Black History Month Symposium 2016
Thesis student Andrew Schlag attended the symposium that closed New College’s Black History Month programming. Here’s his rundown of panels, performances and a talk from acclaimed writer bell hooks.
The New College and Sarasota communities filled the seats of College Hall’s Music Room on Saturday to take part in the “New Schools of Black Thought” symposium, the final event of Black History Month 2016.
The theme of this month’s program was “Black Constructions: Alternative Modes of Blackness Through Time,” which “sought to celebrate and discuss the diversity of black identities and experiences across time, region, gender, sexuality, and class.”
The symposium consisted of a live performance by poet/sound artist/activist Moor Mother Goddess (Camae Ayewa), two panels (“Black Youth Matter” and “Newtown: Past, Present, and Future”), and a keynote address by famed black feminist scholar and critic bell hooks.
A keynote address typically opens a symposium, introducing the themes of the event. However, it felt appropriate to have bell hooks retrospectively open up and prospectively close down the symposium with her address at the end of the night.
In many ways the symposium brought out the presentness of the past, as a way to raise awareness about past and current injustices, to prod viewers into becoming better activists, and to start a process of healing.
The visceral readings of Moor Mother Goddess profoundly embodied that, bringing the past (in the form of recorded samples and historical references) into the immediate present through the transformative moment of performance.
In the panel on Sarasota’s Newtown community, Sarasota Mayor Willie Shaw recalled how New College students aided with a 1969 boycott of the city’s public school system, when the school board tried to close two historically black schools that had been founded in 1925. New College students served as volunteer teachers at “freedom schools” that boycotters attended, until the school board reversed its decision. Mayor Shaw said he hopes New College students will continue to build relationships with Newtown and other Sarasota communities.
As bell hooks took the podium, Black History Month Committee student member Paula Cooper said she was most interested to hear what hooks would say “about healing in the community.” hooks spoke with a vulnerable openness about self-love as a political force, as a radical practice for people of color in a white-dominated culture.
“Domination,” said hooks, “is antithetical to the self,” a form of self-betrayal. Healing begins with the individual, loving and loved by a community. This message deeply resonated with the audience, as the Q&A section was filled with theoretical and practical questions about realizing self-love.
hooks opened her closing keystone address by remarking on the drastic improvement in this year’s Black History Month programming from years past. Such an event is not the inevitable outcome of progress, but the product of great dedication and brilliance from the students and faculty of the Black History Month committee: Donovan Brown, Paula Cooper, Snouasha Glausd, Prof. Brendan Goff, Giulia Heyward, Miles Iton, Paul Loriston, Nasib McIntosh, Raina Nelson, Briana Nieves, Wilmarie Rios-Jaime, and Prof. Queen Meccasia Zabriskie.