Black History Month
Theme: "Lifting As We Climb"

Black History Month Time Line
Toyon Meadow, Month of February

Take a stroll down Toyon Meadow and view the Black History Month timeline. The theme this year is “Lifting As We Climb,” paying homage to the women who went, worked, and fought before us.

Blackout Thursdays
12:15 pm, Thursdays, February 7, 14, 21, 28, Suzanne Adams Plaza

Come join the Black Women's Collective in a celebration of unity during Black History Month. Events include an open mic, a music celebration, sexual education day, and a talent show. Come support your fellow Mills sisters and wear the designated color that will soon be announced each Thursday!

12:15 pm, Thursday, February 7th
Music celebration – the opening event for Black History Month and Blackout Thursdays. There will be music playing in Adams Plaza.

12:15 pm, Thursday, February 14th
Sexual Ed day – A representative from Planned Parenthood will come to distribute information on how to have a safe Valentines Day!

12:15 pm, Thursday, February 21st
Open Mic – A lunchtime event open for everyone to come and perform spoken word.

12:15 pm, Thursday, February 28th
Talent show – The Mills community will sign up and perform their talent piece during lunch!

Black Faculty and Staff Appreciation
7:00 pm, Monday, February 4, 2008
Reinhardt Alumnae House

The Black Women’s Collective is proud to celebrate all the outstanding black faculty and staff here at Mills College. Join us on February 4th at 7:00 pm as we celebrate all the hard work that the black faculty and staff have given. There will be lots of food, fun, and laughter… It’s about time!

Hurricane Katrina-New Orleans Report Back
6:00 pm, Thursday, February 7, 2008

Student Union
During winter break, the Black Women's Collective sent four students from Mills to do Hurricane Katrina relief work in the city of New Orleans. Come and hear about the group's dynamic experiences and activities. There will be a panel with the members that attended the trip, pictures, and information on how YOU can help.

Keynote Speaker: Angela Davis
"Unfinished Liberation and the New Abolitionist Movement"
7:00 pm, Monday, February 11, 2008
Student Union

Once one of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted", today an internationally renowned black feminist philosopher and activist, Angela Y. Davis is a living witness to the histories of struggle that have defined Black America. Join us as Professor Davis shares her incisive analysis of the journey from slavery to contemporary mass incarceration and challenges us to get involved in the movement to build a world beyond the prison-industrial complex.

Angela Davis Biography
Through her activism and her scholarship over the last decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in our nation’s quest for social justice. Her work as an educator —both at the university level and in the larger public sphere—has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender equality.

Professor Davis’ teaching career has taken her to San Francisco State University, Mills College, and UC Berkeley. She has also taught at UCLA, Vassar, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford University. She has spent the last fifteen years at the University of California Santa Cruz where she is Professor of History of Consciousness, an interdisciplinary PhD program, and Professor of Feminist Studies.

Angela Davis is the author of eight books and has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. In recent years a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.” She has also conducted extensive research on numerous issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her most recent books are Abolition Democracy and Are Prisons Obsolete? She is now completing a book on prisons and American history.

Angela Davis is a member of the executive board of the Women of Color Resource Center, a San Francisco Bay Area organization that emphasizes popular education— of and about women who live in conditions of poverty. She also works with Justice Now, which provides legal assistance to women in prison and engages in advocacy for the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant strategy for addressing social problems. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, a similar organization based in Queensland, Australia.

Like many other educators, Professor Davis is especially concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions. Having helped to popularize the notion of a “prison industrial complex,” she now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.

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Kuumba African Dance and Drum Ensemble
7:00 pm, Wednesday, February 13, 2008, Student Union

The Kuumba African Dance and Drum Ensemble, created by Stanford University students in the 1970s, is an exciting group that features music and dance from many cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora. They feature Senegalese, Ghanaian, Congolese, Afro-Brazilian/Peruvian, hip hop, stepping, and many other forms of African dance and drumming.

The Black Women’s Collective invites you to feel the beat. Join us for a lesson in African dance that is invigorating and body moving! Learn to move your body to grooves based on traditional African rhythms. Simple choreography in a safe and fun environment. No experience needed.

Hairstory: Iconic Black Hairstyles Throughout the Decades
7:00 pm, Thursday, February 21, 2008, Student Union

From fingerwaves to frohawks, changes in black hairstyles tell a story of social struggle and cultural inventiveness. Afros, braids, dredlocks, afropuffs and many other styles can carry a message or reflect emotional personal journeys, as well as simply expressing creativity and fashion.

Join the Black Women's Collective as we celebrate how black hairstyles have evolved from the 1920’s to the present day. Featuring music, video footage, and a live performance from Paige Gardner!

Film Night - "Bling: A Planet Rock" Director: Raquel Cepeda
7:00 pm, Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Student Union

You might have spent thousands on the diamond you're blingin'... but do you know how much it really costs? In this riveting, unforgettable film, hip-hop celebrities Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan, Paul Wall, and Tego Calderon travel to war-torn Sierra Leone, West Africa, and come face to face with the victims of the blood diamond industry so deeply entwined in hip-hop. The filmmakers explore the cultural significance of diamond jewelry in hip-hop and trace its evolution from early '80s old-school ghetto culture to the bling-encrusted billion-dollar industry it is today. Featuring Ishmael Beah, best-selling author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and interviews with Kanye West, Big Daddy Kane, Jadakiss and Mr. T, Bling is without question one of the most powerful films you will ever see!

Followed by a discussion led by Professor Amina Mama. Professor Mama is the first Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership at Mills College. She is also chair in gender studies and director of the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, as well as chair of the board of directors of the Global Fund for Women. Her research addresses women in government and politics in a variety of African contexts as well as militarism, women's organizations and movements, race, and subjectivity.

Permission to screen Bling: A Planet Rock granted by Article 19 films.

Hosted by the African Student Alliance and supported by RAP-Resent Group.

Dinner Honoring Black History Month
5:00-7:00 pm, Thursday, February 28, 2008, Founders Hall

Come and enjoy the company of the Mills community to honor Black History Month. The delicious menu includes:

Black History Month Dinner is sponsored by Cafe Bon Appetit.

Book Launch by author Ajuan Mance, "Inventing Black Women, African American Women Poets and Self-Representation 1877-2000"
7:00 pm, Thursday, February 28, 2008, Student Union

The first historical and thematic survey of African American women's poetry, this book examines the key developments that have shaped the growing body of poems by and about Black women over the nearly 125 years since the end of slavery and Reconstruction, as it offers incisive readings of individual works by important poets such as Alice B. Neal, Maggie Pogue Johnson, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Sonia Sanchez, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, and many others.

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The Art of Living Black—Open Studios Art Fair
11:00-5:00, Saturday and Sunday, March 1 and 2, 2008, Student Union
Part of "The Art Of Living Black", Bay Area Black Artists Exhibition and Art Tour 2008, sponsored by the Richmond Art Center

Featuring our very own Mills Professor Ajuan Mance’s acrylic paintings and art work by Jeanette Madden, Lorraine Bonner, Atiba Thomas, Duane Conliffe, and several other Bay Area black artists.

Self Guided Art Tour Weekend - Individual Studio Spaces in the cities of Berkeley, Emeryville, Martinez, Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco, San Jose, San Leandro, San Mateo and Vallejo.

For information on all venues, The Art of Living Black 2008 Art Tour Directories are available at The Richmond Art Center, 510.620.2772

Alvin Ailey Dance Performance!
8:00 pm, Friday, March 7, 2008, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley

Come and enjoy an exciting dance performance with the Alvin Ailey dancers! The program features Béjart/Firebird, set to music by Stravinsky (West Coast company premiere); Monte/Treading, music by Steve Reich; Brown/The Groove to Nobody's Business, music by Ray Charles and Brandon McCune (West Coast premiere); and the masterpiece Revelations (1960; traditional spirituals and gospel music; choreography by Alvin Ailey).

The legendary Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) makes its annual visit to Cal Performances and Zellerbach Hall March 5th through 9th to present six different dynamic programs of repertory, including two Bay Area premieres. Known the world over for its supreme skill, energy and diverse choreographic expression, the AAADT is "a company that clearly believes that dance is a gift to be shared with the audience." (The New York Times)

Cal Performances' time-honored relationship with the AAADT affords Bay Area audiences more opportunities than anywhere outside of the company's New York home. Now in its 49th year, it continues to thrill audiences with its energetic, compelling performances, earning a reputation as the most acclaimed ambassador of American culture, promoting the uniqueness of black cultural expression and the preservation and enrichment of the American modern dance heritage.

Tickets are available only to Mills College students at $16.00 per ticket. The limited tickets can be purchased on a first come first served basis at Jean Wong's office, Mills Hall 340. Please call 510.430.2080 for availability. The Ethnic Studies Department is pleased to underwrite a portion of the cost of the tickets.

Sponsors
Events are co-sponsored by Black Women's Collective, Ethnic Studies Department, Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Women's Studies Program, Office of Student Diversity Programs, Office of Student Activities, Office of Spiritual and Religious Life, Associated Students of Mills College, Women's Leadership Institute, Institute of Civic Leadership, Public Policy Program, School of Education and the English Department.

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