UPCOMING: Black History Program at Florence County Library

On Thursday, February 19, 2015, at 6:30 p.m. it will be my pleasure to participate in an observance of Black History Month at the Doctors Bruce and Lee Foundation Library on S. Dargan St. in Florence. The program is entitled: "A Historical Overview of the Black Experience in South Carolina: Slavery, Jim Crow, and the Struggle for Freedom and Civil Rights." My presentation will be about the Jim Crow system and black activism in the early twentieth century and will feature some vignettes from my forthcoming book, No Jim Crow Church: The Origins of South Carolina's Baha'i Community. I'll be sharing the stage with Dr. Dan Littlefield of the University of South Carolina, an authority on Afro-Carolinians in the colonial period, and Dr. John Gaines of Florence, an attorney and one of the Rock Hill “Friendship Nine,” the courageous students who brought the sit-in movement to South Carolina in 1961 and who just last week were exonerated for their "crime." Please join us for what promises to be a great event! Admission is free.