History tells us that war is a predominantly masculine endeavor; a male enterprise that recalls young men locked in combat for glory and country.  The contributions of women in war efforts are often relegated to footnotes or anecdotal accounts highlighting their services at home while the war was waged elsewhere.  Virtually omitted from the accounts of war are the roles of black women during wartime.  Author Dr. Armand Gonzalzes challenges that perception with the thoughtfully compiled publication Kathryn Magnolia Johnson.

Political activist Kathryn Magnolia Johnson was born on December 15th, 1878 in Darke County, Ohio. In 1902 she graduated from Wilberforce University with a bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate. She taught at the State Normal School for Negroes in Elizabeth City, North Carolina from 1904 to 1905 before spending a year as Dean of Women at Shorter College, a predominately black institution in Little Rock, Arkansas that was the site of bloody racial riots during Johnson’s tenure.

After serving as a branch organizer, helping to establish dozens of branches of the NAACP throughout the South Johnson joined the YMCA as a welfare worker; one of three African American women in the US Expeditionary Forces selected to manage the spirits of the nearly 200,000 African American troops stationed in France. Kathryn organized religious and educational services, field trips, arts engagement-all experiences that these Colored troops would never have experienced at home due to the racial climate and state sponsored systems of segregation. Influenced by the sobering effects of exposure to the treatment of the African American troops Kathryn and Addie Waites Hunton another African American YMCA welfare worker co-authored Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces.

Join Dr. Gonzalzes as he recounts the story of this unknown African American heroine.

Thursday March 28, 2019 | 5:00pm-6:30pm | DuSable Museum of African American History | Click Here to RSVP | FREE Admission | Please enter through the Main Entrance

Exhibit Tour Postponed: New Date March 30, 12:00 p.m.

South Side Stories: The Art and Influence of Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, 1960-1980

Join us for an engaging tour of The Art and Influence of Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, 1960-1980 at the DuSable Museum of African American History. The tour highlights Dr. Burroughs’ legacy as an artist and educator influenced creative expression and social activism on the South Side of Chicago.

Saturday, March 30, 2019 | 12 – 1 p.m. | DuSable Museum of African American History | FREE Admission | Click Here to Register

Please enter through the Main Entrance.

In September 1955, Mamie Till insisted on the world bearing witness to the unbearable brutality and heart-wrenching grief of American racial violence when she made the decision to have an open casket funeral in Chicago for her lynched 14-year-old son. Thousands attended; millions saw the photographs.

Join us for a Collective Memory Conversation, at the DuSable Museum on the role of Emmett Till in the civil rights movement, how we remember that moment, and the power of mourning mothers as activists in the struggle for equality, justice, and freedom.

Saturday March 30, 2019 | 2:00pm-4:00pm | DuSable Museum of African American History | Click Here to RSVP | FREE Admission | Please enter through the Main Entrance

—

IN CONVERSATION

Elliott J. Gorn whose recent book, Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till (Oxford University Press, 2018), delves into the crime, the trial, and the aftermath, chronicling how the story has been told and retold over time. Dr. Gorn is Joseph A. Gagliano Chair in American Urban History at Loyola University Chicago.

Christopher Benson co-authored Mamie Till-Mobley’s memoir, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (Random House, 2003), an account of the historical significance of the 1955 lynching of her son with a mother’s perspective. Benson is a journalist and lawyer. He is currently an associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University.

Moderated by Ina Cox, the inaugural “Home Grown” Fellow in the Ford and Walton Foundations’ Diversifying Art Museum Leadership program hosted at the DuSable Museum. She is a PhD candidate in the Joint Public History/US History program at Loyola University Chicago, researching late 20th century urban public memory and policing.

A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 tells the story of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 and how the building tensions and conflicting interests exploded in bloodshed that sent shock waves across the nation; a story that is both shocking and sadly, all too common.

On a hot day in July 1919, five black youths went swimming in Lake Michigan, unintentionally floating close to the “white” beach. An angry white man began throwing stones at the boys, striking and killing one. Racial conflict on the beach erupted into days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations. This mesmerizing narrative draws on contemporary accounts as it traces the roots of the explosion that had been building for decades in race relations, politics, business, and clashes of culture.

Join nationally recognized children’s book and educator Claire Hartfield as she explores the history and impact the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, the conditions that created it, and the roles of women before the riots in the continuing struggle for racial justice.

Sunday March 31, 2019 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | DuSable Museum of African American History | Click Here to RSVP | FREE Admission | Please enter through the Main Entrance

—

About the Author

Claire Hartfield is the 2019 Coretta Scott King Author Award winner and LA Times Book Award Finalist for A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 (Clarion 2018)

This book has also been honored as a Junior Library Guild Choice, a 2019 Illinois Reading Council Top Book, and a Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books 2018.