Fellows' Fall Speaker Series Begins 10/21/24
October 18, 2024
The BMRC invites you to join us as we kick off the annual Fellows' Fall Speaker Series!
The first session, "The World of Walter Barnes: Jazz, Journalism, and the Cultural Geography of Bronzeville," is scheduled for Monday, October 21, at noon CT.
Dr. Karen Cox, our featured speaker, is a Professor Emerita of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Research conducted during the summer of 2024 at BMRC member institutions has aided in the progress of her full-length manuscript, "Going Home: Jazz, The Great Migration, and the Forgotten Saga of the Rhythm Club Fire." which explores the jazz world Barnes was active in and the Rhythm Club fire, a tragedy took the lives of more than 200 African Americans in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1940. At the time, it was the deadliest fire in the United States. Walter Barnes, a rising jazz musician playing at the club that night, is a Mississippi native who migrated to Chicago and continued his musical education at t the Chicago Musical College, founded in 1872 but later merged with Roosevelt University's School of Music. Barnes was a jazz musician on the rise, touring around the South, and a columnist for the Chicago Defender.
Dr. Eve Wade, a 2023 BMRC fellow, will join us as a discussant. She will converse with Dr. Cox about her book, some of her most exciting findings during her summer reviewing materials in varied collections held at BMRC repositories, and her plans for the future. Dr. Wade teaches Social Studies at Christ the King Jesuit Prep High School and has authored literature documenting the African American experience for the Journal of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Encyclopedia. Her most recent article, “’ Look for Me in the Spring:’ Migration Clubs and the Black Metropolis,” was published in the Spring/Summer edition of the Journal of Mississippi History. Dr. Wade is working on a book-length manuscript documenting the rise of the southern Black Metropolis.
Join us online on 10/21, at 12 pm CT via Zoom - https://tinyurl.com/ffss-102124