Northeastern’s Black History Month to honor global impact of African diaspora

Northeastern University’s celebration of Black History Month will feature more than a dozen educational events, including a film screening, an art exhibit, and a walking tour of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood.

The monthlong series, which begins on Monday and was organized by the John D. O’Bryant African-American Institute, will honor the rich his­tory, con­tri­bu­tions, and global impact of the African dias­pora.

Added Joseph Bostic, the institute’s assistant director of outreach and communications: “Exposing the Northeastern community to the African American experience will promote a healthy diversity on campus.”

The series, he said, will be divided into four, weeklong segments, each of which will focus on a core theme.

Identity

Week one will explore the theme of identity.

On Monday at 7 p.m. in the Cabral Center, students, faculty, and staff will be treated to live music and food found throughout the African diaspora.

Selma—the Oscar-nominated 2014 film chronicling Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965—will be screened in the Cabral Center on Friday at 7 p.m.

Self-reliance

Week two will focus on the theme of self-reliance.

One of the biggest events of the week—a nine-person panel discussion about what it takes to design, launch, and run a startup—will be held in the Cabral Center at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 9.

A guided tour of graphic novelist John Jennings’ Gallery 360 exhibit “Visible Noize”—which aims to explore, disrupt, and recontextualize racial stereotypes in traditional comic art—will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 10.

Another film—Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights—will be screened on Wednesday at noon in the Cabral Center’s study space.

Educate

Week three events will aim to educate.

There will be a lecture on the history of black military participation on Thursday, Feb. 18, at 4 p.m. in the Cabral Center, and a talk on the black Muslim experience on Friday, Feb. 19, at 7 p.m. in the Cabral Center.

A walking tour of Roxbury will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 17. To participate, meet up at the Cabral Center at 11:30 a.m.

Unity

Week four events will center on unity.

A luncheon, to be held in the Cabral Center at 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 23, will honor Northeastern’s black faculty and staff.

A discussion, to be held in the Social Justice Resource Center on Tuesday at 6 p.m., will focus on colorism, the definition of which is “discrimination against people with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.”

An awards show—the fourth annual Tribute to Black Women and Sapphire Awards Ceremony—will be held in the Cabral Center on Thursday, Feb. 25, at 5:30 p.m. Northeastern’s chapter of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, which will host the program, will honor three women with the Sapphire Award, the highest honor bestowed by the fraternity upon women in education, business, and social justice.