The University of Chicago’s Civic Knowledge Project will honor South Side activist and civil rights leader Timuel D. Black, AM’54, at an April 11 event celebrating the culture and legacy of Chicago’s South Side.
The inaugural Timuel D. Black Bridges of Memory Distinguished Guest Lecture and Jazz Concert will be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. in the Parkway Ballroom, 4455 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. The event will celebrate the 96-year-old Black, who in his remarkable career has marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, authored the Bronzeville oral history series, Bridges of Memory, and most recently served on the community advisory board for the UChicago-led effort to bring the Barack Obama Presidential Library to the South Side.
Kenneth Warren, the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor in English, will deliver the lecture. Warren is the author of such works as What Was African American Literature? and So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism.
The lecture will be followed by a reception and jazz concert by Ari Brown and his band. A presentation will follow from the Civic Knowledge Project’s Southside Arts & Humanities Network, a capacity-building resource for local non-profit organizations. The event, which is free and open to the public, also will be a gala networking event for the Southside Arts & Humanities Network and alumni of the Nonprofit Board Leadership program.
The Parkway Ballroom was the destination of choice for Chicago’s African American community from 1940 to 1974, and featured such performers as Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn and Nat King Cole. For more information or to RSVP, please contact Bart Schultz, at rschultz@uchicago.edu or (773) 834-3929, ext 1.
—Prof. Kunle Odunsi
