Freedom’s Gate: Women Who Shaped a Movement: Inside the Nightclub That Sparked a Cultural Revolution

Through rich cultural history and immersive storytelling, Colbert reveals how Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba, and Nina Simone forged artistic brilliance and political resolve in an underground New York nightclub that became a beacon for Black liberation. Discover the friendships, performances, and radical imagination that reshaped American art and activism. For reasonable accommodations, please contact the Center for Accessibility at 202-727-2142 or DCPLaccess@dc.gov. For ASL or tactile interpretation, please allow at least seven (7) days notice. Meet the Author Soyica Diggs Colbert is the Idol Family Professor at Georgetown University and a winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship. Author of the award-winning Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry, she has written for the New York Times and Washington Post. In Conversation With Dana A. Williams is professor of African American literature and dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. Her latest book is Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship (Harper/Amistad 2025). About the Book An illuminating portrait of five Black woman artists and the New York nightclub that helped inspire the civil rights movement. Before they were household names, Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba, and Nina Simone needed a place to practice and perform. That place was the Village Gate, a New York City nightclub that Art D'Lugoff opened at the dawn of an unprecedented decade in civil rights. In the heart of the West Village, the women of the Gate created something that few could have imagined: a downtown hotspot for Black art, culture, music, and politics. Freedom's Gate depicts the groundbreaking artistry and deepening political convictions of the women of the Gate as they developed in the spotlight of art and revolution. From Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun to Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" and Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach's We Insist! Free