Following each of our Sunday matinee performances, a professor of African-American history will speak about the play from a historical perspective and take questions from the audience.

On February 27, our guest will be Dr. Quincy Mills. Dr. Mills is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His teaching and research interests are in Black business and social movement. He is the author of Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America (2013). And he is currently working on a new book tentatively titled “The Wages of Resistance: Financing the Black Freedom Movement.” 

Our speaker on March 6 will be Dr. Sylvea Hollis. Dr. Hollis is an Assistant Professor in African American History at Montgomery College. She earned a Ph.D. in US History from the University of Iowa. Before coming to Montgomery College in the fall of 2020, Dr. Hollis was a National Park Service-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and taught courses in gender and sexuality in the American Studies Department at The George Washington University. She earned a MA in History Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program (SUNY-Oneonta) and has extensive experience in the museum field. Her most current work is a research project on the “Birmingham Years” of the African American sculptor, John W. Rhoden, for a forthcoming exhibition catalog with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.  Dr. Hollis also runs a blog that explores the intersections between African American history, archives, civic engagement, and teaching.