Sunday, March 15, 2pm at Rossville AME Zion Church, 584 Bloomingdale Road, SINY 10309

Staten Island OutLOUD’s series for The Big Read on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird continues with this special event.  Featured guest: our neighbor Rev George McClain, who will have just returned from the 50th anniversary commemoration of the historic Selma-Montgomery marches.

Staten Island OutLOUD is honored to present this event in collaboration with Pastor Janet Jones and the congregation of Rossville AME Zion Church, one of Staten Island’s leading faith communities.  The Rossville church stands on the site  of historic Staten Island’s Sandy Ground community, where freed Black oyster fishermen settled with their families in the early 1800s.

Rev. McClain worked in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s as a seminarian and as a young minister.  OutLOUD has been featuring his oral history of that pivotal time in civil rights history, as part of our 2014-15 series on Harper Lee’s gripping novel.  The march on Selma, Alabama was a critical point in the nation’s growing civil rights movement, and many observers credit To Kill a Mockingbird as helping to catalyze public opinion.  For excellent guides on To Kill a Mockingbird, visit http://www.neabigread.org/books/mockingbird/readers-guide/.