Porterville College’s Cultural Historical Awareness Program (CHAP) has announced a new date for its upcoming presentation featuring acclaimed scholar Dr. Traci Lynnea Parker-Lewis. Originally set for September 15, the lecture has been rescheduled due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict and will now take place on Monday, September 21, 2026, at 7:00 PM in the Porterville College Theater.
In her presentation, titled “The FBI’s War on Black Marriage,” Dr. Parker-Lewis will explore how federal surveillance programs intentionally targeted intimate relationships during the mid-twentieth-century Black Freedom Movement.
Drawing upon extensive historical documentation, the talk examines state-sponsored efforts to manufacture distrust between partners, destabilize marriages, and undermine the personal and domestic support networks underpinning prominent civil rights leadership.
Attendees should note that the lecture includes discussion of sensitive themes, including sex, infidelity, and the weaponization of sexual surveillance against African American activists.
Dr. Parker-Lewis serves as an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s (UNC Press, 2019) and co-editor of The New Civil Rights Movement Reader: Resistance, Resilience, and Justice (UMass Press, 2023). Her extensive research on twentieth-century social movements and personal relationships continues with several major upcoming publications, including Revolutionary Love with Bloomsbury Publishing, a scholarly biography of Coretta Scott King, and a co-edited collection on American marriage. In April 2027, Yale University Press will release her co-edited work, I Was Called: The Activist Life of Coretta Scott King, marking the centennial of the civil rights leader’s birth.
The presentation is open to campus members and the wider community. For more information about this event or the CHAP program at Porterville College, visit the CHAP website at https://www.portervillecollege.edu/about-pc/chap/ index.html or contact CHAP Coordinator Leslie Keele at leslie.keele@portervillecollege.edu.