The Moline Public Library welcomes Dr. Nancy Huse, as she presents Ida B. Wells: Our Fearless American Foremother on Wednesday, April 23rd at 7:00 p.m.  This event is presented as part of the six-week series Created Equal and Changing America, which explores our nation's civil rights history through film, exhibition, and presentations.  The program is free and no registration is required.  More information can be found online at molinelibrary.com/createdequal, by visiting the library at 3210 - 41st Street, or by calling 309-524-2470.

This first-person, Chautauqua-style program enacts the words of Ida B. Wells-Barnett.  Her effective writing in pamphlets and articles - work that helped to end the practice of lynching - will be demonstrated, and a brief, diary-based reflection on youth and old age will be offered.  A discussion of Wells as an American foremother will link the present with Wells' work and with ideas central to our history as Americans, such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Nancy Huse holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago.  She has published numerous articles and delivered many presentations on American and children's literature.  She was the Children's Literature Association President, as well as a member of the Illinois Council of Teachers of English.  Her interests include children's and young adult's literature, African American literature, and women and gender studies.

Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle is made possible through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of its Bridging Cultures initiative, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Changing America is presented by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The traveling exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Local support for Created Equal and Changing America has been provided by Friends of the Moline Public Library, WQPT, and The Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus/QCOnline.

The Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle film screening and discussion series continues with the presentation of the 2012 documentary Freedom Riders on Monday, April 21^st, 6:00 p.m. at the Moline Public Library (3210 41^st Street).  Augustana College's Dr. Christopher Whitt will lead the discussion.  This event is free and no registration is required.

Attracting a diverse group of volunteers?black and white, young and old, male and female, secular and religious, northern and southern?the Freedom Rides of 1961 took the civil rights struggle out of the courtroom and onto the streets of the Jim Crow South. Freedom Riders tells the terrifying, moving, and suspenseful story of a time when white and black volunteers riding a bus into the Deep South risked being jailed, beaten, or killed, as white local and state authorities ignored or encouraged violent attacks. The film includes previously unseen amateur 8mm footage of the burning bus on which some Freedom Riders were temporarily trapped, taken by a local twelve-year-old and held as evidence since 1961 by the FBI.

A professor in the political science department of Augustana College since 2007, Dr. Christopher Whitt is one of the principal founders and contributing members of the school's Africana Studies program.  He received his M.A. and PhD from the University of Maryland, where he researched the impact of the racial wealth gap on Black political participation.  He currently teaches the course "Race, Wealth, and Inequality in American Politics" as well as courses on United States government, politics, and citizenship.

Created Equal is presented as part of the six-week series Created Equal and Changing America, which explores our nation's civil rights history through film, exhibition, and presentations.  More information can be found online at molinelibrary.com/createdequal, by visiting the library at 3210 41^st Street, or by calling 309-524-2470.

Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle is made possible through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of its Bridging Cultures initiative, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Changing America is presented by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The traveling exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Local support for Created Equal and Changing America has been provided by Friends of the Moline Public Library, WQPT, and The Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus/QCOnline.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center (630 - 7th Avenue, Rock Island) will host a three part screening and discussion of the 2013 American Experience documentary The Abolitionists.  The center's Director, Reverend Dwight Ford will lead the discussions on three consecutive Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m.: Part 1 on April 15th, Part 2 on April 22nd, and Part 3 on April 29th.  This documentary is one of four films featured in the Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle film series. These events are free and no registration is required.

The Abolitionists vividly brings to life the struggles of the men and women who led the battle to end slavery. Through innovative use of reenactments, this three episode series puts a face on the anti-slavery movement?or rather, five faces: William Lloyd Garrison, impassioned New England newspaper editor; Frederick Douglass, former slave, author, and activist; Angelina Grimké, daughter of a rich South Carolina slaveholder; Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the enormously influential Uncle Tom's Cabin; and John Brown, ultimately executed for his armed seizure of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The film's release in 2013 also marked the 150th anniversary year of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Reverend Dwight Ford has served as Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center since 2012.  He has a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Arts majoring in business management from Western Illinois University.  He also served in the United States Marine Corps from 1989 to 1994, serving in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, and received several medals during his service.  He grew up in Rock Island and has been a featured speaker at the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Service and Awards Celebration.

Created Equal is presented as part of the six-week series Created Equal and Changing America, which explores our nation's civil rights history through film, exhibition, and presentations.  More information can be found online at molinelibrary.com/createdequal, by visiting the library at 3210 - 41st Street, or by calling 309-524-2470.

Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle is made possible through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of its Bridging Cultures initiative, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Changing America is presented by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The traveling exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Local support for Created Equal and Changing America has been provided by Friends of the Moline Public Library, WQPT, and The Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus/QCOnline.

The Moline Public Library welcomes Illinois Humanities Council Road Scholar Donna Pierce, as she presents Meals on Wheels: Great Migration Recipes Ride the Rails North on Wednesday, April 9^th at 7:00 p.m.  This program is free and does not require registration. 

Meals on Wheels is presented as part of the six-week series Created Equal and Changing America, which explores our nation's civil rights history through film, exhibition, and presentations.  More information about the series can be found at molinelibrary.com/createdequal or by contacting the Moline Public Library at 309-524-2470.

Before the Great Migration, 90% of all African Americans in the U. S. lived in Southern states. Between 1915 and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1970s, six million black people changed their address from the segregated and "separate but equal" Jim Crow South to the urban north. Several Illinois cities have come to be known as destinations of the Great Migration including Alton, Peoria, and Chicago.  Using cookbooks and oral history, Ms. Pierce will explore migrated recipes such as smothered chicken, chitterlings, black-eyed peas, barbecue, biscuits, grits, greens, banana pudding, caramel cake, and peach cobbler. For many Illinois children and grandchildren of uprooted families, these recipes transplant them back to a South (with ties to Africa) many of them have never known, except through stories and photographs.

Donna Pierce, former Assistant Food Editor and Test Kitchen Director for the Chicago Tribune, is a Chicago-based contributing editor for Upscale magazine and a columnist for the Chicago Defender.  At the Tribune, she shared the first place award for Best newspaper Food Project in 2008 with Bill Daley, having won two first place awards for her columns in previous years. Meals on Wheels, a Road Scholars program, is presented by the Illinois Humanities Council, which is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Illinois General Assembly (through the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency), as well as by contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations.  

Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle is made possible through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of itsBridging Cultures initiative, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Changing America is presented by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The traveling exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Local support for Created Equal and Changing America has been provided by Friends of the Moline Public Library, WQPT, and The Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus/QCOnline. 

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