The Clement A. Price Institute will host the 43rd Annual Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series, “Beans, Greens, Tomatoes: Food, Accessibility and Justice in the Black Diaspora,” on Saturday, February 23. The conference will be a hybrid event.
From the Rutgers School of Arts & Sciences – Newark:
In the wake of increasing environmental disasters, housing crises, and food insecurity, Black communities across the world raise new questions about the importance of equitable access to land, water, and food. Spanning a broad cross-section of age, ethnicity, faith, and nationality, Black liberation activism and thought, in this century, emphasizes renewed concern with equitable food systems through land stewardship and culinary practice. Revived attention to the foodways and practices of African descended people underscores the celebration of and return to farming practices and culinary traditions that sustain Black history and culture from one generation to the next. Collectively, Psyche Williams-Forson, Lolis E. Eric, Jessica B. Harris, and Edda L. Fields-Black remind us that food and foodways are vital elements of justice, equality, and community identity. Through their writing, research, teaching, and creative productions they highlight a powerful means of looking to our future by re-examining our past.
The Annual Marion Thompson Wright Lecture (MTW) Series was co-founded in 1981 by Rutgers University- Newark Professor Clement A. Price and Giles R. Wright of the New Jersey Historical Commission, who launched the series with the belief that the “rigorous exploration of the past, made accessible to a broad public of learners, would help guide the nation into a brighter future.” The conference is named in honor of Marion Thompson Wright, the first black female professional historian and a pioneer in Black New Jersey historiography. The Clement A. Price Institute is “devoted to building deep historical justice in our region and beyond.”
For more information and to register for the conference, click here.