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Di·as´·po·ra

The dispersion of any people from their original homeland.

 

The Diaspora Project explores connections between African American and Jewish American experience, including global dispersion, overcoming collective trauma and the Exodus story of liberation from slavery.
12 Points on the Forthcoming Diaspora Project
  1. An African American girl feels embraced attending a St. Louis Jewish elementary school and a Jewish boy feels embraced by Africa when a Dashiki-clad Detroit man places a carved leopard in his palm.
  2. Ann Arbor, San Francisco, Providence, New Orleans, Princeton, Detroit, Harlem, New Haven, Jerusalem, Orleáns, Stratford, Madrid, Havana.
  3. English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Italian, Swahili and Mandinka.
  4. Isaac Hayes in the 70s (“Theme From Shaft”) Michael Jackson in the 80s (“Wanna’ Be Startin’ Something”) Dr Dre in the 90s (“Nothin’ But a G Thang”) and Alicia Keys and Jay Z in the 2000s (“Empire State of Mind”).
  5. Stebbins Tool & Die factory stood on 124th St and Lexington Avenue, five blocks from the Apollo Theater at 125th St and Frederick Douglass Boulevard.
  6. The Promised Land was code for the free north, the Red Sea was the Mason-Dixon Line and Harriet Tubman was Moses leading the Israelites across.
  7. Rabbi Abraham Heschel marched alongside Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights struggle and invited King to attend a Passover seder in 1968. Ten days before the seder, King was assassinated.
  8. Dennis Franklin debuted as the first Black quarterback to play for the Michigan Wolverines on September 16, 1972. Sandy Koufax pitched the final game of Los Angeles Dodgers World Series championship on October 6, 1963.
  9. Angela Davis wore the quintessential 1970s Afro and Abbie Hoffman wore the quintessential 1970s Jewfro.
  10. Abbie Hoffman died on April 12, 1989. Huey Newton died on August 22, 1989.
  11. In Richard Wright’s Black Boy, the n-word appears 76 times. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, the name Auschwitz appears 14 times.
  12. The 7 nights of Kwanzaa begin December 26, 2021. The 8 nights of Hanukkah begin November 28, 2021.
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