Announcing the Fall 2025 CBFS Season!

August 14, 2025

Please join us for the Fall 2025 season of Conversations in Black Freedom Studies! All the events in the series are free and open to the public. The events will take place online on the first Thursday of the month at 6:30 PM and recordings of all our events are available on the Schomburg Center's youtube page.

Our season will begin with an event on September 4th marking the 100th anniversary of Malcolm X's birth on May 19, 1925. We will be joined by four scholars bringing diverse perspectives to the study of Malcolm's life. Anna Malaika Tubbs will discuss the life and politics of Louise Little, Patrick Parr will present on Malcolm's incarceration, Erik McDuffie will share his work on Garveyism and Black internationalism in the U.S. heartland, and Najha Zigbi-Johnson will root us in Malcolm's engagements with the communities and environment of Harlem and New York City.

The second event of the season will take place on October 2nd and will focus on spatiality of Black arts and performance. Julius B. Fleming Jr. will share his work on performance and the Civil Rights Movement. Jo-Ann Morgan will discuss the relationship between the Black Panther Party's visual culture and the Black Arts Movement. La Donna Forsgren will also discuss the Black Arts Movement, presenting on her oral histories with women in the movement. Courtney Thorsson will discuss how a network of Black women writers transformed American culture.

In a moment when Black history and Black studies are under attack, it is critical to hear from the scholars, organizers, and teachers steadfastly pursuing and documenting this work. Our season continues on November 6th with a panel that brings together four such writers to share about their brilliant books. Brian Jones and Jesse Hagopian, both of whom are rooted in anti-racist education struggles today, will discuss the importance of Black history and organizing for anti-racist schools and educational institutions. Barry Goldenberg will dive into the history of Harlem Prep and multicultural education in the neighborhood. Crystal Sanders will discuss the economically coerced migration of Black students out of the South and the debt owed to public HBCUs.

On December 4th, the Fall 2025 season will conclude with a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the publication of Charles M. Payne's groundbreaking history of the Mississippi movement, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Payne will be in conversation with SNCC veteran Charlie Cobb, radical teacher Tess Raser, and historians of the Black freedom movement Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Emilye Crosby. 30 years after it was first published, this history remains a critical text for new generations of organizers carrying forward the struggle for freedom and justice.