Honoring Black History Month

Throughout the month of February, students organized many events to honor and celebrate Black History Month, with the theme of Black Power. Events included a potluck, game night, a jazz performance at assembly, two movie screenings and two invited alumni. 

 

On Thursday, February 16, Trey Ellis '80 (graduate of Andover) hosted a screening and talk-back in Upper Heath Commons of his film, "King in the Wilderness," a documentary about the last three years leading up to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination. The event featured delicious soul food from Sandra’s Next Generation Restaurant, and the opportunity to engage with Mr. Ellis. “It was a privilege to have Trey Ellis back on campus for a Q&A session about his documentary "King in the Wilderness,”’ shared Assata D. ’23. “Mr. Ellis' aptitude for storytelling was so clearly seen through the documentary, and those who attended were eager to hear about the creative process behind it. Mr Ellis was very candid about his work which bode well for our conversation about this universally important yet extremely personal film. I believe that we all left with new notions and questions about the intersection of social justice and identity.” Read more about Trey Ellis at the end of this article. 

 

Entrepreneur and Hopkins alumna Mary Imevbore ’14 returned to campus on Friday, February 24 to speak at assembly. She gave the students advice about how to generate their own luck in the world. See Mary’s full assembly address in the video below, and learn more about Waeve, the company she founded, in this article from the Spring 2021 issue of Views from the Hill.

 

To bring the month’s festivities to a close, a showcase of student and faculty performances and readings was held on Wednesday, March 1. Performances included the Jazz Band, Dance Crew, and Jeorie B. on violin; presentations by Ms. Maxwell & Ms. Madison, and poetry readings of  Langston Hughes, Amanda Gorman and an original poem by Anna C. '24.  See a highlight video of the showcase below. 

Trey Ellis is a two-time Emmy and Peabody winning filmmaker, American Book Award winning novelist, and NAACP Image award winning playwright. His screenplay Holy Mackerel! is one of the highest ever rated on Franklin Leonard’s Black List.com.  He is currently developing this project as a limited series for the FX network with Shaka King and starring Samuel L. Jackson.  Some of his other screenplays include the Peabody Award-winning The Tuskegee Airmen for HBO and Good Fences for Showtime, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the PEN award for Best Teleplay. His works have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the author of the novels, Platitudes, Home Repairs and Right Here, Right Now, as well as the memoir Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood.  His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ and Vanity Fair. His play, Fly, was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Institute and continues to be performed around the country including Washington, D.C.’s Ford’s Theater, the Pasadena Playhouse and the New Victory Theater in New York. He is currently in rehearsals for a musical on the life of Dorothy Dandridge for which he wrote the book and is co-writer of the lyrics.  A night of the music from the musical was performed at Carnegie Hall this summer.