

One of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES honors J. Rosamond Johnson, widely known for composing “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the perfect complement to James Weldon’s poem. The other marker honors Rosamond’s educator daughter, Mildred Johnson, who founded Harlem’s first Black independent school in 1934: The Modern School thrived for sixty years and educated hundreds of children, including one of WWSH's board members, Deidre B. Flowers, Ph.D.