About this Event
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes the little-known story of the pioneering Black women artists and activists who were seen, but barely heard, at the 1963 March on Washington.
"Chatelain teaches us how to tell fuller, truer stories. This is the model for recovering what we have been quick to forget."--Caleb Gayle, author of Black Moses
There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons--and of course the day's headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no "class photo" of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its main stage, or were honored during its "Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom."
In How Bright the Path Grows, Marcia Chatelain weaves a gleaming group portrait of these singular women. Among this cohort were several household names: vaudeville icon Josephine Baker; civil rights activist Rosa Parks gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, and Daisy Bates, champion of the Little Rock Nine. But many were relative unknowns, including Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day's musical program, and Anna Hedgeman, the coordinator who pushed in the eleventh hour for a tribute to Black women's work.
How Bright the Path Grows is a scintillating group biography, rendering the lives of thirteen Black women visionaries--some famous, others soon to be--in novelistic detail and like never seen before.
Marcia Chatelain is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside Dr. Natalie Hopkinson to share more about “one of the most enduring images in American memory through the women erased from its frame” (Alexis Coe, NYT bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First). Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Chatelain will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Doors open to guests at 5:30pm. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of HOW BRIGHT THE PATH GROWS will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books
MARCIA CHATELAIN is a Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of South Side Girls and Franchise, which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History, the James Beard Foundation Book Award for Writing, the Hagley Prize for Business History, and the Lawrence W. Levine Award from the Organization of American Historians. An active public speaker and educational consultant, Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Natalie Hopkinson is Associate Professor of Media, Democracy and Society at the American University. Her 2018 book, A Mouth is Always Muzzled, was a cultural history of her parents’ native Guyana. She is also the author of Go-Go Live (2012, Duke University Press) and Deconstructing Tyrone with Natalie Y. Moore (2006, Cleis Press). Hopkinson is Chief Curator of D.C.’s Go-Go Museum.
BOOK DETAILS
How Bright the Path Grows
The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington
By Marcia Chatelain
September 29, 2026 | Hardcover, 400 pages, $35
Event venue & nearby stays
Busboys and Poets 450K, 450 K St NW, Washington, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.