MISSION

To promote literacy through teaching and learning about the African roots experience, including history and culture, through a dynamic exchange of information, ideas, and creativity.

VISION

To honor and encourage the transmission of history through written and oral history, spoken word, paintings, cultural artifacts and other forms of artistic expression. We celebrate the multifaceted ways to acquire knowledge. We believe that knowledge of the diverse cultural roots of people in our community needs to be understood and spread through sharing and learning from one another.

ABOUT DR. A.J. WILLIAMS-MYERS

Dr. A.J. Williams-Myers is a prominent Professor Emeritus or Black Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He holds a Ph.D. in African History from UCLA. Dr. Williams-Myers is the former director of the New York African American Institute, a member of the New York State Freedom Trail Commission and historian for the African Burial Ground Interpretive Center in New York City.

He is a well published historian whose work includes books, articles, essays, and surveys. His publications include:

Destructive Impulses: An Examination of an American Secret in Race Relations

Long Hammering: Essays on the Forging of an African American Presence in the Hudson Valley to the Early 20th Century

On the Morning Tide: African Americans, History, and Methodology in the Historical Ebb and Flow of Hudson River SocietyGuide to the Survey of Historic Resources Associated with African Americans in New York State (1997)

New York City, African Americans and Selective Memory: An Historiographical Assessment of Black Presence Before 1877

Dr. Williams-Myers is most generous with his time, often serving as a keynote speaker and resource person at events in the Hudson Valley celebrating Black history, where he acts as a Fundi, one who passes on the traditions to the next generation.