Join us as we celebrate the heritage and culture of African Americans.
Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 and Negro History Week in 1926 to promote research and awareness of contributions by people of African descent. In 1976, fifty years after the first celebration, the Association’s celebration was expanded to become Black History Month. Woodson originally choose the week in February which included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, reflecting his belief that the history of African Americans was American history.
The Association, now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, honors Woodson with this year’s theme, “ Black Women in American Culture and History.” For more information, go to the Association’s website, www.asalh.org.
January 19 — May 25, 2013
The African American Library at the Gregory School
Drawn from African art and culture, from the injustices of a segregated United States, from the stoic women of his own family and from the heroism of everyday survival, Harvey Johnson's work depicts the human condition, showing the spirit of man struggling above the mundane.
Saturday, February 23 | 2 PM
Julia Ideson Building | Auditorium
550 McKinney St., 77002 | 832-393-1662
Presented in partnership with the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC), join us as Houston Public Library hosts the annual HMAAC Spring Literary Lecture, featuring Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson discusses The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration.
About the Book: In the tradition of works by Taylor Branch and J. Anthony Lukas, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson chronicles a watershed event in American history: the decades-long migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West, from World War I through the 1970s—through the stories of three individuals and their families. Over a decade in the writing and research, and drawing on archival materials and over 1,200 interviews, The Warmth of Other Suns traces the lives of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Robert Foster, from their difficult beginnings in the South, to their critical decisions to leave behind all they know and look for a better life in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.
Photo by Joe HensonAbout the Author: Isabel Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. Wilkerson also won a George Polk Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for her research into the Great Migration, and she was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. She has lectured on narrative writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and as the James M. Cox Jr. Professor at Emory University. She is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University. During the Great Migration, her parents journeyed from Georgia and southern Virginia to Washington, D.C., where she was born and reared. The Warmth of Other Suns is her first book.
