2023 events

Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn 

Edgecombe Avenue and W. 155th Street 

Sheila Evans, emcee 

• Allan Harris 
• Steven Oquendo Latin Jazz Orchestra 
• Sugar Hill Quartet 
• Jenn Jade

Hosted by Sheila Evans

Music curator, Terrance McKnight of WQXR

Drama curator, American Theatre of Harlem

To get tickets click here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lift-evry-black-voice-of-fire-tickets-686648743877?aff=oddtdtcreator

Join While We Are Still Here as we unveil the first four markers in the SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Harlem Heritage Markers Project

This histroic event pays homage to four exemplars of Black pride. This bus tour will visit the marker sites of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, J. Rosamond Johnson, and Larry Neal. Family members and scholars will be on hand to offer their remarks regarding each man’s legacy. There will also be rousing, brief performances by a cadre of celebrated musicians and actors.  

Marcus Garvey/UNIA (1PM- 2PM) Bus will pick up registered people from here.

2395 Frederick Douglass Blvd.

Site of Marcus Garvey Meeting Hall, named for the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association who fostered Black Pride. 

Remarks

• Raymond Dugué, 1st assistant president general of the UNIA
• Antoinette Tisdale, daughter of Major Francisco Rockwood of the UNIA and treasurer of the Vanguard Local
• Sheree Leonard, granddaughter of Major Francisco Rockwood

Performance

Eon Gray, “The Principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association” (Excerpt)

Malcolm X/Faith Temple Church  (2:30PM- 3:30PM)

1763 Amsterdam Ave.

On February 27, 1965, Ossie Davis eulogized Malcolm X, as “Our Black, Shining Prince” at Faith Temple Church.

Remarks

• Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz
• Herb Boyd, Malcolm X scholar

Performance

Andre Blake, “The Race Problem,” “There’s a Worldwide Revolution Going On”

J. Rosamond Johnson (4PM- 4:30PM) Last bus stop

437 W. 162nd St. 

A prolific composer known for “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” he championed Black music in the US and Europe. 

Remarks

• Melanie Edwards, granddaughter of J. Rosamond Johnson
• Terrance McKnight, musicologist, radio and podcast host

Lawrence “Larry” Neal (4:35PM-5PM) 

12 Jumel Ter. 

Neal was a force in the 1960s Black Arts Movement. He was a playwright, poet, professor, and Guggenheim Fellow.

Remarks

• Evelyn Neal, widow of Larry Neal
• Sam Anderson, Lincoln classmate of Larry Neal
• Playthell Benjamin, friend of Larry Neal

Lift Ev'ry Black Voice of Fire Performance Honoring J. Rosamond Johnson and Larry Neal

Jumel Mansion (5PM- 6PM) 

Please join While We Are Still Here for a performance of excerpts from Larry Neal’s works by the cast. J. Rosamond Johnson’s music will be performed by Damien Sneed, piano; Marcelle Davies-Lashley, voice; and Josh Henderson, violin.

Cyanotype printing is a 150-year-old photographic process that produces Prussian blue prints of photographs or art.  

Join multimedia artist and Harlem native, Dionis Ortiz, for a hands-on guided approach to cyanotype printing on paper. Participants will learn about using transparencies, mixing chemistry, and proper coating and exposing techniques. You will leave with three prints on paper created out of the portraits of the iconic figures seen on the banner.    

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.