Black Press Week Celebrates and Empowers African American Journalism

Each year, Black Press Week provides an opportunity for journalists and media professionals to connect and discuss issues facing the Black Press.

NNPA Newswire

Washington D.C. – The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) will host the annual Black Press Week from March 16-17, 2023, with events and activities aimed at promoting and empowering African American journalism.
The two-day event kicks off on Thursday, March 16, with the NNPA’s daily news show, Let It Be Known, hosting a mixer and broadcast from the Let It Be Known studios inside the NNPA’s national headquarters in the historic Thurgood Marshall Trust Center, located in Washington’s historic Shaw District.
Each year, Black Press Week provides an opportunity for journalists and media professionals to connect and discuss issues facing the Black Press.
The primary event, which takes place on Friday, March 17, will include the NNPA Board of Directors Meeting, held at the National Press Club’s Zenger Meeting Room, from 9:30 am to 12:00 pm.
In celebration of the 196th anniversary of the Black Press, NNPA will host “The State of the Black Press Luncheon,” at the National Press Club’s Ballroom on the 13th floor from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm.
The State of the Black Press Luncheon features a keynote speech from Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., NNPA President and CEO, who will speak about the importance of the Black Press in promoting social justice and democracy.
Dr. Chavis plans to highlight the role of Black newspapers in shaping public opinion and advocating for civil rights, and a call for continued support for Black media outlets.
Dr. Benjamin Talton, Director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, will also speak at the luncheon, discussing the Black Press Archive Digitization Project at Howard University.
The project aims to digitize and preserve historical Black newspapers, making them accessible to researchers and the public.
The event also promises to provide an opportunity for attendees to network and engage with Black media professionals from across the country, including publishers, editors, and journalists.
Tickets are required for entry to the event, and attendees can reserve their seating at www.nnpa-events.com.
Black Press Week remains a vital event for the NNPA, providing a platform to celebrate and promote the achievements of Black journalists and media professionals, and to discuss the challenges facing the industry.
The event aims to empower and inspire the next generation of Black journalists, and to support the continued growth and success of the Black Press.

To ward off memory loss from Alzheimer’s, he went to school — and now has a degree

White Coat Black Art26:29The Graduate

When Ron Robert graduated from university last fall, he was already seven years into a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

The now 85-year-old knew he had to keep an active mind in order to help ward off the memory loss that comes with the illness.

“I was always taught early in life that the brain is like the most powerful instrument we have in our body,” he told White Coat, Black Art host Dr. Brian Goldman.

So Robert tackled a lifelong goal: he enrolled in a three-year bachelor of arts program at King’s University College, in London, Ont. With the support of his teachers and peers, he walked across the stage in October.

“When I went across the stage, and as I’m getting my diploma, the kids all stood up and yelled and clapped,” he recalled. “I had to hold back the tears. It was something else, just wonderful.”

Robert’s wife, Catherine Cornelius, says that while she’s noticed some decline in his memory since starting the program, “it’s still pretty good” — something she credits, partially, to his going back to school.

“I think it’s just because he keeps his mind active,” she said.

White-haired man in a blue shirt and sweater sits at kitchen table with a microphone in front of him speaking with Dr. Brian Goldman, right.
Robert speaks with Dr. Brian Goldman in his kitchen. In the background, a reminder board kept up to date by Robert’s wife, Catherine Cornelius, hangs on a cupboard door. (Jeff Goodes/CBC)

Alzheimer’s is a disease of the brain that leads to dementia, a cognitive impairment that interferes with everyday functioning. Experts say that education and mental fitness play an important role in the condition’s development.

A 2022 study out of the University of Waterloo suggests that people with mild cognitive impairment who have a higher level of education may be less likely to develop dementia. And a systematic review published in 2011 found that, in more than half of the studies analyzed, people with lower levels of education were more likely to develop dementia.

While Robert’s university journey came later in life, researcher Nicole Anderson says that there’s still plenty of value in actively learning following an Alzheimer’s or dementia diagnosis.

“Thinking is a workout for the brain,” said Anderson, a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest health science centre in Toronto.

“The areas of the brain that are working get increased blood flow; there’s increased metabolism in those brain regions. Cognitive engagement also fosters neurogenesis, or the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus.”

Building brain power

Returning to school in his 80s was indeed a workout for Robert. Earlier in his life, Robert had a long career as a journalist and, later, political advisor to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau — but he hadn’t gone to university.

The first two years of classes were spent “learning to learn again,” he said. Memorizing names, dates and places was a challenge; even though he knew the facts, recalling them didn’t come easily, he said.

Robert says he turned to the school’s accessibility department to develop helpful learning strategies. Recorded lectures that he reviewed four, sometimes five, times were a big help.

So were instructors who approached his learning with empathy, he said. 

During tests, he recalled, one teacher “would always know when I’m stuck — somehow, even before I got stuck, I think — and she’d just say one or two keywords, and that’s all I needed.”

I think often people with Alzheimer’s aren’t aware that it’s so important to continue trying to learn new things.– Debra Sheets

Anderson notes that as Alzheimer’s continues to develop, the disease’s characteristic protein plaques and tangles in healthy neurons will grow regardless of a person’s mental fitness.

However, increased mental activity can help build a “cognitive reserve” that makes the brain more resilient to the disease’s effects.

“These things won’t stop or reverse, but they will let people live longer in good brain health. And so they could effectively prevent the dementia,” she said.

Maintaining social connections

Robert also forged friendships with other students, who were usually decades younger than him.

“Sometimes they would come to me with their problems because I would look like the old grandfather on the campus, I guess, and they felt comfortable speaking to me,” he said.

Anderson says retaining social connections can be as important as physical and mental exercise to slowing the disease’s effect on memory. When people learn about an Alzheimer’s or dementia diagnosis, many withdraw from social activities out of concern for how they’ll be perceived. 

Debra Sheets — a University of Victoria gerontology researcher who organizes arts and activity programs for people living with dementia, their caregivers and high school students — has seen the benefit of providing opportunities for social connection.

Woman with purple highlights in her hair poses for a picture in front of green-leaved trees.
Debra Sheets is a professor in the School of Nursing at University of Victoria. (Submitted by Debra Sheets)

The programs, which include a choir, help break down the stigma associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia. 

“What we found was that people that participated in the choir over the course of two years, they had reduced cognitive decline — about half of what would have been expected in a national sample of people who weren’t involved in the choir with memory loss,” said Sheets, a professor at the University of Victoria’s School of Nursing.

Sheets says that staying engaged after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis is crucial.

“I think often people with Alzheimer’s aren’t aware that it’s so important to continue trying to learn new things, doing new things and engaging socially with other people. It makes a huge difference.”

Pushing for empathy and acceptance

Robert now speaks with medical students, emphasizing the importance of empathy — particularly for those with dementia — in health care. 

It’s inspired partially by Robert’s own experiences. He told White Coat, Black Art, that there was little support after his doctor delivered the Alzheimer’s diagnosis and told him he would have to give up his driver’s licence. 

“When that patient comes into your office, take five minutes to relax him or her. Don’t just jump in,” he tells them.

WATCH | Ron Robert shares advice on caring for people with Alzheimer’s: 

He also speaks with Alzheimer’s groups and plans to contribute to a study looking at best practices for teaching patients with dementia.

But Robert has come to terms with his diagnosis. He knows it will continue to progress and that he will continue to lose memories. Despite the challenge that poses, he approaches it with a positive attitude.

“There’s nothing I can do about it. You only worry about things you can’t change. So I don’t worry about that,” he said.

“We’re all going to get bumps in the road as we get old. It’s inevitable…. We’re all going to die, so accept that and start living. And until you do accept that, you can’t live.”

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‘Rewind & Play’ Review: Thelonious Monk Dazzles Even When an Interview Falls Flat

The documentary “Rewind & Play” makes damning use of a 1969 interview Thelonious Monk did with Henri Renaud for the French television program “Jazz Portrait.” Monk’s European tour was set to end in Paris and the show was recorded shortly before. The interview took place nearly six years after Monk was featured on a Time magazine cover under the banner “Jazz: Bebop and Beyond” and one year before he stopped making music.

Directed by the French-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis, this 65-minute, freighted documentary creates a portrait — or two — out of rushes and outtakes Gomis received from the National Audiovisual Institute while researching a fiction film about Monk. One is a study of an interview turned wincing for reasons of glib arrogance — racial but perhaps personal, too. The other is a more gleaming portrait of Monk at work.

More film essay with critical chaser than straight-up documentary, the film suggests that Renaud — a jazz pianist turned record producer and later music executive — aimed for something revelatory, but also something that shined a spotlight on his own insightfulness. But Renaud is continuously dissatisfied with Monk’s answers to his questions: about not being understood by French audiences in the 1950s, about his wife Nellie’s role in his life, about being avant-garde. Renaud asks for take after take, unable to improvise when seemingly thwarted by Monk’s responses. (In the actual 30-minute show, Monk speaks eight words, according to Gomis.)

The film is not merely playback or payback on behalf of one Black artist by another. “Rewind & Play” dazzles because it is and will remain a wonder to witness Monk seemingly discovering his compositions again and again, his fingers conjuring, his right foot etching rhythms.

Rewind & Play
Not rated. In English and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 5 minutes. In theaters.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

A Panorama of Design

This article is part of our Design special section on how the recent push for diversity is changing the way the world looks.


In 2018, Malene Barnett — an artist, textile designer and community builder — attended a prominent event for the New York City design industry in which not one Black creative professional was represented in the many panels and presentations. That year, she founded Black Artists + Designers Guild.

What began as an online directory of architects, artists and furniture, interior and textile designers — “so no one could make excuses that we’re hard to find,” Ms. Barnett said — has flourished into a nonprofit centered on Black imagination and collective action with more than 100 global members.

To spread the organization’s message of creative liberation and activism, a 20-by-45-foot mural called “Facing Futures” has been hand-painted on a building at the intersection of Berry and North 12th Streets in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A collaboration with Lamar Advertising and Colossal Media, it will remain on view through April.

The mural, with its six nonbinary portraits and six signature colors inspired by the vegetal dyes used in African textiles, also appeared last month on 375 digital billboards, from Buffalo, N.Y., to Los Angeles.

“It’s for all Black creatives, regardless of gender identity, so they feel seen,” said Ms. Barnett, speaking from Kingston, Jamaica, where she has a Fulbright grant to research the island’s clay culture. “We must work together to face the future, to advocate for equity and inclusivity worldwide.” badguild.infoANNIE BLOCK

The work of the artist Tsherin Sherpa, who divides his time between California and Nepal, explores the traditions of his culture through a contemporary lens.

Mr. Sherpa grew up in Kathmandu and was trained in thangka painting, which depicts Buddhist deities and mythological scenes. His latest work, a series of carpets, is in many ways a natural evolution.

“Carpets in the Himalayan community have inherently been mobile objects, used daily by nomadic people,” he said. “Living between two places and traveling around the globe with my work, I find myself to be a bit nomadic as well.” His work both playfully updates traditional iconography and introduces it to a new, young audience. “I think both these experiences help the sustainability of this art form and highlight its relevance,” he said.

A collection of Mr. Sherpa’s carpets, made in collaboration with the Nepali design studio Mt. Refuge, appeared last month as part of the NOMAD art fair in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Called “Artists in Flux,” it was a collaboration with Gucci. The works — with names like “The GIANT ego-lessness,” “Three’s Not Always a Crowd” and “This is not a Rorschach test” (shown) — are produced with Tibetan highland wool, Chinese silk, and cotton in limited editions of 25 each. From 8 by 10 to 10 by 14 feet, they start at $13,350. mtrefuge.comSTEPHEN TREFFINGER

The Hispanic Society Museum & Library, which focuses on Spanish and Portuguese arts and cultures, has undergone a major renovation by Selldorf Architects and Beyer Blinder Belle.

The changes will make the buildings fully wheelchair-accessible and restore Audubon Terrace, the landmarked complex occupying land that was once owned by John James Audubon, where the 119-year-old museum is located.

Phase one of the reopening, on April 6, will also include the Main Court and the Sorolla Gallery.

In the gallery, for the centennial of the Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla’s death, will be “Visions of Spain (1912-1919),” a group of 14 monumental paintings by the artist dedicated to the country’s people, costumes and traditions. (Preparatory gouaches for the series are currently on view at the National Arts Club.)

The Hispanic Society’s chief executive and director, Guillaume Kientz, hopes to share the museum’s collection of 750,000 items in new ways in the updated spaces — and with a broader audience. “I think museums should be less of a monologue and more of a conversation,” he said. “The idea is to bring new ideas, new people, new voices.” hispanicsociety.orgSTEPHEN TREFFINGER

Credit…New-York Historical Society

Hardly any objects by the ceramist Thomas W. Commeraw have been gathered in one room since he shuttered his workshop in Lower Manhattan in 1819. The New-York Historical Society has reunited nearly two dozen of his thick-walled stoneware pots for “Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw,” on view through May 28.

Born about 1772, enslaved as a child and then set free by a family of German American potters, Mr. Commeraw began designing ceramics in the 1790s, including food storage vessels for oystermen and innkeepers. He stamped the gray clay surfaces with neo-Classical cobalt swags and tassels alongside his last name and his address, Corlears Hook. At the same time, he worked as a church leader and political activist, and in the 1820s, he briefly resettled with his family to Sierra Leone.

The historical society is also displaying ceramic works by the Queens-based artist Sana Musasama that are inspired by Mr. Commeraw’s designs, with ovoid forms splashed in cobalt. The gift shop offers cobalt-and-cream pottery by Kyle Scott Lee, and a coming issue of the annual magazine Ceramics in America will be devoted to Mr. Commeraw. His legacy is further enriched by a monograph called “Commeraw’s Stoneware: The Life and Work of the First African-American Pottery Owner” by A. Brandt Zipp, while efforts are underway to install a tribute plaque to him in the vicinity of Corlears Hook Park on the Lower East Side. — EVE M. KAHN

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Juanita Brooks dies at 96: Educator, mother and Giants fan

… s the way to fight racism. That's the … in 1966 became the first African American school administrator in the … founded the district’s first African American studies programs. Brooks-Moon … Church. While the family experienced racism in those earliest years, … RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News

Things To Do: Mercutio & the Constantines, Bohemeo’s, March 10, 2023

Markell Gibson is nearing 10 years of performing music but like any other visionary he’s looking ahead, not back. He’s got a clear idea for where his career should be a decade from today.

“Ten years from now I just want to be in Shaolin monk clothes on top of a mountain and other songwriters have to climb a mountain to get to me if they want to learn how to write a song,” Gibson said. “That’s literally how I see myself, it’s not even me being arrogant. I’m literally going to do that. If you want to learn how to write a song you have to physically climb a mountain and I will be on top of the mountain waiting for you, and I will teach you how to write an amazing song.

“I’m going full Shaolin in 10 years,” he said.

That’s the sort of bold inventiveness Gibson’s fans have come to expect from him, first as leader of the Markell Gibson Band and, more recently, as Mercutio & the Constantines. Before he can teach others the mysteries of songwriting, he knows he has his own heights to scale. Keep reading and you’ll learn how he’s headed for the zenith by moving in levels of progression, taking the journey of a thousand miles a single step at a time.

The next step comes this week with Gardens, the latest release of music from Mercutio & the Constantines. Gibson is expected to showcase the new EP at a show Friday, March 10 at Bohemeo’s with a slew of locals supporting visiting acts Loolowningen & the Far East Idiots from Tokyo and New York City’s Many Many Girls.

“It’s like a four-track EP of newer songs, pretty much the newer songs that I’ve been working on for the last couple of years or so,” Gibson said of Gardens. “After that I’m going to be working on another album that I don’t really know the concept for yet but I’m definitely going to put another album out at the end of the year after that EP. That’s going to be all new stuff that’s never been heard.

“So, Gardens would be like the level two Markell and the new album later this year would be kind of the level three stuff where I’m going deep. I might start talking different languages, I might start writing in symbols. Who knows what’s going to come out? People are going to go, ‘Oh, this is the monster that we’ve been trying to contain. Either get this dude onstage so we can contain him or tell him to chill out because he’s really pulling out that thing that’s different, way different.’”

<a href="https://media2.houstonpress.com/hou/imager/u/original/15242927/mk82.jpg" rel="contentImg_gal-15242922" title="Gibson is approaching 10 years as a performer – Photo by Jody Perry, courtesy of Markell Gibson" data-caption="Gibson is approaching 10 years as a performer   Photo by Jody Perry, courtesy of Markell Gibson” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”> click to enlarge

Gibson is approaching 10 years as a performer

Photo by Jody Perry, courtesy of Markell Gibson

The key to Gibson’s music, as he tells it, is digging deeper into his mind, burrowing further to mine music treasures. He’s one of Houston’s more recognizable artists because he performs in traditional venues and also as a busker, posting up with his guitar on street corners after big concerts and sporting events. The point is to get the music to listeners.

Gibson hails from Third Ward. He said he got his first guitar when he was just nine years-old.

“My mom bought me this broken red guitar with flames on it, it was like an acoustic guitar,” he recalled. “I just started messing with it. I don’t know, I just couldn’t put it down. I just started making sounds and the combination of pressing the strings different ways, I automatically got that.

“I could not put it down, I was obsessed with the guitar,” he added and said harmonies and chords came to him naturally. “I’ve always been connected to music that way spiritually, very deep, like I’m here to bring that, that’s a part of my purpose.”

For Gibson, the guitar is an instrument in its truest sense, a vehicle which allows him to express his innermost thoughts to the world at-large, a machine that kills preconceptions. His music has been described as punk and folk punk. He considers that an honor though, he notes, it isn’t exact. He told how his songwriting started at level one in Third Ward.

“It’s a really magical place. It’s a place where there are a lot of people like me who are high-level questioners and who are skeptics of everything, who are just really, really smart Black people. A lot of ingenuity and making the best of your situation and just genius people, a lot of Black genius coming out of there that doesn’t get talked about enough and I just happen to be one of those people who, I spread my wings and I decided to jump off that cliff that is the Houston music world or just the music world all over the world.

“Every Black kid grows up in Third Ward around really amazing family and Black business and this sense (that) you can make anything happen,” he added, “but at the same time I always knew that I could take things a step further. I’ve always had that, I’ve always kept that with me.”

He didn’t pursue music in earnest until 2014, after he’d graduated high school. He told what “Level One” Gibson was like in those early days.

“It was like going to my girlfriend’s house and writing in a notebook, just writing in this purple notebook. Writing ‘Monsters in My Head,’ writing ‘Stellar,’ writing ‘City in the Clouds,’” he said, rattling off the songs that put him on Houston music’s radar. “Knowing that I had to jump, and I’m also at that point now, where I’m kind of at a level, I would say it’s like a level two, I have to jump again because I’ve reached a threshold, kind of reached a plateau where I have to evolve again. So, that’s an awesome, scary process.

“But when I first started, I had this undying need. I had just graduated high school and I felt I had to do this music thing,” he said. “I saw it in my mind even though it wasn’t reality yet. I saw myself on a stage, I saw people liking my music, I saw me being respected as a songwriter.”

Gibson’s been performing as Mercutio & the Constantines since 2016. It’s an apt moniker. Mercutio is the one Romeo and Juliet character able to traverse both houses, Montague and Capulet. Gibson traverses the subconscious and conscious worlds in music. The songs reflect on “the hurt, the happiness, the feeling of gratitude, all that stuff that comes from deep within me,” he said. They’re internal and personal but are sent by Mercutio into the world for others.

He describes his process as “writing from my subconscious, just freehand, writing a song like I would be writing a story in a novel, and sort of creating the song afterwards, constructing the song out of that story.

“It’s hard to do that. It’s not easy to go so deep within a trauma or deep within a fear or deep within a thought or love, the frequency of love, and push these frequencies forward. People may not even understand how deep I really went to get that until much later.”

He considers music important and empowering because it empowered him.

“Music is what saved me,” he said. “Words and me getting so into language, loving words and linguistics and language arts and literacy, literary arts, all this stuff inspired me to become the person I am today and completely shifted my reality from being just another Third Ward person that you might have never noticed if I wasn’t Markell the guitar player. You wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, what’s up regular Third Ward Black kid? What do you got going on today?’ No, I have this guitar so it creates this beautiful bridge essentially where people look at me like I’m more human.”

He’s interested in humanity, even with its many flaws, flaws that are evident to him as a Black artist. Gibson aligns himself with other deep thinkers and innovators, most notably his friend and confidante Kerry Melonson, who will also perform at Friday night’s show. They’re both very outspoken on matters of race, society and music.

“I’m a lot more out there, I say some things that even Kerry thinks are out there, that’s how out there we are,” Gibson said. “A beautiful thing is we almost never agree with each other, we have two completely versions of out there so you’re gonna get something completely different from him, from me, it’s a totally different story.”

Like any master – Shaolin or otherwise – Gibson is interested in pushing people to their peak potential. If he’s outspoken, it’s because he feels some sense of duty to fellow artists, especially artists of color.

“I love that, I really really love that, I think that’s a really positive thing and I think the best thing about it is I’m not trying to be an advocate at all, I’m just saying what I believe, saying what pretty much any Black person from Third Ward would probably explain to you,” he said. “I just happen to be an artist and I just happen to be more public, I just happen to be in this music world, giving my opinion on the world from the view of a Black, Third Ward guy.

<a href="https://media2.houstonpress.com/hou/imager/u/original/15242928/mk83.jpg" rel="contentImg_gal-15242922" title="Gibson's new EP, Gardens, releases Friday, March 10 – Photo by Joshua Daniel Martinez, courtesy of Markell Gibson" data-caption="Gibson’s new EP, Gardens, releases Friday, March 10   Photo by Joshua Daniel Martinez, courtesy of Markell Gibson” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”> click to enlarge

Gibson’s new EP, Gardens, releases Friday, March 10

Photo by Joshua Daniel Martinez, courtesy of Markell Gibson

“I’m still that guy. Just because I have a guitar doesn’t mean I’m like a dweeb now, like I’m just like, ‘Hey guys, what’s up? You know, whatever you guys want to do, I’m down to do it.’ No. I wasn’t raised like that, I’m sorry. I was raised to have values, I was raised in a family of women and strong men, I was raised in a family with LGBT people. I have to say what I believe in, not to tell people what to believe in, just for me personally to put myself in the right spaces.

“If you’re a Black artist, you’re going to see how important that is, to put yourself in the right spaces so that you don’t get used or exploited, especially if you’re really, really good and you’re Black. You’ve got to be really careful inside these spaces because they’re not what they seem.

“Sometimes America tends to have a sort of fetish with using incredible Black young artists,” he added, “squeezing all that juice out ‘til there’s nothing left. I’m just not available to do that with.”

“When I first started music I didn’t even know how to sing, or sing and play at the same time, or write music or memorize music. These are all things in 2014 that I taught myself how to do. I wanted to. I saw this vision so bad, that I would be this incredible music god who just spreads love everywhere,” he said. “That’s what I feel an artist is supposed to do and a visionary really does, they cross all these different barriers and that heals, it can help people come together, it does so much just in my life alone. But I know it’s going to do even more.”

That kind of thinking puts Gibson way ahead of others. When you catch up with him, he’ll be waiting at the mountaintop.

“I know it’s my mission to put these things out even if I don’t get anything back. That’s the thing, it’s all about love, it’s all about putting that love out and I don’t expect anything back from this.”

Mercutio & the Constantines performs songs from Gardens Friday, March 10 at Bohemeo’s, 708 Telephone. With CONCRÈTE MÈLANGE, Vivaldi’s Green Jacket, Many Many Girls, Loolowningen & The Far East Idiots and KA. Doors at 6 p.m. for this all ages event, $15.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

US Justice Dept to review Memphis Police’s use of force

… after the police murder of African-American man George Floyd in Minneapolis … against police brutality and systemic racism. Police killed 1,186 people … , according to Mapping Police Violence. African-Americans were 26 per cent of … RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News