McKendree Hosts Mid-America History Conference Sept. 10-12
Mother Jones, FBI Ghostreaders Presentations Are Open to the Public
(LEBANON, Ill., August 14, 2015) - Historians and scholars from the Midwest and beyond
will present original research on a variety of historical topics at the 37th Annual Mid-America Conference on History, hosted by McKendree University in Lebanon,
Ill., from Sept. 10 to 12.
Two presentations are free and open to the public. On Thursday, Sept. 10 at 7 p.m.
in Bothwell Chapel, the Friends of the Mother Jones Museum will discuss the fascinating
history of labor activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones and her commitments to labor
history, women’s history and social justice. Mother Jones inspired the folk song,
“She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” and she is memorialized at a monument and museum
in Mt. Olive, Ill.
On Friday, Sept. 11 at 7 p.m. in the Hettenhausen Center for the Arts, the conference
welcomes its keynote speaker, Dr. William Maxwell of Washington University in St.
Louis. Maxwell just completed his third book, F.B. Eyes, which exposes the FBI’s policing of five decades of African American poems, plays,
essays and novels. He will discuss his research into the Bureau’s investigations of
African American writers during the Harlem Renaissance.
-McK-
