We know Mike. SUPER DUTY HEAVY TOUGH WORK INTERNATIONAL WORLDWIDE LEGEND. Do your googles. I just had to illustrate him. This was mandatory for me.
Black History 365 | # 141 Christopher Columbus Statue in Santo Domingo
According to The Orlando Sentinel, Dominicans make no bones about Christopher Columbus. His statue is a feature in a Jack Cana tour. The website states “The Christopher Columbus monument is located in the colonial city of Santo Domingo. Columbus Park is the exact spot where the statue is erected, surrounded by other very important historical buildings such as the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Incarnation, considered the first cathedral in America.”
Black History 365 | # 146 Rafael Trujillo
General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo came to power in 1930 and established an oppressive dictatorship in the Dominican Republic that lasted until his assassination in 1961. El Jefe (The Chief), as Trujillo was called, used his secret police to make arrests at will. The most infamous moment during his presidency was the massacre of thousands of Haitian citizens in 1937. Trujillo’s soldiers murdered Haitians working as sugar cane cutters or living in Dominican territory. Estimates of the men, women and children killed range from 13,000 to 20,000. It is a dark part of history that hasn’t much helped uniting the people on the Island of Hispaniola. Trujillo was also of part-Haitian descent.
Black History 365 | # 139 Ralph Ellison
Black History 365 | # 138 Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems is an influential African American artist most renowned for her visually compelling photography that combines text and audio to capture the particularities of past and contemporary African American life. Throughout her three-decade career, Weems has been an artist in residence and visiting professor at numerous locations. She has been recognized by several institutions and awarded multiple honorary degrees. In January of 2014, a 30-year retrospective of Weems works was featured at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, marking the first solo exhibition featured at the museum by an African American woman. Her works have also been featured in The Frist Center for Visual Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Tate Museum in London, The Minneapolis Museum of Art, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Spain. Her list of awards includes The Tiffany Award, The Anonymous Was A Woman Award, and The National Endowment of the Arts, and the BET Honors Visual Artist Award. Weems was also presented with one of the first U.S. State Department Medal of Arts Awards in 2012. Weems is concerned with the historical complexities of race, gender, class, and identity, offering a powerful and thought-provoking commentary on social injustice and inequality. And because that we honor and salute her.