OLLI at UConn Waterbury Juneteenth celebration
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Connecticut will host a special Juneteenth community celebration featuring award-winning journalist and author Elaine Weiss, who will deliver the keynote address based on her critically acclaimed book, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement.
In Spell Freedom, Weiss tells the powerful, little-known story of the grassroots “citizenship schools” that taught Black Americans in the Jim Crow South to read, write, and meet restrictive literacy test requirements designed to prevent them from voting. The movement, led largely by Black women educators and community organizers, laid essential groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement and helped secure voting rights for tens of thousands of people.
Information on the OLLI program can be found online at https://olli.uconn.edu. To register for the free Juneteenth event, click "Take a Class" then "Special Events", or email osher@uconn.edu.
