In 1895, the year before the United States Supreme Court used a "separate but equal" argument to uphold (by a 7-1 vote) the constitutionality of state laws that mandated segregated public facilities, a New York Sun editor named Charles Dana wrote, "We are in the midst of a growing menace. The black man is rapidly forging to the front ranks in athletics, especially in the field of fisticuffs. We are in the midst of a black rise against white supremacy." Over 100 years later, African-American athletes are at the forefront of American popular and sporting culture. From Venus and Serena Williams to Lebron James and Michael Jordan to Floyd Mayweather and Muhammad Ali to Gabby Douglas to Tiger Woods, Black American athletes today command wealth and celebrity at a level that would have been hard to imagine for Americans of a century ago. But have these large dollars and unbridled celebrity translated into any real power for Black people? Where are we right now in the historical arc that is the journey of the African-American athlete? What are the implications of racism in sports with respect to gender and sexual orientation? And is sport a worthwhile site for resistance to white supremacist exploitation? This panel brings together a group of critics, writers, and former athletes from the York College community and elsewhere to discuss and debate these kinds of questions. All are welcome to join us. Free and open to the public.

[1] This is the titled of William Rhoden's 2006 book Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, published by Three Rivers Press.

Film Description:

Project Description:

Blatantly explored race, class and gender at a time of great social change in US history. The plot follows the lives of two widows and their troubled daughters. In the search for success, one of the widows – a struggling actress – neglects her daughter while the other widow, who becomes the actress’s housekeeper, struggles with her own daughter’s repudiation and her efforts to pass for white. As the years pass, each of the four women realizes that she has been chasing a façade.

MARK SCHULLER is former coordinator of the African American Resource Center at York College, CUNY. A writer for Huffington Post, he is the coeditor of four books, including Tectonic Shifts: Haiti since the Earthquake, and codirector of the documentary film Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy. His scholarly work has been published in twenty peer reviewed articles or book chapters, and he is actively involved in Haiti solidarity efforts.

A world premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, the contemporary drama Pariah is the feature-length expansion of writer/director Dee Rees’ award-winning 2007 short film Pariah. Spike Lee is among the feature’s executive producers. At Sundance, cinematographer Bradford Young was honored with the [U.S. Dramatic Competition] Excellence in Cinematography Award. Adepero Oduye, who had earlier starred in the short film, portrays Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay), a 17-year-old African-American woman who lives with her parents Audrey and Arthur (Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell) and younger sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse) in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood. She has a flair for poetry, and is a good student at her local high school.

Alike is quietly but firmly embracing her identity as a lesbian. With the sometimes boisterous support of her best friend, out lesbian Laura (Pernell Walker), Alike is especially eager to find a girlfriend. At home, her parents’ marriage is strained and there is further tension in the household whenever Alike’s development becomes a topic of discussion. Pressed by her mother into making the acquaintance of a colleague’s daughter, Bina (Aasha Davis), Alike finds Bina to be unexpectedly refreshing to socialize with. Wondering how much she can confide in her family, Alike strives to get through adolescence with grace, humor, and tenacity – sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, but always moving forward.

Produced and directed by John Jackson, Jr. and Deborah Thomas, along with Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn and Junior “Ista J” Manning, Bad Friday focuses on a community of Rastafarians in western Jamaica who annually commemorate the 1963 Coral Gardens incident, a moment just after the island’s independence, when the Jamaican government rounded up, jailed and tortured hundreds of Rastafarians. The feature-length documentary recounts the poignant history of violence in Jamaica through the eyes of its most iconic community and shows how people use their recollections of past traumas to imagine new possibilities for a collective future.

The Lynching of Emmett Till explores the tragic death of this innocent and well-loved young boy and the powerful impact it had upon the emerging American Civil Rights movement.