The Race Unity Circle of Olean

Listen to this morning's WBFO broadcast of "What’s Next?" as they return to Olean for a conversation with Della Moore, the founder and executive director of the African American Center for Cultural Development. She first came to Olean 52 years ago and has since become a fixture of the community. Her center is full of artifacts from the local black history of the Southern Tier, including items from her own personal collection. Moore joins host Jay Moran and producer Patrick Hosken for a tour of the center and a discussion about its mission and history, and what she’s learned from a half-century in Olean.

https://www.wbfo.org/2024-02-21/whats-next-oleans-living-black-history-with-della-moore

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the
Olean Public Library:
July 17th at 1pm
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
Book selection:
We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For
(The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures) by Eddie Glaude Jr.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again, a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary people can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and assume responsibility for what it takes to achieve a more just and perfect democracy. We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics.

View from our yoga mats in the morning yesterday, my first and probably last Korean corn dog, last night’s walk at sunset in Lakewood Park

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the library:
June 19th at 1pm
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
Book selection: The Good Lord Bird: A Novel by James McBride

From the bestselling author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856--a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces--when legendary abolitionist John Brown arrives. When an argument between Brown and Henry's master turns violent, Henry is forced to leave town--along with Brown, who believes Henry to be a girl and his good luck charm. The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off.

As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization's first major homicide investigations. An undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau, infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection to bring an end to the deadly crime spree. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Join us for the Race Unity Circle of Olean's Book Club
May 15th at 1pm in the Olean Public Library.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library:
April 17th at 1pm
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
Book selection: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the library:
March 20th at 1pm

Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.

Book selection: Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada by Lawrence Hill
Interspersed with slices of his personal experiences, fascinating family history and the experiences of thirty-six other Canadians of mixed race interviewed for this book, BLACK BERRY, SWEET JUICE also examines contemporary racial issues in Canadian society. Hill explores the terms used to describe children of mixed race, the unrelenting hostility towards mix-race couples and the real meaning of the black Canadian experience.

Discussing American History
Saturday, February 24th from 2pm to 4pm.
at the Olean Public Library
Join the Race Unity Circle of Olean for an afternoon of collegial dialog about American history and its effect on our culture. Please bring a discussion prompt which can be a reading, poem, news article, or visual. Refreshments provided. All are welcome to this free program.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library:
February 21st at 1pm
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
Book selection: The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White by Henry Wiencek
The Hairstons is the extraordinary story of the largest family in America, the Hairston clan. With several thousand black and white members, the Hairstons share a complex and compelling history: divided in the time of slavery, they have come to embrace their past as one family.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club at the Olean Public Library:
January 24th at 1pm
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
Book selection: Soil by Camille Dungy
In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the library:
December 20th at 1pm
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
Book selection: The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison
America’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid?

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library:
November 15 at 1pm
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
Book selection: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

The book that galvanized the nation, gave voice to the emerging civil rights movement in the 1960s—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today. "The finest essay I’ve ever read.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates

Race Unity Circle movie viewing:
“Who We Are – A Chronicle of Racism in America”
Part One: Monday, November 6th at 6:30pm
Part two: Monday, December 4th at 6:30pm

Directed by: Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler, Written by: Jeffery Robinson
Interweaving lecture, personal anecdotes, interviews, and shocking revelations, in WHO WE ARE — A Chronicle of Racism in America, criminal defense/civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America.

Free and open to the public. Refreshments and discussion to follow.

OCTOBER'S BOOK CLUB SELECTION

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library: October 18 at 1pm
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
Book selection: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library: September 20 at 1pm

Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.

Book selection: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass―offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Race Unity Circle presents a viewing of "The Road to Justice"

A Film by Kaliya Warren and Brendan Hall (31 minutes, Grades 7 – Adult)

Monday, September 25 @ 7pm
Olean Public Library

The Road to Justice follows two groups on a civil rights tour through the American South as they reckon with the country's legacy of racial injustice. The first is a group of predominantly Black middle school students from Chicago, and the second a group of older mostly white Americans who lived through the 1960s Civil Rights era. Both groups come face to face with the leaders and everyday activists whose courage and perseverance paved the way for future generations. Does the arc of history truly bend towards justice? And what does justice mean, when the problems of our past are only a grandparent away? How can we heal as a nation without honestly engaging with our history? Discussion and refreshments to follow. Free and open to the public.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the library
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
August 16 at 1pm

Book selection: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library

Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.

July 19 at 1pm

Book selection: Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years by Sarah L. Delany, A. Elizabeth Delany, Amy Hill Hearth
Warm, feisty, and intelligent, the Delany sisters speak their mind in a book that is at once a vital historical record and a moving portrait of two remarkable women who continued to love, laugh, and embrace life after over a hundred years of living side by side. Their sharp memories show us the post-Reconstruction South and Booker T. Washington; Harlem's Golden Age and Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson. Bessie breaks barriers to become a dentist; Sadie quietly integrates the New York City system as a high school teacher. Their extraordinary story makes an important contribution to our nation's heritage—and an indelible impression on our lives.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
June 28 at 1pm

Book selection: Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns
The Warmth Of Other Suns is the story of how and why millions of Black Americans left the South between 1915 and 1970 to escape the brutality of the Jim Crow Laws and find safety, better pay, and more freedom in what is known today as The Great Migration. The Warmth of Other Suns details a period in American history, whose importance cannot be understated. The effects of the Great Migration not only affected the lives of millions of African-Americans, but also shaped much of modern-day American popular culture and identity.

Stop by the Olean Public Library on May 2nd to speak with representatives from the following agencies. Ask questions, sign up for services, and grab a few promo items! We will be there from 1 to 3pm speaking about our initiatives.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library

Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
May 17 at 1pm

Book selection: Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman

Based on the extraordinary life of author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club @ the Olean Public Library
Free and open to the public. Multiple copies available via the library.
April 19th, 1pm.

Book selection: The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century by Peniel E. Joseph

In The Third Reconstruction, distinguished historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a powerful and personal new interpretation of recent history. The racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020, he argues, marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era.

Race Unity Circle of Olean Poetry Reading to
Celebrate National Poetry Month @ the Olean Public Library
April 6th, 7pm

Amber Flora Thomas is a mixed-race African American poet who has authored three collections of poetry, including Eye of Water, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, The Rabbits Could Sing, and most recently Red Channel in the Rupture. Presenting April 6th at 7pm, via Zoom, she will read from her published works and take questions. A recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, the Richard Peterson Prize, and the Ann Stanford Prize, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Thomas is a Cave Canem fellow and faculty member. She regularly teaches at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Sewanee Writers Conference. She earned an MFA at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. Event is free and open to the public. Program and refreshments sponsored by the Race Unity Circle of Olean.

Native American Residential Boarding Schools: Moving From A Basic Understanding Towards Healing
March 13 at 7pm
at Olean Public Library
Speaker: Pete Hill, Special Initiatives Director Native American Community Services
This session will provide an understanding of Native American Residential Boarding Schools and the many consequences and residual impacts of that system. We will discuss recent updates and ongoing efforts for a greater understanding of how these issues can be addressed. We will also share some thoughts about being a good ally of indigenous peoples and communities given the history of these schools. Free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Race Unity Circle of Olean. (This program was rescheduled from the original Feb 27th date.)

Our February 27th program with Pete Hill has been rescheduled to March 13th at the Olean Public Library at 7pm.

Tonight’s program is unfortunately going to have to be rescheduled. He would be coming from Buffalo and the weather forecast is not good. We regret the inconvenience and will have a new date shortly. Thank you for your understanding.

TONIGHT'S SPEAKER PROGRAM POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER!

NEW DATE March 13, 2023 at 7pm

Native American Residential Boarding Schools: Moving from a Basic Understanding
Towards Healing

@ Olean Public Library

Speaker: Pete Hill, Special Initiatives Director Native American Community Services

This session will provide an understanding of Native American Residential Boarding Schools and the many consequences and residual impacts of that system. We will
discuss recent updates and ongoing efforts for a greater understanding of how these issues can be addressed. We will also share some thoughts about being a good ally of Indigenous peoples and communities given the history of these schools. Free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Race Unity Circle of Olean.

The Race Unity Circle of Olean Book Club
Free and open to the public. Meets at the Olean Public Library. Multiple copies available via the Library.

March 15th at 1pm: Unexampled Courage: the Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring by Richard Gergel

Feb 11
1-3pm
Olean Public Library
In celebration of Black History Month come join an interactive commemoration of history.
Share African American Poetry or share a brief highlight of the history of an African American figure.
Sample a taste of Africa…soul food on the tongue. Free, open to the public. All ages welcome. Sponsored by the Race Unity Circle of Olean. Registration required – call 716-372-0200.