The Gwinnett County Public Library exists to provide the place and resources for us all to connect, learn, and grow. That mission is at the heart of the Hooper-Renwick Memorial Program Fund and Endowment’s principal program—the annual Hooper-Renwick Memorial Author Speaker Series. To improve genuine equity and true inclusion for all residents of Gwinnett County, we must increase understanding and foster
empathy—we must provide the opportunity for people to connect with others who are not like them, learn from them, and grow from the experience. True justice and equity will not be realized without racial healing and reconciliation. As a community, we will have to truly come together to move forward.
Why Gwinnett?
Gwinnett leads. As the most diverse county in Georgia, Gwinnett County stands as the perfect community to lead our state and nation in moving beyond lip service and modeling how you grow hearts and minds to see improvement in our county and beyond.
Why an Author & Speaker Series?
We need a broad entry point. We see this series as a primary starting point for ongoing conversations in the community. The Gwinnett County Library is an ideal convener already engaged in bringing authors to Gwinnett and developing programs targeted at balancing inequities. The library has a successful track record of meeting people where they are and moving them forward.
This series leverages the strengths and broad appeal of the library to begin courageous conversations encouraging all the residents of Gwinnett to come together, to learn from each other, and to grow from the experience. Our hope is that these larger gatherings would spur and feed into smaller gatherings convened by other community partners where experiences are shared, otherwise unlikely friendships are forged, and necessary cultural change begins to take hold increasing the opportunity for systemic and institutional change.
Our Objective
- Convene courageous, ongoing conversations,
- Build community instead of fear,
- Celebrate the strength in our diversity, and
- Provide the place and resources for us all to connect, learn, and grow—together.
We want to see strangers become friends, friends become allies, and allies to become
advocates and activists.
Local Voices. Local Leaders.
Yvette Summerour – After a stint in a Georgia police department, Summerour joined the Secret Service in 1986. Since then, she has held supervisory jobs on the security details of President Clinton, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and presidential daughter Chelsea Clinton.
Tommie Smith – An American former track and field athlete and former wide receiver in the American Football League. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Smith, aged 24, won the 200-meter sprint finals and gold medal in 19.83 seconds – the first time the 20-second barrier was broken officially. His salute for equality on the medal podium to protest racism and injustice against African Americans remains a symbolic moment in history.
Keynote Author Speaker.
Carolyn McKinstry, While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement A lifelong member of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama,
Carolyn was present on September 15, 1963, when white racists bombed the Church. Carolyn’s four young friends were killed. As a teenager, Carolyn felt her “calling” by attending the mass meetings and rallies at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. She was among thousands of students hosed by firemen during the 1963 marches. She survived a second bomb explosion that destroyed a large portion of her home in 1964. An “authentic child of the movement”, Carolyn believes that God spared her life on September 15th, 1963, so that she could continue to live in service to others.
Carolyn has shared her experiences with the History and Discovery Channels, The Faith & Politics Institute and The U.S. States Memorial Holocaust Museum – both of Washington, D.C., The Frist Center of Nashville, Tennessee, CNN, BBC, MSNBC, Life Magazine, The Oprah Winfrey Show, national and local Public Radio and numerous other organizations and academic institutions. Recent invitations include New Delhi (India), Rome (Italy) (The Italian Baptist Evangelical Union in celebration of their annual international Martin Luther King memorial holiday), The Ramaz School
(Jewish) in New York, The Children’s Defense Fund at Haley Farm (Clinton, Tennessee), and the Aspen Institute in Colorado. Carolyn was also a consultant and participant in the Spike Lee HBO Documentary “Four Little Girls”, the Hallmark television movie “Sins of the Father” (as told by the son of Bob Cherry, one of those convicted of the bombing), and “We shall not be moved” – a documentary of selected Churches that opened their doors to the Civil Rights Movement in the sixties, and the HBO Grammy winning “Children’s March."