Juneteenth Lecture: A Reflection on Social Justice and Emancipation (Zoom)

The East Brunswick Public Library, New Brunswick Public Library, and Matawan-Aberdeen Public Library will be hosting a Zoom lecture in honor of Juneteenth, a holiday celebrated annually on June 19th that commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people of Texas, then the most remote region of the Confederacy, finally learned slavery had been abolished and that they were free.  Dr. Gretchen Sorin will present on the significance of the holiday, and how the automobile transformed the notion of liberation by providing safe travel for African Americans.  As the author of the book Driving While Black, an engaging account of how car ownership impacted civil rights for Black people, Dr. Sorin traces the role of the automobile in fundamentally reshaping African American life.  

A New Jersey native, Dr. Gretchen Sorin is Director and Distinguished Service Professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program, a training program for museum curators, educators, and directors that is part of the State University of New York College at Oneonta.  She is also a Fellow of the New York Academy of historians.  Dr. Sorin has more than thirty years of experience in the museum profession, she has curated innumerable exhibits, including those for the Smithsonian, the Jewish Museum and the New York State Historical Association.  She has directed a PBS documentary based on her book, which can be found here.

Co-sponsored by the New Brunswick Free Public Library and the Matawan-Aberdeen Public Library

 INSTRUCTIONS TO CONNECT

• To join our Zoom Meeting click on (link) or
  • copy/paste: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81525722561
• Meeting ID  815 2572 2561
  To dial-in via telephone for audio instead of joining the webinar:  929 436 2866