2022 Programs

Black OurStory Month

As Black people, our stories are unique, remarkable and resilient. This year we want to highlight what we have accomplished, think about new ways to resist and persist and reflect on how our legacy can be kept alive to inspire our young people.

We have decided to rename “Black History Month” as “Black OurStory Month”.

We want to emphasize who we are from our perspective. We have to go beyond the history norm to honor all of our stories and celebrate in common unity “community “ with one another.

We are our story, our experiences from our perspective.

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Since I Been Down

Film Synopsis

Kimonti and a group of his peers are joining gangs as early as 11-years-old. Their community is profoundly impacted by our country’s policies in the 1990s, which label kids super-predators. This leads to outcomes of poverty, dead-end prospects for thriving in school and in life, and spending life in prison. The film, told by the people who have lived these conditions, unravels intimate stories from interviews brought to life through archival footage, cinema verité discussions, masquerade, and dance , unraveling why children commit violent crimes and how these children – now adults – are breaking free from their fate by creating a model of justice that is transforming their lives, our humanity and the quality of life for all our children.

Dr. Sheppard’s Bio

Dr. Gilda Sheppard is an award-winning filmmaker who has screened her documentaries throughout the United States and internationally in Ghana, West Africa, at the Festival Afrique Cannes Film Festival, and in Germany at the International Black Film Festival in Berlin. Sheppard is a 2017 Hedgebrook Fellow for documentary film and a 2019 recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship. Her documentaries include stories of resilience of Liberian women and children refugees in Ghana; three generations of Black families in an urban neighborhood; and a film ethnography of stories from folklore started by Zora Neale Hurston in Alabama's AfricaTown. For over a decade, Sheppard has taught sociology classes in Washington State prisons and is a co-founder and faculty for Freedom Education for Puget Sound (FEPPS) an organization offering college credit courses at Washington Corrections Center for Women.

We celebrated Juneteenth to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the US. The holiday was first celebrated in Texas, where on that date in 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, slaves were declared free under the terms of the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.

In Ghana, we remember Juneteenth and its significance to African American freedom.

STAYCATION

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Townhall Meeting

AAAG's Annual Giving Thanks Feast

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