How Bright The Path Grows Author Event
About this Event
We are excited to host Dr. Chatelain to celebrate her new book How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March of Washington in a rich conversation with Aya Waller-Bey. The event will take place at Source Booksellers. There will be a opportunity for questions and a book signing line. We are big fans of her book Franchise and happy to host her in Detroit.
How to Join:
There are free and book tickets at this link. We will have copies of book for purchase after its release date of September 29th. The books in the book ticket can be picked up at the event.
Everyone is welcome to celebrate with us, we think civil rights history buffs and fans of women's history in particular would enjoy this conversation and cherish the findings in the book.
About the book:
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes the untold story of the pioneering Black women artists and activists who were seen, but barely heard, at the 1963 March on Washington
There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons—and of course the day’s headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no “class photo” of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its main stage, or were honored during its Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom.
In How Bright the Path Grows, Marcia Chatelain weaves a gleaming group portrait of these singular women. Among this cohort were several household names: vaudeville icon Josephine Baker, civil rights activist Rosa Parks, gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, and Daisy Bates, champion of the Little Rock Nine. But many were relative unknowns, including Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day’s musical program; and Anna Hedgeman, the coordinator who pushed in the eleventh hour for a tribute to Black women’s work.
How Bright the Path Grows is a scintillating group biography, rendering the lives of thirteen Black women visionaries—some famous, others soon to be—in novelistic detail and like never seen before.
About the Author:
MARCIA CHATELAIN is a Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of South Side Girls (Duke University Press, 2015) and Franchise (Liveright, 2020), which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History, the James Beard Foundation Book Award, the Hagley Medal for Business History, and the Lawrence Levine Award from the Organization of American Historians. An active public speaker and educational consultant, Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
In conversation with:
Aya M. Waller-Bey is a sociologist, educator, and advocate working to create a more equitable and inclusive higher education system. Aya completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Michigan, where her research examined how race, identity, and trauma narratives in the college admissions process inform meaning-making and definitions of worth. Aya is a Gates Cambridge Scholar alumna and earned an M.Phil. in Education from the University of Cambridge. She also holds a B.A. in Sociology from Georgetown University, where she worked as an admissions officer.Aya’s work combines research and storytelling to explore the intersections of race, education, and equity. She has written for publications such as The Atlantic, Forbes, and The Detroit Free Press and has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Slate. Aya is a sought-after speaker and has given dozens of invited talks, keynotes, and presentations, including TEDxDetroit, SXSW EDU, the National Association for Fellowship Advisors, Detroit College Access Network, Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, and the Aspen Center for Physics.
“Marcia Chatelain has written an engaging and compelling saga about the women who were the torchbearers and sinews of the Civil Rights Movement. How Bright the Path Grows lets us see the complexities of these women’s lives, feel their pain, be emboldened by their strength, and marvel at their ability to cut through the thicket of racism and sexism. We can be empowered by their visions of freedom and justice. And as such, we can mourn what could have been.”—Carol Anderson, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies and New York Times bestselling author of White Rage
"Chatelain has done what I didn’t know was possible. She has rendered, with clarity and care, the lives of women who shaped the March on Washington but have been relegated to the margins of its memories. How Bright the Path Grows is more than a corrective. It is as much revelation as it is instruction. Chatelain teaches us how to tell fuller, truer stories. This is the model for recovering what we have been quick to forget."—Caleb Gayle, author of Black Moses
“[An] elegant corrective . . . Chatelain’s narration has a riveting, cinematic quality . . . Readers will be utterly engrossed.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 0.00 to USD 39.94
