All are welcome to a a special one-display of highlights of Beinecke Library collections related to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to the African American freedom movement on view for the holiday in the courtyard level reading room. You will be able to see an array of materials, many drawn from the library’s James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters, that highlight Dr. King’s life, legacy, and impact, and the long civil rights movement in the United States.

Was Horace Walpole really a “miser,” as William Hazlitt claimed?

Collected over the course of more than 125 years, the materials in Subjects and Objects pose questions and highlight contradictions: How did the term Slavic collection come to encompass materials from so many lands, cultures, and languages that lie beyond that linguistical designation? How did Russia come to symbolize this region for Western observers—and why does that impression persist?

Winsome Pinnock’s most recent play, Rockets and Blue Lights, takes the audience on a deep dive into J. M. W. Turner’s painting “The Slave Ship,” asking questions about received and shared history. She is joined by past prize recipient Branden-Jacobs Jenkins in a discussion about how theater can help us look more fully into history.
A complementary display of works by J. M. W. Turner, including sketchbook drawings and color studies, finished watercolors, and prints, will be on view in the Yale Center for British Study Room that day.

“Skokiaan” is a popular tune originally written by Zimbabwean musician August Musarurwa that has been covered by many musician, including Louis Armstrong. Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu chats with Regina Bain, Executive Director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, about the song and about Armstrong’s tours through the African Continent in the 50s and 60s.