Louisiana Center for the Book Presents its Inaugural Women’s History Month Program
BATON ROUGE, La. – The Louisiana Center for the Book in the State Library of Louisiana will present its inaugural program celebrating Women’s History Month with a presentation by Louisiana native Dr. Tara T. Green, author of Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The presentation will be held in the first floor Seminar Center of the State Library in Baton Rouge on Tuesday, March 8, 2022, at 12:00 p.m. The State Library of Louisiana is located at 701 North 4th Street, Baton Rouge, LA.
By the time of her death in Philadelphia, PA, in 1935, Alice Dunbar-Nelson had earned a reputation as a fierce fighter for political and racial justice. To understand who she was, however, requires going back to her first twenty years in her hometown of New Orleans where she was born in 1875 to a formerly enslaved woman and a man whom her family would not discuss publicly. This secret undoubtedly motivated her career of uplifting the Black race while also holding firmly to secrets about her familial and sexual identity.
Biographer Green will provide an overview of Dunbar-Nelson’s life in New Orleans as a student, educator, and a founding club member, including her early correspondence with her first husband, Paul Laurence Dunbar.
“Hosting a program during this month of celebration gives us the opportunity to honor a few of the women in Louisiana’s history who have been responsible for change,” says Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser. “By highlighting Dr. Green and Dunbar-Nelson, we are empowering women and young girls across our state.”
Tara T. Green is professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she teaches literature and gender studies courses. She is from the Westbank of New Orleans and is a graduate of Dillard University and Louisiana State University. In addition to the featured biography, Dr. Green recently published See Me Naked: Black Women Defining Pleasure During the Interwar Era.
“We are delighted that Dr. Green is traveling from North Carolina to her home state of Louisiana for this inaugural Women’s History Month event celebrating a Louisiana woman,” noted State Librarian Rebecca Hamilton. “Women have worked hard and fought for equality for hundreds of years, and we are thrilled to feature two Louisiana women whose identities and work highlight the intersectionality of gender and race.”
Copies of Green’s biography of Dunbar-Nelson will be available for purchase at the program or online through Cavalier House Books, the Louisiana Book Festival’s bookseller. Copies of the just-released Modern Library Torchbearers edition of Dunbar-Nelson’s stories, The Goodness of St. Rocque, will be on hand as well.
The Louisiana Center for the Book in the State Library of Louisiana is the state affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Please follow us on Facebook for more information and any updates regarding this event.
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Contact:
Rebecca Hamilton
State Library of Louisiana
225-342-4923
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Veronica Mosgrove
Office of the Lieutenant Governor
225-342-7009
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