It started quietly when a group of Caribbean students, strangers in a cold new land, began to suspect their professor of racism. It ended in the most explosive student uprising Canada had ever known.

Over four decades later, Ninth Floor reopens the file on the infamous Sir George Williams sit-in. In her first feature-length documentary, director Mina Shum takes a penetrating look at the Sir George Williams University sit in of February 1969, when a protest against institutional racism snowballed into a 14-day student occupation at the Montreal university.

A watershed moment in Canadian race relations and one of the most contested episodes in the nation’s history, join us for a screening of this incredible documentary, followed by a Q & A.

What really happened up there on the 9th floor?

The film is 1 hour and 22 minutes.

Date: February 12 @ 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Registration : https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckcOChqTkjHdbPQO8M7dtudieflCbTQJ8o

Format: Film screening and Q & A

Platform: Virtual – Zoom

Audience: Free of cost to students, staff, faculty, and external community

The post Film Screening: Ninth Floor appeared first on Blacknews.ca.

Presenting four extraordinary young Black Canadian classical artists, performing the music of Black Composers from 17th to 21st century.

Pianist, organist and composer Rashaan Rori Allwood, violinist Tanya Charles Iveniuk, trumpeter William Franklyn Leathers and soprano Nadine Anyan will surprise and delight you with the music of Black composers whose names have been neglected in Western classical music tradition, and who you will want to add to your playlist. From the great Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a prolific composer, violinist and conductor who was born to an enslaved Black woman in 1745 in the French colony of Guadeloupe; to the self taught Erroll Garner, considered one of the most distinctive of all pianists, who was born in Pittsburg Pennsylvania in 1921. Garner proved that it was possible to be a sophisticated player without knowing how to read music yet he produced extraordinary jazz compositions such as the popular ‘Misty’. We add a special treat of poetry of Langston Hughes set to music.  Then prepare to be awed by young Rashaan Allwood who offers a selection of his own compositions.

It is our great pleasure to continue to offer our audiences the important opportunity to reclaim a forgotten part of Black musical heritage and to discover great artists both of the past and the future.

This program is part of the TD 2021 Black History Month Series.

Opening (online) Performance:   Monday, February 1, 2021 @ 8 – 9:30 PM EST

This FREE concert will be streamed online from February 1, 2021 to February 28, 2021  Unlimited viewing!

Plan your watch parties with your family and friends, and join us from the comfort of your home.

The post Celebrations and Revelations 2021 – A Free online concert in celebration of Black History Month appeared first on Blacknews.ca.

The summer of 2020 will be remembered as a time where communities across Canada stood in solidarity against anti-black racism. The Justice 4 Black Lives rally in Winnipeg drew thousands to the legislature in support of Black lives locally and across the globe. As time has passed, have friends and allies remembered their promises to stand with the Black community and embrace equity, diversity and inclusion?

February is Black History Month in Canada! During this time, we honour the richness and diversity of the achievements and contributions of Blacks in Canada and around the world. We also reflect on the issues and difficulties that were faced, and continue to be faced by the Black community.

UM Black Alliance (UMBA) invites all students, faculty, staff, alumni and the community at large to attend the University of Manitoba’s Black History Month Forum.

“IS LIBERATION OUT OF STYLE?”

Keynote speaker: El Jones, B.J. (Hons), Faculty Member, University of King’s College

Jones, as quoted in “Thoughts of Liberation,” which appeared in the magazine Canadian Art on June 17, 2020:

“So often in this work, we keep ourselves alive thinking, ‘someday I’ll be proven right.’ But when we are right, amnesia sets in. People pretend they were with us all along. They forget what they said and did. They tell us it was something in us, something we did wrong (‘I agreed with your issues, just not with your tone/tactics’)…. [Recently] an elder of Africville* drove me for hours around the original boundaries, pointing out the landmarks, the places Black people walked and prayed and worked and birthed and died and were removed.”

|*Africville was an African-Canadian seaside village just north of Halifax founded in the mid-18th century, and demolished in the 1960s in what’s been understood as an act of racism. In 2010, an official apology was offered by the mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality for the bulldozing of the community in order to make way for a bridge.|

“In the avalanche of protest, media, writing, speaking, those hours felt revolutionary. Tracking the ghosts of that land with the still-living, unbeaten and unforgotten powerfully oriented me back within what we are still struggling for. So many of these wounds are open in our communities. Sometimes transformation looks like going back.”

El is a poet, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was born in Wales and grew up in Winnipeg. She was Halifax’s Poet Laureate from 2013–2015. (Source: Wikipedia)

Join us for a discussion at the UMBA Town Hall: “Anti Black Racism: It’s not a trend” following the keynote.

Date: Thursday, February 18, 2021

Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location: Zoom

Registration: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMod-GoqD0qHd2-OcgV8E-HmHo_EXU-VgM2 

About UMBA

UMBA coordinates and promotes Black History Month events; address challenges, and continues to honour and remember the important history, people and experiences of Black communities in February and throughout the year. Anyone interested in joining, please email UMBLACKALLIANCE [at] umanitoba [dot] ca

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @UMBlackAlliance or visit the UM Black Alliance webpage for more information.

The post UM celebrates Black History Month appeared first on Blacknews.ca.