By Samuel Williams, Jr., Special to the AFRO
and Deborah Bailey, Contributing Editor
dbailey@afro.com
Black authors were featured front and center at the first in-person National Book Festival held by the Library of Congress since Labor Day weekend in 2019.
The award-winning festival, which started as a pet project by former first lady and librarian Laura Bush in 2001, has become the nation’s premier meeting ground for bibliophiles of every age and background.
Kwame Alexander took to the kids’ stage to preview his new children’s book, “The Door of No Return.” Author Derick Barnes also read his lively new children’s book, “The Queen of Kindergarten,” written with Vanessa Brantley-Newton. Activist and author Ruby Bridges was on-hand to debut her novel, “I am Ruby Bridges.” The book article details the historic day in 1960 when she attended an all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana.
In all, more than 50 Black authors, illustrators, and other creatives connected with the audience members filling D.C.’s Walter E. Washington Convention Center. There, they were doing what book lovers do – talking about books!
Author and academician Tomiko Brown-Nagin was one of several Black main-stage authors prominently featured at this year’s National Book Festival. Brown-Nagin brought to life the story of female attorney Constance Baker Motley to an audience of thousands, through her talk this past week.
Motley, although well known in Washington, D.C., made remarkable strides for the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. To be “under the radar,” nationally, was how she preferred to operate, said Brown-Nagin.
Brown-Nagin said that “Civil Rights Queen” is a tribute to a woman whose life needs to be more widely known in this generation.
“This nuanced biography of Constance Baker Motley examines the paradoxes in the remarkable life of a ‘first.’ She was the first Black woman elected to the New York State Senate, the first female Manhattan borough president, and the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary.”
Baker Motley was a leading lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Motley was also the first Black woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and one of the women who helped shape the civil rights movement. Between 1982 and 1986, Motley served as chief judge where she served thereafter as Senior Judge until her death in September 2005.
Brown-Nagin, dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and a professor of history at Harvard University, sought to bring the story of a woman whose life and work opened doors.
“The sacrifices Baker-Motley made both professionally and in her personal life are not publicly known,” said Brown-Nagin, whose book examines the life and story of a Black woman who changed lives for many other women of color.
Brown-Nagin said that Motley was “reserved, eloquent and graceful.”
“She was a close associate of Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall and he assigned Baker-Motley to the famed James Meredith case,” Brown-Nagin said.
“Marshall was not going down to Mississippi to deal with the extreme racism, but Motley took the case. She and Medgar Evans faced incredible racist intimidation as they traveled to various court hearings,” Brown-Nagin told the audience.
Also featured at the National Book Festival’s main stage was actress, lyricist, and author, Janelle Monae, who read from her recently published short stories from “The Memory Librarian.” The short story was a compilation of science fiction (sci-fi), written in collaboration with Yohanca Delgado, Eve L. Ewing, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, and Sheree Renée Thomas.
When asked why she chose science fiction fantasy as her first choice to start her publishing work, Monae responded, “I grew up reading lots of sci-fi books and watching sci-fi films. Goosebumps was the first book that inspired me,” Monet said.
“I’ve always had a thirst for that genre where you can say anything, do anything. We get to decide who we are. I like world building and I felt like sci-fi allowed me to go beyond the binary,” Monae continued.
Actor Channie Waites dramatized the reading of “If Beale Street Could Talk.” As veteran music journalist and first Black editor of Billboard Magazine, Danyel Smith told the stories of the little-known Black women who created America’s music scene over the past three decades, detailed in her book “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.”
You can catch taped sessions of this year’s National Book Festival, and find a whole world of great books at loc.gov.
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