Lecture Date: January 29, 2026
The Jack and Marilyn Farrington Lecture
During her keynote speech at the 1976 Democratic Party convention, Barbara Jordan of Texas stood before a rapt audience and reflected on where Americans stood in that bicentennial year. “Are we to be one people bound together by a common spirit, sharing in a common endeavor, or will we become a divided nation? For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future.” The civil rights movement had changed American politics by opening up elected office to a new generation of Black leaders, including Jordan, the first Black woman from the South to serve in Congress. Though her life in elected politics lasted only twelve years, in that short time, Jordan changed the nation by showing that Black women could lead their party and legislate on behalf of what she called “the common good.” In She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan’s Life and Legacy in Black Politics, biographer Mary Ellen Curtin examines the life and significance of a groundbreaking figure regarded as one of the greatest orators of modern America.
Speaker: Mary Ellen Curtin
Mary Ellen Curtin is a historian of modern African American history and women’s social and political history at American University. Her first book, Black Prisoners and Their World, 1865-1900 (University Press of Virginia, 2000) investigated the origins of the convict leasing system in Alabama and explored the lives of Black convict coal miners and their communities after emancipation. Dr. Curtin holds a BA from the University of Rochester, and earned her MA and PhD from Duke University. She served as a consultant for the 2012 PBS documentary Slavery by Another Name, a history of African Americans and forced labor in the South. She teaches courses in American Studies, African American history, and seminars on poverty, incarceration, Washington DC, and politics for American University’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. In the spring of 2025, she was in residence at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in the Humanities and Social Sciences.