Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
“This event is postponed due to weather concerns. We apologize for any inconvenience, and we will follow up with details for a new date soon.”
Harlem Renaissance Librarian: Regina Anderson Andrews
Washington Heights Branch, 1000 St. Nicholas Ave. | 1pm
This SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Harlem Heritage Markers Project Unveiling Honors
Regina Anderson Andrews.
This partnership between While We Are Still Here, the New York Public Library, and First Books is sponsored by New York Life. There will be a Book Giveaway and special activities for children ages 7 to 11. The books tell the story of Harlem immortals that include photographer James Vanderzee.
Regina Anderson Andrews began her career with the New York Public Library in 1923 at the 135th Street branch, bringing her to the center of the Harlem Renaissance. Later in her career, she was the first African American woman to head a branch, and retired from the Washington Heights library. During the Renaissance, Andrews brought prominent speakers to 135th Street and created writing spaces for writers such as Langston Hughes.
Her apartment, at 580 St. Nicholas Avenue, was a hub for the Harlem Renaissance crowd. She was also a playwright. She shared the flat with Louella Tucker and Ethel Ray, who worked with publisher, Charles Johnson, at the Urban League’s Opportunity Magazine as a researcher. Their home was the site of a literary salon, where people such W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson attended. In her earliest days in Harlem, Zora Neale Hurston slept on the sofa.
Parents will be given a copy of Renaissance Librarian: Regina Anderson Andrews the award-winning biography by Ethelene Whitmire.
Coleman Hawkins: The Man Who Changed the Sound of Black Music
445 W. 153rd Sreet | 1pm
Host, Sheila Anderson of WBGO
Following the unveiling, a 2nd line will proceed to the Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn at Edgecombe Avenue and 155th Street for the 7th Annual Sugar Hill Music Festival, where a special tribute will be performed in Hawkins’s memory.
This marker unveiling pays homage to the supremely influential tenor saxophonist, Coleman Hawkins. His musical legacy remains a benchmark for the music that we have come to call jazz. Remarks include a reading of a statement prepared by NEA jazz master, Sonny Rollins, who considers Hawkins a primary influence.
Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn
Edgecombe Avenue and W. 155th Street
Sheila Evans, emcee
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
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
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
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
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.
Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn
155th Street and Edgecombe Avenue Harlem, NY
To celebrate the music of Harlem, we ask you to join us this year for the 5th Annual Sugar Hill Music Festival.
In Tribute to the Mizell Brothers and Gil Scott-Heron, with:
In addition, Reading Across Harlem features an interview with legendary poet Abiodun Oyewole, founding member of The Last Poets and self-described “author, musician, mentor, father, lifelong learner.”Oyewole, author of Branches of the Tree of Life: The Collected Poems of Abiodun Oyewole, 1969-2013.
While We Are Still Here acknowledges the generous support of the J. Rosamond Johnson Foundation and Melanie Edwards, without whom this project would not have taken place.
with author Johanna Fernandez interviewed by Elizabeth Yeampierre
Sunday April 11 1:00PM
Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality with author Jeffrey Perry Interviewed by S.E. Anderson
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8 5:00-6:00 PM ONLINE
In a segregated New York City of the 1930s, as a young Black woman Mildred L. Johnson found herself unable to secure the teaching job she wanted. Undeterred, she went on to imagine and built a progressive, affirming, Black independent school, called The Modern School, which operated for more than sixty years in Harlem's Sugar Hill.
With:
Khadijah Akeem, master’s degree student, History and Education, Teachers College
Melanie Edwards, daughter of Modern School founder, Mildred L. Johnson
Ansley Erickson, associate professor of History and Education Policy and co-director, Center on History and Education
Deidre B. Flowers '17, A’Lelia Bundles Scholar at Columbia University and
Modern School alum
Nicole Furlonge, Klingenstein Family Chair Professor of Practice and Director of Klingenstein Center, Teachers College
Karen D. Taylor, founder and executive director, While We Are Still Here
GEORGE BRUCE LIBRARY 518 WEST 125TH STREET HARLEM, NY
Please come prepared to discuss and agree upon who, what, where should be honored in the first stage of this important campaign. LIGHT REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED.
Copyright © 2020 While We re Still Here - All Rights Reserved.
Powered by EM Designs Group
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.