Biography

Dr. Yohuru Williams is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. The former chief historian of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, he appeared in Ken Burns’s Jackie Robinson and was one of the hosts of Sound Smart, the History Channel’s popular YouTube program. His educational videos on civil rights, social movements, and other historic events have garnered over one million views. He is the author of numerous books, including Teaching Beyond the Textbook, and he has appeared on a variety of media outlets, including ABC, CNN, MSNBC, History, BET, CSPAN, and NPR.

Schedule

10:00 am to 10:45 am
State Library, Second Floor Meeting Room
More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
(Ages 10 to 14)
with Michael G. Long, Yohuru Williams, and moderator Fatima Shaik

11:00 am to 11:45 am
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Hailed as “an essential reeducation on one of the most consequential events in US history” by Ibram X. Kendi, this gripping middle-grade account offers a fresh look at the groundbreaking 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom by spotlighting the protest’s radical roots and the underappreciated role of Black women—includes a wealth of contemporary black-and-white photos throughout.

Six decades ago, on August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—a moment often revered as the culmination of this Black-led protest. But at its core, the March on Washington was not a beautiful dream of future integration; it was a mass outcry for jobs and freedom NOW—not at some undetermined point in the future. It was a revolutionary march with its own controversies and problems, the themes of which still resonate to this day.

Without diminishing the words of Dr. King, More Than a Dream looks at the march through a wider lens, using Black newspaper reports as a primary resource, recognizing the overlooked work of socialist organizers and Black women protesters, and repositioning this momentous day as radical in its roots, methods, demands, and results. From Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long, the acclaimed authors of Call Him Jack, comes a classic-in-the-making that will transform our modern understanding of this legendary event in the fight for racial justice and civil rights.