Panel eyes black Memphians’ triumphs

Richard Wright Memphis too soon.

In 1927, Wright — whose novels “Black Boy” and “Native Son” detailed the struggles of Africanamerican men in a racist society — lit out for Chicago in search of the humanity that he thought he would never find in the South.

But, say the authors of “An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee,” Wright’s “zeal to migrate north blinded him to the various ways African Americans had shaped the politics and culture of this city at the crossroads, sitting atop a Mississippi left River bluff, with the fertile and oppressive Delta fanning to its south.

“Black Memphians found salvation and independence in churches. They did the courageous and calculating work of political organizing. They made music that became a seminal American art form with global impact. And they forged a brilliant, complicated dynamic movement for freedom.”

On Monday, at Blount Auditorium at Rhodes College’s Buckman Hall, the co-authors of that book, Aram Goudsouzian and Charles W. Mckinney Jr., will lead a 6 p.m. panel to tell the largely untold story of the role Memphians played in the freedom struggle.

Besides Goudsouzian, professor and chair of the University of Memphis Department of History, and Mckinney, associate history professor and Neville Frierson Bryan Chair of Africana Studies at Rhodes College, the panel includes: Beverly Bond, U of M associate history professor; Charles L. Hughes, director of Rhodes’ Turley Memphis Center; and Elton Weaver III, assistant history professor at Lemoyne-owen College.

The panel is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow. For more information, call 901-843-3000 or email hughesc@rhodes.edu.

Tonyaa Weathersbee can be reached at tonyaa. weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter at @tonyaajw.