Fannie Lou Hamer Annual Lecture
Fannie Lou Hamer Black History Month Lecture
Hosted annually by the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware, the Fannie Lou Hamer Lecture is a signature event held each February in celebration of Black History Month. Named in honor of Fannie Lou Hamer, a fearless leader of the Civil Rights Movement, this lecture series continues her mission of advocating for justice, equality and the empowerment of Black communities.
The Hamer Lecture brings distinguished scholars, award-winning authors and thought leaders in African American studies to campus, fostering critical conversations about race, activism and the ongoing fight for social change.
For more information, email kbgolden@udel.edu. Kathryn B. Golden, assistant professor of Africana Studies, organizes this Africana Studies Speaker Series.
Previous Events
On February 24, 2025, the University of Delaware's Department of Africana Studies hosted second annual Fannie Lou Hamer Black History Month Lecture, featuring Daniel Black, a professor of African American Studies, award-winning novelist, mentor and activist. The talk was entitled "What Fannie Lou Came to Say: The Legacy of an Angelic Black Woman."
Black's published works include They Tell Me of Home, The Sacred Place, Perfect Peace, Twelve Gates to the City, The Coming, Listen to the Lambs, Don’t Cry for Me, and Black on Black. In 2014, he won the Distinguished Writer’s Award from the Mid-Atlantic Writer’s Association. The Go On Girl! National Book Club named him “Author of the Year” in 2011 for his best-selling novel Perfect Peace. Perfect Peace was also chosen as the 2014 selection for “If All Arkansas Read the Same Book” by the Arkansas Center for the Book at the Arkansas State Library. The novel has been reprinted more than ten times and is being heralded as an American literary classic. Dr. Black has been nominated (three times) for the Townsend Literary Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award, the Ferro-Grumbley Literary Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, he Georgia Author of the Year Prize, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
On February 21, 2024, the University of Delaware's Department of Africana Studies welcomed Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin as the speaker for the Inaugural Fannie Lou Hamer Black History Month Lecture. Griffin gave a provocative lecture on Toni Morrison, banned books, fascism and the importance of book clubs/reading groups.
Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia University and was the inaugural chair of its African American and African Diaspora Studies Department (2019 – 2021). She serves as program director for The Schomburg Center's Scholars-in-Residence Program and is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.
