Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, presents “The Case that Must be Made: Research Libraries, Historical Literacy, and the Future of Brown America” for the annual Pforzheimer lecture at the Harry Ransom Center. 

A former associate professor of history at Indiana University, Muhammad was named director of the historic Schomburg Center in 2010. Muhammad, a native of Chicago’s South Side, is the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Harvard, 2011), which won the 2011 John Hope Franklin Best Book award in American Studies. 

The Schomburg Center is one of the leading institutions focusing exclusively on African-American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. The Schomburg has collected, preserved, and provided access to materials documenting black life—in America and worldwide. It has also promoted the study and interpretation of the history and culture of peoples of African descent. Today, the Schomburg continues to serve the community not just as a center and a library, but also as a space that encourages lifelong education and exploration.

Attendees may enter to win a copy of Collecting the Imagination: The First Fifty Years of the Ransom Center and Know the Past, Find the Future: The New York Public Library at 100.