South Dallas gem named Exec Director of New England Foundation for the Arts

Education at Texas A&M University.

(Boston, MA) The New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) has announced that Harold Steward will join the organization as the next executive director.

Steward, a philosopher, strategist, and educator, is currently the executive director & cultural strategist at The Theatre Offensive (TTO), a Boston-based nonprofit organization that presents liberating art by, for, and about queer and trans people of color that transcends artistic boundaries, celebrates cultural abundance, and dismantles oppression. Previously Steward as manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center, which provides instruction and enrichment in the arts with an emphasis on the African contribution to world culture and will officially join NEFA on July 10, 2023.

“We are delighted to have Harold join NEFA in this role,” said NEFA board chair John Henry. “Their wealth of experience in the arts, cultural equity, leadership, strate- gy, and fundraising is essential to further NEFA’s mission to invest in artists and communities and foster equitable access to the arts. We are excited for the vision and energy that Harold will bring to our programs and services.”

“NEFA plays an important role in the cultural landscape of New England and nationally,” said Harold Steward. “It is exciting to have this opportunity to lead an organization of this scale whose values align with my own, and where I can bring my experience to bear alongside the dedicated NEFA staff and board.”

Steward’s appointment follows an extensive nationwide search led by a search committee, co-chaired by NEFA board members Carrie Zaslow and Michael Bobbitt, working with Arts Consulting Group. Steward will succeed Cathy Edwards, who held the role from January 2015 until she stepped down in May 2022. Since then, icant contributions that they weren’t aware they were making.

It is imperative that historians reflect so it’ll be “the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.”

That is also our job, our mission, as journalists.

Ethically speaking, it would seem that erasing, rewriting, or even hallucinating is morally wrong.

I have to believe that my ethics professor and then-dean of the Florida A&M University School of Journalism would have to agree with me!

Dean Robert Ruggles, can you hear me?

I know he knows that I got the message because he taught it to me twice!

And on college campuses, it has been one of my favorite courses to teach because everyone should want to learn about doing the right thing and I sure know how to live it and teach it!

So, as I hear the continuous debates around the wild hallucinations; I can’t help but think that future generations will think that our elected officials and the people who voted for them are on some serious drugs!

The thought that people are actually rewriting history to make it more palatable and to ease the consciences of those related to those despicable acts of the past is unconscionable and downright pathetic.

Therefore, I Messenger Media is taking a proactive approach to the asinine antics of the revisionist historians.

Every week, in print and through our digital platforms, we are going to tell it like it was; and therefore it is and will always be!

When someone is reading

NEFA has been led by interim executive director/COO Jug Chokshi in partnership with deputy director, programs Jane Preston and in collaboration with other senior staff.

“NEFA has known Harold as a grantee, an arts practitioner, and a cultural equity advisor for a number of years, and we wel- cont. from page 1 know revisionists probably curse Jet Magazine for running the pictures, but I praise them. come Harold’s leadership,” said Jug Chokshi, interim executive director/COO. “We are ready to embark on the next chapter of NEFA’s work.”

I am grateful that in 1995 Mrs. Mobley Bradley and her husband (who was Emmett’s barber and helped to identify his ravaged body) came to Dallas and spent time with me discussing her son’s murder.

And if you didn’t see the pictures of what was done to her son, we’re bringing them and others to you; along with the truth, unfiltered, like award-winning journalist Roland Martin!

Steward is a cultural strategist from Dallas, TX who joined The Theater Offensive in Boston as the managing director in June of 2017 and currently serves as executive director & cultural strategist and oversees all operational and artistic functions of the organization. Steward most recently served as manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center, a division of the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, which provides instruction and enrichment in the arts with an emphasis on the African contribution to world culture.

In 2009, Steward founded Fahari Arts Institute in Dallas after recognizing a gap in the landscape for local LGBTQ artists of color in Dallas. Fahari Arts Institute celebrated, displayed, and produced the work of queer artists from the African Diaspora. Steward is a member of the board of directors of Theater Communications Group where they are the co-chair of the equity, diversity and inclusion committee. Harold is also the board treasurer for the National Performance Network and serves as the board clerk for MassCreative. Also a steering committee member of the Black Theater Commons. Steward is also a founding member of NextGen National Arts Network and founding partner of Steward Cultural Development Group Steward served as a cultural equity facilitator with Equity Quotient and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Theater Studies at Emerson College where current research interests include The Queer Trap Aesthetic in American Theatre and Identity Reclamation-The process in which oppressed individuals reclaim agency over their identity through cultural production. through our pages long after I have said my last goodbye, they will read the truth!

After all, how many of you know what the officers who beat Rodney King look like? But you remember his face, bloody and puffy.

How many of you know the men and the woman behind the savage murder of Emmett Till?

But thanks to that heroic mother, Mamie Till Mobley, the world got to see the results of the torture her son mercilessly suffered. I

Now, truth be told, I understand why folks want to rewrite history. I wouldn’t want people to know that I was a descendant of a person who chained another person to the back of a truck and pulled his body until he was nothing but Exhibit number this and Exhibit number that; because he was in bits and pieces.

I would hate to think that someone I love or whose memory I cherish could be so savage. But we’re talking about the truth.

So hopefully you will take this journey with us. Sign up for the newsletter, at www.texasmetronews.com. or you can send me an email to editor@texasmetronews.com.

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April 6

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Iota Phi Lambda Sorority, Inc., Psi Chapter presents the 49th annual Business Month Education and Scholarship Awards Luncheon at 11am at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel, Dallas Campbell Centre, 8250 North Central Expressway Dallas

The African American Museum- Dallas presents the 35th A. Maceo Smith Community Service Awards Brunch at 10 am at the Dallas Marriott Suites Medical/ Market Center 30

The Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce Power Breakfast at 7:00am at the Soiree Coffee Bar in Dallas. Register at DallasBlackChamber.org

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Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce Business Mix & Mingle 5:30-8:30pm Register at dallasblackchamber.org 28

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SPJ 20th annul First Amendment Awards and Scholarship Banquet. Featuring Keynote speaker, Cynthia Izaguirre, Open

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