Lift Every Voice: 100 Years of Commemorating Black History
In 1926, Dr. Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week as a time to celebrate, teach, and center Black History. Since then, his organization, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), has continued to center Black History by setting the yearly Black History Month theme and providing Black history resources throughout the world. As we celebrate a "Century of Black History Commemorations," ASALH president Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead will outline the historical work that has been done to lift and center every voice while working for justice and equity.
Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead
Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead is the founding executive director of The Karson Institute for Race, Peace & Social Justice and a professor of communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the host of the award-winning radio show Today with Dr. Kaye on WEAA, 88.9 FM, and the recent recipient of the John LaFarge Award, and the Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence for her outstanding reporting on the impact racial reckoning has had in helping to close social/racial wealth gap for Black people in America. She has been selected twice by The Daily Record as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women and was recently selected as of Baltimore Who's Who in Black Baltimore 2024 Game Changer. Her radio show, Today With Dr. Kaye, has received eleven Chesapeake Associated Press Awards and two Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
She is the author of five books, including the recently released my mother’s tomorrow; RaceBrave: new and selected works; Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis, which received both the Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the Organization of American Historians and the Letitia Woods Brown Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians; and Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America. She is a K-12 master teacher in African American history, an award-winning curriculum writer and lesson plan developer, and an award-winning former Baltimore City middle school teacher.
Dr. Whitehead currently serves as the 30th national president for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and is the immediate past national president of the National Women’s Studies Association). She is also one of the most sought-after keynote speakers in the country, having given over 850 keynotes worldwide.