The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri and Kansas. With 8,472 square miles (21,940 km2) and a population of more than 2.2 million people, it is the second-largest metropolitan area centered in Missouri and is the largest metropolitan area in Kansas, though Wichita is the largest metropolitan area centered in Kansas. Alongside Kansas City, Missouri, these are the suburbs with populations above 100,000: Overland Park, Kansas; Kansas City, Kansas; Olathe, Kansas; Independence, Missouri; and Lee's Summit, Missouri.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was a publisher, journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, and editor of the Woman's Era, the first national newspaper published by and for African-American women.
Jason Lee Whitlock is an American sports columnist, podcaster, and former football player. He hosts a program for the conservative media company Blaze Media titled Fearless with Jason Whitlock. Whitlock is a former columnist at The Kansas City Star, AOL Sports, Foxsports.com, and ESPN. He was a radio personality for WHB and KCSP sports stations in the Kansas City area. Whitlock played Division I college football at Ball State as an offensive lineman.
The Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) is a non-profit organization located in Chinatown in New York City. Founded in 1974, it’s one of the earliest Asian American community organizations in the United States. The Arts Centre presents the ongoing developments between contemporary Asian & Asian American art forms and Western art forms through the presentation of performance, exhibitions, and public education. AAAC's permanent collection, which it has accumulated since 1989, contains hundreds of contemporary Asian American art works and traditional/folk art pieces. The organization also has an Artists Archive which documents, preserves, and promotes the presence of Asian American visual culture in the United States since 1945. This includes the East Coast, especially the greater New York area; the West Coast; and some artists in Canada, Hawaii, and overseas. The artists include Asian Americans producing art, Asian artists who are active in the United States, and other Americans who are significantly influenced by Asia. Pan-Asian in outlook, the Arts Centre's understanding of ‘Asia’ encompasses traditions and influences with sources ranging from Afghanistan to Hawaii.
18th and Vine is a neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri. It is internationally recognized as a historical point of origin of jazz music and a historic hub of African-American businesses. Along with Basin Street in New Orleans, Beale Street in Memphis, 52nd Street in New York City, and Central Avenue in Los Angeles, the 18th and Vine area fostered a new style of jazz. Kansas City jazz is a riff-based and blues-influenced sound developed in jam sessions in the district's crowded clubs. Many notable jazz musicians of the 1930s and 1940s lived or got started here, including Charlie Parker. Due to this legacy, U.S. Representative Emanuel Cleaver said 18th and Vine is America's third most recognized street after Broadway and Hollywood Boulevard.
The Organization of Black American Culture (OBA-C) was conceived during the era of the Civil Rights Movement by Hoyt W. Fuller as a collective of African-American writers, artists, historians, educators, intellectuals, community activists, and others. The group was originally known as Committee for the Arts (CFA), which formed in February 1967 in Southside Chicago, Illinois. By May 1967, the group became OBAC and included Black intellectuals Hoyt W. Fuller, the poet Conrad Kent Rivers, and Gerald McWorter. OBAC aimed to coordinate artistic support in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality of opportunity for African Americans. The organization had workshops for visual arts, drama, and writing, and produced two publications: a newsletter, Cumbaya, and the magazine Nommo.
Randy D. Dunn is an American city planner and politician. He is a former member of the Missouri House of Representatives from the 23rd District. Dunn was first elected in 2012 at the age of 29 and was re-elected to office in 2014 and 2016. Currently, he is the executive director of the Missouri Democratic Party.
Benjamin Sylvester Ruffin, also known as Ben Ruffin, was an African American civil rights activist, educator, and businessman in Durham, North Carolina.
Xavier Ruffin is an American film director, writer, illustrator, motion graphics and title designer. He is currently President at Dopamine Productions. He is best known for writing, directing and producing the independent web series Mad Black Men.
Until 1950, African Americans were a small but historically important minority in Boston, where the population was majority white. Since then, Boston's demographics have changed due to factors such as immigration, white flight, and gentrification. According to census information for 2010–2014, an estimated 180,657 people in Boston are Black/African American, either alone or in combination with another race. Despite being in the minority, and despite having faced housing, educational, and other discrimination, African Americans in Boston have made significant contributions in the arts, politics, and business since colonial times.
The Artists' File Initiative (AFI) is an archival project established in 2015 and located in The Spencer Art Reference Library at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
NedRa Bonds is an American quilter, activist, and retired teacher, born and raised in the historic Quindaro neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas. Bonds creates quilts and mixed media fiber dolls using fabric, beads, and symbolism to explore issues dealing with human rights, race, women, politics, and the environment. She is best known for her Quindaro Quilt, a quilt measuring 4 by 6 feet, detailing the important history of the Quindaro neighborhood and its role as part of the National Underground Railroad System of Historic Trails. As a community activist and educator, Bonds advocates for legislation, taught workshops locally and internationally, and attended the Earth Summit Conference on Environment and Development of the United Nations as a delegate in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Bonds is a practicing artist and retired teacher in Kansas City, Kansas. Her recent projects include her Common Threads quilt, commissioned by the Kansas City Chiefs for their Arrowhead Arts Collection, the Wak’ó Mujeres Phụ nữ Women Mural collaboration, sponsored by the Charlotte Street Foundation's Rocket Grant Program, in Lawrence, Kansas, and her recent cancer project. Bonds was appointed to the Kansas Arts Commission by Kansas Governor Joan Finney in 1992.
Leroy Allen (1951-2007), was an award-winning watercolorist and figurative artist. His realistic style focused on African American life and community, and won him more than 30 art awards nationally.
Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin is an American fiber artist, author, designer, community organizer, and curator. Ruffin creates quilts using fabric, symbolism, and references to African textile motifs that explore issues dealing with human rights, race, and gender. Her work has been exhibited across the United States, Africa, and Europe, at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the White House Rotunda, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. She has been a resident artist at the Charlotte Street Foundation and a resident curator at the American Jazz Museum. Thompson-Ruffin is one of the founding members of the African American Artists Collective, a group of African American artists in Kansas City. Thompson-Ruffin was selected to create the Nelson Mandela memorial coverlet by the South African Consulate and the Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. Her work is held in collections such as the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, and others. Her work has been featured on the front covers of New Letters literary journal and of KC Studio Magazine.
Jason Piggie, is an American filmmaker and photographer, writer, and director. Piggie, who got his start in a high school photography class, captures images of everyday life, preferring his art "without enhanced manipulation." Piggie is the owner of a production company in Kansas City, Little Piggie Entertainment. Piggie received the first place award at the 3/5/7 Film Festival in the 5-minute category in 2009. In 2012, Piggie won best in show at an Arts KC show. Piggie is a member of the African American Artists Collective in Kansas City, which was recently awarded a Charlotte Street StartUp Residency.
The National African American Gun Association (NAAGA) is an organization that promotes gun rights among African-Americans in the United States. It has over 45,000 members, more than 75 chapters in the United States, and has grown significantly in reaction to Black deaths. The organization was founded by Phillip Smith in 2015.
Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Ninevah Beach Subdivisions Historic District (SANS) is an African American beachfront community in Sag Harbor, New York. Founded following World War II, the SANS community served primarily as a summer retreat for middle-class African American families during the post-WWII and Jim Crow era. African American families were not allowed at beachfront resorts, pools or beaches, and SANS began as a place of refuge from racial strife. The historic district is bordered by Hempstead Street, Richards Drive, Hampton Street, Lincoln Street, Harding Terrace, Terry Drive and the eastern end of Haven's Beach in Sag Harbor. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 10, 2019.
Joyce Newton-Thompson was a British-born South African politician, community organizer and author. Growing up in London, England, she was active in the British women's suffrage movement. After immigrating to Cape Town, South Africa, with her husband in 1919, Newton-Thompson became involved in organizing community initiatives such as free meals for schoolchildren and the first birth control clinic in the city.
