The Music of Resistance, a tribute to Llewelyn J. Soniat

The Music of Resistance, a tribute to Llwelyn J. Soniat
Panel Discussion: 6:00 PM, Wednesday, Dec 2, 2020 (video will launch earlier in the day on NAM’s Vimeo Page)

Virtual Live Audience Q&A: 7:15 PM Wednesday, Dec 2, 2020

Register for the Zoom link here.

Premiering online in December, this multidisciplinary conversation explores the life and legacy of local civil rights leader Llewelyn J. Soniat, who is the subject of a 2020 portrait by Brandan ‘Bmike’ Odums currently on view at the museum. This program highlights Soniat’s activism, from his work in the 1960s with youth leadership groups desegregating Canal Street to his later interests in the phenomenon of police brutality in the New Orleans community. Bringing special attention to archive collections as instruments for social justice, the guest speakers for this event include Amistad Research Center archivist Felicia Render, ethnomusicologist Matt Sakakeeny, and historian Raphael Cassimere Jr.

During his time as a camera man at NOATV, Bmike met Llewelyn Soniat, a longtime civil rights and community activist, when Soniat was a special guest. Soniat served from 1958 to 1994 with the NAACP New Orleans Branch Executive Committee and Youth Council and spoke out about local police brutality toward the African American community. “Lleweyln Soniat was one of those elders who influenced me deeply,” says Bmike. “NOATV was my real life civics class at a time when I was searching for answers around my identity. This series of paintings pays tribute to those who helped me navigate that moment, as I listened behind the camera standing ten feet away.” The Llewelyn Soniat papers are held by the Amistad Research Center located in Tilton Hall on the campus of Tulane University.

image above: Brandan “Bmike” Odums
Llewelyn Soniat (1926-2014), 2020
Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
Courtesy of Studio BE, New Orleans

Llewelyn Soniat (b. Dec 7, 1926, New Orleans; d. Dec 2, 2014, New Orleans). Civil rights activist, 1949 graduate of Xavier University, 1958-1994 NAACP New Orleans Branch Executive Committee; 1961-1989 New Orleans NAACP Youth Council; US Postal Service, political campaign volunteer for New Orleans mayors Ernest “Dutch” Morial and Marc H. Morial, among others.

This program is funded in part under a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Anyviews, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily representthose of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

About the Speakers

Raphael Cassimere Jr. &

Felicia Render & Matt Sakakeeny

Raphael Cassimere Jr. is a native New Orleanian, civil rights activist, and historian. He taught for 37 years in the Department of History at the University of New Orleans (UNO) where he retired in 2007 as the Seraphia D. Leyda Professor-Emeritus of History. In the early 1960s, as president of the NAACP Youth Council, Raphael made his mark on the political landscape of New Orleans by helping to lead boycotts on Canal Street that targeted segregated cafeterias and local businesses that refused to hire African American workers in capacities beyond janitors and cooks. Raphael has been an active member ofthe NAACP since 1960 where he held several positions. In 1982, he received the A.P. Tureaud Black Citizenship Medal, the highest award conferred by the NAACP in Louisiana. Raphael is author of the book African Americans in New Orleans Before the Civil War (UNO Press, 1995) and has served many appointments by various governors and mayors including the Louisiana Advisory Bicentennial Commission, Louisiana Election Code Revision Commission, the Louisiana Black Culture Commission and the New Orleans Vieux Carre Commission. He was the first African American teaching assistant at UNO in 1967 and later was also the first African American instructor hired by the university. He received a PhD from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania in 1971 and earned his BA and MA in history from LSUNO (now UNO).

Felicia Render is an archivist at the Amistad Research Center, an organization committed to collecting, preserving, and providing open access to original materials that reference the social and cultural importance of America’s ethnic and racial history, the African Diaspora, human relations, and civil rights. She is passionate about preserving different aspects ofculture and the ways technology is used to manage cultural heritage resources. Prior to joining the Amistad Research Center, Felicia was the Visual Culture Archivist for the Atlanta History Center, where she managed visual collections by processing over 100 photograph collections, cataloging thousands of images, and completing a grant project to digitize vintage color film footage of Atlanta. Her past experience working in Georgia and Illinois includes a fellowship from the Institute of Museum and Library Services fellowship at The HistoryMakers in Chicago; Digital Initiatives Resident Librarian at the Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library; and Library Associate at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, also located in Atlanta. Felicia holds a Master of Science in Library and Information Science from the University ofNorth Texas with a concentration in Digital Content Management

Matt Sakakeeny studies the intersections of music, race, and power. He is the author of Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans (Duke Press, 2013) and articles in several edited collections and journals, including Ethnomusicology, Black MusicResearch Journal, and Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. He is co-author of Keywords in Sound (Duke Press, 2015) and his work consistently troubles the boundaries between music and sound. He is also co-author of Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity (Duke Press, 2019), exemplifying how his studies of the region go beyond music. Matt has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Awards to Louisiana Artists and Scholars, and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, and awards from the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Popular Music Section of SEM, and Tulane University’s Center for Public Service. As part of his community-engaged research, Matt is a board member for Roots of Music and the Dinerral Shavers Educational Fund, and has published in media outlets such as Oxford American and NPR’s All Things Considered. Sakakeeny holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University and earned a Masters in Musicology at Tulane University. His undergraduate studies of music were at the Johns Hopkins University. He is also the guitarist and bandleader of Los Po-Boy-Citos and released a solo album in 2018 as The Lonely Birds.

Learn more about the topics discussed in this program and the life and legacy of Llewelyn Soniat

The Music of Resistance, a tribute to Llewelyn J. Soniat

About the Speakers

Raphael Cassimere Jr. &

Felicia Render & Matt Sakakeeny

Learn more about the topics discussed in this program and the life and legacy of Llewelyn Soniat

Amistad Research Center Resources

Videos

Articles and Essays

Books