To mark Black History Month, we’ve showcased recent programs from Chautauqua stages and online platforms that have given voice to the Black experience in America. These words and images provide critical context for the important and difficult work — and action — to which this moment calls us, to advance the cause of justice. This is not an effort limited to February, however. Chautauqua Institution will continue to amplify and elevate the work of Black experts and creators as part of our ongoing and imperative work and investments in Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA), as outlined in our strategic…

Throughout Black History Month, we’re showcasing recent programs from Chautauqua stages and online platforms that have given voice to the Black experience in America. These words and images provide critical context for the important and difficult work — and action — to which this moment calls us, to advance the cause of justice.

For the closing lecture of our 2019 Interfaith Lecture Series, concluding a week themed “Exploring Race, Religion, and Culture,” we were honored to host Stanford professor and social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt for a presentation based on her book Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes What We…

Throughout Black History Month, we’re showcasing recent programs from Chautauqua stages and online platforms that have given voice to the Black experience in America. These words and images provide critical context for the important and difficult work — and action — to which this moment calls us, to advance the cause of justice.

This past summer, we were honored to welcome Franklin Leonard to our CHQ Assembly platform during a week on “Forces Unseen: What Shapes Our Daily Lives” to discuss his work as founder of The Black List. The mission and work of The Black List is to push…

Throughout Black History Month, we’re showcasing recent programs from Chautauqua stages and online platforms that have given voice to the Black experience in America. These words and images provide critical context for the important and difficult work — and action — to which this moment calls us, to advance the cause of justice.

In early July, we were honored to host Cedric Alexander, the CNN contributor and former president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, on CHQ Assembly to help us unpack ongoing protests against racism and injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. In his…

• The film loosely based on Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder (Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, 2018; Writers’ Center faculty, 2019) will debut on Hulu on Feb. 19 and is included in The New York Times’ list of the best movies and TV shows coming to the various streaming services this month. Directed by Chloé Zhao and starring Frances McDormand, “Nomadland” the film is receiving 2021 Academy Award buzz. Bruder presented her nonfiction bestseller for the CLSC in 2018 and returned to Chautauqua the following summer as a writer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center. …

Throughout Black History Month, we’re showcasing recent programs from Chautauqua stages and online platforms that have given voice to the Black experience in America. These words and images provide critical context for the important and difficult work — and action — to which this moment calls us, to advance the cause of justice.

In 2019, it was our honor to host art historian Sarah Lewis on the Amphitheater stage for a presentation based on her “Vision & Justice” class at Harvard, continuing a week in partnership with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center themed “Exploring Race and Culture.” …

By Emálee Krulish

On a Saturday afternoon in July 1891, the Chautauqua Assembly at Fair Point held its first women’s suffrage meeting. Susan B. Anthony, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, Julia Ward Howe, Grace H. Dodge, Zeralda Wallace, and local suffragist Kate Peate attracted “one of the largest audiences of the season,” according to the Chautauqua Assembly Herald. Woman’s Day, as it was called, was reported to have been “the best and biggest day Chautauqua ever saw” in its 17-year history, thereafter sparking a tradition of regularly featuring women’s suffrage on Chautauqua’s platform.

Ten years earlier, Chautauqua had hosted its…

By Sara Toth

In 1874, a Methodist bishop and an Akron businessman started weaving a tapestry.

It was an experiment, this tapestry. Bishop John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller founded the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly to fill a need they both saw for out-of-school, vacation learning. What started as part of the camp meeting trend, and as an attempt to provide a unified Sunday School curriculum, Chautauqua was nearly immediately successful and became a retreat for learning and betterment, threads of people coming through the eye of a needle at Fair Point.

Ferries carried those threads to Chautauqua, to…