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 Hilton Baton Rouge Capital Center, Baton Rouge, LA Hosted by the River Road African American Museum, Donaldsonville, LA THURSDAY, August 20 Jessica B. Harris, Author and Culinary Historian
Jessica B. Harris is one of a handful of African Americans who have achieved prominence in the culinary world. Dr. Harris has been a tenured full professor at Queens College CUNY in New York City for almost four decades. She has contributed to Cooking Light, Food & Wine, The New Yorker, and other publications. She has spoken about food on morning talk shows and lectures on food around the country. Ms. Harris is the author of ten critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora:, Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking, Sky Juice and Flying Fish Traditional Caribbean Cooking, The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent and Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim. A culinary historian, she has lectured on African-American foodways at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. as well as at numerous institutions and colleges throughout the United States and abroad. She has been a Board Member of the Caribbean Culinary Federation, a national Board member of the American Institute of Wine and Food, and is currently a life member of the College Language Association, and a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance. She is a board member of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and of the Southern Food & Beverage museum also in that city. A tenured full professor at Queens College, CUNY, Harris holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Queens College, The Université de Nancy, France, and a doctorate in Performance Studies from New York University where her dissertation focused on the French-speaking theatre of Senegal. She is currently on leave from that position to become the inaugural scholar in residence in the Ray Charles Chair in African-American Material Culture at Dillard University in New Orleans where she recently established an Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. FRIDAY, August 21 Ruby Bridges, Author & Speaker
On November 14, 1960, Ruby Nell Bridges became the first African American child to desegregate an elementary school. On that day, federal marshals escorted Ruby into William Frantz Public School in New Orleans, Louisiana, and into history. Her brave march into school attracted attention locally and nationwide–and much of it negative. Angry protesters yelled at Ruby and held up intimidating signs and symbols. Fate, however, has led Ruby to the job of improving the quality of education for children. Ruby started the Ruby Bridges Foundation as an organization to promote and encourage the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all difference through educational programs. With the belief that prejudice and racism can be eliminated, the foundation’s objective is to change society, through the education and inspiration of children. Racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it. An author and noted speaker, Ruby Bridges continues to share candidly her seasoned perspective on a history that reflects the seismic changes in America during the last half century. |
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