Common Ground Healing Arts Welcomes Kofi Busia May 16-18 for Workshop
Kofi Busia is one of the world’s foremost teachers in Iyengar yoga tradition and Common Ground welcomes him to the Jefferson School City Center. He has been teaching for nearly 40 years and has held his Advance Certificate for 35 years. He has taught all over the world. He began yoga as a student at Oxford and has taught professionally ever since.
His workshop, held at Common Ground Healing Arts, features a series of asanas (workshops focused on body positions) and pranayamas (workshops focusing on the breath). The entire weekend package is $220 and $170 for asanas only (individual workshops are also available for purchase). Registration is available online.
All proceeds from this workshop will benefit Common Ground’s outreach programming. A limited number of props are available, so please feel free to bring your own mats and props if desired.
Sign up for New Tutor Training with Literacy Volunteers
Literacy Volunteers still has space available for its New Tutor Training on May 17, 2014, from 9:30am-4:00pm at the Jefferson School. Anyone interested in working one-on-one with adults in our community to help them improve their skills at reading, writing, and speaking English is strongly encouraged to register for this training. No experience required, just a desire to help others improve their lives. Call 434-977-3838 to register or visit literacyforall.org for more information.
Dismantling Jim Crow, 1954-1974 at African American Heritage Center Next Week
2014 is a significant year as it marks the anniversaries of three important events in America’s history–the settling of the landmark court case Brown vs. Board of Education, the passing of the Civil Rights Act, and the advent of the Boston busing riots. From May 12-May 14 the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center will look at these events through three films and a conversation with Mildred W. Robinson, Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, who will discuss her book Law Touched Our Hearts: A Generation Remembers Brown v. Board of Education.
On May 12 at 5:30pm Separate But Equal (1991) will be shown. This mini-series is based on the groundbreaking Brown vs. the Board of Education case. The film follows a young Thurgood Marshall (Sidney Poitier) as a lawyer who argues the racially charged lawsuit before the Supreme Court. Marshall’s opponent is John W. Davis (Burt Lancaster) and the two argue passionately and eloquently before a Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren (Richard Kiley). Separate But Equal is a moving and human dramatization of one of the most pivotal court cases in American history.Suggested donation $5.00
On May 13 at 6:30 pm A Class Apart (2009) will be shown.This film focuses on the landmark 1951 legal case Hernandez v. Texas, in which an underdog band of Mexican Americans from Texas bring a case all the way to the Supreme Court – and win. The film begins with a murder in a gritty small-town cantina and follows the legal journey of the Hernandez lawyers through the Texas courts and ultimately to the United States Supreme Court.
Closing out the series on May 14 at 6:00 pm is Can We Talk? Learning from Boston’s Busing/Desegregation Crisis (2012). The Boston busing crisis (1974–1988) was a series of protests and riots that occurred in Boston, Massachusetts in response to the passing of the 1965 Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered public schools in the state to desegregate. The legislation provoked outrage from white Bostonians and led to widespread protests and violent public disturbances. The conflict lasted for over a decade and contributed to a demographic shift in Boston public schools, with dramatically fewer students enrolling in public schools and more white families sending their children to private schools instead. Suggested donation $5.00.
Following the film at 7:00pm will be a discussion with Mildred W. Robinson about her book Law Touched Our Hearts: A Generation Remembers Brown v. Board of Education. For the book, Robinson and her co-editors surveyed 4750 law professors born between 1936 and 1954, received 1000 responses, and derived forty essays from those willing to write personal accounts of their childhood experiences in the classroom and in their communities. Their moving stories of how Brown affected them say much about race relations then and now. They also provide a picture of how social change can shape the careers of an entire generation in one profession.
Jefferson School City Center is a voice of the nine nonprofits located at Charlottesville’s intergenerational community center, the restored Jefferson School. We are a legacy preserved . . . a soul reborn . . . in the heart of Cville!
