Sock Hop Dance Party & Freedom Library

Bring your kids and your best dance moves to Myrlie's Garden for a Saturday morning sock hop and story time! With live music by No Tears Project and choreographer/researcher Ashley Tate alongside dancers from Jackson State University's African Drum and Dance Ensemble, we'll get your weekend started right!

This free family-friendly event is intended for children ages 4-12, who will receive new free books that celebrate Black heroes-including the recently published children's book A VOICE OF HOPE: The Myrlie Evers-Williams Story by Nadia Salomon. One Voice will be on site to provide voter registration resources.

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Co-presented by the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument and Oxford American, One Voice, and the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP in partnership with Mississippi Book Festival, Central Mississippi Blues Society, and support from Penguin Random House.

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation's ParkVentures program, the National Park Service, and Jazz Road, a program of South Arts. We are also grateful to Supporting Partner, Visit Jackson. Additional partners include Shady Grove Missionary Baptist Church and JSU Department of Music.

No Tears Project ensemble is co-led by Kelley Hurt (voice) and Christopher Parker (piano), alongside Rodney Jordan (bass), Darrian Douglas (drums), Bobby LaVell (tenor saxophone), Marc Franklin (trumpet), Chad Fowler (alto saxophone), and choreographer/researcher, Ashley Tate. Special guests for this event include drummers Malcolm Sheppard and Rufus Mapp.