about the legacies of rosa parks and eslanda robeson. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. [applause] >> good to have everybody out this afternoon. we've got a distinguished conversation here with my professor, mary berry, at the university of pennsylvania. [applause] mary berry at the university of pennsylvania. [applause] barbara ransby is the author of a tiger free of ella baker of eslanda robeson and jeanne theoharis the author of the new biography on rosa parks. [applause] we want to start the conversation by talking about rosa parks.

and rosa parks as one dimension away and eslanda robeson almost invisible. i can't tell you how many people said paul robeson's wife. i knew he had a wife but i didn't know much about her. eslanda robeson indeed was a remarkable person and a biographer's treasure because she had such a rich life and she spent a lot of time documenting that life so that made my job a little bit easier but she began her career as a chemist working at at columbia presbyterian hospital then quickly shifted to serve as the architect of paul's early career. she was his manager, publicist etc. but that's not really her main contribution our accomplishment. i was most drawn to her and interested and excited to do this work because of her largeness of her life and i mean that on a global stage. i think the importance of telling her story in particular and rosa parks is the international significance of their political contributions and eslanda robeson in particular was an anticolonial activist, a writer and human correspondent, an anthropologist. she was someone who was there the foun