Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 4/25/2023
NORTHAMPTON — On April 29 and 30, educators, writers, artists, activists will gather for the second annual Power of Truths Arts & Education Festival at the Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence.
The festival, which is a collaboration between the Northampton Arts Council and Self-Evident Education, explores different ways in which arts and education intersect to create necessary social change in the community and throughout the country.
According to Michael Lawrence-Riddell, the Self-Evident Education founder and award-winning public school educator of over two decades, this year’s festival will feature keynote speakers, workshops and panel discussions followed by a night show called “Know the Ledge: Hip Hop History Live.”
“Essentially, what we’re doing with that show is telling the stories from American history that help our audience understand the ways in which race has and does function in our culture and society,” Lawrence-Riddell said about “Know the Ledge.” “The content of those performances that folks are going to do during ‘Know the Ledge’ are based on the documentary films that we have made at Self-Evident Education.”
One of these documentaries that Self-Evident produced is called “What Happens to a Dream Destroyed: The Tulsa Massacre of 1921,” which covers the period when white racists destroyed the Greenwood District of Tulsa, which included more than 35 city blocks of Black-owned shops, hotels, theaters and more. Otherwise known as “Black Wall Street,” the district was a thriving community that featured entrepreneurs, lawyers and business owners, but it was all destroyed due to a racist massacre.
A key figure in the inception of this film is Written Quincey, a spoken word artist, emcee, event host, educator and entrepreneur whom Lawrence-Riddell met back in 2020. Quincey, who is well-known for creating the Cypher120 series — which played a major role in developing Tulsa’s hip hop culture — contributed to the music and voice acting for the film.
In an interview with Reminder Publishing, Quincey said that when he moved to Tulsa from Cincinnati in 2005, he was really interested in the rich history of Tulsa and the unfortunate history of the massacre that followed. As a current middle school social studies teacher in Tulsa, Quincey said he wants to make sure this forgotten history is told, and to do that, he said he is teaching his students about the 1921 Tulsa massacre to finish out the school year.
“For this history to be so traumatic, for it to be so such a tragic incident in the history of the United States and this American history, and for it not being told, I feel again that it’s my responsibility to tell it,” Quincey said. “There’s an entire community of us out here who’ve been focusing on ensuring that the narrative has been told correctly.”
The telling of this story is only a slice of the broader goal of the Power of Truths festival, which is to allow people to understand how arts and education can be powerful tools for creating communities where justice and equity are the standards in society. There is no way to change systemic racism in the present if the past is not rigorously and accurately dissected, according to Quincey and Lawrence-Riddell.
That means using art to engage people in different ways to talk about systems of oppression and structural racism. Both Lawrence-Riddell and Quincey different types of art, whether it be graphs, music, multimedia storytelling, or poetry, to engage students in these conversations.
Currently, Self-Evident provides a library of multimedia resources and modules. Each module is accompanied by a short documentary film and then underneath it is supporting curriculum resources that educators, students, and community members can use to dig deeper into the stories that are discussed in the films.
Self-Evident has nine modules in their library so far, and the 10th, “If You Cross the Boundary, We All Die,” will premiere at the Power of Truths. All of these modules help to tell stories that are not always told in the modern school system.
“I think for decades, the tradition in the United States is of course, to tell the story in a fashion to where one side gains the advantage of the narrative and the truth hasn’t always been revealed,” Quincey said.
“So I think my responsibility, just being the person I am for those who taught me to ensure the legacy of truth what I’m saying, it’s the responsibility to ensure that narrative, especially from the oppressed side is told. Because that’s the side that we rarely get a chance to hear about.”
The goal of the Power of Truths is to find similar-minded people who want to engage in this intersection of art, education and race, and to do that, the festival is building upon what it did last year.
“I think our vision from the outset when we started this festival last year was to build something that could serve as a magnet, as a gathering point, as a community space for people who want to come together and do this same kind of work,” Lawrence-Riddell said. “This idea of creating accurate spaces where we can accurately and honestly look at our history in order to better understand our presence so that we can envision and build a just future. If you’re down with that idea, we want the power of truths to be a place where people come together to do that.”
Beyond that, the goal of this festival is to make this an event that expands beyond Western Mass., which is showcased in the lineup of people who are attending.
Aside from Quincey, the “Know The Ledge: Hip Hop History Live” will also feature other artists interpreting these stories, like Akrobatik, Marcia Gomes, Dutch ReBelle, members of Fire in Little Africa, Khalif Neville and more.
Other presenters and performers participating in the event include Kellie Carter Jackson, professor, historian, and award-winning author of “Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence;” New York Times best-selling author Ilyon Woo; Loretta Ross, an academic and activist who has dedicated many years to advocating for women’s rights and reproductive justice; as well as Fire in Little Africa members, including Quincey, iamDES and Krisheena Suarez.
“The feedback we got from last year, one of the themes that kept coming up is people were saying, ‘I really liked the way that this provided me an opportunity to be around people from so many different sorts of identities, whether it’s we’re talking nationality, we’re talking race, we’re talking ethnicity, we’re talking language, or we’re talking profession or age,’”
Lawrence-Riddell said. “And so we really want to build on that, having this place where people can come together and learn from people in ways that they don’t necessarily get the opportunity to in their daily lives.”
For Lawrence-Riddell, the sky is the limit with the Power of Truths, and this year’s event represents that.
It’s only going to get more powerful,” he said. “The artists whom we’re working with to put on this show are incredible.”
Readers can learn more about the festival’s presenters and performers as well as how to register by visiting poweroftruths.org.