Reading to commemorate 50th anniversary of Voting Rights March

Brooklyn BookBeat

February 2, 2015 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Writer Willie Mae Brown will read from her memoirs on Feb. 15 in Sunset Park. Photo: Joseph Anastasi/Tabla Rasa Gallery

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Author, visual artist and storyteller Willie Mae Brown will read “My Selma” and “A Defiant Leader” on Feb. 15 at the Tabla Rasa Gallery in Sunset Park.

The reading is intended to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and “Bloody Sunday.”

Both of Brown’s reading pieces are excerpts from her memoirs, which are slated to be published this year.

“We all know what happened in Selma, Lowndes County, Birmingham, and many places in the south, the Deep South. We’ve heard of many killings. We’ve heard of the killings of Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, Emmett Till and others. We’ve heard the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, ‘I Have a Dream,’ being the most familiar, and we’ve heard of the long lines to register to vote,” Brown said. “But there were other things going on in Selma at the time. There were whispers of homes suddenly catching afire, talks of beatings that were never recorded in the newspapers, disappearances of young black men and guns being drawn on Negro men on Water Avenue. These were confrontations that the media did not record, and that investigators hid.”

In her memoirs, Brown focuses on stories she heard while in Alabama — the stories that happened in the back woods of Alabama, were never spoken of in public and have since died with the victims and their families.

The event is free and lasts from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Tabla Rasa Gallery is located at 224 48th St.

The reading may be unsuitable for children under 15.