Cultural Activities & Events

Film Review | Jesse Owens, the Movie “RACE” and the Impact on the 2024 Olympic Games

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Jesse Owens was an African American track athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. His story is significant because, in 1936, Europe was on the brink of World War II. Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, hosted the Berlin Olympics with the intent of showcasing its ideology of Aryan racial superiority. However, the Games became notable for challenging this propaganda. Jesse Owens’ victories directly contradicted Nazi racial theories and highlighted the absurdity of racial discrimination.

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Person of Note | The Mack Robinson Legacy: Defying the Odds in Life and at the Olympics

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In 1936 at the Olympic Games, the odds were heavily stacked against Black athletes. Many were questioned about why they would agree to compete in a country that was racist toward them while representing another racist country. Yet, those 18 Black athletes knew that they would defy the status quo. By participating in these Olympic Games, they personified the idea of “taking up space,” and understood the lasting impact their presence would have for generations to come.

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Exhibit Review | Ugly Plymouths – a Martine Syms Exhibit @ London’s Sadie Coles HQ & Cork Street Galleries

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Martine Syms’ newest exhibition, Ugly Plymouths

To anybody familiar with Martine Syms’ work, it is no surprise that she is a master in the use of combining the physical and the digital. In her previous work Project 106, her use of space forced the viewer to physically traverse the room in order to experience the exhibition in coherent order .

That particular example was inspired by the great migration of Black Americans from the South to the North in the mid-1900s. This one was a little different.

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