Promoted to full professor in May 2011, Baltasar Fra-Molinero is a professor of Spanish whose research interests include the Spanish Golden Age and Spanish-American colonial literature. He focuses on the representation of blacks and their diaspora and is the author of the book La imagen de los negros en el teatro del Siglo de Oro (“The image of the black in the theater of the Golden Age”; Siglo XXI, 1995).

Fra-Molinero chairs the Spanish program at Bates. In addition to all levels of Spanish language, he has taught Spanish theater, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, medieval Spain, Latin American and Spanish cinema, and the Afro-Hispanic diaspora.

Now in his 17th year at Bates, Fra-Molinero received his doctorate in Spanish and a master’s in linguistics from Indiana University. He holds a doctorate and bachelor’s degree in English philology from the University of Seville in Spain.

In collaboration with Bates professor Sue E. Houchins, he is producing a critical edition and translation of the 18th-century Compendio de la vida ejemplar de la Venerable Madre Sor Teresa Juliana de Santo Domingo (“Compendium of the Exemplary Life of the Venerable Mother, Sister Teresa Juliana of Santo Domingo”). He co-edited a monographic issue on Equatorial Guinea for Afro-Hispanic Review (2009) and was guest editor of a volume on Don Quixote and Race for Annals of Scholarship (2010).

Culminating the college’s Jan. 17 observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, students used music, dance, poetry and prose to survey the vast landscape of the African Diaspora, and their own diverse backgrounds, in an evening performance in Schaeffer Theatre.

Titled Sankofa, a term from Ghana’s Akan language referring to the idea of going back for what you have forgotten, the show emphasized the importance of remembering the past in order to appreciate the present and improve the future.

Reflecting the concept “Get Up, Stand Up: The Fierce Urgency of Now” — the theme for this year’s MLK Day programming at Bates — the performers captivated audience members with their talent, pride and intensity. Fellow students, faculty and townspeople including members of the local Somali community filled the theater. The production, the first of its kind, drew hoots and hollers, laughter and tears from the audience.

The production featured emotional readings, striking dance and uplifting music, displaying the talents of students from myriad backgrounds and disciplines. Directed by Linda Kugblenu ’13 of New York City and produced by Cynthia Alexandre-Brutus of Brooklyn, N.Y., the production was as much a lesson in history and culture as entertainment.

In one piece, actresses Omosede Eholor of New York City and Brittney Davis of Chicago, both first-years, performed Alexandre-Brutus’ adaption of Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I A Woman?” Rendered as a dialogue, the scene juxtaposed the inequalities facing black women in the 18th and 19th centuries with the modern context, a contrast heightened by stage lighting and costumes.

In “Four Blast From the Past,” four performers portrayed liberation movement leaders from across Africa. Raina Jacques ’13 portrayed Yaa AsanteWaa, queen mother of the Asante confederacy. She vehemently delivered the speech that stirred the men of the community to fight against British colonial domination and proclaimed that she would call upon her fellow women to get their king back.

Bisola Folarin ’14 presented Wangari Maathai, the contemporary Kenyan environmental and political activist, proclaiming the threats to the forests by her own government.

The Rev. King was honored as Jourdan Fanning ’13 performed an excerpt from his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech, expressing a fierce exigency of the need to remember the injustices the civil rights movement has fought to surmount.

The program also included dance in a variety of genres, from traditional Ghanian dance to a sampler of Caribbean styles to step dance performed by the college’s Dynasty team. Five students took part in a poetry slam; a piece honored the local Somali community with the piece “I Am a Somali”; and Bates’ own Gospelaires, a relatively recent addition to the college’s robust singing scene, offered the spiritual “Oh Freedom is Coming.” And an intermission gave the audience a chance to share their impressions.

The show stimulated the emotions with powerful performances that highlighted the diversity of Bates students. The standing ovation that closed the show expressed both admiration for the troupe and an entreaty for an encore next year.

– Kelly Cox ’11

Marfa Inofuentes and Rosana Silva Chagas, cultural activists from Bolivia and Brazil, speak at Bates College at 4:15 p.m. Monday, March 23, in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

The event is co-sponsored by the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute and the Arturo Schomburg Afro-Latino Speaker Series, a program of the Bates Office of Multicultural Affairs. It is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8376.

Inofuentes is president of Bolivia’s Afro-Bolivian Cultural Movement. She has been integral to the creation of the cultural movement Saya Afroboliviano, which aims to recover and re-evaluate Afro-Bolivian culture, and is a noted advocate for the establishment of Afro-Bolivian heritage centers.

In Bolivia, there are more than 25,000 surviving descendants of some half a million slaves brought from central Africa to work in Bolivian mines. Inofuentes works with this largely forgotten community. Racial prejudice still abounds in Bolivia, where even now, Afro-Bolivians remain on the sidelines of political power.

Chagas works on issues of concern to the Afro descendant majority in Brazil. She has worked with organizations such as the Steve Biko Cultural Institute in Brazil and the Your World Consultant Group Educational Foundation. She organizes within densely populated, crime-ridden communities to provide residents basic social services.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that between 65 million and 120 million Brazilians are of African ancestry, descended people brought to Brazil as slaves. While some Afro-Brazilians see racism as primarily a cultural problem, others believe the struggle against racism must seek to change economic, social and political structures. The Afro-Brazilian movement has contributed significantly to policy changes in all these areas to improve the quality of life for black Brazilians.

The Arturo Schomburg Afro-Latino Speaker Series at Bates highlights contemporary Afro-Latin scholars and artists who focus on topics including identity, politics, culture, literature and history. The series honors Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, a prominent Puerto Rican historian, writer and activist of the early 20th century.

The Bates College Office of Multicultural Affairs presents a two-day film series titled Political Films from the African Diaspora on Wednesday, Oct. 25, and Thursday, Oct. 26, in Rooms 104 and 105 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St., Bates College. The public is invited to attend the screenings free of charge. For more information, call 207-786-8376.

The schedule for Wednesday, Oct. 25, is as follows:

7 p.m. in Olin 104
The Untold Story of Emmett Till

The film that helped reopen one of history’s most notorious cold-case civil rights murders resulted from the director’s 10-year journey to uncover the truth. In August 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley of Chicago sent her only child, Emmett Louis Till, to visit relatives in the Mississippi Delta. Only eight days later, Emmett was abducted from his great-uncle’s home, brutally beaten and then murdered for one of the oldest Southern taboos: whistling at a white woman in public. It was director Beauchamp’s nine years of investigation, summarized in the film, that was primarily responsible for the Justice Department’s reopening the case. Produced and directed by Keith A. Beauchamp. 2005, 115 minutes, in English.

7 p.m. in Olin 105
Haiti, Killing the Dream

This documentary traces the history of U.S. imperialism and indifference in the Caribbean and South America, portraying the poverty and violence that ravage Haiti. The film presents a stark look at the country whose 19th-century origins as the world’s first independent black republic have been obscured by decades of harsh repression. Directors: Rudi Stern, Katharine Kean. 1992, 56 minutes, in English.

8:15 p.m. in Olin 105
Lumumba

This film presents the rise and fall of legendary African leader Patrice Lumumba. When the Congo declared its independence from Belgium in 1960, the 36-year-old, self-educated Lumumba became the first prime minister of the newly independent state. Called “the politico of the bush” by journalists of the day, he became a lightning rod for Cold War politics as his vision of a united Africa gained him powerful enemies in Belgium and the United States. Lumumba would last just months in office before being brutally assassinated. The film vividly recreates the shocking events behind the birth of the country that became Zaire during the reign of Lumumba’s former friend, Joseph Mobutu. Directed by Raoul Peck. 2002, 115 minutes, in English- dubbed.

9 p.m. in Olin 104
Quilombo Country: Afrobrazilian Villages in the 21st Century

The film portrays rural communities in Brazil that were either founded by runaway slaves or begun from abandoned plantations. This type of community is known as a quilombo, from an Angolan word that means “encampment.” As many as 2,000 quilombos exist today. The film has three distinct settings: the Trombetas region of the Amazon, Marajo Island at the mouth of the Amazon River and the Itapicuru-Mirim area in the state of Maranhao. The film offers a glimpse into these communities, with extensive footage of ceremonies, dances and lifestyles interwoven with discussions about their history and the issues most important to them currently. Directed and produced by Leonard Abram, narrated by Chuck D, 2006, 73 minutes, narration in English; depictions of the Quilombo villages contain discussions in Portuguese, subtitled in English.

The schedule for Thursday, Oct. 26, is as follows:

7 p.m. in Olin 104
Delwende

Inspired by true events, the title comes from the name of one of the shelters that house the remarkable women scapegoated as witches. A rousing story of women’s courage in the face of patriarchal injustice, the film conveys both an impassioned political stance and the extraordinary resolve of its two central characters, a mother and daughter battered but unbroken in their refusal to bow before ignorance.  Directed by S. Pierre Yameogo. 2005, 90 minutes, in Mooré and French with English subtitles.

7 p.m. in Olin 105
The Language You Cry In

This film tells an amazing scholarly detective story reaching across hundreds of years and thousands of miles from 18th-century Sierra Leone to the Gullah people of present-day Georgia. It recounts the even more remarkable saga of how African Americans have retained links with their African past through the horrors of the Middle Passage, slavery and segregation. This is how the memory of a family was pieced together through a song with legendary powers to connect those who sang it with their roots. Directed by Ángel Serrano & Alvaro Toepke, narrated by Vertamae Grosvenor. 1998, 52 minutes, in English and Mende with English subtitles.

8 p.m. in Olin 105
Moolaadé

This powerful and uncompromising film depicts the clash between entrenched cultural and religious tradition and modern secular society over the issue of female genital mutilation in a West African village. Six girls refuse to take part in the “purification” ritual. Two run away to an uncertain fate and the remaining four are sheltered by a woman who is known to have mystical powers and has given the four girls the “moolaade,” the spell of protection. Directed by Ousmane Sembene. 2004, 124 minutes, in French and Jula with English subtitles.
8:45 p.m. In Olin 104
Falasha:  The Exile of the Black Jews

Ethiopia’s Jewish community known as Falasha, or “strangers,” lived in isolation for centuries, practicing an ancient, pre-Talmudic form of Judaism that, according to tradition, traces its origins back to Solomon and Sheba. These long-suffering Jews have undergone centuries of abuse at the hands of Ethiopian citizens who refuse to accept the minority group as part of their culture, leading to interminable feuds and daily conflicts. This compelling documentary uncovers startling truths about the citizens of the impoverished country. Directed and produced by Simcha Jacobovici. 2004, 80 minutes, in English.

A showing of work by Portland artist Daniel Minter will be on display at Bates College through Feb. 28 in an exhibition presented for Black History Month. “A Heavy Grace: Paintings and Sculpture” opens with a gallery reception featuring food and music from African American and Brazilian culinary traditions at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 4, in Chase Hall Gallery, Chase Hall, Campus Avenue, Bates College. The public is invited to attend the reception and the exhibit, both sponsored by the Multicultural Center, free of charge. Call 207-786-8376 for more information.

Minter is a painter, sculptor, illustrator and arts educator whose work is steeped in the context of African American and African diaspora culture. The designer of the 2004 U.S. Postal Service Kwanza stamp, he is a noted illustrator of several children’s books.

“Minter collects the implements, the figures, the cultural tools of Black experience in diaspora and gives them iconic status,” writes Latin American historian and theologian Rachel Harding. Says Harding: “Many of the figures in Minter’s art are those of ordinary black life, especially of the mid-20th century rural south: hot combs and axes; straw brooms and jack-knives; snakes, jars and crows; round women, big men and long-limbed trees. Through his skilled gaze and carefully honed instinct, Minter elicits deeper meanings from the mundane.”

As a senior research fellow, Hill was associated in the early 1970s with the Institute of the Black World in Atlanta, at a time when that institution played a pioneering role in shaping the intellectual direction of black/African American studies nationally and internationally. A professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has been a faculty member since 1977, Hill also has taught at Dartmouth, Northwestern, Emory and Haverford. He is best known for his work as project director and editor of the multi-volume Marcus Garvey and University Negro Improvement Association Papers, of which 10 volumes have appeared to date.

Hill has also been in charge of collecting, archiving and shepherding to publication several other landmark manuscript collections of pivotal historical significance to the study of black diaspora political and social thought, including the magazine The Crusader, The FBI’s RACON: Racial Conditions in the United States During World War II and collections of the writings of George Schuyler.

Among his many awards and professional appointments, Hill is the literary executor of the pan-Africanist intellectual C.L.R. James and has served on the advisory committee for the W.E.B. DuBois Papers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and on the Schomburg Commission for the Preservation of Black Culture at the Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. He received his B.A. degree from University College at the University of Toronto, and his M.S. degree from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

Hill’s talks are sponsored by the African American studies program at Bates, where he will spend a week as a visiting scholar-in-residence from Jan. 31 through Feb. 9, attending and lecturing in various classes and meeting with groups of faculty and students.