father of two our neighbors here in the community and my wonderful wife when her free who we had an opportunity to celebrate our twenty fifth anniversary in lalibela think you know obviously my experience is not that rich and i am from kenya and that has significant impact on the work that we do because we know that area is very rich and is known as the origin of humanity and what that means to house is that it gives us a place of pride now to address your question about the organization as koch was founded some thirty two years ago and it was founded as an opportunity to reclaim and restore the had which has been stolen  obfuscated and corrupted by others who came in and assume that africans could not possibly have benefited the world with knowledge and what we are doing what this group of scholars did when they got together was to say that is absolutely not true because we have a continuity in our african history what happened in the age of and slave meant was simply an interruption of our history and we need to understand that we now live here that african americans we found here are people who in deward unmeasurable in very painful events but those events also impacted us because it was  were stolen and brought here and having that understanding then says we have this collective cultural and ethnic identity and as a consequence conferences such as these give us a space to come in remember who we are and in our african centeredness restore for the sake of our children and ensuring that for the generations to come that we every storing them to wellness and to people very important to create a space for this type of mental activity this type of academic activity because until we as a people  create our own narrative that speaks to this we will find ourselves victims or shall we say consumers of what is called the mainstream media so we have through the fortunate work of many of them locally from here you recognize like dr quint our taylor university of washington and many others from abroad are coming to visit papers to sit on research panels to have discussions to have dialogue to present their research about what sister anita was talking about here with regard to our overall classical african collective and the exciting part about it for me is that we have the conference over several days and i don't know if you explained already but the kind of existing home base from this month march the nineteenth through the twenty second so we'll have discussions and workshops and papers specifically geared towards our history history that we ascribe to classical african history out of the nile valerie valley which is where is you know we start with linked in then we go on down the longest river in the world and we end up in commit do we end up in ethiopia and so it is out of this valley that springs the very civilization that we talk this is where lucy also known as commish was found out of the birthplace of humans comes this entire population that we talk about we talk we have community conversations on friday i'd like you to talk more about their community conversations where the academics get together and talk about the issues dealing with the ancient past but what are the contemporary issues and we have a very important youth conference that element and then the community doesn't get to benefit from what we discuss there they deal here is that we bring in africa and had asked for and we have conversations about the theme of the night  black history matters ancient wisdom spoken and contemporary solutions the concept is that let's sit down and talk about what's happening with us today and draw from our ancient wis what are the things that your grandparents great grandparents whatever legacy you have what are those things that they used used to direct and inform how we behave and how we make the most of our lives and how we ma sure that hopefully our future generations three four five six seven long after we're gone will call our name with honor that's an important african value and so the hope is that by the end of the evening we'll have an auction planned so this conversation is to bring dialogue that would be intergenerational we don't want to leave the children out of that conversation we often don't include them with teens but they need this morning and we need to be able to listen and hear what i want children to telling us about their experiences and about the solutions they think about and we need to honor and respect those solutions and incorporate those in everything because you mentioned briefly that you and i may talk of the institute just a little more detail so with the youth institute we've designed a breakout session on saturday that will focus on youth learning and we have a number of different workshops that we're going to be doing that allows the youth from the local community to come in and learn about some of the  research in stem areas that are out there i'm fortunate to have won the black engineer of the year modern day technology leader award price and i have done some research in this area and because of that a workshop that i and several others are going to be working with is on metallurgy of specifically the nile valley region so we look at some of the regional sources of metallurgy we always hear about steel and iron age and all of these different elements that have impacted the world well the first workings in metal was with the nile valley region the kilns that were developed there and the sciences that were developed over time were brought into existence out of the nile valley so we bring some hands on experience that we can bring to the kids on how to work with metals and what has been their properties and sources and benefits to us in the world other than it being a hard object to understand the science behind it and we also talk about how that same metal how those same metals on those same materials are brought into life art and brought out by people from the nile valley region and so that's going to be very exciting and then we have a number of other workshops too but i want to say this it's very say this it's very important to understand we are not doing this just in isolation we want to reach out to the community specifically to the ethiopian community that's here in the seattle region it's very important that we reach out to our partners in a way where they feel that they have reasons to come we have a wonderful amount of free events that are going to go on to our partners in a way where they feel that they have reasons to come we have a wonderful amount of free events that are going to go on which includes a certain activity or a little bit about some of the free workshops and some of the free activities that we that we have going actually all those things they incorporate in the conference thursday night is an option in reception and that will be where we are welcomed by seattle public schools as a partner in this work will be welcomed by some politicians but it's an opportunity to come in and fellowship and share some time together in anticipation of what will by children and and we have steel plants present to sing the black national anthem and then friday evening of course is a free event and that's the community gathering  and you know and so those are the free aspects of this of this conference but free or not it really is critical that if you're seeking ways to support your children and support your community have is is there a website or our social media link that can be posted on the most screen where people can get more information yes i believe it's ring a beach community center the address by me here sold on friday the conference will be at the rainier beach community center and friday evening and for the rest of the conference we moved to south shore pre k school pre k eight school and the address there is forty eight hundred south henderson zip code is nine eight one one eight forty eight hundred one of the things that you've done recently is hosted the triangle movie i had a chance to see that it was outstanding and also you coming to our kwanzaa event in the  south that was that was great fantastic to have ethiopian representation ones and that was very well received and one thing to him r t i has done a great job of being there at these different activities they've been wonderful in the community over the last i don't know ten plus years they have been there on the scene filming a major activities for sports teams for local community activities and oftentimes doing this at their cost and being also in the role of providing resources to youth in the community giving them technical skills to as you know i like excel in the stem areas so thanks again also to dr joy hardiman has done an incredible job of creating a platform for people to come and present the work and also been the one who is chiefly responsible for bringing the s k conference here so again we want to say thank you to dr mama sister joy hardiman who is a local scholar in her own right here in the puget sound area furthermore i'd like to just talk for a minute about the value of these studios in this time that's being provided to us for us by m m r it is an incredible resource invaluable resource that has for more than a decade now allowed many people from the community to come in and present their ideas to interview important individuals to interview people who have accomplished certain task or achievements in their lives it has been  a fantastic thing to see him r t i be a part of bringing the message of what the community is doing to the rest of the world and i personally want to thank brother and others and him in especially the students who have been so professional as i have seen them in the community filming different events learning the different skills not only of behind the camera but also the editing software splicing things putting it together posting on websites and posting it on the air talk fantastic in the way i understand this reaches around the world even the broadcast so this is fantastic and i just want to commend him a martyr for bringing local events sporting events political event brain was doing below is quite exceptional taking into consideration that this is a program that supports young people that tells us it trusts believes and invests in you and their genius and i just want to honor the work that you do and it's my prayer and my hope that you have many many more years ahead of you because this work is critical knowing the climate in which we live right now and knowing that it's an opportunity our children who ordinarily would not be heard to be heard in the way that they choose to be heard but also to provide mentorship for them and to provide a loving space in which to work they don't have to go to hostile adults the ones that i first met and i'm so proud of the work you're doing so once again congratulations and happy anniversary about your experiences in your perspectives on both things that you've seen before and things that we're seeing right now ok ok good well as background will started very beginning i am sixty six years  was born and town and tennessee browns wilton asli it's not really known for anything except one famous person who came from there was tina turner and i don't know how many of you are from a she would tina turner i grew up in brownsville at the time it was in the segregated south and i intend that segregated a segregated school events really graduating from that school in one nine hundred sixty five and then i was lucky enough to get to college i ended up going teach and i actually came to the university on the other side of the state washington state university spent four years there then went back and finished the ph d of minnesota and one nine hundred seventy seven and i've been teaching ever since then  been teaching and writing ever since then my area of specialization is african american history in the american west and that's rare because as you guys probably know most people when they think about myself devoted my career to trying to study african american history and the west and particularly in the pacific northwest i often tell people i'm a specialist in african american history in the pacific northwest and i get a strange look because people think well there are no african americans in this area right one of the things that happened to me and i feel very very fortunate in this because it ties in to want to talk about in a minute our website black pass is that when i was in grad school i was able to focus on a program we now would call it comparative history but it was essentially called the history of african peoples the history of african people and as a result we had the study we were required to study not just african america we will also require the study africa the african continent and i had leading scholars teach me about africa and then we were required to study blacks in latin america and so that's  for me in the sense that i began to think or early on about the connections between between african americans and african people especially and i still think about those from that and in some ways that led us to black pass taught it washington state university for four years i ended up getting a ph d minnesotan seventy seven and then i went to teach at a relatively small school in california california polytechnic state university and i and i was there for about thirteen years and although one of those years was interestingly spent at the university of lagos in nigeria i taught at the university of lagos one year and where as i had been teaching african history in american university of oregon and i taught there for nine years and one of one of my prized students was a man named so he had at age of moby and sort of loop back to this but essentially so he was my undergraduate student at the university of lagos and he wanted to come to the united states and he came to the united states and he studied and got a masters in african history at the university of oregon but because we didn't have enough people and african history at the university for him to get a d he went on and he ended up studying at the university of texas and the irony here is that so he would teach at wayne state university and the choice and then eventually he would work his way all the way back here  i let me let me say way though and talk about african americans on the west coast is that that's my specially that's that's and away my pride and that's one of the reasons along with the emphasis on african peoples that led me to black pas so i study african american communities in the west and one of the reasons as to why that's interesting and fascinating to me is because african american communities and western cities like los angeles and seattle and san francisco and oakland and denver have always been juxtaposition to other communities of color like asian americans and particularly latino there's a rapidly growing latino population and deede the original blacks who came to the west were all spanish speakers from central mexico and so i argue that at one point you know blacks were a latino right if you look at the people who founded los angeles and the people who found that san francisco they were people who looked like the i don't know if you call a proclivity but i've got this expertise an african history from the african peoples program we have this expertise on the black west which is rare is there a way that we can sort of put all of that together along with african american history and take it out of the classroom which is where african americans normally african american history is normally taught and projected onto the world stage and so that's how black passed out or came to be the idea was to take the information about african american history the information about african history the information about blacks in the west and presented in such a way so that they could be used not just by scholars but by everybody in this room right and so black passed out or was the up and launched on february first twenty seven so we've just gone through our eighth anniversary and and essentially it's grown it's grown beyond our wildest dreams  we have we average now and partly this is because of black history month we average about twenty five thousand people a day who come to come to visit black passed out orders and they come from all over the world ethiopia is usually in the top ten in terms of countries eateries eat the opium nigeria obviously always pretty far up there in terms of the number of visitors who come to see black paris but obviously the vast hundred content contributors from six continents and we touch own every country in africa every country in latin america that has a significant black population and of course every state here in the united states all together black past has at this moment you know if you ask me next next week going to be a different total right for this moment we have thirteen thousand pages on the history of people of african  ancestry more than one billion people in the world who have ever had ancestor and you might say ok you focus on african americans or you focus on africa and i don't know how many people know for instance you know the first black of ways in a variety of ways he was able to get the russian and as a result of this he rose very quickly in the russian aristocracy and eventually became an engineer and he and engineer at some bridges that are still standing in russia to th mean we have you know obviously we have a lot of information only at the opiates some of you who are in front of your computer screens you may be able to tell us you know how many injuries we have but take a look at our entry on at us abba on the churches of ethiopia ethiopia of course i don't need to tell you it's the oldest continuous christian country in the world and we talk about that what people probably don't know is that folks from ethiopia eventually ended up in india and they created a huge empire you know black people meet the o p s created this huge empire in india and of course that's a profile under india black past so and let me be clear this most of this is information that i did know this is not information that i was taught in school this is this is an expansion of the realm of knowledge and as a result of all these volunteers doing all of this study all around the world and so i have a better sense of what's going on in the entire globe and i hope that the guys in this room the guys and the girls in this room will have a better sense so that once they go to black pass and you know join the hundreds of thousands of  entry coming up in the next week on the history of black folks in china