Washington Informer
Entertainment Archive (198)
Mooz-lum, enjoyed a record-breaking opening weekend at the box office, due in large part to word-of-mouth advertising and sccial networks like Facebook and Twitter. / Courtesy photo.When writer-director Qasim Basir originally penned the script for the film, Mooz-lum, he hoped that it would serve as both a catharsis for American Muslims, and a vehicle for dialogue on America’s growing intolerance of Islam.
A coming of age tale of a young African-American male, Mooz-lum follows the character, Tariq (Evan Ross) as he navigates life on an American college campus. Torn between a strict Muslim upbringing and the peer pressure attached to college freedom, Tariq’s growing pains are further complicated by the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Based on Basir’s own upbringing within Islam, Mooz-lum, examines the many misconceptions Muslims face within mainstream culture, as well as the representation of Muslims with which he is most familiar.
Participants of the First Annual Washington Informer African American Heritage Tour posed for a picture in front of the White House in Northwest on Sat., Feb. 12. The tour started at THEARC in Southeast. From there, buses transported participants to the Frederick Douglass home in historic Anacostia and onto the White House and the Freedman’s Bank Northwest. The last stop along the tour was Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill in Southeast. Frederick Douglass, a Republican, frequented the White House when he served as an advisor to several presidents including Abraham Lincoln. / Photo by Khalid Naji-AllahHovering high above the Anacostia River , which zigzags south into the Potomac, and across the street from a quaint, chartreuse, Victorian-style home to the East, Douglass’s home, Cedar Hill, continues to attract D.C. sightseers east of the river.
The pale khaki-green, two-story, brick home is capped with a terracotta-colored tin roof and nestles up to a giant, waxy-leaved magnolia tree located on its eastside. A variety of other conifers and hardwood trees, including cedars, spatter the landscape around it. A redbrick staircase, which starts at street level, climbs up to a redbrick sidewalk on the top of the hill, and then proceeds to wrap around the entire house. Flower-embroidered, white-lace curtains hang in the windows.
Sam Sweet. /Courtesy Photo***Sweet will lead the burgeoning five year old arts center located in the heart of the historic H Street NE neighborhood***
The Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Board of Directors has selected Sam Sweet to be its new Executive Director. As Executive Director, Sweet will manage and coordinate programming for the Atlas’ performance venues, enhance the organization’s visibility, build its management team and emphasize the Atlas’ role as a vibrant collaborative arts center in Washington’s most dynamic neighborhood. Sweet is no stranger to the Washington arts scene having served as Managing
Director for Shakespeare Theatre and Signature Theatre for six and seven years, respectively. Having successfully led both organizations through critical transitions, he is an accomplished leader focused on helping non-profits thrive through the advancement of their missions. During the past year, Sweet has served as a management consultant to and Interim Executive Director of the Atlas, implementing strategies to strengthen its organizational capacity. Sweet’s selection comes as the result of a national five month search, and his tenure as Executive Director will begin immediately.
Andre Hayes addresses the contestants waiting to audition. / Photo by Roy LewisLifestyle guru, fashionista and entrepreneur [Barbara] B. Smith – acclaimed for her upscale B. Smith’s restaurants which feature “down-home cooking” – has created the “B. Discovered” competition in which 28 area singers, ages 21 and up, are vying for a $1,000 cash prize coupled with an opportunity to perform at various restaurants in the District and New York City -- including Smith’s Union Station and Manhattan establishments.
The entrance to Ground Zero Blues Club is "littered" with old sofas, signage, and marker scrawlings. Visitors are encouraged to "leave their mark" on the furniture, windows, and posts, both inside and out. / Photo by Thomas JohnstonThe first thing visitors to the Mississippi Delta notice is the heat. Thick, stifling, and at times unyielding, the heat, locals warn, can only be calmed by the cool of shade trees and a steady supply of sweet tea. As with the Delta’s generations’ old blues traditions, its heat is as much about climate as it is passion. In fact, it remains the most consistent element in the Mississippi blues, right next to cheating women and no count men. Where some like Big Momma Thornton and Robert Johnson married a coded language of sexual innuendo with references to hot and sultry nights, others made folklore of working fields of crop under a burning sun.
Black History Journal
February 26
1920 – Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) founds the first nationally organized celebration of Black American history then called Negro History Week which was first celebrated on this day in 1926. Woodson scheduled the week to coincide with the birthdays of Civil War President Abraham Lincoln and black abolitionist Frederick Douglas. However, in 1976, Negro History Week was expanded into the current day Black History Month.
February 27
1869 – Congress adopts the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution making it illegal for the U.S. government or any state to “deny or abridge” the right to vote “on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” This was one of the so-called “Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th & 15th) that ended slavery, made Blacks full U.S. citizens and guaranteed the right to vote.
February 28
1879 – A date considered by many to mark the beginning of the great “Exodus of 1879” when thousands of blacks begin fleeing racism, violence and economic exploitation in the South for new lives in the Midwest, especially Kansas. One of the most prominent organizers of the exodus was former Tennessee slave Benjamin “Pap” Singleton. An estimated 20,000 blacks take part in the exodus. They were driven in part by the Homestead Act, which promised free land. But by 1880, efforts had already begun to curtail the movement of blacks to the Midwest. In 1881, Pap Singleton was hauled before a Senate investigative committee looking into his role in the exodus.
March 1
1739 – The British government is forced to sign a peace treaty with the Jamaican Maroons. The Maroons were escaped slaves or put another way Africans who refused to be slaves. When the Spanish lost Jamaica to the British in 1665, they freed many of their slaves and called them Maroons or “wild.” The Maroons set up villages, were frequently joined by other escaped slaves and eventually began to wage a highly successful guerrilla war against the British. Under the terms of the peace treaty, the Maroons were designated a free people and given 1,500 acres of land.
March 2
1896 – Ethiopia defeats Italy at the battle of Adowa (also called Adwa). It was one of the few successful military victories of Africans over Europeans as the latter attempted to colonize and economically exploit the African continent. Lead by general was Ras Makonnen – father of the man who would become next Emperor Haile Selassie, the left 6,000 Italians and 10,000 Ethiopians dead. But the victory forced Europe to recognize Ethiopia as an independent and sovereign nation.
March 3
1968 – The infamous COINTELPRO memorandum is sent to FBI field offices around the country. COINTELPRO was a government counter intelligence program aimed at disrupting and destroying black, peace and anti-war groups. The March 3rd memorandum specifically called on FBI agents to infiltrate militant black organizations and employ various tactics to prevent them from growing individually or uniting with one another.
March 4
1922 – Comedic great Bert Williams dies of pneumonia in New York City at the age of 46. What Jackie Robinson did for blacks by breaking the color bar in major league baseball, Bert Williams did on the American stage. He was a comic, singer, writer and producer who spent10 of his 25 years in show business performing with the famous Ziegfield Follies. W.C. Fields once referred to him as “the funniest man I ever saw.” Williams was born Egbert Austin Williams in the Bahamas.
This Week in Black History is compiled by Robert Taylor. Get a free subscription to his weekly Black History Journal by writing him at Robert N. Taylor, P.O. Box 58097, Washington, D.C. 20037. Simply include $3.00 to cover postage.
February 26
1920 – Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) founds the first nationally organized celebration of Black American history then called Negro History Week which was first celebrated on this day in 1926. Woodson scheduled the week to coincide with the birthdays of Civil War President Abraham Lincoln and black abolitionist Frederick Douglas. However, in 1976, Negro History Week was expanded into the current day Black History Month.
February 27
1869 – Congress adopts the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution making it illegal for the U.S. government or any state to “deny or abridge” the right to vote “on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” This was one of the so-called “Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th & 15th) that ended slavery, made Blacks full U.S. citizens and guaranteed the right to vote.
February 28
1879 – A date considered by many to mark the beginning of the great “Exodus of 1879” when thousands of blacks begin fleeing racism, violence and economic exploitation in the South for new lives in the Midwest, especially Kansas. One of the most prominent organizers of the exodus was former Tennessee slave Benjamin “Pap” Singleton. An estimated 20,000 blacks take part in the exodus. They were driven in part by the Homestead Act, which promised free land. But by 1880, efforts had already begun to curtail the movement of blacks to the Midwest. In 1881, Pap Singleton was hauled before a Senate investigative committee looking into his role in the exodus.
March 1
1739 – The British government is forced to sign a peace treaty with the Jamaican Maroons. The Maroons were escaped slaves or put another way Africans who refused to be slaves. When the Spanish lost Jamaica to the British in 1665, they freed many of their slaves and called them Maroons or “wild.” The Maroons set up villages, were frequently joined by other escaped slaves and eventually began to wage a highly successful guerrilla war against the British. Under the terms of the peace treaty, the Maroons were designated a free people and given 1,500 acres of land.
March 2
1896 – Ethiopia defeats Italy at the battle of Adowa (also called Adwa). It was one of the few successful military victories of Africans over Europeans as the latter attempted to colonize and economically exploit the African continent. Lead by general was Ras Makonnen – father of the man who would become next Emperor Haile Selassie, the left 6,000 Italians and 10,000 Ethiopians dead. But the victory forced Europe to recognize Ethiopia as an independent and sovereign nation.
March 3
1968 – The infamous COINTELPRO memorandum is sent to FBI field offices around the country. COINTELPRO was a government counter intelligence program aimed at disrupting and destroying black, peace and anti-war groups. The March 3rd memorandum specifically called on FBI agents to infiltrate militant black organizations and employ various tactics to prevent them from growing individually or uniting with one another.
March 4
1922 – Comedic great Bert Williams dies of pneumonia in New York City at the age of 46. What Jackie Robinson did for blacks by breaking the color bar in major league baseball, Bert Williams did on the American stage. He was a comic, singer, writer and producer who spent10 of his 25 years in show business performing with the famous Ziegfield Follies. W.C. Fields once referred to him as “the funniest man I ever saw.” Williams was born Egbert Austin Williams in the Bahamas.
This Week in Black History is compiled by Robert Taylor. Get a free subscription to his weekly Black History Journal by writing him at Robert N. Taylor, P.O. Box 58097, Washington, D.C. 20037. Simply include $3.00 to cover postage.
The crowd danced to the samba beat and created works of art during the National Museum of African Art’s first ever “Africa Under-ground” / Photo by Roy LewisThe inaugural crowd of more than 900, came out to the National Museum of African Art’s first ever “Africa Underground” on Fri., Feb. 18 and danced the night away to samba. Although this was not the Smithsonian museum’s initial foray into the world of after-hours activities, preceded by the Sackler and Freer Galleries’ “Asia After Dark” and the Hirshorn Muse-um’s late night soirees, it was a first for the underground museum dedicated to the art of Africa and the Diaspora.
David E. Talbert, brings one of the most anticipated and highly acclaimed plays of the year "What My Husband Doesn’t Know"Williams is certainly no stranger to the stage, having delivered outstanding performances in the Broadway production of The Color Purple, earning rave reviews for her role as jazz singer Shug Avery.
Memorabilia from the Ben’s Chili Bowl collection on display at The George Washington University Gelman Library in Northwest. / Photo by William Atkins / The George Washington University.Students, scholars, administrators, and District insiders attended a gifting ceremony on Wed., Feb. 16, to celebrate the merging of two renowned Washington, D.C., institutions: Ben’s Chili Bowl and The George Washington University.
The event, held at The George Washington University’s Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, was attended by more than 200 people, including Virginia Ali and her three sons Haidar, Kamal, and Nizam—the widow and sons of the late Ben Ali, Ben’s Chili Bowl’s iconic founder.
Nathan and Noble Jolley, natives to Washington, D.C., perform twice in the Mansion at Strathmore, on March 2 and 23, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. / Courtesy PhotoNathan and Noble Jolley, natives to Washington, D.C., perform twice in the Mansion at Strathmore, on March 2 and 23, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. The jazz duo was inspired and influenced by their late father, jazz guitarist Noble Jolley, Sr. “The Jolley Brothers, Noble on keyboard and Nate on drums, play some of the District’s most original, self-assured and unpredictable bop” (Capital Bop). For more information or to purchase tickets, call (301) 581-5100 or visit www.strathmore.org.
Nate and Noble, Jr. will team up with fellow musicians Tim Green (saxophone), Christie Dashiell, (vocals) and Eric Wheeler (bass) for their performances at Strathmore, which will feature original pieces and jazz standards. At their March 2 performance, they will celebrate the release of their new CD Memoirs Between Brothers, of which CityPaper says “Noble Jolley brings the colors of the church, while his twin brother, drummer Nate, adds a level of sharp hip-hop groove." On March 23, they will perform the world premiere of a two-movement composition, commissioned by Strathmore.
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