Wed 4/12 @ 7-9PM
The Lift Their Voices series at the BOP STOP is hosted by Cleveland-based educational nonprofit Roots of American Music, calling on local musicians to spotlight the contributions and influence of those who preceded them.
This month, blues rock guitarist/vocalist educator Sam Hooper, a teaching artist with Roots of American Music who has performed and taught all over the world for decades, will be performing some of his own material while paying tribute to a non-musical figure, Dr. T. R M. Howard, a successful surgeon and entrepreneur in the mid 20th century.
Howard founded medical clinics for the Black community, which led him to voting rights and civil rights work, including being a leader in the investigation of Emmett Till’s murder in 1955; Mamie Till stayed at his house in Mississippi when she came down to testify in the trial against his killers. Howard mentored and/or encouraged such figures as Medger Evers, Jesse Jackson, Harold Washington and Fanny Lou Hamer.
He was also a strong proponent of reproductive rights, which he saw as fundamental civil rights, providing abortions when they were still illegal for which he was arrested twice but never convicted. Following Roe v. Wade in 1973, his clinic became the first and one of the largest abortion providers in Chicago, where he had moved in the mid ’50s when living in Mississippi became too dangerous for civil rights leaders.
Tickets for the concert are $10. It will also be livestreamed on the BOP STOP’s and ROAM’s Facebook pages.
rootsofamericanmusic.org/events