“Seeking History Worthy of Grown Folks”: the Beinecke Library’s James Weldon Johnson Collection
Michael Morand ’87, ’93 M.Div Is the Communications Director for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
Morand, who came to New Haven in 1983 as an undergraduate and earned a master’s degree from the Yale Divinity School, has been a cheerleader for both Yale and New Haven, both personally and as Associate Vice President in the office of New Haven & State Affairs, where he worked for a decade.
One of the jewels of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale is the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters, one of the nation’s top archives of African Americana, named for the Florida-born writer and civil rights activist (1871–1938). In this talk, Morand will talk about history and memory, drawing inspiration from important treasures in this collection, including the papers of American historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963). Starting with the Beinecke’s copy of Du Bois’s magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America (1935), Mike will help us explore how the James Weldon Johnson Collection offers new resonance in our own time for the pursuit of lux and veritas.