We write to invite you to the Forty-Fifth annual Marion Thompson Wright (MTW) Lecture Series, one of the nation’s most distinguished and longest-running Black History Month programs. The event will be held on the Rutgers University—Newark campus on Saturday, February 15, 2025. Building on the series’ founding commitment to engage our beloved public, we would behonored for you to speak to our theme of Black transnational activism…. Your work on the Black internationalism and radical activismof Mae Mallory, Audrey Proctor Seniors, and Ethel Azalea Johnson provides an important framework for identifying and understandingthe linkage between Black anti- oppression efforts around the world. We believe your research and writing will offer our cross cultural and multigenerational audience a powerful foundation through which they might examine Black liberation more deeply. Yourdiscussion of Black women’s activism in support of global human rights is powerful and we would welcome a talk about this work with our audience.

Lacey Hunter, Associate Director

Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience AssociateProfessor of Professional Practice, Department of Africana Studies

Jack Tchen, Director

Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience Clement A.Price Professor of Public History & Humanities

 

Interview by Omari Averette Philips about Mae Mallory The Monroe Defense Committee and World Revolutions

https://newbooksnetwork.com/mae-mallory-the-monroe-defense-committee-and-world-revolutions

Interview by Gerald Horne about Mae Mallory The Monroe Defense Committee and World Revolutions
https://youtu.be/SERfG8oBIFg

Publication date May 1, 2024

My 60th Black Wonder Woman Birthday, 2023, Toni Shaw Photography Group

The Day Of Remembrance

When: Feb 22, 2022, 5-7 pm

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://virginiatech.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvf-yppjgrHNTlY8yf2EtkqdxLk9NHA7XD

February 3rd from 6:30 to 8PM I will talking about my upcoming book Mae Mallory The Monroe Defense Committee and World Revolutions https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-new-york-cbfs-registration-253366274347

Paula Marie Seniors Talk, “Mae Mallory, Pat Mallory, the Harlem Nine, and Incarceration as a Political Prisoner,” Schomburg, Columbia University Teachers College, NEH, July 22, 2021

New York Amsterdam News Photograph Archive, 8084. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

New York Amsterdam News Photograph Archive, 8084. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

Listed as a “Movement Veteran,” I will be giving the talk "Mae Mallory, Pat Mallory,  The New York Desegregation Case, and Mae’s Incarceration as a Political Prisoner for Educational Reform,” for the NEH Summer Institute’s “Harlem’s Education Movements: Changing the Civil Rights Narrative”

Date: Thursday July 22, 2021

Host: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Place: Virtual

Time: 4-5

Pat Mallory Oduba Collection

Pat Mallory Oduba Collection

Sponsors: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The National Endowment for The Humanities, and Teachers College, Columbia University

I will be on Black Power Media discussing Mae Mallory and The Monroe Defense Committee Monday June 21, 2020, between 9-10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sB_YPwL7E

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From Blackface to Tina and Everything in Between: The Black Experience in the Musical, after 1865  This virtual salon examines the whitewashing of the history of the musical by placing musical theater by and about black people front and center. From…

From Blackface to Tina and Everything in Between: The Black Experience in the Musical, after 1865

This virtual salon examines the whitewashing of the history of the musical by placing musical theater by and about black people front and center. From Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins's 1879 musical, Peculiar Sam, to Katori Hall's 2019 musical, Tina, the "black musical" does not get the credit it deserves for sustaining the genre we know and love. Come on along and listen to Eric M. Glover, Sean Mayes, Paula Marie Seniors, and Tamilla Woodard talk about why the black musical matters.

“Mae Mallory, The Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions.” Thoughts on Brooklyn Lectures

Mae Mallory, The Monroe Defense Committee and World Revolutions Lecture at St. Francis College” The book should be out in 2020

Brooklyn College, March 14, 2019 “Mae Mallory, The Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions”

A lecture by Dr. Paula Marie Seniors, with Safiya Bandele performing “Warrior Woman-Spoken Word Inspired by Mae Mallory.

Date: Tuesday, March 14, 2019

Time: 2:15-3:30

Location: Occidental Lounge, Student Center, Brooklyn College

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St. Francis College, March 12, 2019: Historian Dr. Paula Marie Seniors (Associate Professor of Africana Studies, Virginia Tech) discusses the 1961 case of self-defense advocate Mae Mallory and the Monroe Defense Committee.

A. T. Simpson is Clarence Henry Seniors, my father

A. T. Simpson is Clarence Henry Seniors, my father

QUOTED BY JASMINE SANDERS IN “A BLACK LEGACY WRAPPED UP IN FUR,” THE NEW YORK TIMES "But there is a sense among many black women that this broader, cultural disavowal of fur has coincided with our increased ability to purchase it. (Or as Paula Marie Seniors, a historian and professor of Africana studies at Virginia Tech, reported her mother saying: “As soon as black women could afford to buy mink coats, white society and white women said fur was all wrong, verboten, passé.”) For women like my mother and grandmother, my aunts and my sisters, a fur coat is more than a personal luxury item. It is an important investment."

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Mae Mallory, The Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions Talks

At St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York on March 12, 2019 and Brooklyn College on March 14, 2019

My father Clarence Henry Seniors writing under the name A.T. Simpson

My father Clarence Henry Seniors writing under the name A.T. Simpson


Michelle Obama’s Impact on African American Women & Girls

Live Stream

Virginia Humanitites 
Tue. Nov. 20 12:00pm
145 Ednam Drive Charlottesville, VA



Two-time Virginia Humanities residential Fellow and associate professor of Africana studies at Virginia Tech, Paula Marie Seniors was an editor of the recently published collection of essays, poetry, and art, Michelle Obama’s Impact on African American Women and Girls. 

The collection explores how First Lady Michelle Obama gradually expanded and broadened her role by engaging in social, political and economic activities which directly and indirectly impacted the lives of the American people, especially young women. 

The book, released by Palgrave Macmillan in August 2018, uses interdisciplinary evaluations through several media, including recipes like those of Suzannah Grace Sese-khalid Jones who contributed “Recipes for Michelle;” and poetry by artist/activist Verna Hampton who wrote the entry, “Michelle’s Arms.”

Join Seniors, Jones, and Hampton for a discussion of their work on the collection and the lasting legacy of Michelle Obama’s time as First Lady, especially for women and girls.

I will be giving the talk "Mae Mallory, The Monroe Defense Committee and World Revolutions," Challenging Erasures: Re-inscribing Black Women's History in New York. Sponsored by Dr. Robyn C. Spencer, The Endowed Chair of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Brooklyn College.

https://blkwomeninny.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/mae-mallory/

Date: March 14, 2019

Time: 2:15-3:30 pm

Place: Brooklyn College

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Interviewed about Aretha Franklin Associated Press, Page 6 Daily News

CBC

Tampa Bay.com

Associated Press News

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Recently Published with contributions by friends, colleagues, and former graduate and undergraduate students:  Yasmine Huggins, Rachelle Brunn-Bevel, Deidre Hill Butler,Duchess Miriam Harris,Avi Thomas, Carole Boyce Davies, Suzzannah Grace Sesekhalid, Daveisha Gibson, Verna Hampton, Kristin Richardson

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EVENT: "God's Trombones: African American Cadences and Culture" Symposium, March 15-16, Open to the PublicMy Talk: “Bleeding Moon,” Cole and Johnson’s The Red Moon (1908-1910) and James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones” Lecture Demonstration.The bea…

EVENT: "God's Trombones: African American Cadences and Culture" Symposium, March 15-16, Open to the Public

My Talk: “Bleeding Moon,” Cole and Johnson’s The Red Moon (1908-1910) and James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones” Lecture Demonstration.

The beautiful singer Krystal, the pianist Esther Tinsort who played for "Mama I Want To Sing," and the finale Cakewalk Dance done by Daliana Dance Company

Date: Friday March 16, 2018

Time: 10 Am

Place: EUC Auditorium, UNC Greensboro, North Carolina

Reception: 9:30 AM

 

 

Paula Marie Seniors Beyond Flyer, 2018.jpg
http://blogs.shu.edu/clarenceseniors/

http://blogs.shu.edu/clarenceseniors/

 

 

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(Clarence Henry Seniors Collection)COPYRIGHT

(Clarence Henry Seniors Collection)

COPYRIGHT

Recent and Upcoming Events

 

My talk: "Red Moon, Bleeding Moon"Cole and Johnson’s The Red Moon"

Place: University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Date:  March 16, 2018

Time:  10Am  

"Celebrating God’s Trombones:African American Cadences and Culture Symposium"

Organized by 1952 Distinguished Scholar Noelle Morissette, PhD, Associate Professor of English University of North Carolina, Greensboro

 

Fellows Talk: "Mae Mallory, The Monroe Defense Committee and World Revolutions"

Place: The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities 145 Ednam Dr, Charlottesville, VA 22903

Date: May 9 2017

Time: 12-2

Lunch provided by the Foundation

 

 

Interviews

My father wrote under the name A.T. Simpson due to the harassment and surveillance of the FBI (Clarence Henry Seniors Collection)COPYRIGHT)

My father wrote under the name A.T. Simpson due to the harassment and surveillance of the FBI (Clarence Henry Seniors Collection)

COPYRIGHT)

Projects

 

This innovative, thoroughly researched, and captivating book offers a stunning portrait of the personal and political lives of a dynamic group of radical Black women activists. Paula Marie Seniors powerfully unveils how these women agitated for Black liberation on local, national, and international levels.

—Keisha N. Blain, author of Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America

The Black freedom struggle in Monroe, North Carolina, was a critical beachhead for the civil rights and Black Power movements. Paula Seniors’ Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions provides a unique look into the Monroe freedom movement and its role in building revolutionary politics, including armed self-defense and internationalism in the Black liberation struggle. Seniors' work contributes to the unearthing and illuminating of the role of unsung revolutionary Black female freedom fighters Mae Mallory, Ethel Azalea Johnson, and the author’s mother, Audrey Proctor Seniors, and centers their role in the building of the Black radical tradition. Seniors' reconstruction of her family and their comrades' story makes an important contribution to our understanding of the fight for Black freedom, left politics, and global solidarity from the 1950s through the 1980s.

—Akinyele Umoja, author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

Deeply researched, cinematically told, and urgently needed, Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions’ excavation of radical black women as ideologues, global change agents, and as mothers and daughters leads the way to a fuller examination of Black radical women’s impact on history.

—Robyn Spencer, author of The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland