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Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby, 2003

Nine of us met on Saturday March 16 th to discuss Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby, published in 2003.    Although born 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, Ella Baker was predominantly reared in Littleton, North Carolina. Her Civil Rights and Human Rights career spanned over five decades, some of her work took place in New York and some took place in the South.    Some of the groups she worked with are   YNC L Young Negroes’ Cooperative League    WEP Worker s’ Education Project    NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People    SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference    M FDP Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party    SCEF Southern Christian Education Fund    SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee     She established her place in these movements as a behind the scenes organizer and never sought leadership positions. Her philosophy abou...

New People by Danzy Senna

                                                                             The Urban Life Expe rience Book Discussion Series continued on June 3 rd , with a discussion of New People by Danzy Senna. This 2017 novel features a young woman, Maria, who is engaged to Khalil, but becomes increasingly obsessed by a poet i n their community who is unambiguously Black. Maria and Khalil are both mixed-raced people and are being featured in a doc umentary about multi-raced Black people who are exceptionally light complexioned and consider themselves upwardly mobile. Maria was adopted by a Black woman named Gloria who didn’t realize that her baby was never going to appear Black. Maria is writing her dissertation on the musicality of the Jim Jones cult and Khalil is starting a dot-com company wit...

Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South

  Book Discussion of Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly, with a foreword by Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).                        Chasing Me to My Grave won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Biography.   Winfred Rembert was an artist who painted scenes from his life in Cuthbert Georgia onto leather. His story details the hardship of his life in Cuthbert, his being abandoned by his mother, his being sentenced to a chain gang, and his near lynching. The shining light in his life was his marriage to Patsy, who he proposed to while still a prisoner. Winfred and Patsy moved to New Haven, CT, where encouraged by Patsy, Winfred began to seriously work on his art. Winfred Rembert passed away in 2021.   The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued Saturday Dec. 3 rd at the Wil...