Dewart Bell to Deliver Juneteenth Day Address on Black Women, Freedom and Justice Event is Part of Women's Media Center History Lecture Series

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Dr. Janet Dewart Bell will present a Juneteenth Day lecture on Black women in history and their quest for freedom, justice and democracy as part of a Women’s Media Center Series.

Dewart Bell’s speech will premiere online on Wednesday, June 19, at noon ET. It is inspired by her latest books, " Blackbirds Singing: Inspiring Black Women’s Speeches From the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century and Lighting the Fires of Freedom, African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement.

“During the Civil Rights movement, African-Americans led the fight to free this country from the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow, though they were all too often and remain invisible to the public,” said Dewart Bell, president and founder of LEAD InterGenerational Solutions and Chair of the Women's Media Center. “African-American women played significant roles at all levels of the movement. These women did not stand on ceremony. They simply did the work that needed to be done without expectation of personal gain.”

Following her lecture, Dewart Bell will explore the historical impact of Black women leaders on society with Dr. Koritha Mitchell, a professor of English at Boston University, literary historian, award-winning author, and cultural critic. Last year, Mitchell received the WMC Progressive Women’s Voices IMPACT Award.

“We chose Juneteenth as the day to premiere Dr. Janet Dewart Bell’s lecture honoring the historical impact of narratives by Black women leaders to highlight the national celebration of African American resilience, achievement, and racial advancement,” said Julie Burton, President and CEO of the Women’s Media Center.

The lecture is the second in a series named for Beverly Wettenstein, who bequeathed the funding to the Women’s Media Center. Wettenstein, who passed away in 2019, was a renowned journalist, speaker, media critic and historian. She chronicled the representation of women in national media outlets and was the founder of the “Women in History and Making History Today – 365-Days-A-Year - Database.” She also served as a public affairs executive with several global banks, as well as Semester at Sea. She wrote the “HerStory” column in the Dallas Morning News. Dr. Cristina Azocar, author and journalism professor at San Francisco State University, was the inaugural speaker.

Erica González Martínez, vice chair of the Women’s Media Center Board and founding editor of IDAR/E channel at WMC, will introduce Dewart Bell and Mitchell.

Dewart Bell has extensive experience as a communications strategist, television and radio producer, and management consultant. She is co-editor of Carving Out a Humanity: Race, Rights, and Redemption and founder of The Derrick Bell Lectures on Race in American Society at New York University School of Law. She has been a key strategist and senior executive at a number of national organizations including PolicyLink, The Opportunity Agenda, National Urban League, and National Public Radio (NPR). Her programming at NPR won numerous awards, including a Peabody. The first director of specialized programs at NPR, she helped increase diversity by recruiting and training women and people of color as producers and on-air talent.

The Women’s Media Center is an inclusive and feminist organization that works to raise the visibility, viability, and decision-making power of women and girls in media by ensuring that their stories get told and their voices are heard. We do this by researching and monitoring media; creating and modeling original online and on-air content; training women to be effective in media; and promoting women experts in all fields.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Please click this link to register.

For additional information, contact: Cristal Williams Chancellor at cristal@womensmediacenter.com.

Watch the full lecture here.