Lessons from Changemakers

In November, former Macalester history professor Mahmoud El-Kati sat in the Alexander G. Hill Ballroom’s front row, surrounded by family and many former students, as the Mac community celebrated his legacy at the eighth annual El-Kati Distinguished Lectureship in American Studies.

“In African culture, the griot is the wise elder who shares the history, traditions, and aspirations of the clan and community,” Melvin Collins ’75 said at the event. “Mahmoud has been that for Macalester, and for the Twin Cities community, for over fifty years.”

In 2021, more than three hundred donors raised $90,000 during a twelve-day campaign to endow the lectureship, which brings notable Black scholars to St. Paul every other year to share their knowledge with Macalester and the local community. The lectureship was established by Stanley M. Berry ’75, Bertram M. Days ’74, and Ava B. Days to honor El-Kati’s career—including at Macalester from 1970 to 2003—as a lecturer, writer, and commentator on the African American experience.

The program in November featured Dr. Crystal Marie Moten, a former Macalester history professor who is curator of African American history at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Division of Work and Industry. Her research focuses on Black women’s struggles for economic justice in the twentieth-century urban North. Moten’s lecture lifted up the work and legacies of Bernice Copeland Lindsay and Nana Reed Baker, changemakers who fostered opportunities for Black women and girls in 1940s Milwaukee, “in hope that we might learn from their examples of strength, courage, resilience—their determined decisions to create during crisis.”

“Being invited to give the El-Kati lecture holds tremendous meaning for me, especially having taught African American history in the same department where Elder El-Kati taught, literally traversing the path he cleared,” Moten told the audience. “It’s amazing.”

Watch Moten’s lecture