Baltimore County Public Library Offers Black History Month Programs
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The Baltimore County Public Library is celebrating Black History Month by hosting multiple virtual events—and this year.
While the library will not resume in-person programming until March 1, there are plenty of virtual activities and events available to those interested in learning more about the nation's history.
"Black History Month is first and foremost American History, right? And it is something we should be talking about throughout the year," Library director Sonia Alcantara-Antoine told WJZ. "But we do honor it during the month of February and it's just a great opportunity for people to learn about our shared history and our past."
To view a complete list of events, visit the library's event calendar here. Below you'll find a handful of notable upcoming events:
- Lift Every Voice: Songs of the Civil Rights Movement
- Saturday, Feb. 5 at 11 a.m.
- Musician, teacher and Baltimore native Lea Morris describes herself as a "singer, songwriter, parent, teacher and perpetual student." In this event, Morris shares the role music plays in the pursuit of civil rights, focusing on "Lift Every Voice and Sing," by J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson.
- Virtual Author Visit: Jason Reynolds
- Tuesday, Feb. 15 at 7 p.m.
- Participants are invited to take part in a virtual session with Jason Reynolds, a New York Times bestselling author who has written extensively about racial and social justice. His work includes All American Boys (2015) and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2021).
- Riding the Rails: The Activism and Service of Pullman Porters
- Saturday, Feb. 19 at 11 a.m.
- This virtual event explores the coast-to-coast train rides undertaken by Pullman porters, Black men hired after the Civil War to work on passenger trains. The library says this session will inform participants about the porters' lives and efforts to advance their lives.
- Meet the Authors–Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
- Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m.
- Benedict and Murray discuss the research that went into writing The Personal Library, a New York Times bestseller that chronicles the life of Belle da Costa Greene, an African American woman hired to assemble a rare book collection for J.P. Morgan.