Institute for African American Research (IAAR) Presents: Carolina-Barbados Connection Symposium

Institute for African American Research (IAAR) Presents:

Carolina-Barbados Connection Symposium

November 13-14, 2020

Program Overview

Friday, November 13, 2020

(Note: All times are EST)

Welcome and Opening Remarks (12:30 p.m.)

Keynote Address (1:00 p.m.)

Rhoda Green, President, Barbados and the Carolinas Legacy Foundation, Charleston, SC

Title: “History Links: Barbados and Carolina”

Panel and Q&A (2:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.)

• Ramona La Roche, African-American Research Library and Cultural Center, Fort

Lauderdale, FL (2:00 p.m.)

Title: Artisanal Capital: “Koramante, Bim, and Chucktown”

• Tara Inniss, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados (2:20 p.m.)

Title: "From Newton to Colleton: Connecting Slave Routes in Barbados (and Beyond)

through Archaeology and Heritage"

• Nicole Maskiell, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC (2:40 p.m.)

Title: “Pipes of wine, rice, and human beings: The expansive influence of the Barbados-

Carolina connection”

• Jeannette Allsopp, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados (3:00 p.m.)

Title: “A Brief Look at Some Cultural Correspondences between Barbados and South

Carolina through Selected Lexical Items"

BREAK (3:20-3:30 p.m.)

• Jason Siegel, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados (3:30 p.m.)

Title: “Possible lexical retentions from Barbados in South Carolina”

• Yanique Hume, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados (3:50 p.m.)

Title: “Plantations as Shared Legacy: Religio-Cultural Connections and Spiritual

Legacies”

• Russell Fielding, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC (4:10 p.m.)

Title: "The Shared Environmental Histories of Barbados and the Carolinas”

• Heather Hodges, Former Executive Director, Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor,

Charleston, SC (4:30 p.m.)

Title: “Gullah Geechee, Global Connections: Educating about the development and

evolution of Gullah Geechee identity as part of a larger, global Creole cultural identity

linked to Africa and the Caribbean”

Q&A 4:45 – 5:30

Saturday, November 14, 2020

Keynote Address (11:00 a.m.)

Jonathan Green, Internationally Renowned Artist from South Carolina,

Charleston, SC

Interactive Tours (beginning at 12:10 p.m.)

• Speightstown, Barbados with Carlo Goodman (12:10 p.m.)

• Charleston, SC with Alada Shinault-Small (1:20 p.m.)

• Magnolia Plantation and Gardens (Charleston, SC) with Joe McGill (2:30 p.m.)

Cooking Demonstration (4:00 p.m.)

Thaddeus Sealy, Chef, Dodi Barbados, Bridgetown, Barbados

Music (5:30 p.m.)

Aubry Padmore, Atlanta, GA and Kirk Brown, Barbados

Happy Hour Social Gathering and Closing (6:00 p.m.)

Photos, Bios, and Websites

Symposium Co-Chairs

Dr. Kimberly Eison Simmons is currently an

Associate Professor of Anthropology and African

American Studies and the Interim Director of the

Institute for African American Research at the

University of South Carolina. She received her B.A. in

Spanish from Grinnell College and her Ph.D. in

Anthropology from Michigan State University where

she was also a Researcher-in-Residence with the

African Diaspora Research Program. Much of her

research focuses on the cultural construction of

identity, race and gender, color/colorism, women’s

organizations, Black ethnic groups (focusing on Afro-

Dominicans and African Americans), and Blackness in

the African Diaspora. She is the author

of Reconstructing Racial Identity and the African Past

in the Dominican Republic (University Press of

Florida, 2009) and co-editor of Afrodescendants,

Identity, and the Struggle for Development in the Americas (Michigan State University Press,

2012). She is currently working on a book and documentary film project on the natural hair

movement in the Dominican Republic and the United States. She is a former President of the

Association of Black Anthropologists and previous recipient of the Michael J. Mungo

Undergraduate Teaching Award at USC.

Dr. Tracey L. Weldon is an Associate Professor in the

English Department and the Linguistics Program at the

University of South Carolina, where she currently serves

as Associate Dean for Diversity, Interdisciplinary

Programs, and Social Sciences in the College of Arts and

Sciences. Weldon is a sociolinguist, specializing in

varieties of American English, with a particular focus on

African American language varieties, including Gullah.

Her current book project, forthcoming with Cambridge

University Press, examines the use of African American

English by middle class speakers. Weldon is also an

Associate Producer of the 2017 documentary “Talking

Black in America,” which was produced by the North

Carolina Language and Life Project at North Carolina State University.

Keynote Addresses

Rhoda A. Green

President, Barbados and the Carolinas Legacy Foundation, Charleston, SC

https://www.barbadoscarolinas.org/the-connection-1

I worked as a Court Reporter for 28 years in Charleston County,

South Carolina, and was a member of the National Association of

Court Reporters. In 1987 I obtained a copy of the Barbados

Carolina Connection coauthored by Dr. Henry Fraser and Mr.

Warren Alleyne which roused an unlikely passion. The book

captivated my interest and my imagination as a native Barbadian

and a current resident of Charleston, South Carolina to untapped

opportunities between Barbados and South Carolina. Realizing the

role Barbados played in the settlement of the Carolinas led me to

do further research. As a result, I became active in the Charleston

community to highlight Barbados and Carolina shared history. I

became associated with a number of historical groups and

organizations that shared interest in history, heritage and culture. I

revived and served as President of the now defunct Carolina

Caribbean Association for many years and received many awards

and acknowledgements for her work in the community highlighting those connections.

I approached and encouraged Barbados, in particular the Ministry of Tourism, to collaborate and

facilitate engagements with South Carolina groups and organizations to further explore the

shared history. Barbados acknowledged my contributions in keeping the Barbados Carolina

connection before the Carolina public by awarding her the Silver Crown of Merit in November

2000. In March 2008 I was commissioned as Barbados Honorary Consul to South Carolina. On

June 18

, 2012, the Barbados and the Carolinas Legacy Foundation, which I founded and serve

as CEO was registered and certified as a nonprofit corporation in South Carolina “to highlight,

research, archive, facilitate and promote opportunities for Barbados/Carolina collaboration. I

served as past president for The Friends of Charles Towne Landing the South Carolina State

Park known as the “Birthplace of South Carolina.” Charles Towne Landing is site where British

settlers from Barbados landed and established the Carolina colony in 1670.

I also served on the Board of the International African American Museum (IAAM) and still

serve on its Programing Committee. I’m currently serving as a Board Member of the South

Carolina National Heritage Corridor (SCNHC). Most recently, Middleton Place Foundation, one

of Charleston, SC’s iconic plantations with a Barbadian link interviewed me to provide the

Barbados link to South Carolina. The documentary received stellar reviewed and is now being

shown nationally on PBS stations.

Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green, Internationally Renowned Artist from South Carolina, Charleston, SC

A native of Gardens Corner, South Carolina,

Jonathan Green (American, b 1955) was raised in

the black “Gullah” culture of the coastal

Southeast and grew up speaking the region’s

distinct language. As a nationally recognized

artist of southern culture and heritage, Green is

often placed in context with other important

artists of the African-American experience such

as Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth

Catlett and John Biggers. His work celebrates the

work, daily life, community and dignity of people

of the rural south. Green graduated from the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982

and holds an honorary doctoral degree from the

University of South Carolina. Following his

graduation Green traveled widely – throughout

the United States, Canada, Mexico, the West Indies, Switzerland, Germany, England and France.

Green’s work has been published in the book, Gullah Images: The Art of Jonathan Green

(University of South Carolina Press, 1996) and is included in the permanent collections of the

United States Embassy in Sierra Leone, Museum Würtz in Kuenzelsau, Germany, the McKissick

Museum (Columbia, South Carolina), the Naples Museum of Art (Naples, Florida), the Morris

Museum of Art (Augusta, Georgia), The Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Florida), the

Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston, South Carolina) and other museums throughout the world.

Green’s work has been the subject of five national traveling exhibitions throughout the United

States and 51 solo exhibitions. The art of Jonathan Green has also inspired a nationally-touring

ballet, Off the Wall & Onto the Stage: Dancing the Art of Jonathan Green. In his images of

celebrating people, flowing fabrics and sweeping landscapes Green captures the spirit of South

Carolina’s Gullah country. While these dreamscapes may spring from simple childhood

memories, they echo profoundly human themes. Through his art Green shows the dignity, beauty

and continuity of the past combined with the energy, exuberance and creativity of the present.

Panelists (in alphabetical order)

Dr. Jeannette Allsopp, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados

https://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/LLL/research/allsopp-centre/founders.aspx

https://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/LLL/research/allsopp-centre/publications.aspx

An educator of many years’ experience, Jeannette

Allsopp is now the retired Senior Research Fellow

in Lexicography, former Director of the Centre for

Caribbean Lexicography, English and Multilingual,

which she founded in 2010, and Lecturer in

Linguistics at the University of the West Indies

Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. Jeannette Allsopp

holds a BA Honours degree in Spanish with French,

an MA in Romance Languages and a Diploma in

Education from London University. She holds a

PhD in Linguistics from London Metropolitan

University and is a recipient of the EURALEX

(European Association for Lexicography) Verbatim

Award in lexicography (1991), as well as a

Fulbright Research Fellow. Jeannette Allsopp also served for years on the Executive Committee

of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics and was Vice-President of the Society from 2008 to

2010 and President from 2010 – 2012. She is now the Immediate Past President of the Society

and has attended and presented papers at several SCL conferences over the years. She is also the

Consultant in Caribbean English to the Third Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Her

research interests include Caribbean lexicography, Creole linguistics, language acquisition,

language teaching methodology, and Caribbean literature in English, French and Spanish. She

has published in all these fields and has about 65 publications to her credit. These include the

French-Spanish Supplement to the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage by Richard Allsopp

and the first Caribbean Multilingual Dictionary of Flora, Fauna and Foods, published in April

2003 by Arawak Publications Jamaica as well as many articles on linguistics, lexicography and

education published in learned academic journals. Her latest publication is Language Education

in the Caribbean: Selected Articles of Dennis Craig (2014) which she edited with Professor

Zellynne Jennings of UWI - Mona, published by the University of the West Indies Press.

Dr. Russell Fielding, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC

https://www.russellfielding.com/

I was born and raised in Tampa, Florida, and currently live in

South Carolina with my wife, Diane, and our children,

Conrad and Margaux. My research, teaching, and other travel

have taken me to six continents, fifty countries (more or less,

depending on how you count) and all fifty US states. After

my undergraduate training in computer science at the

University of Florida (BS, 2000) I completed graduate

degrees in geography at the University of Montana (MA,

2005) under Jeffrey Gritzner and at Louisiana State

University (PhD, 2010) under Kent Mathewson. With the

able guidance of these mentors I steeped myself in the

literatures of cultural geography, environmental history,

anthropology, and human ecology in preparation for my

current efforts in teaching, research, and outreach.

Now I am an Assistant Professor in the HTC Honors College

at Coastal Carolina University and a Visiting Scholar with the

Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus at the University of

Washington. I previously spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in the Institute of Island Studies at

the University of Prince Edward Island, in Canada, and taught at the University of Denver, the

University of the South, and the University of the West Indies-Cave Hill.

Heather Hodges, Former Executive Director, Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor,

Charleston, SC

https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/

Heather L. Hodges served as the Executive

Director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural

Heritage Corridor NHA from November 2017

through October 2020. During her tenure, she

placed an emphasis on developing educational

programs, supporting cultural documentation

and historic preservation efforts, encouraging

heritage tourism, and fostering new research to

facilitate interpretation of Gullah Geechee

history and culture. Her interpretation and

documentation projects included advising on

new exhibitions on Gullah Geechee heritage at

the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, the

Edisto Island Museum and the Smithsonian

Museum of Natural History. Major research projects include partnering with the U.S. National

Park Service on a multi-year inquiry into the Gullah Geechee communities that once existed on

Cumberland Island, Georgia. Under her leadership, the GGCHC also recently completed the

first, national traveler survey and research study of the regional market for Gullah Geechee

heritage tourism.

Heather serves on the advisory board for the Charles W. Joyner Institute for Gullah and African

Diaspora Studies and she was appointed by the National Endowment for the Arts to serve on the

panel responsible for selecting the 2020 National Heritage Fellows. In September 2020, she was

appointed to the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Heather is also a documentary photographer who specializes in documenting African, African-

American and Afro-Latino culture with an emphasis on contemporary and traditional music and

dance culture. Recently, this work has taken her Santiago de Cuba, Cuba to study traditional

Afro-Cuban dance with Ballet Folklórico Cutumba; La Sabana, Venezuela for the Fiesta de San

Juan; Dakar, Senegal to explore it's contemporary music scene; Hopkins Village, Belize for

Garifuna Settlement Day; San Antonio, Texas for the Tejano Conjunto Festival; Clarksdale,

Mississippi to document the roots of Delta blues; and the Gathering at Geechee Kunda festival

culture in Riceboro, Georgia. Her photographs have been exhibited in Washington D.C. and

London.

Dr. Yanique Hume, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados

https://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/CulturalStudies/staff/dr-yanique-hume.aspx

Dr. Yanique Hume is a multifaceted scholar, dancer and

choreographer with extensive research expertise and

specialization across the Americas and the African Diaspora. As

a tenured academic from the Caribbean with extensive regional

and international experience, she has secured expertise and

contribution to the Caribbean intellectual tradition operating

from the disciplines of cultural anthropology and performance

studies. Dr. Hume’s research experience and teaching areas

include: religious and performance cultures of the African

diaspora, Caribbean thought, popular culture, migration and

diasporic identities. As a multilingual researcher, her fieldwork

experience in dance forms and sacred arts are centered in Caribbean and Latin America,

especially Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Suriname, Brazil and Colombia. In

applied research, her work has focused on the creative industries and cultural policy; migration

and tourism; museological production and management.

Dr. Hume is the co-editor of Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora (2013);

Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance (2016); and Passages and

Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Caribbean (2018). Dr. Hume is the

recipient of grants from the Social Science Research Council, the International Development

Research Centre, Ford Foundation and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological

Research. As a professional dancer and choreographer, she has worked with the National Dance

Theatre Company of Jamaica, L’Acadco United Caribbean Dance Force, and Danza Caribe of

Cuba. Her choreography draws on over 25 years of training in Afro-Caribbean dance with

specializations in Haitian, Jamaican and Cuban movement vocabularies. Dr. Hume brings

additional competencies in dance and theatre production management; grant writing, budget

analysis, project/program evaluation and contingency planning; directing international cultural

exchange projects across different linguistic territories within the Caribbean and Latin America.

She is proficient in 5 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Kreyol and Jamaican

Patwa.

Dr. Tara Inniss, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados

https://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/histphil/staff/dr-tara-a-inniss-gibbs.aspx

Title: “From Newton to Colleton: Connecting Slave Routes in

Barbados (and Beyond) through Archaeology and Heritage” Tara

A. Inniss is a Lecturer in the Department of History and

Philosophy at Cave Hill Campus, The University of the West

Indies (UWI). The areas of focus for her teaching and research

include: history of medicine; history of social policy; and heritage

and social development. In 2002-03, she received a Split-Site

Commonwealth PhD Scholarship to study at the UWI/ University

of Manchester. In 2007, she completed a Masters in International

Social Development at the University of New South Wales in

Sydney.

Dr. Inniss is the Director of the UWI/ OAS Caribbean Heritage

Network (CHN). She has also served as a delegate for the Government of Barbados on the World

Heritage Committee. She currently serves on the executive committees for the Barbados

Museum and Historical Society and the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH).

Dr. Ramona La Roche, African-American Research Library and

Cultural Center, Fort Lauderdale, FL

Ramona La Roche, Ph.D. serves as Assistant Director of Adult

Information Services at the African American Research Library and

Cultural Center in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. A former Institute of Library

and Museum Services (ILMS) Cultural Heritage Informatics

Leadership (CHIL) Fellow recipient, she received her doctorate in

Information Science from the University of South Carolina’s College

of Communications. She also holds a M.Ed. [Columbia College, SC],

and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, [New York City]. Her

published works Include “Bajan To Gullah” Cultural Capital: Wood,

Stone, Iron, and Clay 1670 To 1770 (2017); Gullah Connections:

Crossing Over, Passing The Links between the Worlds, Orisa: Yoruba

gods and spiritual identity in Africa and in the diaspora (2005), and

Black America Series: Georgetown County, South Carolina (2000).

Her consultant work focuses on Cultural Heritage Informatics: arts,

artisans, thanatology, and digital humanities particularly related to

coastal Florida, lowcountry SC and Barbados; as well as family

history research, building critical community archives and providing digital technology training

wherever interest in the global African diaspora is found!

Dr. Nicole Maskiell, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC

https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/history/our_people/directory/maskiel

l_nicole.php

Nicole Maskiell specializes in early American history,

with a focus on overlapping networks of slavery in the

Dutch and British Atlantic worlds. Her current book

project entitled Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the

Creation of a Northern Gentry compares the ways that

slavery shaped the development of elite Northern

culture by examining the social and kinship networks

that intertwined enslavers with those they enslaved.

Professor Maskiell is a recipient the John Carter

Brown, Gilder Lehrman, and Huntington Mayers

research fellowships, and her dissertation was

nominated for the 2014 Allan Nevins Prize.

Dr. Jason Siegel, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados

https://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/LLL/faculty-staff/academic-staff/linguistics/dr-jason-

siegel.aspx.

A native of the US, Dr Siegel is a specialist in Caribbean

Lexicography. An avid learner of languages, Dr Siegel speaks the

four major official languages of the Caribbean: English, French,

French Creole, and Spanish. In addition to his work on

lexicography, he has also published on translation, creolistics,

language & gender and sociolinguistics. Additionally, he was the

Chair of the Local Organising Committee for the Dictionary

Society of North America’s first conference off the mainland, held

in Barbados in 2017. His goal is to promote and standardise

lexicography across the region, encouraging the development of

multilingual resources and engagement with one’s own language

community.

Dr Siegel’s academic work focuses on Caribbean French and French Creoles, along with Bajan.

He is especially interested in the role of the user and society in the making of dictionaries. His

current manuscripts are on language contact and dictionaries for the upcoming Cambridge

Handbook of the Dictionary and the responsibility that lexicographers have to the most

vulnerable members of society. His ongoing lexicographic work is principally on the French of

St Barth and the French Creole of French Guiana.

Tours and Tour Guides

Carlo Goodman, Speightstown, Barbados

https://www.facebook.com/HSEBarbados

I am not a historian but someone who is passionate

about the history of Speightstown. I studied business at

university- Bsc. Management Studies, University of the

West Indies and Master of Business Administration,

University of Surrey. I spent over twenty (20) years

working in Information Technology and for the past

thee (3) years I have been teaching Information

Technology to young adults at The Barbados Youth

ADVANCE Corps. In late 2015, I started “The Historic

Speightstown Walking Tour”, mainly as a part-time

business venture. Initially, I planned to spend a few

months researching the history of Speightstown, so I

could relay it on the walking tour. However, five years

later I am still learning about this quaint, old town. I

have become hooked. I have enjoyed every single tour over the past 5 years. I have met many

wonderful persons, like Rhoda, and a few others from South Carolina that came over and toured

with me. I have had some really encouraging reviews regarding the tours and I have also done

some tours for Barbados Tourism Authority and the tours have been featured in Nation

Newspaper.

I grew up a few minutes away from Speightstown. I went to school in Speightstown but never

knew it had such history until I started my research. My walking tour lasts approximately 2 hours,

so I have actually had to condense it for this presentation. Nevertheless, I hope that by the end of

it someone would have learnt more about the fascinating link between Charlestown and

Speightstown.

Alada Shinault-Small, Charleston, SC

https://discoversouthcarolina.com/products/25202

Alada Shinault-Small is a Charleston native and has

been a Certified Tour Guide since 1982 and a Certified

Interpretive Guide since 2014. She also gives

presentations on Charleston area history, Gullah Geechee

culture & is a Storyteller. A few of her previous

professional positions include: Director of Operations for

Sites and Insights Tours; Program Coordinator at the

Avery Research Center for African American History &

Culture at the College of Charleston; Program

Coordinator at the Medical University of SC Geriatric

Education Center; & Stableyards Interpretive Coordinator

at Middleton Place Plantation. Alada lives in North

Charleston & has an MA in History from a joint program at the University of Charleston and The

Citadel, a BA in Journalism from the University of SC & she studied Speech and Theatre at

Lander College in Greenwood, SC.

Joe McGill, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, Charleston, SC

https://slavedwellingproject.org/

Joseph McGill, Jr. is a history consultant for

Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina,

and the founder and director of The Slave Dwelling

Project. Previously, as a field officer for the National

Trust for Historic Preservation, Mr. McGill worked to

revitalize the Sweet Auburn commercial district in

Atlanta, Georgia, and to develop a management plan

for the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area. He

is a former executive director of the African American

Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a former director

of history and culture at Penn Center, St. Helena

Island, South Carolina. He has also served as a

National Park Service park ranger at Fort Sumter

National Monument in Charleston.

Cooking Demonstration

Thaddeus Sealy, Chef, Dodi Barbados, Bridgetown, Barbados

https://www.facebook.com/dodibarbados

https://www.instagram.com/dodibarbados/?hl=en

Thaddeus Sealy isn't the only person in Barbados to be

professionally trained as a Bartender and Chef, but he

currently lives it. Along with being a passionate Food

Blogger, he and a close friend are the architects of

designated cocktail bars at all-inclusive events. Having 10

years in the kitchen at Coral Reef Club under his apron, he

then moved to Canada in 2013 and expanded his skill set at

numerous hotels and sporting venues. Upon his return, he

founded Dodi Barbados Inc., where he marries his love for

cuisine and cocktails while he educates his patrons about

suitable pairings. Thaddeus was a member of the successful

Barbados Culinary Team in 2010 and every year since has

amassed numerous awards in both disciplines. In fact, in

2008 he was the first Chef to reach the finals of the Angostura Bartending Competition. Mr.

Sealy is a founding member in TopShelf Bartending Academy Inc. Currently he tantalizes the

taste buds of his private villa, event hosts clientele plus the new addition his line of smoked

meats and cheese Po' Boy Meats.

Ask him about his award-winning BBQ sauce.

Music

Aubry Padmore, Atlanta, GA

https://caribvoiceradio.org/caribspeakers.html

Aubry Padmore, BA, MPA., is a self-made

entrepreneur from Barbados who structured a

strategic plan for his life to become a successful

motivational speaker, author, coach and publisher.

Aubry credits his nature to being an outcast from

birth. He shares his story from being born mute to

crafting his entrepreneur prowess, beginning with

planting vegetables, raising chickens and supplying

the local supermarket with products to help sustain

his financial life while in high school. Aubry was a

church boy from an early age and was very

inquisitive. He remembers a legally blind man

grabbing his arm and pulling him off to church. The

following years honed his inquisitiveness about God

and the universe, while questioning his purpose for living. Aubry later moved onto the judicial

system as a mailroom Court Aide, and a couple years later became the Supervising Court Aide

for NYS Civil Court in charge of providing support for all judicial and non- judicial staff under

the direction of the Chief Clerk and Chief Budget Management Analyst Citywide.

Aubry has many credits to his name including that of Program Specialist for Boy Scouts of

America, where he entered different projects to create scout troops. His endeavors led him to

meet Grace Ferranti, a local community activist and travel agent who shared her dream of

creating a production company. CAP Productions was born out of that conversation as a TV

production company for the disabled.

Kirk Brown, Barbados

http://www.thisiskirkbrown.com/

Kirk Brown is a Singer, DJ, Host, Actor and

Entrepreneur. Born on the beautiful island of

Barbados, Kirk Brown is one of the brightest

stars on the Caribbean’s musical horizon,

placing him in the elite class of young,

upcoming faces in region. Kirk Brown began

his music career as a student of the St.

Michael’s Secondary School in Barbados

where he specialized in brass instruments and

was simultaneously a member of the school

band and the Barbados Youth Orchestra. Kirk

originally founded "Strategy the Energy Band"

(now “The Energy Band”). With Brown at the helm, Strategy quickly seized the title of the

youngest & hottest Bajan live band, boasting a sound & image to rival any international act.

They have made tremendous strides globally, with tours and performances spanning from the

neighboring Caribbean islands all the way to the United Kingdom. As an individual artiste,

Brown has shared the stage with major international stars including Ne-Yo,Shaggy, Sean Paul,

Rihanna, Fat Joe, Beenie Man, Maxi Priest, Tessane Chin, Baby Cham, T.O.K, Machel

Montano, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Ashanti, Ja Rule, Kerwin DuBois, Mavado, Fay-Ann

Lyons,Bunji Garlin and more. Brown lives by the motto “Music Knows No Limits” as he

continues to break the mold and pave the way for young, aspiring Caribbean artistes.

Additional Resources

Special Thanks

The College of Arts and Sciences

The African American Studies Program

Jennifer Melton

VirtualVRI ASL Interpreters

IAAR Staff

Dr. Kimberly Eison Simmons, Interim Director

LaTasha Saunders, Office and Business Manager

Betty Wilson, Graduate Assistant

Chelsea Hawthorne, Graduate Assistant

Sierra Howard, Office Assistant

Kaniyah Bell, Office Assistant

Carolina-Barbados Connection Symposium Program Committee

Rhoda Green

Aubry Padmore

Kimberly Eison Simmons

Tracey L. Weldon