Hair Care Heiress Of The Harlem Renaissance: Author Will Speak At Montclair Event

MONTCLAIR, NJ — The following news release comes courtesy of the Montclair Public Library. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site.

On Saturday, Feb. 21 at 4 p.m., the Montclair Public Library will host award-winning television producer and author A’Lelia Bundles, in a talk with Princeton professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad about Bundles’s new biography of A’Lelia Walker, her great-grandmother, the hair care heiress and patroness of the Harlem Renaissance. Bundles will also be showing a PowerPoint presentation of historic images and rare archival family photos.

Registration is free and required. Register at tinyurl.com/OBOMBundles

Doors open at 3:30 p.m. The conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A and signing with Watchung Booksellers. The program is part of Open Book / Open Mind, MPL’s popular, long-running literary conversation series.

“We’re excited to explore the Harlem Renaissance from A’Lelia Bundles’s unique perspective, combining history, literature, and family lore,” says Library Director Radwa Ali. “Check out our other offerings for Black History Month.”

A’Lelia Bundles is also the author of "On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker," a New York Times bestseller about her great-great-grandmother, the early 20th-century hair care industry entrepreneur and philanthropist. She is the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives, the largest private collection of Walker photographs, memorabilia and ephemera. Bundles worked in network television news for thirty years, first at NBC News where she was a producer for news and magazine programs, and then at ABC News where she was a World News Tonight producer, Washington, DC deputy bureau chief and director of talent development.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the inaugural Professor of African American Studies and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he directs the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project. He chairs the board of the Vera Institute of Justice, and is a WGBH contributor to Boston Public Radio. Muhammad is the former Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library and the world’s leading library and archive of global Black history. He co-hosted the podcast Some of My Best Friends Are.

This season of Open Book / Open Mind will also include Ann Patchett (“Whistler”), Christina Baker Kline (“The Foursome”), Nicholas Boggs (“Baldwin: A Love Story”), Nicholas Lemann (“Returning”), Michael Luo (“Strangers in the Land”), and Daniel Okrent (“Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy”).

The Open Book / Open Mind series is presented by the Montclair Public Library with the generous support of The Montclair Public Library Foundation, Watchung Booksellers, Anonymous, Dr. Alex and Doris Malaspina, David and Mary Lee Jones, and our individual Underwriters, the First Congregational Church, Amanti Vino and The George Montclair.

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