A Community Talk Featuring
Dr. Sharon D. Johnson

$10 Admission
Refreshments Served

May 17, 2014 is the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which declared segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.  Dr. Johnson will discuss famed author Zora Neale Hurston's pointed response to the Supreme Court's ruling, the controversial 1955 Orlando Sentinel editorial, “Why Courts Can’t Make Races Mix,” as well as contemporary education and the legacy of the Brown v. Board of Ed precursory case, Roberts v. City of Boston MA (1849).

Sharon D. Johnson, PhD is a screenwriter and widely published feature story writer.  She became a member of the Writers Guild of America, west, Inc. (WGAw) in 1993 and has written for television series on the ABC, FOX and UPN networks.  Johnson was a 1999 candidate for the WGAw Board of Directors and elected Chair of the WGAw Committee of Black Writers from 1999-2003.  As Chair, Johnson was appointed by WGAw Executive Director John McLean to travel to Washington, DC in September 2000 to accept the U.S. Department of Labor EPIC (Exemplary Public Interest Contribution) Award on behalf of the WGAw for its ongoing work to achieve greater diversity of working writers in the entertainment industry.  Johnson wrote a pivotal early speech for (then) Senator Barack Obama about “The Power of Diversity in Television,” which opened the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ landmark diversity summit, Television’s Challenges in Black, White and Multi-Color in October 2004.  Johnson has discussed diversity issues on news and information programs on ABC, BET, KCAL, KCET, NPR, and Telemundo, to name a few.  Johnson holds a BA in the Program in the Arts–Writing from Barnard College, an MA in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research, and a PhD in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.  Her paper, “Conscious Daughters: Psychological Migration, Individuation, and the Declaration of Black Female Identity in Daughters of the Dust,” will be published by the University of South Carolina Press in a 2014 anthology on writer/director Julie Dash’s renowned film.  As a 2009 Distinguished Guest Speaker for Western Carolina University’s Women Who Dare! speaker series, Johnson spoke on “Zora Neale Hurston—Provocateur of the Page,” which focused on the Harlem Renaissance writer’s published non-fiction work.