Speaker: Visiting FMST Scholar Vera Kallenberg

Vera will discuss her research on the life of Gerda Lerner (1920-2013), a pioneer of women’s history who co-wrote the 1964 film Black Like Me with husband and film director Carl Lerner. The film is based on the highly controversial book by John Howard Griffin, a white writer who in 1959 darkened his skin and traveled through the Jim Crow-era “deep South” to expose the everyday realities of racism. The film reflects the Lerners’ experience as participants in the civil rights movement and their own experiences of repression as communists in Cold War America and Gerda’s persecution as a Jew in Nazi Europe

Lunch will be provided.