Black Love: A Celebration of the Village that Raises Us
2023-02-19 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York)
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about Black love and the village that nurtures and sustains it. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Program
In recognition of Valentine’s Day, this program will shift the focus away from romantic love to, instead, focus on the love we each need to develop in ways that are emotionally, culturally and socially sound. Using her book, My George, as a springboard, Kathy Butler will give a presentation that celebrates Black love and those who nurture it in us individually and in our communities.
Ms. Butler will relate her personal story and tell why it is important for her to share this experience with others. She also will explore the healing power of “The Village,” and ask those in attendance to reflect on the individuals who raised them and the source(s) of love from which they drew strength. During the program, Ms. Butler will read excerpts from her book.
As a gesture of love from The Baton Foundation, we will make a limited number of Ms. Butler’s book available to attendees.
About the Book
My George: A Love Letter to My Dad, is a tribute to the man who raised the author, a man she affectionately calls George. The book celebrates George and Black fathers and father figures. Within its pages are heartwarming anecdotes detailing how George came into the author’s life and provided unconditional love, a sense of belonging, unwavering support and invaluable life lessons that taught her that Black life mattered before it was a hashtag. Through each story, Ms. Butler shows young people (who may not have biological dads in their lives) that they still can experience the true love of a father. The fact is, she says, that “although we often see ourselves as ‘fatherless children,’ the truth is, many of us have father-figures (stepfathers, godfathers, grandfathers, and mentors) that are parenting us.”
Equally important, the book is a way for our community to ignite a movement to #giveBlackdadstheirflowers and dispel the stereotype that suggests Black men are not active, present and nurturing parental figures.
About the Author
Kathy Butler, CA, is an author, certified child advocate and speaker and the founder of Comfort in The Storm, LLC–an organization created to provide education and awareness about child sex abuse prevention.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Hidden in Plain Sight: Black Women and the Civil Rights Movement
2023-03-05 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the important role Black women played in the fight for Black liberation from the era of enslavement to the modern Civil Rights Movement. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Program
This talk explores why and how Black women involved in Civil Rights activism become “hidden in plain sight” and silenced in dominant U.S. historical narratives and cultural memory. Professor Yates-Richard traces a persistent representational logic that shadows and quiets Black women in Black freedom imaginings from the era of slavery through the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Yates-Richard introduces key Black women Civil Rights organizers and activists, and highlights their contributions to the ongoing struggle for Black liberation.
About the Speaker
Meina Yates-Richard is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English at Emory University. She specializes in African American, African diasporic and American literature and culture. Her scholarship explores the connections between representations of slavery, gender, sound, and liberation ideologies in Black Atlantic literary and cultural production and freedom movements. Dr. Yates-Richard was 2018-19 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and was awarded the Norman Foerster Prize for Best Essay published in American Literature in 2016 for “‘WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER’S NAME?’: Maternal Disavowal and the Reverberating Aesthetic of Black Women’s Pain in Black Nationalist Literature.” Her work appears in the Journal of West Indian Literature, amsj: American Studies, post-45 Contemporaries, Feminist Review, and the edited volume Ralph Ellison in Context. Yates-Richard co-edited with Robin Brooks MELUS Special Issue (vol 46:4), Black Women’s Literature: Violence & the COVID-19 Moment.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Expressive Arts Self-Exploration Workshop
2023-05-07 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a virtual expressive arts workshop designed to help attendees explore their inner self. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Workshop
The expressive arts combine a variety of practices including writing, music, visual arts, drama, and dance to support self-expression, personal growth and healing. In each session, and as one participates, s/he explores working with a variety of materials and activities. And, as one completes a session, s/he reflects on what was expressed, discovered, and/or experienced. The expressive arts have been defined as supporting a process of self-discovery and self-expression–as a way to connect with one’s creative self. Expressive arts also can help one find a path to tranquility and/or achieve emotional release.
For this introductory virtual session, please wear comfortable clothes and bring plain white paper, chalk, crayons, colored pencils, play dough or paints—any material with which you would like to work. If preferred, each participant will be able to work with her/his camera turned off. Should you have any questions in advance of the workshop, please feel free to call Dr. Phillips at 404-798-1061.
About the Presenter
Wendy Phillips, Ph.D., LMFT, REAT, REACE is a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, a Registered Expressive arts Consultant Educator, and an Atlanta-based Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Dr. Phillips also teaches in the Psychology and Creativity Studies Programs at Saybrook University (Pasadena, California).
Register Here for Zoom Workshop

Half American
2023-06-04 15:00 - 16:00
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about Black Americans fighting World War II—at home and overseas. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” The bravery and patriotism of Black troops in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. In a time when the questions raised about World War II regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading.
About the Author
Matthew F. Delmont is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A Guggenheim Fellow and expert on African American history and the history of civil rights, he is the author of the new book, Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (Viking, 2022). He is also the author of four previous books: Black Quotidian, Why Busing Failed, Making Roots, and The Nicest Kids in Town. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and several academic journals, and on NPR. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Delmont earned his BA from Harvard University and his MA and PhD from Brown University.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Smile For We
2023-06-25 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a conversation about Black men…and their smiles. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
The idea for Smile For We was born in response to recent instances of police brutality against Black men around the country. Often depicted as gang members, deadbeat dads, drug dealers, and societal outcasts, images of smiling Black men are rare.
Author Damon Mosley says, “Every time you turn on the TV, one sees Black men being killed, ridiculed, or stereotyped…in general, the media constantly portrays us as threats—not human beings.” He says the goal of the book “is to keep positive Black men visible and relevant.” Smile For We is a photo book dedicated to changing the way the world sees and treats Black men. Purchase books here.
About the Author
Damon Mosley is a Columbus, Ohio-based writer, producer, and photography buff. He began his writing career by submitting articles to his favorite publications while studying at Columbia University. His first story appeared in SLAM magazine in 1995. He later switched gears to cartoons–authoring a comic strip called Mosley that was picked up for development by Universal Press Syndicate in 2005.
In 2008, Damon self-published the children’s book, I’ve Got to Have Those Shoes!. When he learned about the work of Samaritan’s Feet — a charitable organization based in Charlotte, N.C., Mr. Mosley pledged a portion of the proceeds from the book to support their work. He also joined the group when they distributed thousands of pairs of shoes to needy children in Peru.
After years of developing various projects in Hollywood, Damon released Smile For We — a collection of portraits dedicated to changing the stereotypical images of Black men. Currently, Mr. Mosley is writing and producing his first feature film and a TV show based on his life.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

The Importance of Cultural Heritage Instruction for Black Boys
2023-08-06 15:00 - 16:30
We must impress upon our children that even when troubles rise to seven-point-one on life’s Richter scale, they must be anchored so deeply that, though they sway, they will not topple. ~Mamie Till Mobley
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. ~Frederick Douglass
Cultural Heritage Program Orientation Overview
Initiated in 2016, The Baton Foundation is excited to host the eighth orientation for its signature Cultural Heritage Program. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
August 2023 marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and almost seventy years since the horrific torture and killing of Emmet Till. In fact, organizers selected the date on which the March of Washington occurred (August 28, 1963), to honor the memory of young Emmett.
Today, states and school districts around the country are working feverishly to make it impossible for students to learn about history that casts the United States in a bad light–particularly as it relates to Black people. Too often, the story of Black people in the United States is told by others, and for reasons not meant to edify or to inspire, much less to reflect truth. It is important, though, that our children learn the entirety of our history.
The Baton Foundation’s Cultural Heritage Program is designed to give Atlanta-area Black boys (ages 10-17) opportunities to learn about Black history and culture in an intimate, supportive environment. In bi-weekly seminars, students explore various aspects of the Black experience in the United States and around the world. Additionally, they work with Baton Foundation facilitators to explore notions of self-awareness and self-mastery. The program also provides opportunities for students to explore many of Atlanta’s cultural venues and to engage in educational travel to historic and cultural sites.
During the orientation, attendees will learn more about the program and have an opportunity to ask questions of the program’s founder, Baton Foundation board members, and Cultural Heritage Program students.
Register for Zoom Orientation Here
Photo Credit: Adinah Morgan for The Baton Foundation (Cultural Heritage Program students at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, 2019)

Red Hot City
2023-08-20 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the policies, politics and economics that led to Atlanta’s racialized gentrification. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
Atlanta is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance. In recent decades, capital-driven growth has excluded low-income people and families of color from the city’s center, pushing them to distant suburbs. As central Atlanta has experienced heavily racialized gentrification, the suburbs have become more diverse, and many affluent suburbs have tried to push back against this diversity. Red Hot City (University of California Press, 2022), tracks these racial and economic shifts and the politics and policies that produced them. Repeatedly, policymakers and planners have chosen trajectories that favor redeveloping places that house less affluent families and households of color to remake them for a more affluent, whiter residential base. Revealing critical lessons for leaders, activists, and residents in cities around the world, Dan Immergluck considers how planners and policymakers can reverse recent trends to create more socially equitable cities.
About the Author
Dan Immergluck is a Professor of Urban Studies at Georgia State University (GSU). Prior to joining GSU in 2017, he was Professor of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta). His research concerns housing, neighborhood change, and real estate markets. Dr. Immergluck is the author of five books and over 120 scholarly articles, book chapters, and research reports. He has consulted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Justice, foundations, and nonprofit organizations. Professor Immergluck has been cited and quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets. He has testified several times before the U.S. Congress and the Federal Reserve Board. Prior to becoming a full time academic, he was a community development practitioner and affordable housing advocate in Chicago for over a decade.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
2023-09-10 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the first book-length autobiography by a formerly enslaved Black woman. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Program
Koritha Mitchell’s edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is no ordinary edition. Besides faithfully reproducing Harriet Jacobs’ 1861 narrative, it adds extensive explanatory footnotes and a thorough introduction. The volume also offers six appendices with historical and cultural documents that help readers appreciate the immensity of Jacobs’ achievement. Mitchell will share what she learned from editing this extraordinary text, the first book-length autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman.
About the Book
In 1861, Harriet Jacobs became the first formerly enslaved African American woman to publish a book-length account of her life. In crafting her coming-of-age story, she insisted upon biographical accuracy and bold creativity—telling the truth while giving herself and others fictionalized names. She also adapted conventions from two other popular genres: the sentimental novel and the slave narrative. Then, despite facing obstacles not encountered by White women and Black men, she orchestrated the book’s publication and became a traveling bookseller in an effort to inspire passive Americans to support the abolition of slavery.
Engaging with the latest research on Jacobs’ life and work, this edition helps readers to understand the magnitude of her achievement in writing, publishing, and distributing her life story. However, it also shows how this monumental accomplishment was only the beginning of her contributions, given her advocacy work over the nearly forty years that she lived after its publication. As a survivor of sexual abuse who became an advocate, Jacobs laid a foundation for activist movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. The six appendices featured in this edition, place at readers’ fingertips resources that further illuminate the issues raised by Jacobs’ remarkable life and legacy.
About the Editor
Koritha Mitchell (she/her + Koritha rhymes with Aretha) is an award-winning author, literary historian, cultural critic, and professional development expert. Her research focuses on African America literature as well as violence in United States history and contemporary culture. She examines how texts, both written and performed, help targeted families and communities survive and thrive.
Her first book, Living with Lynching, won awards from the American Theatre and Drama Society and from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Her second monograph, From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture, appeared in August 2020 and was named a Best Book of 2020 by Ms. Magazine and Black Perspectives. Professor Mitchell edited Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), the first book-length autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman, and Frances E.W. Harper’s 1892 novel Iola Leroy. Her scholarly articles include “James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings the Blues for Mister Charlie,” published by American Quarterly, and “Love in Action,” which appeared in Callaloo and identifies similarities between lynching and violence against LGBTQ communities.
Currently a professor of English at Ohio State University, Koritha grew up in Sugar Land, Texas (near Houston); earned her BA from Ohio Wesleyan University; and earned her MA and PhD at the University of Maryland-College Park.
In 2011, Koritha founded the Columbus, Ohio, chapter of Black Girls RUN!, a national organization encouraging women to make fitness and healthy living a priority. She stepped down from leadership in 2014 and remains proud that the chapter is still going strong. On Twitter, she’s @ProfKori.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Remaking the Republic
2023-09-24 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about Black politics and the creation of American citizenship. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
Citizenship in nineteenth-century United States was an ever-moving target. The Constitution did not specify its exact meaning, leaving lawmakers and other Americans to struggle over the fundamental questions of who could be a citizen, how a person attained the status, and the particular privileges citizenship afforded. Indeed, as late as 1862, U.S. Attorney General Edward Bates observed that citizenship was “now as little understood in its details and elements, and the question as open to argument and speculative criticism as it was at the founding of the Government.”
Black people suffered under this ambiguity, but also seized on it in efforts to transform their nominal freedom. By claiming that they were citizens in their demands for specific rights, they were, the author argues, at the center of creating the very meaning of American citizenship. In the decades before and after Bates’ lament, free African Americans used newspapers, public gatherings, and conventions to make arguments about who could be a citizen, the protections citizenship entailed, and the obligations it imposed. Thus, they played a vital role in the long, fraught process of determining who belonged in the nation and the terms of that belonging.
Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship (UPenn Press, 2020), chronicles the various ways African Americans from a wide range of social positions throughout the North attempted to give meaning to American citizenship over the course of the nineteenth century. Examining newspapers, state and national conventions, public protest meetings, legal cases, and fugitive slave rescues, Bonner uncovers a spirited debate about rights and belonging among African Americans, the stakes of which could determine their place in U.S. society and shape the terms of citizenship for all Americans.
About the Author
Christopher Bonner teaches African American history at the University of Maryland, College Park. Professor Bonner teaches courses covering African American politics and culture, slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world, the transformations of the United States during the nineteenth century, and race and ethnicity in early America. Originally from Chesapeake, VA, he earned his B.A. from Howard University and Ph.D. from Yale.
Other work by Professor Bonner appears in digital form at Muster, the blog of the Journal of the Civil War Era and at Black Perspectives, the blog for the African American Intellectual History Society.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Howard Thurman’s Atlanta: Nonviolence, Civil Rights, and Mystical Thought
2023-10-22 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a conversation about the role Atlanta played in the life and work of Howard Thurman. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Program
Using Peter Eisenstadt’s book, Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman (University of Virginia Press, 2021), as the backdrop, distinguished Howard Thurman scholars Luther E. Smith, Jr. (Emory Professor Emeritus) and Peter Eisenstadt, will engage each other in a conversation about Howard Thurman’s life and work in Atlanta.
An early pacifist and the first African American to meet Mahatma Gandhi, Reverend Thurman often is overlooked in the pages of history as a foundational proponent of nonviolent direct action. A nationally recognized human rights advocate, Thurman would serve as spiritual advisor to James Farmer and Pauli Murray (founding members of C.O.R.E.), Marian Wright Edelman (Children’s Defense Fund), Reverend Jesse Jackson, Vernon Jordan (National Urban League), Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights activists.
Integral to Thurman’s development and to the trajectory of his career was the time he spent in Atlanta. From his years as a student at Morehouse College, his return to campus in 1928 for a dual appointment in religion and philosophy at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, and decades of speaking engagements in the city, Atlanta figured prominently in his life. This program is designed to give the speakers great latitude to converse about Thurman’s life in Atlanta, his impact on the city and one of its most influential and beloved native sons.
About the Speakers
Peter Eisenstadt, Ph.D., was Associate Editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project and is an affiliate member of the Clemson University history department. He is author of Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City’s Great Experiment in Integrated Housing.
Luther E. Smith, Jr., Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Church and Community, Candler School of Theology of Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia), at which he served on the faculty for thirty-five years.
While at Emory University, Dr. Smith served as president of the University Senate, president of the University’s Faculty Council, and as Candler’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development. Professor Smith writes and speaks extensively on issues of church and society, congregational renewal, meanings and dynamics of community, interfaith cooperation, Christian spirituality, and the thought of Howard Thurman. He is the author of Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet, Intimacy and Mission: Intentional Community as Crucible for Radical Discipleship, and editor of Howard Thurman: Essential Writings. Dr. Smith is the Senior Advisory Editor for the five-volume papers project The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman (the second largest papers project on an African American). His book, Hope is Here! Spiritual Practices for Justice and Beloved Community, is being published by Westminster John Knox Press and will be released in November 2023.
In recognition of his scholarship, teaching, and community service, Dr. Smith has received numerous awards and professional accolades. He helped to found the International Community School and the Interfaith Children’s Movement, and currently serves as the coordinator for the Pan-Methodist Campaign for Children in Poverty.
Reverend Smith is an ordained minister of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia with his wife Helen. They have four children and five granddaughters.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

King: A Life
2023-10-29 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a conversation with author Jonathan Eig about his new biography of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life (Macmillan, 2023) is the first major biography in decades of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. — and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. Eig casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.
In this landmark biography, Jonathan Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.
About the Speakers
Jonathan Eig is a former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal. He is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Ali: A Life, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. Ken Burns calls him “a master storyteller,” and Eig’s books have been listed among the best of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Sports Illustrated, and Slate. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.
Kiplyn Primus is a journalist, strategic marketing professional, and host of WCLK’s (91.9) The Local Take with Kiplyn Primus—a public affairs show that features discussions about critical issues facing Atlanta and profiles organizations engaged in important work in the station’s constituent communities.
Ms. Primus has had a long career in public and commercial media, including stints with The Atlanta Tribune, Global Atlanta, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her work in strategic marketing focuses on health, finance and the tech industry, including Goldman Sachs and the DeKalb Hospital Authority. In addition, she has written extensively on global and local initiatives for several publications and media outlets. Kiplyn is also a veteran facilitator with the Atlanta-based StoryCorps studio—the largest oral history project in the United States.
Ms. Primus received a BA degree in journalism and English from Howard University (Washington, D.C.) and an MBA in marketing from Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, GA).
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Afro-Hispanic Painter Juan de Pareja
2023-11-05 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit, Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter (April 3 – July 16, 2023). This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Program
Dr. David Pullins, associate curator in the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (pictured above), will talk about the exhibition he recently co-curated at the museum, Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter. The research inspired by this groundbreaking exhibit has offered an unprecedented look at the life and artistic achievements of Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608–1670). Largely known today as the subject of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s iconic portrait by Diego Velázquez (pictured above), Pareja was enslaved in Velázquez’s studio for more than two decades before becoming an artist in his own right. The exhibition was the first to tell his story and examine the ways in which enslaved artisanal labor and a multiracial society are inextricably linked with the art and material culture of Spain’s so-called Golden Age. The exhibit brought together approximately 40 paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts objects, as well as an array of books and historic documents from The Met’s holdings and other collections in the United States and Europe.
Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met., said, “This exhibition takes us to the very heart of 17th-century Spanish painting to reveal Juan de Pareja’s incredible personal story. By reexamining the narrative around one of the most celebrated works in the history of western portraiture, the presentation challenges us to question existing notions about historical art and objects—and introduces a remarkable artist whose name may be familiar to many but whose work had not been explored in depth.”
About Juan de Pareja
Juan de Pareja was born around 1608 in Antequera, Spain–probably to an enslaved woman of African descent and a white Spaniard. Although no known documents from Pareja’s lifetime speculate on his family origins or skin color, ample evidence from seventeenth-century Spain provides the context of a highly multiracial society in which enslaved labor was widespread. Pareja is first mentioned in Madrid in 1634 as part of the circle of artist Diego Velázquez, who was then establishing himself as the foremost painter at the Spanish court. Between 1649 and 1650, the pair traveled to Italy, where Velázquez painted Pareja’s portrait and signed legal papers releasing him from slavery. Once back in Madrid, Pareja built a successful career as an independent artist.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Georgia’s Long Struggle Toward Democracy: The Role of the Press, Then and Now
2023-11-19 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the role of Black press leaders in Georgia’s ongoing struggle for democracy. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Program
Georgia and its capital city, Atlanta, have long played a central role in the U.S. struggle to achieve the democratic ideals set forth in its founding documents. From the end of the Civil War (1861-1865) to the present, a reactionary, anti-democratic, White nationalist press has often worked against these efforts.
Using their book, Journalism and Jim Crow (University of Illinois Press, 2021), as a backdrop, professors D’Weston Haywood and Kathy Roberts Forde will discuss how White press leaders, collaborating with Georgia governors, senators, officials, and business leaders, helped build a violent White supremacist society and political economy that endured for generations after the war. They also will tell the equally compelling story about how Black press leaders fought back–documenting, in real time, what was happening while marshaling a collective Black power to forge a more inclusive and just democracy in the state, the South, and in the nation. Drs. Forde and Haywood will connect this history to the momentous events taking place in Georgia today.
About the Author
D’Weston Haywood is an Associate Professor of History at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). His work centers on Black protest and cultural politics, and their intersections with the state and public spheres. His award-winning book, Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement (UNC Press, 2018), explores this. Haywood’s work also includes “Sonic Scholarship.” His projects here include “The [Ferguson] Files: A Sonic Study of Racial Violence in America” (2016), examining a year of racial violence from the killing of Michael Brown to the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church, and “MADE MEN” (2020), examining White Nationalism, White masculinity, and American politics in the Trump era. He is currently working on two book projects, one reconsidering the Cold War and Space Age through Black Nationalism, and another analyzing Black political theory, Hip Hop, and mass incarceration. Originally from North Carolina, Haywood currently lives in Queens, New York.
About the Editor
Kathy Roberts Forde is Professor of Journalism and Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is co-editor and contributing author of the book Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America, which received the American Historical Association Palmegiano Book Award, the AEJMC History Division Book Award, and the American Journalism Historians Association Book Award. A U.S. press historian, Dr. Forde is working on a new book about the role of the White press in racial massacres—instigating, organizing, and covering up racial massacres for generations after the Civil War—and the role of the Black press in exposing these atrocities and attempting to hold those responsible to account. Professor Forde was raised in rural East Tennessee.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Celebrating the Season…Honoring Self
2023-12-03 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a virtual expressive arts workshop to help center us during the holiday season. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Workshop
With the holiday season upon us and a new year just weeks away, this virtual expressive arts workshop will encourage participants to reflect on 2023 and take stock of and nurture self.
Despite the challenges we might face and regardless of the turmoil around us, it is important to focus on our innate strengths and to ground oneself in the knowledge that all is well. Dr. Wendy Phillips will employ guided expressive arts techniques that will aid each participant in her or his journey to self-expression and healing.
Please wear comfortable clothes and bring paper, chalk, crayons, colored pencils, play dough or paints–whatever materials you would like to work with. You will be able to participate with your camera off or on and there is never any pressure on anyone to actively engage with the group. At the end of the session, the group will reflect on what has been expressed, discovered, and experienced.
Should you have questions about the workshop beforehand, you may call Dr. Phillips at 404-798-1061.
About Expressive Arts
The Expressive Arts combine a variety of practices including writing, music, visual arts, drama, and dance to support self-expression, personal growth and healing. In each session, and as one participates, s/he explores a variety of materials and activities. The expressive arts have been defined as supporting a process of self-discovery and self-expression, as a way to connect with one’s creative self, and also as a way to find tranquility and or achieve emotional release.
About the Instructor
Wendy Phillips, Ph.D., LMFT, REAT, REACE is a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, A Registered Expressive arts Consultant Educator, and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who is based in Atlanta. She also teaches in the Psychology and Creativity Studies Programs at Saybrook University.
Register Here for Zoom Workshop

America’s Black Capital
2024-02-18 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about how African Americans remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
America’s Black Capital (Basic Books, 2023) tells the remarkable story of how African Americans transformed Atlanta, the former heart of the Confederacy, into today’s so-called Black mecca.
Atlanta is home to some of America’s most prominent Black politicians, artists, businesses, and HBCUs. Yet, in 1861, Atlanta was a final contender to be the capital of the Confederacy. Sixty years later, long after the Civil War, it was the Ku Klux Klan’s sacred “Imperial City.”
America’s Black Capital chronicles how a center of Black excellence emerged amid virulent expressions of white nationalism, as African Americans pushed back against Confederate ideology to create an extraordinary locus of achievement. What drove them, historian Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar shows, was the belief that Black uplift would be best advanced by forging Black institutions. America’s Black Capital is an inspiring story of Black achievement against all odds, with effects that reached far beyond Georgia, shaping the nation’s popular culture, public policy, and politics. Please use this link to purchase the book.
About the Author
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar is Professor of History and the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music. He is the author or editor of several books, including Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas, 2007); and The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts and Letters, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). In 2018, he released Keywords for African American Studies (New York University Press), with co-editors Erica R. Edwards and Roderick A. Ferguson. Dr. Ogbar’s articles appear in the Journal of Religious Thought, Journal of Black Studies, Souls, Centro and Radical Society among other academic publications. He has been invited to write for The New York Times’ “Room for Debate” and The Daily Beast, among other publications. His newest book, America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy, released in 2023 with Basic Books, was named on the “Best Books of 2023” list from Publishers Weekly. Raised in Los Angeles, California, Ogbar received his BA in history from Morehouse College and his MA and Ph.D. degrees in history from Indiana University.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
2024-03-17 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a conversation with journalist and author Antonia Hylton about her new book that centers mental illness, slavery, and racial segregation in the United States. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
In Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum (Hachette Book Group, 2024), Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
In her book, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable. Please use this link to purchase the book.
About the Speakers
Antonia Hylton is a Peabody and Emmy-award winning journalist at NBC News reporting on politics and civil rights, and the co-host of the hit podcast Southlake and Grapevine. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she received prizes for her investigative research on race, mass incarceration and the history of psychiatry. She lives in Brooklyn.
Kiplyn Primus is a journalist, strategic marketing professional, and host of WCLK’s (91.9) The Local Take with Kiplyn Primus—a public affairs show that features discussions about critical issues facing Atlanta and profiles organizations engaged in important work in the station’s constituent communities.
Ms. Primus has had a long career in public and commercial media, including stints with The Atlanta Tribune, Global Atlanta, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her work in strategic marketing focuses on health, finance and the tech industry, including Goldman Sachs and the DeKalb Hospital Authority. In addition, she has written extensively on global and local initiatives for several publications and media outlets. Kiplyn is also a veteran facilitator with the Atlanta-based StoryCorps studio—the largest oral history project in the United States.
Ms. Primus received a BA degree in journalism and English from Howard University (Washington, D.C.) and an MBA in marketing from Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, GA).
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Get Off My Neck
2024-04-23 19:00 - 20:30 | Auburn Avenue Research Library, 101 Auburn Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA, 30303, United States
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the injustices and racial inequities in the U.S. criminal legal system. This in-person program is free to the public, but registration is required. You may register here.
About the Book
In Get Off My Neck (MIT Press, 2024) Debbie Hines draws on her unique perspective as a trial lawyer, former Baltimore prosecutor, and assistant attorney general for the State of Maryland to argue that US prosecutors, as the most powerful players in the criminal legal system, systematically target and criminalize Black people. Hines describes her disillusionment as a young Black woman who initially entered the profession with the goal of helping victims of crimes, only to discover herself aiding and abetting a system that prizes plea bargaining, speedy conviction, and excessive punishment above all else. In this book, she offers concrete, specific, and hopeful solutions for just how we can come together in a common purpose for criminal justice and racial justice reform.
Get Off My Neck explains that the racial inequities in the prosecutorial system are built into our country’s DNA. What’s more, they are the direct result of a history that has conditioned Americans to perceive the Black body as insignificant at best and dangerous at worst. Unlike other books that discuss the prosecutor’s office and change from inside the office, Hines offers a proactive approach to fixing our broken prosecutorial system through a broad-based alliance of reform-minded prosecutors, activists, allies, communities, and racial justice organizations—all working together to end the racist treatment of Black people. Told intimately through personal, family, and client narratives, Get Off My Neck is not only a deeply sobering account of our criminal legal system and its devastating impact on Black children, youth, and adults, but also it is a practical and inspiring roadmap for how we can start doing better right now. Books will be available for purchase.
About the Speakers
Debbie Hines is a former Baltimore prosecutor and Assistant Attorney General for the State of Maryland. Ms. Hines is a trial attorney and an advocate for racial equity in the criminal justice system. She maintains a private law practice focused on civil and criminal litigation in Washington, DC. A leading voice in the discourse of criminal justice and race, Hines is often called on by media networks for legal commentary.
Carl Suddler is an associate professor of history at Emory University. His first book, Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York (2019) is widely used in college and graduate classrooms across the country.
Professor Suddler has published works that have appeared in the Journal of American History, Journal of African American History, American Studies Journal, and Journal of Sports History. In 2020, he edited a special issue of The American Historian magazine that historically contextualized the global protests that occurred in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others. His expertise is in high demand from scholarly communities and media outlets such as CNN, ABC News, Al Jazeera, Black News Channel, and NPR.
In addition to a number of public-facing projects, Suddler is currently working on a second book project, tentatively titled No Way Out: The Carceral Boundaries of Race and Sports. The book uncovers the hidden fingerprints of police power in sports over the past 150 years and tells the stories of how Black athletes have been forced to navigate the constantly growing police presence in their daily lives.
NOTE: Limited free parking is available on site behind the library only. Once parked, secure a pass from the security desk inside. Additional on-street parking is free at 7p.m.

Before the Movement
2024-05-05 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a conversation about the hidden history of Black civil rights. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
In a brilliant rethinking of civil rights, Dylan C. Penningroth’s Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2023) changes the way we think about Black history itself. Interweaving his own family history with long-forgotten documents found in county courthouse basements, he reveals how African Americans thought about, talked about, and used the law long before the marches of the 1960s. In a world that denied their constitutional rights, Black people built lives for themselves through the “rights of everyday use.” Before the Movement recovers a rich vision of Black life–a vision allied with, yet distinct from, the freedom struggle. Please use this link to purchase the book.
About the Speakers
Dylan C. Penningroth is a professor of law and history at the University of California–Berkeley, currently serving as Associate Dean of the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at Berkeley Law. He specializes in African American history and legal history. His first book, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South, published by the University of North Carolina Press, won the 2004 Civil War and Reconstruction Book Award from the Organization of American Historians. His articles have appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Journal of American History, and the American Historical Review. Penningroth has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the MacArthur Foundation.
Frederick Knight is professor of history at Morehouse College. He specializes in the history of African Americans and the African Diaspora before 1900. Dr. Knight has held fellowships at the Center for Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia; the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization at Brown University; and the University of California, Riverside, where he held the P. Sterling Stuckey Postdoctoral Fellowship in African American history. He has also served in various capacities with scholarly organizations including Imagining America, the American Historical Association, and the Omohundro Institute. Professor Knight has published numerous book chapters and articles in his field. Prior to this current book, Black Elders (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), he published Working the Diaspora: The Impact of African Labor on the Anglo-American World, 1650-1850 (NYU Press, 2010). Professor Knight received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom
2024-05-19 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the importance of Black elders during the eras of enslavement and emancipation. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
Would there have been a Frederick Douglass if it were not for Betsy Bailey, the grandmother who raised him? Would Harriet Jacobs have written her renowned autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, if her grandmother, a free Black woman named Molly Horniblow, had not enabled Jacobs’ escape from slavery?
In Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), Frederick C. Knight explores the experiences of African Americans with aging and in old age during the eras of slavery and emancipation. Though slavery put a premium on young labor, elders worked as caregivers, domestics, cooks, or midwives and performed other tasks in the margins of Southern and Northern economies. Looking at Black families, churches, mutual aid societies, and homes for the aged, Knight demonstrates the pivotal role of elders in the history of African American community formation through Reconstruction.
Drawing on a wide array of printed and archival sources, including slave narratives, plantation records, letters, diaries, meeting minutes, and state and federal archives, Knight also examines how Blacks and Whites, men and women, the young and the old developed competing ideas about age and aging, differences that shaped social relations in coastal West and West Central Africa, the Atlantic and domestic slave trades, colonial and antebellum Southern slave societies, and emancipation in the North and South.
Black Elders offers a unique window into the individual and collective lives of African Americans, the day-to-day struggles they waged with regards to their experiences of aging, and how they drew upon these resources to define the meaning of family, community, and freedom. Please use this link to purchase the book.
About the Author
Frederick Knight is professor of history at Morehouse College. He specializes in the history of African Americans and the African Diaspora before 1900. Dr. Knight has held fellowships at the Center for Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia; the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization at Brown University; and the University of California, Riverside, where he held the P. Sterling Stuckey Postdoctoral Fellowship in African American history. He has also served in various capacities with scholarly organizations including Imagining America, the American Historical Association, and the Omohundro Institute.
Professor Knight has published numerous book chapters and articles in his field. Prior to this current book, Black Elders, he published Working the Diaspora: The Impact of African Labor on the Anglo-American World, 1650-1850 (NYU Press, 2010). It traces how Africans, though carried across the Atlantic against their wills, drew upon knowledge from their homelands to shape the agricultural and material worlds of New World slave labor camps.
Professor Knight received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Blackness in Mexico
2024-06-09 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the efforts underway in Mexico to recognize African-descendant Mexicans as a distinct cultural group. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
Through historical and ethnographic research, Blackness in Mexico (University Press of Florida, 2023), delves into the ongoing movement toward recognizing Black Mexicans as a cultural group within a nation that has long viewed the non-Black Mestizo as the archetypal citizen. Anthony Jerry focuses on this process in Mexico’s Costa Chica region in order to explore the relational aspects of citizenship and the place of Black people in how modern citizenship is imagined.
Jerry’s study of the Costa Chica shows the political stakes of the national project for Black recognition; the shared but competing interests of the Mexican government, activists, and townspeople; and the ways that the state and NGOs are working to make “Afro-Mexican” an official cultural category. He argues that the demand for recognition by Black communities calls attention to how the Mestizo has become an intuitive point of reference for identifying who qualifies as “other.” Jerry also demonstrates that while official recognition can potentially empower African descendants, it can simultaneously reproduce the same logics of difference that have brought about their social and political exclusion.
One of few books to center Blackness within a discussion of Mexico or to incorporate a focus on Mexico into Black studies, this book ultimately argues that the official project for recognition is itself a methodology of mestizaje, an opportunity for the government to continue to use Blackness to define the national subject and to further the Mexican national project. PURCHASE BOOKS HERE.
About the Author
Anthony Russell Jerry is an assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests are Blackness, citizenship, subject-making, and Black entrepreneurship in the “Americas.” Professor Jerry is the founder and director of the Cultural Media Archive and The Empathy Archive–online platforms designed to promote racial literacy and social and emotional learning through empathy and awareness. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, an MA in applied anthropology from San Diego State University, and an MBA from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at University of California, Riverside.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

The Rage of Innocence
2024-06-23 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the day-to-day brutalities endured by Black youth growing up under constant police surveillance and the persistent threat of physical and psychological abuse. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
Drawing upon twenty-five years of experience representing young people in Washington, D.C.’s juvenile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational and manufactured fears of Black youth and makes a compelling case that the nation’s obsession with policing and incarcerating Black America begins with Black children.

Unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White America and denied the privilege of healthy adolescent development. Weaving together powerful narratives and persuasive data, Henning examines the criminalization of Black adolescent play and sexuality, the demonization of Black fashion, hair, and music, and the discriminatory impact of police in schools.

The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2021), lays bare the long-term consequences of racism and trauma that Black children experience at the hands of police and their vigilante surrogates and explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear and resent the police.
About the Author
Kristin Henning is the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown. Professor Henning has been representing children accused of crime for more than 26 years and was the lead attorney for the Juvenile Unit of the D.C. Public Defender Service. She is currently the Director of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Gault Center.

Professor Henning worked closely with the McArthur Foundation’s Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network to develop the Juvenile Training Immersion Program (JTIP), a national training curriculum for youth defenders, and is the co-founder of several initiatives to combat racial inequities in the juvenile and criminal legal systems, including the Ambassadors for Racial Justice program and a Racial Justice Toolkit for defenders. Professor Henning trains state actors across the country on the impact of racial bias in the courts and the traumatic effects of policing in communities of color.

Professor Henning writes extensively about race, adolescence, and policing, and her book, The Rage of Innocence, was featured on the front page of The New York Times Book Review. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, was a Reporter for the ABA’s Juvenile Justice Standards Task Force and is an Advisor to ALI’s Restatement on Children and the Law project. In addition, she has received many awards including a 2023 Embracing the Legacy Award from the RFK Community Alliance, a 2022 Women of Distinction Award from the American Association of University Women, the 2021 Juvenile Leadership Prize from the Juvenile Law Center, and the Robert E. Shepherd, Jr. Award for Excellence in Juvenile Defense by the Gault Center. Professor Henning earned her B.A. from Duke University, her J.D. from Yale Law School, and her LLM in Advocacy from Georgetown Law.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

The Nation That Never Was
2024-09-15 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the enduring myth of the so-called American story. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
There’s a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. In The Nation that Never Was (The University of Chicago Press, 2022), Kermit Roosevelt III, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, argues that, with the country increasingly divided, this story isn’t working for us anymore—what’s more, it’s not even true. Roosevelt presents an eye-opening reinterpretation of the American story, in which our fundamental values, particularly equality, are not part of the vision of the Founders and suggests that there is a different and more useful way to understand our history.
About the Author
Kermit Roosevelt is the David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He is the author of numerous law review articles and several books. Before joining the Penn faculty, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. In 2021, he was selected by President Biden to serve on the Presidential Commission on Supreme Court Reform. He is also the author of two novels, Allegiance and In the Shadow of the Law. Professor Roosevelt is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

What's Your Street Race? Why We Must Add a Street Race Question in Federal Standards and Beyond for Advancing Equity in Black Diasporic Communities
2024-10-13 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the perception of race in U.S. society and how we must rethink it. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Program
This presentation will focus on the urgency of employing intersectionality as a transformational and ethical vision for data infrastructure that can illuminate inequities within heterogenous Black diasporic communities. Dr. López will discuss policy-relevant research on outcomes in health, education, employment, housing, poverty, wealth, etc. that shows that race is a social status that has a visual, ocular and corporeal component and ethnicity as a cultural background. An intersectional understanding recognizes that race and ethnicity are simultaneous, yet they are analytically distinct positions in society that require separate questions because they are not concordant. Imagine if intersectionality as praxis and inquiry became a normative ethical principle for revising Office of Management and Budget (OMB) federal guidelines on race and ethnicity and a street race question was added to all institutional data collection? How can we engage in what Crenshaw calls “mapping the margins” and what Collins calls intersectional “flexible solidarity,” when it comes to data collection, that makes the invisible visible within Black Diasporic communities and beyond?
About the Speaker
Dr. Nancy López is professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. She co-founded and directs the Institute for the Study of “Race” and Social Justice. Her scholarship, teaching and service are guided by the insights of intersectionality–the importance of examining the simultaneity of race, gender, class, ethnicity and other systems of inequalities across a variety of social outcomes, including education, health, employment, and housing for developing contextualized solutions that advance social justice. Dr. López is author of Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race & Gender Disparity in Urban Education (2003); co-editor of, Creating Alternative Discourses in the Education of Latinas & Latinos (2003), Mapping “Race”: Critical Approaches to Health Disparities Research (2013); and QuantCrit: An Antiracist Approach to Education Equity (2023). Her current research, “Intersectionality as Inquiry and Praxis: Race-Gender-Class-Ethnicity for Student Success in STEM,” is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) program. Professor López is a Black Latina, New York City-born daughter of Dominican immigrants with a second-grade education rich in cultural wealth. She is the first woman of color tenured in Sociology and the first woman of the African Diaspora tenured in the College of Arts and Sciences (2008) and promoted to full professor (2018) at UNM.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Die Standing: From Black Panther Revolutionary to Global Diversity Consultant
2024-11-24 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host Elmer Dixon as he talks about his journey from co-founder of the first Black Panther Party chapter outside California to diversity consultant.
About the Book
This powerful memoir, with a foreword by former Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale, sets the record straight about the altruistic mission of the Black Panther Party. Historically, members of the Panthers have been maligned in media, movies, and minds as angry, gun-toting, misogynistic thugs. During his tenure, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover declared the Black Panther Party “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”
To the contrary, the Panthers started a free breakfast program for children, distributed free groceries to families, opened schools, founded health clinics, and provided patrols to protect people from police abuse. Today, their 10-point plan serves as a blueprint for social justice movements in the United States and abroad.
In Die Standing (Two Sisters Writing and Publishing, 2023), Dixon describes how heavily armed Panthers confronted police to protect Black drivers. He also takes the reader into suspenseful scenes inside the Panthers’ homes and offices.
The book shows how, after 16 years in the Party, Dixon began working as an EEO officer and training manager for a large organization for which he developed and implemented trainings. He also monitored accusations of sexual harassment and racial discrimination.
Die Standing offers Elmer Dixon’s inspiring story and action-oriented teachings to help propel social justice movements forward by creating a world in which Black and Brown people are safe to live, learn, and prosper.
About the Speaker
Elmer Dixon is a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) consultant. His expertise in the field is rooted in his identity as a revolutionary committed to working for equality and justice.
Inspired by the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s, Elmer was 17 years old when he and his older brother, Aaron, co-founded the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968—the first chapter outside of California.
After guiding the chapter to local prominence by providing essential services to Black and Brown people in his multicultural community, Elmer served as director of the Al Davis Girls and Boys Club in Tacoma, Washington’s predominantly Black Hilltop community. He then became Training Manager and EEO officer for the Seattle Parks Department, creating and implementing anti-sexual harassment policies, recruiting women to non-traditional jobs, and investigating sexual harassment complaints. Dixon’s success in that position led then-Mayor Charles Royer to appoint him to his cabinet as director of the city’s Citizens Service Bureau.
Elmer’s EEO work impressed the founders of Executive Diversity Services (EDS), who recruited him to a new career providing high-level DEIB training to national and international businesses. In 2010, Elmer became the organization’s president.
Elmer has been a guest lecturer at JAMK University of Applied Sciences in Finland for the last 13 years, and teacher at Espeme University in Lille and Nice, France. He is the current president of SIETAR USA, and routinely presents at SIETAR Europa. His recent TEDx Talk is “Stories from the Revolution’s Front Lines.”
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

A New Year, A New Beginning
2025-01-12 15:00 - 16:30
The Baton Foundation will host a virtual expressive arts workshop to help individuals ground themselves as we begin a new year — and a new chapter in American history.
About the Workshop
With the holiday season behind us and a new year upon us, this virtual expressive arts workshop will help participants explore ways to best maintain their physical, emotional, and spiritual equilibrium as we prepare to usher in a new historical and social era.
Despite the challenges we might face and regardless of the turmoil around us, it is important to draw upon ancestral legacies and focus on our innate strengths — and to ground oneself in the knowledge that all is well. Dr. Wendy Phillips (pictured above) will employ guided expressive arts techniques that will aid each participant in her or his journey to self-expression.
Please wear comfortable clothes and have at your disposal plain/colored paper, chalk, crayons, colored pencils, play dough or paints — whatever materials you would like to work with. You will be able to participate with your camera off or on and there is never any pressure on anyone to actively engage with the group. At the end of the session, the group will reflect on what has been expressed, discovered, and experienced.
Should you have questions about the workshop, you may call Dr. Phillips at 404-798-1061 (after 1p.m. ET).
About Expressive Arts
The Expressive Arts combine a variety of practices including writing, music, visual arts, drama, and dance to support self-expression, personal growth and healing. In each session, and as one participates, s/he explores a variety of materials and activities. The expressive arts have been defined as supporting a process of self-discovery and self-expression, as a way to connect with one’s creative self, and also as a way to find tranquility and or achieve emotional release.
About the Instructor
Wendy Phillips, Ph.D., LMFT, REAT, REACE is a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, A Registered Expressive arts Consultant Educator, and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who is based in Seattle, Washington. She also teaches in the Psychology and Creativity Studies Programs at Saybrook University.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality
2025-02-09 15:00 - 16:30
About the Book
Racial Innocence will challenge what you thought about racism and bias and demonstrate that it is possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and also be discriminatory. Racism is deeply complex, and law professor and comparative race relations expert Tanya Katerí Hernández exposes “the Latino racial innocence cloak” that often veils Latino complicity in racism. As Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the US, this revelation is critical to dismantling systemic racism. Basing her work on interviews, discrimination case files, and civil rights law, Hernández reveals Latino anti-Black bias in the workplace, the housing market, schools, places of recreation, the criminal justice system, and Latino families. By focusing on racism perpetrated by communities outside those of White non-Latino people, Racial Innocence brings to light the many Afro-Latino and African American victims of anti-Blackness at the hands of other people of color. Through exploring the interwoven fabric of discrimination and examining the cause of these issues, we can begin to move toward a more egalitarian society.
About the Speaker
Tanya Katerí Hernández is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, where she teaches Anti-Discrimination Law, Comparative Employment Discrimination, Critical Race Theory, Writing/Righting Race in the Public Sphere, The Science of Implicit Bias and the Law: New Pathways to Social Justice, and Trusts & Wills. She received her A.B. from Brown University, and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as Note Topics Editor of The Yale Law Journal.
Professor Hernández is an internationally recognized comparative race law expert and Fulbright Scholar who has visited at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, in Paris and the University of the West Indies Law School, in Trinidad. She has previously served as a Law and Public Policy Affairs Fellow at Princeton University, a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University; a Faculty Fellow at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, and as a Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Professor Hernández is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute, and the Academia Puertorriqueña de Jurisprudencia y Legislación. Hispanic Business Magazine selected her as one of its annual 100 Most Influential Hispanics and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander awarded her a Commendation for “extraordinary contributions to anti-racism.” Professor Hernández serves on the editorial boards of the Revista Brasileira de Direito e Justiça/Brazilian Journal of Law and Justice, and the Latino Studies Journal published by Palgrave-Macmillian Press.
Professor Hernández’s scholarly interest is in the study of comparative race relations and anti-discrimination law, and her work in that area has been published in numerous university law reviews like Cornell, Harvard, N.Y.U., U.C. Berkeley, Yale and in news outlets like The New York Times, among other publications–including her books Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response (including Spanish and Portuguese translation editions), Brill Research Perspectives in Comparative Law: Racial Discrimination, and Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination. Her most recent book from Beacon Press is Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and The Struggle for Equality, and its Spanish translation edition, Inocencia Racial: Desenmascarando la antinegritud de los latinos y la lucha por la igualdad. Currently under contract with Beacon Press, is her next book (Under) Counting Blackness Across the Globe: The Civil Rights Crisis of Census Racial Erasure.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Railroad
2025-03-09 15:00 - 16:30
About the Book
Riding Jane Crow tells the overlooked story of Black women on American trains, from before the Civil War to more contemporary times. How did Black intellectual women such as Ida B. Wells fight racial segregation through lawsuits, before the (in)famous Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896? Who were the Black women who worked as Pullman maids, along with the more well-known Pullman porters? How does the experience of Black women on the American railroad provide a more accurate measure of American ingenuity and progress? These questions and others will be answered during this virtual talk.
About the Author
Miriam Thaggert is a professor of English at the University at Buffalo. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on African American literature, history, and culture. Her previous book was on the Harlem Renaissance, Images of Black Modernism: Verbal and Visual Strategies of the Harlem Renaissance. She has also written on films such as Imitation of Life, Twelve Years a Slave, and Mahogany. She is currently working on the Buffalo-area African American poet Lucille Clifton and Percival Everett’s novel, The Trees. She grew up in southwest Louisiana and obtained her Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture

An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South
2025-04-13 15:00 - 16:30
About the Book
Between Fort Sumter and Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands of Black men, women, and children through a persisting trade in enslaved people. They did so for numerous reasons, including to adapt to the conflict, to invest in their desired slaveholding future, and to fend off the onset of emancipation. These transactions had profound impacts on the enslaved–their lives and families, and the ways in which they pursued freedom during the war. The surviving traffic in humanity thus shaped the experience of the Civil War and its aftermath for all inhabitants of the wartime South.
About the Speaker
Robert Colby is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. His first book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South, was published in 2024 by Oxford University Press. His research has won awards from the Society of American Historians and the Society of Civil War Historians and has been published in the Journal of the Civil War Era, Journal of the Early Republic, and Slavery & Abolition.
Register Here for Zoom Lecture
