On Tuesday, February 23, at 7pm the Gossels Fund for Human Dignity is sponsoring a program in honor of Black History Month in the Raytheon Room of the Wayland Library. Professor Leonard Brown will present “Singing Our Story” which will explore how enslaved Blacks in colonial America used music as a secret vehicle to create a sense of family and provide social commentary on their conditions and their enslavers. The program is appropriate for an audience from third graders through adults.

Professor Leonard Brown is an accomplished professional musician (saxophonist, composer, and arranger), teacher, author of books and articles, ethnomusicologist, and specialist in multicultural education. He is an emeritus professor of African American Studies and Music at Northeastern University where he taught and served in various administrative capacities from 1986 to 2015.

Started many years ago by the families of Peter and Werner Gossels of Wayland to honor their mother and aunts (who were victims of the Holocaust) and all other innocent victims of persecution, the Gossels Fund’s mission is “to foster and augment programs and activities that will encourage people to respect, treasure, and protect the rights of all human beings to live in dignity, freedom, and peace.”