BIO partners with Troy University-Montgomery to Sponsor National Conference on Black Biography
BIO will host the first major national conference in Black biography in over 40 years. Telling the Stories of Black Lives through Biography will be co-sponsored by and take place on the campus of Troy University-Montgomery, Alabama, on March 21 and 22, 2025. It will feature a full day of speakers and panel discussions, along with receptions and other activities.
Telling the Stories of Black Lives through Biography is the brainchild of author and longtime BIO board member Ray Anthony Shepard, who says of the conference, “On March 21 and 22, 2025, as the nation begins to commemorate its founding, a cadre of biographers and biography enthusiasts will gather in Montgomery, Alabama, to consider this critical question: How can we honestly celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Republic without reckoning with the role of the slave system and its impact on America today? Montgomery is a symbolic forge of Black lives inside America—where the heat of slavery flamed, and the hammer of civil rights toughened the resolve of a 21st- century America.”