BOROUGH HALL BLACK HISTORY MONTH CELEBRATION TO HONOR UNSUNG CIVIL RIGHTS HERO

Civil rights activist Sarah Keys Evans will be honored, with Danny Simmons and the
International African Arts Festival.

6:00 P.M.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2007
BROOKLYN BOROUGH HALL
209 JORALEMON STREET
BETWEEN COURT AND ADAMS
DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

On Thursday, February 15, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz will host a special Black History Month celebration honoring the International African Arts Festival, Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation co-founder Danny Simmons, and Sarah Keys Evans, an unsung civil rights hero whose courageous act of defiance in 1952 helped lay the groundwork for some of the landmark civil rights victories of the era.

In 1952, while traveling to North Carolina from Fort Dix, New Jersey, where she served as a private in the Women’s Army Corps, Evans was arrested in uniform, held in jail overnight, and charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to vacate her seat on a bus. The ensuing legal battle lasted three years and culminated in 1955 when the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled on appeal that those who paid an equal fare are entitled to equal service, effectively outlawing racial discrimination in interstate travel. Evans has called Brooklyn home for nearly 50 years.

She will be joined on the dais by representatives of the International African Arts Festival, a dance, music, and spoken word event that draws an audience of 75,000 to Brooklyn every year, and artist and author Danny Simmons, who operates the Corridor Gallery in Clinton Hill and co-founded the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation with his brothers Joey and Russell.

Simmons also curated Borough Hall’s Black History Month art exhibit, Alternate Realities, which is on view in the building’s Community Room.