Helena Hicks Speaker Series: Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson

Description

Celebrate Women's History Month with the Johns Hopkins Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts with their annual Helena Hicks Speaker Series featuring Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson, the Africana archives curatorial fellow of Inheritance Baltimore and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts. Wiggins-Jackson's lecture will focus on "Ethel's Place: Celebrating Ethel Ennis Baltimore's First Lady of Jazz" and grows out of her curatorial and exhibition work on the legendary jazz singer Ethel Ennis.

Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson is the curatorial fellow for Africana collections, an interdisciplinary postdoctoral position situated between the Sheridan Libraries and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. In addition to serving as the lead curator for "Ethel's Place," she has contributed to two other ground-breaking exhibitions this year, "The Colors of Pontella Mason" at the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center, and "The Birth of Jazz: Billie Holiday's Baltimore," a portable exhibition co-curated with Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Lawrence P. Jackson. Prior to assuming her current role, Wiggins-Jackson was a manager of gospel programs at Washington Performing Arts and served as a graduate assistant at the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University, where in addition to archival and curatorial work, she also organized the conference "Why We Sing: Indianapolis Gospel Music in Church, Community, and Industry." She has a doctorate in musicology and ethnomusicology from Indiana University Bloomington.

This event begins with a wine reception and the Peabody Jazz Ensemble at 5:45 p.m. and Wiggins-Jackson's lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. The Helena Hicks Speaker Series honors Helena Hicks, the foremother of the student-led movement for civil rights in Baltimore City.

The event will be held at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture.