AUTHOR TALK: SAMUEL BLACK
In 2006, the Senator John Heinz History Center opened Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era, the first major museum exhibit on the subject in American museums. The exhibit subsequently traveled to six American cities and was visited by nearly 450,000 people. Samuel Black is the director of the Museum of African American History at the center, and the editor of the book that accompanied the exhibit. On Tuesday, November 3, at 7 p.m. at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library, Black will discuss the creation, impact and importance of the history of Soul Soldiers to the body of knowledge of the Vietnam War.
In addition to editing Soul Soldiers, Black edited The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience and co-authored Through the Lens of Allen E. Cole: A Photographic History of African Americans in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the 2024 recipient of the Davey Award for his Western Pennsylvania History article The Negro Motorist Green Book: Exploring the History of African American Travel, Migration, and Mobility.
BOOK FLOOD DAMMED The bad news is, because of the library’s renovation, Jolabokaflod, one of our favorite winter events because it basically amounts to giving and getting books and then just going off to read them, will not happen this month. The good news is, you can still prepare for your own private Jolabokaflod (Icelandic for “Christmas Flood of Books.” Isn’t that the greatest?) at the Friends of the Library’s holiday book sale, Saturday, November 21 from 10 to 4. Also, the Friends Poinsettia Sale will start the same day.
NOIR-VEMBER RETURNS
Every Monday in November, down these mean streets a viewer must go who is not mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid, but who loves black and white crime movies from the 1940s.
That’s the rationale behind Mt. Lebanon Public Library’s Noir-vember. Monday nights at 6:30, watch a classic film noir and stick around for a discussion. This year’s lineup:
November 2
Nora Prentiss Richard Talbot, a San Francisco doctor, is drawn into an affair with nightclub singer Nora Prentiss. Unable to ask his wife for a divorce, he seizes an opportunity to fake his death when a patient who looks somewhat like him, and whom he knows does not have any family or friends, dies in his office.
November 9
The Postman Always Rings Twice The original 1946 version, starring Lana Turner and John Garfield. Drifter Frank Chambers finds work at a diner, where he begins an affair with the owner’s wife, Cora, who is married to a man she does not love and working at a diner she wishes to own. Cora has a plan to get rid of her husband, and needs Frank’s help. Remade in 1981, starring Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson.
November 16
The Woman on Pier 13 Brad Collins, a San Francisco shipping executive, has a shadowy past that makes him the target of a Communist plot to sabotage labor negotiations in the Bay Area shipping industry.
November 23
The Big Clock True crime magazine editor George Stroud has a one-night fling with Pauline York, his boss’s mistress. Stroud’s boss, Earl Janoth, sees Stroud leave York’s apartment but is not able to identify him. An enraged Janoth kills York. He confesses his crime to his assistant, intending to turn himself in, but his assistant convinces him that they can frame the unidentified man. Janoth puts Stroud in charge of leading the investigation. If this story sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it was remade in 1987 into No Way Out, starring Sean Young, Gene Hackman and Kevin Costner.
November 30
Dark Passage Convicted wife killer Vincent Parry escapes from San Quentin and hitches a ride with Irene Jansen, a wealthy dilettante who offers him shelter in her apartment while nursing him through his recuperation from face-changing plastic surgery.