• The Sueddeutsche Zeitung interviewed the Nigerian-German musician Adé Bantu about Afro-German identity issues. Adé Bantu also founded the anti-racism Hip-Hop music project Brothers Keepers e.V. a non-profit organization with over 90 Afro-German musicians and performers including top stars Xavier Naidoo, Mamadee, Afrob, Samy Deluxe, Eased (Seeed), Patrice und Gentleman et Al.




 • The documentary "Yes I Am" describes the biographies of several Afro-German artists and "social acceptance of African-Germans offstage" ("gesellschaftliche Akzeptanz von Afrodeutschen abseits der Bühne"). The Hamburger Abendblatt writes that the documentary premiered in German cinemas on February 15, 2007. I imagine that this event could be considered part of a German Black History Month although no one has promoted the event as such.





• "African-German Filmmakers Hope to Open Up 'New Perspectives,'" writes David Gordon Smith in Spiegel International about a special series at the Berlin International Film Festival

The African-German community has a long history, but the sizeable minority is often overlooked in a country where being German is often considered to mean being white. Now a group of black German filmmakers is trying to change that. (...)
The series features six short films that aim to represent the breadth of black filmmaking in Germany -- from Yohannes' coming-of-age story, to "You Are Welcome!," a documentary featuring interviews with German visitors to Ghana, to "Diver," a cartoon about a German superhero. However Yohannes emphasizes that black German filmmakers see themselves as complementing the mainstream. "We are not trying to segregate or differentiate ourselves," she says. "Rather, we're coming together in order to become visible."
They have a hard task ahead of them. Black Germans, who generally refer to themselves as Afrodeutsche or African-Germans, have to constantly fight to be accepted as German -- for many people within and outside Germany, being German is synonymous with being white.
It's not known exactly how many African-Germans live in Germany -- one legacy of the Holocaust is that census data in the country does not include ethnicity or religion -- but estimates range from 100,000 to 500,000. Many African-Germans are the offspring of Africans who came to Germany to work or study and married white Germans. A significant number grew up in East Germany, which had links to then-communist countries such as Mozambique. There is also a growing number of German citizens who immigrated as adults from sub-Saharan Africa.

Their story is largely untold, their battle for compensation mostly fruitless. Thousands of African descent perished in Nazis concentration camps, the New Nation reports today. Many survivors have since died of old age, their place in history forgotten.This reporter spoke exclusively to two Afro-Germans, both in their 80s, who revealed their extraordinary story of living under an ever-present fear of death.

• The Atlantic Review has previously written about the musical "Martin Luther King - The King of Love" which premiered in Berlin on February 2, 2007 and will be performed in churches all over Germany. The well known German TV personality Ron Williams has written the musical and stars as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He has also starred in "One Night of Ray Charles - The Genius of Soul."

Ron Williams was born in California, joined the US Army's military police and came as a GI to Germany in the 60s. He was the first African-American radio-DJ at the US military radio station AFN. He has appeared in countless German shows on  stage and on TV. He is a singer, comedian, actor, entertainer, moderator etc. One of his latest projects Mr. Williams received the Federal Cross of Merit in 2004 from the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Check out his homepage: RON WILLIAMS (mostly in German).

Bill, author of the Jewels in the Jungle blog, informed me that he once met Ron Williams in San Francisco back in the '90's while he was on a business trip in the Bay Area.  Bill described a scene from that chance meeting with Ron Williams as follows:  

I was having dinner with one of my German customers who was traveling with me at the time and we both spotted Ron having dinner a few tables over from us.  After we finished eating I strode over to his table and struck up a conversation with him "auf Deutsch".  You can imagine the look of shock on his face (and other guests) when these two black guys start up a conversation in perfect German in the middle of an elegant Chinese restaurant in San Francisco.  It was a most pleasant experience for both of us and I'm certain that he hasn't forgotten about it.  I certainly haven't.

Is Black History Month a good thing?
Should Germany celebrate such a month?

Johnny Mickler looks over his dance card and exhales. It’s full, stuffed, overstuffed, and at the time, it’s not even February yet. Oh, there will be more to come, he says. More. Just... more. More appointments to keep. More invitations to talk. More speeches to make. This being February — this being Black History Month — and Mr. Mickler being the president of the Greater Toledo Urban League, the man is busy. Way busier than, say, April. There’s a speech at Lourdes College. A talk at Owens Community College. A speech at Flower Hospital. A talk at Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church. A talk at Pickett Elementary School. An appearance at Cherry Elementary School. With more to come. It’s still early. February has 28 days. Mr. Mickler isn’t complaining. He will accept nearly every one of those invitations; he’s grateful for the attention. “Don’t get me wrong,” he says.
“I think it’s great we have Black History Month. We need Black History Month.” He just wonders where black history and African-American studies disappears to the moment February becomes March.
“It’s wonderful we get Black History Month, but the truth is it can trivialize things,” Mr. Mickler said. “We are part of American history. African-American history is American history, and it should be better integrated with school curriculums, better mixed into everyday life. Instead it gets crammed into one month. It becomes Booker T. Washington and Washington Carver. It becomes firsts — the first black this, the first black that. I understand why. We still have firsts in 2007, which is unbelievable. The day I don’t have to hear about another first will be a great day.” Call it persistent ambivalence. Talk about Black History Month with enough people, particularly anyone associated with an African-American organization or ethnic studies department or black history museum — the typical front lines of Black History Month — and a few tempered, recurring feelings emerge. Nobody wants Black History Month eliminated; though it was created with the hope one day it wouldn’t be needed, nobody feels that day has arrived. But nobody’s entirely comfortable with Black History Month, either.
(...)
“Yeah, you’ve got to laugh,” said Ethel Morgan Smith. Like it or not, she finds herself a lightning rod every February. In 1997 she wrote a wry essay for the Seattle Times about being black and in demand during Black History Month, and every year since, the piece circulated among friends and black intellectuals, (including Ms. Dickerson, who cites it in her Salon essay). Ms. Smith, an associate professor of English at West Virginia University and a Fulbright scholar, says after 10 years she’s received hundreds of positive letters, and maybe two negative.
“It hits a nerve, I guess,” Ms. Smith said. “We’re a crazy culture. The politics of Black History Month demand people call me now. But the reality is that folks don’t have vision. It never occurs to them to call me other times. They’re not interested in changing. I get messages on voice mail: ‘Ethel, you’re black, right? If so, call me back.’ Funny thing is, they never tell me what to do if I’m not.”