Washington
Real Estate Brokers Celebrate 69th Birthday
The Washington Real Estate
Brokers Association (WREBA) will celebrate its 69th year with a
dinner and dance Saturday, November 17 in the Arbor Room at the
Washington Times Building; 3600 New York Avenue, NE; Washington, D.C.
from 7p-11p. “The WREBA started in a conference room within the
12th Street YMCA,” says WREBA
president Ivan Brown of Ivan Brown
Realty. (William Sidney Pittman, son-in-law of Booker T. Washington
and
one of the nation's first African-American architects  designed the five
story building for the “Black YMCA” now known as the Thurgood Marshall
Center for Service and Heritage) at 1816 12th Street, NW in Washington.
When the WREBA
founding fathers got together, Washington was very segregated.
The White association of realtors, like the White YMCA, did not welcome
Blacks. In 1946, the WREBA helped form the National Association
of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB).
Though it is now
illegal to discriminate based on race, “discrimination is now more
subtle,” added WREBA secretary Scott Akers. Many Black realtors
now belong to only the former all-White groups such as the National
Association of Realtors, just as some Black Americans have abandoned
historically Black colleges and universities. A minority belongs
to both groups. “There are a few older
members who remember how things
were and refuse to join the National Association of Realtors,” says
Akers.
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Our
Children, Our World Opens at MLK - DC / Visual Griots - NY
 More
than 40 people attended the opening of “Our Children, Our World,”
last Thursday at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library.
The exhibit runs through Friday, November 30. “Our Children, Our
World,” is the brainchild of the late Nestor Hernandez. The D.C.
exhibit includes photographs taken by children from Ghana, Cuba,
Washington, D.C., and Gary, Indiana.
Another brainchild of
Hernandez’s, "Visual Griots," is on display at
the
World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery in New York through Sunday,
November 25. The exhibit contains more than 40 images
taken by
children in Mali. The 5th annual African Photography
Encounters Festival in Bamako Mali, the Smithsonian National Museum of
Natural History in Washington, D.C., and Central Library in Kansas
City, MO previously hosted the exhibition.
Shawn Davis, who directs the Visual Griots, project, says it is a
gift. “This exhibit gives us the opportunity to see Africa
through the eyes of African children. The story of Africa is too
seldom told by Africans.”
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