PORT ANGELES — Peninsula College’s Cultural & Fine Arts Committee has planned a variety of events for Black History Month.
All the events are free and open to the public.
“Thank you to all the college leaders who are working hard to bring awareness and education to our community around Black History,” Peninsula College President Suzy Ames said.
“This is a critical time in our nation’s history, and a time for everyone to listen, learn and engage.”
On Thursday, Studium General hosted the David Jones Trio featuring music by African American composers who made significant contributions to American musical culture, including Charlie Parker and John Lewis.
Buffalo Soldiers
On Feb. 15 at 1:30 p.m., director Dru Holley will be on the Port Angeles campus for a screening of the film “Buffalo Soldiers: Fighting on Two Fronts” and a discussion in the Little Theater at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Many African American men enlisted as Buffalo Soldiers in exchange for full citizenship as promised by the 14th Amendment but were denied this right by the Jim Crow laws in the Reconstructionist South.
These soldiers built and guarded the Pacific Railroad and served as park rangers in places like Yosemite before the U.S. government established the National Park Service.
They fought for the U.S. army during westward expansion, and they fought in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Mexican Punitive Expedition, World War I and World War II.
“They were patriots and served with immense bravery at great risk to their own lives,” organizers said.
But, Holley said in press material, “the Buffalo Soldiers also participated in the subjugation of Native peoples as the United States appropriated tribal land, the persecution of striking silver miners in Idaho, and against Filipinos fighting for independence during the Spanish-American War, resulting in a complicated legacy.”
By combining a multitude of diverse perspectives, the film examines the profound and often-contradictory roles played in American history by The Buffalo Soldiers, and how they fought on two very different sets of front lines: military conflicts abroad and civil rights struggles at home.
Holley graduated from the Art Institute of Colorado, where he specialized in video broadcasting.
Holley was selected by Stanley Nelson, the iconic African American filmmaker, for the prestigious 2020 Firelight Documentary Lab Fellowship, Black Public Media 360 Incubator, and 2022 Better Angels Levine fellowship.
Technologies of Protest
Aiesha Turman will be on the virtual stage at 12:30 p.m. Feb. 16. She will Zoom from New York, where she serves as faculty in the Africana Studies Department of Nassau Community College.
To join it, go to https://pencol-edu.zoom.us/j/89779530051. The meeting ID is 897 7953 0051.
An educator, writer, cultural producer and interdisciplinary scholar, Turman will offer a program titled “Technologies of Protest: Towards a Black Femme Afrofuture,” followed by a dialogue.
Turman, who has a doctorate, was featured on the nationally-known Story Corps radio program. She has been teaching for more than two decades, beginning in after school programs, then museums and cultural institutions.
She has been a formal high school teacher as well as a college professor.
In 2010, she founded The Black Girl Project after writing, directing and producing the documentary of the same name.
After creating and facilitating Black woman and femme-centered programs throughout the mid-Atlantic region, she organized an annual Sisterhood Summit for seven seasons, which hosted facilitators and educators from across the country and served more than 3,000 participants.
Her website says that “she has shifted gears (after resting) and is committed to a social art and education practice … For Black women and girls who need to remember who they are when the acculturation and lies get to be too much.”
For more about her, see www.aieshaturman.com.
