Virginia Johnson is a journalist, advocate for the arts, and retired ballerina. In this segment, she shares many views on why The Arts should be a K-12 classroom priority.
learn more*Cecil Brath was born on this date in 1936. He was a Black Pan-African activist. Cecil Elombe Brath was born in Brooklyn, New York, where his father had migrated from Barbados in the 1920s. Brath and his brother, Kwame Brathwaite, grew up in Harlem and Hunts Point, attending the High School of Industrial Art (now […]
learn more*Kwame Brathwaite was born on this date in 1938. He was a Black photojournalist and activist. Born Gilbert Ronald Brathwaite in Brooklyn and brought up in the South Bronx, to immigrant parents from Barbados, who chronicled the cultural, political, and social developments of Harlem, Africa, and the African diaspora. His parents were Cecil and Margaret […]
learn more*Louis Draper was born on this date in 1935. He was a Black art photographer. Louis Hansel Draper was born in Richmond, Virginia. He and his sister Nell attended a private Catholic school near Richmond, the Van deVere Institute, and Virginia Randolph High School in Glen Allen, VA. In 1953, he enrolled in Virginia State […]
learn more*Charles E. Johnson was born on this date in 1871. He was a Black dancer. From Saint Charles, St. Charles County, Missouri, he grew up in Minneapolis. As a teenager, he worked at the Nicollet Hotel. His wife, Dora Babbige, was born in Kentucky. The couple met while performing as part of the same vaudeville […]
learn more*The Regent Theater opened on this date in 1916, in Baltimore, MD. As a Family operation, the Regent Theater was owned by Louis Hornstein and his two sons, Simon and Isaac, who opened the theater on the former site of a coal yard at 1629 Pennsylvania Avenue. Advertised as the “largest, coolest, best-ventilated house in […]
learn more*Josie Woods was born on this date in 1912. She was a Black British dancer, choreographer, and activist. Woods was born Josephine Lucy Wood in Canning Town, London, in 1912. Her father, Charles Wood, was from Dominica, and her mother, Emily, had Gypsy ancestry. As a teenager, Woods worked as a seamstress before entering vaudeville. […]
learn more*Anne Kennedy was born on this date in 1920. She was a Black classical pianist and piano professor. Anne Lucille Gamble was born in Charleston, West Virginia, to Dr. Henry Floyd Gamble and the former Nina Hortense Clinton. She was the younger of two children born into that union. Gamble had two older step-siblings as […]
learn more*Angelbert Metoyer was born on this date in 1977. He is a Black Afrofuturism-themed artist. He is from Houston, Texas, and began his artistic career through Rick Lowe’s Project Row Houses in Houston. He held his first solo exhibition there in 1994. He moved to Atlanta to study drawing and painting at the Atlanta College […]
learn more*Hamid Drake was born on this date in 1955. He is a Black jazz drummer and percussionist. Hamid Drake (Henry Lawrence Drake) was born in Monroe, Louisiana, and when he was a child, his family moved to Evanston, Illinois. There, he started playing with local rock and R&B bands, eventually bringing him to the attention […]
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