Sylvia Wong Lewis - Profile and Journalist Details

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Biography

Sylvia Wong Lewis is a journalist, filmmaker, and community volunteer. She owns and manages several media platforms, including Narrative Network, Auntyland.com, and 1619Brooklyn.com. Sylvia launched Auntyland Film Festival (AFF) while living in quarantine during the Covid19 pandemic. "I truly believe that lifting and sharing stories via film, media, and real dialogue helps us to connect, understand, and love each other," Lewis said. An award-winning journalist and former Holy Names University, journalism professor Sylvia's work have appeared on BBC Radio, Boston Globe, Oakland Tribune, and numerous digital platforms. Her story about her Uncle Warren's Mississippi lynching in 'Strange Fruit' won two prestigious awards - BBC Radio Academy Award in London and the Prix Europa Award in Berlin. Sylvia was founder, publisher & editor of Caribbean American News, a free community newspaper (pre-internet). She was recognized as NYC's only woman publisher and awarded the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce' Woman of the Year Award (1990's). A home-trained chef, gardener, and noted food writer, Sylvia published "Cooking Your Way-The MTA Employee Cookbook" that raised funds for 9/11 memorials and featured over 800 recipes from New York's most diverse workforce. Sylvia is passionate about genealogy. Her award-winning film 'From Shanghai to Harlem,' https://vimeo.com/137646596 portrayed her family's (im)migration and was featured in the New York Historical Society's Library & Museum's exhibit 'Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion.' Raised in a Civil Rights activist family, Sylvia grew up during racial segregation and participated in many protests, boycotts with her mother in Brooklyn and Harlem. She distributed campaign flyers for Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, a neighbor and family friend. She recalls living with several identity labels - Colored, Mixed Racial, Dougla, Mulatto, Creole, Negro, Black, African American, Minority, People of Color (POC), Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), People of the Global Majority (PGM). Sylvia's volunteerism began early at five as a letter writer, newspaper reader, and arts & crafts helper to elderly Black residents at Weeksville's Brooklyn's Home for Aged Colored People. Her mother was on the Board of Trustees. Growing up in a musical family, Sylvia trained in theater, piano, viola, and modern jazz dance. She performed in musical and fashion productions that were fundraisers for the elder home, a Bedford Stuyvesant community center, and other community programs. Sylvia currently (2020) serves on the Brooklyn Public Library's (BPL)transition Collections Committee as part of the merger of the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS), where she was a Board of Trustees. She served in Harlem on an Advisory Board of City College Center for the Arts, Aaron Davis Hall (CUNY). She is Co-Leader, co-founder at Coming to the Table-NYC chapter, whose mission is to provide leadership and resources regarding racism and the harms of US and UK's slavery. An Amistad Commissioner, Sylvia was appointed in 2012 by NYS Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Other volunteerism: Friends of Bogardus Plaza, a re-designed traffic triangle in Tribeca; Friends of the Hopper-Gibbon House at 339 West 29th street, part of the Lamartine Place Historic District-the last standing Under Ground Railroad building in New York City. Sylvia acknowledges that she lives and works on unceded land that belonged to the Lenape Indigenous people. She believes the Lower Manhattan area is the quintessential tale of two cities - rich and poor, every nationality and ethnic group, struggling and privileged. She sees many ironies from living on an old Dutch settlement that was taken from the Lenape people that became the 'land of the Blacks' because the formerly enslaved Blacks earned their freedom and land grants from the Dutch government. But, as a Harlem native and Tribeca resident, she sees more irony of now living in the original Harlem—NYC's authentic Black community! Sylvia is a native New Yorker. Harlem-born, Brooklyn raised, Sylvia, grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on President Street, a block known as Doctor's Row and Congressman's Way. Her claim to fame is surviving a Brooklyn Catholic school education! She graduated from St. Matthews elementary school; George W. Wingate High School with honors; and Smith College. Sylvia is married to Byron E. Lewis Sr, Chairman Emeritus, UniWorld Group, Inc. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylviawonglewis/

Content

Total articles 6

• How Martin Luther King Jr. Is Being Taught in New Ways

  By Sylvia Wong Lewis · paper.li

  Jan. 13, 2023

As seen in

Company Info

Freelance