Washington, DC – The National Archives hosts a special program celebrating African American Folktales on Wednesday, January 10, at 7 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. It will be held in the William G. McGowan Theater of the National Archives Museum and stream live on YouTube. Attendees should use the Special Events entrance on Constitution Avenue at 7th Street, NW. The building is Metro accessible on the Yellow and Green lines, Archives/Navy Memorial/Penn Quarter station. Reservations are recommended and can be made online.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Maria Tatar will discuss their book, The Annotated African American Folktales.
The illustrated book celebrates nearly 170 stories across several continents and is a kaleidoscopic study of the African American folklore tradition. It presents fairy tales from Africa, trickster tales, ballads of heroes, rarely seen stories and those thought to be lost, black origin stories, and Caribbean and Latin American folktales Joining professors Gates and Tatar in conversation will be journalist, author, and National Archives Foundation Board Member A’Lelia Bundles. A book signing will follow the program.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or co-authored twenty-one books and created fifteen documentary films. Finding Your Roots, his groundbreaking genealogy series now in its third season on PBS.
Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Professor Tatar has written for the New York Times, the New Republic, and the Harvard Crimson. Her work has been featured on the Today Show and in Harvard Magazine.
A’Lelia Bundles, author and journalist, is working on her fifth book, The Joy Goddess of Harlem: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, a biography of her great-grandmother, whose parties, friendships, international travels and arts patronage helped define the era. She was a network television news executive and producer for thirty years at NBC News and then at ABC News, where she was Washington, DC deputy bureau chief.
Related Special Document Display – The Emancipation Proclamation
National Archives Museum, February 17-19, 2018, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
The National Archives celebrates Black History Month and the 155th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation with a free special display of the original Emancipation Proclamation from February 17-19. The Emancipation Proclamation is displayed only for a limited time each year because of its fragility, which can be made worse by exposure to light, and the need to preserve it for future generations.
The National Archives’ 155th anniversary celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of United Airlines.
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