2025 Black History Month Festival Media Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 28, 2025
Media Contact:        
Zebulon Miletsky

ASALH Will Offer Several Free Events for this Year’s Black History Month Virtual Festival

WASHINGTON, DC—The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is proud to announce the Annual Black History Month Festival, a month-long festival that will feature a rich program of scholarly sessions and many other events that illuminate the importance of the current struggle to own and control our own narrative.

The Black History Month Virtual events will start with an Opening Ceremony on February 1st 2025, 6:00 pm EST, highlighting the life and times of A. Philip Randolph, labor activist and freedom fighter. Randolph lived a life that embodied the message within “Culture for Service and Service for Humanity” the motto of Phi Beta Sigma, of which he was a member.

A truly unique presentation on “Pen to Screen,” will happen on February 4th 2025, at 6:00 pm EST featuring Julian Breece. Breece, who wrote the original screenplay for Netflix about gay Civil Rights strategist Bayard Rustin and his behind-the-scenes work for the March on Washington, will discuss his career as writer-director of the film, “Rustin” and the role history has played in shaping his work.

A discussion of the best-selling book, The Vice President’s Black Wife, will feature a conversation with author and University of Indiana Professor Amrita Chakrabarti Myers about the interconnectedness of sex, gender, class, and economics during the antebellum period. The event will stream live on February 6th 2025, at 6:00 pm EST. Myers has recovered the riveting, troubling, and complicated story of Julia Ann Chinn (ca. 1796–1833), the enslaved wife of Richard M. Johnson, and US Vice President under Martin Van Buren. This will be an event to remember.

Don’t miss “The Reshaping of Racial Labor in the Age of A.I. with Dr. Golden Owens,”on February 13th 2025, at 6:00 pm EST. The implications and use of AI and ChatGPT has had a pivotal impact on the lives and experiences of African Americans. Golden M. Owens will explore this further through the lens of gender and labor.

ASALH will co-host with PBS Books, “A Conversation with Mary Frances Berry,” on February 19th 2025, at 8:00 pm EST.

Lastly, ASALH will also offer as part of its in-person programming the Author’s Book Signing, a free event which will take place at 10:00 a.m. EST, featuring selected authors sharing books on African American history and culture. The full list of authors may be found here.

All of the virtual events will be shown on ASALH’s YouTube channel, “ASALH TV,” which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/asalhtv.