Tuesday, December 1, 2026
Doors at 6:00pm · Conversation at 6:30pm
First Light Books, Hyde Park

At the 1963 March on Washington, Black women organized the day, performed on its main stage, and were honored in its Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom. Join Pulitzer Prize winner Marcia Chatelain for How Bright the Path Grows, a group portrait of thirteen of those women, in conversation with UT historian Amira Rose Davis.

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how to attend

This event is free and open to everyone. Buy a copy of How Bright the Path Grows with your ticket to get a reserved seat, and pick up your book at the event. Marcia will sign books after the conversation.

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about the book

How Bright the Path Grows brings to life the Black women artists and activists of the March on Washington. Some are household names: Josephine Baker, Rosa Parks, Mahalia Jackson, and Daisy Bates, champion of the Little Rock Nine. Others deserve to be, like Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day's musical program, and Anna Hedgeman, who pushed at the eleventh hour for a tribute to Black women's work.

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about the author

Marcia Chatelain is a Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of South Side Girls (Duke University Press, 2015) and Franchise (Liveright, 2020), which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History, the James Beard Foundation Book Award, the Hagley Medal for Business History, and the Lawrence Levine Award from the Organization of American Historians. An active public speaker and educational consultant, Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

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about the conversation partner

Amira Rose Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in 20th-century American history, race, gender, sports, and politics. She is finishing "Can't Eat a Medal": The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow and co-hosts the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down. She also provides sports commentary for NPR, ESPN, CNN, and the BBC.

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