Events include the following:
Carter G. Woodson Annual Soul Food Feast, Sunday, Feb. 4 at 2 p.m., Memorial Student Center.
Luke Eric Lassiter, director of the MU Graduate Humanities Program, presents: The Glenwood Project, Charleston Slave Histories, and Community-University Research Partnerships. Monday, Feb. 5 at 4 p.m. Drinko Library Atrium.
The Rev. Matthew Watts, “Next Steps,” following the State of African Americans in West Virginia summit at Marshall University in November. City of Huntington lecture series, Tuesday, Feb. 6 at 6 p.m., City Hall.
Watts is the senior pastor of the Grace Bible Church in Charleston, where has served for more than 10 years. He has been a pastor for more than 20 years, serving in several churches.
Thom Walker, an associate professor and the music and digital services librarian with Marshall University Libraries, will speak on blues from the Richmond, Virginia, area Monday, Feb. 12 at 4 p.m.
Thomas Walker is an Associate Professor and the Music and Digital Services Librarian at Marshall University. Prior to joining the world of academia, Mr. Walker was a television news director, as well as a touring blues musician. He has shared the stage with “Steady Rollin’” Bob Margolin (Muddy Waters Band), Johnny B. Moore, Hubert Sumlin (Howlin’ Wolf), and other notables in the electric and acoustic blues genres.
A Frederick Douglass speech reenactment and birthday celebration will take place at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 14, in the Don Morris Room of the Memorial Student Center.
Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926 and honored the births of Abraham Lincoln and Douglass with the dates he selected. Marshall will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Douglass, the black abolitionist and journalist, with a presentation and re-enactment of an 1852 Douglass speech on “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” by Professor Robert Levine, University of Maryland, and actor Phil Darius Wallace. Local singer Dana Hart will sing “Happy Birthday,” and cake will be served.
Robert S. Levine is Professor of English and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. He got his PhD at Stanford University and has been teaching at the University of Maryland, College Park, since 1983. He is the author of Conspiracy and Romance (1989), Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity (1997), Dislocating Race and Nation (2008), The Lives of Frederick Douglass (2016), and Race, Transnationalism, and Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies (2018) and the editor or coeditor of over 20 volumes, including Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader (2003), Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville: Essays in Relation (2008), Hemispheric American Studies (2008), The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville (2014), and a cultural and critical edition of Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave (2015).
Actor, Phil Darius Wallace
A presentation by Dr. Carla Hayden, the 14th librarian of Congress and the first African- American and first woman appointed to this position, will take place at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 21, at the Joan C. Edwards Performing Arts Center. The Library of Congress has special significance in Dr. Woodson’s research program.
Dr. Carla Hayden
The Mis-Education of the Negro, Woodson’s most famous book, will be revisited in a roundtable discussion by Marshall students seeking 21st-century implications. The roundtable begins at 3 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, at the Drinko Library Atrium. This will be presented with support from Equity Programs and MUReads.
Andrew H. Lee of New York University will discuss “Strange Fruit: The Scottsboro Case and Its Global Impact” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, in Room 402 of Drinko Library.
Dr. Craig Woodson is an ethnomusicologist and Carter G. Woodson relative. He will present a lecture entitled “Drumming and Sankofa: Our Story of Black/White Woodson Family Reconciliation” at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 28, in the Don Morris Room of the Memorial Student Center.
Dr. Craig Woodson is a percussionist, educational consultant and applied ethnomusicologist (UCLA, 1983). After starting his company Ethnomusic, Inc. in 1976, he directed a university instrument-making project in Ghana for three years between1979-1984. He has over 250 instrument inventions including 12 patents and is a consultant to the Remo drum company. Personally, over the past 20 years, Dr. Woodson has been involved with reconciliation among black and white Woodsons including presentations at ASALH National Conferences in 2016 and 2017.