W.E.B. DuBois Library hosts distinguished speaker Howard Dodson

The W.E.B. Du Bois library is in its 15th year of presenting distinguished speakers to honor the library’s namesake. This year,the speaker will be Howard Dodson, Jr., chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the leading center for materials and artifacts on black cultural life at the New York Public Library.

Dodson will present the 15th annual Du Bois lecture, sponsored by the Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives Department.

As a historian and educator, Dodson has specialized in the culture of African and African American people. His focus has been on retrieval, preservation, and interpretation of documentation of African diaspora and African history and culture.

Dodson holds a masters degree in both history and political science, and an “A.B.D.,” or all but dissertation in black history and relations. Dodson was the director of the Institute of the Black World from 1974 to 1979 which is the research center of Martin Luther King Junior Center for Nonviolent Change in Atlanta.  

In addition to winning several honorary awards from various universities, Dodson has published numerous books including “Becoming American: The African American Journey,” “In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience,” and “The Black New Yorkers: Four Hundred Years of African American History.”

Because of Dodson’s interest in the history of black people throughout the Western Hemisphere, he decided to go to South Africa with the Peace Corps in the 1960s. His plans changed, however, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

 According to an interview done with Contemporary Black Biography, Dr. King’s death led Dodson to the realization that he had no clear path to travel. His solution to this sense of de-centering was to return to history for new bases for assessing this particular moment in time. Dodson told CBB that he felt he needed to connect with the best of moral and ethical traditions, which he later found in his extensive studies of black history and literature.

One of Dodson’s goals is not only to educate others on the history of the black people, but to encourage more research on African and African-American culture in his role at the Schomburg Center.

The lecture will take place Thursday, Feb. 26 at 6:30 p.m. in the Special Collections Reading room on the 25th floor of the Du Bois library,

Dinah Gorelik can be reached at dgorelik@student.umass.edu

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