Bertha Maxwell-Roddey author Sonya Ramsey at forums

SUBMITTED PHOTO

Charlotte educator Bertha Maxwell-Roddey is the subject of a 2022 book by Sonya Ramsey. Ramsey will speak at Allegra Westbrook Regional Library on March 7. She'll also speak at University City Regional Library April 20.

The author of a biography on Bertha Maxwell-Roddey will lead discussions on the educator’s life.

Sonya Ramsey, author of “Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership” will speak March 7 at Allegra Westbrook Regional Library, 2412 Beatties Ford Road. The forum is free and starts at 6 p.m.

Ramsey will also speak at University City Regional Library, 301 W.T. Harris Blvd., April 20 at 6:30 p.m.  

Maxwell-Roddey, 92, who retired as UNC Charlotte’s Frank Porter Graham professor emeritus, was one of the first Black women appointed principal at a formerly all-white Charlotte-Mecklenburg elementary school. She was founding director of UNC Charlotte’s Africana Studies Department and in 1974, cofounded the Afro-American Cultural and Service Center, forerunner to the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture.  

Ramsey’s book, which was published last year, uses oral histories and private records from the home archives of Black women to shed light on leadership strategies used by Maxwell-Roddey and her peers to overcome racist barriers in the classroom and beyond.  Maxwell-Roddey’s story includes insights into desegregation of CMS campuses in the 1960s, the rise of Charlotte’s Black middle class and the fight for equity.  

A Johnson C. Smith University graduate, Maxwell-Roddey founded the National Council for Black Studies and has been actively involved with Gamma Lambda Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and served in several capacities, including Charlotte Alumnae Chapter president and national president.  

Ramsey, who is director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at UNC Charlotte, is the author of several historical works, including “Reading, Writing, and Segregation: a Century of Black Women.” She’s a native of Nashville, Tenn., and graduate of Howard University and UNC Chapel Hill.

For more information call the Westbrooks Library at (704) 416-0150 or University City branch at (704) 416-7200. To register online for either forum, go online:
cmlibrary.bibliocommons.com/ events/63d053173bc3f33600935061  

Comments