Helena Hicks Speaker Series | Women’s History Month –  Dr. Raynetta Wiggins Jackson 

Thursday, March 21 | 5:45 pm to 8 pm | FREE EVENT

Celebrate Women’s History Month with the Billie Holiday Center for Liberations Arts (JHU)  for their annual Helena Hicks Speaker Series featuring  Dr. Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson, the Africana Archives Curatorial Fellow of Inheritance Baltimore & Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts. Dr. Wiggins-Jackson’s lecture will focus on “Ethel’s Place: Celebrating Ethel Ennis Baltimore’s First Lady of Jazz.” Her lecture grows out of her curatorial and exhibition work on the legendary jazz singer Ethel Ennis. 

Raynetta Wiggins Jackson, PhD, is the Curatorial Fellow for Africana Collections, an interdisciplinary postdoctoral position situated between the Sheridan Libraries and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. In addition to serving as the lead curator for Ethel’s Place, she has contributed to two other ground-breaking exhibitions this year, The Colors of Pontella Mason at the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center, and The Birth of Jazz: Billie Holiday’s Baltimore, a portable exhibition co-curated with Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Lawrence P. Jackson. Prior to assuming her current role, Dr. Wiggins Jackson was a manager of gospel programs at Washington Performing Arts and served as a graduate assistant at the Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC) at Indiana University, where in addition to archival and curatorial work, she also organized the conference Why We Sing: Indianapolis Gospel Music in Church, Community and Industry.

This event begins with a wine reception and the Peabody Graduate Jazz Ensemble at 5:45 pm and Dr. Raynetta Wigins-Jackson’s lecture will begin at 6:30 pm. The Helena Hicks Speaker Series honors Helena Hicks, the foremother of the student-led movement for Civil Rights in Baltimore City.