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Fremont Street evicts black history festival
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Las Vegas Taste & Sounds of Soul, the annual Black History Month festival that is scheduled to celebrate its 10th anniversary next month, has been evicted by the Fremont Street Experience. The event was denied a permit to locate in the business district where it started. Instead, it will be at the Edmond Town Center, at 1021 W. Owens Ave., Feb. 25-27.
At issue is whether the festival -- featuring African-American entertainment and food and merchandise vendors -- drew enough of its own attendees.
"I can put anything out on the street that can sustain off of the customer base that's already here," Fremont Street Experience President Jeff Victor said.
Festival organizers disagree, saying that Taste & Sounds of Soul -- which is produced with KTNV-TV, Channel 13 -- attracted 15,000 to 20,000 of its own visitors to the flashing canopy every year.
"Not only are you telling the locals that you don't value their contributions, you're also saying that the people who are booking their trips and hotel rooms are not bringing enough value to their properties to even warrant having this type of celebration," said Charles Tureaud, who founded the festival with his wife, Kimberly Bailey-Tureaud, in 2001. The Tureauds are co-publishers of Black Image magazine, along with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Ward 5 Councilman Ricki Barlow fully supports the Tureauds, if not their math. He estimated that the festival drew "hundreds, if not thousands" of its own patrons.
"It attracts people into downtown to spend money," Barlow said. "And I believe it brings another level of culture and diversity to downtown that it currently lacks."
According to Victor, Fremont Street Experience businesses, assisted by various subsidy programs, have footed most of the staging costs over the years in the hopes that the festival could one day sustain itself.
"After nine years of trying it, the funding that was there to support those things has dried up," he said.
This year, Victor said, the Tureauds were asked to absorb 10 percent of the Fremont Street Experience's costs, but refused to sign a contract. The Tureauds dispute this claim, stating that they successfully negotiated a contract that was delivered to them with incorrect dates. When they sent it back, they say, they were promised a new one that never arrived.
Earlier this month, the couple received an e-mail from a Fremont Street Experience executive explaining the permit was being denied.
"I think it's a sad testimony, not only just for black people, but to Nevada as a whole," said Bailey-Tureaud, noting that Black History Month serves to expose African-American culture to the mainstream.
"It's ironic," she said. "It's sad."
Kim Pedersen, marketing director for Fitzgeralds -- which sponsored the festival since its inception but withdrew that sponsorship last year -- called Las Vegas Taste & Sounds of Soul a "wonderful community affair."
"If the event drove incremental business, you bet we'd have them down here," Pedersen said. "But it just doesn't make sense financially."
"We wish that economic times were different."
Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0456.
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Keep telling that history:
Read the greatest fictionalized 'historical novel', Rescue at Pine Ridge, the first generation of Buffalo Soldiers. The website is: http://www.rescueatpineridge.com This is the greatest story of Black Military History...5 stars Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Youtube commercials are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD66NUKmZPs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVslyHmDy9A&feature=related
Rescue at Pine Ridge is the story of the rescue of the famed 7th Cavalry by the 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers. The 7th Cavalry got their butts in a sling again after the Little Big Horn Massacre, fourteen years later, the day after the Wounded Knee Massacre. If it wasn't for the 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers, there would of been a second massacre of the 7th Cavalry. This story is about, brutality, compassion, reprisal, bravery, heroism and gallantry.
I know you’ll enjoy the novel. I wrote the story that embodied the Native Americans, Outlaws and African-American/Black soldiers, from the south to the north, in the days of the Native American Wars with the approaching United States of America.
The novel was taken from my mini-series movie with the same title, “RaPR” to keep the story alive. Hollywood has had a lot of strikes and doesn’t like telling our stories…its been “his-story” of history all along…until now. The movie so far has attached, Bill Duke directing, Hill Harper, Glynn Turman, James Whitmore Jr. and a host of other major actors in which we are in talks with.
When you get a chance, also please visit our Alpha Wolf Production website at; http://www.alphawolfprods.com and see our other productions, like Stagecoach Mary, the first Black Woman to deliver mail for the US Postal System in Montana, in the 1890's, “spread the word”.
Peace.
NOT SURPRISED BY THE OUTCOME...I PERFORMED AT THE TASTE AND SOUNDS OF SOUL FOR TWO YEARS--SOME ARTIST PERFORMED FOR FREE AFTER BEING TOLD THEY WOULD GET PAID..WHAT A HEARTBREAK TO NOT BE SUPPORTED BY YOUR OWN PEOPLE, BUT IN ALL REALITY THERE'S NO CULTURE HERE IN VEGAS(IF YOU'RE A.A.)-YOU CAN GO TO CALI. AND CELEBRATE ANY AND EVERYTHING, WHICH I DO! IT'S A SAME AND DISGRACE THAT THIS TOWN ONLY CELEBRTES ONE THING(MONEY!!!).WE NEED LEADERS-NOT YES MEN!!!
I happened to be at the FSE last year during this event -- just by happenstance. I checked out the booths and displays and I must admit that I did not learn anything at all. It was not designed as a learning experience. I agree with the FSE, that this was simply attracting curiousity from the people already at FSE rather than bringing in their own crowds. I can understand the BUSINESS DECISION of ending this event.
Excuse me but all you tear jerkers who are responding empathetically to 'blacks' who want to celebrate anything on Fremont St., I will say this, I was there just recently for MLK Day (Martin Luther King) and I never saw so many Metro Police officers concentrated at one event; I'm talking at least a hundred or more just around Fremont St. itself, not to mention the surrounding streets, even more. The Gang Unit was there, horseback patrols everything. They were concerned, everything was very tense a lot of blacks wondering around but not gambling or buying anything not even food. No organization no speeches just a difficult situation. No tourists (like you typically see on Fremont), until the blacks left. Sad but true.
Since the 1950’s there was a Miss Black America Pageant. Also ‘The United Negro College Fund’. I’ve often wondered if they still exist.
I fully understand the economics, maybe the event planners should market the event as a national event with both locals and outside of NV and make it a National Black History celebration In fab. Las Vegas. Hotels will then have room nights, they will be happy. I wish the organizers the best and hope they will regroup and host a successful event at the new venue in Las Vegas. Where is the convention authority in all this.... Black History is a celebration of culture hotels, etc should embrace and help promote this event....I am from Spain and the city hosts big celebrations for my culture... why not do the same for African Americans...sad, very sad!
As a person born in Europe I find the whole American racial thing quite mystifying. I have African and Asian friends who feel exactly the same way. In Europe, Africa and Asia race has little meaning. People generally hate each based upon more sensible grounds like nationality, culture, ethnicity, religion and social class :) I'm not saying there are not tensions in places like France but these are between different cultures and not races. Arabs, modern Turks and Frenchmen are all caucasians. You may loathe and despise a particular culture or religion but the color of their skin or hair has little to do with it. Often times its the same as your own.
It is interesting that all ethnicities save one, celebrate thier culture. Italian Americans, Native Americans, Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, Greeks Americans, Filipino Americans, etc. Only African Americans lead by the likes of Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton focus on race rather than culture. Things in this country would be much, much better if those who choose to keep racism alive (Jackson, Sharpton and the like) would be shunned by the culture they purport to represent.
Not just horrible and cruel it was ignorant and foolish.
That was a horrible/cruel comment Tax.Payer.