Messy Conversations Book Club: The 1619 Project - 2/7/2022

Conversation Overview

AULA Graduate Student Clarence R. Williams in discussion with New York Times Magazine journalist  and original contributor to the 1619 Project, Linda Villarosa.

Suggested chapters:

• Chapter 1 - "Democracy by Nikole Hannah-Jones

• Chapter 10 - "Punishment" by Bryan Stevenson

• Chapter 12 - "Medicine" by guest conversationalist Linda Villarosa

• Chapter 17 - "Progress" by Ibram X. Kendi

About The 1619 Project

The 1619 Project is The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning reframing of American history that placed slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. The project, which was initially launched in August of 2019, offered a revealing new origin story for the United States, one that helped explain not only the persistence of anti-Black racism and inequality in American life today, but also the roots of so much of what makes the country unique.

Linda Villarosa is a journalist, an educator and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. She covers the intersection of health and medicine and social justice. She is a journalist in residence and associate professor at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY and teaches journalism and Black Studies at the City College of New York. Her essay on medical myths was included in the New York Times's 1619 Project in August 2019 and is published in the 1619 Project Book which came out in November 2021. She has covered the toll covid-19 has taken on black communities in America and the environmental justice movement in Philadelphia in 2020 and wrote about life expectancy in Chicago in 2021. Her book Under the Skin will be published in June 2022. 

Southern fried from toe to head, Clarence R. Williams has traveled a journey that has taken him from the White House to the celluloid gates of Hollywood . A celebrated publicist, Williams has worked on Broadway, in television and film. His cultural influence allowed him to co-design the first African-American pavilion at the world’s fair. Clarence’s love of the arts was rewarded when he became Commissioner of arts and humanities for the city of Washington DC.

Currently, Williams is committed to his new found passion for eradicating health disparities among minority populations. As a committed community stakeholder, Williams serves on a Community academic Council, collaborating with Charles Drew University, USC, UCLA and Healthy African American Families, Inc. This partnership supports the concept of patient centered research in the areas of cancer, stroke, depression, HIV-AIDS and Aging. A little known fact about Clarence: He named a Sorority, while working at Howard University, D.I.V.A.S. Inc., which is now enjoying its 35th Anniversary. Patti LaBelle calls him “Mr. Fix It.” He is currently a graduate student in the department of Urban Sustainability at Antioch University.