For the 4th year in a row, the New Paltz Community Partner Organizations (the Elting Memorial Library, Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Center, Historic Huguenot Street, New Paltz Historical Society, and Ulster County Historian) have come together to bring the New Paltz community free programming that explores and celebrates Black strength, history, and culture.

This year we are honored to host Dr. Shelton Johnson of the SUNY New Paltz Black Studies Department. Dr. Johnson's talk will examine the American Dream as a racialized political mythology, tracing its historical formation, its enduring authority in shaping ideas of merit, mobility, and belonging, and the ways Black intellectual and political traditions have imagined freedom beyond its inherited terms.

Join us at the Elting Memorial Library (93 Main Street, New Paltz, NY 12561) on Saturday, October 3rd from 4:00-5:30 pm for this engaging, in-person presentation.

Shelton K. Johnson, F. Csc., Ph.D., is an imagineer, author, cultural and educational sociologist, and social foundations scholar whose intellectual formation is rooted in the Black South. An Alabama native, he earned a bachelor’s degree in English/African American Literature from Alabama State University, a Master of Education degree in Curriculum and Instruction and English from Faulkner University, and a Ph.D. in Instructional Leadership, with concentrations in Social and Cultural Studies and Qualitative Educational Research, from The University of Alabama. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where he also holds affiliate appointments in Educational Studies and Leadership and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. 

See full speaker bio and program abstract here.

This program is free and open to the public. Pre-registration is required as limited seating is available.