features art, music and more
The Yale campus will celebrate Black History Month with special talks, theatrical
performances, musical offerings, an African food “cookoff,” a beauty
pageant, a film festival, an art exhibit and more.
Among the featured participants in campus events during the celebration of
black history and culture — which centers this year on the theme “Celebrating
the Black Woman” — are Dr. Alexa Canady, the first black woman
neurosurgeon in the United States, Yale’s chief financial officer (CFO)
Gwendolyn Sykes, television and radio talk show host Tavis Smiley, and Yale
professors Stephen Carter and Elijah Anderson.
Highlights of the Black History Month celebration follow. Unless otherwise
indicated, the events are free and open to the public.
On stage
A musical about the life of Bert Williams, the most famous black performer
of early Broadway, will be staged at the Yale Cabaret Thursday-Saturday, Feb.
7-9.
The musical is based on a novel by Yale English professor Caryl Phillips, which
has been adapted for the stage by Yale School of Drama student Ken Robinson.
Patricia McGregor directs the performance by School of Drama students.
A native of the West Indies, Williams performed in blackface in New York from
the 1890s through the 1910s. His artistic achievements were limited by racial
prejudice in the early 20th century: He wasn’t allowed to perform in
public without blackface and was called a “performer” rather than
an “actor.” “Dancing in the Dark” re-imagines Williams’ struggle
to reconcile his identity with his art.
Performances are at 8 p.m. on Thursday and at 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on Friday
and Saturday at the Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St. Tickets are $15; $10 for students.
For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.yale.edu/cabaret or
call (203) 432-1566.
Talks, lectures
Dr. Alexa Canady. Canady, the first African-American brain surgeon in the United
States, will present the keynote address at the annual Black History Month
Dinner, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, at Calhoun College,
corner of Elm and College streets. Those wishing to attend the dinner must
R.S.V.P. to joanna.gorman@yale.edu. This event is co-sponsored by the Afro-American
Cultural Center (AACC).
Canady was chief of neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan
from 1987 until her retirement in 2001. She earned her B.S. and M.D. from the
University of Michigan and completed her surgical internship at Yale-New Haven
Hospital in 1975. During her 20 years as a neurosurgeon, she has treated thousands
of patients, many of them age 10 or younger, whose afflictions included gunshot
wounds, head trauma, hydrocephaly and other brain injuries or diseases.
Canady received the Children’s Hospital of Michigan’s Teacher of
the Year Award in 1984 and was inducted into the Michigan Woman’s Hall
of Fame in 1989. In 1993 she received the American Medical Women’s Association
President’s Award. She was named by the Detroit News as Michiganer of
the Year in 2002.
Staceyann Chin. A poet, writer and activist, Chin will give a public lecture
and reading at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 17, at the AACC, 211 Park St . Her
visit is co-sponsored by Word!, Prism and the Yale West Indian Students’ Organization.
A resident of New York City and a Jamaican national, Chin has been a poet since
1998. She won a Tony Award for her performance in the Russell Simmons’ Def
Poetry Jam on Broadway, and she has also performed at the Nuyorican Poets’ Café,
off-Broadway and in poetry workshops in Denmark and London. She was the winner
of the 1999 Chicago People of Color Slam and the 1998 Lamda Poetry Slam, was
a finalist in the 1999 Nuyorican Grand Slam and won the 1998 and 2000 Slam
This!, as well as WORD: The First Slam for Television.
Gwendolyn Sykes. Sykes will give a talk on Monday,
Feb. 18, noon-1:30 p.m. in the General Motors Room,
55 Hillhouse Ave. School of Management (SOM) Dean Joel Podolny will present
opening remarks, and a free lunch will be provided. For information, contact
rashayla.brown@yale.edu. This event is sponsored by the Yale SOM Black Business
Alliance.
Sykes joined Yale as its CFO in July 2007. She previously had been the CFO
at NASA since 2003. At NASA, she oversaw the financial management and health
of the $16 billion agency. She has also served as an analyst for the U.S. Department
of Defense and in Congress for U.S. Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. At Yale,
Sykes is responsible for the financial stewardship of the University, including
budgeting, accounting and transaction management, financial reporting, internal
control and the integrity of financial information.
Stephen Carter. Carter, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale
Law School, will speak at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 19, in the Sterling Memorial
Library lecture hall, 120 Wall St. This event is sponsored by the Yale University
Library Diversity Council. For information, contact teresa.miguel@yale.edu.
Carter earned his J.D. from Yale in 1979 and began teaching at the Law School
in 1982. He is the author of several books, including “Reflections of
an Affirmative Action Baby” and the novels, “New England White” and “The
Emperor of Ocean Park.”
Elijah Anderson. Anderson will be the featured speaker at a dinner on Tuesday,
Feb. 19, at 5:30 p.m. at the AACC. This event is presented by Here, Our Voices.
For information, contact rodriquez.donald@yale.edu.
Anderson joined the University’s Department of Sociology in July 2007.
He is considered one of the nation’s most influential sociologists in
the field of black urban studies. He is the author, among many other publications,
of “A Place on the Corner: A Study of Black Street Corner Men,” “Streetwise:
Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community” and “The Code of
the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City.” He
is currently working on a monograph on the black middle class. Before coming
to Yale, he was the William L. Day Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences
and professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he first
began teaching in 1975.
Aaron Ship ’96. As part of the Life After Yale Series, alumnus Ship will
speak during a dinner on Thursday, Feb. 21, at 5:30 p.m. at the AACC.
Ship, a life coach, will discuss his job working to help people improve, grow
and reach their goals, and will offer tips to his audience on achieving what
they desire.
Musical performances
Shades. Shades, a co-educational a cappella singing group dedicated to the
performance of African-American music, will perform its annual Valentine’s
Day concert at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 14, in the dining hall of Silliman
College, 505 College St. For more information about this event, contact jean-phillp.brignol@yale.edu.
New Haven Chorale. Actors from the School of Drama will be featured in “Lift
Every Voice!” — a musical and literary celebration of Black History
Month presented by the New Haven Chorale on Sunday, Feb. 24, at 4:30 p.m. in
Woolsey Hall, corner of Grove and College streets. Tickets are $35 for reserved
seating, $20 for general seating and $15 for senior citizens; students with
I.D. are admitted free. Tickets are available at the door and by calling (203)
776-SONG. Tickets can also be purchased at Foundry Music in New Haven, Books
and Co. in Hamden, Sound Runner in Branford, Breakwater Books in Guilford and R.J. Julia’s Booksellers in Madison. For more information, visit www.newhavenchorale.org.
The New Haven Chorale will also be joined by The Heritage Chorale for the event,
which will feature dramatic readings and vocal performances to portray “African-American
expressions of the human spirit’s universal aspiration for freedom and
justice.” Texts by Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther
King Jr., Maya Angelou and others will be interwoven with spirituals, gospel
music and contemporary compositions, including audience sing-along opportunities.
Tenor Albert Lee, an award-winning performer in opera and on the concert stage,
will be a special guest for this performance.
Pre-concert discussion. A pre-concert lecture titled “What Does America
Mean to Me? Citizenship in the Formation of the United States” will be
offered at 3:15 p.m. in Woolsey Hall by Jonathan Holloway, professor of history
and of American and African-American studies, who is also master of Calhoun
College. Free-will donations to benefit the Greater New Haven NAACP’s
Scholarship Fund will be accepted.
Film screenings
‘Afro-punk.’ James Spooner, director of “Afro-punk,” a
documentary film exploring race identity in the punk scene, will show and discuss
his film on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 7-9 p.m. at the AACC.
Spooner, who was born in Saint Lucia to a black father and a white mother,
produced his film mostly out of New York. He was fascinated by the fact that
no one he knew (including himself) discussed the issue of race relations or
explored the untold stories of the black experience in the punk scene, despite
the plethora of accomplished black artists in the genre and punk rock’s
origins as an offshoot of rock-and-roll itself (and of the work of innovators
such as Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Little Richard).
Spooner has toured the country showing his film, which has developed a cult
following largely among punk rock fans who are members of minority groups.
For more about the film, visit Spooner’s website at www.afropunk.com.
Film festival. “Black and Green — Land, Power and Sustainability
in the African Diaspora” is the title of a film festival being offered
11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 23, at the AACC. The event is co-sponsored
by the Yale Sustainable Food Project.
The invited speaker is the president of the Association of Black Farmers.
Featured films include the following:
• “Darratt,” by Guy Bellinger, about a 16-year-old whose grandfather
orders him to execute the man who killed the boy’s father. The murderer
is among the war criminals who have just received amnesty from the government
after a 40-year civil war.
• “Life and Debt,” a series of sequences focusing on the stories
of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day
existence are determined by the United States and other foreign economic agendas.
The film utilizes excerpts from Jamaica Kincaid’s award-winning text “A
Small Place.”
• “Homecoming … Sometimes I Am Haunted by Memories of Red Dirt
and Clay,” a film by Charlene Gilbert about her family’s farm and
her investigation of the social and political implications of African-American
land loss in the South. She relates how, in 1920, there were nearly one million
black farmers in America; in 1999, there were less than 18,000.
• “Gold Greed Genocide and Salmon on the Backs of Buffalo” explores
the toxic legacy of the California Gold Rush on the Klamath River, once the third
most productive salmon river in the United States. Today, due to habitat-blocking
dams, poor water quality and too little water left in the river, the once abundant
Klamath salmon runs have now been reduced to less than 10% of their historic
size.
Art exhibit
The exhibition “Women of a New Tribe” will open on Monday, Feb.
25, at 5 p.m. at the AACC. The exhibit features 20 photographs from the collection
of photographer Jerry Taliaferro that pay homage to the physical and spiritual
beauty of black women. Taliaferro is a native of Brownsville, Tennessee. In
addition to the black-and-white photos from his core collection, the exhibit
will also include photographs of 25 local women, including New Haven leaders
and Yale students, administrators, alumni, faculty and staff.
Black Solidarity Conference
The Black Student Alliance at Yale and the Black Pride Union are co-sponsoring
a conference Feb. 29-March 2 titled “The Ballot or the Bullet? Revitalizing
the Revolution.”
Author, journalist, political commentator and talk show host Tavis Smiley will
speak at the event. There is a fee to attend, and registration is required.
To register, visit www.yale.edu/bsc or contact kristian.henderson@yale.edu.
Smiley hosts “Tavis Smiley,” a late-night talk show televised on
the PBS network. He also hosts a weekly two-hour version on Public Radio International
radio stations. He will moderate two live presidential forums in 2007: a Democratic
forum at Howard University in June and a Republican forum at Morgan State University
in September.
Smiley has helped launch advocacy campaigns to highlight discriminatory practices
in the media and government and to rally support for causes such as the awarding
of a Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. He is the founder
of the Tavis Smiley Foundation, which funds programs that develop young leaders
in the black community. He has written eight books, including “Doing
What’s Right: How to Fight for What You Believe — And Make a Difference,” “The
Covenant with Black America” and “Keeping the Faith: Stories of
Love, Courage, Healing and Hope from Black America.” His numerous honors
include the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award from the National Association
of Minorities in Communications.
Other events
Other events being offered as part of the Black History Month celebration are:
• A party 9 p.m.-1 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, hosted by the Yale West Indian
Student Organization and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity at the AACC. For information,
contact faith.briggs@yale.edu.
• An African Cook-Off on Monday, Feb. 11, 6-8 p.m. at the AACC. This event
is sponsored by the Yale African Student Association and the Yale West Indian
Student Organization. For information, contact ivuoma.onyeador@yale.edu.
• “Miss Black and Gold,” a pageant on Saturday, Feb. 16, 7-9
p.m. at Harkness Auditorium of the School of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. The pageant
highlights and fosters the connection between success and etiquette among young
women. Hosted by the Zeta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., the pageant
celebrates young women who epitomize self-confidence, communication skills, intelligence
and beauty. Contestants are provided with scholarships to assist with post secondary
studies.
For more information about Black History Month events, contact Pamela George,
director of the AACC and assistant dean of Yale College, at pamela.george@yale.edu.
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