Amiri Baraka to speak at Southern University - New Orleans

Poet laureate and professor emeritus Amiri Baraka highlights
SUNO’s Black History Month celebration
Month also features award-winning author and 25-year-old professor M.K. Asante, Jr.

NEW ORLEANS, LA – Southern University at New Orleans’ (SUNO) Center for African and African-American Studies (CAAAS) presents Amiri Baraka, poet laureate, playwright, activist and co-founder of the Black Arts Movement, in the opening ceremony of its month-long Black History Month celebration. The opening ceremony will take place on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at SUNO’s Lake Campus, 6801 Press Drive, Building 43, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 pm. All events are free and open to the public.

The month’s activities will begin on February 4th and run through February 28th. SUNO’s Black History Month celebration will feature lectures, films, poetry, exhibits, musical performances, dramatic presentations and many other social and cultural events. The University’s theme is consistent with the National Black History Month’s 2008 theme, “Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of Multiculturalism”.

Dr. Romanus Ejiaga, Director of CAAAS, comments, “This year’s theme provides an opportunity to reflect on the importance of cultural diversity and democracy. As the Father of Black History and pioneer of multiculturalism, Carter G. Woodson laid the foundation for a rethinking of American identity.”

Mr. Baraka will lecture on “African American Politics, Arts, and Culture”. He has written more than 40 books of essays, poems, drama and music history and criticism. Mr. Baraka has also recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. He has received such esteemed honors as an Obie Award, the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, the James Weldon Johnson Medal, Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York – Stony Brook and Rockefeller Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts grants.

One of the public lectures will be conducted by noted scholar Molefi Asante, Jr., an award winning author, film producer, journalist, poet and professor in the Department of English and Language Arts at Morgan State University on February 15th at 11:00 a.m. in Building 43, at SUNO’s Lake Campus.

The month will begin with a photography display “Picturing Us, Loving Us” curated by Gus Bennett, Jr., SUNO’s Electronic Digital Specialist and student in the University’s Museum Studies Program. The exhibition will run from Thursday, February 7th through Friday, February 29th in the Knights’
Cafe (Building 5).