CULTURE & CONSCIOUSNESS

Black History Month is hitting St. Lawrence County's college campuses with a variety of events, concerts and displays.

The universities will feature events touching on multiple topics: the history of the Harlem Renaissance, step dancing and gospel music, among others.

"There's always an opportunity to educate, to inform, to inspire and frequently to entertain, and that's what we try to find," said Vicki Clark, adviser of Spectrum, a diversity club at Clarkson University, Potsdam.

SUNY Potsdam's art gallery is exhibiting Nigerian masks and accompanying costumes. Though the Gibson Gallery does own a few African masks, all of those now on display come from the Museum of African Culture in Portland, Maine, according to April K. Vasher-Dean, the gallery's director.

The college's diversity office also is bringing a traveling performance group to campus to give a presentation about the Harlem Renaissance.

"It's a multimedia presentation giving people information about the Harlem Renaissance and the poetry and the art," diversity officer Susan A. Stebbins said. "We try to make it both in the U.S., but also going back to Africa."

The events were planned separately, she said.

St. Lawrence University, Canton, will feature two concerts. One is about black history and the other is a gospel-music master class.

Black History Month began in 1976, though it traces its roots to an honorary week begun in the 1920s. February was chosen because it marks the birth of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Both were great influences on the lives of black people in American history, one a famous abolitionist, writer, speaker and runaway slave, the other a Civil War president and author of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Both Clarkson University and SUNY Canton are planning variety shows featuring an array of mostly student talent. A few area residents also will take part in Clarkson's show, Ms. Clark said.

"I think it helps, having that student population when we do these types of events," SUNY Canton Director of Diversity Lashawanda T. Ingram said. "It only adds to us getting the message out."

Both campuses will have students doing spoken word and step team performances. In step, a dancer's body becomes a percussion instrument, creating complex rhythms out of a combination of footsteps, claps and words. The events also will showcase singers, and dancers and performers will give brief history presentations.

"There's a history behind each of these modern day activities," Ms. Clark said. "So before each performance, they will explain where they come from."