On Feb. 22, 2010, to commemorate Black History Month, I threw my bi-annual Sound Of Soul party to celebrate the First National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple, as well as to raise money with Pacifica Radio Archives to digitize hundreds of hours of never-before-heard historic African-American audiotapes and get them into schools across America.
At my first Sound OF Soul party in 2007, we raised enough money to restore many of these tapes, including speeches, casual conversations and performances by the likes of Martin Luther King, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Malcolm X, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, Mohammed Ali, Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Rosa Parks, Miles Davis, Dorothy Dandridge, Fannie Lou Hamer and wayyyyyyy more... Since I bequeathed the first collection to my high school, Mumford High in Detroit, The Allee Willis Sound Of Soul Collection has been gifted to over 1500 high schools and colleges. And we’re still going strong....
(Pacifica Radio Archives is a 501-C3 non-profit organization.) |
|
