Baylor University professor to speak on Black sacred music and the civil rights movement – April 18

Robert Darden will visit Elon to give a public lecture and a keynote address for the annual Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony.

Monday, April 18
Robert Darden, director of Baylor University’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project
“Black Sacred Music and the American Civil Rights Movement”

LaRose Digital Theatre, Koury Business Center, 4 p.m.

Professor Robert Darden, Baylor University.
Robert F. Darden is professor of journalism, public relations, and new media at Baylor University. He is the director of Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, which is the world’s largest initiative to identify, acquire, digitize, catalogue, and make accessible the fast-vanishing vinyl of gospel music’s golden age. He is the former gospel music editor for Billboard Magazine and author of People Get Ready: A New History of Black Gospel Music and Nothing but Love in God’s Water: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, Volume I. He also is also a frequent contributor to Huffington Post on the topics of Black sacred music and the civil rights movement.

Darden’s expertise also includes 20 years as Senior Editor of The Wittenburg Door (the world’s oldest, largest, and probably only religious humor and satire magazine). He is the author of more than two dozen books and hundreds of magazine articles. His articles and short stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Oxford American, Southern Arts, Amazing Journeys, The Library of Congress/National Registry of Historic Recordings, Journal of Church and State, Oxford University’s Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd Edition, and others.

Darden has been interviewed and featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Tapestry (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.), C-SPAN and Fresh Air. He earned a bachelor of science degree in education from Baylor University and a master of arts in journalism from the University of North Texas. He was named the Baylor University Centennial Professor in 2008, the Outstanding Research professor of the Arts and Sciences in 2008, and Outstanding Professor of Baylor University in 2011.