Athens Reporter

Athens Area Chamber of Commerce issued the following announcement on Apr. 18. 

The Friends of Athens-Clarke County Library present an evening with Mary Frances Early in celebration of her memoir, The Quiet Trailblazer.  Books will be available for purchase from Avid Bookshop. Retired music educator Mary Frances Early was the first African American student to graduate from the University of Georgia in 1962. She taught at Atlanta public schools, Morehouse College, and Spelman College and was chair of Clark Atlanta University’s music department. Early lives in Decatur and continues to be an advocate for education and an active member of the UGA community.

The Quiet Trailblazer (University of Georgia Press) recounts Early’s life from her childhood in Atlanta, her growing interest in music, and her awakening to the injustices of racism in the Jim Crow South. Early carefully maps the road to her 1961 decision to apply to the master’s program in music education at the University of Georgia, becoming one of only three African American students. With this personal journey we are privy to her prolonged and difficult admission process; her experiences both troubling and hopeful while on the Athens campus; and her historic graduation in 1962.

Early shares fascinating new details of her regular conversations with civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. She also recounts her forty-eight years as a music educator in the state of Georgia, the Southeast, and at the national level. She continued to blaze trails within the field and across professional associations. After Early earned her master’s and specialist’s degrees, she became an acclaimed Atlanta music educator, teaching music at segregated schools and later being promoted to music director of the entire school system. In 1981 Early became the first African American elected president of the Georgia Music Educators Association.

April 26, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. in the Athens-Clarke County Library Auditorium - We will feature Rebecca Baggett, author of The Woman Who Lives Without Money, and Komal Mathew, author of For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons.

Rebecca Baggett is the author of four chapbook collections, two of them prize-winners. The Woman Who Lives Without Money, winner of the Terry J. Cox Poetry Award, is her first full-length collection. A native of North Carolina, she has lived for most of her adult life in Athens, GA, where she worked as an academic advisor at the University of Georgia. In retirement, she stewards Little Free Library #110420, works at adding native habitat to her garden, and heaps stacks of to-read books all over the house.

Komal Mathew is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Diode Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Narrative, The New Replubic, and others. Her debut collection of poems, For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons, won the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. She lives with her family in Smyrna, GA, where she is the co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly.

These events are presented by the Friends of Athens-Clarke County Library and are free and open to the public. Call the library at 706-613-3650 for more information.

Original source can be found here.