Black History Month 2025: Honoring Black Excellence and History
Join us as we celebrate Black History Month with a dynamic series of events that highlight Black history, culture, and contributions. This curated collection of programs features lectures, performances, workshops, and discussions hosted by departments and organizations across the institution.
We invite all members of our campus community to participate, reflect, and celebrate.
Sustain: Black Histories/Black Futures
Date: Sunday, February 2, 2025
Time: 2:30pm
Location: Arthur Zankel Music Center
Sponsors: Zankel and MDOCS
Description: This free afternoon-long screening features documentary-style portraits of jazz greats
Jackie McLean and Alice Coltrane alongside Sun Ra’s sci-fi odyssey, exploring themes
of music, spirituality, education, and Black liberation.
Niecy Blues
Date: Sunday, February 9, 2025
Time: 4pm
Location: Arthur Zankel Music Center
Sponsors: Zankel Surround Concert Series
Description: South Carolina singer and producer Niecy Blues describes her songwriting process like
an undertow: “I feel a strange pull, and let it carry me, following swirling leaves...
whole days roll by, forgetting about the body.” Her full-length debut, Exit Simulation,
captures this sense of deep-rooted divination, cycling between simmering ballads,
ghosted R&B, downtempo gospel, and looped vocal improvisations – often within the
same track. The title is taken from a science fiction novel they read during the purgatory
of the pandemic, alluding to a dimensional ideation of departure – “the permission
to imagine leaving.”
Author Talk: A Field Guide to Saratoga’s Black Heritage by Field Horne
Date: Monday, February 10
Time: 5:00-6:00pm
Location: Wyckoff Center
Sponsor: Wyckoff Center, Black Studies, History Department
Description: Co-hosted with the Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence with Paul and Mary Liz Stewart
of the Underground Railroad Project, this event will bring together historical scholarship
and regional significance. Historian Field Horne will share his new book, A Field
Guide to Saratoga Black Heritage, which uncovers and celebrates the Black community's
contributions to Saratoga Springs’ rich history. Copies of the book will be available.
Malloy Lecture with Saya Woolfalk
Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Payne Room in the Tang Teaching Museum
Sponsors: Studio Art Department
Description: Saya Woolfalk creates works of art that incorporate the African American, European
American, and Japanese influences of her family background. Also alluding to science
fiction, feminist theory, mythology, anthropology, archaeology, Eastern religion,
and fashion, she re-imagines a utopian, empathic world through painting, sculpture,
video, performance, multimedia installations, and public artworks. She is currently
working on a mid-career survey titled Empathic Universe, to be presented at the Museum
of Arts and Design in the Spring of 2025.
Black Excellence Career Affair
Date: Thursday, February 13, 2025
Time: 5:30-7:30pm
Sponsors: Career Development Center, Dean of Students, Office for Student Diversity Initiatives,
and Alumni Engagement
Description: Join us for an evening that blends celebration, networking, and good food as we honor
our esteemed Black alumni and community members. Several student groups will host
an interactive and engaging career panel with professionals from a broad range of
industries and class years. Panelists will share takeaways from their college experiences
and their perspectives on professional pathways. Registration is required and students
can register through Handshake. Guests include:
- Public Administration: Lola Brabham, President of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (CICU)
- Education - Jacob Navarrete '08, The Connected College Counselor/PhD Student
- Criminal Justice - Tashawn Reagon ’16, Senior Investigator, Civil Rights Corps/PhD Student
- STEM - Rashawnda Williams '17, Program Manager, Google Developer Studio
- Law - Nana Nyantakyi '19, JD Candidate, St. John's University School of Law
- Behavioral Health- Tyrone Jones '89, LMSW, Clinician, Refresh Psychotherapy
Lovefest
Date: Friday, February 14, 2025
Time: 1-4pm
Location: Wyckoff Center
Sponsors: Wyckoff Center
Description: Coinciding with Valentine’s Day, Lovefest aims to offer the community a space where
everyone is loved and welcomed. It honors the tenets of diversity, equity, inclusion,
and justice to which the Wyckoff Center is dedicated. The program also reflects Skidmore’s
commitment to the health and well-being of the community, a strategic priority of
the College. We are guided by bell hooks’ wisdom from her book “All About Love: New
Visions”: “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients — care, affection,
recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”
Film Screening: Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
Date: TBD
Time: 2:45pm-4:30pm
Location: Wyckoff Center
Sponsors: Wyckoff Center, Black Faculty and Staff Group, Queer Facutly and Staff Affinity Group,
Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion
Description: Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project is a documentary celebrating poet Nikki
Giovanni's life, activism, and enduring legacy. Through archival footage and interviews,
it explores her role in the civil rights movement, her fearless advocacy for justice,
and her visionary imagination, symbolized by "going to Mars" as a metaphor for creating
bold, transformative futures.
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes
Film Screening: Rising Hope
Date: Wedensday, February 26, 2025
Time: 7-9pm
Location: Wyckoff Center
Sponsors: Bob & Alicia Wyckoff, Wyckoff Center, Racial Justice Initiative
Description:Rising Hope explores issues surrounding the state’s historically oppressive policies towards
Black Mississippians, the massive employment loss following NAFTA, and the devastating
effects of defunding public education for consecutive generations. The screening will
include a post-film discussion with the director.
Morning Event: Work with MDOCS on Film Making on Feb 27.
Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes
RSVP: http://forms.gle/BwXtTtoHktN8hCVa8
Winter Miller lecture with Nina Chanel Abney
Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Payne Room
Sponsors: Tang Teaching Museum
Description: Join us for the eighth annual Winter/Miller Lecture on Thursday, February 27, at
6 pm, featuring acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Nina Chanel Abney. Abney is known
for her bold paintings that challenge viewers to confront societal issues. She gained
wide acclaim as the youngest artist included in the influential 2008 exhibition of
work by contemporary Black artists 30 Americans, which has traveled the country.
Melanie Charles + Make Jazz Trill Again
Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025
Time: 8:00pm
Location: Payne Room
Sponsors: Department of Music and the office of Special Programs and is cosponsored by Black
Studies, Gender Studies, Intergroup Relations, IdeaLab, Arts Administration, Management
& Business, with collaborators in Dance, Theater, and International Affairs, among
others. Funding is provided by the Zankel Music Fund and the McCormack Artist-Scholar
Residency Fund.
Description: Join us for the eighth annual Winter/Miller Lecture on Thursday, February 27, at
6 pm, featuring acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Nina Chanel Abney. Abney is known
for her bold paintings that challenge viewers to confront societal issues. She gained
wide acclaim as the youngest artist included in the influential 2008 exhibition of
work by contemporary Black artists 30 Americans, which has traveled the country.