South Side Initiative kicks off Black History Month with dance performance, photo artifact exhibit

Thursday, January 22, 2009, By News Staff

Kelly Homan Rodoski
(315) 443-3784

Participants in the Syracuse Black History Preservation Project, a community engagement project of Syracuse University’s South Side Initiative Office, will kick off the celebration of February as Black History Month with a program and photo artifacts exhibition on Sunday, Feb. 1, at the Onondaga Historical Association Museum and Research Center, 321 Montgomery St., Syracuse.

The event, from 2-4 p.m., will include a performance by the Syracuse University South Side Initiative Kuumba Dancers. They will perform “Root Remembrance,” a piece choreographed by Carol Dandridge Charles. Performances by a local step team and youth choir will also be part of the event. Light refreshments will be served.

The primary focus of the photo artifacts exhibit is local black history from the 1800s to the mid-1900s. Historic dialogue between suffragist and activist Matilda Joslyn Gage and African American abolitionist Jermain W. Loguen will be featured within the exhibit.

The event is sponsored by the South Side Initiative, the Onondaga Historical Association Museum and Research Center, the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, the Dunbar Association, Onondaga County Public Library and Umi & Associates.

For more information, call the South Side Initiative Office at 443-1916.