Looking to enrich your life? Join us for a series of free cultural conversations.

The White Fund’s purpose is to have a free series of interactive presentations for Lawrence area adults, youth, and children. The audience is encouraged to seek wisdom, cultural enrichment, and intellectual enhancement by attending and participating.

Spring 2013

May 3 – What is Activism in Today’s World? author Ernesto Quiñonez

Join author Ernesto Quiñonez, as he discusses activism in today’s world and what small actions we might be able to do in our everyday lives, in order to contribute to social causes and bring change.

Quiñonez was raised in Spanish Harlem and is a product of the New York City public school system. His debut novel, Bodega Dreams, was chosen as a Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers, Borders Original Voices, the New York Public Library’s 25 Books to Remember, as well as a Los Angeles Times and New York Times Notable books of the year. Since then, Bodega Dreams has become a landmark in contemporary literature; it is required reading in many high schools and colleges around the country and it was heralded as a “New Immigrant Classic” by the New York Times.

Quiñonez is an associate professor at Cornell University’s MFA program. His essays have appeared in Esquire, The Sunday New York Times Magazine, The Sunday Times, Newsweek, El Pais, (Spain) and he has been a fellow at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab as well as other institutions.

The White Fund Enlightenment Series is presented by Northern Essex Community College. For more information, please call 978-738-7403.

Additional Information

For additional information or to be added to the electronic mailing list, please contact Martha Leavitt, director, Lawrence Campus operations, at mleavitt@necc.mass.edu or 978-738-7403.

Sign language interpreters may be requested by calling 978-556-3897 V or by emailing interpret@necc.mass.edu.

About the White Fund Enlightenment Series

In the 1850’s Daniel Appleton White served as an Essex County Probate judge and a Massachusetts Congressman. His birthplace was a Methuen farm that would eventually become a part of downtown Lawrence and the campus of Northern Essex Community College. At his direction, money from the sale of a portion of that land would endow a “course of lectures delivered annually designed to enlighten the mind and elevate the character.” His chief concern was “for the advancement and success in life” of the young men and women at work in the textile mills.

The first White Fund lecture was delivered in 1864. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Booker T. Washington were among the mid-century luminaries who graced the White Lecture podium at City Hall on Common Street. Charter trustees Charles S. Storrow, Henry K. Oliver, and Nathanial G. White, for whom the Lawrence Public Library was dedicated, enlisted speakers “tending to the moral and intellectual uplift of the inhabitants of Lawrence.” Today the White Fund Trustees continue this tradition through support of the White Fund Enlightenment Series offered in cooperation with Northern Essex. By Judge White’s design, these presentations are free to the public.

For more information on any of the events or for directions to the events at Northern Essex’s Louise Haffner Fournier Education Center, please call 978-738-7403.