Fellows Fall Speaker Series 11-14-24
November 5, 2024
The BMRC invites you to the third session of the 2024 Fellows' Fall Speaker Series on Thursday, November 14 at 12:00 p.m. CT. “Charlemae Hill Rollins, An Early Advocate for Diverse Books,”
Dr. Nicole Cooke is the August Baker Endowed Chair and Professor in the School of Information Science at the University of South Carolina. During her summer residency in Chicago, she focused on researching the life, career, and advocacy work of Charlemae Hill Rollins. Mrs. Rollins is among the incredible and often unsung forerunners in Black librarianship. She was Augusta Baker’s contemporary, colleague, and friend, who worked at the Chicago Public Library (CPL) for over 30 years, and they both served and loved Black children as public librarians, storytellers, and children’s literature crusaders. They were some of my profession’s earliest social justice advocates for anti-racism and diversity in children’s literature. Baker wrote "The Black Experience In Children's Books" and "Books about Negro Life for Children". Rollins wrote "We Build Together: A Reader's Guide to Negro Life" and "Literature for Elementary and High School Use," along with several other titles related to Black history. Their bibliographic publications highlighted books that positively represented Black children in literature, an early demonstration of the now popular hashtag #RepresentationMatters! Dr. Cooke has access to Mrs. Baker’s archives at the University of South Carolina and has set a fervent goal to conduct a comparable study on Mrs. Rollins by working with her papers and ephemera at the Chicago Public Library and the DuSable Museum.
Dr. LaVerne Gray, a 2017 and 2024 BMRC fellow and an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, will serve as a discussant for this session. Dr. Gray's research focuses on the Black information experience, including familial genealogies, community-based information networks, archives, and libraries.
JOIN US online via ZOOM or go to https://tinyurl.com/ffss-111424