Columns:: Black History Month observance commemorates‘The Birth of African-American Culture’

since 12/15/98

Columns::February 11, 2002

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Campus News

Black History Month observance commemorates ‘The Birth of African-American Culture’

By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu

The theme for this year’s celebration of Black History Month at the University of Georgia is “Imagine: The Birth of African-

American Culture.”
Events and presentations are being sponsored and planned by several campus units and coordinated by the African-American Cultural Center, part of Minority Services and Programs.
Major highlights of the month are the visits of poet Nikki Giovanni and artist Willie Cole.
The students of the Black Theatrical Ensemble will mount a production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by award-winning playwright August Wilson. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was a legendary blues singer, sometimes called the mother of the blues.
Wilson’s play is set in 1927, in a run-down recording studio in Chicago. Waiting for Rainey to arrive for a recording session are her black musician sidemen, her white manager, and the white owner of the record company.
The play will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 14-16 in the Morton Theater in downtown Athens. Tickets are $8 ($5 for students), available in advance at the cashier’s window in the Tate Student Center.
The Brown Media Archives in the main library will be screening several documentaries dealing with black history from the Peabody Awards collection. The screenings are at 7 p.m. on Tuesday evenings in room B-2 of the main library.
The Feb. 12 screening deals with Medgar Evers, who was field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP from 1954 until he was assassinated in 1963.
The Feb. 19 documentary is called A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom. On Feb. 26, the showing will be August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama The Piano Lesson, in a video production starring Charles Dutton, Alfre Woodard, and Courtney B. Vance. Following the screening each week, the audience will have the chance to discuss the presentation.
Several other lectures, discussions and social events also are planned.

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