Chatelain talks about her new book on the women who shaped the march, with live music from singer Chantell McCulloch, at The Mount’s new Lit Salon.
Friday, November 6, 7–8:30pm | Great Barrington, MA | $20–$25
Historian Marcia Chatelain talks about her new book, How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington, at Barrington Hall on Friday. The Mount presents the evening as part of its new Lit Salon of the Berkshires, a series that pairs literature and music in candlelit conversations. Author Michelle Young, who curates the series, moderates, and Chicago singer-songwriter Chantell McCulloch performs.
The book is a group biography of 13 Black women who shaped the 1963 March on Washington. It includes Josephine Baker, Rosa Parks, and Mahalia Jackson, along with Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day’s musical program, and Anna Hedgeman, the coordinator who pushed late in the planning for a tribute to Black women’s work. Chatelain is a professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of South Side Girls and Franchise, which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History.
McCulloch is a classically trained vocalist who performs blues, jazz, and classical soul. She has opened for local legends Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, and Berkshire Magazine named her one of its Berkshire 25 this year.
Young comes with her own bonafides. She wrote The Art Spy, a biography of World War II resistance figure Rose Valland.
Doors open at 6pm, with a cash bar and a food truck.
Barrington Hall, 426 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington, MA. Tickets at edithwharton.org or 413-551-5111, ext. 2.
