‘We’re building Black history’: Esi Lewis shares vision for the Margaret Wade-Lewis Center as 2024 O’Keefe Lecturer
Esi Lewis, the founder, president and executive director of the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Center in downtown New Paltz shared her hopes and aspirations for the historical site as this year’s featured speaker for the Dennis O’Keefe Lecture Series, presented by the Friends of the Sojourner Truth Library.
“We’re building Black history right now,” Lewis said. “There will be a time when our descendants study what we did, and how we grew into what we grew into.”
The mission of the Margaret Wade-Lewis Center, named for the beloved, late former professor and chair of the SUNY New Paltz Department of Black Studies, is to engage, empower, educate, and heal the community through history and culture.
To be situated at the historic Ann Oliver House in New Paltz, the Center will preserve the Black experience in the Hudson Valley using the lens of free and enslaved lives in Ulster County, New York.
At the O’Keefe Lecture, Lewis shared the story of how she has been working with community partners including New Paltz Mayor Tim Rogers to attain stewardship of the building, and how she continues her work to restore and transform the house into a suitable home for the Center.
“I am standing here on the shoulders of ancestors,” she said. “Of course, my beloved mother paved the way for me. It was my upbringing in this beautiful, historic town that made me seek the stewardship of the Ann Oliver House.”
Click here to learn more about the Margaret Wade-Lewis Center.
Lewis’ stewardship of Black history also extends to roles as Ulster County’s Chief Diversity Officer and as a council member on the New Paltz Town Board, where she works to advance anti-racist policies.
“To get to an anti-racist society, we need to start from the place of triumph,” she said. “Black people did not just come from slavery. There was so much more before slavery and after.”
As a token of appreciation for both hers and her family’s legacy, the Friends of the Sojourner Truth Library marked the occasion of her lecture by plating a book in Lewis’s honor. That book, “Mighty Change, Tall Within: Black Identity in the Hudson Valley,” edited by Bard College history professor Myra B. Young Armstead, can be found in the collection of the University’s Sojourner Truth Library.
“This is a continuation of your mother’s love for our community,” said Thomas Olsen, chair of the Friends and SUNY New Paltz professor emeritus of English.
About the Dennis O’Keefe Lecture
The O’Keefe Lecture is sponsored by the Friends of the Sojourner Truth Library. Since 2007, the Friends have honored library staff member Dennis O’Keefe with an annual fall lecture, always open to the public, that celebrates O’Keefe’s intellectual curiosity, range of interests, and public spirit.