SANKOFA Reading Group is an auxiliary of Women For Progress of Mississippi, Inc.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Margaret Walker Center Sponsored Creative Arts Festival at Jackson State University
The theme of the conference was the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, high school, undergraduate, and graduate students made presentations on topics of their choice in one of four fields:
1. spoken word (5 to 7 minute original presentations in storytelling, oratory, and poetry)
2. visual arts (up to 3 pieces of artwork in any media with a 5 to 7 minute presentation)
3. written (8 to 10 page essays with a 15 to 20 minute presentations)
4. performing arts (5 to 7 minute dance, musical, and theatrical presentations)
The best essay by a JSU student received the $1,000 annual Margaret Walker Award, and selected essays will have the opportunity to be published in either the BLACK MAGNOLIAS Literary Journal or the JSU RESEARCHER. The winning essay was:
Jackson State University
"Essay on Skin, Race, and Pride"
Jarrett Claiborne,
The highlight of the Creative Arts Festival for me was the Friday night Poetry reading event held at the Africa Book Cafe. The venue was packed with engaged listeners and participants and the poetry readings by Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Charlie Braxton and C. Liegh McInnis were awesome! The poetry reading was an intergenerational dialogue that was both inspiring and educational. The venue gave individuals the opportunity to support a small African American owned business in Jackson, Mississippi.
Hello Again!
It has been awhile since I posted a new blog entry because April has turned out to be as busy March. So far this month we have had the Creative Arts Festival, the Robert Clark Symposium, Fannie Lou Hamer Fifth Annual Humanitarian Awards and a lecture series presentation on the declining presence of African American men in colleges and universities. Women For Progress launched its revised, updated cookbook this month and we will have a general meeting of Women For Progress and SANKOFA Reading Group this April. Tomorrow, Wednesday April 20, 2011 there will be a panel discussion at Jim Hill High School on Youth Power in the Freedom Rides and later that afternoon at 3:00 pm a Meet & Greet Reception to honor Jackson's Freedom Riders at the COFO Civil Rights Education Complex. On Thursday, April 21, 2011 there will be a panel discussion commemorating the 1961 Freedom Rides.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Georgia Douglas Johnson
In honor of National Poetry Month, SANKOFA Reading Group would like to spotlight a lesser known poet, Georgia Douglas Johnson
She was a musician, playwright, fiction writer, mother, wife, friend, mentor, intellectual and gracious host, and a creative woman of her time. One of the most loved and cherished participants of the Harlem Renaissance period, Georgia Douglas Johnson was the nurturer who gave to others not just her cadenced words, but much of her heart. While acknowledging the oppressed position of women in her lifetime and documenting how this stiffled the creative spirit, she nevertheless proudly wore the mantle of the woman poet and fully embodied this restriction for herself.
Georgia Douglas Johnson is remembered for her considerable energy in fostering community among writers, and her deep commitment to honoring writing. The various workshops (such as the Sterling Brown one which meets in Brown's last home), and literary organizations (such as Hurston-Wright Foundation) and even gathering places (such as Sisterspace & Books), that continue to nurture community among Black writers, artists and intellectuals in the Washington, DC area all have their roots in the Saturday Nighters. Douglas Johnson set the blueprint for how intellectual and creative talent could be nurtured and supported and her legacy here continues. Georgia Douglas Johnson died in her home at 1461 S Street NW on May 14, 1966.
Some poems I recommend include:
"Your World"
"I Want to Die While You Love Me"
"The Heart of A Woman"
Source: http://washingtonart.com/beltway/gdjohnson.html
She was a musician, playwright, fiction writer, mother, wife, friend, mentor, intellectual and gracious host, and a creative woman of her time. One of the most loved and cherished participants of the Harlem Renaissance period, Georgia Douglas Johnson was the nurturer who gave to others not just her cadenced words, but much of her heart. While acknowledging the oppressed position of women in her lifetime and documenting how this stiffled the creative spirit, she nevertheless proudly wore the mantle of the woman poet and fully embodied this restriction for herself.
Georgia Douglas Johnson is remembered for her considerable energy in fostering community among writers, and her deep commitment to honoring writing. The various workshops (such as the Sterling Brown one which meets in Brown's last home), and literary organizations (such as Hurston-Wright Foundation) and even gathering places (such as Sisterspace & Books), that continue to nurture community among Black writers, artists and intellectuals in the Washington, DC area all have their roots in the Saturday Nighters. Douglas Johnson set the blueprint for how intellectual and creative talent could be nurtured and supported and her legacy here continues. Georgia Douglas Johnson died in her home at 1461 S Street NW on May 14, 1966.
Some poems I recommend include:
"Your World"
"I Want to Die While You Love Me"
"The Heart of A Woman"
Source: http://washingtonart.com/beltway/gdjohnson.html
National Poetry Month
Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.
What are the goals of National Poetry Month? The goals of National Poetry Month are to:
What are the goals of National Poetry Month? The goals of National Poetry Month are to:
- Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
- Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
- Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
- Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
- Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
- Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
- Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry
SANKOFA Reading Group UPDATE
March 2011 was a wildly busy month! The Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement hosted their 6th annual conference at Jackson State University, March 23-26, 2011. The weekend began with a very interesting discussion on Women in the Civil Rights Movement held in Woodworth Chapel on Tougaloo College's historic campus. Speakers focused on the experience of Mrs. Annie Devine, Mrs. Victoria Gray Adams and Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer during the the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. How do we encourage and promote in young women today the energy, determinism and activism of the above-mentioned women. The conference began in earnest on Thursday morning with plenary sessions and workshops. Participants from across the globe came to participate in the Conference. Numerous writers on the Civil Rights movement were featured at the conference. A huge shout out and words of commendation go to Ms. Cynthia Palmer, conference coordinator and Mr. Owen Brooks, Executive Director of the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. Speakers this year included Kathleen Cleaver, Charles Payne, Haki Madhabuti, Louis Farrakhan, Myrlie Evers-Williams & Shirley Sherrod. The most important questions are where do we go from here and how do we encourage, progress, interracial, intergenerational, and interfaith dialogue. What should be our agenda moving forward? How do we improve the American public education system for ALL children?
This only one of several events that occurred in March. The Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church sponsored "The Parchman Hour", a dramatic presentation on the experiences of the Freedom Riders in Mississippi in 1961. Young people mostly from North Carolina through the performing arts helped the audience understand and empathize with the Freedom Riders.
Northminister Baptist Church sponsored a interfaith panel discussion on the three major monotheistic religions, Islam, Judaism & Christianity.
The Old Capitol Museum was the site for the Richard Wright Mississippi Hall of Fame portrait unveiling.
The Margaret Walker Center launched the Margaret Walker digital archive.
The Piney Woods School celebrated the legacy of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm in Washington, DC.
The Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series honored Freedom Rider, Hank Thomas among other honorees.
This only one of several events that occurred in March. The Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church sponsored "The Parchman Hour", a dramatic presentation on the experiences of the Freedom Riders in Mississippi in 1961. Young people mostly from North Carolina through the performing arts helped the audience understand and empathize with the Freedom Riders.
Northminister Baptist Church sponsored a interfaith panel discussion on the three major monotheistic religions, Islam, Judaism & Christianity.
The Old Capitol Museum was the site for the Richard Wright Mississippi Hall of Fame portrait unveiling.
The Margaret Walker Center launched the Margaret Walker digital archive.
The Piney Woods School celebrated the legacy of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm in Washington, DC.
The Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series honored Freedom Rider, Hank Thomas among other honorees.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
SANKOFA Reading Group Meeting Wrap-Up
We had a wonderful meeting last night and I would like to thank everyone for coming out to discuss JUBILEE by Margaret Walker. Welcome to new members Anquenette Michelle Perkins, Irene German, Samson Emeakpor, Jean Chamberlain, and Vijay Maddipatha we greatly appreciate your attendance and participation.
Special thanks to Willie Jones, Nettie Stowers, Dorothy Stewart and Megan Stewart for all your support! We couldn't do it without you!
The discussion was lively and timely. We highly recommend JUBILEE to anyone interested in American History, Women's History, African American History and great fiction. Margaret Walker's writing influenced the neo-slave narratives of novelists such as Toni Morrison and J. California Cooper.
The Margaret Walker Center was the perfect setting for last night's meeting. Displays in the Melvene Coney Conference Room included items mentioned in JUBILEE such as a butter churn, quilt top, cotton bolls, a framed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, and other items related to the Civil War. Audiovisual displays included a PowerPoint presentation on Margaret Walker and JUBILEE and a CD of Negro Spirituals arranged and conducted by William Levi Dawson and performed by the Tuskegee Singers. Participants also had the opportunity to examine copies of Margaret Walker's handwritten notes on JUBILEE from the Margaret Walker Personal Papers at the Margaret Walker Center
Refreshments were served and discussion turned to the timely topic of HIV/AIDS in the African American community.
Special thanks to Willie Jones, Nettie Stowers, Dorothy Stewart and Megan Stewart for all your support! We couldn't do it without you!
The discussion was lively and timely. We highly recommend JUBILEE to anyone interested in American History, Women's History, African American History and great fiction. Margaret Walker's writing influenced the neo-slave narratives of novelists such as Toni Morrison and J. California Cooper.
The Margaret Walker Center was the perfect setting for last night's meeting. Displays in the Melvene Coney Conference Room included items mentioned in JUBILEE such as a butter churn, quilt top, cotton bolls, a framed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, and other items related to the Civil War. Audiovisual displays included a PowerPoint presentation on Margaret Walker and JUBILEE and a CD of Negro Spirituals arranged and conducted by William Levi Dawson and performed by the Tuskegee Singers. Participants also had the opportunity to examine copies of Margaret Walker's handwritten notes on JUBILEE from the Margaret Walker Personal Papers at the Margaret Walker Center
Refreshments were served and discussion turned to the timely topic of HIV/AIDS in the African American community.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Civil War Battle Animation
Sherman's March to Atlanta
http://www.civilwaranimated.com/AtlantaAnimation.html
http://www.civilwaranimated.com/AtlantaAnimation.html
Civil War Battle Animation
Animation of the Battle of Chattanooga
http://www.civilwaranimated.com/ChattanoogaAnimation.html
http://www.civilwaranimated.com/ChattanoogaAnimation.html
Civil War Battle Animation
After a very successful campaign of maneuver which forces the confederates out of Tennessee with minimal losses, Union General William Rosecrans expects to do the same to the confederates in northern Georgia.
But Confederate General Braxton Bragg plans to fight and all of General James Longstreet's army corps is on the way from Virginia to reinforce him.
Margaret Walker writes extensively about the Battle of Chickamauga in chapter 25 of JUBILEE. Click on link below to view an animation of the battle.
http://www.civilwaranimated.com/ChickamaugaAnimation.html
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Wilberforce, Lincoln, and the Abolition of Slavery
This exhibition presents a variety of original documents and images highlighting the story of the abolition of slavery between 1787 and 1865 in England and America. Each item has its own historic significance as well as a place in the broader progress of abolitionist thinking, from the moment William Wilberforce joined the British abolition campaign through the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Although its implementation proceeded in fits and starts, abolitionism was an idea whose force ultimately proved unstoppable across the English-speaking world.
Link to online collection:
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/online/wilberforce/index.html
Link to online collection:
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/online/wilberforce/index.html
Abolitionist John Brown
Link to an online exhibition on the life of abolitionist John Brown
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/online/jbrown/index.php
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/online/jbrown/index.php
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott gave his name to what has become the most infamous Supreme Court decision in American history, yet many Americans are unaware of his story. This exhibition looks at the history of Dred Scott and his case through images and primary source documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection and other archives.
Link to online collection:
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/online/scott/slide12.html
Link to online collection:
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/online/scott/slide12.html
A Year of Hope for Joplin and Johnson
An article from the Smithsonian Magazine on the Boxing Champion Jack Johnson and Composer Scott Joplin
A Year of Hope for Joplin and Johnson
A Year of Hope for Joplin and Johnson
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Maria Stewart
In September 1832, Maria W. Stewart delivered at Boston’s Franklin Hall one of the first public lectures ever given by an American woman. Her speech, directed to the women of the African American Female Intelligence Society, called on black women to acquire equality through education. The speech appears below.
Oh, do not say you cannot make anything of your children; but say, with the help and assistance of God, we will try. Perhaps you will say that you cannot send them to high schools and academies. You can have them taught in the first rudiments of useful knowledge, and then you can have private teachers, who will instruct them in the higher branches.
It is of no use for us to sit with our hands folded, hanging our heads like bulrushes lamenting our wretched condition; but let us make a mighty effort and arise. Let every female heart become united, and let us raise a fund ourselves; and at the end of one year and a half, we might be able to lay the cornerstone for the building of a high school, that the higher branches of knowledge might be enjoyed by us.
Do you ask, what can we do? Unite and build a store of your own. Fill one side with dry goods and the other with groceries. Do you ask, where is the money? We have spent more than enough for nonsense to do what building we should want. We have never had an opportunity of displaying our talents; therefore the world thinks we know nothing…
Few white persons of either sex are willing to spend their lives and bury their talents in performing mean, servile labor. And such is the horrible idea I entertain respecting a life of servitude, that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising above the condition of servant, I would gladly hail death as a welcome messenger. Oh, horrible idea, indeed to possess noble souls, aspiring after high and honorable acquirements, ¬yet confined by the chains of ignorance and poverty to lives of continual drudgery and toil.
Neither do I know of any who have enriched themselves by spending their lives as house domestics, washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots or tending upon gentlemen’s tables. I have learned, by bitter experience, that continued hard labor deadens the energies of the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas become confined, the mind barren. Continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our dispositions; the whole system becomes worn out with toil and fatigue, and we care but little whether we live or die.
I do not consider it derogatory, my friends, for persons to live out to service. There are many whose inclination leads them to aspire no higher: and I would highly commend the performance of almost anything for an honest livelihood; but where constitutional strength is wanting, labor of this kind in its mildest form is painful: and, doubtless, many are the prayers that have ascended to heaven from Afric’s daughters for strength to perform their work. Most of our color have dragged out a miserable existence of servitude from the cradle to the grave. And what literary acquirements can be made, or useful knowledge derived, from either maps, books, or charts, by those who continually drudge from Monday morning until Sunday noon? . . .
O ye fairer sisters, whose hands are never soiled, whose nerves and muscles are never strained, go learn by experience! Had we had the opportunity that you have had to improve our moral and mental faculties, what would have hindered our intellects from being as bright, and our manners from being as dignified, as yours? Had it been our lot to have been nursed in the lap of affluence and ease, and to have basked beneath the smiles and sunshine of fortune, should we not have naturally supposed that we were never made to toil? And why are not our forms as delicate and our constitutions as slender as yours? Is not the workmanship as curious and complete? . . .
Oh, do not say you cannot make anything of your children; but say, with the help and assistance of God, we will try. Perhaps you will say that you cannot send them to high schools and academies. You can have them taught in the first rudiments of useful knowledge, and then you can have private teachers, who will instruct them in the higher branches.
It is of no use for us to sit with our hands folded, hanging our heads like bulrushes lamenting our wretched condition; but let us make a mighty effort and arise. Let every female heart become united, and let us raise a fund ourselves; and at the end of one year and a half, we might be able to lay the cornerstone for the building of a high school, that the higher branches of knowledge might be enjoyed by us.
Do you ask, what can we do? Unite and build a store of your own. Fill one side with dry goods and the other with groceries. Do you ask, where is the money? We have spent more than enough for nonsense to do what building we should want. We have never had an opportunity of displaying our talents; therefore the world thinks we know nothing…
Few white persons of either sex are willing to spend their lives and bury their talents in performing mean, servile labor. And such is the horrible idea I entertain respecting a life of servitude, that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising above the condition of servant, I would gladly hail death as a welcome messenger. Oh, horrible idea, indeed to possess noble souls, aspiring after high and honorable acquirements, ¬yet confined by the chains of ignorance and poverty to lives of continual drudgery and toil.
Neither do I know of any who have enriched themselves by spending their lives as house domestics, washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots or tending upon gentlemen’s tables. I have learned, by bitter experience, that continued hard labor deadens the energies of the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas become confined, the mind barren. Continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our dispositions; the whole system becomes worn out with toil and fatigue, and we care but little whether we live or die.
I do not consider it derogatory, my friends, for persons to live out to service. There are many whose inclination leads them to aspire no higher: and I would highly commend the performance of almost anything for an honest livelihood; but where constitutional strength is wanting, labor of this kind in its mildest form is painful: and, doubtless, many are the prayers that have ascended to heaven from Afric’s daughters for strength to perform their work. Most of our color have dragged out a miserable existence of servitude from the cradle to the grave. And what literary acquirements can be made, or useful knowledge derived, from either maps, books, or charts, by those who continually drudge from Monday morning until Sunday noon? . . .
O ye fairer sisters, whose hands are never soiled, whose nerves and muscles are never strained, go learn by experience! Had we had the opportunity that you have had to improve our moral and mental faculties, what would have hindered our intellects from being as bright, and our manners from being as dignified, as yours? Had it been our lot to have been nursed in the lap of affluence and ease, and to have basked beneath the smiles and sunshine of fortune, should we not have naturally supposed that we were never made to toil? And why are not our forms as delicate and our constitutions as slender as yours? Is not the workmanship as curious and complete? . . .
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
SANKOFA Reading Group next meeting
Join us Monday, February 28, 2011 as we discuss Margaret Walker's novel, JUBILEE. We will meet at 6:00 p.m. in the Margaret Walker Center [Ayer Hall] on Jackson State University's campus.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Slavery in the American South, 1619-1808
Africans did not come to the Americas as slaves initially. The first Africans arrived in the Americas as explorers and later as indentured servants. In 1619, 20 Africans came to Jamestown, Virginia as indentured servants. Indentured servants worked for a set period of time to earn their freedom and Europeans and Africans served as indentured servants in America. However, after 1640 the status of Africans began to change from indentured servants to servants for life (slaves).
Less than one hundred years after the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia the institution of slavery was firmly in place. By the turn of the eighteenth century more than a thousand Africans were arriving each year via merchant-slave ships. Sea routes were established: Sailors voyaged from England to Africa, where they offered goods in exchange for slaves, then departed for the New World colonies where settlers purchased the slaves and put them to work. While colonial America profited from the Africans' labor, the slave trade became a tremendously lucrative business in itself. At the expense of a people held captive, colonial America's plantation economy and the slave trade industry flourished for many years to come.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, delegates fiercely debated the issue of slavery, but ultimately agreed that United States would cease its engagement in the transatlantic slave trade in 1808. While American vessels, as of this date, no longer traveled to Africa in search of human merchandise, a domestic or "coastwise" trade in slaves persisted between ports within the United States.
Why Margaret Walker wrote Jubilee
The past is never dead. It's not even past. William Faulkner
I wanted to tell the story that my grandmother had told me, and to set the record straight where Black people are concerned in terms of the Civil War, of slavery, segregation and Reconstruction. I believe that the role of the novelist can be, and largely is for me, the role of a historian. More people will read fiction than will history, and history is slanted just as fiction may seem to be. People will learn about a time and a place through a historical novel.
--Margaret Walker, "Poetry, History, and History".
Jubilee is a bedtime story of truth, of black historical truth, repeated time and time again by a grandmother who refused to forget the painful black past and the courageous black people who lived it. Margaret Walker's grandmother motivated her to write the story of Randall and Vyry Ware, a true story set during Civil War and Reconstruction in the American South.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Granny Midwives during Slavery
"There are documentations written that the slave midwife became a highly important member of the slave community within the Southern Plantation, the French and English Caribbean and South America. She was elevated in the slave hierarchy occupying positions just below that of the top slaves, the head overseer and housekeeper. Their skills in Midwifery and herbology were similar throughout the Diaspora. Not only did she deliver the babies of slaves, she also delivered the plantation owners wife and other local white women. The Midwife was the keeper of women's business, knowing which herbs to enhance fertility, to sustain pregnancy, and to abort. She was the root doctor among the slave quarters; maintaining the health of other slaves on the plantation. Pregnancy and childbirth folklore, beliefs and rituals that originated in Africa, were practiced and passed on from generation to generation. Many midwives regardless whether they lived in the U.S.South, West Indies, South America or the Gullah Sea Islands, shared similar beliefs regarding the protection of pregnancy and childbirth. Common beliefs are documented and still practiced among midwives today regarding the Caul or "veil", umbilical cords, the burying or burning of the placenta, easing the pain of labor, and what the pregnant woman is exposed to during pregnancy that could jinx her pregnancy. Although many people today may call these beliefs superstitions, if thoroughly researched one will find that there are origins to these sayings. For instance, the burying of the placenta or the umbilical cord is to remind the child where he was born. Usually a fruit tree was planted over the placenta to assure the child that he will never go hungry. It was believed that a baby born with the caul "veil" over its head will have super natural abilities, have the ability to see spirits and talk to them, or will become a healer. These two beliefs are commonly heard from other traditional cultures. Another practice is the placing of an axe under the bed of a laboring woman to cut the pain and length of the labor. Many granny midwives carried axes to births with them if the mother did not have one herself. The origin of this practice has not been documented, however the Ibo Midwives of Nigeria would sometimes place a metal object used for cutting close by the laboring mothers hut. The axe (which is one of the symbols of the Orisha Ogun) represents the warrior aspect of the deity, thus the axe representing cutting a potentially lengthy or dangerous labor or keeping evil spirits from the birthing process."
Source: http://www.afrigeneas.com/forumdarchive/index.cgi/md/read/id/4438/sbj/midwives-during-slavery/
Source: http://www.afrigeneas.com/forumdarchive/index.cgi/md/read/id/4438/sbj/midwives-during-slavery/
Jubilee's Central Character Vyry
Elvira "Vyry" Ware Dozier
Margaret Walker's maternal
great-grandmother and central character
in her classic novel, Jubilee.
great-grandmother and central character
in her classic novel, Jubilee.
Click on link to compare Vyry's experiences with Harriet Jacobs
The link is from the Museum of the African Diaspora excellent webpage on slave narratives.
Frederick Douglass on the plight of mulatto slave children
In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, (1841), Douglass reflects on the plight of slave children fathered by their masters. We see this same plight manifested in the life of Vyry, the central character of Jubilee.
Read the following excerpt from Douglass' narrative and compare his situation to Vyry and the "tragic mulatto" complex that develops in literature and film.
Frederick Douglass explains the plight of mulatto children thusly:
Read the following excerpt from Douglass' narrative and compare his situation to Vyry and the "tragic mulatto" complex that develops in literature and film.
Frederick Douglass explains the plight of mulatto children thusly:
The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father. I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend.Source: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/01.html
Thursday, February 3, 2011
What is a Salon?
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate".
The purpose of the SANKOFA Salon Series is to discuss significant and timely issues, literary topics, present musical performances and artistic displays in an intimate setting.
The Dark Tower was actually a salon on 136th Street in Harlem sponsored by Madame C.J. Walker’s daughter, A’Lelia Walker. It was the height of Harlem's literary renaissance and in 1928-1929 she organized a literary salon in her townhouse at 108 West 136th Street. The salon was named after Countee Cullen's column in Opportunity. Its purpose was to provide a place for young African-American artists and writers to discuss and exhibit their works. The walls of the rooms had poems by Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen lettered on them. Perhaps Cullen knew he was speaking for the others, too, when he wrote:
We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made eternally to weep.
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Jubilee
Moses Hogan Chorale singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Jubilee a joyful shout or clangor of trumpets, the name of the great semi-centennial festival of the Hebrews. It lasted for a year. During this year the land was to be fallow, and the Israelites were only permitted to gather the spontaneous produce of the fields (Lev. 25:11, 12). All landed property during that year reverted to its original owner (13-34; 27:16-24), and all who were slaves were set free (25:39-54), and all debts were remitted. The return of the jubilee year was proclaimed by a blast of trumpets which sounded throughout the land. There is no record in Scripture of the actual observance of this festival, but there are numerous allusions (Isa. 5:7, 8, 9, 10; 61:1, 2; Ezek. 7:12, 13; Neh. 5:1-19; 2 Chr. 36:21) which place it beyond a doubt that it was observed. The advantages of this institution were manifold. "1. It would prevent the accumulation of land on the part of a few to the detriment of the community at large. 2. It would render it impossible for anyone to be born to absolute poverty, since everyone had his hereditary land. 3. It would preclude those inequalities which are produced by extremes of riches and poverty, and which make one man domineer over another. 4. It would utterly do away with slavery. 5. It would afford a fresh opportunity to those who were reduced by adverse circumstances to begin again their career of industry in the patrimony which they had temporarily forfeited. 6. It would periodically rectify the disorders which crept into the state in the course of time, preclude the division of the people into nobles and plebeians, and preserve the theocracy inviolate."
Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" (excerpt)
Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America.is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
An Introduction to the Slave Narrative
by William L. Andrews
E. Maynard Adams Professor of English
Series Editor
E. Maynard Adams Professor of English
Series Editor
Modern black autobiographies such as Richard Wright's Black Boy (1945) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) testify to the influence of the slave narrative on the first-person writing of post-World War II African Americans. Beginning with Margaret Walker's Jubilee (1966) and extending through such contemporary novels as Ernest J. Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), Sherley Ann Williams's Dessa Rose (1986), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage (1990), the "neo-slave narrative" has become one of the most widely read and discussed forms of African American literature. These autobiographical and fictional descendants of the slave narrative confirm the continuing importance and vitality of its legacy: to probe the origins of psychological as well as social oppression and to critique the meaning of freedom for black and white Americans alike from the founding of the United States to the present day.
Link to articles in THE NATION about Margaret Walker by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
 |
| Amiri Baraka and Margaret Walker with Sonia Sanchez |
About Margaret Walker
MARGARET WALKER
Dates
July 7, 1915 - November 30, 1998
Other Names Used
§ Margaret Abigail Walker: birth name
§ Margaret Walker Alexander: married name, used academically
Alabama Connection
§ Birmingham, Jefferson County: birthplace, childhood residence
§ Greenville, Butler County: home of maternal relatives, setting for a portion of Jubilee
Selected Works
§ Walker, Margaret. For My People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942.
§ Walker, Margaret. Jubilee. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Rpt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
§ Walker, Margaret. Prophets for a New Day. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1970.
§ Walker, Margaret. October Journey. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1973.
§ Walker, Margaret. Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at His Work. New York: Warner Books, 1988.
§ Walker, Margaret. This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.
§ Walker, Margaret. How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature. Ed. Maryemma Graham. New York: Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1990.
Literary Awards
§ Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, Yale University Press, 1942, for For My People
§ Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award, 1966, for Jubilee
§ American Book Award, Lifetime Achievement, Before Columbus Foundation, 1993
§ Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award, Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration and Natchez Newspapers, Inc., 1995
Biographical Information
Margaret Walker was born and spent much of her early life in Birmingham, Ala. When she was ten, the family moved to New Orleans where both her parents had teaching jobs. Her grandmother lived with the family and entertained the children with family stories of life under slavery. Walker’s parents introduced her to poetry and the classics, and she began writing poetry and prose at age eleven. Walker graduated from Gilbert Academy at age fourteen and began attending college at New Orleans University (now Dillard University). After two years, she transferred to Northwestern University and graduated with an AB in English in 1935. Walker was then hired by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Writers Project in Chicago. She became friends with Richard Wright, and the two helped each other with their writing projects. During this period, some of her poems were published in The Crisis and in Poetry magazine. In 1939, Walker enrolled in graduate school at the University of Iowa, earning an MA in 1940. Her thesis was a collection of poems later published as For My People.
Walker taught for several years at Livingstone College in North Carolina and at West Virginia State College, Institute (now West Virginia State University). In 1949, she began teaching at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Mississippi. In 1962, Walker took time off to pursue a PhD at the University of Iowa. Her dissertation was a draft of Jubilee, a novel based on her grandmother’s stories. After its publication in 1966, Walker returned to Jackson State where in 1968 she established the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People (renamed in 1989 the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center). In the last three decades of her life, Walker published three books of poetry, two collections of essays, and a controversial biography of Richard Wright. While she was working on Jubilee, Walker received Rosenwald and Ford Fellowships to do research. Later in her career, she held National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts senior fellowships and a Yaddo residency.
JUBILEE by Margaret Walker
Jubilee Margaret Walker's novel Jubilee, published in 1966, is one of the first novels to present the nineteenth-century African American historical experience in the South from a black and female point of view. The winner of Houghton Mifflin's Literary Fellowship Award, the novel is a fictionalized account of the life of Walker's great-grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown, who was born aslave in Dawson in Terrell County and lived through Reconstruction in southwest Georgia. It is based on stories told to Walker by her maternal grandmother. Walker herself was not a Georgian by birth. Born in Alabama, she spent most of her teaching career in Mississippi and earned her doctorate at the University of Iowa, where she wrote most of Jubilee, which served as her dissertation. Walker also learned much about the life of her great-grandfather, a free man from birth. While on a speaking engagement in nearby Albany in 1947, Walker visited Dawson, where she found a man who had known her great-grandfather, Randall Ware, who worked as a blacksmith and operated a gristmill, which she was able to visit. Walker based the description of the Dutton plantation, where most of her story is set, on an antebellum house that she discovered while visiting Bainbridge. Walker's narrative is divided equally into sections on the antebellum era, theCivil War (1861-65), and Reconstruction. Each section contains eighteen to twenty-two chapters. Despite the lengthy narrative passages and the demands on the reader imposed by the various dialects, Jubilee moves its heroine, Vyry, from the slave cabin to the "Big House," and from slavery to freedom. Jubilee draws on both history and folk traditions. The treatment of the slaves is based on numerous slave narratives Walker researched in archives and libraries in Georgia, North Carolina, and the National Archives. The Civil War section of Jubilee traces the battles, historically, from Tennessee to Sherman's march through Georgia. The African American male characters Randall Ware and Brother Zeke, who are both literate, function in dual roles as spies for the Union army and foot soldiers in the Confederate army. As the Union soldiers storm and destroy the plantations, including the Dutton place, Vyry's role changes from that of chattel slave to primary protector of the property and caretaker of her master's daughter and two grandchildren. The book's final section begins with the war's end. It does not bring immediate freedom for Vyry. In addition to her caretaking duties, she, along with a "contraband" freedman named Innis Brown, must work the crops, as she anxiously awaits word from Randall Ware, her husband. When she receives news that Ware is dead, her heart will not allow her to believe it. Innis Brown, however, expresses interest in Vyry; befriends her children, "Minna" and Jim; and asks Vyry to marry him. His hard work and his dream of owning his home and farm persuade her to do so. They leave the Dutton plantation and move to Alabama. After several temporary homes, including one burned by the Ku Klux Klan, Vyry and her family settle in Greenville, Alabama. The building of the new house is a community effort. Vyry's midwifery and the marketing of hervegetables establish a bond between blacks and whites in the community. The house-building celebration concludes with quilting bees, plenty of food, and the solidarity of the "neighborhood watch." With a home and a farm in place, Randall Ware, who survived the Civil War after all, fulfills Vyry's dream of schooling for her children. After seven years of military duty, work in his smithy and gristmill in Dawson, and service as a charter member of the Georgia Equal Rights Association, Ware traces Vyry and her family to Greenville. He knows of her marriage to Innis Brown, but his mission is to take his son, Jim, to a training school in Selma, Alabama. The final section of Jubilee thus shifts its focus to the education of blacks during and after Reconstruction. The ending of Jubilee suggests a connection between the events the novel has described during Reconstruction and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The narrative ends on a train bound for Selma. As Jim and his father board the train, the conductor announces the segregated seating order—colored up front and whites in the rear. Suggested Reading Kay Bonetti, An Interview with Margaret Walker (Columbia, Mo.: American Audio Prose Library, 1991). Jacqueline Miller Carmichael, Trumpeting a Fiery Sound: History and Folklore in Margaret Walker's "Jubilee" (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998). Margaret Walker, How I Wrote "Jubilee" (Chicago: Third World, 1972). Jacqueline Miller Carmichael, Georgia State University Published 9/20/2004 |
| Copyright 2004-2011 by the Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Pr |
Meeting Monday night was a success!
I want to thank everyone who attended Monday's night meeting of SANKOFA Reading Group, it was an excellent and inspiring meeting. Special thanks go out to Chioma Anosike for her wonderful presentation on Nigeria and the Igbo people in particular. We will ask her to do a post for the blog containing the information she shared with the group Monday night.
Our book selection for the month of February will be JUBILEE by Margaret Walker. Let me hear from you a good date/time/place for the next SANKOFA Reading Group meeting and I encourage everyone to bring a guest with them to the next meeting.
Asante sana!
Our book selection for the month of February will be JUBILEE by Margaret Walker. Let me hear from you a good date/time/place for the next SANKOFA Reading Group meeting and I encourage everyone to bring a guest with them to the next meeting.
Asante sana!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
TOMORROW! SANKOFA Reading Group meeting, 01/31/2011
Monday, January 31 2011
SANKOFA Reading Group will meet for the first time this year tomorrow, Monday, January 31st. We will meet at the Margaret Walker Center on Jackson State University's campus in the historic Ayer Hall at 6:00 PM. Do not worry if you have not read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe because we will discuss and explain the book enough for you to follow along. Also at Monday evening's meeting we will determine which books we read next and we will have people present to talk about life in Nigeria today.
If you have any questions please call 601-331-2410 or email astew44032@aol.com
We look forward to seeing you tomorrow (Monday night)!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
What should we read next?
What should we read next?
Below are some suggested further readings and discussions, please provide feedback and suggest other books.
JUBILEE by Margaret Walker
Here is the classic--and true--story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress, a Southern Civil War heroine to rival Scarlett O'Hara. Vyry bears witness to the South's prewar opulence and its brutality, to its wartime ruin and the subsequent promise of Reconstruction. It is a story that Margaret Walker heard as a child from her grandmother, the real Vyry's daughter. The author spent thirty years researching the novel so that the world might know the intelligent, strong, and brave black woman called Vyry. The phenomenal acclaim this best-selling book has achieved from readers black and white, young and old, attests to her success.
BENEATH THE LION'S GAZE by Maaza Mengiste
HALF OF A YELLOW SUN by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as "the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe," Half of a Yellow Sun recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, and the chilling violence that followed.
With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor's beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna's twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and they must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.
Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all.
THE WEDDING by Dorothy West
Below are some suggested further readings and discussions, please provide feedback and suggest other books.
Suggested Future Reading
Here is the classic--and true--story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress, a Southern Civil War heroine to rival Scarlett O'Hara. Vyry bears witness to the South's prewar opulence and its brutality, to its wartime ruin and the subsequent promise of Reconstruction. It is a story that Margaret Walker heard as a child from her grandmother, the real Vyry's daughter. The author spent thirty years researching the novel so that the world might know the intelligent, strong, and brave black woman called Vyry. The phenomenal acclaim this best-selling book has achieved from readers black and white, young and old, attests to her success.
BENEATH THE LION'S GAZE by Maaza Mengiste
The brutal 1970s civil war in Ethiopia is the dramatic setting in this first novel, told from searing personal viewpoints that humanize the politics from many sides and without slick messages. The author, born in Addis Ababa and now living in New York, tells the story in unforgettable detail: between Emperor Haile Selassie in his lush palace set against the famine outside, captured in the image of a child gnawing on a stone. The focus is on the family of physician Hailu, first before the revolution and then after the brutal regime takes over. His older son tries to lead a quiet life and look the other way, until Hailu is taken and tortured. The younger son joins the mass demonstrations, exhilarated that change has come, then deflated when he confronts the new tyranny. The clear narrative voices also include the women in the family and others on all sides, who experience the graphic violence, both in the old feudal system, where a rich kid regularly rapes a servant, and in the new dictatorship with torture in the name of freedom. --Hazel Rochman
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is an "African American feminist classic" and a vibrant and achingly human novel. The syncopated beauty of Hurston's prose, her remarkable gift for comedy, the sheer visceral terror of the book's climax, all transcend any label that critics have tried to put on this remarkable work. First published amid controversy in 1937, then rescued from obscurity four decades later, the novel narrates Janie Crawford's ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny. Although Hurston wrote the novel in only seven weeks, Their Eyes Were Watching God breathes and bleeds a whole life's worth of urgent experience. HALF OF A YELLOW SUN by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as "the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe," Half of a Yellow Sun recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, and the chilling violence that followed.
With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor's beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna's twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and they must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.
Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all.
THE WEDDING by Dorothy West
Set on a bucolic Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's black bourgeoisie. Within this inner circle of "blue-vein society," we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of their loveliest daughter, Shelby, who could have chosen from "a whole area of eligible men of the right colors and the right professions." Instead, she has fallen in love with and is about to be married to Mead Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. A shock wave breaks over the Oval as its longtime members grapple with the changing face of its community.
Through a delicate interweaving of past and present, North and South, black and white, The Wedding unfolds outward from a single isolated time and place until it embraces five generations of an extraordinary American family. It is an audacious accomplishment, a monumental history of the rise of a black middle class, written by a woman who has lived it. Wise, heartfelt, and shattering, it is Dorothy West's crowning achievement.
SANKOFA Reading Group meeting, Mon. Jan. 31
We look for to see everyone at the SANKOFA Reading Group meeting this coming Monday, January 31, 2011, 6:00 PM. We will meet in the Margaret Walker Center which is located in the historic Ayer Hall on the Jackson State University main campus. After 5:30 PM the gate, to enter the parking area behind Ayer Hall, should be up. When you enter campus report to the security stations and they should direct you to Ayer Hall. Enter the parking area and park in any UNNUMBERED space in the parking lot. If you have any questions or problems please call 601-979-2460(office) or 601-331-2410 (cell).
We will discuss the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and select books to read for the rest of the year. Please bring amy further books selections with you to the meeting. Refreshments will be served.
See you Monday!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
SANKOFA Reading Group Meeting
SANKOFA Reading Group
will meet
Monday, January 31, 2011
6:00 PM
Margaret Walker Center
Jackson State University's Historic Ayer Hall
We will discuss
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
For further information please: email: astew44032@aol.com
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday
Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than the "I Have A Dream" speech. He was a prophet in the Old Testament tradition of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea. He had a commitment to speak truth not only to power, but also to his own people. He was evolving from civil rights for African Americans to human rights and economic rights for everyone.
Today is January 15, 2011, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 82 years old today. Below I share some videos about Dr. King.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92-r05TH9qs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suw_CQ3zfTY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SfH2uMayks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FQIlE-WlM8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvB5a9_XJ3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDbm6Cv6tSA
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Link for article from Stanford Social Innovation Review
Using E-Readers to promote literacy in Africa
What’s Next: Curling Up with E-Readers (December 9, 2010) | Stanford Social Innovation Review
What’s Next: Curling Up with E-Readers (December 9, 2010) | Stanford Social Innovation Review
Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Celebration
The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University invites everyone out to events celebrating the birth of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University will host two events in recognition of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The celebration will begin with the 16th Annual For My People Award Luncheon at 11:45 a.m., Friday, Jan. 14, at the JSU Student Center, 1400 John R. Lynch St. The luncheon, sponsored by attorney Isaac K. Byrd, is named for Walker's most loved poem and honors individuals who have distinguished themselves in the preservation of African-American culture. This year's honorees are: Hank Thomas, freedom rider; Dollye M. E. Robinson, JSU Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the Mississippi National Council of Negro Women.
The Grammy award-winning Mississippi Mass Choir will perform a free concert at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 18, at the Rose Embly McCoy Auditorium. The choir is known for songs such as "Your Grace and Mercy," "Near the Cross" and "It's Good To Know Jesus."
The concert also will feature Amber Rose Johnson, the 2010 National Poetry Out Loud champion. Johnson, who won the title in April at the age of 16, beat out nearly 325,000 high school students nationwide. Johnson won after reciting Walker's "For My People." Joining Johnson will be Mississippi's Poetry Out Loud Champion John Eze Uzodinma of Jackson, Miss.
Both the luncheon and concert are free and open to the public. For more information, call 601-979-3935 or /1.3.11MLKDayMSMass.pdf Luncheon: http://www.jsums.edu/announcements/1.4.11Luncheon.pdf
See link below for flyer:
http://www.jsums.edu/margaretwalker/FMPMLK2011.pdf
The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University will host two events in recognition of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The celebration will begin with the 16th Annual For My People Award Luncheon at 11:45 a.m., Friday, Jan. 14, at the JSU Student Center, 1400 John R. Lynch St. The luncheon, sponsored by attorney Isaac K. Byrd, is named for Walker's most loved poem and honors individuals who have distinguished themselves in the preservation of African-American culture. This year's honorees are: Hank Thomas, freedom rider; Dollye M. E. Robinson, JSU Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the Mississippi National Council of Negro Women.
The Grammy award-winning Mississippi Mass Choir will perform a free concert at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 18, at the Rose Embly McCoy Auditorium. The choir is known for songs such as "Your Grace and Mercy," "Near the Cross" and "It's Good To Know Jesus."
The concert also will feature Amber Rose Johnson, the 2010 National Poetry Out Loud champion. Johnson, who won the title in April at the age of 16, beat out nearly 325,000 high school students nationwide. Johnson won after reciting Walker's "For My People." Joining Johnson will be Mississippi's Poetry Out Loud Champion John Eze Uzodinma of Jackson, Miss.
Both the luncheon and concert are free and open to the public. For more information, call 601-979-3935 or /1.3.11MLKDayMSMass.pdf Luncheon: http://www.jsums.edu/announcements/1.4.11Luncheon.pdf
See link below for flyer:
http://www.jsums.edu/margaretwalker/FMPMLK2011.pdf
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