Charleston museum to host sessions on race with global news organization

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The Charleston Literary Festival has formed an international partnership with global news organization, The Guardian, to produce two sessions that will take place at the newly-opened International African American Museum in Charleston, on November 12th —the 10th and final day of the 2023 Festival.

The first session, slated for 2 p.m. in the African Ancestors Memorial Garden outdoor exhibition space at IAAM, will feature former Guardian journalist Gary Younge, currently professor of sociology at the University of Manchester, in conversation with journalist Kerri Forrest, now Senior Program Director For Equity Centered Leadership and Philanthropy for MDC, a legacy nonprofit committed to equitable systems of change in the South, about his latest book “Dispatches from the Diaspora.”

Reflecting on three decades of his career as a journalist, the book “is a powerful collection of his writings on race, racism, and Black life and death,” according to The Guardian. It covers some of the most defining moments in recent history, including Nelson Mandela's election campaign in South Africa, Obama’s victory, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“We are excited to partner with Charleston Literary Festival and The Guardian to create space for ambitious reading lists and conversations. Media is storytelling, and we live in an era grappling with the truly challenging stories of slavery and reconciliation. We hope the museum’s mission to champion the authentic, empathetic telling of untold stories of African American history will be a powerful spark to personal and community reflections on this year’s festival themes, Tonya M. Matthews, President and CEO of IAAM, said in the release.

The second session at 4 p.m. will feature a panel of journalists involved in The Guardian’s major journalism series, Cotton Capital, which explores the links that the newspaper’s founding editor and financial backers had with the transatlantic slave trade. Chaired by Bernard Powers, IAAM board member and director of the College of Charleston's Center for the Study of Slavery (CSSC), this panel will explore the findings from an independent academic report commissioned by The Guardian, that found that the newspaper’s founder John Edward Taylor had links to transatlantic slavery through partnerships in Manchester’s cotton manufacturing and merchant firms that imported raw cotton produced by enslaved people in the Americas. Alongside Gary Younge, the panel will include Maya Wolfe-Robinson, editor of "Cotton Capital," and Lauren N. Williams, Deputy Editor for Race and Equity at Guardian US. The conversation will cover the legacy and continued impact of transatlantic slavery and ways to make reparations.

Tickets for these two sessions and other featured sessions at Charleston Literary Festival, running from November 3 to 12, can be purchased now through the Charleston Literary Festival's website by clicking here.