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Freedom Center Presents Everybody Sang Freedom

CINCINNATI, OH – In celebration of Black History Month, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center presents Everybody Sang Freedom: Black Women and the Strategy of Non-Violence through Song – a survey of musical performances showcasing how Black women have used music as a means of documenting and promoting the struggle for equality and social justice since slavery. The program will take place the Harriet Tubman Theater, Saturday, February 27 at 2:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Author, musician and professor of Musicology at Miami University Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle, will explore the ‘freedom’ or protest song in multiple historical contexts, from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement to the proliferation of the Black Power Movement of the 1970s. Dr. Kernodle’s scholarship, which concentrates on the contributions of African Americans to American classical and popular music, has been included in a number of journals, encyclopedias and anthologies. Her most recent work, Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams, chronicles the life and contributions of the late jazz pianist, Mary Lou Williams.

“Everybody Sang Freedom, a program that both concludes Black History Month and kicks off Women’s History Month, celebrates the role that black and brown women played in America’s struggle for civil rights,” says Dr. Michael Battle, executive vice president and provost of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. “This engaging program will educate the public—through the unifying lens of music—on the considerable contributions and leadership of women within the Civil Rights Movement, a history that has disproportionally remembered the contributions of men.”

Everybody Sang Freedom: Black Women and the Strategy of Non-Violence through Song begins Saturday, February 27 at 2:00 p.m. in the Harriet Tubman Theater and is free and open to the public. Visit freedomcenter.org for more information.