PRESERVING AND
CELEBRATING
HERITAGE
2018
WHEN SUGAR HILL WAS SWEET
OUR HISTORY CONTINUES IN HARLEM
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If Not Us, Then Who?
While We Are Still Here (WWSH) is a museum without walls. We hold curatorial
meetings with professional curators. We conduct research and consult with scholars
and other experts. We engage community residents, organizations, and institutions
to actively engage in the process of determining how Harlem’s history should be
documented, reflected, and presented in the future.
WWSH is a historic-preservation organization similar to those that can be found from
the Lower East Side of New York City to East L.A. We request access to individual’s
artifacts and ephemera—their personal archives—in order to identify rare information
and materials that enhance Harlem’s rich history.
We are engaged in media documentation and have produced a feature-length film, In
the Face of What We Remember: Oral Histories of 409 and 555 Edgecombe Avenue, which
premiered in April 2018 at Columbia University’s Miller Theater. Currently we are in
pre-production for a film about the oral history of the famed St. Nick’s Pub (see page 4),
which was recently destroyed and later demolished due to a fire.
Our mission helps to ensure that the post-gentrification residents and community
respect and honor the legacy of African-American achievement and its connection to
Harlem’s importance to world culture.
WWSH seeks to build a broad and diverse audience, by presenting high-quality
programs that are, generally, free and open to the public, including the Sugar Hill
Music Festival. WWSH also seeks sustainability and institutional longevity, and
we look to follow the example of impresario Voza Rivers, who has helped transform
Harlem Week into an internationally renowned celebration of Harlem, “The Black
Capital of the World;” and Melissa Walker, founder of Jazz House Kids (an artseducation
organization), who is also the executive producer of New Jersey’s Montclair
Jazz Festival.
WWSH encapsulates and highlights the varied aspects of Harlem’s history, especially
that which emanates from 409 and 555 Edgecombe Avenue. Our efforts have attracted
national media attention— Ebony Magazine, the New Yorker, the Amsterdam News, the
New York Times—as well as international attention in Milan, Italy.
As we honor the contributions of the people of Harlem—the everyday people, the
famous, and the infamous—those whose presence altered culture and style; inspired
intellectual discourse; and sparked social-justice activism, WWSH’s mission and
programming will continue to identify and bring these Harlem-based, culturally rich
narratives to the fore.
WWSH receives the support of
Columbia Community Service
and generous individuals!
Partnership for Parks
Cover photo, Regina Carter; page 1, Firey String Sistas! (Top row, L-R: Mala Waldron, Marlene Rice;
Bottom row, L-R; Nioka Workman, Melissa Slocum, Camille Gainer Jones.
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2018
When Sugar Hill Was Sweet
SEPTEMBER
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 3PM
2018 |
1
3rd Annual Sugar Hill Music Festival
(formerly Echoes of the Eras)
Regina Carter-Xavier Davis Duo
Sugar Hill Quartet with TC the 3rd
Firey String Sistas!
Uptown Brass Quintet
An afternoon of music, featuring artists of
international renown.
Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn
Edgecombe Avenue and 155th Street
Harlem, NY
(co-sponsor Jazz Foundation of America)
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2
| 2018
2018
When Sugar Hill Was Sweet
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 3PM
Reading and Book Signing with MaryLouise Patterson, MD
Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance
to the Red Scare and Beyond, MaryLouise Patterson and
Evelyn Louise Crawford, eds.
MaryLouise Patterson, a pediatrician in clinical practice, and Evelyn
Louise Crawford, a retired arts administrator and consultant, are the
daughters of Langston Hughes’s cherished friends Evelyn Graves
Crawford, Matt N. Crawford, Louise Thompson Patterson, and William
L. Patterson. Hughes was a frequent guest in the homes of the two
families and was like an uncle to Evelyn Louise and MaryLouise.
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2018 |
3
OCTOBER
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1PM
Reel Sisters Film Festival Harlem Kick-off
Celebrating Community and Self-Care!
A Collaboration Between Reel Sisters and
While We Are Still Here
This is the Harlem Kick-off of the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival
and Lecture Series. Join us for an afternoon of films produced, directed,
and written by women of color from across the globe! One of the films will
be a 15-minute cut of the feature-length In the Face of What We Remember:
Oral Histories of 409 and 555 Edgecombe Avenue. Families and students
are welcome! Films will celebrate community, self-care, and wellness. For
information, please visit reelsisters.org or call 212-865-2982.
Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival and Lecture Series makes history
this year by becoming the first Academy Qualifying Film Festival for
narrative shorts devoted to women of color!
Miller Theatre at Columbia University
116th Street and Broadway
Harlem, NY
Join Reel Sisters 21st Anniversary Celebration!
Harlem Kick off - October 6, 2018
Enjoy a provocative selection of 30+ films produced, directed
& written by women of color!
Miller Theater, Columbia University
Alamo Drafthose Cinema, Brooklyn (Oct. 20-21, 2018)
Tickets & Info:
www.reelsisters.org
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2018
When Sugar Hill Was Sweet
NOVEMBER
THURSDAYS, NOVEMBER 1 AND NOVEMBER 8
3PM (Oral Histories)
7:30PM (Music)
Videotaping the Official Oral History of St. Nick’s Pub
Featuring the
Sugar Hill Quartet
and a Jam Session
On March 22, 2018,
the famed Harlem
nightspot, St. Nick’s
Pub, burned down.
For decades, the
Sugar Hill Quartet
was the house band
for the Monday
night jam sessions.
While We Are Still
Here will be taping
the oral histories
of the members of
SHQ— Patience Higgins, Marcus Persiani, and David F. Gibson—as
well as Bill Saxton, who was also a Pub presence, and other musicians,
patrons, and some of the proprietors, for a film short that will stream
on the internet, beginning March 22, 2019—the one-year anniversary
of the accident.
The tapings take place at the historic Bill’s Place (owned by Bill Saxton
and his wife, Theda). It was the site of Billie Holiday’s first gig in New
York City.
If you would like to share your oral history of St. Nick’s Pub, please
visit wwsh.nyc to register, or call 929-266-3952.
Bill’s Place
148 West 133rd Street
Harlem, NY
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Mission
While We Are Still Here (WWSH) ensures that the “post-gentrification” community
of Harlem and beyond will honor and find a meaningful connection to the legacy
of African American achievement, and its paramount importance
to world culture.
Heritage in all its forms must be preserved, enhanced, and handed on to future
generations as a record of human experience and aspirations…
—The United Nations “Declaration on Cultural Diversity and Creativity.”
Founder and Executive Director
Karen D. Taylor
Board of Directors *
Yvonne Dennis Wakim, Author; Native American Rights Activist | Board Secretary
Marline Martin, Greene County Council on the Arts | Board Treasurer
Henry L. McCurtis, MD, Private Practitioner
Stephanie Renee Payne, Instructor, University of Southern California | Board President
Byron C. Saunders, Independent Consultant
Paulette J. Tabb, Educator, New York City Department of Education
Karen D. Taylor, ex-officio
Steering Committee Members *
Herb Boyd, Project “Scholar-Historian-In-Residence;” Professor, City University of
New York; Journalist, Book Author and Editor
Monica L. Gray, Conference and Event Planning Director, National Urban League
Stephen Robinson, MD, MPH
Cheryl Scott, MD, MPH
Judith Stafford, Educator (In Memoriam)
Board of Advisors *
Alexa Birdsong, Co-founder Jazz at Lincoln Center, Independent Concert Producer
Marie Dutton Brown, Literary Agent, Marie Brown Associates
Carmen Cruz, Curator
Jamal Joseph, Professor, Columbia University
Rosemari Mealy, Ph.D., Professor, City University of New York
Mark Naison, Ph.D., Professor, Fordham University
Vera E. Sims, Educator, New York City Department of Education; Board
Member, African Voices Magazine
Michael Thelwell, Professor Emeritus, Founding Chairman of the W.E.B. Du Bois
Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst College
* Institutions Listed for Affiliation Only
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