**PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A VIRTUAL PROGRAM THAT WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM. Registrants will receive a link to access the Zoom Meeting via email.**  

Authors Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth will discuss their book, The Last Negroes At Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever. In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited eighteen “Negro” boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later they would graduate as African Americans. Some fifty years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, began to reconnect with his classmates and explore their vastly different backgrounds, lives, and what their time at Harvard meant. Garrett and his partner Jeanne Ellsworth recount how these young men broke new ground. By the time they were seniors, they demonstrated against injustice, had lunch with Malcolm X, experienced heartbreak & the racism of academia, and joined with their African national classmates to fight for the right to form an exclusive Black students’ group. Part journey into personal history, part group portrait, and part narrative history of the civil rights movement, learn the remarkable story of brilliant, singular boys whose identities were changed at and by Harvard, and who, in turn, changed Harvard.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. This virtual event is a collaboration between the libraries in North Reading, Tewksbury and Wilmington.