The 33rd annual Nashville Conference of African American History and Culture will take place Feb. 14, 2014 at the Tennessee State University Avon Williams campus.

Co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences at Tennessee State University, and the Metropolitan Historical Commission, the conference will focus on the educational and musical legacies of Nashville’s African American community. For more than 30 years, the award-winning conference has brought together historians, students, educators, community leaders and others interested in African American history and culture.

During the conference, Dr. Sonya Ramsey, of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, will speak on the legacy of African American schoolteachers in Nashville, the subject of her recent book, Reading, Writing, and Segregation: A Century of Black Women Schoolteachers in Nashville.

Additionally, Dr. Don Cusic, professor of Music Business at Belmont University, will speak on educator, poet and activist James Weldon Johnson. Dr. Janet Walsh, coordinator at the TSU Avon Williams Campus library, Beverly Robertson with the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, will highlight the research and interpretation of the African-American experience at their institutions.

In commemoration of the Sesquicentennial year of the Battle of Nashville in the American Civil War, Norm Hill will join Dr. Tim Johnson to discuss the Civil War experiences of Nashville’s African Americans during the Battle of Nashville.
For more information, contact Tara Mitchell, Metropolitan Historical Commission, at 615-862-7970, or Mielnik Wynn at 615-532-1550.