Popular culture has an Afro-Latinx problem. It was on full display earlier this year, when the hosts of the popular show, “The Breakfast Club,” wrestled against their limited imaginations of who and what it means to be of African heritage, in a conversation with the singer and reality TV star Amara La Negra. Naturally, the long historical baggage that comes with the identity marker of blackness has meant that in different times and different places individuals — Ana Livia Cordero, Celia Cruz, Machado de Assis and Sammy Sosa, for instance — have left us with different conceptions of the experience of being Afro-Latinx. Increased global migration of people and faster movement of media (and images) from all corners of the globe have provoked new conversations.

The Caribbean Cultural Center and African Diaspora Institute, on New York’s East 125th St has, since its founding in 1976, sought to “document and present the creative genius of African Diaspora cultures.”  Early on, in 1981, it hosted the first ever global convening of academics, spiritual leaders and practitioners of Yoruba sacred traditions at the Orisha Tradition World Conference in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. It repeated the event in Brazil in 1983 and New York City in 1986. Various eminent artists have come through its doors, including the above mentioned Amara’s mentor Celia Cruz, and the recently deceased South African trumpeter, Hugh Masekela. Today, it continues to use art exhibitions, educational programs, performances, and workshops and conferences, and a conjuncture of the aesthetics, politics and activism of current social movements to push “the boundaries on how we think of the global African Diaspora, past, present, and future.”

I spoke to Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, the founder and outgoing executive director for the CCCADI about the center, the community it serves, and if the work has changed giving the growing demographic of people of African descent, and the urgency of activism in the community today. Our conversation, lightly edited for clarity, is below.