February was one day longer this year and filled with a myriad of events celebrating Blackness and Black History, ranging from artistic performances to lectures on the 14th Amendment. Look back on a month of celebration to learn more about the organizations, people and events uplifting Blackness year-round.
EX LIBRIS: Gregory Pardlo and Tina Cane
On Feb. 2, Gregory Pardlo, Tina Cane and community members came together to celebrate the release of Pardlo’s new poetry collection, “Spectral Evidence.” Pardlo read from the collection alongside Cane, who read from her most recent collection “Year of the Murder Hornet.” The event also included a conversation between the poets.
Pardlo has won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry, which touches on topics of race and class, American life, masculinity and identity. In Pardlo’s website, his book “Totem,” is described as poetry imbued with “stories of factory hours and picket lines from his father,” and sounds from “the bars, clubs, and on the radio.”
“Spectral Evidence” is Pardlo’s third poetry collection, featuring topics of devotion, art and the force of law. The collection also includes considerations of “pro-wrestler Owen Hart; Tituba, the only Black woman to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials; MOVE, the movement and militant separatist group famous for its violent stand-offs with the Philadelphia Police Department,” according to the book’s distributor.
Tina Cane, a recent poet laureate of Rhode Island, is the Founder/Director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI. Her collection “navigate(s) the uneasy terrain of the self amid an increasingly tumultuous and fragmented world,” according to a book distributor.
Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading
Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading — an organization which hopes to share and build on Langston Hughes’s legacy — hosted several events during February.
The organization’s signature event — the annual Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading — hosted its 29th reading on Feb. 4. The reading brings together artists and community members to share and celebrate the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.
This year’s reading centered on the theme of Hughes as a global poet. According to the organization’s website, Hughes’ “journeys further prove that his life and work can unite people of different races, backgrounds, professions and ages.” In this spirit, students from Achievement First Providence performed readings at the event.
The event has previously been described as a “labor of love” by April Brown, co-director of the Poetry Reading, The Herald previously reported. Others have emphasized the healing and community-building aspects of the event.
On Feb. 24, the Poetry Reading hosted an additional discussion on Black Women and Dance Studio Ownership in New England. Brown moderated the discussion with dance studio owners Dee Dee Handy Morris and Claude Michelle Oliveira.
Brown’s 2024 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture: Sherrilyn Ifill
Sherrilyn Ifill, the former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, delivered the University’s 2024 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on Feb. 15, The Herald previously reported. Ifill’s speech placed an emphasis on the history and legacy of the 14th Amendment. She has also founded the 14th Amendment Center at Howard University.
Ifill stressed the importance of civic participation and “implored the audience to meaningfully research and engage with politics at all levels of government.” Speaking on the US’s political polarization and the country's political future, she stated that “we have to be willing to take hold of power.” Her speech also referenced themes of love and justice.
The lecture additionally included a performance by Shades of Brown, an a cappella group at the University.
EXULTATION: An evening of uplift with the Mixed Magic Exult Choir
On Feb. 27 the Mixed Magic Exult Choir performed at the Providence Performing Arts Center, putting on a “musical program that range(d) in style from soul to jazz, from pop to gospel, from Bob Marley and Prince to Bob Dylan,” according to the program description.
The Exult Choir, formed by the Mixed Magic Theatre, aims “to preserve traditional gospel music and to explore and demonstrate its impact on music, human rights movements and cultures throughout the world,” the Theatre’s website reads. Their performance at the Providence Performing Arts Center was one of their major annual concerts.
In addition to its resident choir, The Mixed Magic Theatre serves as a venue for plays, dance and music concerts, also hosting a monthly performance series titled (RI)SE TO BLACK, which “showcases the talents of both emerging and established BIPOC talent in Rhode Island,” according to its website.
“First think diverse” — the creed of the Theatre — places a large emphasis on its place within the community, the website states. Its mission statement is “to build more literate and arts-active communities by presenting a diversity of ideas and images on stage, and use the theater and its related arts forms to tell great stories from America and around the world.”
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: ‘I Will Not Bend An Inch’
Luckily for readers, the RISD Museum exhibition “I Will Not Bend An Inch” will be on display until Summer 2024. Unveiled on Feb. 17, the exhibition centers on the work of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and features several wood-and-marble-made sculptures, as well as “wood friezes, watercolors and photographic presentations of archival documents and lost or destroyed sculptures,” according to the museum’s press release.
Black and Narragansett, Prophet was one of the first known women of color to graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. She later went on to co-found the arts program at Spelman College.
The exhibit places an emphasis on systemic racism in the art world and includes “excerpts from Prophet’s diary from Paris and the artist’s correspondence with African American historian and civil-rights advocate W. E. B. Du Bois,” according to the press release. The museum believes that these records provide “insight into how (Prophet) navigated the art world and sought to position her work.”
The exhibition is the “most comprehensive presentation and analysis of Prophet's work to date,” according to the press release.
Mikayla Kennedy is a Metro editor covering housing and transportation. They are a junior from New York City studying Political Science and Public Policy Economics.
