Civil Rights Author to Speak at Pepperdine

Gail Milissa Grant, author of a memoir on segregation in 1950s and 1960s St. Louis, speaks at Payson Library. The following is a modified release from Pepperdine about the event:

Civil rights author Gail Milissa Grant will give an inspirational lecture at Pepperdine University highlighting her personal history during the civil rights era. Grant will give her lecture at noon on Tuesday in the Kresge Reading Room of Payson Library. Grant’s memoir, At the Elbows of My Elders, chronicles her experience growing up in St. Louis during the 1950s and 1960s during a period of intense racial segregation. In her memoir, Grant recounts the early activism of her family, particularly her father David Grant, a pioneering activist lawyer.

The Grant family home, located in a predominantly white neighborhood, became a refuge for black entertainers and political leaders denied accommodations by white-only hotels. Lena Horne and Josephine Baker were guests, and Cab Calloway was Milissa Grant’s godfather. 

The lecture will conclude with a panel discussion highlighting panelists’ memories related to their parents’ experiences during the civil rights movement. The panelists will also examine the tensions created while living under the Jim Crow laws. professor Christine Goodman and humanities professor David Holmes will participate in the panel discussion.

 "At the Elbows of My Elders is a moving and inspirational account of one family’s history during this turbulent era," Dean of Libraries Mark Roosa said. "The perspective Milissa Grant brings illustrates the tensions created by prejudice that causes society to fracture both from without and within."