Join the Boston Public Library for an online author talk with the winner of 2020 Museum of African American History (MAAH) Stone Book Award. In Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, Jelani M. Favors offers a history of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) from 1837 to the present illustrating how HBCUs became a vital seedbed for politicians, community leaders, reformers, and activists, offering students a grounding in idealism, racial consciousness, and cultural nationalism. This program will be moderated by BPL President David Leonard, who will also host the Q&A portion of this event. We invite people who are interested in attending to  registration here:      https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/5f6257346b896d4500369f2f   

For generations, HBCUs have been essential institutions for the African American community. Their nurturing environments not only provided educational advancement but also catalyzed the Black freedom struggle, forever altering the political destiny of the United States. In this book, Jelani M. Favors offers a history of HBCUs from the 1837 founding of Cheyney State University to the present, told through the lens of how they fostered student activism. 

Favors chronicles the development and significance of HBCUs through stories from institutions such as Cheyney State University, Tougaloo College, Bennett College, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Southern University, and North Carolina A&T. He demonstrates how HBCUs became a refuge during the oppression of the Jim Crow era and illustrates the central role their campus communities played during the civil rights and Black Power movements. Throughout this definitive history of how HBCUs became a vital seedbed for politicians, community leaders, reformers, and activists, Favors emphasizes what he calls an unwritten "second curriculum" at HBCUs, one that offered students a grounding in idealism, racial consciousness, and cultural nationalism. 

Shelter in a Time of Storm also received the 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award and was a finalist for the 2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize.