KINGSTON, R.I. – March 22, 2022 – The University of Rhode Island will welcome Annette Gordon-Reed, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the author of “On Juneteenth,” for the final event of the Center for the Humanities’ 2021-22 lecture series.
The event, part of the Center’s annual Spring Humanities Festival, will be held Thursday, April 14, at 7 p.m. in Edwards Auditorium and also will be available via livestream. To register, go to the lecture’s webpage.
The event will open with remarks from Acting Provost Laura Beauvais and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Jen Riley. Riley will offer a commemoration of Assistant Dean Earl Smith III, who passed away on March 1.
Gordon-Reed will present a talk entitled “On Juneteenth: The Essential Story of ‘Freedom Day’ and Its Importance to American History.” She is a professor of history in the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School. She is the author of six books and has been honored with a National Book Award, along with the Pulitzer Prize in History.
She will discuss her recent book that examines the history of Juneteenth and its importance as a holiday, and will host a question-and-answer session at the end of her talk.
Juneteenth, June 19, celebrates the news of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation reaching Texas on June 19, 1865 – more than two and a half years after Lincoln first issued it in 1863. The U.S. Congress first recognized Juneteenth as a federal holiday in June 2021.
According to Evelyn Sterne, director of the Center for the Humanities at URI, Gordon-Reed’s book is both a memoir and a historical account of growing up in Texas and the violence and oppression that circulated around Juneteenth. It makes connections to the importance of the holiday today and comments on the societal push for equality.
“Her work is very much on topic, not only for closing out our series, but also for engaging the complex history of American race relations at this pivotal moment in our history,” Sterne said.
Gordon-Reed’s talk will be the last event in the year-long series on “Memorials and Commemoration in the U.S.” The series has had great success throughout the academic year, said Sterne.
In the fall, the most popular event of the series, “Walking Through Time: The 5,000 Year History of the URI Campus,” welcomed more than 100 people to campus on a Saturday morning for a presentation by URI faculty members and Lorén Spears, executive director of the Tomaquag Museum. The event included a tour highlighting the Indigenous history of the Kingston Campus.
This spring, more than 400 people registered for the March 3 virtual talk, “Recognizing the History of Slavery in Rhode Island.” The panel featured speakers from the Newport Middle Passage Ceremony and Port Markers Project, Rhode Island Slave History Medallions and the Center for Reconciliation, who discussed Rhode Island’s role in the slave trade.
“The popularity of these two events demonstrates the hunger of our audience to learn more about local history and the history of American race relations,” Sterne said. “It’s been really exciting to see how these topics have captured the attention of folks at URI and in the broader community.”
At the April 14 event, Dean Riley will also recognize two students, one undergraduate and one graduate, with humanities achievement awards. The awards will be presented to students who have made strong contributions to the field of humanities at URI and show demonstrated promise in a humanities-related career.
The College of Arts and Sciences has purchased copies of Gordon-Reed’s “On Juneteenth” for the first 150 people who signed up as part of a campus-wide “Big Read.” The Center for the Humanities is hosting three discussions of the book in the last week of March.
Kate LeBlanc, a senior journalism and political science major at the University of Rhode Island and an intern in the Department of Communications and Marketing, wrote this press release.