The Racine Public Library, in collaboration with Find the Light LLC, Resilient by Design Healing & Consulting, LLC, The Racine Literacy Council, Coming Together Racine, Family Power Music and the BONK! Arts and Culture series invites you to The Sixth Annual “Mary Finley and Marcie Eanes Memorial Black History Month Read-In”. This event will be held virtually on Thursday, February 25th from 6 til 7:30pm.
A Black History Month Read-In is an event where community members of all different backgrounds join together to celebrate the vibrant legacy of black contributions to world literature. Fifteen community members will be given 5 minutes each to read a piece (or an excerpt of a piece) of writing written by someone from the black diaspora.
Because the purpose of this event is to highlight the copious, diverse contributions of all black people to literature, and because we want to illustrate the great breadth of those contributions as much as possible in one and a half short hours, we will not be having ANY repeats of authors. This is a unique aspect of Racine’s BHM read-in and has been the practice since it was first founded in 2016.
To “attend” this event, community members are encouraged to go to the BONK! Facebook page, where it will be live streamed and where viewers dialogue in the comments section.
About the name of this event: Mary Finley and Marcie Eanes were two prominent black women residents of Racine who were inspirations both in the Racine community locally, as well as the literary community nationally–Mary as an ambassador and literary agent and Marcie as a writer herself and supporter of the arts. They have both gone on to join the elders, Mary in 2014 and Marcie in 2015. Shortly before Marcie passed away, she was chosen as one of the finalists for the Racine Poet Laureate position. We are honored to be able to celebrate these two women as leaders of both Racine’s Black Community, as well as Racine’s Literary Community.
This event is made possible by the sponsors of the BONK! Arts and Culture series: The Racine Public Library, the Racine Community Foundation, the Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation, the Friends of the Racine Public Library, and Olde Madrid restaurant.
For questions, please contact one of the 2021 Co-chairs of the BHM Read-in Committee: Genie Webb-Mitchell, author and owner of Find the Light LLC, at genie@findthelightbooks.com or 262-497-0059 or Nick Demske, Racine Public Library’s Community Resources Librarian, at nick.demske@racinelibrary.info or 262-631-0021.
BONK! 