Hickory Public Library Marks King Anniversary With Program on the African-American Church in Literature

Hickory Public Library will celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday with a special program at Ridgeview Branch Library featuring a discussion of the African-American church in the works of author Ernest J. Gaines on Monday, January 23 rd at 6:30 p.m. The church has traditionally been cast as the pillar of faith for African-American communities. Gaines' fiction challenges this belief in a society where the church does not intervene to combat the inequalities that are widespread in the South. What has the church accomplished in these communities? What has caused these communities to seek self-definition for survival? Dr. Anthony invites the reader to revisit, with Gaines, the role of the church to determine if it is merely a new myth designed to pacify the oppressed. The public is invited to the free program.

Dr. Anthony is an Associate Professor of English and serves as Executive Assistant to the Chancellor at Fayetteville State University. Dr. Anthony studied English at St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, received his Masters and Doctorate at Ohio State University, and pursued Religious Studies at The Good Shepherd School of Biblical and Cognate Learning in Columbus, Ohio. He also completed the Harvard University Graduate School of Education Management Development Program. Also an ordained Baptist minister, Dr. Anthony is the pastor of Flat Swamp Missionary Baptist Church in Fayetteville.

The Humanities Forum, a Speakers’ Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council, makes this program possible. Since 1990, NCHC has been offering speakers, free of charge, to public audiences. All presentations are grounded in the humanities, with speakers whose lectures focus on issues of history, literature, philosophy, ethics, religious studies, linguistics, jurisprudence, history and criticism of the arts, sociology, and certain aspects of social science.

Ridgeview Branch Library is located at 706 1 st Street SW, one block west of South Center Street. For information call 345-6037.