Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
PRESERVING AND<br />
CELEBRATING<br />
HERITAGE<br />
<strong>2018</strong><br />
WHEN SUGAR HILL WAS SWEET<br />
OUR HISTORY CONTINUES IN HARLEM<br />
<strong>2018</strong>_<strong>Booklet</strong>_R4.indd 1<br />
9/5/18 9:07 AM
If Not Us, Then Who?<br />
While We Are Still Here (WWSH) is a museum without walls. We hold curatorial<br />
meetings with professional curators. We conduct research and consult with scholars<br />
and other experts. We engage community residents, organizations, and institutions<br />
to actively engage in the process of determining how Harlem’s history should be<br />
documented, reflected, and presented in the future.<br />
WWSH is a historic-preservation organization similar to those that can be found from<br />
the Lower East Side of New York City to East L.A. We request access to individual’s<br />
artifacts and ephemera—their personal archives—in order to identify rare information<br />
and materials that enhance Harlem’s rich history.<br />
We are engaged in media documentation and have produced a feature-length film, In<br />
the Face of What We Remember: Oral Histories of 409 and 555 Edgecombe Avenue, which<br />
premiered in April <strong>2018</strong> at Columbia University’s Miller Theater. Currently we are in<br />
pre-production for a film about the oral history of the famed St. Nick’s Pub (see page 4),<br />
which was recently destroyed and later demolished due to a fire.<br />
Our mission helps to ensure that the post-gentrification residents and community<br />
respect and honor the legacy of African-American achievement and its connection to<br />
Harlem’s importance to world culture.<br />
WWSH seeks to build a broad and diverse audience, by presenting high-quality<br />
programs that are, generally, free and open to the public, including the Sugar Hill<br />
Music Festival. WWSH also seeks sustainability and institutional longevity, and<br />
we look to follow the example of impresario Voza Rivers, who has helped transform<br />
Harlem Week into an internationally renowned celebration of Harlem, “The Black<br />
Capital of the World;” and Melissa Walker, founder of Jazz House Kids (an artseducation<br />
organization), who is also the executive producer of New Jersey’s Montclair<br />
Jazz Festival.<br />
WWSH encapsulates and highlights the varied aspects of Harlem’s history, especially<br />
that which emanates from 409 and 555 Edgecombe Avenue. Our efforts have attracted<br />
national media attention— Ebony Magazine, the New Yorker, the Amsterdam News, the<br />
New York Times—as well as international attention in Milan, Italy.<br />
As we honor the contributions of the people of Harlem—the everyday people, the<br />
famous, and the infamous—those whose presence altered culture and style; inspired<br />
intellectual discourse; and sparked social-justice activism, WWSH’s mission and<br />
programming will continue to identify and bring these Harlem-based, culturally rich<br />
narratives to the fore.<br />
WWSH receives the support of<br />
Columbia Community Service<br />
and generous individuals!<br />
Partnership for Parks<br />
Cover photo, Regina Carter; page 1, Firey String Sistas! (Top row, L-R: Mala Waldron, Marlene Rice;<br />
Bottom row, L-R; Nioka Workman, Melissa Slocum, Camille Gainer Jones.<br />
<strong>2018</strong>_<strong>Booklet</strong>_R4.indd 2<br />
9/5/18 9:08 AM
<strong>2018</strong><br />
When Sugar Hill Was Sweet<br />
SEPTEMBER<br />
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 3PM<br />
<strong>2018</strong> |<br />
1<br />
3rd Annual Sugar Hill Music Festival<br />
(formerly Echoes of the Eras)<br />
Regina Carter-Xavier Davis Duo<br />
Sugar Hill Quartet with TC the 3rd<br />
Firey String Sistas!<br />
Uptown Brass Quintet<br />
An afternoon of music, featuring artists of<br />
international renown.<br />
Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn<br />
Edgecombe Avenue and 155th Street<br />
Harlem, NY<br />
(co-sponsor Jazz Foundation of America)<br />
<strong>2018</strong>_<strong>Booklet</strong>_R4.indd 1<br />
9/5/18 9:08 AM
2<br />
| <strong>2018</strong><br />
<strong>2018</strong><br />
When Sugar Hill Was Sweet<br />
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 3PM<br />
Reading and Book Signing with MaryLouise Patterson, MD<br />
Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance<br />
to the Red Scare and Beyond, MaryLouise Patterson and<br />
Evelyn Louise Crawford, eds.<br />
MaryLouise Patterson, a pediatrician in clinical practice, and Evelyn<br />
Louise Crawford, a retired arts administrator and consultant, are the<br />
daughters of Langston Hughes’s cherished friends Evelyn Graves<br />
Crawford, Matt N. Crawford, Louise Thompson Patterson, and William<br />
L. Patterson. Hughes was a frequent guest in the homes of the two<br />
families and was like an uncle to Evelyn Louise and MaryLouise.<br />
<strong>2018</strong>_<strong>Booklet</strong>_R4.indd 2<br />
9/5/18 9:09 AM
<strong>2018</strong> |<br />
3<br />
OCTOBER<br />
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1PM<br />
Reel Sisters Film Festival Harlem Kick-off<br />
Celebrating Community and Self-Care!<br />
A Collaboration Between Reel Sisters and<br />
While We Are Still Here<br />
This is the Harlem Kick-off of the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival<br />
and Lecture Series. Join us for an afternoon of films produced, directed,<br />
and written by women of color from across the globe! One of the films will<br />
be a 15-minute cut of the feature-length In the Face of What We Remember:<br />
Oral Histories of 409 and 555 Edgecombe Avenue. Families and students<br />
are welcome! Films will celebrate community, self-care, and wellness. For<br />
information, please visit reelsisters.org or call 212-865-2982.<br />
Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival and Lecture Series makes history<br />
this year by becoming the first Academy Qualifying Film Festival for<br />
narrative shorts devoted to women of color!<br />
Miller Theatre at Columbia University<br />
116th Street and Broadway<br />
Harlem, NY<br />
Join Reel Sisters 21st Anniversary Celebration!<br />
Harlem Kick off - October 6, <strong>2018</strong><br />
Enjoy a provocative selection of 30+ films produced, directed<br />
& written by women of color!<br />
Miller Theater, Columbia University<br />
Alamo Drafthose Cinema, Brooklyn (Oct. 20-21, <strong>2018</strong>)<br />
Tickets & Info:<br />
www.reelsisters.org<br />
<strong>2018</strong>_<strong>Booklet</strong>_R4.indd 3<br />
9/5/18 9:10 AM
<strong>2018</strong><br />
When Sugar Hill Was Sweet<br />
NOVEMBER<br />
THURSDAYS, NOVEMBER 1 AND NOVEMBER 8<br />
3PM (Oral Histories)<br />
7:30PM (Music)<br />
Videotaping the Official Oral History of St. Nick’s Pub<br />
Featuring the<br />
Sugar Hill Quartet<br />
and a Jam Session<br />
On March 22, <strong>2018</strong>,<br />
the famed Harlem<br />
nightspot, St. Nick’s<br />
Pub, burned down.<br />
For decades, the<br />
Sugar Hill Quartet<br />
was the house band<br />
for the Monday<br />
night jam sessions.<br />
While We Are Still<br />
Here will be taping<br />
the oral histories<br />
of the members of<br />
SHQ— Patience Higgins, Marcus Persiani, and David F. Gibson—as<br />
well as Bill Saxton, who was also a Pub presence, and other musicians,<br />
patrons, and some of the proprietors, for a film short that will stream<br />
on the internet, beginning March 22, 2019—the one-year anniversary<br />
of the accident.<br />
The tapings take place at the historic Bill’s Place (owned by Bill Saxton<br />
and his wife, Theda). It was the site of Billie Holiday’s first gig in New<br />
York City.<br />
If you would like to share your oral history of St. Nick’s Pub, please<br />
visit wwsh.nyc to register, or call 929-266-3952.<br />
Bill’s Place<br />
148 West 133rd Street<br />
Harlem, NY<br />
<strong>2018</strong>_<strong>Booklet</strong>_R4.indd 4<br />
9/5/18 9:10 AM
Mission<br />
While We Are Still Here (WWSH) ensures that the “post-gentrification” community<br />
of Harlem and beyond will honor and find a meaningful connection to the legacy<br />
of African American achievement, and its paramount importance<br />
to world culture.<br />
Heritage in all its forms must be preserved, enhanced, and handed on to future<br />
generations as a record of human experience and aspirations…<br />
—The United Nations “Declaration on Cultural Diversity and Creativity.”<br />
Founder and Executive Director<br />
Karen D. Taylor<br />
Board of Directors *<br />
Yvonne Dennis Wakim, Author; Native American Rights Activist | Board Secretary<br />
Marline Martin, Greene County Council on the Arts | Board Treasurer<br />
Henry L. McCurtis, MD, Private Practitioner<br />
Stephanie Renee Payne, Instructor, University of Southern California | Board President<br />
Byron C. Saunders, Independent Consultant<br />
Paulette J. Tabb, Educator, New York City Department of Education<br />
Karen D. Taylor, ex-officio<br />
Steering Committee Members *<br />
Herb Boyd, Project “Scholar-Historian-In-Residence;” Professor, City University of<br />
New York; Journalist, Book Author and Editor<br />
Monica L. Gray, Conference and Event Planning Director, National Urban League<br />
Stephen Robinson, MD, MPH<br />
Cheryl Scott, MD, MPH<br />
Judith Stafford, Educator (In Memoriam)<br />
Board of Advisors *<br />
Alexa Birdsong, Co-founder Jazz at Lincoln Center, Independent Concert Producer<br />
Marie Dutton Brown, Literary Agent, Marie Brown Associates<br />
Carmen Cruz, Curator<br />
Jamal Joseph, Professor, Columbia University<br />
Rosemari Mealy, Ph.D., Professor, City University of New York<br />
Mark Naison, Ph.D., Professor, Fordham University<br />
Vera E. Sims, Educator, New York City Department of Education; Board<br />
Member, African Voices Magazine<br />
Michael Thelwell, Professor Emeritus, Founding Chairman of the W.E.B. Du Bois<br />
Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts,<br />
Amherst College<br />
* Institutions Listed for Affiliation Only<br />
<strong>2018</strong>_<strong>Booklet</strong>_R4.indd 5<br />
9/5/18 9:11 AM
<strong>2018</strong>_<strong>Booklet</strong>_R4.indd 6<br />
9/5/18 9:11 AM