2017 marks 50 years since the loss of South African leader Chief Albert Luthuli, who was President-General of the African National Congress and the first African Nobel Peace Prize winner. For years, Chief Luthuli was under banning orders by the South African apartheid government. In fact, it was while he was still under a banning order that he was killed on July 21, 1967 when he was walking across a trestle bridge over the Umvuti River, near his farm, and was hit by a freight train.

It was also less than a year later after Luthuli's death that, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was also a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1962. A little known fact, however, is that these two renowned leaders, King and Luthuli, corresponded with each other, starting in the 1959. Here is the 1959 letter from King to Luthuli.

After Luthuli's suspicious death in South Africa in 1967, his daughter, Thandi Gcabashe, along with her husband and four children, left South Africa in the early 1970s to reside in Atlanta.

Thandi was sponsored in the United States by Coretta Scott King, the wife of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Dr. King's good friend Vincent Harding who Thandi and her family stayed with when first in Atlanta.

Edited from a posting by Justice Initiative International.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) needed to implement an Obama-era rule on January 1, 2018 that enabled low-income people to afford housing in high-opportunity areas with better schools, a federal judge ordered Saturday.

Under the leadership of Secretary Ben Carson, HUD announced in August it was delaying the rule for two years, saying the agency needed to further evaluate it. Several civil rights organizations - - including the Legal Defense Fund - - immediately filed a lawsuit against the agency’s decision. Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled against HUD Saturday evening, saying it did not provide "notice and comment or particularized evidentiary findings” to substantiate delaying the rule.

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Supervisors clocked him as he rapidly maneuvered scissors again and again to cut bones out of raw chicken thighs. The plant was cold to prevent spoilage. And the slaughtering of chickens created an awful stench.

"It hurt a lot,” Yeom said. "All of the Korean workers, we all had some sort of chronic symptoms or pain, and some would lose their nails.”

Yeom, now 46, had landed in South Carolina in 2015 after researching how to immigrate to the United States. At the time, he was living in Daejeon, a technology center about 90 miles south of Seoul and worried about the future of his two young daughters in Korea’s high-pressure education system, where many children spend additional hours each day in in-his-hands "cram schools.” He also believed pollution blowing in from China was making him ill.

Online, he came across the website of a Korean migration agency, which said House of Raeford, a large chicken processor, was sponsoring foreign workers through a little-known green card program designed to fill unskilled jobs that U.S. employers say they can’t find American workers to do.

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Dozens of characters (and dialects!) are performed by Helen Hayes Award-winner Erika Rose in Mosaic Theater’s "Queens Girl in Africa.” The story centers around teenager Jacqueline Marie Butler as she and her family travel from New York City to Nigeria following the assassination of her father’s close friend, Malcolm X. In the 90-minute performance, Jacqueline finds herself navigating personal challenges (fitting in at a new school, applying to college, and falling in love) and societal challenges (a civil war in Nigeria and growing racial tension back in the States).

Playwright Caleen Sinnette Jennings, director Paige Hernandez, and actress Rose are of African descent. "My dramaturg is also a Black female,” added Jennings in a Port Of Harlem interview.

Similar working relationships are not new says native New Yorker Jennings. August Wilson, Lorraine Hansbury, and other Black playwrights have had them.

However, "it’s still rare, and it is a very wonderful experience when this type of working relationship happens because there is a baseline of understanding because we have a shared culture,” says Jennings, who lived in Nigeria in her late teen years and briefly as an adult.

Nevertheless, their age differences did cause the sisterhood to engage in some intergenerational dialogues to gain common understandings on some issues. The differences were not gulf sized she says. "For better or worse, things have not changed much in the Black experience.”

The Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St NE, hosts the two-year old theater company whose mission is to be a model of "diversity and inclusion at every strata, on stage and off.” The performance runs January 4 through February 4.

Thanks to you, 2017 was a progressive year for Port Of Harlem magazine. More than half of you and your fellow readers now open Port Of Harlem on mobile phones (51 percent on mobile; 49 percent on desktop). That is why we converted the magazine to be "mobile friendly,” which allows you to read the magazine easily on your phone, tablet, or desktop.

We also experienced a 13 percent increase in subscriptions. Subscriptions to Port Of Harlem magazine remain free. Our advertisers provide the monetary support needed to keep the information free and we thank you for doing business with them and letting them know you learned of them or remembered to do business with them after seeing their advertisement in Port Of Harlem. Please view our advertisers and their contact information on the Advertiser’s page.

Our most loyal readers, according to our mail service provider, had the following (partial) email addresses: crgibbs, gtolbert, mmaye, oguarawanemi, and gibsonernest. Thanks for not missing an issue. And, thanks to all who have shared issues and encouraged others to get a free subscription.

We distribute Port Of Harlem via email, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. Our Facebook fans have grown 44 percent during the last year to more than 1300 fans. The majority of our Facebook fans live in Washington, DC, with the second largest group living in Banjul, The Gambia. Fans living in New York City make up the third largest fan group.

Author, historian, lecturer, and Port Of Harlem contributor C.R. Gibbs will join The College of Southern Maryland President Emeritus Bradley Gottfried in discussing "African Americans From Maryland in World War 1," Sunday January 14.

They will appear on "Southern Maryland Perspectives," produced in cooperation with SOMAR Communications. The taped show airs on:

7a on WKIK 102.9 FM
7:30a on WYRX 97.7 FM
8a on WSMD 98.3 FM

The 30-minute talk is also available on Gibb’s Port Of Harlem page under "Audio,” or by clicking here.

Please note that 2017 marks the centennial of America's entry into the First World War and 2018 concludes both the national and international centennial commemoration of the First World War on November 11, 2018 (Veterans Day).

To see Gibbs' biography and availability for a presentation before your group for Black History Month - or any other Port Of Harlem contributor - visit our updated Contact Us page. Click the envelope under the contributor’s name to send them an email request directly. Availability and possible cost vary.

Washington
Curve Of Departure
Studio Theater
14 and P Streets, NW
Now till Sun, Jan 7, $

Queens Girl in Africa
Mosaic Theater
at Atlas Performing Arts Center
1333 H Street, NE
Now till Sun, Feb 4, $

Conversation with Dr. Terri Trent
Alexandria Black History Museum
902 Wythe Street
Sat, Jan 6, 1p, free

Jazz Music: East River Collective
featuring Craig Alston, Theljon Allen, Todd Simon,
Blake Meister and Dana Hawkins
The Anacostia Art Center
1231 Good Hope Road, SE
Sun, Jan 14, 3p, free

Bakau, The Gambia
LKJ in The Gambia
Ebunjan Theatre
Sat, Jan 13, 8p-11p, $

Coming
Barack Obama Holiday (Illinois only)
Sat, Aug 4, free

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