Event Details
DATE: 02/08/2022 19:00
TIME: 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
WEBSITE: Visit
LOCATION: Birthplace of Country Music Museum
Join us on Tuesday, February 8, at 7:00 p.m. for our next Speaker Series program. Dr. William H. Turner will partner with Dr. Ted Olson for discussions on music, including the Sepia Tones podcast, and Turner’s book The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life In Appalachian Coal Towns. Through sharing their unique knowledge and perspectives on the Black experience in Appalachia, Drs. Turner and Olson will take the audience beyond the assumptions and stereotypes about this region for a deeper and richer understanding of its history.
The virtual program will stream live via Zoom, and the in-person program will be held in the Birthplace of Country Music Museum’s Performance Theater.
**COVID-19 Policy
In-person audience members, staff, and artists will be required to wear face coverings and show proof of vaccination or proof of negative COVID-19 test result taken within 72 hours for entry to the program in the museum’s Performance Theater.
About Dr. William H. Turner
Dr. William H. Turner, the fifth of ten children, was born in 1946 in the coal town of Lynch, Kentucky, in Harlan County. His grandfathers, father, four uncles, and older brother were coal miners.
Bill has spent his professional career studying and working on behalf of marginalized communities, helping them create opportunities in the larger world while not abandoning their important cultural ties. He is best-known for his ground-breaking research on African-American communities in Appalachia, but Bill’s work is universal. As an academic and a consultant, he has studied economic systems and social structures in the urban South and burgeoning Latino communities in the Southwest. What he strives for on behalf of his clients and their communities is what we all want: prosperity, understanding, and respect.
Today, Bill and his wife Vivian – the retired President of the R.J. Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem, N.C. – live near their children and grandchildren in Houston.
About Dr. Ted Olson
Ted Olson is presently serving as co-host (with Dr. William Turner) of the podcast Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music. Presently Full Professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, Olson served in 2008 as Fulbright Senior Scholar in American Studies in Barcelona, Spain. He is the author of many articles, essays, encyclopedia entries, poems, and reviews published in a range of books and periodicals. From 2003-2005 he was president of the Tennessee Folklore Society, and from 2009-2013 he was the editor of the Journal of Appalachian Studies. Olson has produced many documentary albums of Appalachian music ,and for his work as a music historian, he has received an International Bluegrass Music Association Award, three Independent Music Awards, the Ramsey Award for Lifetime Achievement from the East Tennessee Historical Society, and seven Grammy Award nominations.
Visit the Events page at BirthplaceOfCountryMusic.org to register or RSVP.
