Join us for an evening with Julieanna Richardson, founder of The HistoryMakers—the largest African American oral history project.
In a special interview with author, speaker, educator, and Emmy Award–winning producer Kwame Alexander, Richardson discusses her lifelong commitment to preserving the legacy of African American stories.
This program is presented in memory of legendary poet Nikki Giovanni, in partnership with The HistoryMakers and The Poetry Foundation.
This program will be taped for public broadcast. Late seating will be available in the balcony until it reaches capacity.
About the Speakers
Julieanna L. Richardson is the founder of The HistoryMakers, a non-profit educational institution headquartered in Chicago that has been committed to preserving, developing, and providing easy access to an internationally recognized archival collection of thousands of African American video oral histories for 25 years.
Richardson graduated from Brandeis University, where she studied Theatre Arts and American Studies and did extensive oral history interviews on the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes. She then graduated from Harvard Law School in 1980 and went on to work as a corporate lawyer in Chicago at Jenner & Block prior to serving as the cable administrator for the City of Chicago Office of Cable Communications. She is a 2021 recipient of the Chicago History Museum’s John Hope Franklin Making History Award, which celebrates prominent Chicagoans who have made the city a better place to live.
Kwame Alexander is a poet, Emmy Award–winning producer, and #1 New York Times–bestselling author of 42 books, including Why Fathers Cry at Night, Becoming Muhammad Ali (co-authored with James Patterson), and The Crossover, his Newbery Medal–winning novel. Recently appointed the Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts for Chautauqua Literary Arts, he is also the executive producer of The Crossover TV series on Disney+ and a new animated special on PBS based on his children’s book, Acoustic Rooster. His mission is to change the world, one word at a time.
While we aim to provide closed captioning for all of our programs, closed captioning will not be available due to the live taping of this program. For questions related to accessibility accommodations, please email access@artic.edu.
If you have any questions about programming, please reach out to museum-programs@artic.edu.
