Scholar on African American Women to Speak at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Jacqueline Jones Royster, a scholar of the non-fiction writing and public speaking of African American women, will deliver a lecture and slide presentation on Monday, Nov. 20, at 4 p.m. in the Dinand Library Faculty Lounge. Royster's lecture, entitled "frican American Women Literacy and Social Action,"is free and open to the public.

Royster is an English professor at Ohio State University and a past president of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the premier national organization of college-level expository writing teachers. She is an expert on turn-of-the-century anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, and has published a collection of her work.

In her book, "races of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women," Royster analyzes the ways and means whereby nineteenth-century African American women acquired advanced literacy skills against heavy odds and used their verbal talents on behalf of their community. She will lecture on some of the material covered in this book, and present a slide show from her extensive collection of period photographs.

The event is sponsored by the English department, the women’s studies concentration and the African American studies concentration.