Welcome to The African Roots Library!

Our Library Director Odell Winfield

Telling Our Story

OUR VISION:
is one that acknowledges the multifaceted nature of acquiring and celebrating knowledge. It hopes to honor and encourage the transmission of history through oral history, spoken word, paintings, cultural artifacts and other forms of artistic expression. It is important that the diverse cultural roots represented in the community are understood and spread through sharing and growing from one another.

THE SADIE PETERSON DELANEY AFRICAN ROOTS LIBRARY

is located in Poughkeepsie, New York. This grassroots initiative at The Family Partnership Center was created to focus on the African contribution to history and culture. Starting with an informative collection of books, videos, and programming for all kids, it has built pride among African-American children. The Library plans to include an adult research center.

Mission Statement:

to collaborate with other community organizations to establish a library/center that will promote literacy, through the teaching and learning about the African Experience, including the History and Culture, and by the dynamic exchange of information, ideas and creativity.



The creation of the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library has been initiated by the efforts of the Library Action Committee consisting of representatives of various organizations who feel that the establishment of such a space will benefit the members of the community that they serve. Need more Information? Have a Question?

Please Contact Us:

Write to

The Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library

29 North Hamilton Street

Suite 218

Poughkeepsie, New York 12601

or Email us:
africanrootslibrary@gmail.com

Above: The Family Partnership Center where the African Roots Library is housed.

Connecting on a personal level is an important part of sharing ideas. On this page we'll present some details about our organization and the people behind it.



The Library Staff


Odell Winfield Cofounder of The Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library

Odell Winfield, cofounder of the Library was born and raised in Hempstead, Long Island. It was there that Odell played sports and was involved in community groups as a youth. Although there were good experiences for young Odell, it was in Hempstead that he got into trouble and landed in Comstock State Prison. During his time in prison, Odell was fortunate to meet and befriend a Native American Story Teller, who worked as the English teacher in prison. His name is Joe Bruchac. This man and his style of communicating history made an impression on Odell. Later, Odell joined The Peoples Party while in prison. It was a multiracial group of men who had been involved in organizations like The Black Panther Party and The Weather Underground. The Peoples Party worked collectively in the prison system, to help inmates.

During Odell's incarceration, he was voted to become Education Minister for The Peoples Party. Odell's great Organizing skills strengthened during this time. Upon release from prison, Odell enrolled in Skidmore College and later graduated from Siena College. He took with him 2 proposals, ICAP the inmate college advisory program and Phase Out/Reentry Transitional Housing Program. Both of these programs served inmates who were transitioning from prison campus to college campus. After his college career Odell then began work with Regents College out of Albany, New York. He became the Coordinator of Community Outreach for the Nontraditional Education Program, helping Adult educationally disadvantaged workers obtain their A.A or B.A degrees.

Odell also worked as the Director of the Malcolm X Study Network which cosponsored Conferences on Critical Black Issues. These tremendously important conferences titled "Freedom has never been Free", "The Survival of the African American Family", "Education: Its Role in the Liberation of the African American Community" and "African Amercian Progress:...Myth or Reality?" were developed to help participants develop an understanding of the major national and local issues impacting on African Americans. They also served to encourage participants to become involved in the educational, economic and political arenas of society, especially to identify strategies that will assist African Americans in becoming full partners in society.

These conferences also helped to energize participants to develop community based programs and develop an awareness of the strategies needed to expedite full participation on the part of all African Americans in a highly technological, capitalistic society.

He developed The Third World Story Hour which was produced and aired by the Local Cable Television company. This series included 12, fortyfive minute storytelling programs based on Third World Cultures. The entire technical aspect of the production was handled by disadvantaged minority students from selected institutions in the Albany New York area.

Odell's first bookstore was quite sucessful and became the MidHudson Valley MultiCultural Educational Resources Bookstore. It was sometime later that Odell was contacted by his good friend, Lateef Islam who was Director of The Family Partnership Center. Although Lateef knew Odell from Comstock, he was anxious to talk with him after seeing Odells work on The African Film Festival in Poughkeepsie.

Lateef contacted Odell and asked him if he would consider developing some of the unused space in the Family Partnership building and Odell agreed. The result is the Library.

Recently we asked Odell why Poughkeepsie needs the African Roots Library and Center and his answer was profound. In addition to reasoning that the people of color need to see their identity and the contribution they have made to the world, it is also important that Africans see themselves in the books they read. Part of the problem is that ones will read the books, but cannot see that image of themselves in the books they read. Odell wants to change that.

Brian Riddell

Born and bred in Brooklyn, New York. Attended St. Vincent Ferrer and Nazareth High, where he participated in the first Catholic High School Student Strike to protest the Murder of American College Students at Jackson and Kent State Universities!

Brian went on to receive a B.A. degree in Social Science, with a concentration in food and nutrition from Brooklyn College. Soon after Graduation, Brian moved to King William County, Virginia and worked in rural community development projects for the Charles City-New Kent Community Action Agency, including Head Start, alternative education programs and community water projects bringing clean drinking water and sanitary facilities into peoples' homes for the first time in 1980!! Together with his wife Michele, he became involved with a Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and Peace and Antimilitary Movement.

When Brian's Father became ill, he moved back to New York State to help care for him. He decided to remain in New York, to be closer to family. Later he purchased an abandoned creamery building in New Paltz, and began rehabilitation of the property. He continued to work as a part time News Reporter, abstract basket maker and energy auditor while finishing the first phase of the re-construction project.

Brian took a job as caseworker at Dutchess Outreach, Inc. in 1989, became Associate Director in 1990, and Executive Director five years later. He has served on the Board of the Hunger Action Network of New York State, one of the remaining poor peoples' lobby in Albany, from that time and up until the present.


Social activist lives on in work
Community urged to take up Islam's causes
By Michael Valkys
Poughkeepsie Journal

Walk into the Family Partnership Center in the City of Poughkeepsie and he's there to greet you.

A tall, robust, smiling black man with a cane. Head shaved, earings dangling, almost jaunty — he seems to invite visitors to join in the good work that's going on inside the North Hamilton Street social services center.

It's the late Lateef Islam, appropriately larger than life, memorialized in paint on a pillar of the community center he helped create.

Dozens of community leaders, colleagues and friends came out Friday morning for a symposium on Islam, the social activist who died last year.

Titled "Lateef Islam and His Community," the program was more revival of purpose than academic review of Islam's life and legacy, a call to arms for people to continue his work for social and economic justice.

A theme of the day: The body is gone. His soul remains.

Islam envisioned library

Odell Winfield worked with Islam to establish the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library at the partnership, where Friday's event was held. Winfield recalled Islam dreamed of creating the library, even when things looked bleak.

"No books," Winfield said. "We only had an idea."

The library is up and running, but remains a work in progress.

"We will continue to build this library," said Winfield, the library's director. "We will continue to develop Lateef's dreams."

Catharine Street Community Center Executive Director Shirley Adams said she spoke with Islam a few weeks before his death. He ached to return to his work for those in need.

"He said 'We have things to do!' " Adams recalled. "That was Lateef."

Brian Riddell, head of Dutchess Outreach, which helps people in need of clothes and food, knew Islam for nearly two decades.

Riddell said Islam had an uncanny ability to accomplish tasks that would daunt others.

"Hope, energy and the willingness to go forward on a shoestring," is how Riddell described Islam. "You start out small and build it to something great, and hopefully, meaningful."

Family Partnership President Joseph D'Ambrosio, then new to the post, brought Islam back to the center last year after Islam had left the organization he helped create.

"He started this dream," D'Ambrosio said of the center. "We're all here in some way because of him. We have to make this work."

Emilie Dyson, whose family runs the Millbrook-based Dyson Foundation, spent years working with Islam.

"He was a catalyst," Dyson said. "He was a connector."

Dyson told those gathered Friday that remains true — even months after his death.

"His soul is in this room," Dyson said.

Islam died in the fall at age 58 following health problems that had left him bedridden. He was the Family Partnership's first executive director, coming to Poughkeepsie after serving prison time. Islam turned his life around behind bars, taking college courses through a program for inmates run by Marist College.

He would emerge to become one of the area's most vocal and respected black leaders, working to improve relations between the races during tense times.

Winfield said others must take the baton Islam carried.

For Islam, "it wasn't about color. It wasn't about money. It was about who needed help," Winfield said. "We have to create more Lateefs."

Downstairs on the pillar of his true home, Lateef Islam smiled.

Michael Valkys can be reached at mvalkys@poughkeepsiejournal.com

Above: Lateef Islam's Memorial in the Partnership building

Above: Lateef Islam