OF NOTE- People In The News: Thursday, January 16
At Fort Greene’s Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, social studies teacher WILLIAM MASON teaches students about the history of the holocaust while giving them a chance to better understand their Jewish neighbors. “A lot of our students live in Crown Heights and Williamsburg, on the borders of Orthodox Jewish communities, and they notice the friction between the two groups and they don’t understand why,” Mason told haaretz.com. “So they’ll have a lot of questions about Jewish culture and Jewish ideas.” The class, which he started teaching five years ago, is popular with students, drawing from a curriculum provided by the Anti-Defamation League and Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. AMY GOLDBERG, wife of late Holocaust survivor Ernest Michel, visited Mason’s class recently to tell the students about her husband’s experience. Seventeen-year-old NAH’EEMA WALKER found Goldberg’s talk especially moving. “For him to be able to live his life with no hatred is amazing,” Walker said.
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The Brooklyn Academy of Music will host a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on Jan. 20, honoring the civil rights leader’s life and legacy, as well as the contributions of other notable black leaders. “Many of the sources of uncertainty and instability that we feel as a nation were addressed by Dr. King. His legacy continually inspires our own work at BAM toward anti-oppression,” said BAM President KATY CLARK. Journalist NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES, who created The New York Times’s 1619 project, will deliver a keynote speech to kick off the day, followed by speeches from Brooklyn civic leaders emceed by Borough President ERIC ADAMS. BAM will offer a free screening of the Aretha Franklin concert film “Amazing Grace” at Rose Cinemas in the afternoon. For more info, visit bam.org.