Patricia McKissack, 72

Patricia McKissack, Prolific Author Who Championed Black Heroes, Dies at 72
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, April 12, 2017

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Tzvetan Todorov, 77

Tzvetan Todorov, Literary Theorist and Historian of Evil, Dies at 77
by Sewell Chan, The New York Times, February 7, 2017

Andrzej Wajda, 90

Andrzej Wajda, Towering Auteur of Polish Cinema, Dies at 90
by Michael T. Kaufman, The New York Times, October 9, 2016

Remembering Andrzej Wajda, Unflinching Observer of Modern Poland
by J. Hoberman, The New York Times, October 12, 2016

Dream project for George Takei will come to Broadway

George Takei to Star in Broadway Musical About Interned Japanese-Americans
by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, February 5, 2015

Celebrate Kwanzaa at NYC's African Burial Ground

African Burial Ground National Monument

celebrates Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa is an African-American holiday observed from December 26 through January 1, which focuses on the traditional African values of family, community responsibility, commerce and self improvement. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase, “matunda ya kwanza” which means, “first fruits” in Swahili.

    Friday, December 26

        10-10:30am: Libation ceremony and introduction

        10:30-12pm: Drum and dance performance by Fusha Dance

        12pm-1pm: West African drumming class by Cumbe Dance

        1-2:30pm: The Works of Langston Hughes: Dramatic performance by David Mills

        2:30-3:30pm: The Cultural Philosophy of Kwanzaa: Celebrating the Rich Cultural Roots of Americans of African Descent: Dr. Patricia Leonard

    Saturday, December 27

        11am-12:40pm: Film Screening of Tula: The Revolt

        1pm-2:40pm: Film Screening of Tula: The Revolt

All events and activities are free and open to the public but on a first come first serve basis. Schedule is subject to change, please see our website or Facebook page for up-to-date information.

For questions regarding our event please do not hesitate to contact us at african_burial_ground@nps.gov or 212-238-4367.

African Burial Ground National Monument
290 Broadway, 1st Floor, Manhattan (directions)
(212) 238-4367

Bokaer installation honors women's acts of resistance

Have you read this New York Times article about dance artist Jonah Bokaer's tribute to four little-known women of courage?

Commissioned by the American Jewish Historical Society and curated by Rachel Lithgow (AJHS's executive director and Bokaer's co-researcher), October 7, 1944 is a multimedia installation inspired by the resistance activities of a network of Polish Jewish women, laborers at a munitions factory near Auschwitz and Birkenau. Róża Robota, Estera Wajcblum, Regina Szafirsztajn and Ala Gertner were among the women recruited by the underground to smuggle out small quantities of gunpowder to be used to create grenades and, on the date of Bokaer's title, destroy a crematorium. Just a few weeks before the advancing Soviet army could reach and liberate the camps, the Nazis arrested, tortured and hanged these four women while their fellow workers were forced to watch.

"These women were not remarkable in any way that is known to us," writes Lithgow in her essay for the exhibition's brochure. "They were young women who believed what they were doing was right."

Bokaer's structurally elegant, haunted arrangement of archival documents, fragmented music instruments, blow-ups of sheet music and projected imagery includes two dance films--one made for this project (Four Women), another from 2012 (Study for Occupant) with eerie echoes of his current theme. Both films feature the dancing of Laura Gutierrez, Catherine Miller, Irena Misirlić and Sara Procopio.

The exhibition is small in size, but its inner density invites commitment of time to lengthy videos and documents in plexiglass display cases. These cases stretch along a white table, oddly protected and recessed just far enough from its edge to make a reader bend in an awkward way to read the typed or printed words. To read each document, you end up leaning over a concrete block in front of each case. Each block has a piece of a musical instrument resting on it. A strange experience, as I saw it: You must decide to skim a selection of a document's words, get a general sense of what's there and move on or to tilt yourself just so, hold that pose and read word for word until you're done. With his dancer's sensibility, Bokaer seems to be trying to create discomfort and effort in our bodies as well as our minds. He introduces a sense that learning all there is to know about the gruesome reality of the Holocaust is both important and impossible.

I keep returning to Lithgow's words about this exhibition's heroes. Are they not, in fact, remarkable? In a sense, they most certainly are. But in another sense--her meaning, surely--they were ordinary women and ones whose small but essential contributions have remained largely obscure except to scholars of the Holocaust. Bokaer does not overdramatize this heroism but his work reminds us that anyone of us, at any time, can choose to do the one thing that will make a difference.

October 7, 1944 will be on view in the Popper Gallery at the Jewish Historical Center (home of the American Jewish Historical Society) through December 30. For visitor information, click here.

Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Tia Powell Harris to lead Brooklyn's Weeksville Heritage Center

Tia Powell Harris

New Director Named for Weeksville Heritage Center
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, March 3, 2014

Of related interest:

New Center, but Woes at Historic Site
Weeksville Black History Site Hobbled by Dip in Donations
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, February 20, 2013

A photo archive of the Palestinian experience

Photographs Tell a History of Palestinians Unmoored

by Isabel Kershner, The New York Times, November 28, 2013

Kyle Abraham in a luminous film by Gabri Christa

Dance artist and filmmaker Gabri Christa wrote me this note about 2013 MacArthur Award winner, Kyle Abraham:

When I saw Kyle dance (in 2007), I was immediately smitten--and also because he looks like my family. Yes, I wanted to make a film with my dad, and Kyle looks so much like my dad when he was younger, it was a no-brainer. So we lived together and worked together in my home town, and he is also a wonderful person who deserves all the love he is getting. So here they are: my dad Marcel Stomp and my lil bro Kyle.

From TenduTV's Essential Dance Film collection on YouTube: 

An older man looks at his younger self (Kyle Abraham) explore an old quarantine building for enslaved Africans. Quarantine is the first film in Gabri Christa's Another Building series, which features short narrative dance films that take place in and around historic buildings and sites connected to the Dutch History.

The quarantine building was in Curaçao and housed slaves who were too sick to be taken to the Americas. 

For more information on the Another Building series, click here.

Jamel Shabazz: Documenting rap's history

Rappers of Old, Through a Lens of History
‘Jamel Shabazz Street Photographer,’ a New York Portrait
by Nicolas Rapold, The New York Times, August 1, 2013

Scholar examines Hollywood complicity with Nazis

Scholar Asserts That Hollywood Avidly Aided Nazis
by Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times, June 25, 2013

William Miles, 82

William Miles, Maker of Films About Black History, Dies at 82
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, May 18, 2013

Film version of Anaya's "Bless Me, Ultima" opens today

The author of “Bless Me, Ultima” talks about his book reaching the big screen at age 75
by Kristina Puga, NBCLatino, February 21, 2013

Memorial planned for cultural historian Delilah Jackson

Delilah Jackson

A public memorial tribute to Delilah Jackson, Harlem's cultural historian, who died on January 12, is planned for St. Peter's Church--New York's world-renowned jazz church--on Friday, March 8 (7-10pm).

Organized by Al Heyward, Michela Marino Lerman, Mable Lee and Cobi Narita, this tribute will feature nearly 100 jazz musicians and tap dancers along with special guest Jill Jackson, Delilah's daughter. A coffee and dessert reception will follow.

All are welcome!

St. Peter's Church
619 Lexington Avenue (at 54th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Delilah Jackson, cultural historian, 84

Delilah Jackson, a New Yorker who chronicled the history of black entertainers in the mid-20th Century, dies at age 84
by David Hinckley, The New York Daily News, January 23, 2013

Study "The Body"

The Body

a course instructed by Terri Gordon-Zolov

The New School

15 sessions: Tuesdays, 4-5:50pm, beginning August 28

Noncredit tuition: $650

"You do not realize how the headlines that make daily history affect the muscles of the human body," the dancer Martha Graham once commented.  This course examines the relationship between politics, social tensions, and cultural values and muscles, movement, and skin--a relationship that has made the body one of the most visible signs of 20th-century culture.  We study deployments of the body in Europe and the United States, covering the historical and contemporary avant-garde; body culture and life reform movements; war and propaganda; and cabaret, dance, and performance art. How can we "read" the body? How do representations of the body reflect and support prevalent notions of race, gender and nation? In what ways do images of the body critique and subvert cultural norms? We study literature, history, art and cultural documents, including articles in the press and political manifestoes; fictional works by Kafka, Apollinaire, Junger, and Carrington; artworks by Hans Bellmer, Frida Kahlo, Cindy Sherman, and Orlan; and theoretical texts by Freud, Foucault, Kracauer, Sontag, and others.  We also spend class time viewing paintings, photography, and performance art. (3 credits)

Terri Gordon-Zolov, PhD, Columbia U.; assistant professor of comparative literature. New School Bachelor's Program; co-editor of "Citizenship," special issue, WSQ (Women's Studies Quarterly) (Spring/Summer 2010); has published articles on Josephine Baker, cabaret, performance art, and postwar film; recipient of The New School's Distinguished Teaching Award, 2003.

For registration information, visit The New School online.

Keep the memory of our artists alive

Black sisters: Are you tired of hearing young people say "I never heard of her" when you mention of one our great women artists? I am.

Commit to educating our youth about our heritage. Each one teach one.

Here's a striking photo of legendary singer/actress and fervently outspoken civil rights activist Eartha Kitt (1927-2008) by photographer Kenn Duncan (1928-1986).

















Find more images in the NYPL Digital Library.

A remembrance of Howard Zinn

A Radical Treasure
by Bob Herbert, The New York Times, January 30, 2010