Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

During the Civil Rights Movement, African American women did not stand on ceremony; they simply did the work that needed to be done. Yet despite their significant contributions at all levels of the movement, they remain mostly invisible to the larger public. In Lighting the Fires of Freedom, Janet Dewart Bell shines a light on women's all-too-often overlooked achievements in the movement. Through wide-ranging conversations with nine women, several now in their nineties, with decades of untold stories, we hear what ignited and fueled their activism.

Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, Lighting the Fires of Freedom offers deeply personal and intimate accounts of extraordinary struggles for justice that resulted in profound social change.

Janet Dewart Bell is a social justice activist with a doctorate in leadership and change from Antioch University. She founded the Derrick Bell Lecture on Race in American Society series at the New York University School of Law. An award-winning television and radio producer, she lives in New York City.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Lauren Haldeman is the author of Instead of Dying (winner of the 2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry, Center for Literary Publishing, 2017), Calenday (Rescue Press, 2014), and the artist book The Eccentricity is Zero (Digraph Press, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Colorado Review, Fence, The Iowa Review, and The Rumpus. A comic-book artist and poet, she has taught in the U.S. as well as internationally. She has been a recipient of the 2015 Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, the Colorado Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You can find her online at http://laurenhaldeman.com.

Kiki Petrosino is the author of three books of poetry: Witch Wife (2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013), and Fort Red Border (2009), all from Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, The Best American Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, Fence, Gulf Coast, Jubilat, Tin House, and online at Ploughshares. She is founder and co-editor of Transom, an independent online poetry journal. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Louisville, where she directs the Creative Writing Program. She also teaches part-time in the brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Her awards include a residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat and research fellowships from the University of Louisville's Commonwealth Center for the Humanities and Society and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

Read "Nome, a Sonnet," by Lauren Haldeman.
Read "A Guide to the Louisa County Free Negro & Slave Records, 1770–1865," by Kiki Petrosino.

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 2, 2018

In her new book, The Woman's Hour, Elaine Weiss tells the story of the last six weeks in the fight for women's suffrage, when it all came down to one state, and in the end one man's vote.

By August 1920, 35 states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, 12 had rejected it or refused to vote, and one last state hung in the balance -- Tennessee. The suffragettes descended on Nashville to duke it out with their opposing forces -- politicians with careers at stake, liquor companies, railroad magnates, racists who didn't want to see black women win the vote, and the "Antis," women who vehemently opposed their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage would bring about the moral collapse of the nation.

The Woman's Hour is a political thriller that follows three remarkable women as they lead their respective forces into the battle for -- and against -- suffrage. They all converge one hot summer for a vicious face-off replete with dirty tricks and cutting betrayals, sexist rancor, bigotry, booze, and the Bible.

Elaine Weiss is an award-winning journalist and writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper's, The New York Times, and The Christian Science Monitor. A MacDowell Colony Fellow and Pushcart Prize Editor's Choice honoree, she is the author of Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army in the Great War.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, April 3, 2018

In her new book, History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times, Dr. Mary Frances Berry examines instances of resistance during the times of various presidential administrations.

Despair and mourning after the election of a hostile president are part of the push-pull of American politics. But resistance to presidential administrations has historically led to positive change and the defeat of outrageous proposals, even in perilous times. And though conservative presidents require massive public protest to enact policy decisions, the same can be true of progressive ones. For instance, Barack Obama and the Indigenous protests against the Dakota pipeline is one modern example of resistance built on earlier actions. Resistance sometimes fails, but it has usually been successful, even if it does not achieve all of a movement's goals.

Dr. Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the former chairwoman of the US Commission on Civil Rights, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Legal History, the author of 12 books, and the recipient of 35 honorary degrees.

The Brown Lecture Series is supported by the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Family Foundation.

Recorded On: Thursday, March 15, 2018

In the 1960s and '70s, a diverse range of storefronts -- including head shops, African American bookstores, feminist businesses, and organic grocers -- brought the work of the New Left, Black Power, feminism, environmentalism and other movements into the marketplace. Through shared ownership, limited growth, and democratic workplaces, these activist entrepreneurs offered alternatives to conventional profit-driven corporate business models. By the middle of the 1970s,  thousands of these enterprises operated across the United States. But only a handful survive today. Some, such as Whole Foods Market, have abandoned their quest for collective political change in favor of maximizing profits.

In From Head Shops to Whole Foods, Joshua Davis portrays the struggles, successes, and sacrifices of these unlikely entrepreneurs. The book challenges the widespread but mistaken idea that activism and political dissent are inherently antithetical to participation in the marketplace. Davis uncovers the historical roots of contemporary interest in ethical consumption, social enterprise, buying local, and mission-driven business.

Joshua Clark Davis is assistant professor of history at the University of Baltimore.

Marc Steiner, podcast host, radio host, and activist, introduces the event.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, March 13, 2018

A 2018 Oprah's Book Club Selection!

Novelist Tayari Jones reads and discusses her new book, An American Marriage.

An American Marriage is a stirring love story and an insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career.

But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend and best man at their wedding. As Roy's time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center.

Tayari Jones is the author of three previous novels: Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling and Silver Sparrow. A winner of numerous literary awards, she is an associate professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University. She is spending the 2017-18 academic year as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada Las Vegas. 

Presented in partnership with CityLit Project.

Recorded On: Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Ira's Shakespeare Dream is a book for children about Ira Aldridge, the celebrated African American Shakespearean actor. Written by Glenda Armand, the book is illustrated by the award-winning artist Floyd Cooper.

Listen to Glenda Armand and Floyd Cooper at this opening reception for the special exhibit of Cooper's illustrations from Ira's Shakespeare Dream. Floyd Cooper talks about his artistic process.

Arts at the Pratt is supported by the William G. Baker Memorial Fund, creator of the Baker Artist Portfolios, www.BakerArtist.org.

Recorded On: Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The other great Renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth in what may seem an unlikely place – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – from the 1920s through the 1950s. Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson’s famed plays, but this community once had an impact that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely read black newspaper in the country, fielded two of the greatest baseball teams of the Negro Leagues, and introduced Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pittsburgh was the childhood home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner.

Mark Whitaker's Smoketown is a captivating portrait of this unsung commuity and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal. 

The former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, Mark Whitaker was previously the Washington bureau chief for NBC News and a reporter and editor at Newsweek, where he rose to become the first African-American leader of a national newsweekly. He is the author of the memoir, My Long Trip Home.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, February 6, 2018

David Cay Johnston first met Donald Trump in 1988 and has tracked him ever since. He wrote about Trump in two books: Temples of Chance and The Making of Donald Trump. He was also an uncredited source of documents and insight for major campaign reports by the Washington Post, New York Times, and network television. When Trump announced his campaign in June 2015, Johnston was the first national journalist to write about a potential Trump presidency.

In It's Even Worse Than You Think, Johnston examines the first one hundred days of Donald Trump's presidency, including a close look at what the mainstream press stopped covering years ago: the workings of the federal government agencies and how that touches the lives of all Americans. He also shows how our lives are affected by many actions that the new administration quietly approves without drawing the attention of the Washington press corps.

David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and bestselling author of The Making of Donald Trump. Founder and editor of DCReport.org, he has been a frequent guest on MSNBC, CNN, the BBC, ABC World News Tonight, Democracy Now and NPR’s Morning Edition, among other shows.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, January 23, 2018