Author: luma

On April 6, 1974, at 5:30 a.m., WDKX signed on the air as a Black-owned commercial radio station in Rochester. That moment was not just about music. It was about narrative power. Black ownership in media means editorial control. It means the ability to amplify community concerns without filtering them through external priorities. It means […]

In 1970, Jamaican-born choreographer Garth Fagan founded his dance company in Rochester. What began locally grew into an internationally respected institution known for blending modern dance, ballet technique, and Afro-Caribbean movement. Fagan later gained global recognition as the choreographer of Broadway’s The Lion King, but his artistic laboratory was here. Rochester was not a stepping […]

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, federal urban renewal programs reshaped Rochester’s landscape. Entire sections of the Clarissa Street neighborhood were demolished. Urban renewal was often marketed as modernization. In practice, it frequently meant displacement. Black families who had built homes and businesses over generations were uprooted. Cultural hubs disappeared. Economic networks fractured. The […]

Shep’s Paradise and the Survival of Clarissa Street (1967) In 1967, Ruther “Shep” Sheppard purchased a bar at 293 Clarissa Street. That space became Shep’s Paradise, one of the last standing anchors of what had once been a thriving Black business and entertainment corridor. Clarissa Street was not just nightlife. It was infrastructure. Barbershops. Beauty […]