A Permanent Accusation: Art Confronts Lynching and Other Acts of Inhumanity

January 8th, 2013
Jan
30
7:00 pm

Wednesday January 30, 7pm

A Permanent Accusation: Art Confronts Lynching and Other Acts of Inhumanity

Moonstone Arts Center, 110A S. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107, 215-735-9600

Art, in all its forms, is powerful. Poems and music, paintings and dance make us feel as well as think. Art produces the “affect,” the internalized feeling and emotional understanding that goes beyond cognition. Human beings have done terrible things to each other but the purpose of this program is not to beat anyone up or bemoan the ills done to us. Our purpose is to acknowledge and to remember that we human beings need to be vigilant and to respond when things go astray. We need to remember that “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and “The only necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I thank the artists in this program for being vigilant and for acting and for producing wonderful art on terrible subjects. As Botero says in his video, “Nobody would remember Guernica if not for the painting.”

Visual Art:

World Artists Against Apartheid (13 prints)

Permanent Accusation: Botero on Abu Ghraib (Video)

Collage and Conflict: The Anti-Imperialist Art of Theodore A. Harris

 

Music: Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday; The Death of Emmett Till, Bob Dylan

End this War… After Shirley Chisholm – triptych by Theodore A. Harris

Poetry: Marjorie Agosin (Torture in Chile – The most unbelievable part); Gregory Djanikian (Armenian genocide – So I will till the Ground); Hanoch Guy Kaner (Jewish Holocaust – Terra Treblinka. Holocaust Poems); Lynn Levin (Sexual Violence); Ewuare X. Osayande (on White Supremacy – Whose America?); Aaren Yeats Perry (history – Ariku: A Re-Membering); Lamont B. Steptoe (African American experience – Meditations on Congo Square); Robert Zaller (War – Dresden Zoo poem)

Dance: Lela Aisha Jones (Native Portals of Lynching and Love, The profound imagery of the noose becomes a portal towards understanding the past and future of the African/Afro/Black experience. Inspired by their personal stories, memories, and dreams, six dancers explore their exposure to this country’s traumatic history of lynching and ask the question: what would it take for me to fall in love with someone different?)

Part of the Ida B. Wells, Lynching & Trayvon Martin project - February 22 to March 3, 2013 produced by Moonstone Arts Center

for information www.moonstoneartscenter.org/idabwells or 215-735-9600

No Comments »

Why Black Media? A Panel Discussion

January 8th, 2013
Jan
30
5:00 pm

Wednesday January 30, 5pm

Why Black Media? A Panel Discussion

Department of Journalism of the Temple School of Media and Communication

First Floor Atrium of Annenberg hall, on 13th street between Norris and Diamond Streets

Over 100 years ago Ida B. Wells, one of the first investigative journalists and one of the first black women to edit and own a newspaper, earned the nickname “Princess of the Press.” She said: “The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.” The Black Press was important at the turn of the 20th century, what is its significance at the turn of the 21st century.

Lori L. Tharps (Moderator) is an assistant professor of journalism at Temple University, an award-winning author, freelance journalist and popular speaker. Tharps was a staff reporter at Vibe magazine and a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly, she has written for Ms., Glamour, Suede, Bitch, Caribbean Life, Grid Philadelphia and Essence magazines and for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Root.com and Ebony.com. Her work is included in Young Wives Tales: Stories of Love and Partnership, Naked: Black Women Bare All About their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips and Other Parts, Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine and Women: Images & Realities. A Multicultural Anthology.

Kierna Mayo is the Editorial Director, Digital for EBONY.com. She is the former Editorial Director of Tyra.com, where she developed a cutting-edge, online women’s magazine for Tyra Banks’ Bankable Enterprises. She is former online editor at Cafemom.com. Kierna has written about culture and lifestyle for over 20 years. Her critically acclaimed writings have appeared in major national magazines including Essence, Marie Claire, Glamour, Seventeen, Vibe and Uptown among others. Kierna’s work has been featured in several books including And It Don’t Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years.
Irv Randolph is the managing editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, the nation’s oldest continuously published African-American newspaper, a position he has held since December 1994. Under Randolph’s editorial leadership, the Tribune has been named “Best Newspaper” by the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) in seven of the last 14 years. During that time the Tribune has won more than 80 national awards. As managing editor, Randolph oversees the daily operations of the Philadelphia Tribune and its many editorial products, including a weekly educational supplement for Philadelphia public schools, a quarterly lifestyles magazine and Sojourner, a quarterly visitor’s guide to Philadelphia.

Stephanie Renee is a host (Mid-Morning MOJO -10am to noon) and Program Director on 900 AM WURD. “it has been a great joy to bring news, information and all kinds of music to my audience. I happen to be the only woman with a daily show in the station’s lineup, so it’s also fun to bring my effervescent estrogen onto the airwaves! It seems that it is my destiny to be the “pet girl” in most of the endeavors I undertake, but I don’t mind. There is great flexibility and necessity in being the “only” in such situations, of which I take complete advantage.

Vernon Odom has been a reporter with WPVI-TV’s Action News for over a quarter of a century. He was also the host of the station’s weekly Public Affairs program, “Visions,” telecast on Saturday evenings. While working for Channel 6, Odom has covered every major story of our time in the Delaware Valley region, plus all the Presidential campaigns dating back to 1976.

Part of the Ida B. Wells, Lynching & Trayvon Martin project - February 22 to March 3, 2013 produced by Moonstone Arts Center

 for information www.moonstoneartscenter.org/idabwells or 215-735-9600

No Comments »

A Discussion on Ida B. Wells with John Bracey, Paula Giddings & Sonia Sanchez

January 8th, 2013
Jan
31
7:00 pm

Thursday January 31, 2013, 7pm

A Discussion on Ida B. Wells with John Bracey, Paula Giddings & Sonia Sanchez

District 1199C Philadelphia Headquarters, 1319 Locust St, Philadelphia, PA 19107, 215-735-1300

No lectures, no scripts, just three amazing, intelligent people discussing an ancestor, a “shero,” an inspiration and her relevance to today. Do you know how exciting it is to hear intelligent people talk about things? You will sit spellbound and then you get to ask questions.

John H. Bracey, Jr. is chair of the Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His interests include African American social history, radical ideologies and movements, and the history of African American Women. He was active in the Civil Rights, Black Liberation, and other radical movements in Chicago.

Paula Giddings is chair of Afro-American Studies at Smith College, editor of Burning All Illusions, and is a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), The Nation etc.  She is author of the definitive biography: Ida: A Sword among Lions. “Ida B. Wells was an inspired journalist, an uncompromising civil libertarian, and a woman far ahead of her patriarchal times—a ‘difficult’ woman. Paula Giddings’s monumental achievement restores this extraordinary contrarian to her place as one of the grand pace-setters of American social justice and female empowerment.” (David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-Winning biographer of W.E.B. DuBois) “History at its best—clear, intelligent, moving. Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject.” (Toni Morrison ) 

Sonia Sanchez is Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, National and International lecturer on Black Culture and Literature, Women’s Liberation, Peace and Racial Justice. Sonia Sanchez is the author of over 16 books, a contributing editor to Black Scholar and The Journal of African Studies, and editor of We Be Word Sorcerers.  Sonia is an advisor to Moonstone which has consulted with her about the Hidden Project’s presentations on Frances Harper, Martin Delany and Ida B. Wells. She said to Larry Robin: “Larry, you should have taken my course at Temple, I taught these people years ago.” “I should have, but it has been great fun discovering them now.” Robin’s replied.

Part of the Ida B. Wells, Lynching & Trayvon Martin project - February 22 to March 3, 2013 produced by Moonstone Arts Center

 for information www.moonstoneartscenter.org/idabwells or 215-735-9600

No Comments »

The Continuum of Abuse: Slavery, Black Laws, Contract Labor, Jim Crow, Lynching, Prison/Industrial Complex, Death Penalty

January 8th, 2013
Feb
3
2:00 pm

Sunday February 3, 2013 – 2pm

The Continuum of Abuse: Slavery, Black Laws, Contract Labor, Jim Crow, Lynching, Prison/Industrial Complex, Death Penalty

Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square, 215-735-3456

How come executions in the 21st Century follow the same pattern that lynching did in the 19th Century? 

It is significant that the death penalty, like lynching, is most prevalent in the South. It is the latest in a series of techniques to subdue and control the African American population and maintain a system of white privilege. Prisoners arrested because they had no money (vagrancy) were leased to the same plantations where they had been slaves when they could not pay their fines.  Angola Plantation became Angola Prison. The prison/industrial complex and death penalty continue the abuse of African Americans which started with slavery.

Welcome by Hugh Taft-Morales, Leader, Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia

Panel:

  • Shujaa Graham was on Death Row until exonerated, and is now Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for Witness to Innocence. Google him, he is amazing.
  • Pam Africa is the coordinator for the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and has been on the frontlines in the movement to have Abu-Jamal released from prison.  
  • L. V. Gaither is a political activist and independent historian who resides in Houston, Texas. He is editor and publisher of the Gaither Reporter: An Independent Journal of Politics, Literature and Culture, and author of Loss of Empire: Legal Lynching, Vigilantism, and African American Intellectualism in the 21st Century.  
  • Sandra J. Jones author of Coalition Building in the Anti-Death Penalty Movement is Professor of Sociology at Rowan University, whose research includes race/ethnic relations and social movement theory.
  • Michael Coard, a criminal defense attorney with more than 15 years of trial experience, specializes in murder cases and formerly worked at the Charles W. Bowser Law Center after having served as Legal Counsel for State Senator Hardy Williams. He is an adjunct professor in the African Studies Department and the Urban Studies Department at Temple University as well as a volunteer instructor of Criminal Justice and also Hip Hop in the university’s Pan African Studies Program.

Part of the Ida B. Wells, Lynching & Trayvon Martin project - February 22 to March 3, 2013 produced by Moonstone Arts Center

 for information www.moonstoneartscenter.org/idabwells or 215-735-9600

No Comments »

A Discussion with Mia Bay, Michael Coard and Linn Washington

January 8th, 2013
Jan
26
7:00 pm

Saturday January 26, 2013 – 7pm

To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells

A Discussion with Mia Bay, Michael Coard and Linn Washington

 Moderated by Erica Armstrong Dunbar 

Moonstone Arts Center, 110A S. 13th Street, second floor, 215-735 9600

Two historians, a lawyer and a journalist discuss Ida B. Wells and the cost of telling the truth in the nineteen century and today.

 

Erica Armstrong Dunbar is an Associate Professor of History with joint appointments in Black American Studies and Women’s Studies. Her first book, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City has positioned her as a scholar of early African American Women’s history. Professor Armstrong Dunbar was appointed the first director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Mia Bay is a Professor of History at Rutgers University. The Associate Director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity since 2007, Bay became the Director of the CRE in 2011. A 2010 Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellow, and 2009 National Humanities Fellow, Bay is currently completing a study of African-American views on Thomas Jefferson, and a book on the social history of segregated transportation.  Mia Bay’s publications include the books To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells and The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People 1830-1925, as well a variety of book chapters and articles. Her most recent publications include: “Invisible Tethers: Transportation and Discrimination in the Age of Katrina,” “If Iola were a Man:’ Gender, Jim Crow and Public Protest in the Work of Ida B. Wells,” “Looking Backward in Order to Go Forward: Black Women Historians and Black Women’s History”.

Michael Coard is a criminal defense attorney in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with more than 15 years of state and federal trial experience, specializes in murder cases and formerly worked at the Charles W. Bowser Law Center after having served as Legal Counsel for State Senator Hardy Williams. He is an adjunct professor in the African Studies Department and the Urban Studies Department at Temple University as well as a volunteer instructor of Criminal Justice and also Hip Hop in the university’s Pan African Studies Program.

Linn Washington Jr. is an award-winning journalist who writes a weekly column for The Philadelphia Tribune. A graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship, Washington writes regularly on issues involving law, the criminal justice system, news media and inequities involving race and/or class. Professor Washington is the Director of the News-Editorial sequence and Co- Director of the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab. He teaches courses in news reporting, investigative reporting, and journalism law at Temple University. He has many years’ experience as an investigative reporter. He is the author of the book Black Judges on Justice: Perspectives from the Bench.

Part of the Ida B. Wells, Lynching & Trayvon Martin project - February 22 to March 3, 2013 produced by Moonstone Arts Center

 for information www.moonstoneartscenter.org/idabwells or 215-735-9600

No Comments »

To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells

January 8th, 2013
Jan
26
10:00 am

Saturday January 26, 2013 – 10am

To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells

African American Museum in Philadelphia, 701 Arch Street, 215-574-0380

A Teacher Workshop with Mia Bay – Act 48 Credits are available

Contact Melvin Garrison, 215-4000-5694, garrison@philasd.org

Co-sponsored by the School District of Philadelphia’s Teaching American History Grant Program and the African American Museum in Philadelphia

Mia Bay is a Professor of History at Rutgers University. The Associate Director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity since 2007, Bay became the Director of the CRE in 2011. A 2010 Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellow, and 2009 National Humanities Fellow, Bay is currently completing a study of African-American views on Thomas Jefferson, and a book on the social history of segregated transportation.  Mia Bay’s publications include the books To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells and The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People 1830-1925, as well a variety of book chapters and articles. Her most recent publications include: “Invisible Tethers: Transportation and Discrimination in the Age of Katrina,” “If Iola were a Man:’ Gender, Jim Crow and Public Protest in the Work of Ida B. Wells,” “Looking Backward in Order to Go Forward: Black Women Historians and Black Women’s History”.

“In this remarkable book, Mia Bay understands Ida B. Wells in full—as thinker, writer, crusader, politician, and woman of the world. Finally, we have a biography worthy of one of the bravest and most influential activists in U.S. history.” – Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan

 “Mia Bay’s biography of Ida B. Wells is as sharp and sassy as the woman herself. The vigilance and bravado of this dynamic black woman crusader shines through on every page. Bay’s triumphant tapestry reveals the life and times of an unsung heroine woven into battles for African American freedom.” – Catherine Clinton, author of Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

Part of the Ida B. Wells, Lynching & Trayvon Martin project

February 22 to March 3, 2013 – produced by Moonstone Arts Center

More information www.moonstoneartscenter.org/ida-b-wells or 215-735-9600 

No Comments »

Presenters for Ida B. Wells

January 8th, 2013

Pam Africa is the coordinator for the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and stands as a contemporary figure in the tradition of the early women’s rights advocates who were also fighters against slavery, for the betterment of the working classes, and for the freedom of political prisoners. She is a world significant freedom and social justice fighter. “We fight for prisoners’ rights, and not just in the US, but also internationally dealing with animal rights, joblessness, Occupy Wall Street, and the wars. We’re on the frontlines. Anything dealing with the ills that black people are facing we are also heavily involved in.”

Marjorie Agosín is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, activist, and professor. She has written and edited over 80 books. The most unbelievable part is a poet from the collection, An Absence of Shadows, on torture and terror in Chile under the regime of Augusto Pinochet. Her poem will be read by John Lavin.

Mia Bay is a professor of history at Rutgers University, where she directs the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity. An intellectual historian who focuses on African American history, she is the author of The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People 1830-1925 and To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells, and a coauthor, with Waldo Martin and Deborah Gray White, of Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, with Documents. She is completing a book on African American ideas about Thomas Jefferson and has begun to research a new project on the social history of segregated transportation.

John H. Bracey, Jr. is chair of the Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. His interests include African American social history, radical ideologies and movements, and the history of African American Women, he was active in the Civil Rights, Black Liberation, and other radical Movements in Chicago. He co-edited Black Nationalism in America, African-American Women and the Vote: 1837-1965, Strangers and Neighbors: Relations Between Blacks and Jews in the United States, and African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to the Present, and did editorial work on the Black Studies Research Sources (Papers of the NAACP, A. Philip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, NACW, and Horace Mann Bond.)

Michael Coard is a criminal defense attorney in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with more than 15 years of state and federal trial experience, specializes in murder cases and formerly worked at the Charles W. Bowser Law Center after having served as Legal Counsel for State Senator Hardy Williams. He is an adjunct professor in the African Studies Department and the Urban Studies Department at Temple University as well as a volunteer instructor of Criminal Justice and also Hip Hop in the university’s Pan African Studies Program.

Gregory Djanikian‘s So I Will Till the Ground, his fifth collection of poetry, confronts the horrors of the Armenian genocide of 1915, and the diaspora that ensued, sending survivors to all parts of the world.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar is an Associate Professor of History with joint appointments in Black American Studies and Women’s Studies. Her first book, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City has positioned her as a scholar of early African American Women’s history. Professor Armstrong Dunbar was appointed the first director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Paula Giddings is chair of Afro-American Studies at Smith College and author of three books: When and Where I Enter: The Impact on Black Women on Race and Sex in America; In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement; and Ida: A Sword among Lions. She is editor of Burning All Illusions, and is a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), The Nation, and the journals Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism and Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, among other publications.

L.V. Gaither is author of Loss of Empire: Legal Lynching, Vigilantism, and African American Intellectualism in the 21st-Century and the Gaither Reporter: Chronicling the African American Experience. “Providing a detailed, scholarly connection among the institutionalization of lynching, capital punishment, the escalation of the imprisonment of Black youth, and the imprisonment of Black political activists, Loss of Empire presents an intellectual and political challenge to Black public intellectuals and political leaders whose political rhetoric unveils their compromisin…moreProviding a detailed, scholarly connection among the institutionalization of lynching, capital punishment, the escalation of the imprisonment of Black youth, and the imprisonment of Black political activists, Loss of Empire presents an intellectual and political challenge to Black public.” –Joyce A. Joyce, Professor, Temple University

Shujaa Graham was born in Lake Providence, Louisiana and grew up on a plantation, moving to South Central Los Angeles in 1961. Shujaa was framed in the 1973 murder of a prison guard and he and his co-defendant Eugene Allen were sent to San Quentin’s death row in 1976. The California Supreme Court overturned the death conviction and he was found innocent by his fourth trial. Shujaa was released in March 1981, and began work in the Bay area building community support for the prison movement and against police brutality. He now gives lectures on the death penalty, the criminal justice system, racism, incarceration and innocence in America.

Lela Aisha Jones is a native of Tallahassee, Florida and is at home when creating. While in movement she found her entry point as an artist, she cannot be defined by one discipline or practice; her experiences have lead to a more nomadic existence. She is the founder of FlyGround—her creative home, co-founder of The Requisite Movers, and the development coordinator for as a well as a member of Mascher Space Co-op. Lela walks with her transitioned as well as living family; she is humbled and so thankful for all those who have nurtured her, especially her grandfather, mom, dad, and sister.

Hanoch Guy Kaner, author of Terra Treblinka, is a third-generation survivor of the holocaust and evokes family members who perished as witnesses to the horrors. Through the poems their memories intensify after more than sixty years.

Lynn Levin is a poet, writer, translator and co-producer of the TV show The Drexel InterView. She has published three collections of poems her work has appeared in journals such as Ploughshares, Boulevard, Washington Square Review, Artful Dodge, Southwest Review, Cimarron Review, 5 A.M., Hunger Mountain, Lilith, and Kerem.

Kierna Mayo is the Editorial Director, Digital for EBONY.com. She is the former Editorial Director of Tyra.com, where she developed a cutting-edge, online women’s magazine for Tyra Banks’ Bankable Enterprises. She is former online editor at Cafemom.com. Kierna has written about culture and lifestyle for over 20 years. Her critically acclaimed writings have appeared in major national magazines including Essence, Marie Claire, Glamour, Seventeen, Vibe and Uptown among others. Kierna’s work has been featured in several books includingAnd It Don’t Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years.

Vernon Odom has been a reporter with WPVI-TV’s Action News for over a quarter of a century. He was also the host of the station’s weekly Public Affairs program, “Visions,” telecast on Saturday evenings. While working for Channel 6, Odom has covered every major story of our time in the Delaware Valley region, plus all the Presidential campaigns dating back to 1976; Ford versus Carter including their debate that fall at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theater.

Ewuare X. Osayande is a political activist, award-winning author, cultural analyst, poet, essayist, publisher and internet radio talk show host. The Quarterly Black Review has called Osayande “one of Black America’s newest insurgent intellectuals coming to the table with enough mental firepower to be a David Walker for our time.” His latest book is Whose America?

Aaren Yeatts Perry has performed his poems at the Nuyorican, Kimmel Center, World Café, Fringe Festival, Kelly Writers House and the Philadelphia Writers Conference along with countless stages and classrooms across America. His collections include Open Fire,Poetry Across the Curriculum: An Action Guide for Elementary Teachers.

Irv Randolph is the managing editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, the nation’s oldest continuously published African-American newspaper, a position he has held since December 1994. Under Randolph’s editorial leadership, the Tribune has been named “Best Newspaper” by the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) in seven of the last 14 years. During that time the Tribune has won more than 80 national awards. As managing editor, Randolph oversees the daily operations of the Philadelphia Tribune and its many editorial products, including a weekly educational supplement for Philadelphia public schools, a quarterly lifestyles magazine and Sojourner.

Stephanie Renee is a host (Mid-Morning MOJO -10a to noon) and Program Director on 900 AM WURD. “it has been a great joy to bring news, information and all kinds of music to my audience. I happen to be the only woman with a daily show in the station’s lineup, so it’s also fun to bring my effervescent estrogen onto the airwaves! It seems that it is my destiny to be the “pet girl” in most of the endeavors I undertake, but I don’t mind. There is great flexibility and necessity in being the “only” in such situations, of which I take complete advantage..”

Sonia Sanchez - Poet. Mother. Professor. National and International lecturer on Black Culture and Literature, Women’s Liberation, Peace and Racial Justice. Sonia Sanchez is the author of over 16 books, a contributing editor to Black Scholar and The Journal of African Studies, and editor of We Be Word Sorcerers. Recipient of numerous awards including the NEA, the Lucretia Mott Award,  the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities, a PEW Fellowship in the Arts. She has lectured at over 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled extensively.

Lamont B. Steptoe author of Meditations in “Congo Square” ($11.95 Whirlwind Press) was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and/or editor of fifteen poetry collections, the latest of which is Meditations in Congo Square, and publisher/founder of Whirlwind Press. He is the winner of an American Book Award and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

Lori L. Tharps is an assistant professor of journalism at Temple University, an award-winning author, freelance journalist and popular speaker. Tharps was a staff reporter at Vibe magazine and a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly, she has written for Ms., Glamour, Suede, Bitch, Caribbean Life, Grid Philadelphia and Essence magazines and for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Root.com and Ebony.com. Her work is included in Young Wives Tales: Stories of Love and Partnership, Naked: Black Women Bare All About their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips and Other Parts, Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine and Women: Images & Realities, A Multicultural Anthology.

Linn Washington, Jr. is an award-winning journalist who writes a weekly column for The Philadelphia Tribune. A graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship, Washington writes regularly on issues involving law, the criminal justice system, news media and inequities involving race and/or class. Professor Washington is the Director of the News-Editorial sequence and Co- Director of the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab. He teaches courses in news reporting, investigative reporting, and journalism law at Temple University. He has many years’ experience as an investigative reporter. He is the author of the book Black Judges on Justice: Perspectives from the Bench.

Robert Zaller is a Professor of History at Drexel University and is author of many history texts as well as books of verse including The Year One, Lives of the Poet, Invisible Music, For Empedocles, and Islands. He has served on the editorial board of the Yale Center for Parliamentary History, as President of the Robinson Jeffers Association and is a member of the board of Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and of the steering committee of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation.

No Comments »

Schedule for Ida B. Wells

January 8th, 2013

Wednesday January 23, 4pm

Cecil B. Moore Branch Library, 2320 Cecil B. Moore Avenue, 215-685-2766

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice and the Cecil B. Moore Philadelphia Freedom Fighters- Co-sponsored by:   Cecil B. Moore Philadelphia Freedom Fighters and the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University Libraries, Hosted by Cecil B. Moore Branch Library,

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice Cecil B. Moore Philadelphia Freedom Fighters are a relentless group of people who committed their lives to the sole purpose of equality and freedom throughout the streets of Philly in the 60′s. Vibrant members of the Cecil B. Moore Philadelphia Freedom Fighters are: Mel Dorn, Eugene ‘Freedom Tree’ Dawkins’, Kenneth A. Salaam ‘Freedom Smitty’, Karen Asper-Jordan and Richard J. Watson. Along with these honorary members Miranda Alexander and Gary R. Adams, they are ready to continue the case for a better Philadelphia by making appearances, singing the call and response songs of freedom and educating the next generation to stand up against injustices, and in improving and promoting North Philly Neighborhood through the living legacy of Cecil B. Moore.

Wednesday January 23, 7pm

First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 2125 Chestnut Street, 215-563-3980

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice – Film & Discussion

Saturday January 26, 10am

African American Museum in Philadelphia, 701 Arch Street, 215-574-0380

Teacher Workshop with Mia Bay author of To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells 

A teacher workshop, carrying Act 48 credits, co-sponsored by the Social Studies Department of the School District of Philadelphia, led by Mia Bay, Professor of History at Rutgers University, where she also serves as the Associate Director of the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity. She is author of Ida B. Wells: To Tell the Truth Freely.

Saturday January 26, 7pm

Moonstone Arts Center, 110A S. 13th Street, second floor, 215-735 9600

To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells Discussion

Two historians, a lawyer and a journalist discuss Ida B. Wells and the cost of telling the truth in the nineteen century and today.

Moderator: Erica Armstrong Dunbar is an Associate Professor of History with joint appointments in Black American Studies and Women’s Studies.

Panel: Mia Bay, Professor of History at Rutgers University, where she also serves as the Associate Director of the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity. She is author of Ida B. Wells: To Tell the Truth Freely; Michael Coard, a criminal defense attorney with more than 15 years of trial experience; Linn Washington Jr. is an award-winning journalist who writes a weekly column for The Philadelphia Tribune.

Sunday January 27, 11am

Mother Bethel AME Church, 419 S. 6th Street, 215-925-0616

11am – A sermon from senior minister Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler.

1pm – A program that looks at the life of Wells as a means to talk about the self-inflicted lynching we are engaged in today and ways to confront it. Invited panel includes Mr. Seth Williams, District Attorney; a representative from Mothers in Charge (an advocacy group of Black women who have lost their children to violence); Dr. Bettye Collier-Thomas (professor at Temple University and author) and a moderator, Mrs. Annette John Hall, Columnist for the Inquirer.

Sunday January 27, 6pm

Paul Robeson House, 4949 Walnut St., 215-747-4675

Ida B. Wells, Activist, Journalist, and Womanist - Panel Discussion and Open Forum

This panel discussion will examine the work of Ida B. Wells as a social justice activist who used her skills and talents as an investigative journalist to expose and bring greater attention to the terror and systematic barbaric acts of lynching. While this program is for the community at large, it will also serve as one of the introductory activities for the National Million Woman Movement’s “African Writers Guild” and a special outreach to “Lil’ Sistahs” Literacy Program and Writers Talent Search for female students of African descent, ages 7-17. The discussion will focus on the New Jim Crow, Police and Governmental Terrorism, and Black Women Activism in the 21st Century. Panelists include: Linda Waters-Richards: Former President of the Black United Fund of PA and widow of Bro. Yahya Karim, who founded the Ida B. Wells Barnett Book Store (Philly). Dr. Latisha Webb, MHS, ABD: a freelance writer and journalist and the Operations Director for OpportUNITY Inc., a program that trains ex-offenders for employment and ownership in the construction field. La Sharra Bennett, MPM, BSTM: a writer and founder of J’Avani Publishing, LLC. SiS. Empress Philé Chionesu, freelance writer, and radio broadcast journalist.

Monday January 28, 6pm

David Cohen Ogontz Branch Library, 6017 Ogontz Ave., 215-686-3566

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice – Film & Discussion

Tuesday January 29, 6pm

Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Regional Library, 68 W. Chelten Ave., 215-685-2150

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice – Film & Discussion

Wednesday January 30, 5pm

Journalism of the Temple School of Media and Communication

First Floor Atrium of Annenberg hall, on 13th street between Norris and Diamond Streets

Why Black Media? A Panel Discussion Presented by the Department of Journalism of the Temple School of Media and Communication

The Black Press was important at the turn of the 20th century, when Ida B. Wells was writing, what is its significance at the turn of the 21st century.

Lori L. Tharps (Moderator) is an assistant professor of journalism at Temple University, an award-winning author, freelance journalist and popular speaker; Kierna Mayo is editor in chief, Ebony.com; Irv Randolph is managing Editor at Philadelphia Tribune; Stephanie Renee is station manager at 900AM WURD, Vernon Odom has been a reporter with WPVI-TV’s Action News for over a quarter of a century.

Wednesday January 30, 5:30pm

Walnut Street West Branch Library, 201 S. 40th Street, 215-685-7671

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice – Film & Discussion

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice

Wednesday January 30, 2013, 7pm

Moonstone Arts Center, 110A S. 13th Street, Philadelphia PA 19107, 215-735-9600

A Permanent Accusation: Art Confronts Lynching and Other Acts of Inhumanity

Art, in all its forms, is powerful, it produces the “affect,” the internalized feeling and emotional understanding that goes beyond cognition. It is also permanent, as Botero says in his video, “Nobody would remember Guernica if not for the painting.”

Visual Art: World Artists Against Apartheid; Permanent Accusation: Botero on Abu Ghraib (Video); Collage and Conflict: The Anti-Imperialist Art of Theodore A. Harris

Music: Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday; The Death of Emmett Till, Bob Dylan

Poetry: Marjorie Agosin (Torture in Chile – The most unbelievable part); Gregory Djanikian (Armenian genocide – So I will till the Ground);Hanoch Guy Kaner (Jewish Holocaust – Terra Treblinka. Holocaust Poems); Lynn Levin (Sexual Violence); Ewuare X. Osayande (on White Supremacy Whose America?); Aaren Yeats Perry (history – Ariku: A Re-Membering); Lamont Steptoe (African American experience- Meditations on Congo Square); Robert Zaller (War – Dresden Zoo poem)

Dance: Lela Aisha Jones (Native Portals of Lynching and Love)  

Thursday January 31, 2013, 1pm

Kensington International Business High School, 2051 E. Cumberland Street

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice – Film & Discussion

A program for students that includes screening of the film followed by discussion on the themes in the life of Ida B. Wells that align with the Academic Standard of the school district

Thursday January 31, 2013, 5:30pm

1199C – Breslin Training Center, 100 S. Broad Street, 10th Floor, 215-568-2220

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice – Film & Discussion

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice

Thursday January 31, 2013, 7pm 

District 1199C Philadelphia Headquarters, 1319 Locust St, Philadelphia, PA 19107, 215-735-1300

John H. Bracey, Paula Giddings and Sonia Sanchez Discuss Ida B. Wells: A Sword Among Lions

No lectures, no scripts, just three amazing, intelligent people discussing an ancestor, a “shero,” an inspiration and her relevance to today. Do you know how exciting it is to hear intelligent people talk about things? You will sit spellbound and then you get to ask questions.

John H. Bracey, Jr. is chair of the Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts; Paula Giddings is chair of Afro-American Studies at Smith College and author of Ida: A Sword among Lions; Sonia Sanchez –Poet Lauriat of Philadelphia, author of 16 books, National and International lecturer on Black Culture and Literature, Women’s Liberation, Peace and Racial Justice.

Saturday February 2, 2013 – 10am – noon

Lucien Crump’s Art Gallery,6378 Germantown Ave., 215-843-8788

Free and open to the public.  Light refreshments will be served.

Ida B. Wells: Finding Our Strength

Ida was a survivor.  Discussing the video will provide a doorway into the challenges we face in our own lives.  A relaxing visualization will help us approach tough situations from a calmer perspective.  Participants will have a chance to write and, if they wish, share.  We will celebrate the grit of a phenomenal woman, and draw on each other’s strength.

Sunday February 3, 2013 – 2pm

Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square, 215-735-3456

The Continuum of Abuse: Slavery, Black Laws, Contract Labor, Jim Crow, Lynching, Prison/Industrial Complex, Death Penalty

A Panel Discussion on how the prison/industrial complex and death penalty continue the abuse of African Americans which started with slavery. It is significant that the death penalty, like lynching, is most prevalent in the South. It is the latest in a series of techniques to subdue and control the African American population and maintain a system of white privilege. Angola Plantation becomes Angola Prison.

Welcome: Hugh Taft-Morales, Leader, Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia

Panel: Shujaa Graham, Formerly Incarcerated on Death Row and Vice Chair of the Board

of Directors for Witness to Innocence; Pam Africa is the coordinator for the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; L. V. Gaither author of Loss of Empire: Legal Lynching, Vigilantism, and African American Intellectualism in the 21st Century; Michael Coard is a criminal defense attorney with more than 15 years of trial experience; Sandra J. Jones is author of Coalition Building in the Anti-Death Penalty Movement and is Professor of Sociology at Rowan University.

No Comments »

Ida B. Wells Quotes

November 21st, 2012

“Although lynchings have steadily increased in number and barbarity during the last twenty years, there has been no single effort put forth by the many moral and philanthropic forces of the country to put a stop to this wholesale slaughter.”

“Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense. “

“I came home every Friday afternoon, riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday and Sunday washing and ironing and cooking for the children and went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon.”

“I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way… so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people.”

“If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. ”

“In fact, for all kinds of offenses – and, for no offenses – from murders to misdemeanors, men and women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same.”

“No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders. ”

“Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob.”

“Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. ”

“The Afro-American is not a bestial race. ”

“The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. ”

“The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased. ”

“The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.”

“The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival. ”

“The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American. ”

“The negro has suffered far more from the commission of this crime against the women of his race by white men than the white race has ever suffered through his crimes. ”

“The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd. ”

“The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense. ”

“The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press. ”

“The South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled. ”

“One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”
“Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.”
“The strong arm of the law must be brought to bear upon lynchers in severe punishment, but this cannot and will not be done unless a healthy public sentiment demands and sustains such action.”
“The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South.”
“The white man’s dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities.”
“The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.”
“There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.”
“Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense.”
“In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed.”
“The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased.”

No Comments »

Ida B. Wells Resources

November 21st, 2012

Film

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice documents the dramatic life and turbulent times of the pioneering African American journalist, activist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader of the post-Reconstruction period. A fuller description of the film is attached.

Books

Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth be Told, Walter Dean Meyers, ages 8/9, Harper, $16.99

An activist, educator, writer, journalist, suffragette, and pioneering voice against the horror of lynching, she used fierce determination and the power of the pen to educate the world about the unequal treatment of blacks in the United States. Award-winning author Walter Dean Myers tells the story of this legendary figure, which blends harmoniously with the historically detailed watercolor paintings of illustrator Bonnie Christensen.

Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Dennis Fradin, ages 12/14, Clarion, 19.00

The acclaimed civil rights leader Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) is brought vividly to life in this accessible and well-researched biography. Her story is one of courage and determination in the face of intolerance and injustice.

Crusade for Justice: Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, edited by her daughter Alfreda M. Duster, Chicago, $27.50

This engaging memoir tells of her private life as mother of a growing family as well as her public activities as teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight against attitudes and laws oppressing blacks.

Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching by Crystal N. Feimster, Harvard, $19.95

Pairing the lives of two Southern women Ida B. Wells, who fearlessly branded lynching a white tool of political terror against southern blacks, and Rebecca Latimer Felton, who urged white men to prove their manhood by lynching black men accused of raping white women. Southern Horrors provides a startling view into the Jim Crow South where the precarious and subordinate position of women linked black and white anti-rape activists together in fragile political alliances.

 

On Lynching, Ida B. Wells, introduction Patricia Hill Collins, Prometheus Books, 19.98

Reprints three famous pamphlets which document and denounce the lynching of African American men and women. – Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) began speaking out against lynching as the editor of a small newspaper for Blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, and continued her campaign in New York and Chicago. Here are three of her pamphlets: Southern Horrors (1892), A Red Record (1895), and Mob Rule in New Orleans (1900). They are introduced by Patricia Hill Collins (sociology and African American studies, U. of Cincinnati).

To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells by Mia Bay, Hill & Wang, $18.00

A profile of the civil rights pioneer traces her early life in Mississippi and Tennessee, her campaign for justice after being forced to give up her train seat in 1883, and her journalism work to fight lynching and racial injustice. Born to slaves in 1862, Ida B. Wells became a fearless anti-lynching crusader, women’s rights advocate, and journalist. Wells’ refusal to accept any compromise on racial inequality caused her to be labeled a “dangerous radical” in her day but made her a model for later civil rights activists as well as a powerful witness to the troubled racial politics of her era. In the richly illustrated To Tell the Truth Freely, the historian Mia Bay vividly captures Wells’s legacy and life, from her childhood in Mississippi to her early career in late-nineteenth-century Memphis and her later life in Progressive-era Chicago.

Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, Paula Giddings, Harper, $19.99

Heralded as a landmark achievement upon publication, Ida: A Sword Among Lions is a sweeping narrative about a country and a crusader embroiled in the struggle against lynching – a practice that imperiled not only the lives of black men and women, but also a nation based on law and riven by race. At the center of the national drama is Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). Born to slaves in Mississippi, Wells began her activist career by refusing to leave a first-class ladies’ car on a Memphis railway and rose to lead the nation’s first campaign against lynching. For Wells, the key to the rise in violence was embedded in attitudes not only about black men, but also about women and sexuality. Her independent perspective and percussive personality gained her encomiums as a hero, as well as aspersions on her character and threats of death. Exiled from the South by 1892, Wells subsequently took her campaign across the country and throughout the British Isles before she married and settled in Chicago. There she continued her activism as a journalist, suffragist, and independent candidate in the rough-and-tumble world of the Windy City’s politics. With meticulous research and vivid rendering of her subject, Giddings also provides compelling portraits of twentieth-century progressive luminaries, blacks and whites who worked with Wells during some of the most tumultuous periods in American history. In this groundbreaking work, Paula J. Giddings brings to life the irrepressible personality of Ida B. Wells and gives the visionary reformer her due.

 
DVD
53 minutes, 1989
Producer/Director: William Greaves

 

ABOUT THE FILM
Though virtually forgotten today, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a household name in Black America during much of her lifetime (1863-1931) and was considered the equal of her well-known African American contemporaries such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice documents the dramatic life and turbulent times of the pioneering African American journalist, activist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader of the post-Reconstruction period. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison reads selections from Wells’ memoirs and other writings in this winner of more than 20 film festival awards.

“One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.” - Ida B. Wells

Discussion Questions

Well’s Original Letters

ABOUT WILLIAM GREAVES

A director, producer, actor and writer, William Greaves’ films have won over seventy international film festival awards including an Emmy. He served as executive producer and co-host of the pioneering 1960s network television series Black Journal. His complete filmography reveals that he has been one of the most prolific and eloquent African American voices in the media over the past three decades. For more information visit www.williamgreaves.com.
CRITICAL COMMENT
“Tells of the brave life and works of the 19th century journalist, known among Black reporters as ‘the princess of the press,’ who led the nation’s first anti-lynching campaign.”
New York Times
“A powerful account of the life of one of the earliest heroes in the Civil Rights Movement…The historical record of her achievements remains relatively modest. This documentary goes a long way towards rectifying that egregious oversight.”
Chicago Sun-Times
“A keenly realized profile of Ida B. Wells, an African American who used her potent skills as writer and orator to fight racism and sexism.”
Los Angeles Times

No Comments »