Celebrating African American Heritage

Celebrate Black History Month 2021 with a special series of virtual guest lectures hosted by Forsyth County Public Library. Each event will be hosted on GoToMeeting and participation is free. Advance registration is suggested.

COVID-19: Lessons From the Harlem Renaissance

Historian and filmmaker Dr. Gnimbin A. Ouattara speaks on the Spanish Flu pandemic and the Harlem Renaissance on February 3 at 7:00 p.m.

More people died in the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic or “Spanish Flu” than in any other pandemic, war, or famine in history—50 to 100 million of the world’s 1.8 billion people died in sixteen weeks, from mid-September to mid-December of 1918. 675, 000 perished in the United States alone - more than in the US Civil War. The flu originated in January 1918 in Haskell County, Kansas. It spread to the army barracks of Camp Funston, now Ft. Riley, located three hundred miles to the east of Haskell County. Nine months earlier, on April 6, 1917, the United States had entered World War I with devastating consequences on the pandemic. Scientists were surprised that the black population, which was expected to fare poorly, had lower morbidity and mortality than the white population during the autumn of 1918. How did these experts and the Harlem Blues finally explain this apparent inconsistency? What lessons can the black population draw from the 1918 pandemic to protect itself during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Dr. Ouattara is a Fulbright scholar from Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), West Africa. He is currently an Associate Professor of History and International Studies at Brenau University. He received his PhD in African History from Georgia State University in 2007. His published and unpublished research compares the work of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in the Cherokee Nation and West Africa within the contexts of the Atlantic slavery and the Western civilizing missions. He is also a Georgia State University Film School graduate, specializing in historical documentary filmmaking. His last film, published in 2016, is titled, Ali Mbomayé, a documentary that recounts for the first time the African perspective on the famous Muhammad Ali vs George Foreman Heavyweight title bout in 1974.

An Afternoon with Chef Kabui

Chef Njathi Kabui will speak on African food culture, sustainability, and food activism on February 13 at 2:00 p.m.

Chef Kabui was born in rural Kenya to a coffee farmer mother and restaurant owner father, both of whom took an active role in the Kenyan independence movement. Immigrating to the United States at the age of 20, Chef Kabui earned Masters degrees in both Medical and Urban Anthropology at the University of Memphis and a Bachelors in Political Science and Philosophy Studies at the historically black LeMoyne-Owen College. He now leverages his rich legacy by sharing his extensive knowledge of farming, culinary skills, and food justice as he travels across America, Europe, and Africa. He is committed to changing the way society views food, justice, and sustainability.

He has worked on many projects, and has spoken widely, appearing  on many forums dealing with issues of food justice and  sustainability. He has worked with major universities, communities groups as well as individuals clients in the U.S, Africa and other parts of the world. He appears regularly on the media speaking on matters of food literacy, sustainability and the intersection of food justice amongst African immigrants. He periodically writes about food, as well. 

Legacy of the Gullah Geechee

Dr. Eric Crawford will speak on the unique history and culture of the Gullah Geechee people on February 20 at 2:00 p.m.

The Gullah Geechee are a unique population of African slave descendants from widely separated regions of Africa, who today reside in isolated areas along the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Through their geographic and cultural isolation and strong sense of identity, they are said to have preserved more of their African heritage than any other group in the United States. They are distinctive by their creole language, their African style arts, crafts, and music, and their spirituality.

Dr. Eric Crawford is the Director of The Charles Joyner Institute for Gullah and African Diaspora Studies at Coastal Carolina University and the organizer of the annual International Gullah Geechee and African Diaspora Conference. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from The Catholic University of America, and his research focuses on the rich tradition of Gullah music. Beginning in 2007, he conducted extensive field recordings on Saint Helena Island, site of the historic Port Royal Experiment, and his transcriptions are held at the Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

In 2013, he participated in the Saint Helena Island Gullah Spirituals project, which was a collaborative effort among scholars and students to preserve and foster the study of the earliest recorded Negro spirituals. In 2014, The Atheneaum Press released a CD of his field recordings and accompanying booklet to the general public. Crawford is currently working on his book on the Saint Helena Island spirituals entitled De Ole Sheep Done Know De Road: In Search of the Gullah Spiritual, and he is conducting field recordings on historic Sandy Island, South Carolina.

For more information, or to register for events in the Celebrating African American Heritage series, please visit www.forsythpl.org.