Category: Black History - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

Save the Date - IATF Showing at the Putnam on October 22nd, 2023

9/27/2023

Save the Date - I Am the Future showing at the Putnam
Sunday, October 22nd at 2:00 pm

Putnam Museum and Science Center
1717 W 12th ST
Davenport, IA (map)

PACG Board We will be working with the Putam to show our I Am the Future video and educate the community about the importance of being activists for civil rights. Look for more information soon. And if you are interested in helping with this fun event, please contact us at qcprogressiveaction@gmail.com.

QC Juneteenth Festival - Of Interest to Our Forum Members

5/31/2023

QC Juneteenth Festival
Saturday, June 17th at 11:00 am to 6:00 pm

The Lincoln Center
318 East 7th ST
Davenport, IA (map)

Friends of MLK Center (FoMLK)

The Friends of MLK (FoMLK) organization is proud to host the Quad City Juneteenth Festival on Saturday, June 17, 2023 at the Lincoln Center - TMBC located at 318 E. 7th St., Davenport, IA. from 11 am – 6 pm.

This festival is complete with food and retail vendors; local and national history information; community and resource booths; and fun-filled games and live entertainment for the whole family, this is sure to be an event you will not want to miss. Now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, we are looking to make this year’s event our largest ever.

We look forward to having you join us as a vendor, volunteer, sponsor or patron for this years festival as we acknowledge and celebrate the Black/African American culture and history. Read the history of Juneteenth and find more information about the 2023 Festival here.

PACG Webmaster

The new version of "I Am the Future" at the MLK Center - After Action Report

3/5/2023

**WQPT PBS viewing of I Am the Future - After Action Report**

Civil Rights Forum

One year after the creation of I am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past, PACG’s 2022 Black History Month film project, was updated with the help of local PBS affiliate, WQPT. As a small nonprofit organization, PACG could not have done this on our own. Lora Adams, WQPT Director of Marketing and Local Content, worked with her team for two months to make this possible.

In celebration of the updated version of the film and Black History Month 2023, PACG
held a special showing at Friends of MLK Interpretive Center in Davenport, on Thursday, February 23rd, for an audience of 20 people. Three of the interviewees were present to watch the video with community members: Rev. Gabriel Barber III, Dr. Henry Brockington, Attorney Catherine (Kitty) Alexander, along with film moderator, AbdurRahmaan Howard. Unable to attend the event was interviewee Mayor Bill Gluba.

In 1963, some residents of the Quad Cities attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The film highlights their first hand accounts and how their connection with Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired each of them to become civil rights leaders in our community. As young men and women in the 1960s and beyond, Gabe, Bill, Henry and Kitty would have thought of themselves as the future. This is their story. We are grateful to them in so many ways.

As PACG President and I am the Future creator, Glenda Guster says, "I am benefiting now from these past acts of courage and sacrifice. I made sure my children knew this, and my grandchildren know now they are standing on bent down backs that were not broken by racism. I believe this video gives local civil rights activists an opportunity to tell their story about their involvement in the March on
Washington and meeting Dr. King. We hope this updated version proves to be both educational and inspirational, not only for Black History month, but throughout the year
and for years to come.”

Our project title came from a phrase that Glenda's church often uses when speaking of their children: "I Am the Future." (This phrase is from the Whiney Houston song The Greatest Love Of All.)

We would like to thank our panelists, Gabriel, Henry, Bill, and Kitty, Moderator, Abdur, PACG President and film creator, Glenda Guster, WQPT’s Lora Adams, the PACG Civil Rights Forum, Friends of MLK Interpretive Center, and everyone else who has supported this project.

You may view our updated video here. For those of you who attended our viewing, Lora Adams shared this version of We Shall Overcome sung by Cordova High School Concert Singers from Memphis, Tennessee. This music is used in our video.

Maggie Davis, Office Manager

P.S. Have you donated to PBS this year? Do it now.

View the updated (2023) version of "I Am the Future" - A Message from the Board

3/2/2023

It's here! View I Am the Future online

A Message from the Board

PACG Board of Directors

We are honored that WQPT offered to update our Black History Month video from 2022! As a small nonprofit organization, PACG could not have done this on our own. Lora Adams, WQPT Director of Marketing and Local Content, worked with her team for two months to make this possible. Please enjoy it here. We hope to get it on our PACG YouTube channel as well.

For those of you who attended our group viewing at the Friends of MLK Center in Davenport on February, 23rd, here is the link to the video recording of We Shall Overcome. Part of this performance by high school students is featured in our video.

(P.S. Have you donated to your local PBS station? Do it here!)

Glenda Guster

"I Am the Future" gets a makeover! - A Message from the Board

2/14/2023

Announcing I Am the Future gets a WQPT PBS makeover!
Thursday, February 23rd at 7:00 pm

PACG Board of Directors

We are thrilled to let you know that our Black History Month video has been updated thanks to WQPT PBS! Please join us as we watch this together on PBS at the MLK Interpretive Center in Davenport on Thursday, February 23rd at 7:00. The show starts at 7:30 but we ask that you arrive early.

About a year ago when our new PACG president, Glenda Guster, took the helm of the organization, she had the idea of interviewing Quad City residents who had been personally impacted during the 1960s by Rev. Martin Luther King and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Typical of PACG, we organized a committee to get this project off the ground and the result was a 12-minute video we named I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past. Read about the original project here. And you may view that video on the PACG YouTube Channel: I Am the Future - Standing on the Shoulders of the Past here.

You have read a lot about this project over the past year because Glenda - on her own - has reached out to various groups and libraries to show our video. She gathers all of our featured speakers and hosts a discussion with them, addressing questions from the audience, after each showing. These have been very popular events.

In the fall of 2022, Glenda contacted WQPT PBS in Moline about our video. Lora Adams, WQPT Director of Marketing and Local Content, was extremely interested in seeing all of the raw footage we had and meeting many of our participants. She volunteered to rework our video, adding more than 15 minutes of new material and made some additional changes that we had originally wanted. WQPT did this editing for free!! (Have you donated to PBS this year? Do it now.)

We are honored that PBS was willing to update our video, making it something they will show for Black History Month, 2023. We are really proud that a local news organization saw the value of not just our video but of PACG itself. And none of this would have happened without the hard work of our current president.

Thank you Glenda for your continued devotion to this project!

If you are unable to join us in Davenport, watch on WQPT from home! Record it on your DVR, share with your friends and family, and keep an eye out for further showings. Their outreach will really help spread the word about the common good that PACG continues to do for our community.

Allison Ambrose

3 things to know about Black History Month - No Hate In Our States

2/3/2023

It's Black History Month. Here are 3 things to know about the annual celebration

NPR's Black History Month 2023

1. It was Negro History Week before it was Black History Month.
2. There's a new theme every year. The theme this year is "Black Resistance."
3. Recent controversies over how race is taught echo a time when Black history is often ignored.

From NPR: February marks Black History Month, a tradition that got its start in the Jim Crow era and was officially recognized in 1976 as part of the nation's bicentennial celebrations. It aims to honor the contributions that African Americans have made and to recognize their sacrifices.

Here are three things to know about Black History Month:

It was Negro History Week before it was Black History Month
In 1926, Carter G. Woodson, the scholar often referred to as the "father of Black history," established Negro History Week to focus attention on Black contributions to civilization. According to the NAACP, Woodson — at the time only the second Black American after W.E.B. Du Bois to earn a doctorate from Harvard University — "fervently believed that Black people should be proud of their heritage and [that] all Americans should understand the largely overlooked achievements of Black Americans."

Woodson, the son of former enslaved people, famously said: "If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated."

Woodson chose a week in February because of Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was Feb. 12, and Frederick Douglass, who was born enslaved and did not know his actual birth date, but chose to celebrate it on Feb. 14.

"Those two people were central to helping to afford Black people the experience of freedom that they have now," says W. Marvin Dulaney, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), which Woodson founded in 1915 and today is the official promoter of Black History Month.

In the decades after the Civil War and through the racial violence that erupted across the country in the years following World War I, there was a concerted effort to repress the teaching of Black history.
"In the South, they tried to suppress Black history or African American history in the public schools," Dulaney says, "particularly about things like Reconstruction and slavery, literally distorting the curriculum."

At the university level, Black studies programs were almost nonexistent, he says. "California was the first state to actually mandate Black history in 1951 for the public schools."

Largely as a result of the civil rights and Black consciousness movements of the 1960s, "you saw an uptick in Black history courses," says LaGarrett King, an associate professor of social studies education at the University at Buffalo.

Read the rest of the article here.

PACG Webmaster

"I Am the Future" showing by DYC of NAACP - What You Can Do Now

2/3/2023

I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past showing - Update
Saturday, February 18th at 3:00 pm

Davenport Public Library
321 N Main ST
Davenport, IA 52801 (map)

Note: The venue has changed. This event will be at the main branch of the Davenport Library on North Main Street.

PACG and the NAACP Davenport Youth Council 47AA

Our Black History Month project is once again being shown at a Quad Cities library. We are very excited that the NAACP Davenport Youth Council will make this presentation.

Please join us for a viewing of the impact that the 1963 March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr had on local Quad City residents.

As before, we will have at least some of the interviewees on hand for a discussion afterwards. Read more about these remarkable people from our previous blog post.

Glenda Guster

"I Am the Future" Showing - After Action Report

11/10/2022

Black History Video of I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past - After Action Report

Rock Island Library
Rock Island, IL

PACG Board

On Tuesday, October 25th we gathered together to watch the PACG Black History Video I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past. Despite the rainy day, over 35 people were in attendance! Gabriel Barber spoke as one of several interviewees that were featured in the video. And this was his 95th Birthday! Many of his family and church members joined us for this event.

The following interviewees were in attendance: Bill Gluba, Dr. Henry Brockington, Catherine Alexander, and AbdurRahmaan "Abdur" Howard. There was a lot of positive feedback from the audience. There were questions from several young people that attended in support of Abdur Howard.

The Rock Island Library requested the link so it can be included in their reference video collection. Several attendees requested a link to the video which is on our PACG YouTube Channel (link above).

The video will be shown again in 2023 at the Davenport Library, Fairmount St. Branch on Saturday, February 11th from 2:00 to 3:30 pm. We will be asking the Moline and Bettendorf Libraries to host viewings of the video for Black History month.

Glenda Guster

Showing of "I Am the Future" - A Message from the President

9/27/2022

I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past showing and discussion
Tuesday, October 25th at 5:00 pm

Rock Island Public Library
401 19th Street
Rock Island, IL 61201 (map)

Civil Rights Forum

Join us on October 25th for a free showing of our Black History movie, I Am The Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past.

In 1963, some residents of the Quad Cities attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Hear their first hand accounts and learn how their connection with Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired each of them to become civil rights leaders in our community. We will have a discussion after the video.

For more information visit: https://www.rockislandlibrary.org/event/community-viewing-i-am-future-standing-shoulders-past-pacg

Glenda Guster

"I Am the Future" Black History Video - After Action Report

5/17/2022

Civil Rights Black History Video - After Action Report

On Sunday, May 1st the video I Am the Future - Standing on the Shoulders of the Past was viewed at Friends of MLK Interpretive Center in Davenport, Iowa. Four of the interviewees were present to watch the video with the PACG members who worked on the project: Dr. Henry Brockington, Bill Gluba, Catherine Alexander, and AbdurRahmaam "Abdur" Howard. You can read more about I Am the Future in our blog post.

After the video we had a lively Question and Answer discussion. There were many questions for our interviewees from the people that attended the viewing. We had very positive feedback about the video. We plan to show the it at the Davenport NAACP Juneteenth Festival on Saturday, June 18th. There will be another showing of the video to PACG donors soon. In the meantime, you may view it on the PACG YouTube Channel: I Am the Future - Standing on the Shoulders of the Past here.

Glenda Guster