Coming Together for Justice

Current Voices: Coming Together for Justice: 57 Years Ago — and Today

Sunday, January 19, 2020 at 3:00pm

Panel led by Amy Nathan

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Inspired by the publication of A Ride to Remember by Sharon Langley and Amy Nathan on the 1963 de-segregation of Gwynn Oak Amusement Park,  we come together this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend for a panel discussion of how we as a Baltimore community can learn lessons from our past to create a better future together.

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About the Panelists

Amy Nathan grew up in Baltimore where A Ride to Remember, co-authored with Sharon Langley, takes place. It is based in part on Nathan’s earlier book for teens and adults: Round and Round Together. A graduate of Harvard with master’s degrees from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Columbia’s Teachers College, she now lives in New York. Her other books include The Young Musician’s Survival Guide, Meet the Musicians, Meet the Dancers, Yankee Doodle Gals, Take a Seat—Make a Stand, as well as two recent books for adults: The Music Parents’ Survival Guide and Making Time for Making Music. www.AmyNathanBooks.com

Sharon Langley is a Baltimore native who became known as the first African American child to enjoy Gwynn Oak Amusement Park when it opened to the public without segregation. She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University and holds a master’s degree in educational leadership from Mount Saint Mary’s University. She lives and writes in Los Angeles, California.

Sherrell Savage is the Director of Community Organizing at CHAI. Ms. Savage organizes with a variety of leaders that live in the 5 neighborhoods that are a part of CHAI’S General Service Area. The neighborhoods are: Glen, Cheswolde, Cross Country, Fallstaff and Mt. Washington. In her work Ms. Savage supports projects community association leaders develop to strengthen their neighborhoods. Projects include individual home improvements, block improvement projects, as well as community-wide projects. She also works to support the leader development of community members. Ms. Savage also works with blended teams of leaders who work together to take problems and turn them into issues that they win on together. All of the training facilitated by Ms. Savage is rooted in the community organizing universals of the Baltimore-based grassroots community organizing entity, BUILD (Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development & their parent organization, The Industrial Areas Foundation. Before coming to CHAI, Ms. Savage was the Director Community Engagement at the KIPP Baltimore charter school and was a Community Organizer with BUILD.

Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead is an American educator, author, radio host, speaker, and documentary filmmaker who is known as the #blackmommyactivist. She is Associate Professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland. In 2019, Whitehead received the Collegium Visionary Award from the College of Holy Cross; the Exceptional Merit in Media Award (EMMA) from the National Women’s Political Caucus for her work editing and compiling #BlackGirlActivism: Exploring the Ways We Come Though the Storm, a special issue of the Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism journal (Duke University Press); the Baltimore Sun named her as one of Baltimore’s 25 “Women to Watch in 2019”; and, Essence magazine included her on the 2019 “Woke 100 List,” of “black women advocating for change.” She is the host of “Today with Dr. Kaye” on radio station WEAA, which received the 2019 Associated Press Award for Outstanding Talk Show and the second place Award for Outstanding Editorial and Commentary. Whitehead is an Opinion Editorial columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American.