Jackson State & Bethune Cookman meet in 2008 MEAC|SWAC Challenge
February 29, 2008
The Tigers will play the Wildcats of Daytona Beach, Fla., on Aug. 31 at the Citrus Bowl as part of the MEAC/SWAC Challenge. The game will be televised by ESPN. A game time has not been set.
According to a news release, the rest of JSU’s schedule has not been finalized, but a tentative schedule has been announced.
UAPB (2007) - Halftime Show
February 29, 2008
FAMU/BCU Presidents State The Florida Classic is Here to Stay in Orlando
February 29, 2008
ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida A&M University and Bethune-Cookman University released the following statement regarding the Title Sponsorship of the Florida Classic that draws well over 60,000 people from all over the nation to participate in the largest historically black college or university (HBCU) Classic.
In a joint statement, Dr. James H. Ammons, President of Florida A&M University, and Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, President of Bethune-Cookman University, declared, “This Classic is more than a game. It is a family reunion that has evolved into the greatest competition between two historic universities in the state of Florida. The football game, the band competition, the tailgating, the display of school pride, as well as the student recruitment and educational fairs now attract individuals as far away as New York City and deliver a near $30 million economic impact to the Central Florida economy.”
Virginia State - Horsepower Tuba Section
February 29, 2008
SWAC-MEAC Challenge held in Orlando in 2008 | Disney Withdraws Sponsorship from the Florida Classic
February 26, 2008
Kyle Hightower
Sentinel Staff Writer
Source: Orlando Sentinel
February 26, 2008
Orlando will host to two historically black annual college football games this fall, though its staple event is in need of a new sponsor.
Already home to the annual Florida Classic between Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman University each November, Orlando’s Florida Citrus Bowl will also host the fourth-year MEAC/SWAC Challenge on Aug. 31, ESPN announced Monday.
However, in joining its sister-company ESPN in announcing the game’s move to Orlando, Walt Disney World also declared Wednesday that it is ending support of the Florida Classic.
SCSU Band Member Loses Battle with Hodgkins Disease
February 25, 2008
Source: WLTX.com
Orangeburg) - Talk to her for five minutes, and you’ll get a pretty good sense of Devon Ferguson’s passion in life. She’s played saxophone since the 6th grade, and had hardly stepped foot on campus this summer when she went out for the South Carolina State marching band.
“I love this band,” she said with a smile. “I can’t tell you, like … everyday I come here, and I enjoy it.”
From the first practice, she fit right in. But just as she began to feel at home, her body let her know it just wasn’t realistic. Not when you’re fighting Hodgkin’s disease.
“Everything happened so fast,” said Darion Breland, speaking of Devon’s sickness.
When Devon dropped out of practice to fight her illness, fellow band member Darion Breland and his buddies didn’t just let her go. After all, she’d become part of their family. And the truth was harsh: their new family member needed all the help she could get to survive.
Read more
SCSU Percussion Battle (2005)
February 25, 2008
African American music teacher makes a difference
February 25, 2008
Source: VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
Monday, February 25, 2008
For Ricardo L. Hayden Jr., 31, race isn’t a black-or-white issue. Hayden, the band director at Knoch High School in the South Butler County School District, is proudly biracial. But he doesn’t like to “make a big deal out of who I am” by bringing personal politics into the classroom for Black History month alone, he said.
Instead, Hayden weaves the stories and songs of revered black composers and jazz legends into music lessons, along with all the other musical histories that are part of his richly-blended heritage.
“I don’t really feel that I fit a particular stereotype,” Hayden said. “It’s always been a kind of dream of mine that people could judge each other on who they are and not judge them by their appearance. I don’t just pick one month or one particular week to do some special unit. I try to be that person every day.”
Morris Brown College (2000) - Halftime Show
February 24, 2008
Embedded Reporter Talks about his experience with N.O. High School Band
February 24, 2008
I’m with the Band
Source: The New Yorker
New Orleans’s high-school marching bands are the real heroes of Mardi Gras; several march with each krewe. I’ve been spending time with the band of O. Perry Walker Senior High School and its director, Wilbert Rawlins, Jr.
I sought Rawlins out because I’d heard that before Katrina he was a legendary bandleader at George Washington Carver High School, in the Lower Ninth Ward, a famously neglected part of town, where many of his students came from blown-apart families. Rawlins had evacuated to Beaumont, Texas, the story went, where the school board offered him a bandleader’s job at a well-funded high school. But Rawlins wanted to come home, and, when Carver didn’t reopen, he accepted a job at O. Perry Walker, in Algiers, the part of New Orleans on what’s called the West Bank of the Mississippi River, which didn’t flood. Walker had been performing below state standards before Katrina, and new state rules had enabled the Algiers community to turn O. Perry Walker into a charter school. O. Perry Walker now admits kids from all over New Orleans, and parent comments have gone from “There are too many teachers at this school with an ‘I don’t care’ attitude,” in 2004, to “I would not want my child to be anywhere else.”
