The College of Charleston will present a lecture by author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates on March 21, 2017, as part of the College’s Race and Social Justice Initiative Lecture Series.

Coates’s lecture, A Deeper Black: Race in America,” will be held at the College of Charleston’s TD Arena, at 301 Meeting Street, at 6:30 p.m. Doors will open at 5 p.m.

coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Due to tremendous interest in this event, registration is now closed. A printed or electronic ticket from Eventbrite is required to enter the arena.

Coates is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics and social issues. He is the winner of a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship and is also a New York Times bestselling author of the books The Beautiful Struggle and Between the World and Me. More recently, The Atlantic cover story “My President was Black,” Coates’ reflection of President Obama’s time in office, has generated wide acclaim.

“Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the leading voices on race and the Black experience in America,” says Patricia Williams Lessane, the executive director of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture. “As such it is fitting that he would round out our slate of inaugural RSJI speakers. His words echo the ethos of 21st Century Black America, and like writers before him such as Baldwin, Ellison, Lorde, and Bambara, Coates reminds of the pain of the past, the problems of today, and the possibilities for the future.”

The Race and Social Justice Initiative is made possible by a major grant from Google and is led by the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Addlestone Library, African American Studies, the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI) at the College of Charleston in collaboration with multiple community partners, including South Carolina Humanities and the Charleston County Public Library.

For more information please contact the Race and Social Justice Initiative Project Coordinator Daron Lee Calhoun II at calhoundl@cofc.edu.

Feature Photo Credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation