Students, faculty and members of the community last night gathered at Granoff Family Hillel Center to close out Black History Month with a celebration of black history and culture.
The Black History Month Celebration, sponsored by the Tufts Black Men's Group and the Africana Center, featured performances by the all−female a capella group Essence, the ENVY Step Team, Berklee College of Music student Nick Hakim and Matt Rose and the Crossover Kidz, a hip hop/rap band also made up of students from Berklee.
Sophomore Gabrielle Raymond also read her essay, which took second place in January's MLK Reflections Contest. There was an open mic for attendees to share their thoughts about black history and culture.
Senior Shabazz Stuart, one of the event's organizers, said the idea for the event came up two weeks ago when members of the Black Men's Group realized there was a void to fill.
"Black history is American history," Stuart said. "To know black history and to understand black history is to understand who we are as Americans. We talked about priorities for the semester. We said, ‘No one's doing anything for Black History Month. There's no opportunity for Tufts students to come out and celebrate such a part of history.'"
Senior Hameto Benkreira, another event organizer, said the group wanted to commemorate the end of Black History Month with an event involving a broad spectrum of the community.
"We really wanted to bring a cross−section of the campus together to celebrate this event. … There's not always such a diverse crowd that's reflective of the Tufts campus," Benkreira said. "We thought it would be a good way to close out Black History Month with a community gathering. We really worked hard to reach out to a lot of people from all over campus."
The organizers approached Tufts Hillel to host the event, worked with the Center for STEM Diversity and obtained funding from the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs.
Sophomore Groom Dinkneh, who also helped organize the event, said he invited Matt Rose and the Crossover Kidz to the celebration after seeing Rose perform at a similar event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a week and a half ago.
"I went there and Matt, from the group that performed, recited the same poem on stage [that he performed tonight]," Dinkneh said. "When I heard it, I was like, ‘Man, we need this kid to come out'. So I ran up to him and grabbed his number. Lo and behold, he happens to be an artist, so he brought his whole band out and made them the feature and really got the crowd really involved today."
Sophomore Sabienne Brutus heard about the event from Dinkneh and thought it would be an interesting event to attend given the outside involvement and venue, which is different from venues of other Africana Center events. She said she especially liked Essence's performance of "I Am Not My Hair" by India Arie.
"It speaks to me, so I definitely enjoyed that," Brutus said.
Stuart hopes that this event will become an annual tradition.
"I hope we started something here tonight," Stuart said. "Hameto and I are both seniors, but I hope this continues. Black History Month is an important opportunity to look back retrospectively at black history, as far as the narrative of black people in America, so I hope this happens again."
