Friday, October 11, 2024
11:00am-12:00pm CDT
Watch the Lecture Here
For more than twenty years, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt strongly and publicly supported the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, where civil rights activists such as Septima Clark, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks trained.
Join Dr. Melody Lehn as she explores how Roosevelt's support drew both praise and censure, as the school's integrated activities imagined a nation where people of all races could gather together and collaboratively address regional problems. After decades of providing financial support and signing petitions in favor of the school, Roosevelt visited Highlander in 1958.
As the local Ku Klux Klan chapter plotted to upset her visit, Roosevelt nevertheless persisted, participated in a workshop, and delivered a recently recovered speech. This virtual lecture focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt's longtime patronage of Highlander and suggests how her allyship to the school's mission provides important lessons for today.
More About Dr. Melody Lehn:
Melody Lehn is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where she also co-directs the Center for Speaking & Listening. At Sewanee, she teaches Public Speaking, Argumentation and Debate, U.S. Public Address, and Voices of American Women. She is the author of several articles and chapters on first ladies such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Pat Nixon, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Michelle Obama. Her co-edited anthology One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment: An Anthology, 1923-2023 will be published by Peter Lang in 2024 and her chapter "First Ladies, Suffrage, and the Equal Rights Amendment" will appear in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to U.S. First Ladies, edited by Lisa M. Burns and Teri Finneman.
NOTE: This program is entirely virtual. Members of the National First Ladies Library & Museum at the $125 level and above receive free access to this program and all ticketed online programs through 2024. Contact David Lee at dlee@firstladies.org to become a member and receive your promo code for free access. To learn more about our membership program, visit firstladies.org/donate. All attendees will receive a recording of the event within 48 hours of the event.
