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The Lit Salon at Barrington Hall presented by The Mount, Edith Wharton Cultural Center
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes the little-known story of the pioneering Black women artists and activists who were seen, but barely heard, at the 1963 March on Washington.
There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons—and of course the day’s headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no “class photo” of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its main stage, or were honored during its “Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom.”
In How Bright the Path Grows, Marcia Chatelain weaves a gleaming group portrait of these singular women. Among this cohort were several household names: vaudeville icon Josephine Baker; civil rights activist Rosa Parks gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, and Daisy Bates, champion of the Little Rock Nine. But many were relative unknowns, including Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day’s musical program, and Anna Hedgeman, the coordinator who pushed in the eleventh hour for a tribute to Black women’s work.
How Bright the Path Grows is a scintillating group biography, rendering the lives of thirteen Black women visionaries—some famous, others soon to be—in novelistic detail and like never seen before.
“Chatelain lets us see the complexities of these women’s lives, feel their pain, and marvel at their ability to cut through the thicket of racism and sexism.”—Carol Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage
“Chatelain brilliantly reframes one of the most enduring images in American memory through the women erased from its frame.”—Alexis Coe, New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First
ABOUT MARCIA CHATELAIN
MARCIA CHATELAIN is a Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of South Side Girls and Franchise, which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History, the James Beard Foundation Book Award for Writing, the Hagley Prize for Business History, and the Lawrence W. Levine Award from the Organization of American Historians. An active public speaker and educational consultant, Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Michelle Young is an award-winning journalist and author. Her latest book, The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of World War II Resistance Hero Rose Valland, was named a Best Book of 2025 by the New York Public Library, Library Journal, and Hyperallergic. The book is also a finalist for the Marfield Prize—The National Award for Arts Writing—the Lambda Literary Prize, and the Massachusetts Book Award, and was longlisted for the 2025 American Library of Paris Book Award.
This event is in collaboration with The Mount, Edith Wharton Cultural Center
About The Mount, Edith Wharton Cultural Center: Inspired by Edith Wharton's life and work, The Mount brings together history, literature, and nature to spark ideas, creativity, connections, and cultural experiences. Located in Lenox, Massachusetts, The Mount was the country estate Wharton designed and built in 1902, and today serves as a museum and cultural center offering author talks, writer residencies, jazz events, art exhibitions, and family programs. | edithwharton.org
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