Events
Montgomery Conference 2025
The joys and challenges of producing biographies of Black subjects was the focus of a significant national conference March 21-22, 2025, in Montgomery, Alabama, presented by BIO in collaboration with Troy University-Montgomery.
Overview
Telling the Stories of Black Lives through Biography is believed to be the first conference of its kind since the 1980s. Through talks, panel discussions, and opportunities to tour Montgomery’s foremost civil rights memorials, the conference is intended to appeal to writers and readers of biography and history, along with teachers and students from the Southeast region.
What to Expect
Site tours are recommended on Friday, March 21. Sites can be visited through the weekend for those staying in the area through Sunday. Other historic sites, including the Rosa Parks Museum and the Edmund Pettis Bridge, are accessible in and around Montgomery. Keynote talk, four panel discussions, and other events will fill the day on Saturday, March 22the downtown Montgomery campus of Troy University, concluding with a dinner and talk in the evening.
Program
(Please note that all times are U.S. Central Daylight Time)
(Please note that all times are U.S. Central Daylight Time)
All sessions at Troy University – Montgomery, 231 Montgomery St.
Keynote Speaker
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A’Lelia Bundles
is the author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a New York Times Notable Book about her entrepreneurial great-great-grandmother and the nonfiction inspiration for Self Made, the fictional Netflix/Warner Bros. series starring Octavia Spencer. Her latest book, Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, the first major biography of her great-grandmother, will be published on June 10, 2025 by Scribner.
She is the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives and serves on several nonprofit boards including the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, the March On Festival, Biographer’s International Organization (BIO) and Columbia Global Reports. A former network television news executive and Emmy Award winning producer at ABC News and NBC News, she is a former chair of the National Archives Foundation and a former vice chair of Columbia University’s board of trustees.
Luncheon Speaker
David Greenberg
is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. His latest book, John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster, 2024), has been called “panoramic and richly insightful” (Brent Staples, The New York Times) and a biography that “captures Lewis’s life, achievements, and times with heart-stopping precision” (Booklist). A Guggenheim Foundation, NEH, Cullman Center and Leon Levy Center for Biography fellow, Greenberg is the author or editor of several books on American history and politics including Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (2003) and Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency (2016). Formerly acting editor of The New Republic and columnist for Slate, he now writes regularly for Politico, Liberties, and many other scholarly and popular publications. He holds a PhD in history from Columbia University and a BA from Yale University.
Registration
Early registration has been extended through March 1, 2025!
The early-bird fee for BIO members is $95; after that, the cost increases to $125.
Non-member registration is $140, and students can attend for $30.
All registration fees include admission to Civil Rights sites operated by the Equal Justice Initiative, including the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial, and the Freedom Movement Sculpture Park.
