Brown University's Inman Page Black Alumni Council (IPC)

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Black Alumni Reunion 2010
Black at Brown & Beyond: Careers, Community & Challenges

The Inman Page Black Alumni Council (IPC) invites you to the 2010 Black Alumni Reunion on September 24-26, 2010.

The Black Alumni Reunion weekend festivities will coincide with Brown's annual Alumni Fall Weekend. This reunion will be a unique opportunity to reconnect with friends from all class years as well as network with other Brown alumni and current students. It will provide a fun experience rich in intellectual exchange, reflection and pride in being a member of the Brown community.

Visit the new reunion website at http://www.brownbar2010.com

Alumni and students can volunteer to help with the reunion using the link below: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/brownbar2010

Playwright Lynn Nottage ’86 wins Pulitzer Prize for "Ruined"

Lynn Nottage ’86 has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her harrowing play, Ruined, about a group of women who have been raped and brutalized during the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Pulitzer carries a $10,000 award.

Ruined is on an extended run at the Manhattan Theatre Club, which coproduced it with Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. To research the story, Nottage traveled to Africa twice and interviewed women whose lives had been destroyed by the war that has raged in Congo for a dozen years. The winner of a 2007 MacArthur “genius” award, she discussed the creation of Ruined in the March/April BAM. She is the first woman and the first African American to win the drama Pulitzer since 2002.

An English concentrator at Brown, Nottage began writing plays in a class with professor Paula Vogel, who won the 1998 Pulitzer for How I Learned to Drive and who left Brown for Yale last year. After graduation, Nottage earned her MFA at the Yale Drama School but spent the next four years working for Amnesty International. In 1993 she committed herself to writing fulltime, and since then she has produced a string of extraordinarily popular and widely produced plays, including Crumbs From the Table of Joy, Intimate Apparel, and Fabulation. In 2003 the BAM interviewed Nottage about her early career.

To read the full article on the Brown website, click here.

Alumni and Students Reflect on 1968 Walkout and Brown Student Activism

Forty years ago, 65 black students walked off campus and boycotted classes for the better part of a week to protest what they saw as a lack of commitment to minority students at Brown and its then-sister school, Pembroke College.

The boycotters represented more than three quarters of the schools' combined black enrollment, and a major demand of the walkout - which began Dec. 5, 1968 and lasted five days - was for black students to make up 11 percent of Pembroke's next incoming class.

On February 27, 2009, students, faculty and alums gathered on Pembroke's campus, now long since merged with Brown's, to commemorate the walkout and hear a panel discuss the protest and its lessons in front of an audience that filled most of Smith-Buonanno 106.

To read the full article in the Brown Daily Herald, click here.

To read an archived article on a subsequent protest in 1985, click here.

Roland Laird '82 Releases New Book "Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African-Americans"

Roland Laird '82 co-authored Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans, a critically acclaimed work with an impressive scope: the entire history of Black America, told in an accessible 216 page graphic-novel form. Originally published in 1997, it was recently updated and now extends from the arrival of the first Africans in 1619 right through to Senator Barack Obama’s groundbreaking presidential campaign. Compared by many to Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Still I Rise is a breathtaking achievement that celebrates the collective African-American memory, imagination, and spirit and the book has been embraced by colleges and schools throughout the country.

In addition to his role as CEO at Posro Media, the country's leading convergent entertainment company specializing in African American culture, Roland is the co-founder and managing director of My Image Studios (MIST), a ten million dollar entertainment venue based in Harlem and scheduled to open in late 2009. This multifaceted 20,000 square foot venue will feature the art and culture of the African, Latino Diaspora and include 3 screening rooms, a restaurant, cafe and post-production facility. MIST is located in the Kalahari Condominiums, a 250 unit mixed income LEED certified "green" building.

A graduate of Brown University, Roland co-founded the NY Chapter of Brown University's Inman Page Black Alumni Council and its affiliate the Ethel Tremaine Robinson Foundation. He is also the former president of the board of the I Am Trenton (NJ) Community Foundation. An active advocate for his community, Roland has played many roles working on the behalf of the people of Trenton, Harlem, and other underserved neighborhoods.

View his February 2009 appearance on The 10! Show on NBC Philadelphia WCAU below:

Harambee House Survives Recruitment Scare

UPDATE: Harambee House was able to exceed the maximum and recruit 39 students to live in the house! Harambee will continue for the 2009-2010 school year. The students appreciate the efforts of all of the alumni who shared their positive experiences regarding Harambee on the group's Facebook wall.

Read the full article about Harambee's success in the Brown Daily Herald.

Lindsay Priam '11 Marc Howland '11 and are working really hard to recruit people to live in Harambee House this year. The House is in danger of being discontinued if they don't recruite enough students. Harambee House is a living center for all those interested in the politics, culture, society, and other aspects of African culture. Harambee, meaning "Togetherness" in Swahili, is also focused on perpetuating a sense of community, academic excellence, and leadership for all people of African descent. Harambee House affords its members a challenging and dynamic school year and a community environment.

A full house would include 38 students and the bare minimum for the house to exist is 22 students. They are hosting a social on February 25, 2009 to give tours of the house and recruit members. Dean Addison and several seniors will be there to talk about their experiences.

The deadline to reach the minimum of 22 students is March 4th and they are aiming high – they would like to achieve the maximum of 38 students.

They would greatly appreciate suggestions from alumni in how to improve the house and recruit students. They have started a Facebook group “Harambee House @ Brown University” for current and past members. It would be great if alums could join the group and take a few minutes and write about how great Harambee was to them! To join their Facebook group and post your positive experiences at Harambee House, click here.

You can also e-mail any suggestions you have directly to the Harambee House Leaders Lindsay_Priam@brown.edu or Marc_Howland@brown.edu.

To view the Harambee House 5 Point Plan for improvement, click here.

Joseph N. Gayles Jr. '63 PhD, Founder of Morehouse School of Medicine

Sixty years ago, all but one U.S. medical school practiced racial segregation. To become doctors, African Americans not only had to endure the rigors of medical training; they needed to do so in a nearly all-white environment. To make the medical profession more accessible to blacks, Joseph Gayles Jr., a chemist and higher education activist, helped to found the Morehouse School of Medicine in 1975. Today, Morehouse remains one of the primary schools of medical education for African Americans.

Gayles, who died at 71 of heart failure on Oct. 2 at his home in Atlanta, was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on Aug. 7, 1937. According to his daughter, Monica Dorsey, he spent time as a young man working at his father's appliance repair shop. After attending public schools, he won a full scholarship to Dillard University in New Orleans and in 1958 graduated summa cum laude with a degree in chemistry. He arrived at Brown on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, earned his doctorate, and then worked as a staff scientist at IBM from 1966 to 1969 before beginning his career as a chemistry professor at Morehouse.

To read the rest of the article, visit the Brown Alumni Magazine website.