The Bookish Magic Of Black Women Is Getting A Literary Festival

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

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Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

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June 8, 2017

By Claire Fallon, TheHuffingtonPost.com

The Well-Read Black Girl has come a long way in just a couple of years.

Pictured: Glory Edim. By Sandra Hong. thehuffingtonpost.com

Founded by creative strategist Glory Edim, the digital book club started as a way for her to talk about books with her friends. She took the name from a custom T-shirt her boyfriend gave her ― a nod to her bookishness ― and began posting book recommendations on Instagram. Now it’s an online community of more than 20,000, and Edim has begun regularly hosting in-person meetings as well.

Next up: A conference and festival held in Brooklyn, New York, which will be all about celebrating black women authors and creating a space for black women to share their literary passions and experiences….

More important, the book world still frequently fails to make its spaces welcoming and inclusive of people of color, especially black women, or relegates them to token events addressing diversity or race in literature. Preceding the established festival with an event for black women provides a counterbalance to the whiteness of most shared literary spaces, an opportunity for black girls and women to celebrate their nerdy sides in a sisterly atmosphere….

The festival addresses a long-neglected group of book readers, so it should be no surprise that Well-Read Black Girls has seen a surge of demand. Edim launched a Kickstarter on June 3 to support the event, and as of Tuesday morning had been funded to $17,000, exceeding its $15,000 goal.

Read the full article here.

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