Event Lectures and Symposia Race in America: Jason Reynolds and Jacqueline Woodson

Date and Location

  • When: Friday, June 19, 2020

    4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT

  • This event will be livestreamed on Facebook External and YouTube External. It will be available for viewing afterwards in the Library's Event Videos collection.

  • Where: Online Only

Part of National Book Festival

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

To commemorate Juneteenth, the holiday marking the end of slavery, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden chats with current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds and former National Ambassador Jacqueline Woodson about ways to hear and support kids during a period of nationwide protest against injustice.

This event is part of the National Book Festival Presents series “Hear You, Hear Me.” The series is named for a phrase from the Langston Hughes poem “Theme for English B”:

But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.

This new online series, a continuation of the themes raised in our June 5 program, “Carla Hayden and Lonnie Bunch: Cultural Institutions at Times of Social Unrest,” features Hayden in conversation with some of the nation’s great literary figures. These conversations will highlight what poetry and literature can offer the nation as it contends with foundational issues of social justice.