A high school spoken word club changed students’ lives, and now you can read their poems. Oak Park and River Forest High School’s Peter Khan created an after-school spoken word club. For over 20 years, the club has provided a space for students to engage in storytelling. “Respect the Mic” is an anthology featuring 76 honest and powerful poems by the clubs’ students and alumni.
Read more here: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1080146117/respect-the-mic-book
The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York has a new exhibition called “Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen.” The exhibit looks at the technology of deepfakes and how they’re used to populate viewers.
Deepfakes are deceptive videos created using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The centerpiece of the exhibit is the video ‘In Event of Mood Disaster’ a six-minute film produced by the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality. It’s set in a 1960s styled living room and the 1969 launch of Apollo 11 is played the program cuts to Richard Nixon saying a line from the never-used address written by speechwriter William Safire in case the Apollo 11 team did not return from their mission.
Original post by Jan Recker/Smithsonian Magazine
Read more here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-deepfake-exhibition-shows-how-convincing-the-new-technology-can-be-180979619/
Elizabeth Meaders collects thousands of Black History Artifacts for over 70 years. In an attempt to document the full history of Black Americans in the U.S., Meaders has gathered around 50,000 objects.
Read more here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-a-schoolteacher-spent-70-years-collecting-thousands-of-black-history-artifacts-180979602/
Scientists have reason to believe that ostrich eggshells carved into beads in Africa 50,000 years ago might have been part of humans’ first social network.
Researchers examined around 1,500 ancient beads excavated from 31 sites across eastern and southern sections of Africa and found artifacts were nearly identical in shape, size, and style.
The findings identified that the oldest beads came from East Africa and spread to South Africa. Possibly a result of seeing someone with the beads and coping with the design when they got to their destination.
Bead wearing in ancient times was a way to express identity and define relationships. Throughout the years, it became more popular and the relation to meaningfulness still exists, for example, wedding rings may display relationship status.
Original post by David Kindy/Smithsonian Magazine
Read more here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/first-social-network-might-have-involved-beads-carved-from-ostrich-eggshells-180979542/
Over 20 years ago, an accountant named Jonnet Solomon was driving through Pittsburgh when she came across an abandoned home. After stopping to take a closer look at the home, she discovered a historical plaque outside.
Solomon decided to research the house in Homewood, where it is located, but she did not get very far. The locals knew nothing about the house, so in 2000 she purchased it to preserve it and eventually share its history.
The house was home to the National Negro Opera Company, founded in 1941 by Mary Cardwell Dawson. In the 1920s, a wealthy black businessman named William A. “Woogie” Harris owned the property. Even though he did not live in the house, he wanted it to be a space where Black Americans could live, gather, and stay.
Mary Cardwell Dawson was a classically trained opera singer who utilized the home. She successfully ran a music school and taught lessons from Harris’ home. Dawson rented the third floor of the house, which would become the headquarters for the National Negro Opera Company.
Despite the community not supporting the preservation of the home in 2020, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the house one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. In 2021 multiple foundations and individual donors awarded the house with grants, playing a significant role in the progress of the house’s restoration.
Original post by Tim O’Donnell/National Trust for Historic Preservation
Read more here: https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-fight-to-save-the-national-negro-opera-company-house#.YgwLK-7MIq0
Ludacris Partners with his eldest daughter, Karma Bridges, to produce an animated series on Netflix. The show was inspired by Karma herself and will be called Karma’s World and is expected to release soon. Karma’s World is a coming-of-age story that will follow the life of 10-year-old Karma Grant, an aspiring musical artist who wants to change the world with her music.
Read more here: https://www.blacknews.com/news/ludacris-partners-daughter-produce-animated-netflix-series-young-black-girls/
Hesperia Branch Library in California hosted its 4th annual African American Read-In on Feb 7th. This read-in featured the sharing of literary contributions from African Americans. This event highlighted “Black voices, current and classic” by having participants read 3-to-5-minute poems, passages, or condensed biographies.
Read more here: https://news.yahoo.com/black-history-month-local-writers-193017991.html
The Walker River Paiute Tribe of Nevada was awarded a $1 million grant for a nutrition center. A community store and food pantry have been operating out of the tribe’s technology center for the past two years.
The community food center will provide nutrition and wellness programs. The grant awarded is a part of a new round of funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Food access for Nevada tribes was greatly impacted by store shortages and supply chain disruptions, during the pandemic.
Original post by: Jeniffer Soils/Nevada Current
Read more here:
https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/tribe-receives-funding-for-nutrition-center
“Wicked” is a Broadway musical based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and a book by Winne Holzman. “Wicked” has been a blockbuster since its opening at Gershwin Theatre in 2003. The story is inspired by “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” but instead of focusing on the main character of Oz, Dorothy, “Wicked” follows the story of an unlikely friendship between the misunderstood witch Elphaba and the popular Glinda.
In 2019 Brittney Johnson was the first woman of color to play Glinda in the production of “Wicked” as an understudy. Now she has made history again, taking over full-time as the first Black leading lady of the show, she started this position on Feb. 14th.
Johnson expressed her excitement for her new role, “I’m really excited for people to be able to see someone who looks like them on stage, wearing the crown.”
Original post by: Donna M. Owens/NBC News
Read more here: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/meet-brittney-johnson-broadways-first-black-glinda-rcna15766
523 acres of redwood forest have been returned to a group of Native American tribes in California. According to a statement from Save the Redwoods League, the ancestors of the tribes were involuntarily removed from the land generations ago.
The land will be renamed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ, which means “Fish Run Place” in the Sinkyone language. The Sinkyone people lived on the land in California for thousands of years, traveling, hunting, and fishing throughout their territory before being removed in the 1800s.
Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ is in Mendocino County, within the North Cost area of the state.
Original post by Margaret Osborne/Smithsonian Magazine
Read more here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/more-than-500-acres-of-redwood-forest-returned-to-indigenous-tribes-180979505/