Today marks what would have been the 84th birthday of Nobel Prize winning activist and Civil Rights Leader Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.

The DREAM@50 is a tribute series that was held throughout 2012 and continues into 2013, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. The series included a student art contest (K-12), a world music/dance festival, and  video PSAs, all in celebration of creative collaboration in both the Civil Rights Movement and the arts as the foundation for a new paradigm in how we can live together. Philadelphia was one of 10 U.S. cities chosen to participate in the contest.

Students involved in the Free Library's Literacy Enrichment After-school Program (LEAP) who submitted art  to the contest currently have their art on display in Parkway Central Library.

The Free Library LEAP DREAM@50 contest winners can be seen on the right.

Those winners have been submitted to the Philadelphia-wide DREAM@50 art contest which will be judged with the results being announced at an awards ceremony on February 20th at Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Good luck to the artists and their entries!

Tags: African American, Awards, Exhibitions, Parkway Central, art, children's programs

Columbia Professor Manning Marable recently passed away April 1, 2011, three days before the publication of his new biography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Professor Marable has spent his career studying African-American history and writing on the legendary life of activist Malcolm X and his new book is touted as the “definitive biography”.

The library currently has this novel on order and should be available soon, but if you are interested in learning more about Malcolm X check out these items from the Library:

Written by Malcolm X

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X with assistance of Alex Haley
• Malcolm X: The Last Speeches by Malcolm X 
• The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard by Malcolm X 
• By Any Means Necessary (Malcolm X Speeches & Writings) by Malcolm X 

Malcolm X on Film (documentary)

• Malcolm X
• Black History: A Retrospective
• African American Leaders of the 20th Century
• Understanding the Civil Rights Movement
• King: A Man of Peace in Time of War
• The Greatest Speeches of All Time, Volume 1

Tags: African American, Recommendations

Two extraordinary writers have recently released new novels, years after their earlier books established their literary reputations. It's been fifteen years since Fae Myenne Ng's debut, Bone, and eager fans have been devouring her new novel, Steer Toward Rock, since it came out earlier this year. Fans of Paul Beatty's 2001 release, The White Boy Shuffle, haven't had to wait quite as long for his new satirical novel, Slumberland. But seven years without Beatty's labyrinthine riffs that pull together European history and popular culture - effortlessly linking images of everything from Kant to candy bars - felt like a lifetime.

Steer Toward Rock is one of the first fictional treatments of the Chinese Exclusion Act from the late 19th century, which severely restricted Chinese immigration and naturalization and imposed brutal restrictions on Chinese American life. Ng tells the story in several voices, starting with that of an old man who has sneaked into the country with false papers and ending the story with narration from the man's grown daughter. Fans of Bone will recognize Ng's fearless female characters who are marbled with both surprising vulnerability and unshakeable confidence. Steer Toward Rock is a brand new take on an old immigration experience.

Beatty's Slumberland is instead an emigration story, telling the tale of an African American man with a "phonographic memory" - he can perfectly remember any sound he has ever heard - who moves to Berlin just before the wall comes down. he is in search of a DJ, the perfect DJ, who goes by the name Schwa. Beatty's satire runs deep in the wacky characters he meets and strange settings he travels through in East and West Berlin's Afro-German communities. You've never read anything about this facet of Berlin or the Cold War. Beatty's prose is magical and just the thing to take you to the time and place of which he writes.

There are many copies of Fae Myenne Ng and Paul Beatty's books in branches all around the system. Head to the library and check one out today!

By Joel N., Blackwell Regional Library

Tags: African American, Reviews

An exciting addition to our reference collection is making its way onto shelves around the city: the multi-volume African American National Biography, published by Oxford University Press and edited by Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham.  This is the largest research project in African American Studies to be completed or published in over 20 years, according to a Library Journal Article (1/15/2008 "Behind the Book—First of Its Kind: African American National Biography"). The project was a massive undertaking that brings together the work of over 1000 scholars who researched and wrote over biographical 4000 entries.
 
The scope of this reference work spans 500 years of African American life, including entries about historical figures, according to Dr. Gates, "who already have a place in the historical record, even if only just a few words." These thousands of lives span eight volumes that include previously uncollected information, especially about women and the roles they played on the local level in defying segregation laws and registering new voters. The immensity of this project means that we can read about the lives of hundreds of historical figures whom previous publishers had to leave out because there was not enough information about them or because there was not space to include them.
 
Some of the entries feature photographs of the subject, and all of them include citations for further reading and research. Take a look through the African American National Biography, where you can read about African Americans from Aaron (a former slave from Virginia who became an antislavery lecturer who toured New England) to Paul Burgess Zuber (a lawyer who represented cases that established legal precedents against segregation) and crucially, the thousands of lives in between.
 
The AANB is on the reference shelves at Parkway Central, Blackwell Regional, Northeast Regional, Holmesburg, Kingsessing, Logan, and Wynnefield.

(post written by Joel N, at Blackwell Regional Library)

Tags: African American, Reviews