Harriet Rene "Khandi" Alexander is an American dancer, choreographer, and actress. She began her career as a dancer in the 1980s, and was a choreographer for Whitney Houston's world tours from 1988 to 1992.
Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd, better known as Professor Longhair or "Fess" for short, was an American singer and pianist who performed New Orleans blues. He was active in two distinct periods, first in the heyday of early rhythm and blues and later in the resurgence of interest in traditional jazz after the founding of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1970. His piano style has been described as "instantly recognizable, combining rumba, mambo, and calypso".
Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade, was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.
Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican actress, dancer, and singer. She is noted for her work on stage and screen in a career spanning over seven decades. Moreno is one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Among her numerous accolades, she is one of a few performers to have been awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony (EGOT) and the Triple Crown of Acting, with individual competitive Academy, Emmy, and Tony awards. Additional accolades include the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, the National Medal of Arts in 2009, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2013, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2015, and a Peabody Award in 2019.
Chumba is a traditional form of music and dance performed by the Garifuna people in several Central American countries. Like punta, chumba songs are highly polyrhythmic, but have a slower tempo.
Nina Serrano is an American poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer who lives in Vallejo, California. She is the author of Heart Songs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano (1980) and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools (Stagebridge). Her poems are widely anthologized, including the literary anthology, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Writers from California, and three anthologies of peace poems edited by Mary Rudge from Estuary Press. She has also translated two chapbooks from Peruvian poet Adrian Arias. She currently leads storytelling workshops at senior centers and elementary schools through Stagebridge.org. She is the former director of the San Francisco Poetry in the Schools program and the Bay Area's Storytellers in the Schools program. A Latina activist for social justice, women's rights, and the arts.
Sonia Manzano is an American actress, screenwriter, author, singer and songwriter. She is best known for playing Maria on Sesame Street from 1971 to 2015. She received a Lifetime Achievement Daytime Emmy Award in 2016.
Cecilia María Altonaga is the Chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She is the first Cuban-American woman to be appointed as a federal judge in the United States.
Punta is an Afro-indigenous dance and cultural music originating in the Caribbean Island of Saint Vincent And The Grenadines by the Garifuna people before being exiled from the island. Which is also known as Yurumei. It has African and Arawak elements which are also the characteristics of the Garifuna language. Punta is the best-known traditional dance belonging to the Garifuna community. It is also known as banguity or bunda, before the first arrival of the Garifuna people in Punta Gorda, Roatan, Honduras on April 12, 1797.
Andy Vivian Palacio was a Belizean punta musician and government official. He was also a leading activist for the Garifuna people and their culture.
Loreta Janeta , was an American woman who wrote that she had masqueraded as a male Confederate soldier during the American Civil War. The book she wrote about her experiences says that after her soldier husband's accidental death, she enlisted in the Confederate States Army in 1861. She then fought at Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, and Fort Donelson, but was discharged when her sex was discovered while in New Orleans. Undeterred, she reenlisted and fought at Shiloh, until unmasked once more. She then became a Confederate spy, working in both male and female guises, and as a double agent also reporting to the U.S. Secret Service. She remarried three more times, being widowed in each instance. According to William C. Davis, she died in January 1923 under the name Loretta J. Beard after many years away from the public eye in a public psychiatric facility, St. Elizabeths Hospital.
Honduran Americans are Americans of full or partial Honduran descent. Hondurans are the eighth largest Latino group in the United States and the third largest Central American population, after Salvadorans and Guatemalans. Hondurans are concentrated in Texas, Florida and California.
The Sugar Babies is a 2007 feature-length documentary film about exploitation in the sugar plantations of the Dominican Republic. The film, narrated by Edwidge Danticat, explores how the descendants of African slaves, are trafficked from Haiti to live and work in inhumane conditions akin to modern day slavery."
Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child.
Olga Merediz is an American actress and singer. Merediz originated the role of Abuela Claudia in the Broadway musical In the Heights, for which she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical. She played the role for the show's entire Broadway run, and reprised the role in the film adaptation. Her television credits include NBC's 2016 series Shades of Blue and Netflix's Orange Is the New Black.
El espíritu de mi mamá is a Spanish language feature film by Ali Allie about Garifuna woman's journey home to Honduras to embrace her cultural roots. It premiered at SXSW in 1999 and later at Dawn Breakers International Film Festival. It was released on DVD in 2002 by Vanguard Cinema and was the first fictional movie featuring Garifuna actors in leading roles. It features an extended religious ritual segment with traditional Garifuna songs and traditional punta dance.
Nancy Mercado is an American writer, editor, educator and activist; her work focuses on issues of injustice, the environment, and the Puerto Rican and Latino experience in the United States. She forms part of the Nuyorican Movement, a literary genre which arose from the Beat Movement.
Tony Mendoza is a Cuban-American artist with a studio in Miami, Florida. Mendoza's style is Primitive Expressionist and "Caricaturista," a type of art that is whimsical in nature. Mendoza works mainly with acrylic on canvas.
Marion Lipschutz is an American documentary producer, writer, and director. Lipschutz has directed and produced award-winning documentaries, including BEI BEI, The Education of Shelby Knox and Young Lakota.
Sofía Blanco is a Garifuna singer from Guatemala, widely recognized for her talent and efforts to promote the cultural traditions of her people. She has been a featured singer on several albums of Garifuna music, and has toured internationally with the Belizean group Garifuna Collective and Garifuna Women's performance band Umalali, one of the groups selected for performances at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
