A. Foxen-McNeill

SB Black Culture House

by Joanne A Calitri

Black History Month (BHM) is an annual national celebration during February that commenced with Negro History Week (February 1926) initiated by Carter G. Woodson, founder of Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Later in the 1940s, Blacks in West Virginia began to celebrate February as Negro History Month, and by 1960 in Chicago, cultural activist, Frederick H. Hammurabi, started celebrating Negro History Month.

In 1976, the ASNLH used its influence to shift from a week to a month and from Negro History to Black History. In addition, February’s Black History Month is endorsed annually by Presidential Proclamation, which started with President Ford. The ASNLH renamed itself ASALH (Association for the Study of African American Life and History) and continues to promote the study of Black history all year.

This feature story for BHM shines a light on Santa Barbara Black Culture uate of Santa Barbara High School, sits on the board of directors of the SBHS Alumni Association, and is a member of the city’s Neighborhood Advisory Council representing the Lower West Side community. The majority of her career was spent at UCSB as a student advisor, working with primarily students of color and their journey toward graduating with bachelor’s and graduate degrees at UCSB.

Foxen-McNeill

House founded in 2020 by Darrell M. McNeill and Sally A.

Their mission is to present and illuminate the Black experience through events that showcase the art, culture, and history of the African diaspora in the city of Santa Barbara: “It serves not just as a spotlight on the vibrancy of Black life, but as a reminder of a once thriving Black community in America’s Riviera.”

Brooklyn-born McNeill is the CEO of PoetWarrior Productions and Backlit Media and director of Operations for the Black Rock Coalition, a 501(c)(3) advocacy group for BIPOC artists whose work defies and challenges reductive narrowcast genre and cultural classifications and stereotypes by the music industry. He also serves as vice-chair of the Santa Barbara Arts Advisory Council, in addition to being a musician, producer, composer, journalist, critic, broadcaster, and historian. He holds a BFA in print journalism from the School of Visual Arts NYC.

Foxen-McNeill, a native of Santa Barbara, is dedicated to her city. She is a proud grad-

SB Black Culture House, currently in its fourth year, operates annually as a onemonth cultural pop-up, located this year at Soul Bites Restaurant on State Street. I met Darrell and Sally there to talk about their organization and their work for our Black and Brown communities.

Q. What was the defining impetus for you to create the SB Black Culture House?

A. For Sally, she’d grown up in a Santa Barbara community that was far more diverse and cross-cultural than it is presently with every Black History Month having only a few programs here and there scattered around town. She wanted to create a single space that would host multiple events throughout the month and bring larger groups of people together. Darrell moved to Santa Barbara in 2017 after 10 years of maintaining a long-distance relationship with Sally. He was seeking opportunities to continue producing live events. His last job in New York was associate producer of Music Programming at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). There didn’t appear