INNOVATION + LEADERSHIP Presents Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Annette Gordon-Reed

On Thursday, June 3 at 7pm EST, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, Annette Gordon-Reed comes to The Music Hall's virtual stage as part of the Innovation + Leadership series, now being presented in an intimate, online format. Gordon-Reed will discuss her new book, ON JUNETEENTH, the essential sweeping story of Juneteenth's integral importance to American history and the ongoing fight for equality.

"I'm thrilled to be serving as the event's moderator, bridging my work in discussing the connections between black expressive culture and freedom movements and events with Gordon-Reed's research on these topics," says Dr. Reginald A. Wilburn, associate professor at UNH and the evening's moderator, "I'm looking forward to connecting with her virtually to discuss Juneteenth and the importance of racial justice in America today."

The 7pm EST virtual event includes an author discussion moderated by Dr. Reginald A. Wilburn, an associate professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. The event will be hosted on Zoom via Eventive and books can be purchased through The Music Hall's Box Office for pick-up or shipment.

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's ON JUNETEENTH provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed-herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s-forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all.

Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story.

Annette Gordon-Reed is an award-winning author and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard. Gordon-Reed is the recipient of sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 and the National Book Award in 2008, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. She lives in New York and Cambridge.

Dr. Reginald A. Wilburn is an associate professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, specializing in African American literature and culture, Milton, and intertextuality studies. Wilburn's monograph, Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt: Appropriating Milton in Early African American Literature, was published by Duquesne University Press in 2014. He is the recipient of two teaching awards, awarded by the University of New Hampshire.

The ticket package for Innovation + Leadership: Annette Gordon-Reed on Thursday, June 3, at 7pm EST is $5. In addition to an event link, the package includes an author discussion moderated by Dr. Reginald A. Wilburn and audience Q+A. Books and tickets can be purchased online at TheMusicHall.org or through the B2W Box Office over the phone at 603.436.2400.

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