Free family day at the Museum of the African Diaspora
Celebrate Juneteenth and Father’s Day
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—A free family day at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) this Sunday from 12 pm to 6 pm, offers visitors an opportunity to celebrate Juneteenth and Father’s Day in an enriching setting, thanks to the generosity of Lennar Urban.
“Lennar Urban is excited to support a fun and community-building event like Free Family Day. We’re proud to partner with such a national leader like the Museum of the African Diaspora in honor of Juneteenth and Father’s Day,” said Kofi Bonner, regional vice president of Lennar Urban.
Visitors to MoAD will have much to explore. They will be able to enjoy performances from the incredible Bay Area talent, the Marcus Shelby Trio. They’ll also listen to tales woven by storyteller Kirk Waller; learn the basics of how to conduct an oral history of a family or community member with Leah McGarrigle; and participate in a Free Write Family Poetry activity.
In the Celebration Circle visitors will be able to view African American Lives and Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the Wells Fargo Heritage Center will feature Juneteenth, a documentary on the historical celebration of emancipation.
“We are grateful to Lennar Urban for their support of MoAD and our Juneteenth and Father’s Day celebration,” said Grace C. Stanislaus, MoAD’s executive director. “Lennar Urban has a long history of providing this kind of sponsorship that supports bringing diverse audiences together for fun and enrichment.”
The Museum of the African Diaspora is located at 685 Mission Street (at Third) in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.moadsf.org or call (415) 358-7200.
Lil Wayne is down on drugs — for others.
For himself, well, it’s a different story.
The man who infamously told Katie Couric during a 2009 interview “I’m a gangsta, Miss Katie. I don’t take nothing from no one. I do what I want to do,” has been equally outspoken about his use of “sizzurp” or “purple drank,” a prescription cough syrup made with a combination of promethazine and codeine.
During the 40 years or so of the modern evolution of the Black Studies movement in America’s colleges and universities, we have made major progress in research, writing, teaching and authorship. We have also sometimes accepted the stories we’ve been too often told as true without critical examination. In fact, there is much to be said for providing people who have most often been taught and told relentlessly that they have no worthwhile history and contributions that they actually have much, much more than anyone knows.
One sustaining strength of Black America has always been African American culture. As Black American culture goes, so goes Black people. Unfortunately, Black culture is dying a slow, tortuous death currently. What happened to those very effective devices we once had to transmit our own cultural strength to our offspring? Even though most of us think we know what’s not Black culture, and we’re very quick to point it out, listen to all the stammering when someone directly asks, just what exactly is Black American culture, anyway? Here’s an answer:
Within most cultures, there are repeated patterns of behavior and character types that help to perpetuate those cultures. So it is with Black culture, which is at once a living crucible of the Black experience, in all of its finery, genius and foolishness. There is both exquisite beauty and profound ugliness in being Black in America and elsewhere, and that has been the case since our American origins.
OK, for those who read last week’s article and who stopped me in Albertson’s, or on campus, to ask when we were going to get something going on, in the aftermath of the MLK Day 2013 celebration.
Around Jan. 20, from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., the Council of Black Political Organizations (COBPO), KJLH’s Frontpage and, most likely, Our Weekly newspaper, will co-sponsor a California Town Hall on a Black American agenda.
