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Iowa City’s inaugural Black History Ball was a celebration of Black culture, community
More than a hundred people attended the Saturday black-tie event, featuring traditional Black cuisine, live jazz music, Black artwork and a range of speakers
Feb. 4, 2024 1:57 pm
Music seeped out of the Iowa City Senior Center’s Assembly Room Saturday night, featuring a booming trumpet threaded with drums, keyboard and bass. The rhythmic jazz served as both the entertainment and backdrop for the crowd converging in the room — a mixture of ornate patterns, sparkling sequins, suits and cultures.
The black-tie event — held on the first weekend of Black History Month — was Iowa City’s inaugural Black History Ball. More than 100 people gathered to honor Black history and celebrate Black communities.
“It’s a great way to kick off Black History Month, which we know is all year-round,” said attendee Yolanda Spears, 54, who is a University of Iowa clinical associate professor in social work. “But we’re highlighting it today.”
The Iowa City Senior Center’s Original Mature Groovers, formerly known as Elders of Color, teamed up with nonprofit Sankofa Outreach Connection to plan the first-ever ball in celebration of Iowa’s Black community. Both groups offer support to people of color — the former for adults over 50 years of age, and the latter for women.
The food and drinks lining the hall outside the center’s assembly room were nearly all catered from vendors who are people of color, said LaTasha DeLoach, the center coordinator and Sankofa Outreach Connection co-founder who led planning for the ball. Traditional Black cuisine filled platters, ranging from the Puerto Rican dish mofongo to traditional Jamaican jerk chicken.
Attendees brought their plates into the assembly room, where the UI Stanley Museum of Art displayed seven pieces of artwork that captured a “global Black visual narrative,” said museum curator of special projects Derek Nnuro. Two African textiles adorned one wall with intricate patterns; carved figures and a mask sat in displays across the room; and another wall held several pages from Ho Che Anderson’s graphic novels about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Several speakers addressed the crowd. After an invocation and land acknowledgment, poet and UI English assistant professor Donika Kelly performed an original poem inspired by her family in southern Arkansas and their cultural vernacular. Then, the crowd stood to sing the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” commonly referred to as “The Black National Anthem.”
“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,” attendees crooned, their voices melding with the soulful band. “Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on ‘til victory is won.”
Ashley Howard, an UI assistant professor in African American studies and history, was the ball’s keynote speaker.
She referenced and quoted Black figures, like historian Vincent Harding, activist Malcolm X, artist Aaron Douglas and singer-songwriter Prince. She spoke of how Iowa’s Black communities challenge the stereotype that the Midwest is “exclusively white,” and noted how the state’s population of Black residents is projected to nearly triple by 2060.
Even so, she said, the region’s recounting of Black history and the community’s modern-day presence is often diminished or erased in mainstream conversation and media — something that must change to accurately represent the identity and humanity of Black people in Iowa and beyond.
“While the inclusion of narratives which challenge dominant Midwestern narrative frames are becoming more frequent, much work remains to amplify the alternative identities Black Iowans create for themselves within these spaces,” Howard said in her speech. “The time is now to craft loving narratives of Black islands — vast, complicated portraits of our humanity. We fight because we know that we are worth fighting for.”
For the rest of the night, the center’s assembly room was flooded with the mesmerizing rhythm of live jazz music. Curtis Taylor, an award-winning trumpeter and UI assistant professor of jazz studies, led the quartet and played alongside fellow UI assistant professor in jazz studies William Menefield, bassist Jonathon Muir-Cotton and drummer Alexander White.
The night was a joyous celebration of Black culture in Iowa and beyond. Attendee Fechi Odocha, 33, recently moved to Iowa from Nigeria to attend Maharishi International University in Fairfield. He attended the Black History Ball to learn more about the African American experience.
“I actually wanted to know the history, how Black (people) in America live and how they’ve been able to achieve,” he said. “It’s actually different from Black Africans... It’s more emotional... They are telling the story that their fathers told them, their grandparents told them.”
Most of the proceeds from the ball’s ticket sales and silent auction — where paintings and masks were up for bidding — will go toward sending the Original Mature Groovers group on a trip to learn more about the Underground Railroad, a Civil War-era network that helped fugitive slaves escape to free states and Canada.
“This very much feels like a beginning,” Howard said about the ball as she closed her keynote. “When I think of this ball next year, I'm also thinking: What are the stories that we will tell each other a year from now?”
Brittney J. Miller is the Energy & Environment Reporter for The Gazette and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.
Comments: (319) 398-8370; brittney.miller@thegazette.com
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