In Honor of Black History Month

February 1, 2025

In honor of Black History Month I would like to share a few things.

Books:

Manchild in the Promised Land Cover by Claude Brown

Manchild in the Promised Land Cover by Claude Brown

You know that feeling, when you pick up a book and you just can’t put it down. Maybe you read it all through the night until your eyes were bloodshot. Maybe you were at work and found yourself sneaking off to the restroom unable to pull yourself away from the pages. I remember the first time this happen to me. The book was written by Claude Brown. The title was Manchild in the Promised Land. It was an autobiography about a juvenile delinquent growing up in NYC. I remember being transported into the lives of young boys and the hardships of poverty. A google search describes it as a coming of age during the 1940s and 1950s in Harlem.

Rather than having pages forced on me as the United States school system likes to do, I found this book in junior high when, for the first time, we were allowed to choose something we wanted to read. Unfortunately, it is a book today that would be pulled off the shelves in some states as it is a documented history of a black mans life of poverty, violence and god forbid depicts a scene indulging in teenage masturbation.

I can’t believe America is going back to a time akin to the movie Footloose where parents were burning books about life; sex, race, culture, history, struggle and activism. No one can erase history. This month is a reminder to honor our history and educate ourselves because we have that right.

ART:

Hail Mary mosaics for Black Lives Matter

Hail Mary mosaics for Black Lives Matter on display at Studio Place Arts in Barre, Vermont.

Mary Tapogna, of Hail Mary mosaics in Lyndonville, has a Black Lives Matter Portrait Exhibit at @studioplacearts in Barre Vt. It runs thru to March 1st, and there is an artist reception on Feb 1st 4:00-5:30. You can read all about it in Seven Days, they said “The Lyndonville artist presents 10 memorial mosaics honoring Black people killed by police in “Black Lives Matter — A Portrait Series.”

MOVIES:

This year, 2025, our local Catamount Arts film center is celebrating Black History Month by showing a series of FREE films.

Fences is playing Sunday February 2, 2025 at 2pm. The film is directed by and stars Denzel Washington. It takes place in Pittsburgh in the 1950’s and is a drama about family tensions as an African American man tries to provide for his family. It is based on the Puliter Prize-winning 1985 play written by August Wilson. The play first premiered at the Yale Repertory Theater.

42 is Playing Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 6pm. It is a film about Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball in America.

On Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 6pm they will feature Glory, a Civil War film about the first all-Black unit, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, who fought for American freedom. This historical tribute features Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman.

On Wednesday February 26th at 6pm Panther will be playing. A historic depiction of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960’s, a movement that fought for civil rights in America.

The Wednesday night film series is hosted by guest curator Robert Farlice who will host a discussion after each screening: That’s every film except for “Fences”. Form more information about the movie series visit https://www.catamountarts.org/film/

HISTORY:

From Penny Patch as a source of history and inspiration for all of us.

SNCC LEGACY PROJECT (SLP)

SNCC LEGACY PROJECT (SLP)

February 1, 2025                        Contact: info@sncclegacyproject.org

SNCC LEGACY PROJECT STATEMENT ON THE 65th ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIT-IN MOVEMENT, FEBRUARY 1, 2025

 On this day, 65 years ago, February 1, 1960, the sit-in movement began, which led to the greatest civil rights movement in our country’s history. We, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Legacy Project (SLP), are the inheritors of that movement and we are holding our Board of Directors meeting on this day in Washington, DC.

We are alarmed. Perhaps we are the best qualified to be alarmed. We organized and fought for civil rights in some of the most violently dangerous areas of the Black Belt South. Yet we live today in more dangerous times than we imagined our future would be 60-some-odd years ago.

The SLP was formed in 2010 on the 50th anniversary of the founding of SNCC in April 1960. Most of our lives have been spent in struggle for a better life for people of all races, ethnicities, religions, genders, and incomes here in the United States.

We are responding in this statement to those who want to know more than is covered (or not covered) in the civil rights literature. One of our primary purposes is to document the work and worldview of SNCC veterans and to share that knowledge with young people. We continue to be there for younger generations of organizers, just as older organizers were there for us, when we risked our lives working together in the 1960s. That is our reason for being. We think that there are lessons in what we struggled for, as well as what we struggled against, that are necessary to fully understand today.

Our own experiences as Civil Rights Movement veterans leave us without illusions about the capacity of tyranny to take root. Today we see a national government taking shape that is reminiscent of the white supremacist Citizens Councils in Mississippi and throughout the South. And we remember that their viciousness was not only directed at civil rights activists and organizers, but at all people who criticized or stood in dissent of their practices and programs.

Democracy is under serious assault with lies and disinformation leading the attack. The teaching of our nation’s history and our movement — and the critical issues that our movement addressed — is being distorted or outright banned. And those who teach these truths are, themselves, under attack, as are librarians who guide our children to books that will enrich their lives. Civil rights and civil liberties, ranging from the voting rights we so vigorously fought for to freedom of speech and association, are being challenged by anti-democratic oligarchies. Official state violence has been increasing as has violent intimidation of those who oppose the powerful. The insidious influence of billionaires grows, as does the gap between the haves and the have-nots. In this land of enormous wealth, the poor are getting poorer.

We are no longer young people just starting out in life. Today, with greater intensity we worry about what the future may hold for our children and grandchildren. We are angry as we see, each day, that the freedoms we fought for and have come to expect are under assault at every level.

Thus, we are compelled to speak; to ring an alarm bell if you will. After all, for all that we draw on from our past and carry with us today, we do not live in the past but for the future. It is what we have always done.

We will continue to work so that we do not lose the basic American rights we SNCC veterans – and so many others — fought so hard and long for.

For more information on the SNCC Legacy Project, visit www.sncclegacyproject.org.

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DONATE TO THE SNCC LEGACY PROJECT

 

SNCC Legacy Project | www.sncclegacyproject.org info@sncclegacyproject.org | Washington, DC 00000 US

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