seangarrison is an artist and writer. In this segment, he shares his reasons for loving his black community.
learn more*Samella Sanders Lewis was born on this date in 1923. She was a Black visual artist, professor, and art historian. Samella Sanders was born to Samuel Sanders and Rachel Taylor Sanders in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. Her father was a farmer, and her mother was a domestic worker. Widely exhibited and […]
learn more*Jawole Willa Jo Zollar was born on this date in 1950. She is a Black dancer, teacher, and choreographer of modern dance. One of six children, she was born Willa Jo Zollar in Kansas City, Missouri, to parents Alfred Zollar Jr. and Dorothy Delores Zollar. From age seven to seventeen, Zollar received her dance education […]
learn more*The opening of Voodoo Macbeth was on this date in 1936. This play was a New York production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth through the Federal Theatre Project. Orson Welles adapted and directed the show, moved the play’s setting from Scotland to a fictional Caribbean Island, and recruited an entirely Black cast. It earned the nickname for his production from the […]
learn more*Orson Welles was born on this date in 1915. He was a white-American director, actor, screenwriter, and producer. George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was the son of Richard Head Welles and Beatrice Ives Welles. His parents separated and moved to Chicago in 1919. His father, who made a fortune as an […]
learn more*Louis Gossett was born on this date in 1936. He is a Black actor. Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. was born in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City, to Hellen Rebecca Wray, a nurse, and Louis Gossett Sr., a Pulman porter. He is an alumnus of Mark Twain Intermediate School 239 and Abraham Lincoln High School. […]
learn moreT. Mychael Rambo is an actor, dancer, singer, and theater/Arts educator In this segment, he shares three words of self-description, and a childhood memory.
learn more*On this date in 1957, we celebrate the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC). AMSAC was an organization of African American writers, artists, and scholars. The society was founded because of the Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in 1956 based on the idea of the French fr: Société Africaine de culture. In the summer of 1957, five […]
learn more*Bobb Vann was born on this date in 1939. He is a Black artist, teacher, and lecturer. Vann was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Timothy and Eleanor (Ashford) Vann. He started drawing at age six and, after high school, was a student at the Philadelphia College of Art from 1959-1962. Vann worked as a […]
learn more*Blackface in America is affirmed on this date in 1441. Blackface is a form of theatrical or media makeup. It is used mainly by white performers to portray a caricature of a black person of African descent. There is no agreement about a single moment that constitutes the origin of blackface. The journalist and cultural […]
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