Tag Archives: black history

A Long Time Coming: The Role Of Race In American History

Ray Anthony Shepard has put together an award-winning book for young readers to counter what he says are “years of sanitized Black History months and schoolbooks.” He has chosen instead to tell the story from the inside – examining the question of race through the lyrical biographies of six prominent American heroes, all of whom challenged and changed the racial barriers of their day – Ona Judge, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B Wells, MLK and Barack Obama.

Shepard intertwines his academic research with personal memories of his mother’s stories about her enslaved father, accounts informed by his own experiences of living through eight decades from the era of Jim Crow to the present day. He provides a refreshing and corrective understanding of the role of race in American life – Black and White. As a retired history teacher and textbook editor, he now writes books “that didn’t exist when I was in the classroom and books I couldn’t publish as an editor.

Recorded 2/27/2024

CF: Long Time Coming 1
CF: Long Time Coming 2
The Role Of Race In American History

Ray Anthony Shepard graduated from the University of Nebraska and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The conversation will be moderated by Jude Nixon, Professor of English and former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Salem State University.

Markers and Reminders: MLK to BLM

It’s time to reflect on the significance of our local and national history with regard to black icons and community activists.  

Cambridge Forum partners with the Harvard Square Business Association to examine Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and Black Lives Matter’s impact on the history of Cambridge, Boston and beyond.

Recorded 1/19/2021

CF: Markers and Reminders: MLK to BLM
it’s called “The Embrace.” The statue is an abstract based on a famous picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. & Coretta Scott King hugging each other.

Speakers include Denise Jillson, Executive Director of HSBA and Denise Simmons, Cambridge City Councillor. In addition Imari Paris Jeffries, Executive Director of King Boston discusses the planned three-story “Embrace” memorial to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

A portrait of American singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone by artist  Lennie Peterson being installed in the Out of Town News Kiosk in Harvard Square as a prelude to Martin Luther King’s Day on Monday, January 18th.

Parenting While Black

Writer, poet and teacher CLINT SMITH in conversation with Jude Nixon, Professor of English at Salem State University.  Both men are educators and fathers, and their discussion explores what it means to raise children during this challenging period of Black Lives Matter. 

CF: Parenting While Black

Recorded July 24, 2020.

Clint Smith is a writer, teacher, and Emerson Fellow at New America. He currently teaches writing and literature in the DC Central Detention facility. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review and elsewhere. 

CF: Living While Black

Smith’s first full-length collection of poetry, “COUNTING DESCENT” was published by Write Bloody Publishing in 2016. It won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, and was selected as the 2017 ‘One Book One New Orleans’ book selection.

Cambridge Trust is proud to support Cambridge Forum in our joint endeavor to help eradicate racism and inequities in our black
communities

Race Still Matters

Political activist, author and Harvard University professor Cornel West speaks on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his national best-seller Race Matters. First published in 1993 following the L.A. riots, the book has since become a groundbreaking classic on race in America.

Race Matters speaks to despair, black conservatism, myths about black sexuality, the crisis in leadership in the black community, and the legacy of Malcolm X. Now more than ever, Cornel West argues, Race Matters is a book for all Americans, as it helps us to build a genuine multiracial democracy in the new millennium.

Recorded 12/5/17

Race Matters 1
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