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Come to MoAD and celebrate Freedom Day! We will honor Juneteenth with a free community day on Saturday, June 17th with exhibitions and programming for the whole family

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Free admission 11am-6pm, enjoy complimentary access to our current exhibitions, Black Venus and Emerging Artist Program awardee Nimah Gobir.

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11am - 4pm | Family Art Activity in the lobby with MoAD Teaching Artists

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12-1:30pm | What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World: A Memoir by Dorothy Lazard, in conversation with Pendarvis Harshaw

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3pm & 4pm | A Song of Triumph II: The Diaspora of Black Music with the Curtis Family C-Notes and members of the Community Music Center Black Music Program Faculty

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12-1:30pm | What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World: A Memoir by Dorothy Lazard, in conversation with Pendarvis Harshaw

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“What you don’t know will make a whole new world,” said Mam’Ella to her precocious granddaughter Dorothy Lazard in the summer of 1969. Though meant to humble her, these words only emboldened Lazard in her insatiable intellectual journey to understand her young self, her race-riven society, and the path that would lead her to become a community pillar and memory-keeper. In this engrossing coming-of-age memoir, Lazard charts her journey from an orphanage in segregated St. Louis to her adopted hometown of Oakland. Seduced from a young age by the power of the written word, Lazard unearths new worlds and dreamed-of futures in the sanctuary of the library stacks—the springboard to her own trajectory toward self-determination. Lazard’s story, told vividly through her adolescent and teenage eyes, connects her early readerly pursuits to her career as a celebrated public historian,taking us through the Summer of Love, the murder of Emmett Till, the flourishing of the Black Arts Movement and beyond. As she writes with honesty about the challenges she faced in her youth—including the loss of both parents—Lazard’s memoir remains triumphant, animated by curiosity, careful reflection, and deep enthusiasm for life. The 2023 recipient of the Book Club of California's Oscar Lewis Award in Western History and the 2023 recipient of the Oakland Heritage Alliance's Partnership in Preservation Lifetime Achievement Award. Published by Heyday Books, an independent, nonprofit publisher founded in 1974 in Berkeley, CA.

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Dorothy Lazard was born in St. Louis and grew up in San Francisco and Oakland. A librarian for nearly forty years, she joined the staff of the Oakland Public Library (OPL) in 2000. From 2009 until her retirement in 2021, she was the head librarian of OPL’s Oakland History Center, where she encouraged people of all ages and backgrounds to explore local history. Beloved by her Bay Area community, she has been an indispensable resource for journalists, library patrons, and all the ever-curious that have crossed the threshold of OPL. She has been featured in conversations on the history of Oakland and her own work in Oaklandside, KQED, NBC Bay Area, and Netflix’s Last Chance U, among others. She lives in Oakland.

Pendarvis Harshaw is the host of Rightnowish on KQED-FM, a columnist at KQED Arts, and the author of OG Told Me, a memoir about growing up in Oakland. Follow him on Twitter @ogpenn.

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3pm & 4pm | A Song of Triumph II: The Diaspora of Black Music with the Curtis Family C-Notes and members of the Community Music Center Black Music Program Faculty

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Community Music Center (CMC), is proud to partner with the Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) to present A Song of Triumph II: The Diaspora of Black Music. This work is developed and co-produced by Maestro Curtis PhD, Department Head of CMC’s Black Music Studies Program. A Song of Triumph II is a celebration of American Black culture (descendants of Alkebulan/African slaves) that has impacted the world and crossed all ethnic and color lines. The musical suite will feature music written and composed by Maestro and The Curtis Family C-notes and feature talented CMC faculty Michael Mohammed, Clif Payne, Rita Lackey, Ken Little, Michaela Overall, Jon Jang, and others to be announced. A Song of Triumph II will share a musical collage of genres - drawing from The Black Church, an historical place of safe haven, where skills, ideals, and faith abounded despite the treachery of slavery. A Song of Triumph II will musically trace the path from Black spirituals developed in the church which gave birth to the blues, barbershop, gospel, jazz, country, early bluegrass, folk, rock and roll, R&B, and funk.

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Juneteenth at MoAD is generously supported by Yerba Buena Community Benefit District and the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Foundation.

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