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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson

May 16 from 7 to 8:30 pm at St. Louis Public Libary

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson returns to Schlafly Branch to discuss and sign her book, The Warmth of Other Suns. Books for sale courtesy of Amber Books. Isabel Wilkerson, who spent most of her career as a national correspondent and bureau chief at The New York Times, is the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in the history of American journalism and was the first black American to win for individual reporting. Inspired by her own parents' migration, she devoted fifteen years to the research and writing of this book. She interviewed more than 1,200 people, unearthed archival works and gathered the voices of the famous and the unknown to tell the epic story of the relocation of an entire people in The Warmth of Other Suns. This program is part of Read St. Louis, a community-wide reading initiative developed by St. Louis Public and St. Louis County Libraries to encourage St. Louisans to read and discuss books. Sponsored by UPS.
(http://www.slpl.org/events/calendar.asp?selectedEvent=1&selectedBranch=0

Documented Rights Exhibit Illustrates Struggle for Human and Civil Rights

The new National Personnel Records Center (an office of The National Archives) in St. Louis has a special exhibition illustrating this nation’s continuing process of defining human and civil rights. Including the Emancipation Proclamation, Jackie Robinson's court martial, Brown v. Board of Education, James Meredith's struggle to enroll in the University of Mississippi, and much more, Documented Rights features a sampling of documents from all regions of the National Archives. Other exhibit highlights include:

• Holding The Line - a special section appearing exclusively in St. Louis that features documents from the St. Louis holdings, including letters and telegrams pertaining to James Meredith’s dramatic attempts to integrate the University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”);
• Examples of efforts waged by Native American organizations in the fight for Indian rights;
• A glimpse into the 1940s treatment of Japanese Americans by the War Relocation Authority;
• An early Montgomery Improvement Association booklet written by Martin Luther King Jr.; and

There is also a supplementary Documented Rights website, which offers historical thematic summaries and images of the documents featured in the exhibit. The St. Louis exhibition includes sections three through five.

The exhibit runs through May 31, 2012 and is open Monday through Friday (except Federal holidays) from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. For special tours call Wanda Williams at 314-801-9313 or e-mail wanda.williams@nara.gov.

Dred Scott and the Southern Argument for Slavery

Dr. Paul Finkelman, the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy at Albany Law School, discusses the Dred Scott case within the context of pro-slavery thoughts in the antebellum South. http://www.mohistory.org/node/7144)

2012 Rosenberg Film Series: Strange Fruit

This documentary tells a dramatic story of America's past, using an influential protest song as its epicenter. This song, inspired by the terror of lynching, thought always, asociated with Billie Holiday, was actually written in 1936, by Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher and union activist from the Bronx.

Introductory remarks by Karen Aroesty, Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Missouri-Southern Illinois. The ADL is the leading civil rights and human relations agency, fights bigotry.

All films in the series are screened at 1 pm on the last Sunday of each month in the Holocuast Museum and Learning Center Theatre, unless otherwise indicated. For a full screening list, visit the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center website. For additional information or to receive a film brochure call the Museum, (314) 442-3714.