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CITY LIGHTS
City Lights Black Journal
City Lights
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More Than a Word
In this week’s New Yorker, staff writer Doreen St. Félix writes about the experience of watching the news show Black Journal, which launched in 1968, in 2020. It resonates across the decades: The premiere episode, St. Félix says, is “decidedly of its time, which was, like ours, one of transformation, violent and hopeful by turns.” Episodes are now available online via the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH in Boston), and segments can also be found in the online collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. On Black Journal, viewers could see Alice Coltrane interviewed about music, spirituality, and her family three years after the death of her husband John—a rare clip, according to a description for a screening earlier this week that was introduced by Rhea Combs, the museum’s curator for photography in film. They could also watch a frank, nearly hourlong segment where Black soldiers and ranked officers talk about the racism they experience in the military during the Vietnam War. What makes Black Journal so fascinating, St. Félix says, is how it highlighted “the complexities of Black fame,” and its political project—it “was tracking a revolution.” Segments are available at nmaahc.si.edu and americanarchive.org. Free. —Emma Sarappo
City Lights
Waiting for Salvation At the beginning of the summer, D.C. bassist and singer Rob “Kalani” Tifford wrangled his quarantine energy into Wabi Sabi: Songs for the Moon, a bare-bones psych-rock EP labeled as art of “impermanence and imperfection,” in tune with the Japanese concept at the front of the title. The plan was that Tifford’s band, Thunderpaw, would “just keep going until we are able to get together as a band again,” he says, and maybe do three EPs total. The process obviously unlocked something, though, because Thunderpaw has now released four EPs in three months, with another coming in September. Tifford’s confidence only seems to be expanding. The latest set of songs, Waiting for Salvation, is an all-too-brief tour of Thunderpaw’s sure-handed garage rock and hallucinogen-infused post-punk (check out “The Ballad of Mary Jane’’ in particular). Tifford, who previously led the D.C. trio Sunwolf, says he’s been recording bass, vocals, drum loops, and guitar sketches, then sending those to guitarist Kenny Pirog for his input. (Drummer Andrew Labens hasn’t been able to contribute while “living the good life” in Montana, Tifford says.) Bonus cut: a compelling cover of “Sons And Daughters,” the 2006 a cappella solo track by Fugazi’s Joe Lally. Thunderpaw’s discography is available at thunderpaw.bandcamp.com. Prices vary. —Joe Warminsky After a summer of uprising against systemic racism, specifically anti-Black racism, and decades of pressure from Native activists, the Washington NFL team reluctantly agreed to (eventually) change its infamous name. As of publication, they are officially the “Washington Football Team,” new name pending. That it took so long is a testament to how ingrained white supremacy is in America—and still, callous defenders claim the slur is “just a word.” But it’s not, and it never was, argues More Than a Word, a 2017 documentary by two enrolled members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, brothers John and Kenn Little. The documentary dives into the history of the slur, its derogatory use, and the broader landscape of sports mascots and corporate logos that use caricatures of Native people. It’s a good companion to the National Museum of the American Indian’s long-running exhibition Americans, which “highlights the ways in which American Indians have been part of the nation’s identity since before the country began” in pop culture, art, and history. Fittingly, the NMAI will host a virtual screening of More Than a Word followed by a streamed conversation with Kevin Gover, the museum’s director and a citizen of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and Diné activist Amanda Blackhorse, a plaintiff in the 2014 lawsuit Blackhorse v. Pro Football, Inc. who is featured in the film. The film streams at 7 p.m. on Aug. 28 and 3 p.m. on Aug. 29 at
americanindian.si.edu. Free. —Emma Sarappo
City Lights
A lot has happened this year: Outside of the global pandemic and protests against racial injustice, we’re also preparing for a historic presidential election. As a result, many people are looking to become civically engaged, whether by joining a march or tutoring kids who can’t go to school. If you’re looking to learn more about the past in the process, you could help the Smithsonian bring scanned documents from significant periods in American history into their online databases. The Smithsonian Transcription Center offers virtual projects where volunteers—branded as #volunpeers—type out the documents at their leisure. Got a free hour on Saturday morning? You could transcribe the diary of a 1920s farmer or official records from 18th-century bureaucracies. Recently, a group of volunteers helped transcribe more than 100,000 pages from the Freedmen’s Bureau for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Be a part of history by making it more accessible. The Smithsonian Transcription Center is available at transcription.si.edu. Free. —Kaila Philo
City Lights
DC Writers’ Homes
From Zora Neale Hurston to Elizabeth Bishop, an online database of more than 300 writers and their D.C. homes offers a glittering who’s who of Washington literary history. Finesse your explorations using mysterious and glamorous search terms like “genre: romance,” “showbiz,” “society hostesses,” and even “spies & their families” (where you’ll find Julia Child and her lemon meringue-colored Georgetown home). There’s an admirable category for “hosts of literary salons,” where generous intelligentsia like Hilary Tham will invite you into their homes. Tham immigrated from Malaysia to Virginia in 1971 at the age of 25, and was the poetry editor of the Potomac Review while living in her Arlington nook. Under “architecturally significant” homes, you’ll find iconic Logan Circle outposts like the home of Gil Scott-Heron. (The house, incidentally, was built by a former White House tenant and son of a president). Three miles up Connecticut Avenue is the country hometurned-Georgian mansion of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the first woman to hold a cabinet position in India. She gathered materials for her memoir from her Cleveland Park residence while serving as ambassador to America in 1949. Then there’s the 12th Street YMCA, as it was known, a Renaissance Revival fortress designed by William Sidney Pittman, a trailblazing Black architect (and son-in-law of Booker T. Washington), where Langston Hughes wrote immortal lines. Explore the collection at dcwritershomes.wdchumanities.org. —Emma Francois
