Mixed Race Studies

Chi-chi Nwanoku: A classical legacy and an African heritage

Music Africa Magazine
2016-06-16

Ed Keazor

A short biography of Chi-chi Nwanoku MBE, world-renowned classical baroque bassist and Professor of Music, covering her life, influences and deep connections to her African roots.

Dr Michael Nwanoku adjusted himself in his seat as the next announcement was about to be made. He and his wife Margaret had looked forward to this day for several weeks and he had made the point of wearing his full Igbo Chief’s regalia, complete with the “Ozo” Cap and Coral beads. After all it was not every day one visited Buckingham Palace, neither was it every day that one witnessed one’s daughter receiving the award of a national honour from Queen Elizabeth II herself. His daughter, through sheer talent and hard work, had conquered years of adversity and some might say, prejudice to emerge as one of Britain’s finest Classical Musicians and academics. Almost in the same way, he and his Irish wife had conquered racism and ignorance in the course of their long and happy marriage. Dr and Mrs Nwanoku had too many good reasons to be proud of their eldest daughter, the talented Chi-chi Nwanoku, now Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) as she received her award from the Queen.

Chinyere (Chi-chi) Adah Nwanoku, was born in Fulham, London, in 1956 to Michael Nwanoku and the former Margaret Ivey. Her parents had met at a chance encounter at a dance in London, in 1955 and were inseparable from then on and they got married shortly afterwards. The young couple faced prejudice on account of their Interracial relationship at the time, recalling a period in Britain, where signs on Houses, advertising lodging vacancies, would boldly state, “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”. The couple humorously recalled thanking God they didn’t have a dog (since they were both black and Irish)…

Read the entire article here.

Africa Writes Returns to London

London Live
2016-07-01

Reya El-Salahi, Presenter

The UK’s biggest festival celebrating contemporary African literature returns to the capital today. The fifth annual Africa Writes event features award-winning authors, book launches and panel discussions at The British Library. Sheila Ruiz from the Royal African Society says the event aims to make African literature more mainstream while promoting cross-cultural understanding in London.

Africa Writes festival runs from Friday 1st – Sunday 3rd July 2016 at the British Library. For full listings visit: africawrites.org.

Africans in Medieval & Renaissance Art: Duke Alessandro de’ Medici

Victoria and Albert Museum
London, England, United Kingdom

Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, after Jacopo da Pontormo, Florence, Italy, about 1550. Museum no. CAI.171. Ionides Bequest

Both of the objects highlighted here feature Alessandro de’ Medici (1511-37), the first Duke of Florence. It is thought that Alessandro’s mother was a Moorish slave.

The Medici, an Italian family of merchants, bankers, rulers, patrons and collectors, dominated the political and cultural life of Florence from the 15th century to the mid 18th century. They were expelled from Florence in 1494-1512 and 1527-30. In 1530, after a long and bitter siege, the army of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V conquered the city and backed the installment of Alessandro de’ Medici as the first Duke of Florence. Alessandro’s reign ended in 1537, when he was assassinated by his cousin and rival Lorenzino de’ Medici. As he had no children with his wife (Margaret of Austria, illegitimate daughter of the emperor Charles V), and his illegitimate son Giulio was only four years old, Alessandro was succeeded by a member of another branch of the Medici family, Cosimo I.

Officially, Alessandro was the illegitimate son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino (1492-1519), but it was rumoured that Lorenzo’s cousin Giulio (later Pope Clement VII), had fathered him. Alessandro’s mother, Simonetta, was allegedly a Moorish slave who had worked in the household of Lorenzo and his parents during their exile in Rome…

Read the entire article here.

Mary Seacole statue: Why Florence Nightingale fans are angry the Crimean War nurse is being commemorated

The Independent
2016-06-27

Kashmira Gander

Some Florence Nightingale experts say Mary Seacole isn’t a nurse

It should be a symbol of pride in a black British heroine. Instead, a statue of Mary Seacole, to be unveiled on 30 June, has become a source of controversy

Staring proudly across the River Thames towards Big Ben, her cape caught in a gust as she strides away from a backdrop of the Crimean battlefield. This is how the Crimean War heroine Mary Seacole will be memorialised in a powerful 10ft bronze statue by the distinguished sculptor Martin Jennings, to be unveiled outside St Thomas’ hospital in central London on Thursday.

The campaign to commemorate the nurse once voted the greatest black Briton began when a group of Caribbean women approached their local MP in Hammersmith. Seven years later, the sculpture – the first public statue of a named black woman in the UK – is complete thanks to donations from tens of thousands of people. Happy days.

Except a small faction of hand-wringing Florence Nightingale experts and fans are not at all happy. To them, placing Seacole’s statue outside the hospital where the Lady with the Lamp established her revolutionary nursing school is an affront…

…Then there’s the argument that Seacole is a symbol of political correctness gone mad because the great black British icon isn’t, er, black. In a Spectator piece Rob Liddle took the baffling stance that Seacole was “three-quarters white”. This is despite contemporary depictions of her as a person “of colour” (and her own recollection that a white American at a dinner party said he wished he could bleach her skin).

But how tiresome this mud-slinging is. If we were going to pick holes, we could point out that even Nightingale couldn’t compete with the fact that her military hospital at Scutari was placed over a sewer, meaning many patients died. But we celebrate the best in her: her initial impulse; her skill in creating and organising the British nursing profession in later life…

Read the entire article here.

How Jesse Williams Stole BET Awards With Speech on Racism

The New York Times
2016-06-27

Katie Rogers

Jesse Williams accepting the humanitarian award at the BET Awards on Sunday in Los Angeles. Credit Matt Sayles/Invision, via Associated Press

The BET Awards Sunday featured tributes to Prince and Muhammad Ali, and a performance by Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar. But this year, the actor Jesse Williams commanded the spotlight with an impassioned speech calling for an end to police killings, racial inequality and cultural appropriation.

His was far from the only political statement of the evening: With the words “Don’t Trump America” written on his back, the singer Usher used his performance to make a statement against Donald J. Trump. And when Taraji P. Henson, the star of “Empire,” accepted her best actress award, she also warned the audience about Mr. Trump.

Since 2009, Mr. Williams has been played the role of Dr. Jackson Avery on “Grey’s Anatomy.” When he is not working on the set of the hospital drama, Mr. Williams, a former teacher, champions causes related to civil rights. He starred in and produced “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement,” a documentary that premiered last month on BET. He produces Question Bridge, an art project about the experience of black men in America, and works with Sankofa, an organization dedicated to ending racial injustice.

The child of a white mother and a black father, Mr. Williams told The Guardian last October that his parents had shaped his activist roots, and said that being biracial allowed him to see both sides of a cultural divide.

“I have access to rooms and information,” he told the newspaper. “I am white and I am also black. I am invisible man in a lot of these scenarios. I know how white people talk about black people. I know how black people talk about white folks.”…

Read the entire article here.

One Drop of Love preceded by I’ve Just had a Dream

The 18th Annual Roxbury International Film Festival
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Barbara and Theodore Alfond Auditorium (Auditorium G36)
Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
2016-06-30, 20:00-21:35 EDT (Local Time)

Film still from One Drop of Love

I’ve Just had a Dream by Javi Navarro (USA, 2014, 7 min.). Two girls. Two cultures. Two visions. A dream. They say that dreams are only dreams; the only thing that makes them different is the person who dreams.

One Drop of Love by Carol Banker, written and produced by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni (USA, 2016, 67 min.). One Drop of Love is the feature film of a multimedia solo performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni. Produced by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, this extraordinary one-woman show incorporates filmed images, photographs and animation to tell the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the United States and how it affects our most intimate relationships. A moving memoir, One Drop takes audiences from the 1700s to the present, to cities all over the U.S. and to West and East Africa, where the narrator and her family spent time in search of their ‘racial’ roots. The ultimate goal of the show is to encourage everyone to discuss ‘race’ and racism openly and critically.

Followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.

For more information, click here.

A New Movie About Bob Kaufman, a Jewish African-American Street Poet Shrouded in Myth

Tablet
2016-06-24

Jake Marmer

And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead does little to dispel the mystery surrounding the artist, which is why it works.

Bob Kaufman Alley, in San Francisco’s neighborhood of North Beach, is tiny—narrow and hardly a block in length. Only a smattering of locals and dedicated poetry aficionados around the world remember whom it is named after—the eccentric street poet-prophet, whose personal history remains a mystery to this day. Kaufman’s improvised street performances, his 30 (or more) arrests, Jewish and Caribbean roots, involuntary shock treatment, and decade-long vow of silence are touched on in Billy Woodberry’s And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead, a new documentary that honors the poet’s work and life.

Though cleaned up, these streets still bear witness to the pulse of hipness and desperation that inspired Kaufman’s “Heavy Water Blues:”

Consolidated Edison is threatening to cut off my brain,
The postman keeps putting sex in my mailbox,
My mirror died, and & can’t tell if I still reflect,
I put my eyes on a diet, my tears are gaining too much weight

Here, a classic blues-styled litany of troubles meets urban imagery, surrealism, wit, playfulness, and puns. Though self-“reflection” is one of poetry’s trademark functions, this poet is no longer so sure he’s capable of reflecting, and in any case, his mirror stares back with Picasso-like enmeshment of the body and polis, violence, humor, and sorrow…

Read the entire article here. Watch the trailer here.

Oral history interview with Benny Andrews, 1968 June 30

Archives of American Art
Smithsonian Institution

Andrews, Benny, b. 1930 d. 2006
Painter
Active in New York, N.Y.

Size: Transcript: 29 pages

Format: Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformated in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hrs., 12 min.

Collection Summary: An interview of Benny Andrews conducted 1968 June 30, by Henri Ghent, for the Archives of American Art.

Andrews remembers his childhood on a sharecropping farm in Georgia, difficulties he faced being light-skinned, and his struggle to get an education. He speaks of the role of the 4-H Club in his escape from that life and his attempts at painting using improvised materials. Andrews describes how he worked his way to college and joined the Air Force. He recalls passing himself off as white in certain situations, the insights into race relations he was able to gain that way, and his consciousness of being black as it affects his art. He notes the importance of other artists who encouraged him, and ends with a general characterization of his work.

Biographical/Historical Note: Benny Andrews (1930-2006) was a painter and lecturer from New York, New York.

This interview is part of the Archives’ Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.

Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America’s Treasures Program of the National Park Service.

For more information, click here.

Fanny Eaton: The Black Pre-Raphaelite Muse that Time Forgot

AnOther
2016-03-07

Shola von Reynolds

Walter Fryer Stocks, British, 1842–1915: Mrs. Fanny Eaton, ca. 1859 / Black, red, and white chalk on cream wove paper / 43.2 × 34.9 cm (17 × 13 3/4 in.) / Museum purchase, Surdna Fund / 2016-1 / Princeton University Art Museum

The enigmatic model made her way to London from Jamaica in the early 19th century to sit for the Pre-Raphaelites, and her legacy lives on in their impactful work

Who? Lizzie Siddal has long reigned supreme in the minds of historians, artists and writers as the embodiment of the artist’s muse. Her fellow Pre-Raphaelite models, such as Marie Spartali, Jane Morris or Maria Zambaco are less well known, but renewed attention has given many of these women a rightful place in art history beyond the typically limited conception of “the muse”. If you haven’t heard of Fanny Eaton, however, there would be meagre cause for surprise, though surprise there should be: little exists in the way of information about her, and until recent years all that remained was the series of paintings and drawings she sat for.

Fanny Eaton was a black Victorian Londoner and, for some time, painter’s model. Born in Jamaica in 1835, Eaton was the daughter of an ex-slave and, it is suspected, a white slave owner. She came to London in the 1840s and began modelling in her twenties. It has been discovered that she was working as a regular portrait model at the Royal Academy, which is potentially where she caught the attention of the many renowned painters of the era she sat for…

Read the etnire article here.

Merle Dandridge on “Blasian” Identity and Oprah Winfrey Network’s new summer original series “Greenleaf”

CAAM: Center of Asian American Media
2016-06-20

Mitzi Uehara Carter

Merle Dandridge started her career on Broadway with leading roles in Spamalot, Aida, Rent, Tarzan, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Not only does she have singing chops, she shines on screen. Dandridge has been cast in recurring roles on television shows including The Night Shift, CSI: Miami and Stalker.

Dandridge has also broken into a field that is gaining more serious attention from actors — video games. Female actors can often find well developed, complex characters in narrative-led gaming roles. This year, she won BAFTA’ best performer for her role in the popular post-apocalyptic Playstation game, “Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.”

I spoke with Dandridge about her starring role in the upcoming original drama series, Greenleaf, on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), which debuts June 21, 2016. This is her first lead role on a television series. Dandridge talked to me via phone from Los Angeles about this new summer drama that is chock-full of award-winning actors and writers. We also squealed about being Black and Asian and she hinted at a possible “Kimchi and Collards” project…

…Ok, Merle. I’m Black and Asian and I have to tell you I did a little happy dance when I learned your mother is Asian and your dad is Black American right? And you were born in Okinawa where my mom is from. Seriously now. I’m so psyched you’re Black Asian. Can you tell me a little about growing up with this very particular mixed background?

Your kidding me? I don’t know others of that mix. How interesting! My mother is half Japanese and Korean. And I have older siblings who are mostly Korean, 1/4 Japanese, because of my mom’s first marriage to a Korean man. I was born in Okinawa but most of my time in Asia was in Seoul. My mother belongs to two cultures that didn’t really accept her 100 percent. So she had this understanding of rejection based on her own experiences. She would look at me and say, “You are of different ethnicities and you might not always be accepted so go into the world knowing that and know that you are more than that. You are beautiful.” And in many ways she instilled a sense of who I was and gave me ways to encounter fears of not being fully accepted. And in Nebraska as one of the only ones [mixed Asians], I think it was a good exercise in becoming a good person because I think I had to be above the confusion, the potential rejections…

Read the entire interview here.