February 2025 – Black History Month Celebrations – Americans Who Tell The Truth

The Friends of the Westfield Memorial Library, in partnership with the Westfield Memorial Library and the Martin Luther King, Jr., Association, are celebrating Black History Month 2025, with an exciting program. The theme of this celebration is Americans Who Tell the Truth (AWTT) as relating to the Black Experience. The program is a vibrant combination of a portrait gallery and a speaker series highlighting the impact and accomplishments of the featured historians . 14 portraits will be on display in the Meeting room of the Westfield Memorial Library throughout the month of February 2025. These discussions will take place in the Community Meeting room from 7:00 to 8:00 PM on select nights in February.

• February 4, 2025: Keith Walcott, Professor, UCNJ “Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement: Slavery & Underground Railroad  (Highlighting Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass) to the Niagara Movement and the NAACP (W.E.B. DuBois)”.
• February 11, 2025: Brother Rob Tuck, Educator, Author, Poet: “African American Impact on Sports and Performing Arts” (Highlighting Mohammed Ali, Dick Gregory and Ossie Davis).
• February 18, 2025 : Ethel M. Washington, Author “African American Impact on Education and Literature including Westfield’s role in the Harlem Renaissance” (Highlighting Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison).
• February 24, 2025: Jason Williamson, JD  “The Power of Social Activism” (Highlighting W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Stacey Abrams, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer andBryan Stevenson).

AMERICANS WHO TELL THE TRUTH (AWTT) is a broad-based non-profit organization, inspired by the portraits of artist and historian, Robert Shetterly. He has portrayed numerous individuals, both living and deceased, who showed the courage to identify and address fundamental issues such as environmental justice, civil rights and other global and local concerns. He has created over 260 portraits, each one including a quote from the subject portrayed. You can view these works along with narratives and other information about the portrait subjects on the AWTT website Americans Who Tell the Truth.

2025 Black History Month Celebration Committee

• Friends of WML: Alice Dillon, Marcy Lechner, Alexander Liu, Erin Miller, Michael Miller, Linnea Rhodes, Velvet Rogers, Jerry Skotnicki (Chair)
• Westfield Memorial Library: Allen McGinley
• Martin Luther King Jr. Association: Dawn Nichol-Manning, Donnell Carr