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‍https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82033775592?pwd=Q2J6ZHVuNmV5VEU2cWM5Y2JROWR3UT09

‍Passcode: 125650

Join us for a Virtual Performance and Community Discussion

White Nights, Black Paradise, The Play

By Sikivu Hutchinson

A virtual performance and community discussion on the African American Legacy of Peoples Temple and Jonestown 1978

With: Sikivu Hutchinson, Wanda Sabir and Dr. James L. Taylor

Featuring: Cydney W. Davis, Breeanna Judy, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Philip McNair, Cheri Miller, Scott St. Patrick, Elvinet Piard, Darrell Philip, Elise Robertson, Charlotte Williams, JC Cadena, Ella Turenne, and Selene Whittington

Pictured in image clockwise from left to right: Charlotte Williams, Scott St. Patrick Williams, Elvinet Piard, Breeanna Judy, Cydney W. Davis, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Darnell Rhea, Elise Robertson

Sikivu Hutchinson is a writer, educator and director.  Her books include Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (2003), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011), the novel White Nights, Black Paradise (2015), and the recently published Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist,and Heretical.  She also wrote, directed and produced a short film of White Nights, Black Paradise in 2016 and is the founder of the Women's Leadership Project and Black Skeptics L.A.‍

James Taylor, Ph.D. is a professor of Political Science at the University of San Francisco. Professor Taylor’s current research is on a solo-authored full-length study of the Peoples Temple Movement and African American political history in California. The working title is Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and California Black Politics. The book is under contract with Pennsylvania State University Press.

Professor Taylor brings a wealth of experience and scholarship to the initiative, and has been deeply engaged in the Fillmore District community through collaboration with the New Community Leadership Foundation. Professor Taylor has moderated several events on the African American experience in Peoples Temple and Jonestown.

‍Wanda Sabir is a journalist and author, moonlighting as a college professor in Alameda, California (wandaspicks.com). She is also a Depth Psychologist, with deep roots in the bayous of Louisiana where she was born. Her interests and expertise are historic trauma and trauma healing—the Maafa, specifically ancestral memories, dream tending, women prisoners, and the use of art to stimulate those forgotten conversations, especially among Diaspora descendants.

She is co-founder of MAAFA San Francisco Bay Area, in its 25th Season October 2020 ( maafasfbayarea.com), co-founder of The International Coalition for the Commemoration of African Ancestors of the Middle Passage (remembertheancestors.com) and recent recipient of the Distinguished 400 Award, 400 Years of African American History Commission (2019) She is a Transformative Justice (TJ) or Community Accountability facilitator and believes the true revolution starts at home.

‍This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org. Additional support was generously provided by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.