Three women have changed how arts activism looks and what it does. And Brooklyn is the proud beneficiary. Dr. Indira Etwaroo, executive director of the Billie Holiday Theatre; renowned actress Pauletta Washington and savvy media powerhouse Antonia Yuille Williams have answered a directive wending its way through nearly 50 years — from the hands of […]Read More

February 28, 2019 – March 3, 2019   NEW YORK, February 20, 2019 – The African Diaspora International Film Festival will celebrate Black History Month with a selection of films about the multiple dimensions of Black World History. Just added to the program is the East Coast Premiere screening of Boss: The Black Experience in Business.   The […]Read More

On Sunday, December 2, over 250 people converged on the Jamaica Performing Arts Center in Queens, NY for the 4th Annual Pre-Kwanzaa Community Empowerment Event which opened with the pulsating African Diasporan sounds of Atiba Kwabena Wilson and the Be’fo Quintet. In addition to the great music, the audience also experienced an intergenerational spoken word […]Read More

By Ron Howell   Fordham University Press 2019 Professor Ron Howell has written the definitive biography of the first Black elected official in Brooklyn, America’s largest Black community. Assemblyman Bertram Baker (1898-1985) was born in the West Indies 120 years ago. He came to Brooklyn, a place of “limitless possibilities,” without a high school diploma […]Read More

In 1976, when I was 12 years old, my Home Economics teacher (Mrs. Dunstin) took the Home EC Club to see Ntozake Shange’s #Obie Award-winning play, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf,” when it opened at the Booth Theater in 1976. Afterwards, she took us to eat at the […]Read More

The new production American Captives: Lena Baker and Sandra Bland, a social justice piece influenced by Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, focuses on the lives and deaths of Lena Baker and Sandra Bland, two Black American women, who both died at the hands of the police state and an indifferent  U.S. judicial system. Activist-turned-victim Sandra Bland is more […]Read More

From the Dance Theater of Harlem family: It’s with the deepest sadness we share the news that our founding artistic director, the great, Arthur Mitchell has passed away. His legacy of passion, power, and perfection will live on through each and every person he’s touched in his lifetime. We love you and we honor you, […]Read More

Danny Simmons, keeper of culture, steward of word, custodian of fine arts and village counselor, retains his sovereignty here in Brooklyn, evidenced by how rapidly tickets are moving fast for the RestorationARTS Def Poetry Jam Reunion. Curated by Simmons, the assuredly powerful event takes place at the Billie Holiday Theatre this Saturday, September 15 in […]Read More