(Black PR Wire) ATLANTA, Ga. — Building on the 2025 Black History Month Theme, African Americans and Labor, The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is excited to share that its ASALH Convention and Meeting will explore this theme with vibrant and engaging programming that will bring together Black leaders from across the country at this critical hour.   Related activities and events focus on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds—free and unfree, skilled and unskilled, vocational and voluntary—intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Our theme intends to encourage broad reflections on intersections between Black people’s work and their workplaces in all their iterations and key moments, themes, and events in Black history and culture across time and space and throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. Like religion, social justice movements, and education, African Americans’ labor and labor struggles are important organizing foci for new interpretations and reinterpretations of the Black past, present, and future. Such new considerations and reconsiderations are even more significant as the historical forces of racial oppression gather new and renewed strength in the 21st century.

This year’s Convention and Meeting, which will be held at the Omni Atlanta Hotel at Centennial Park from September 24-28, 2025, will feature vibrant and engaging programming that will bring together Black leaders, academics, teachers, and community members from across the country at this critical hour.

Our goal is to make as many of the activities free and accessible to the public as possible, including our Wednesday sessions and plenary, film festival offerings, poster sessions, vendor exhibits, and the Friday evening author book signing. Click here for the list of free daily events.

Conference headliners include the following: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edda Fields Black; scholar/activist Ibram X. Kendi; historians Peniel Joseph, Maurice Hobson, Stephanie Evans and Joe Trotter Jr.; and labor leaders such Chris Smalls of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), the first independent union to successfully organize Amazon warehouse workers in the United States, and others. Other personalities who will be in attendance include Michael Bond, Rev. Jamal Bryant, Carolyn Byrd, The Honorable Bill Campbell, State Rep. Omari Crawford, Ambassador Andrew and Andrea Young, and many, many more who comprise our Conference Host committee.

Sessions will provide guidance to librarians, teachers, community organizers, and others on how to establish Freedom Schools and otherwise purvey Black history in the current challenged national environment. We are especially proud to highlight these featured sessions from this year’s Film Festival, as they align closely with our conference theme. Please find the film festival schedule here. While admission to these screenings remains free, we wish to emphasize the central role our film festival programming plays in advancing the mission and impact of the conference.

Our plenary sessions are also free. Wednesday, September 24th, 4:00-6:00pm, The Fire Now! will discuss how budgets and policies are “Undermining Preservation of the African American Experience.” Featuring moderator, Crystal Davis, National Parks Conservation Association, with presenters: Jocelyn Imani, Trust for Public Land; Robert Stanton, US Department of the Interior; Sylvia Y. Cyrus, ASALH Executive Director; and Alan Spears, of the National Parks Conservation Association.  The plenary session on Thursday the 25th, Towards a Theory of Liberation: The State of Black Radicalism Today, features Charisse Burden-Stelly, Gerald Horne, Akinyele Umoja, Joy James and Ashley Howard. On Friday, September 26th, The Legacy and Scholarship of Joe William Trotter Jr. will feature Naomi R. Williams, Augustus Wood, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Blair LM Kelley, Leslie M. Harris and Joe W. Trotter. Click here to see all plenaries.

We are especially excited about our “ticketed” luncheon events this year! The John Blassingame Luncheon takes place Friday with labor organizer Chris Smalls, and the Saturday luncheon will focus on “An Unusual Emphasis on Scholarship: Carter G. Woodson. Omega Psi Phi, and the Power of Black History.” Both luncheons will be powerhouses of thinking and teaching—with voices both young and old. Tickets are available here.

Registration is open to all by clicking here.

Media outlets seeking press credentials click here.

Source: The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)