Stop what you’re doing! Tell your significant other to turn down the TV!
We’ve dropped a new episode of the redbankgreen podcast for your Black History Month enjoyment and enlightenment.
On this episode, editor Brian Donohue interviews Gilda Rogers, Executive Director of the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center where, as the web site states, “Black History is 365 days.”
Rogers discusses her own background growing up in a multiracial neighborhood in Elizabeth, moving to a vibrant black community on Red Bank’s west side, and her amazing story of how “T. Thomas Fortune found me” – not the other way around.
We also discuss the headwinds facing the Fortune Center – and the added importance of its mission – at a time when the federal government is engaging in a systematic deletion of chapters of black history, and Red Bank’s once large black population is rapidly dwindling.
The podcast (and previous episodes) is available on Youtube (posted above), Spotify (click here) and Apple Podcasts (embedded player below.)
If you listen to the end, you’ll hear me nerd out when Gilda mentions local Revolutionary War figure Cornelius Titus, aka Colonel Tye.
The next item on the Fortune Center’s jam-packed calendar of events is an author talk with a historian who wrote a book about Colonel Tye, an escaped slave who fought for the British in the war. It comes in the wake of an Asbury Park Press report that a planned interactive exhibit on Colonel Tye’s life may need to be relocated from Gateway National Recreation Area because of the Trump administration’s executive order banning DEI initiatives in national parks.
Here’s the info on that event, as well as the Feb. 22 film screening that Rogers mentions in the podcast. More info on all this is available at the Fortune Center’s web site.
Sunday, February 15
2 pm
“On A Sunday Afternoon,” Author Talk with Rick Geffken, “New Jersey’s Revolutionary Rivalry,” is his new book and salute to the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolutionary War and rivalry between the Black British Loyalist, Colonel Tye and Captain Huddy. A portion of the book proceeds to benefit the Cultural Center. Please register with [email protected]
Sunday, February 22
3pm
With the SCOTUS set to hear oral arguments about “Birthright Citizenship,” the 14th Amendment. The Free State of Jones film screening on Sunday February 22 at 3 pm, was made for this moment. It brings the past into the present. This riveting true story brings together an enslaved runaway hiding out in a Mississippi swamp and a Confederate Army deserter, who form a brotherly bond leading up to 1868 and 1870 passing of the 14th and 15th Amendments, giving formerly enslaved people citizenship and Black men the right to vote. Register with [email protected] to reserve your seat.
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331.
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