THURSDAY MAY 28, 7pm – Non- Fiction
at The ARCH STREET UNITED METHODIST CHURCH,
55 North Broad Street, 215-568-6250
WILLIAM C. AYERS and BERNADINE DOHRN
authors of Race Course: Against White Supremacy ($19.95 Third World Press)
White supremacy and its troubling endurance in American life is debated in these personal essays by two veteran political activists. Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days – and that it is still very much with us – the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors’ own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.
William C. Ayers is a distinguished professor of education and a senior university scholar at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is the author of To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher and Fugitive Days, a memoir about his life with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Bernardine Dohrn is the director of the Children and Family Law Justice Center and a clinical associate professor of law at Northwestern University. She is the coauthor of A Century of Juvenile Justice and Zero Tolerance.
and HAKI R. MADHUBUTI
author of Liberation Narratives: New and Collected Poems 1966-2009 ($29.95 Third World Press)
Haki R. Madhubuti: Poet. Publisher. Editor. Educator. Innovative Entrepreneur. Activist. Founder and President of Third World Press. Spanning a long career, these poems helped define and sustain a movement that added music and brash street language to traditional poetics. Like Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones), this poet and social activist has long combined the personal and the political by adding anger, activism, and outside art to well-crafted poems. Spoken-word poetry (which recently garnered the author a Grammy nomination) and “message” poetry aimed at community healing are innovations in the later works, and as a whole the poems provide an overview of emerging Black culture as they borrow language from Black consciousness, hip-hop, political speeches, and motivational talks. Haki R. Madhubuti has been a pivotal figure since the 1960s in advocating a strong black literary tradition. He is the founder of Third World Press, the founder and director emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing, and the director of the MFA degree program in creative writing at Chicago State University. He is the author of Claiming Earth: Race, Rage, Rape, Redemption, Groundwork: New and Selected Poems, and YellowBlack: The First Twenty-One Years of a Poet’s Life.