Black History Month Celebrations Kick Off In LA With The Kinsey Collection!

'What You Didn't Learn In High School' Comes To The Ebony!

On Saturday February 5th at 8pm, join us for a spectacular Southern California evening of inspiration as world renowned art collectors and philanthropists Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, along with their special guests, take you through the African American experience in a unique and engaging way.

The Kinsey's "What You Didn't Learn In High School History" will include performances by talented actress Cassandra Freeman (The Inside Man) and Danny "Coco" Brown, followed by a scrumptious champagne and dessert reception immediately after this 2nd Annual Los Angeles cultural gathering.

If you missed attending last year, please take a peak at the 2010 photos now on Facebook that were taken to see that this is no ordinary celebration.

Tickets are going fast so get your now at the Ebony Repertory Theater's Website.

See you there! And make sure you visit The Kinsey Collection, currently on display at The Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC.

HBO Series 'Treme' Takes Us Inside The World of Black Jazz And Culture In A Post-Katrina New Orleans

America I AM Exhibit Makes The Case About The Importance of Black History And Culture

By Sandy Banks (LA Times)

An exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles marks nearly 500 years of African American contributions to the U.S.

My visit to the California Science Center's black history exhibit this week was intended as rainy day relief; an emotional lift and respite for me from those relentless images of Haitian grief.

I hauled my college daughter along because it seemed a fitting way to celebrate the holiday honoring Martin Luther King. She had just wrapped up a freshman "ethnic studies" course where the historical narrative seemed to be WASPs against the rest of us.

It reminded me that history depends on who's doing the telling. When I was her age, people of color were asterisks, not narrators. Tomorrow's version will depend on today's storytellers.

This exhibit -- "American I AM: The African American Imprint" -- leaves no doubt about its vision: to "celebrate nearly 500 years of African American contributions to the U.S."

So I wasn't surprised by the visitors wending their way through the gallery:

The trio of elderly black women, trading recollections before a display of Jim Crow-era "White Ladies" and "Colored Women" markers. The teenagers in hip-hop gear crowding around a glass case featuring Tupac Shakur's handwritten lyrics. A family of five from Inglewood, wearing designer jeans and Barack Obama T-shirts.

I noticed the slight, bespectacled white man who studied the giant slave trade diagram for 20 minutes before moving on. The silver-haired woman talking in Spanish to her bored young grandson about Rosa Parks. The young Asian woman in a UC Davis hoodie, who listened dutifully at every exhibit to the narrated monologue on her rented headset.

And the pretty blond woman explaining the horrors of the Middle Passage -- the torturous voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic -- to her wide-eyed, auburn-haired daughter.

In Los Angeles, at least, American WE ARE ALL, it seems.

::

The exhibit, created by broadcaster Tavis Smiley, is on its third stop in a 10-city, four-year tour. It opened in Exposition Park in October and runs through April. On Monday, the day I visited, more than 700 people bought tickets to see it.

It has gotten off to a slow start in Los Angeles, where the black population is not as concentrated or politically active as the cities of its previous stops, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

"The challenge here is we crave entertainment . . . but we have a problem appreciating culture," Smiley said.

But the upside of Los Angeles, he told me, is the diversity it offers. "L.A. is truly a microcosm of the world. So there's no better place to introduce Americans to each other."

Field trips from local schools come during the week, while weekend visitors tend to be families, church groups and history buffs, said Tamika Lamison, who coordinates the exhibit's docents.

The journey begins with an explanation of slavery -- complete with artifacts like a slave ship manifest and ancient shackles and chains.

The docents keep a box of tissues on hand, "because some people get pretty worked up about it," Lamison said. "You look at these things, and you can imagine the pain."

"It's not just black people," she said. "The little children are bothered by it. . . . They don't understand, how could people be so mean. And we get a very visceral reaction from Jewish people. They feel a connection to us because of their history; of what's been done to their people."

I understood what she meant as I watched my own daughter wrestling with a new awareness of things she's already learned in school.

The slave trade looks different when, instead of reading a textbook about the Civil War or the importance of the cotton gin, you are staring at a life-size image of Africans shackled and stacked like cordwood on a slave ship.

::

The exhibition starts on a somber note, but it ends with a triumphal tone, chronicling the influence of black culture on this country's politics and pulpits, stages and sports.

Still, it was sobering to me to watch the young people in the gallery struggling to absorb what they heard and saw.

How does a young girl reconcile the promise of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, on exhibit in one glass case, with the receipt in another from the 1776 sale of slaves, $100 for a Negro woman and her child? I understand those parents who -- like me -- try to tie their children to our history, even though we cannot know what images they will remember in this sweep from slavery to the presidency.

The snapshot I choose from my exhibit visit is quintessential Los Angeles:

A rambunctious little boy named Josh, brown curls bouncing as he mimics Michael Jackson.

His African American father leaning against the wall, absently fiddling with his iPhone.

And his young, blond mother explaining to his brown-skinned sister why Rosa Parks refused to stand and Martin Luther King was behind bars.

sandy.banks@latimes.com

Boys Choir of Harlem Silenced!

For the audiences that marveled at the Boys Choir of Harlem, it was an additional wonder that the young performers with world-class voices had emerged from some of the most difficult neighborhoods of New York. But this year, the boys are nowhere to be found.

Last week, Terrance Wright, a 39-year-old choir alumnus, picked up a microphone in front of the altar of Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church in Harlem, the choir’s last home, and delivered news that surprised few people but saddened many.

“Tell the people. Let it be known,” Mr. Wright said, glistening and exhausted after leading a Christmas concert by former singers in the choir. “There is no Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem.”



The choir’s last official performance was in 2007, around the time of the death of its founder, Walter J. Turnbull. But no one ever announced that it was gone. Board members and alumni had hoped to revive it, but they acknowledged last week that they had not had any success.

For a famous organization that politicians had vowed would outlive its founder, it had a quiet end. Many of the choir’s materials, like copies of handwritten scores and its trademark burgundy blazers, now sit in black garbage bags and open boxes in the church’s damp dirt-floor basement, amid overturned tables and sacks of plaster of Paris.

Led by Dr. Turnbull, who started the group in 1968, the choir sang at the White House for nearly every president since Lyndon B. Johnson, and it was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Bill Clinton. But it did not survive long enough to perform for the country’s first black president.

The choir’s demise as a functional organization was a result of many factors, but everyone agrees it was set in motion by a single episode...

The story continues here...

Museum Officials, Business Partners, Even Florida Governor Charlie Crist Is Pulling Out All The Stops For Black Art Exhibit

The Sunshine State has spared no effort to promote The Kinsey Collection, what many are claiming will be the most remarkable art and historic exhibit yet in tracing the African-American experience for Tallahassee residents. People are already feeling the impact.

Florida A&M University grads Bernard and Shirley Kinsey still consider Tallahassee a second home, and for six months "The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey" will have residence at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science. The exhibit officially opens to the public Friday and will remain here until March 21, 2010.

"I will tell you that we are projecting stronger admissions for the Brogan Museum than ever before," said Chucha Barber, the Brogan's CEO. "We have generated significant sponsorship for this exhibit, even more so than we had for the blockbuster Our Body — The Universe Within."

The list of corporate partners is a business Who's Who: Visit Florida, The Walt Disney Co., Target Stores, Progress Energy, State Farm, Edison Electric, the Anheuser Busch Foundation and AT&T, among others.

Local partner A.M.W.A.T. Moving & Storage volunteered to truck the exhibit here from Los Angeles and will take it to Washington, D.C., for its next venue, the Smithsonian Institution.

Barber said the biggest outreach is a cooperative effort with tourism marketer Visit Florida and American Express, which will promote the exhibit to more than 7.4 million people through the company's communications with its cardholders.

In Florida, the Governor's Office will join in marketing the exhibit with emphasis on February, Black History Month, she said.

Besides Los Angeles, the Kinsey Collection has been on display in Cincinnati, Chicago and in Bernard Kinsey's hometown of West Palm Beach, where it was housed at the Norton Museum of Art.

"We have had about 200,000 people see the collection, 12 to 15 million people have seen it on television, and about 2-plus million will see it at the Smithsonian," Bernard Kinsey said. "But what we're trying to do is a little different."

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