LYNN (Podcast) LYNN — Government officials, academic scholars, and social justice advocates will come together in Lynn Wednesday (10/4) for Defending Democracy, a public forum on current threats to civil liberties, including book banning in the public schools, the threat to minority voting rights, and efforts to eliminate or marginalize the teaching of black history. Complete event information is posted below
Guests:
Wendy Joseph – Curator of the Grand Army of the Republic Hall (GAR) in Lynn
Tom Dalton – Author, former reporter for the Daily Item & Salem News – Dalton’s books are available at the Lynn Museum, all profits benefit the museum.
Wendy Joseph & Tom Dalton with Bill Newell
Massachusetts Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler, the former Lynn school superintendent, is a featured speaker along with Dr. Kabria Baumgartner of Northeastern University, associate professor of history and Africana Studies. She is the award-winning author of a book about black girls and women
who fought for their educational rights in the 19th century.
Panelists include Dr. Martin Garnar, director of the Amherst College library and an activist in the fight to stop book banning. Garnar is the former chairman of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee.
Defending Democracy will be held Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 6 p.m. at Lynn Memorial Auditorium in Lynn City Hall. The free forum is co-sponsored by the Grand Army of the Republic Museum in Lynn and Lynn Museum/Lynn Arts.
One of the prime movers behind the forum is Steve Matthews, a Lynn native and labor activist whose search for his mother’s Southern roots led to the discovery of a family legacy of
slave-holding. He chronicled his journey of self-discovery in “Finding Mary,” a 10-part series that ran last year in the Lynn Item. On that journey, Matthews met Billy Keyserling, the former mayor of Beaufort, S.C., who will speak at the forum. Keyserling started the Second Founding of America Learning Center in Beaufort, a nonprofit organization that partners with the National Park Service to uncover the untold stories of the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War.
Panelists also include Nicole McClain, the first female African-American to sit on the Lynn City Council and founder and president of the North Shore Juneteenth Association; Adriana Paz, founder of North Shore’s Women of Color Association and other racial justice organizations; Jeff Crosby, a former GE union official who helped bring together labor and community groups to form the New Lynn Coalition; and Rev. Andre Bennett, president of the Essex County Community Organization, an affiliation of 39 religious congregations and the North Shore Labor Council.
The evening program will include a “living history interlude” featuring actors portraying Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, who arrived in Lynn in 1841 as a fugitive slave and went on to become the century’s leading Black activist and a friend and advisor to Lincoln. The Lincoln impersonator will deliver the Gettysburg Address. At 10 a.m. on Oct. 4, “Frederick Douglass” will join Dexter
Bishop of the Sons of Union Veterans for a memorial service at the GAR lot in Pine Grove Cemetery, followed by a tour of abolitionist graves led by Julia Greene, an adjunct professor at
North Shore Community College. All of the Defending Democracy programs are free and open
to the public.
“This event,” Matthews said, “is made possible by the deep connection and respectful relationship between these dedicated community and social justice organizations and the leadership of Doneeca Thurston at the Lynn Museum and Wendy Joseph at the Grand Army of the Republic Museum, which are both treasured repositories of Lynn’s history.
Wendy Joseph / Tom Dalton – Next to hand written letter by President Abraham Lincoln at the Lynn GAR Hall / Museum
Lincoln Letter
