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
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.
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