“You can’t love what you don’t understand,” said Minister Stretch Sanders, president of community group All Shades United. “And black women are not the loud, obnoxious image that the media tries to portray.”
That’s one of the reasons Sanders is leading a celebration of black women on March 25; he hopes Las Vegans of every nationality and gender will come to the event and leave with a better understanding of a group that he feels has been forgotten. A planned 22 speakers—including Nevada state Sen. Pat Spearman, Ann Barlow of the National Congress of Black Women, Sequoia Holmes of the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces and more—will be on hand share their stories. (There will be live entertainment and local vendors, too)
The other reason is that Sanders hopes this will be the start of a continuing dialogue. “Black men have caused the destruction of black women, the put-down of black women,” he said. “We’re responsible for bringing them back up.”
2428 N. Martin Luther King Blvd., 2:30-4:30 p.m. free.
This story originally appeared in the Las Vegas Weekly.