Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Four great migrations defined the history of black people in America: the Middle Passage, the violent removal of Africans to the east coast of North America; the relocation of one million slaves to the interior of the antebellum South; the movement of more than six million blacks to the industrial cities of the north and west a century later; and since the late 1960s, the arrival of black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. Ira Berlin's account of these passages evokes both the terrible price and the moving triumphs of a people forcibly and then willingly migrating to America.

Ira Berlin is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Maryland. His many books include Slaves Without Masters, Generation of Captivity, and Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

Recorded On: Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Recorded On: Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The Indignant Generation is the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. Writers such as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin rose to prominence during this period, but little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works.

Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the great Depression, the growth of American communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples.

Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, The Indignant Generation paints a vivid portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth century.

Lawrence P. Jackson is professor of English and African American studies at Emory University. He is the author of Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius and a forthcoming biography of Chester Himes. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and holds graduate degrees from Ohio State University and Stanford University.

Recorded On: Tuesday, January 25, 2011

No other question is more important to city-loving parents than where to send their child to school. For years, the prevailing wisdom was that you had to leave the city to get a good education for your children.

Jacqueline Edelberg and a group of like-minded moms in the East Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago refused to accept that wisdom. Instead, they worked in partnership with the principal of their local public school to create community partnerships, facility improvements, curriculum enhancements, and marketing activities that turned their neighborhood public school into an asset that anchored families in the community.

Jacqueline will share her experiences in Chicago and reflections on the progress Baltimore is making to ensure that all children have a great school to walk to.

Recorded On: Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The infamous Reverend Curtis Black's sordid past is no secret. But when his long-time mistress and mother of his illegitimate two-year-old daughter dies, Black and his wife Charlotte have no choice but to raise the child together. Charlotte resents Curtina and takes her emotions out on the young girl. When confronted about her behavior, Charlotte starts spending time away from home, getting closer to her ex-boyfriend. Fans of faith-based series will love the sinful shenanigans that ensue.

Kimberla Lawson Roby has published 14 novels, including Be Careful What You Pray For, A Deep Dark Secret, and The Best of Everything. Love, Honor, and Betray is the seventh in the Reverend Curtis Black series.

www.kimroby.com/bookshelf.php

Recorded On: Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Recorded On: Saturday, January 15, 2011

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson chronicles the decades-long migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West through the stories of three individuals and their families. Over a decade in the writing and research, and drawing on archival materials and more than 1,200 interviews, Wilkerson 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 and look for a better life in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for her feature writing in The New York Times, making her the first African American woman to receive a journalism Pulitzer. She has also won a George S. Polk Award, a Guggenheim Fellowhip, and a Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Black Journalists. She is Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University.

Recorded On: Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Shiori was born in Tokyo, Japan, six years after the end of World War II. She describes herself as hapa, half-American, half-Japanese. In her first collection of poetry, she weaves memoir and historical record into a lyrical and moving portrait of post-war immigration to the United States.

Shiori's work has appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Frogpond, Hawai'i Review, and other publications. Her awards include the Washington Square Review, James Still and Thomas Merton poetry prizes. A contributing editor for the Baltimore Review, she teaches creative writing and journalism at Coppin State University.

Recorded On: Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Glass House of Dreams celebrates Baltimore's landmark Victorian glass palace, the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in historic Druid Hill Park. An extensive collection of original lithographic postcards illustrate the history of this 1888 botanical conservatory, the second oldest glass house in America. Photographs by David Simpson capture the elegance of this architectural gem and the beauty of its individual plants and flowers.

Margaret "Peggy" Stansbury is founder of the non-profit Baltimore Conservatory Association that worked with the City to bring this Victorian jewel back to life. The original Palm House featuring 175 glass windows, many of them curved, is once again packed with exotic flora from around the world.

Recorded On: Sunday, December 12, 2010

This historic novel is a compelling story about the complex and courageous lives of three young African American women who leave behind the racism and oppression of the South for a new life in Harlem. They work long hours at dangerous jobs in war plants and encounter war time espionage, death and betrayal.

Frances Beckles, editor, journalist, and retired college professor, grew up in Harlem. Hop the A Train is based on her family's vivid accounts of how their lives were indelibly changed by the events of World War II. Beckles is the author of Twenty Black Women: Profiles of African American Maryland Women.

Recorded On: Tuesday, December 7, 2010