Arts and Culture

African American Museum of History and Culture Opens in Washington, D.C.

Published

8 years ago

October 6, 2016

Opening last weekend on the National Mall in Wash., D.C., the African American Museum of History and Culture depicts the experience of Black people in the United States from the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade to Barack Obama’s historic presidency.

The three-day opening celebration included concerts on the National Mall, ranging from Spirituals to Classical, R&B to Gospel, Hip-Hop to Jazz including Oakland’s Latin Jazz band led by Bobi Cespedes, featuring John Santos.

Thousands of people attended: family groups, couples, toddlers in strollers, white-haired elders in wheelchairs and babes in arms.

Advised to begin their museum experience on the bottom floor where relics from a slave ship were displayed, they waited patiently in long lines.

The curators did more than identify the objects –ballast from the slave ship São José Paquete Africa, found off the coast of South Africa in 2010. They mounted quotes about the experience of the captives on the ships.

“Their singing was always in tears, so much that one captain threatened the women with a flogging because their mournfulness of her song was painful for his feelings.” William Corbett, 1806.

The exhibits make clear that chattel slavery, the buying and selling of human beings as if they were domestic animals or furnishings, was unprecedented in human history.

Accompanied by voice overs and testimony and observances of the time, the brutality of the kidnapping and capture of Africans is uncontested as is the benefit to the slavers:

“Are we not indebted to these valuable people – the Africans – for our sugars, tobaccos, rice and rum? Malachy Postelthwayt, 1745.

Standing under the quote on the wall, “We’ve got to tell the unvarnished truth” by historian John Hope Franklin, Courtney Hester-Green of Washington D.C. explained that she has been a student of Black history since she was six, when her uncle gave her a Golden Legacy Series Comic Book.

Now 32, her great pleasure was “Being able to see the stories told how they should be told.”

“I thought I would hold it together,” Hester-Green said. “But I’m misty now. I hope the story is made real to people who haven’t studied it all their lives.”

Gallery after gallery, photos and artifacts show the African American experience on its own terms. It felt like nothing was left out.

Second to the slave-ship exhibit, the display of Emmett Till’s casket was perhaps the most moving.

Till was 14 in 1955 when he was brutally lynched in Money, Miss., for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The killing brought international attention to the racism of the South when his mother insisted on an open casket.

Exhumed in 2005 for DNA testing on his body, the Till family had initially wanted to put his casket in a museum of their own but instead donated it to the museum.

There are life-size statues everywhere on all floors including freedom fighters of many generations and leaders in all arenas of life from art and entertainment to food, activism, entrepreneurship and sports, including one of John Carlos and Tommie Smith with fists raised and bowed heads at the 1968 Olympics.

Eight-year-old T.C. Washington of Atlanta, Ga., stared up at them, put his hand over his heart and grudgingly agreed to let his father take a photo, where he struck a pose just like them.

Not knowing what it meant, his father, Terance Washington, told him it was like what Colin Kaepernick is doing. The boy nodded and skipped on to the next gallery, where paraphernalia from the National Council of Negro Women was on display and a recorded speech by Mary McLeod Bethune was heard in the background.

“What’s a Negro?” the little boy asked.

“It’s good to know how far we have come,” said Shay Moor of Baltimore, MD.

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Arts and Culture

Faces Around the Bay Dr. Carl Blake, Pianist

Born in Liberty, Missouri, Carl Blake, a virtuoso and respected pianist, made his most recent migration to the East Bay in 1999. One might have seen him performing recently at Noontime Concerts in San Francisco, or at the Piedmont Center for the Arts in Oakland. He is Director of Music at The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. He was also co-organizer and collaborative pianist at Herbst Theater for The Majesty of the Spirituals concert in 2022 and has held several church positions in the Bay Area.

Published

2 days ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Dr. Carl Blake

By Barbara Fluhrer

Born in Liberty, Missouri, Carl Blake, a virtuoso and respected pianist, made his most recent migration to the East Bay in 1999.

One might have seen him performing recently at Noontime Concerts in San Francisco, or at the Piedmont Center for the Arts in Oakland. He is Director of Music at The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. He was also co-organizer and collaborative pianist at Herbst Theater for The Majesty of the Spirituals concert in 2022 and has held several church positions in the Bay Area.

Blake obtained a Bachelor of Music from Boston University and continued post-baccalaureate studies in Jamaica before earning a Master of Arts in Music at San Jose State University. He was the recipient of two Fulbright residencies in Honduras and completed a third residency at the University of St. Petersburg in Russia. He has a Doctor of Musical Arts from Cornell University.

At age 19, Blake, then an undergraduate piano major at Boston University, was “discovered” by Impresario Dr. W. Hazaiah Williams, who is the Founder and Director of Today’s Artists/Four Seasons Arts.

Williams honored Blake by awarding him the first Marian Anderson Young Artist Award. Anderson personally presented the award at the Masonic Auditorium in S.F. Subsequently, Blake was presented by Dr. Williams in his San Francisco debut at The Herbst Theatre. Williams subsidized a year of study abroad for Blake at the Paris Conservatory of Music. Additionally, Williams sponsored Blake’s New York Weill Hall debut, where he has performed twice since. Blake performed several times at the Yachats Music Festival in Oregon.

Blake continues to perform nationally and abroad. His hobbies are reading, baking and travel. He says, “I’m still pumping ivories, as Belgian pianist Jeanne Stark described the disciplined practice of concert piano.”

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Arts and Culture

Oakland Jazz Great Offers Master Class as City Declares “John Handy Day”

World-renowned jazz master saxophonist John Handy, a McClymond’s High School graduate, was presented with a Mayor of Oakland Proclamation declaring Feb. 12, as John Handy Day in the city. Handy is most notably known as the featured saxophonist for Charles Mingus on “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” from the album “Mingus Ah Um” (1959) and on “Hard Work” from his own album “Hard Work” (1976).

Published

2 months ago

February 24, 2024

Oakland Post

(L-R) Del Handy, John Handy, Roger Glenn, and Joe Warner celebrate John Handy Day at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, Oakland. Photo by Lady Bianca.

By Conway Jones

World-renowned jazz master saxophonist John Handy, a McClymond’s High School graduate, was presented with a Mayor of Oakland Proclamation declaring Feb. 12, as John Handy Day in the city.

Handy is most notably known as the featured saxophonist for Charles Mingus on “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” from the album “Mingus Ah Um” (1959) and on “Hard Work” from his own album “Hard Work” (1976).

“John Handy is a jazz icon and an inspiration to musicians everywhere,” said Ayo Brame, a 16-year-old Oakland tenor saxophone player who is enrolled at the Oakland School for the Arts.

In celebration of this day, the reception in downtown Oakland at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle was a gathering of artists, young and old, coming together in his honor and celebrating his 91st birthday.

Handy presented a Saxophone Colossus free masterclass for musicians. This class afforded a rare opportunity to learn about the saxophone from an aficionado. The class was free and open to all – saxophonists, vocalists, aficionados, students, and casual listeners.

“As a longtime friend for over 60 years, and fellow musician who has had numerous opportunities to share the stage with John, it has always been a pleasure performing with him and hearing his creative interpretations of the music and his gift of ease inspiring the next generation of jazz musicians,” said Roger Glenn, a multi-instrumentalist.

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Arts and Culture

Musical Chronicling Life of Betty Reid Soskin Set for Bay Area Debut

Betty Reid Soskin’s storied 102 years includes time spent as a WWII defense worker, activist, business owner, songwriter, National Park Service park ranger and so much more. Now the Richmond icon is the subject of a musical based on her incredible life.

Published

2 months ago

February 24, 2024

Oakland Post

Betty Reid Soskin. Photo courtesy of Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond.

The Richmond Standard

“Sign My Name to Freedom,” a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company (SFBATCO) production which will focus on the life, music and writing of Ms. Soskin, will premiere at San Francisco’s Z Space Friday, March 29 and continue through Saturday, April 13. Tickets range from $15–$65 and can be purchased online at https://www.sfbatco.org/smntf

The musical is directed by Elizabeth Carter, while playwright Michael Gene Sullivan integrates Ms. Soskin’s own music throughout dialogue between what SFBATCO calls “The Four Bettys” as they progress through a century of experiences of this awe-inspiring American woman.

The cast of “Sign My Name to Freedom” features Tierra Allen as Little Betty, Aidaa Peerzada as Married Betty, Lucca Troutman as Revolutionary Betty and Cathleen Riddley as Present Betty Reid Soskin, according to Artistic Director Rodney Earl Jackson Jr. and Managing Director Adam Maggio. Other casting will be announced in the future.

Jackson said that having Soskin’s blessing to steward her life’s story is an honor and career highlight for him and that her journey stands as “a beacon for Black Americans, women and people of color all across the world [and] is a testament to the strength of the human spirit.”