{"id":111877,"date":"2026-02-12T09:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T09:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/111877\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T09:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T09:25:08","slug":"multicultural-organization-hosts-black-history-march-the-lafayette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/111877\/","title":{"rendered":"Multicultural organization hosts Black history march \u2013 The Lafayette"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dozens of students, faculty and staff walked the Lafayette College campus on Sunday in a Martin Luther King Jr. event that highlighted Black history and culture at the college.<\/p>\n

Organized by the Association of Black Collegians and the college archives, it was the second year for the event and part of a larger month-long Black History Month celebration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to go around campus and really talk about the Black history that lies within our campus,\u201d said Association of Black Collegians historian Paris Francis \u201826 before beginning the tour. \u201cI feel like that really isn\u2019t advertised enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francis, who co-founded the event last year, led the group to stops focused on historical figures and events that helped shape Black culture and community at Lafayette.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among these was the Black Manifesto, a document presented in 1969 outlining five demands to enhance the quality of life and learning on campus. This document led to the establishment of the Portlock Black Cultural Center, formerly the Malcolm X Liberation Center, which for 55 years has been a base for Black cultural events on campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The building was most recently relocated to its current McCartney Street home<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it\u2019s really important that we continue having events like these to represent these communities,\u201d said attendee Lilah Hassan \u201829.<\/p>\n

Francis said she hoped to see similar events held throughout the year, \u201cnot just during Black History Month.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, Black History Month is a time to commemorate all of our ancestors, everyone that came before us,\u201d said Skyler Chouloute \u201828, the president of the Association of Black Collegians.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can just kind of soak up every bit of Black history right here,\u201d she said of the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adja Campbell \u201829 said that the event allowed her to \u201cspeak about my ancestry.\u201d She highlighted that her grandparents and earlier generations in Jamaica dealt with the aftermath of slavery.<\/p>\n

The tour concluded with a presentation and viewing of books, poems, plays and art from the college and association archives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI want our students to know that there is power in these words and there\u2019s power in these books, and that we are here as a library to support that,\u201d said college archivist Ana Ramirez Luhrs, who selected the pieces for viewing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of students, faculty and staff walked the Lafayette College campus on Sunday in a Martin Luther King…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-111877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}