2020 Season’s Newsletters
A MESSAGE FROM THE AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE HOUSE BOARD
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the African American Heritage House at Chautauqua (AAHH). We have not communicated in a while and we want to reach out to you during these trying and uncertain times with a few hopefully comforting thoughts. First, we want to express our fervent hope that you and your family are well and that you are following the appropriate guidelines to avoid Covid-19. We want to see you all safe and sound this upcoming season and beyond. Second, we want to thank our many friends and supporters who continue to fund our efforts even during these challenging times. And lastly, we want to bring you up to speed on our activities since our last correspondence. A lot of things have taken place and an exciting season is shaping up.
Planning - The AAHH Executive Board meeting was held in Atlanta on January 23, 2020 with all but two of our fifteen members present. The view at that time was quite optimistic for the future. The short term is now a bit cloudy, but long term we remain optimistic. We plan to have an even larger presence this Season with activities beyond our normal programming. Of course we will adapt as the pandemic situation dictates.
The African American Heritage House at Chautauqua (38 Clark)
Even though it was in the process of being sold to new owners, we were pleased to learn that 38 Clark would be available again for AAHH and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra Fellows for the 2020 Season. The AAHH board approved the funding for our share of the expenses; so, we expect to again have a House for 2020, and we hope to see you there!
CSO Diversity Fellows - We also look forward to intensifying our associations with the CSO Diversity Fellows this season (five professional musicians seconded from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra). To start, Erroll and Elaine Davis will host them for a welcoming dinner at their home, and we will plan other events with them throughout the Season. AAHH members will also assist this year with the CSO Fellows' transition into the CHQ community.We profoundly thank Deborah Sunya Moore for this partnership with the CSO Diversity Fellows, a group of young professional musicians accepted by the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra for the 2020 Season.
Financials - We are pleased to report that for 2020, AAHH remains financially viable. We expect to have sufficient funds to underwrite both our programming - nine weekly lectures (transportation, boarding, etc.) - and operating expenses - the House, an intern and supplies. We thank our financial supporters, several of whom have underwritten a week of speaker costs, for allowing us to be financially secure moving into the 2020 Season. AAHH does not receive revenues from any of its activities and is entirely funded by individual philanthropy. Your support IS meaningful to us.
Special Event - A house on the grounds of Chautauqua, named the Phillis Wheatley House, was dedicated in the 1890s to provide lodging for African American workers and speakers at Chautauqua Institution. There were two categories of African Americans at Chautauqua, those who were brought in their roles as chauffeurs and household help, and those who were invited as teachers, preachers and Amp lecturers. A sampling of those invited includes the luminaries and the professionally known: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Utica Jubilee singers, Mary McCloud Bethune, Carl Rowan, Roy Wilkins, Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, Alex Haley, Ralph Abernathy, Carl Stokes, Shirley Chisholm, ….and those known in their fields of literature and religion: Dr. Henry Brooks from Andover-Newton Theological Seminary; James McPherson (for a CLSC writers’ course); Dr. Robert Murray from Howard University; Bishop Nichols, chaplain for a week, more than once.The Phillis Wheatley House was moved around a bit and finally rested near what is now Fletcher Hall. Significant additional historic research has been developed so far, along with additional information on the lives of African Americans during the Chautauqua Season. During the 2020 Season, we plan to reveal and celebrate this history and commemorate the Phillis Wheatley House in multiple ways and on several occasions!
Speaker Series – While there is growing concern that we will have a full Season, we continue to plan for one. We will, of course adjust as events dictate. AAHH Speaker Series (usually Wednesdays at 330pm in the Hall of Philosophy) is shaping up nicely to be another winner. We have prominent speakers for almost all weeks already booked, and the lineup will again be broad, deep and impressive!
We will kick off the Season with Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali from the National Wildlife Federation and will finish Week Nine with a discussion of demography by Dr. James Johnson from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
In between, we will have a full slate of diverse and learned speakers addressing a wide range of topics from art and social justice, the inherent biases in artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, urban education and, of course, reparations, a topic raised numerous times by our audiences last year. Following his electrifying presentation last year on confederate monuments, Dr. Stan Deaton from the Georgia Historical Society will return to share a southern female perspective of suffrage. An outstanding season is coming together. A full roster can be found on our website at AAHH 2020 Lecture Series.
In closing, we hope the above has given you a sense of the plans we are putting in place, not only for the 2020 season, but also for the future, as well. These are difficult times for us all and we at the AAHH hope and pray that you weather them safely. While commenting on these troubled times, we leave you with the words of CHQ President Michael Hill, "this pandemic has underscored the need for all of us to come together and to weave even broader, more inclusive stories of our humanity, struggle and triumph into a new Chautauqua."
The AAHH, with your continued support is setting out to do just that - to create a better Chautauqua Institution.
On behalf of the AAHH Board, please stay safe and follow the federal guidelines.
Sincerely Erroll Davis, President
A Statement from the Board of the
African American Heritage House at Chautauqua
June 2, 2020
Dear Friends of the African American Heritage House (AAHH) and the Chautauqua Community:
Like many Americans, we, the board members of the AAHH, are distressed, disturbed and devastated as a result of the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and the threatening surveillance of birder Christopher Cooper. However, we understand these acts not as isolated incidents, but within the context of our country’s legacy of racial oppression and indiscriminate violations of and violence upon black bodies. Therefore, we unequivocally name and experience these acts as racist and clearly recognize them to be the fruits of a white privileged culture that has little respect for and puts little value on the lives of black and brown people.
As a project with a mission to partner with the Chautauqua Institution to make it a place where black people are welcomed and find a sense of belonging, and that values diversity, equity and inclusion, we find these atrocities committed against black people abhorrent. We are further disturbed, in particular, that they are part of a centuries old pattern of law enforcement’s highly problematic relationship with black people and their communities. We long for justice to be done on behalf of the victims of these most recent events and their families. And, because we know these acts are symptoms of an illness that plagues American society, we understand that the wellness of our country is dependent upon the transformation of all systems, institutions and structures that create the conditions which allow such injustices to persist.
We refuse to permit the shocking, anxiety producing state of current affairs to back us into a corner of impotency and endless grieving. We at the AAHH hold the mirror up to ourselves and ask, what shall we do? We implore Chautauqua, an institution in which we take great pride as an affiliated project and whose mission we hold dear, and all Chautauquans to do the same.
In answering the question, what shall we do, it would be intellectually dishonest and a preservation of the status quo, to suggest black people and white people have the same work to do. Our experience and knowledge tell us that simply exhorting us “all to do better” without distinction, renders invisible the painful experiences of black people and absolves white people of their full responsibility. We must not perpetuate this inequity.
We are all responsible. We all have work to do. We encourage black people to intentionally embrace practices of self-care, engage in mutual support, find time to evoke and lament and create spaces to exercise your memory of the creative genius you have shown in order to survive and prosper since landing on the shores of Jamestown in 1619. We also urge black people to take up the mantle of leadership to continue the critical work of dismantling racism in our society.
Similarly, we encourage our white neighbors, who have benefited from the cumulative advantage of white privilege across the ages to do the necessary work to acknowledge, accept and understand this reality. Remember, that over the long and trying struggle for our country to be a more perfect union, there have been moments when white and black citizens have transcended the constructed barriers of the color line, in order to fight for justice together. We urge you to consider your role in transcending that line today. We ask you to acquire the skills to be racially literate, learn together, challenge each other, hold one another accountable, and acquire both the will and the wherewithal to act to interrupt structural racism.
We are committed. As a project, the AAHH will continue its work of sharing information, stories and perspectives that confront racial issues, provoke people to think and challenge them to do their part in making change. And, we invite you to share the work with us.
May we move with the urgency this hour demands and be inspired by the moral voice of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who both reminded us that “The time is always right to do right,” while also challenging us that “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
In Courage and Hope,
African American Heritage House (AAHH) Board of Directors
Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell
Erroll B. Davis, Jr.- Chair
Ted First
Geof Follansbee- Treasurer
Rev. Dr. Robert Michael Franklin, Jr.
Rev. Dr. Sterling E. Freeman
Dr. Helene D. Gayle- Vice President
Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Hale
Edward M. Jones
Ernest Mahaffey- Secretary
Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III
Rev. Dr. Albert Pennybacker
Tim Renjilian
