MVPL Partners With RISEUP & Black Westchester to present Decypher Lecture Series Feat. Dr. Jeffrey B. Perry
Mount Vernon, NY – Thursday, August 26, 2021 will mark the launch of a new lecture series dubbed DECYPHER, which will bring renowned authors to the Mount Vernon Public Library to discuss recent publications on Black history and life. The inaugural lecture will feature Dr. Jeffrey B. Perry, author of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-nominated book, Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality 1918-1927 (Columbia University Press, December 2020).
Hubert Harrison was known as the “father of Harlem radicalism.” A mentor to Marcus Garvey, Harrison was a key link in the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Liberation struggle. Hubert Harrison lived in Mount Vernon, New York in the early 1900s. The production of DECYPHER is being spearheaded by RISEUP (Research Initiatives for the Strategic Empowerment of the Urban Populace), a local grassroots think tank, in partnership with Black Westchester Magazine, and The Mount Vernon Public Library (MVPL).
“Programs such as DECYPHER are one of the many partnerships the library shares so that we can bring informative, thought-provoking programs to the community,” MVPL Director Timur Davis shares with Black Westchester.
DECYPHER aims to entertain, engage and enlighten attendees. “In bringing some of the nation’s leading authors to the library, DECYPHER continues the tradition of popular education that Harrison and an earlier generation of radicals saw as vital to any movement for progressive change,” Dr. Robert Baskerville, the president of RISEUP added.
Dr. Jeffrey B. Perry and MVPL Director Timur Davis appeared on The People Before Politics Radio Show, Sunday, August 15th to discuss the event and Dr. Perry’s book.
Dr. Perry’s work focuses on the role of white supremacy as a retardant to progressive social change and on the centrality of struggle against white supremacy to progressive social change efforts.
For fifty years Jeff Perry has been active in the working class movement as a rank-and-file worker and as a union shop steward, officer, editor, and retiree. He has also been involved in domestic and international social justice issues including affirmative action, tenants’ rights, union democracy, anti-apartheid, anti-war, and anti-imperialist work. A vast collection of his materials in these areas is currently being prepared for repository placement.
The event will take place in the Fiction Room. Seating will begin at 5:30 pm, and will include music by DJ I -Slam and light refreshments. Copies of Dr. Perry’s two-volume biography of Harrison, as well as an anthology of Harrison’s writings he also edited, will be available for purchase.
For further information please contact: Cathy Webb 914-668-1840 ext.236 or email: cwebb@wlsmail.org
