Black History Month activities at VCU: Lunch counter sit-in lecture, hip-hop writers’ appearance, Sickle Cell research fund-raiser

By Mike Porter

Virginia Commonwealth University professors will examine the significance of lunch counter sit-ins in advancing the civil rights movement in the United States as part of the 8th annual VCU Libraries Black History Month Lecture.    

“Fifty years after the student-led sit ins: Where are we now?” takes place on Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 7:30 p.m. in the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts and is free and open to the public.

Njeri Jackson, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and special assistant for diversity in the Office of the Provost, will moderate the discussion. Jenny Jones, Ph.D., associate professor of social work; Napoleon Peoples, Ph.D., associate dean of student affairs; Jill Rowe, Ph.D., assistant professor of African American Studies; and Shawn Utsey, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and chair of African American Studies; will serve as panelists.

The panel will discuss sit-in demonstrations by African American students and others that began in February 1960 at restaurants throughout the South. The demonstrators were protesting segregation in public facilities and their efforts received national attention and were followed by passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which extended voting rights and outlawed racial segregations in schools, the workplace and in public facilities.

The panel will discuss the demonstrations and consider the state of black America and race relations 50 years later.

VCU’s Black History Month celebration also includes a visit by two leading hip-hop writers.  

Bakari Kitwanna, author of “Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era,” and Joan Morgan, contributing essayist in “The Speech: Race and Barack Obama’s A More Perfect Union,” will appear for a lecture on Hip-Hop Leadership in the Post Civil Rights Era. It takes place on Wednesday, Feb. 17, from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. in the Commonwealth Ballrooms at the University Student Commons. The lecture is sponsored by the VCU Office of Multicultural Student Affairs.  

Kitwana is a journalist, activist and political analyst. His observations on politics and youth culture have been seen on CNN, FOX, C-SPAN and PBS. His 2002 book, “The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture,” has been used in courses at more than 100 colleges and universities.

Morgan is an award-winning journalist, author and provocative cultural critic who has appeared on MTV, BET, VH-1, and CNN.  She coined the term “hip-hop feminism” in 1999 when she published the book “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost,” which has been used in classrooms across the country.

Also this month, the VCU Health System is joining Richmond area radio stations Kiss 99.3 & 105.7 FM in sponsoring a benefit concert to raise funds for Sickle Cell disease research.

A concert by jazz guitarist and singer Chuck Brown, also known as the “Godfather of Go-go,” is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 27, at 8 p.m. at the Hat Factory, 140 Virginia St., Richmond. Richmond-based “Plunky and Oneness” will also perform. Advance tickets are $25 for general admission.  A limited number of advance tickets will be sold for $20 to VCU Health system employees with a valid ID.  

The event will raise funds for the Florence Neal Cooper-Smith Initiative for Sickle Cell research to help sponsor a Sickle Cell research fellowship at the VCU Medical Center. Tickets are available at the Hat Factory box office or online at http://www.hatfactoryva.com/.