Tonight, Museum of African American History honors 2008 living legends

GALA CELEBRATION HONORS MUSEUM’S 2008 LIVING LEGENDS:
DR. KENNETH GUSCOTT, DENISE NAPPIER, AND GEORGE WEIN
Friday, March 7, Four Seasons Hotel, Boston

The Museum of African American History will present the 2008 Living Legends Awards during its annual Gala celebration — Friday, March 7, 2008 at the Four Seasons Hotel [200 Boylston Street], beginning at 6:00 p.m. with a Sponsors Reception in the hotel’s Blaxton Room. The Gala dinner begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Four Seasons’ Grand Ballroom. The distinguished Emmy Award-winning actress Victoria Rowell [of The Young & The Restless, Distinguished Gentlemen, Feast of All Saints, Diagnosis Murder] will be a part of the presentation program, which begins at 8:00 p.m.

The Living Legends Awards Gala is the Museum’s annual opportunity to shine the spotlight on those individuals who exemplify the spirit of those 18th and 19th Black patriots who have led the way in their commitments to the community and to civil rights.

The recipients of this year’s Living Legends Awards:

• Dr. Kenneth Guscott is one of the leading minority business entrepreneurs and community activists in Boston. The former head of the Boston NAACP during the Civil Rights Movement, he is responsible for designing and developing their Positive Program for Boston, a human resources initiative providing employment opportunities and a summer management internship program in Greater Boston industries. In his latest venture, Guscott has worked for 15 years on One Lincoln Street. This 36-story structure in Boston’s financial District will be the largest office building in America financed and planned by minority groups. Guscott is also the founder and General Partner of the Long Bay Management Company, a real estate development firm that owns and manages 1100 multi-family housing units, commercial, retail and office space.

• Denise L. Nappier, Treasurer, State of Connecticut, is the first African-American woman elected to serve as a State Treasurer in the United States and the first African-American woman elected to a statewide office in Connecticut. Treasurer Nappier is the only woman to be elected Treasurer in Connecticut history. As Connecticut’s chief financial officer, she is principal fiduciary of $26 billion in Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, and oversees the state’s $14 billion debt management program and the $5 billion Short-Term Investment Fund. Treasurer Nappier is a strong advocate for diversity and expanding economic opportunity, establishing the $800 million Connecticut Horizon Fund investment program. During her administration, the number of minority-owned and women-owned investment banking and financial advisory firms doing business with the Treasurer’s office has quadrupled.

• Jazz impresario George Wein is as much a legend as the artists and festivals he has presented. Wein, a living repository of the history of jazz from 1948 to present, is also an accomplished pianist who has toured the United States, Europe and Japan for decades. From 1950 - 1960, George Wein owned and operated Storyville in Boston, one of the three most important jazz clubs in the country. He went on to create the distinguished Newport Jazz Festival in 1954. The world’s very first annual jazz festival, this Rhode Island event totally influenced the entire presentation and performance of artists and their music. Wein went on to create Festival Productions which produced festivals around the globe including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Grand Parade du Jazz in Nice France and JVC Jazz Festivals in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. Wein’s festivals helped develop and enhance the careers of many artists, including Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Mahalia Jackson and numerous others. Wein also has a long history of involvement with philanthropy and the arts, including the establishment of the Joyce and George Wein Chair of African American Studies at Boston University, the Alexander Family Endowed Scholarship Fund at Simmons College and the Joyce Alexander Wein Endowed Scholarship at Berklee College of Music.

OTHER INFORMATION:
The Four Seasons Hotel and American Airlines will auction a Four Seasons vacation package (air and hotel) to the highest bidder.

Proceeds of the event benefit the Museum of African American History.

The Museum of African American History is New England’s largest and most visible African American history museum with four national historic sites and two Black Heritage Trails. The Museum has two campuses: one in Boston and another on Nantucket. Both locales were the nexus of the free 19th century African American community. The African Meeting House (1806), a National Historic Landmark and the longest standing African American church in the nation, and the Abiel Smith School (1835), one of the first buildings constructed for the sole purpose of housing a black public school, sit side by side on Beacon Hill in Boston. Visit the Museum exhibits and Museum store at 46 Joy Street, in the Abiel Smith School.