How Bright the Path Grows: Marcia Chatelain in conversation with Sherie M.
About this Event
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is encouraged. This event takes place at the Auburn Avenue Research Library, 101 Auburn Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30303. Doors open at 6pm. Event begins promptly at 6:30pm.
Charis and the Auburn Avenue Research Library welcome Marcia Chatelain in conversation with Sherie M. Randolph for a celebration of .From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes the little-known 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 Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of and , which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History, the James Beard Foundation Book Award for Writing, the Hagley Prize for Business History, and the Lawrence W. 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.
About the conversation partner
Sherie M. Randolph is an associate professor of history at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Black Feminist Think Tank. A former associate director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College, she is also co-curator of the National Women’s History Museum’s inaugural exhibition, We Who Believe in Freedom: Black Feminist DC. Randolph is the author of the award-winning biography and the forthcoming Unmother: Black Feminist Freedom from the Limits of Motherhood (Yale University Press). She is also co-editor of the forthcoming edited collection More Words, More Fire: African American Feminist Thought, 1991–2026 (The New Press).
About the Venue / Accessibility
- Masks are encouraged but not required.
- The entire building is wheelchair accessible with ramps, including the front and back entrances. Both entrances have powered doors. There are wheelchair accessible bathroom stalls. There are three dedicated wheelchair accessible parking spots.
- AARL has a parking lot accessible via Courtland street. There are 25 free parking passes available on a first-come, first-served basis. Parking is allowed in spaces marked Public Parking in the AARL parking lot. Please park and enter the library to get a free parking pass and place it on your dashboard before getting settled in the auditorium.
The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Charis Circle's mission is to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. Donate via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate.
Please contact us at [email protected] or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event.
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Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 0.00 to USD 40.68
