(RED BANK, NJ) -- The expanding Black Press exhibit "Shaping Black Identity and Black Influence on Mass Media," moves into the Ida B. Wells Gallery at the historic T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center, and opens on Saturday, March 23 at 1:00pm, in celebration of Women’s History Month, where Wells’ crusading story, as the first Black investigative reporter is featured. Commissioned artist, Kimberly Moore, formerly of the Jersey Shore, through colorful renderings of Wells, brings a fitting aesthetic to the gallery space.

Guest speaker, Caroline Hunter Williams, will set the tone for the opening of the interactive exhibit, at 3:00pm, when she takes the floor with a story that only she can tell. A founding member of the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, Williams was an important catalyst for world change, whose voice and actions led to the toppling of South Africa’s apartheid government. Today she would be referred to as a “disrupter.”

Visitors will be introduced to other women like Mollie Moon, who today would be considered a major influencer. Moon was a Black New York socialite, who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Civil Rights Movement.  Visitor's will also see the invitation that Ethel Payne, “The First Lady of the Black Press,” received in 1963 from President John F. Kennedy to attend the 100th Anniversary Ceremony honoring President Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation that ended slavery.

The exhibit also includes a salute to Ebony Magazine and Eunice Johnson, the founder of Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling fashion extravaganza.  The year, “1968,” is a feature that captures a pivotal time in America, after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when those leading the charge in Shaping Black Identity took a bold stance against America’s status quo. No one defines this more than the trailblazing disrupter, Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman from Brooklyn, New York, elected to the U.S. Congress, in 1968. 

Tickets are $15 and available for purchase online. The T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center is located at 94 Drs. James Parker Blvd. in Red Bank, New Jersey.