HHOA LECTURE SERIES PART. 3 DR. LEONARD JEFFRIES & DR.ROSALIND JEFFRIES

3113 West Atlantic Blvd,Pompano Beach FL 33069

16 July, 2022

Description

Leonard Jeffries worked for Operation Crossroads Africa, allowing him to spend time in Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. He became the program coordinator for West Africa in 1965. Jeffries became a political science instructor at CCNY in 1969 and received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1971 with a dissertation on politics in the Ivory Coast. He became the founding Chairman of Black Studies at San Jose State College in California. A year later, he became a tenured professor at CCNY and became the chairman of the new Black Studies Department.  He held the position of Chairman of CCNY's Black Studies Department for over two decades, recruiting like-minded scholars and attempting to expand the number of faculty and students within or associated with the department. In 1972, he was recruited by City College of New York to organize its Black Studies Department. During his tenure, the department-sponsored/hosted/organized 25 major national and international conferences and seminars. Besides administration and teaching, he often traveled to Africa and served in the African Heritage Studies Association, a group seeking to define and develop the Black Studies discipline. Originally from Harlem, Rosalind Jeffries earned her masters in painting from Hunter College before moving to West Africa where she lived for two years, culminating in a one woman show in Abidjon on the Ivory Coast. Upon her return to the states she also held a one woman show at Jackson State College in Mississippi. Most of Rosalind Jeffries masks were sold at the opening and several prominent members of the community bought more than one of them, including, “Assemblyman and Mrs. John Miller, Attorney and Mrs. Tom Berkley, Dr. Carleton Goodlett, and Mrs. Norvell Smith, wife of Merritt College President Dr. Norvell Smith”(Bee). “Jazz Masks” is one of the earliest exhibits at Rainbow Sign and seems to have been a great success, demonstrating the real demand for Black Arts and culture that Rainbow Sign was meeting.