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Jonathan Adewumi, who made everyone feel at home, dies at 57 |
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A photo provided via the Adewumi family shows Jonathan Adewumi. From creating the fashion company Nigerian Fabrics and Fashions that dressed celebrities like Stevie Wonder in clothing from Nigeria to creating a Nigerian film festival and a Brooklyn restaurant that became a gathering place for the diaspora, Adewumi was dedicated to bridging the cultural gap between Africans and black Americans. Adewumi died on April 17, 2020, at Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey. The cause was complications of the novel coronavirus, his brother said. He was 57. Via Adewumi family via The New York Times.
by Kim Severson
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NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Jonathan Adewumi grew up in New York, but he was African through and through.
From creating a fashion company that dressed celebrities like Stevie Wonder in clothing from Nigeria to creating a Nigerian film festival and a Brooklyn restaurant that became a gathering place for the diaspora, Adewumi was dedicated to bridging the cultural gap between Africans and black Americans.
He was often the first point of contact to many people who never had an African friend and for Africans who didnt understand the struggles of black Americans, said Adebayo Adewumi, a younger brother.
Jonathan Adewumi died April 17 at Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey. The cause was complications of the novel coronavirus, his brother said. He was 57.
Adewumi was born in London on Sept. 12, 1962, to Jacob and Grace (Ulowandi Oriaku) Adewumi, physicians from Nigeria who had traveled to England to further their medical education.
When Adewumi was still a young boy, the family moved back to Nigeria to open a maternity hospital in their hometown, Ile Oluji, about a five-hour drive from Lagos. They moved to the Bronx when Adewumi was 10.
He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and went on to receive a degree in computer science from Utica College in 1986. His favorite class was African history. He liked playing handball and became president of the black student union and a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. (He would later help start a chapter in Nigeria.)
Nigerian Fabrics and Fashions started almost as an accident. Adewumis parents had moved back to Nigeria and would send the children cloth and clothing. People began asking about the colorful garments he and his sister wore. Adewumi, a natural marketer and a gregarious businessman, saw a niche.
Although African clothing had become popular in the U.S. as part of political movements in the 1960s, Adewumis company was soon swept up in an 1980s fashion trend that embraced the African aesthetic. He and two of his four siblings began presenting their clothes for black student union groups on college campuses and at bridal shows, and garnered national exposure as part of a Miss Black America Pageant in 1989. Soon, Stevie Wonder became a customer and sent his friend Aretha Franklin to buy their clothing. Actor Wesley Snipes was also a fan.
After 9/11, when anti-Muslim sentiment rose along with an appetite for American-made products, business dropped. After 20 years, the company closed.
Adewumi headed back to Nigeria for a few years. When he returned, he joined his brother at Amarachi, a Nigerian restaurant in downtown Brooklyn that served American-style chicken wings and steak and West African jollof with oxtails, all served with an Afrobeat soundtrack. With his outsize personality, he quickly turned it into a cultural center that attracted immigrants and a popular spot for community events.
Jonathan had a unique way of making everyone feel at home, like they belong, Ugo Nwaokoro, a former deputy mayor of Newark, New Jersey, said.
Adewumi, who was divorced, is survived by a son, Jonathan Adewumi Jr. of Union, New Jersey, and, in addition to Adebayo Adewumi, another brother, Samuel Adewumi, with whom he lived in Brooklyn; and two sisters, Joyce Adewumi of Harlem and Elizabeth Body-Lawson of White Plains, New York. Another brother, Emmanuel Adewumi, died in 2000.
© 2020 The New York Times Company
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