On the Yard, Howard Celebrates Chadwick A. Boseman with Art, Joy—and a $50,000 Gift

By Chad Eric Smith, Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts

Hosted by Anthony Anderson, the fifth annual Chadwick A. Boseman Day Student Showcase brought hundreds together for an evening of music, dance, fashion, visual art, theatre and film—six years to the day after Boseman’s passing.

Before the performances, before the film screening, before the singing, dancing and jokes that would carry the celebration into the evening, Anthony Anderson had an announcement to make.

Soon after taking the stage on the Yard in front of Douglass Hall, the award-winning actor, comedian and producer invited Dean Raquel Monroe and Omiyẹmi Green, chair of Howard University’s Department of Theatre Arts, to join him.

Then he announced that he was giving $50,000 to the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, designated for use by the Department of Theatre Arts.

The announcement drew an enthusiastic response from a crowd already primed to celebrate.

 

It was Friday, August 28—the sixth anniversary of Chadwick A. Boseman’s death and Howard University’s fifth annual Chadwick A. Boseman Day. Across the Yard, students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of the College gathered for the culminating Student Showcase, many dressed in white in honor of Boseman.

And from his first moments at the microphone, Anderson made clear that the evening would look backward only long enough to consider what comes next.

“Tonight, we celebrate the legacy of a Howard legend,” Anderson told the crowd, “but more importantly, we celebrate the artists, dreamers, leaders, and creators who are carrying that legacy forward.” 

That distinction became the animating idea of the evening.

This year’s Chadwick A. Boseman Day theme, “A New Dawn of Purpose,” invited the Howard community to consider legacy not as a monument to the past, but as an obligation in the present.

“What am I here to do?” Anderson asked from the stage. “What am I called to create? And what will I leave behind?” 

For the next two hours, Howard students supplied their own answers.

A Showcase of Howard Artistry

The evening opened in song, with the CABCoFA Choir, comprising students affiliated with several College ensembles, before Fine Arts Student Council President Noelle Desire Best welcomed the crowd and introduced Anderson as the evening’s host.

 

 

From there, the program moved briskly among disciplines.

Models Inc. brought fashion and movement to the stage. During a visual arts spotlight, student artists introduced their work and the ideas behind it.

“Howard artists don’t just create, they tell stories,” Anderson said as he introduced the segment. 

The sentiment could have served as a thesis for the entire showcase.

The Blackout Arts Collective followed, along with appearances from Fine Arts and Greek organizations including D.I.V.A. Inc., Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity and Alpha Theta Sigma Fine Arts Fraternity, Incorporated. Anderson framed their contributions within a larger tradition.

“Art has always been a vehicle for expression, resistance, joy, and community,” he said. 

 

But if Anderson’s script supplied the evening with its sense of purpose, Anderson himself supplied plenty of spontaneity.

He frequently departed from the page, bantering with performers and the audience and turning transitions into miniature comedy routines. At one point, he unexpectedly launched into “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from the musical Dreamgirls, earning applause from the crowd.

At another, Anderson transformed himself into a runway model, pulling his shirt off one shoulder and strutting for the audience, which erupted in laughter.

The unscripted moments gave the showcase the looseness of a family gathering—one hosted, in this case, by a veteran comedian who seemed perfectly comfortable allowing the program to breathe.

The students remained the center of it.

The Howard Players took the stage to announce their upcoming season. Three senior Musical Theatre majors performed together after Anderson noted that the students had spent part of the summer studying at NYU’s New Studio on Broadway program.

“There is something special about watching Howard artists grow and step into their purpose,” he told the audience. 

That idea—of artists growing into their purpose—surfaced again and again.

The Fine Arts Student Council presented the top three performers from Next Big Star, a competition that gives Howard freshmen an opportunity to introduce their talents to the campus community. Jasmine Grant Campbell was recognized as second runner-up, followed by Kaylin Norwood, before Jordan Stoney was announced as the Next Big Star winner. 

Former Fine Arts Student Council President AJ Evans, a member of Howard University’s Afro Blue Jazz Ensemble, also took the stage, and representatives of the Howard University Student Association brought greetings.

Then the lights turned toward another form of storytelling.

“Howard has always been a place where stories are born,” Anderson said. “Stories that challenge us. Stories that reflect us. Stories that remind us of who we are.” 

With that, he introduced Samiyyah El-Amin-Turner and a screening of her Howard Thesis Showcase Award-winning short film, Mama Says: Black Tales. 

Music. Fashion. Visual art. Dance. Theatre. Film.

Taken together, the evening offered something more revealing than a traditional tribute could have: a portrait of the institution Boseman came from and the young artists who are now inheriting its possibilities.

 

Legacy as a Living Thing

Boseman arrived at Howard as a student artist himself, studying directing before beginning a career that would eventually make him one of the most recognizable actors of his generation.

But on August 28, his legacy was not confined to photographs, speeches or memories.

It could be heard in a student singing.

Seen in a filmmaker’s images.

Felt in the movement of dancers and models crossing the stage.

Found in young artists testing their voices before a crowd on the same campus where Boseman once tested his own.

And, at the beginning of the night, it took the concrete form of a $50,000 investment in the Department of Theatre Arts, announced by an artist using his own platform to invest in those coming behind him.

That made Anderson’s opening questions feel increasingly consequential as the evening unfolded:

What am I here to do? What am I called to create? And what will I leave behind?

By the end of the formal program, members of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts Student Council had joined Anderson onstage as Best recognized the many people and organizations responsible for the three-day celebration, including College leadership, student organizers and campus partners. 

 

Then the formalities gave way to music.

The DJ returned. Students danced. And an evening held on the anniversary of a profound loss ended not in silence, but in celebration.

On the Yard, beneath an August evening sky, a crowd dressed largely in white gathered around the work of young artists still becoming who they will be.

Six years after Chadwick A. Boseman left the world, Howard did more than remember him.

It showed what his legacy is still making possible.