Montgomery County Community College will join libraries from across the country this year in celebrating African American poetry, thanks to a new national grant obtained by two MCCC faculty members.

MCCC has been selected as one of 49 libraries in 24 states to receive the Library of America’s “Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters” grant. The program, won by MCCC Dr. Fran Lassiter, English Associate Professor and Amanda M. Leftwich, Student Success Librarian is part of a national public humanities initiative dedicated to enhancing appreciation of the extraordinary range and richness of the 250-year-long African American poetic tradition, according to its website.

A total of $58,800 was awarded to public libraries and other institutions in the form of $1,200 stipends to support public programs centered on a core selection of poems that illustrate five humanities themes at the heart of the project. Poets and scholars will participate in all programs, which will be presented online from September 2020 through February 2021 and will be free and open to the public.

MCCC will use the grant to host a series of public online events, beginning with "Black History and Memory: A Discussion on Black Diasporic Poetry," on Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 5:15 p.m. The hour-long, virtual, panel discussion, moderated by Leftwich, will feature Lassiter, Maurice A. Tony Davis, MCCC Counselor, Community College of Philadelphia Assistant English Professor Shawne Johnson and St. Joseph’s University Associate English Professor Dr. Aisha Damali Lockridge. This event is designed to bring about cultural awareness of the Black experience, but also to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on diversity and inclusivity. A question and answer session will follow the discussion. 

There are plans to also hold events in February featuring an African American poetry contest, a guest artist/poet, and a workshop with poet laureates from Philadelphia and Montgomery County. Full details will be released as they become available.

Leftwich and Lassiter applied for the grant on behalf of the College and said they were thrilled to be named one of its recipients.

“The College already offers an African American literature course,” said Leftwich, “so I was sure we would win this grant and we will use it well.”

Students already appreciate African American poetry, she said, and this new program will provide a more cohesive experience for them.

“This is the first event the Library of America is doing of this type,” said Lassiter, “but there are other grants out there like this. We’re hoping this will be an annual event, and it will generate enough interest to do this each year.”

African American culture and history is celebrated every year during the Pan African Festival hosted by the Montgomery County Community College African American Student League (ASL). The annual festival was first created over a quarter of a century ago to recognize the contributions of Malcolm X, as well as those of the African Diaspora, meaning where Africans are from throughout the world.

Lift Every Voice is presented by Library of America with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Emerson Collective. Its principal objective is to engage participants in a multifaceted exploration of African American poetry, the perspectives it offers on American history and the struggle for racial justice, and the universality of its imaginative response to the personal experiences of black Americans over three centuries, according to its website.

Lift Every Voice coincides with the publication in September of "African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song," a major new Library of America anthology edited by Kevin Young, who also serves as principal humanities advisor on the project. Young is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library, which will host a national launch for the initiative on Sept. 17, 2020.

Each online event at MCCC will be free and open to the public. For more information, contact Integrated Learning at Integratedlearning@mc3.edu.