Please join us on Thursday, October 7th from 6 - 8pm for a very special program, Regarding the Underground Railroad Today: A Community Conversation With Keynote Speaker Jermaine Fowler. This program will kick off a regular series of free, public gatherings on the first Thursdays of each month called Thursday Night Salon, in the Carnegie Center main galleries. Because seats will be limited, reservations for this program are required in advance. The presentation will be recorded.

Jermaine Fowler is a Louisville-based historian and creator of The Humanity Archive, a podcast that challenges dominant narratives around the history of slavery, resistance, and civil rights, and that highlights subjects from Crispus Attucks to Pocahontas to Ida B. Wells. 

At 6 pm on October 7th, Fowler will share a presentation of his studies on the Underground Railroad, followed by a Q & A. 

Directly afterward, we will welcome a small group of regional scholars and community members to the stage to further engage in dialogue about the Underground Railroad broadly, as well as about the exhibition on the subject at the Carnegie Center, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage: The Men and Women of the Underground Railroad, which will reach its 15th anniversary next year.

As that estimable milemarker approaches, (and against the backdrop of International Underground Railroad Month*), this panel discussion will aim to address the question: what does it mean to behold or depict the stories of the Underground Railroad through a 2021/2022 lens? 

We at the Carnegie Center, along with a committee of artists, thinkers, historians, and community members whom we have invited to join us, are spending this September in a state of reflection and consideration of the question posed above. Please stay tuned for further ways to join us in this conversation.

*International Underground Railroad Month is an annual commemoration in September that aims to elevate the stories and honor the actions of freedom seekers and their allies. Thanks to a proclamation this month by Governor Eric Holcomb, the State of Indiana now officially recognizes September as International Underground Railroad Month. (It was first initiated by the State of Maryland in 2019.) 

Thanks to the Indiana Arts Commission for their support of our Underground Railroad Month programming!