By Naeisha Rose
Queens College was to kick off its Black History Month celebration this past Thursday with an interactive exhibition titled “Waging Peace: 100 Years of Action,” which was organized by the American Friends Service Committee at the school’s Godwin-Ternbach Museum.
The American Friends Service Committee is a non-profit organization committed to social justice, according to its website.
Through the use of interactive media and artifacts, the exhibition is intended to explore themes about building peace, ending discrimination, and addressing prison issues, just economies, immigration rights and calls to action.
The museum will expand on the exhibition by including historical posters, photographs and documents from its collection of Queens College Civil Rights Archives, according to the school.
The materials from Godwin-Ternbach are firsthand accounts of the fight for social justice by Queens College students and faculty, according to the institution.
A panel about the origins of Black History Month will be held Monday from 10:45 a.m. to 12:05 a.m. to kickoff week two celebrations. It will be at the Muyskens Conference Room at the school’s Summit apartments. The school is at 65-30 Kissena Blvd. in Flushing.
Jessica Harris, a culinary historian, cookbook author, journalist and Queens College faculty member, will present “My Soul Looks Back: Reflections on My 50-Year Career at Queens College” on Tuesday from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Student Union’s fourth-floor ballroom.
Dr. Patrice Fenton, Babajimi Famusesan and Jason Rosario will round out Week 3 of the celebration on Feb. 13 at a “What is Blackness: A Discourse on Identity, Ethnicity and Race” panel at the Benjamin Rosenthal Library at the President’s Conference Room.
The emergence of contemporary blackness will be discussed, along with the panelists’ own experiences and understanding of ethnicity, race, and identity, as well as social and political forces that have shaped them.
The panel will start at 4:40 p.m. and end at 6 p.m.
For Week 4, there will be guest lectures by author Vanessa Valdes and Katrina Adams, the chairwoman of the board of the United States Tennis Association, on Feb. 20 and Feb 21 at Rosenthal Library. Both lectures will be from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m.
The fifth week of Black History Month will have students who went civil rights sites in Georgia and Alabama reflect on their experiences at the Student Union Ballroom West on Feb. 26 from 12:15 to 2 p.m.
The final event will be a panel discussion, “Black Women and the Vote: Suffrage to the Era of Trump,” scheduled at the Patio Room at the school’s dining hall for Feb. 28 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by email at nrose
