Collin College will celebrate Black History Month with a series of events throughout February hosted by the Collin College Black American Awareness Committee (BAAC). This year’s national theme is “Black Resistance: Grit, Faith, and Perseverance.”
The month kicks off with the “City of Hope Poster Exhibition,” available all month long at the Frisco Campus on the first floor of the J Building. The exhibition honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Poor People’s Campaign, a grassroots, multiracial movement that few thousands of people to Washington, D.C. to demand social reform in 1968.
One week later, “The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords” is screening from 7 – 9:45 a.m. on February 7 at the Plano Campus Living Legends Conference Center. The documentary provides a history of Black newspapers and journalists in twentieth-century America with a panel discussion to follow.
On February 9 from 11:30 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist Mitchell Jackson is presenting “Black Resistance: Grit, Faith, and Perseverance” at the McKinney Campus Conference Center. It will also be streamed at the Frisco Campus Conference Center. Jackson’s writing has been spotlighted in Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, The Guardian and Vice. His most recent book, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family, named one of the Time’s 100 Books of the Year, explores the intersections of blackness, violence, and economic inequalities through the lens of his early life in Portland, Oregon.
Later, the Wylie Campus Conference Center will host “Foundations of Exploitation, Oppression, and the Black Resistance,” a video presentation and panel, in room 103. From February 16 from 11:30 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., the 36-minute YouTube video from the African American Resource Collection with a discussion of New Orleans’ significance in the Civil Rights Movement.
On February 21 at 2:30 p.m., panelists will share stories of strength and courage with “Resistance and Resilience: Stories from Black History” at the Frisco Campus Conference Center with discussions of African American service in the Civil War, civil rights activist Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, and African American cuisine and culture. Donna Okaro will also share stories of her father Eddie “Sarge” Stimpson.
From February 20-23, Collin College campuses will host LEADership in the Movies: “The Woman King” at 6 p.m. The film is inspired by the events that took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey, a powerful African state from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The movie will play at Plano Campus Living Legends Conference Center on Feb 20, Wylie Campus on February 21, McKinney Campus on February 22 and Frisco Campus on February 23.
After Black History Month ends, the Black American Awareness Committee is hosting a Heart & Soul Food event at the McKinney Campus Conference Center on March 31 at 1:30 p.m.
