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| Jazz Museum in Harlem Celebrates Women in Jazz The April 27, 2006 Harlem Speaks guest, cultural historian Delilah Jackson presents her programs at Cobi's Place in Manhattan. Delilah is founder and artistic director of the Black Patti Research Foundation and has amassed one of the most extensive collections of African American expressive culture anywhere - more than 1000 rare slides, photos, and vintage films documenting the performances of musicians, singers, actors and dancers of Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s. Delilah has given talks, curated exhibitions, and held programs at libraries, churches, universities and museums. She has been a consultant for TV documentaries and news reports as well as such films as The Cotton Club, the BBC production, Going Back to Harlem, and Essence magazine's Women in Jazz. In 1997, she curated a show at the Smithsonian Institution entitled "Paris, the Jazz Age" 1914- 1940. Delilah has lectured at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, Museum of Natural History, Schomburg Center for Black Culture, and the Smithsonian. In 1993, Delilah was inducted into the Black Collectors' Hall of Fame. She is the recipient of the Mama Lu Parks Achievement Award for Dance History; the 2001 Flo-Bert Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York City Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day; and on June 28, 2005, Delilah Jackson received the coveted Tap Preservation Award from Tap City 2005. Recently, Delilah moved the lion's share of her collection to Emory University's African-American archives. The move included some 4, 000 photos of actors, singers, dancers, sports figures and politicians; twenty-plus reels of 10-minute "soundies"--film performances of jazz musicians and others, made mostly in the 1940s before the advent of television--the precursor of music videos; a scrapbook that belonged to Johnny Hudgins, a black entertainer who played in blackface, which is filled with 20 years of clippings, pictures and itineraries of gigs in the United States, Cuba and Europe. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Jazz News :: home page |