Portraits Unveiling Reception

At the start of this semester, we held a reception for the unveiling of three new portraits painted by local artist Leo Rucker that were recently installed in the hallway outside our Classics classrooms.  The subjects of the portraits are: Helen Maria Chesnutt, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Wiley Lane.  Accompanied with these paintings is a brochure featuring Black scholars, teachers, and leaders in the field of Classics whose forgotten histories have been recovered by the archival research of Professor Michele Valerie Ronnick, Professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.  At the reception, Dr. Mary Pendergraft, Chair and Professor of Classics at Wake Forest University, and Dr. T. H. M. Gellar-Goad, Associate Professor of Classics at Wake Forest University, gave remarks, as well as Angela Rucker, wife of artist Leo Rucker, and Ally Swartzberg, President of WFU Student Government.  The paintings were co-sponsored by the WFU Classics Dept, WFU Provost Office, WFU Office of Diversity and Inclusion, WFU Student Government, Society for Classical Studies, Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and National Endowment for the Humanities and the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute.