Bartholomew Jones is a wearer of many hats. The co-founder of Memphis’s Cxffeeblack and Anti-Gentrification Cxffee Membership is a rapper, neighborhood organizer, movie maker, clothes and shoe designer, and multi-time Finalist for each the Sprudgie Awards and the Sprudge Design Awards. And to the resume he can now add Visitor Lecturer. Jones has joined the Vanderbilt College school and will probably be main a category on the intersection of espresso, hip-hop, and Afrofuturism.
Jones and Vanderbilt have had a symbiotic relationship for a couple of years now. In 2024, Vanderbilt helped enjoyable section two of Cxffee Black’s Barista Change Program that introduced African espresso professionals to America to hone their craft at Black-owned espresso outlets throughout the Southeast. In the meantime, Jones’s decolonizing efforts in espresso have been highlighted as a part of Vanderbilt’s Espresso Fairness Lab, a part of the Program in Tradition, Advocacy, and Management (CAL).
Beginning for the Spring 2026 semester, Jones joined Vanderbilt as an Entrepreneur in Residence for CAL. In that function, he will probably be giving visitor lectures, the subsequent one titled: God Don’t Make No Junk: Pattern The Root Of Espresso By way of Hip-Hop And Afrofuturism. The lecture description is as follows: “Black data methods should not misplaced — they’re recoverable, and essential for the innovation wanted to unlock the longer term the business is trying to find. The connection between the African diaspora and the African continent was by no means absolutely severed. It lives within the plant. It lives within the cup. It lives within the identify.”
Per the press launch, “Jones is believed to be the primary scholar-practitioner in the US to construct a university-level curriculum framing the $500 billion world espresso business via Black historical past, Afrofuturism, hip-hop pedagogy, and reparative financial design.”
Open to the general public, the lecture will happen Friday, March 27th from 1:25pm to 2:25pm at Vanderbilt’s School of Arts and Letters. It will likely be adopted by a reception and set up opening at 2:30pm for Final Espresso Of The Week With Cxffeeblack.
“The way forward for espresso isn’t being invented. It’s being remembered,” Jones states. “All the things the business is celebrating as innovation was already being practiced by Black and indigenous peoples lengthy earlier than specialty espresso existed.”
Jones will keep on as Entrepreneur in Residence a minimum of via the top of the semester, Could fifteenth. Jones and Cxffeeblack may also be in attendance at World of Espresso San Diego subsequent month, the place together with Awake Labs, they are going to be making a “main reveal.” Extra particulars on that to be launch right here on Sprudge.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Community and a workers author primarily based in Dallas. Learn extra Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
