March On! brings history to life through a vibrant lineup of film screenings, panel discussions, and cultural experiences. From powerful pre-festival programs to engaging post-festival conversations, each event is designed to honor the legacy of the civil rights movement and inspire a new generation of changemakers.
We’re building momentum before the festival even begins—and keeping the energy going long after it ends! Below is a sneak peek at the special events March On! is hosting before and after this year’s Festival.
Looking for the full lineup of powerful programming happening during the Festival? Head to our Festival webpage to explore the dozens of dynamic events that await!
The March On! Festival Spring 2024 Workshop Series, “Mind Your Movie Business: Pro Tips from Hollywood Industry Leaders” features three comprehensive workshops that delve into essential filmmaking aspects: casting, producing, and distribution.
The March on Washington Film Festival Spring 2024 Workshop Series, “Mind Your Movie Business: Pro Tips from Hollywood Industry Leaders” features three comprehensive workshops that delve into essential filmmaking aspects: casting, producing, and distribution.
Debuting in 2016, the Student and Emerging Filmmaker Competitions gives filmmakers the opportunity to use cinematic storytelling to answer important themes like “what’s your civil right?” and “speaking truth to power.” The annual short film competition receives over 150 submissions from across the world.
March On’s 2024 Film Festival will spotlight writers who move the movement, with an emphasis on the writers of nonfiction, fiction, African futurism, spoken word, journalism, and cookbooks, past and present, whose works propel us into a more just and equitable world.
The Prophet, a reading in honor of the 101st anniversary of this classic book of 26 prose poems written by the acclaimed Lebanese-American writer, Khalil Gibran, accompanied by violinist Keith Colón, Jr.
March On is honored to announce an exclusive virtual salon “Long Way Down: From Page to Stage” featuring March On Founder Robert Raben, in dialogue with MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and award-winning Author Jason Reynolds. Reynolds’ groundbreaking story has been reimagined as a critically acclaimed musical by Dahlak Brathwaite and Khiyon Hursey, bringing its raw emotion, […]
Feeling drained by today’s challenges? Take a moment to refuel your spirit and draw inspiration from the courageous changemakers who shaped the Civil Rights Movement. MARCH ON! is more than an event—it’s a movement, a rallying cry, and a soul-stirring experience designed to recharge your passion for justice, creativity, and truth. Join us for a […]
Join us for a live conversation exploring the power of film to amplify the untold and underrepresented stories of the Civil Rights Movement. Featuring Emmy-winning producer Opal H. Bennett, who leads the March On! Filmmaker Competition, and special guest and former March On! film competition winner Christine Swanson, acclaimed director of FANNIE, The Clark Sisters: […]
Doors Open: 1:45pm
Day Party: 2:00 – 4:00pm
Join us for a live conversation celebrating the legacy of A’Lelia Walker, daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and a defining figure of the Harlem Renaissance. This pre-festival webinar features award-winning journalist and author A’Lelia Bundles, whose new biography Joy Goddess brings to life her great-grandmother’s dazzling world of culture, creativity, and community. From legendary parties […]
Join us live on Tuesday, September 9 at 7 PM ET for a moving conversation with award-winning journalist and author Lonnae O’Neal, as she shares the deeply personal and historical journey behind her new memoir Bibb Country: Unearthing My Family Secrets of Land, Legacy, and Lettuce. What began with planting Bibb lettuce seeds in her […]
Doors Open: 6:45pm
Session: 7:00pm
Join us for A Quiet Word, a community silent reading experience, a blending of literature, music, and conversation.
Bring your favorite book, or just what you’re reading now. We’ll also have some complimentary copies of books from the 2025 March On! Reading List on hand. Then immerse yourself in two 20-minute silent reading sessions with intermittent 10-minute breaks to share your literary discoveries and insights with fellow book enthusiasts. Sip a cup of tea while a curated playlist enhances the vibe.
Sponsor
Eaton House
Session: 7:30 – 8:45pm
Health has always been a civil rights issue. From the struggle to desegregate hospitals to today’s fights around Black maternal mortality, chronic disease, and structural bias in medicine, the right to be well has long been shaped by race, power, and policy.
Presentors and Speakers
SOLD OUT
Festival pass holders are invited to a special pre-event screening of We Want the Funk! with acclaimed filmmaker Stanley Nelson. This syncopated journey through the history of funk traces its roots from African rhythms to soul and early jazz- capturing the sound, spirit, and soul of a cultural revolution.
Valet Parking Available for Gala Attendees at Dock 5
SOLD OUT
Join us for a spectacular evening of recognition, celebration, and joy—culminating in a high-energy, funk-infused dance party you won’t want to miss. This unforgettable night will honor visionary leaders who continue to shape the narrative of civil rights and social justice in America.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries will present Senator Cory Booker with the John Robert Lewis Lifetime Legacy Award. Congressman Maxwell Frost will present the March On! Lifetime Achievement Award to Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith—along with Firelight Media, the trailblazing documentary platform they co-founded.
The evening will be hosted by Jonathan Capehart, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, MSNBC anchor, Washington Post opinion columnist, and New York Times bestselling author.
Please note: If you'd like to attend the Gala along with other Festival events, the best option is to purchase the Festival Pass + Gala pass, which grants access to everything for $600.
If you sponsor the festival at the friend ($1,000 level), you are granted access to two festival+gala passes.
Valet Parking Included
TO BE RESCHEDULED
Join us at Woolly Mammoth Theatre for March On! Night and a thought-provoking performance of The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar)—a comedic and resonant play examining America’s history of harming Black bodies in the name of science, our responsibility to time, and the power of joy in reckoning with the past. The evening includes a special conversation hosted by March On!
Pre-Show
7:30pm Wine, Art & Connection
Join us in the lobby before the show to sip, mingle, and immerse yourself in an installation celebrating the resilience, creativity, and intelligence of Black communities across time. It honors not only the grief in the play but also the joy, beauty, and unstoppable forward movement of Black life. Here, celebration is resistance, rest is wisdom, and gathering is a radical act.
Post-Show Conversation
Use code MARCH30 at checkout to receive 30% off regular ticket prices.
Hurry—only the first 50 people will receive the discount!
Partner
We are excited to partner on this event with Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, which produces courageous and invigorating new work to radically redefine theatre as a catalyst for an equitable, creative, and engaged society.
Doors Open: 5:30pm
Start Time: 6:00pm
Reception: 7:45pm
End Time: 8:30pm
Join us for an eye-opening conversation featuring clips from Critical Condition: Health in Black America, the powerful NOVA and Firelight Films documentary by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson. The film investigates why Black Americans are nearly twice as likely to suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease—and why their life expectancy is five years shorter than White Americans—despite no meaningful genetic differences between races.
Featured voices from the film will discuss its themes and the pressing realities of health and equity today, exploring how pseudoscientific myths about race continue to influence medicine and how the lived experience of discrimination impacts the health of Black Americans. This session connects history, science, and lived reality, offering an urgent dialogue on health equity and justice.
The conversation will be followed by a reception, offering space to continue the dialogue and connect with fellow attendees. The full film is available to stream for free on PBS.
Partner and Sponsor
We are honored to collaborate with NOVA to bring this session to life and are grateful for their generous support, which made it possible.
Partners
Thank you to Howard University Hospital, the Georgetown-Howard Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, WETA, and WHUT for their partnership.
Speakers:
Doors Open: 12:00pm
Session: 12:15 – 12:45pm
An Intro to ASL Workshop, in partnership with Interpret This!, on the history and fundamentals of American Sign Language.
Speakers
Doors Open: 12:45pm
Session: 1:00 – 2:30pm
This program will explore the elements of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Amendments, focusing on key definitions, terminology, and the broad scope of what constitutes disability today. We will examine how this landmark legislation has evolved to better protect individuals with disabilities - and how it has not - using real-world examples. Panelists will discuss the proposed bill: Reproductive Health Care Accessibility Act and how they aim to address persistent gaps in care for all people with disabilities in rural and underserved urban communities.
Curated by Dara Baldwin, this session offers actionable ways for citizens to support inclusive legislation.
Speakers
Doors Open: 2:45pm
Session: 3:00 – 4:15pm
This interactive conversation brings together the most pressing health issues facing both women and men—while centering the tools and confidence needed to advocate for your own care. From prenatal health to menopause, from prostate and testicular cancer to diabetes, and from sexual health to heart and elder care, the panel addresses the full spectrum of concerns across the lifespan.
Drawing on the real stories of front-line medical experts and community leaders, this session tackles both the science and the stigma, highlighting the disproportionate burdens Black communities face and offering practical strategies for prevention, early detection, and whole-person wellness. Above all, it’s about breaking silence, removing barriers, and ensuring that every person can access the care they want and need—body, mind, and spirit.
Moderator
Panelists
Duke Ellington School of the Arts
3500 R St NW
Washington, DC 20007
Doors Open: 5:30pm
Session: 6:30pm
Directed by Christine Swanson, Albany Road follows Celeste as she prepares for an important work trip, only to find herself sharing a tense car ride with her ex-fiancé’s mother, Paula.
After the film, join us for an honest and revealing community dialogue on improving how we share our lives and thoughts with the people we love.
Sponsor
Presented through support from The Black Leadership AIDS
Crisis Coalition powered by AHF
Speakers
Doors Open: 9:45am
Session: 10:00am
Each year, the March On! Festival hosts a powerful film competition that showcases the work of emerging and student filmmakers using their craft to explore civil rights, social justice, and equity.
Doors Open: 2:30pm
Session: 3:00 – 4:30pm
Tickets Are Available For Purchase at the Door
What if the key to our liberation, justice and community thriving isn’t more effort—but more rest? In this transformative interactive session, Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, challenges everything we’ve been taught about productivity, showing how intentional rest is not just a luxury, but a necessity for personal and collective liberation. Brilliant sound artist and singer Arin Maya will be joining Tricia to add a live soundtrack to the Collective Rest Moment. You don’t want to miss this special collaboration.
Tricia is the acclaimed author of two groundbreaking books Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto and We Will Rest!, both of which explore rest, healing, and liberation as radical tools for reclaiming our humanity.
Before the session, FlowWell Yoga will lead a gentle Chair Yoga demonstration—an embodied invitation to release and center.
Speakers
Partner
We are excited to partner on this event with Metropolitan AME Church, a historic national church at the vanguard of creating space for all human beings to imagine and build a just and beautiful community and world.
Doors Open: 6:00pm
Session: 7:00pm
Tickets Are Available For Purchase at the Door
Presented biennially by Dr. Sharon Malone—renowned OB/GYN and sister of civil rights pioneer Vivian Malone Jones—this award honors contemporary women who demonstrate extraordinary courage in the fight for racial justice. Named after the first African American to graduate from the University of Alabama, the award celebrates those who, like Vivian, boldly confront injustice and inspire progress.
This year, we are delighted to honor commentator, author, television and podcast host Joy-Ann Reid, who will be joined In Conversation with the Honorable Eric Holder, former US Attorney General. With welcoming remarks from Jalaya Liles Dunn, Director of Learning for Justice at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and a special performance by actor Lisa Arrindell.
And at the top of the program, we will also proudly celebrate the creativity and vision of the winners of the Student and Emerging Filmmaker Competition.
Come early! The first 500 people to arrive receive a free copy of Joy-Ann Reid's book Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America.
Partner
We are excited to partner on this event with Metropolitan AME Church, a historic national church at the vanguard of creating space for all human beings to imagine and build a just and beautiful community and world.
Doors Open: 12:45pm
Day Party: 1:00 – 3:00pm
Step into the glittering world of the Harlem Renaissance, where art, politics, and pleasure converged in a swirl of brilliance and defiance. Inspired by the legendary gatherings at A’Lelia Walker’s Dark Tower salon—the top floor of her Harlem townhouse on 136th Street—this closing celebration channels the glamour, intellect, and audacity of an era that redefined Black creativity. The Dark Tower was the gathering space for the luminaries of the day—artists, writers, musicians, poets, their patrons, and friends from Walker’s travels abroad.
Poetry drifts through the crowd, an aerialist twists gracefully overhead, and the rhythms shift through an intellectual and emotional journey on the history of Black music—from the swing of the 1920s to the grooves of funk, the pulse of hip hop, and the global beat of Afro Beats. A spirited conversation between A’Lelia Bundles, granddaughter of the original “Joy Goddess,” and March On! Artistic Director Isisara Bey will bring to life the stories, style, and cultural impact of Walker’s famed salon, connecting its legacy to the artistry and activism of today.
Thought-provoking dialogue intertwines with artistry, as reflections on legacy mingle seamlessly with the thrill of the moment. Laughter mingles with the clink of glasses, rich flavors tempt your palate, and a table of carefully curated books invites you to take a piece of the experience home.
More than a party, it’s a living tribute to a cultural awakening—an afternoon to be inspired, to connect, and to carry the spark forward.
Special Guests:
The March On! Festival Spring 2024 Workshop Series, “Mind Your Movie Business: Pro Tips from Hollywood Industry Leaders” features three comprehensive workshops that delve into essential filmmaking aspects: casting, producing, and distribution.
The March on Washington Film Festival Spring 2024 Workshop Series, “Mind Your Movie Business: Pro Tips from Hollywood Industry Leaders” features three comprehensive workshops that delve into essential filmmaking aspects: casting, producing, and distribution.
Debuting in 2016, the Student and Emerging Filmmaker Competitions gives filmmakers the opportunity to use cinematic storytelling to answer important themes like “what’s your civil right?” and “speaking truth to power.” The annual short film competition receives over 150 submissions from across the world.
March On’s 2024 Film Festival will spotlight writers who move the movement, with an emphasis on the writers of nonfiction, fiction, African futurism, spoken word, journalism, and cookbooks, past and present, whose works propel us into a more just and equitable world.
The Prophet, a reading in honor of the 101st anniversary of this classic book of 26 prose poems written by the acclaimed Lebanese-American writer, Khalil Gibran, accompanied by violinist Keith Colón, Jr.
March On is honored to announce an exclusive virtual salon “Long Way Down: From Page to Stage” featuring March On Founder Robert Raben, in dialogue with MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and award-winning Author Jason Reynolds. Reynolds’ groundbreaking story has been reimagined as a critically acclaimed musical by Dahlak Brathwaite and Khiyon Hursey, bringing its raw emotion, […]
Feeling drained by today’s challenges? Take a moment to refuel your spirit and draw inspiration from the courageous changemakers who shaped the Civil Rights Movement. MARCH ON! is more than an event—it’s a movement, a rallying cry, and a soul-stirring experience designed to recharge your passion for justice, creativity, and truth. Join us for a […]
Join us for a live conversation exploring the power of film to amplify the untold and underrepresented stories of the Civil Rights Movement. Featuring Emmy-winning producer Opal H. Bennett, who leads the March On! Filmmaker Competition, and special guest and former March On! film competition winner Christine Swanson, acclaimed director of FANNIE, The Clark Sisters: […]
Doors Open: 1:45pm
Day Party: 2:00 – 4:00pm
Join us for a live conversation celebrating the legacy of A’Lelia Walker, daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and a defining figure of the Harlem Renaissance. This pre-festival webinar features award-winning journalist and author A’Lelia Bundles, whose new biography Joy Goddess brings to life her great-grandmother’s dazzling world of culture, creativity, and community. From legendary parties […]
Join us live on Tuesday, September 9 at 7 PM ET for a moving conversation with award-winning journalist and author Lonnae O’Neal, as she shares the deeply personal and historical journey behind her new memoir Bibb Country: Unearthing My Family Secrets of Land, Legacy, and Lettuce. What began with planting Bibb lettuce seeds in her […]
Doors Open: 6:45pm
Session: 7:00pm
Join us for A Quiet Word, a community silent reading experience, a blending of literature, music, and conversation.
Bring your favorite book, or just what you’re reading now. We’ll also have some complimentary copies of books from the 2025 March On! Reading List on hand. Then immerse yourself in two 20-minute silent reading sessions with intermittent 10-minute breaks to share your literary discoveries and insights with fellow book enthusiasts. Sip a cup of tea while a curated playlist enhances the vibe.
Sponsor
Eaton House
Session: 7:30 – 8:45pm
Health has always been a civil rights issue. From the struggle to desegregate hospitals to today’s fights around Black maternal mortality, chronic disease, and structural bias in medicine, the right to be well has long been shaped by race, power, and policy.
Presentors and Speakers
SOLD OUT
Festival pass holders are invited to a special pre-event screening of We Want the Funk! with acclaimed filmmaker Stanley Nelson. This syncopated journey through the history of funk traces its roots from African rhythms to soul and early jazz- capturing the sound, spirit, and soul of a cultural revolution.
Valet Parking Available for Gala Attendees at Dock 5
SOLD OUT
Join us for a spectacular evening of recognition, celebration, and joy—culminating in a high-energy, funk-infused dance party you won’t want to miss. This unforgettable night will honor visionary leaders who continue to shape the narrative of civil rights and social justice in America.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries will present Senator Cory Booker with the John Robert Lewis Lifetime Legacy Award. Congressman Maxwell Frost will present the March On! Lifetime Achievement Award to Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith—along with Firelight Media, the trailblazing documentary platform they co-founded.
The evening will be hosted by Jonathan Capehart, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, MSNBC anchor, Washington Post opinion columnist, and New York Times bestselling author.
Please note: If you'd like to attend the Gala along with other Festival events, the best option is to purchase the Festival Pass + Gala pass, which grants access to everything for $600.
If you sponsor the festival at the friend ($1,000 level), you are granted access to two festival+gala passes.
Valet Parking Included
TO BE RESCHEDULED
Join us at Woolly Mammoth Theatre for March On! Night and a thought-provoking performance of The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar)—a comedic and resonant play examining America’s history of harming Black bodies in the name of science, our responsibility to time, and the power of joy in reckoning with the past. The evening includes a special conversation hosted by March On!
Pre-Show
7:30pm Wine, Art & Connection
Join us in the lobby before the show to sip, mingle, and immerse yourself in an installation celebrating the resilience, creativity, and intelligence of Black communities across time. It honors not only the grief in the play but also the joy, beauty, and unstoppable forward movement of Black life. Here, celebration is resistance, rest is wisdom, and gathering is a radical act.
Post-Show Conversation
Use code MARCH30 at checkout to receive 30% off regular ticket prices.
Hurry—only the first 50 people will receive the discount!
Partner
We are excited to partner on this event with Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, which produces courageous and invigorating new work to radically redefine theatre as a catalyst for an equitable, creative, and engaged society.
Doors Open: 5:30pm
Start Time: 6:00pm
Reception: 7:45pm
End Time: 8:30pm
Join us for an eye-opening conversation featuring clips from Critical Condition: Health in Black America, the powerful NOVA and Firelight Films documentary by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson. The film investigates why Black Americans are nearly twice as likely to suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease—and why their life expectancy is five years shorter than White Americans—despite no meaningful genetic differences between races.
Featured voices from the film will discuss its themes and the pressing realities of health and equity today, exploring how pseudoscientific myths about race continue to influence medicine and how the lived experience of discrimination impacts the health of Black Americans. This session connects history, science, and lived reality, offering an urgent dialogue on health equity and justice.
The conversation will be followed by a reception, offering space to continue the dialogue and connect with fellow attendees. The full film is available to stream for free on PBS.
Partner and Sponsor
We are honored to collaborate with NOVA to bring this session to life and are grateful for their generous support, which made it possible.
Partners
Thank you to Howard University Hospital, the Georgetown-Howard Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, WETA, and WHUT for their partnership.
Speakers:
Doors Open: 12:00pm
Session: 12:15 – 12:45pm
An Intro to ASL Workshop, in partnership with Interpret This!, on the history and fundamentals of American Sign Language.
Speakers
Doors Open: 12:45pm
Session: 1:00 – 2:30pm
This program will explore the elements of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Amendments, focusing on key definitions, terminology, and the broad scope of what constitutes disability today. We will examine how this landmark legislation has evolved to better protect individuals with disabilities - and how it has not - using real-world examples. Panelists will discuss the proposed bill: Reproductive Health Care Accessibility Act and how they aim to address persistent gaps in care for all people with disabilities in rural and underserved urban communities.
Curated by Dara Baldwin, this session offers actionable ways for citizens to support inclusive legislation.
Speakers
Doors Open: 2:45pm
Session: 3:00 – 4:15pm
This interactive conversation brings together the most pressing health issues facing both women and men—while centering the tools and confidence needed to advocate for your own care. From prenatal health to menopause, from prostate and testicular cancer to diabetes, and from sexual health to heart and elder care, the panel addresses the full spectrum of concerns across the lifespan.
Drawing on the real stories of front-line medical experts and community leaders, this session tackles both the science and the stigma, highlighting the disproportionate burdens Black communities face and offering practical strategies for prevention, early detection, and whole-person wellness. Above all, it’s about breaking silence, removing barriers, and ensuring that every person can access the care they want and need—body, mind, and spirit.
Moderator
Panelists
Duke Ellington School of the Arts
3500 R St NW
Washington, DC 20007
Doors Open: 5:30pm
Session: 6:30pm
Directed by Christine Swanson, Albany Road follows Celeste as she prepares for an important work trip, only to find herself sharing a tense car ride with her ex-fiancé’s mother, Paula.
After the film, join us for an honest and revealing community dialogue on improving how we share our lives and thoughts with the people we love.
Sponsor
Presented through support from The Black Leadership AIDS
Crisis Coalition powered by AHF
Speakers
Doors Open: 9:45am
Session: 10:00am
Each year, the March On! Festival hosts a powerful film competition that showcases the work of emerging and student filmmakers using their craft to explore civil rights, social justice, and equity.
Doors Open: 2:30pm
Session: 3:00 – 4:30pm
Tickets Are Available For Purchase at the Door
What if the key to our liberation, justice and community thriving isn’t more effort—but more rest? In this transformative interactive session, Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, challenges everything we’ve been taught about productivity, showing how intentional rest is not just a luxury, but a necessity for personal and collective liberation. Brilliant sound artist and singer Arin Maya will be joining Tricia to add a live soundtrack to the Collective Rest Moment. You don’t want to miss this special collaboration.
Tricia is the acclaimed author of two groundbreaking books Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto and We Will Rest!, both of which explore rest, healing, and liberation as radical tools for reclaiming our humanity.
Before the session, FlowWell Yoga will lead a gentle Chair Yoga demonstration—an embodied invitation to release and center.
Speakers
Partner
We are excited to partner on this event with Metropolitan AME Church, a historic national church at the vanguard of creating space for all human beings to imagine and build a just and beautiful community and world.
Doors Open: 6:00pm
Session: 7:00pm
Tickets Are Available For Purchase at the Door
Presented biennially by Dr. Sharon Malone—renowned OB/GYN and sister of civil rights pioneer Vivian Malone Jones—this award honors contemporary women who demonstrate extraordinary courage in the fight for racial justice. Named after the first African American to graduate from the University of Alabama, the award celebrates those who, like Vivian, boldly confront injustice and inspire progress.
This year, we are delighted to honor commentator, author, television and podcast host Joy-Ann Reid, who will be joined In Conversation with the Honorable Eric Holder, former US Attorney General. With welcoming remarks from Jalaya Liles Dunn, Director of Learning for Justice at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and a special performance by actor Lisa Arrindell.
And at the top of the program, we will also proudly celebrate the creativity and vision of the winners of the Student and Emerging Filmmaker Competition.
Come early! The first 500 people to arrive receive a free copy of Joy-Ann Reid's book Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America.
Partner
We are excited to partner on this event with Metropolitan AME Church, a historic national church at the vanguard of creating space for all human beings to imagine and build a just and beautiful community and world.
Doors Open: 12:45pm
Day Party: 1:00 – 3:00pm
Step into the glittering world of the Harlem Renaissance, where art, politics, and pleasure converged in a swirl of brilliance and defiance. Inspired by the legendary gatherings at A’Lelia Walker’s Dark Tower salon—the top floor of her Harlem townhouse on 136th Street—this closing celebration channels the glamour, intellect, and audacity of an era that redefined Black creativity. The Dark Tower was the gathering space for the luminaries of the day—artists, writers, musicians, poets, their patrons, and friends from Walker’s travels abroad.
Poetry drifts through the crowd, an aerialist twists gracefully overhead, and the rhythms shift through an intellectual and emotional journey on the history of Black music—from the swing of the 1920s to the grooves of funk, the pulse of hip hop, and the global beat of Afro Beats. A spirited conversation between A’Lelia Bundles, granddaughter of the original “Joy Goddess,” and March On! Artistic Director Isisara Bey will bring to life the stories, style, and cultural impact of Walker’s famed salon, connecting its legacy to the artistry and activism of today.
Thought-provoking dialogue intertwines with artistry, as reflections on legacy mingle seamlessly with the thrill of the moment. Laughter mingles with the clink of glasses, rich flavors tempt your palate, and a table of carefully curated books invites you to take a piece of the experience home.
More than a party, it’s a living tribute to a cultural awakening—an afternoon to be inspired, to connect, and to carry the spark forward.
Special Guests:
Join us on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026 for a special replay of the Vivian Malone Courage Award, featuring Joy Reid in conversation with Eric Holder.
Presented biennially by Dr. Sharon Malone, OB/GYN and Chief Medical Officer of Alloy Women’s Health and sister to Vivian Malone, the Vivian Malone Courage Award honors contemporary women who demonstrate extraordinary courage in the fight for racial justice.
Learn the history and fundamentals of American Sign Language.
Join us on Tuesday, January 27, 2026 for Talking Hands, an introductory ASL workshop exploring the history, fundamentals, and cultural significance of American Sign Language.
The conversation will be hosted by WNYC’s Michael Hill, Brian Lehrer, and Janae Pierre, along with WQXR’s Terrance McKnight.
