Archive for Community
As very connected folks in Birmingham, I’m sure you’re well abreast of the latest events going on across the city as February /Black History Month closes out.
I’m sure you know about Bill Cosby’s two performances tonight at the Alabama Theater to benefit Miles College. The Cos has been in the ‘Ham several times over the past year, working as he can to encourage and strengthen the community with his words of wit and wisdom. A good fatherly kick in the pants and advice can motivate us to do better. I hope that somehow his words can especially touch the hearts of some of our youth who seem headed for trouble, like the sage counsel former Judge J. Richmond Pearson shared last week with disgruntled teens at Huffman High.
But you may also want to check out the free film festival that’s going on right now. For Black History Month, the Carver Theatre is hosting the 5th annual E. Desmond Lee Africa World Documentary Film Festival (AWDFF). It’s open to the public and FREE, folks.
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Renowned historian and author Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week in 1926 as a way to highlight the contributions of African Americans in a country that distorted the historical records of their contributions.
After all, if black folks, being intellectually and morally inferior as individuals and as a group, had no record of having done anything of import to advance human civilization (according to the reasoning of racially chauvinistic of males in the dominant society in the 18th and 19th centuries), then what is their worth? It was a sad rationale for racial oppression, without much consequence.
Woodson’s own research of African history – not to mention the work being done by his own American peers and plain ol’ common sense – roundly refuted such arguments. And he wanted black people to know what he knew, as a way to build their self esteem in a society that constantly pulverized it. And he wanted the world to know too, particularly because it would help eliminate prejudice among whites. So he chose February to start his campaign.
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Two sets of events events will take place this weekend, things that on the surface have nothing in common. But in my little mind, I see a strong connection.
The first include the weekend of celebratory events planned to commemorate the life and legacy of Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who died on October 5. The second is the Birmingham Comprehensive Planning meeting on Saturday.
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I first met the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church during the 30-year anniversary of the church bombing, when NBC’s Brian Williams (before he was an anchor) and his television crews broadcast a live, national town-hall meeting from its sanctuary.
I was one of The Birmingham News reporters covering the event, and I was directed to interview him. At that time I only knew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in terms of the Civil Rights Movement. So Rev. Shuttlesworth’s story fascinated me.
He recounted surviving the first bomb attack on his home. A blast that should have killed him instead inspired him because he knew that God spared him to lead the Movement in Birmingham. Emerging from the ruins of his wrecked home virtually unscathed, he was from then on the fiercest foe of segregation, he said, because he was never again afraid.
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Artwalk features works by photographers (Liesa Cole), painters (Matt Underwood), mixed-media sculptors (Joe Minter) and jewelry makers (Julie Jackson).
When Birmingham’s Artwalk began 10 years ago to draw people to the downtown Loft District and celebrate art there, there wasn’t a whole lot of “there” there. What a difference a decade makes.
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Harris Reynolds on 