Join us as Dr. Noliwe Rooks of Brown University and Dr. Ashley Preston of Howard University discuss their new books on renown educator and humanist, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune.
An interdisciplinary scholar, Noliwe Rooks is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Africana Studies, and the chair of Africana Studies at Brown University. Her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. Dr. Rooks’ work, A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune, is an intimate and searching account of the life and legacy of one of America’s towering educators, a woman who dared to center the progress of Black women and girls in the larger struggle for political and social liberation.
Dr. Ashley Robertson Preston is an Assistant Professor of History at Howard University and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Dr. Preston’s research interests focus on the activism of Black women during the early twentieth century particularly the work of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. She is the author of Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State which examines how the educator rose to prominence while fighting for equality at the height or racial unrest in the state. Her recent book Mary McLeod Bethune the Pan-Africanist was published with the University Press of Florida. Dr. Preston’s past positions in the field of Public History include serving as director of the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation-National Historic Landmark at Bethune-Cookman University while she also was an archives technician for the National Archives for Black Women’s History at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House-National Historic Site. Educated at Howard University (PhD), Temple University (MA) and Bowie State University (BS), her research has been published in Phylon, Journal of Black Studies, and The Journal of Negro Education.
