WHEELING — The Ohio County Public Library is celebrating Black History Month with a blockbuster series of programs scheduled throughout the month of February.

The library’s popular weekly Lunch With Books programs features speakers who will spotlight an array of topics focusing on notable people and events in local, state and the region’s diverse history. The informative and thought-provoking adult programming offered by Lunch With Books takes place at the library in downtown Wheeling at noon every Tuesday and can be viewed in-person or via a live stream available online.

Sean Duffy, director of adult programming and publicity at the Ohio County Public Library, said this year’s series will not be one to miss.

“I strongly believe this is the finest and most complete series of Black History Month programs we’ve ever hosted,” Duffy said.

The celebration kicks off at noon this Tuesday, Feb. 1, with a living history presentation sponsored by the West Virginia Humanities Council’s “History Alive” program featuring the great blues singer Bessie Smith as portrayed by “West Virginia’s First Lady of Soul,” Lady D — also known as Doris Fields of Beckley.

As the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, Bessie Smith was the highest-paid Black performer of her day. She was known as the “Empress of the Blues” by virtue of her forceful vocal delivery and command of the genre.

In addition, she was an all-around entertainer who danced, acted and performed comedy routines with her touring company. She was a staple of the “Chitlin’ Circuit” and throughout the Jim Crow South, and many of her tunes have been covered by various artists through the decades. Smith made an infamous visit to Wheeling in 1936, performing at the Pythian building on Chapline Street.

The series continues on Feb. 8 with “Archiving Wheeling Presents: Lesser Known Legends of Wheeling,” featuring Eileen Miller, an African American teacher who taught at Lincoln School then at Warwood after school desegregation following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. Presenters will be Dr. Martha Lash of Kent State University and Monica Ratcliffe Cooper of Pittsburgh.

“A master’s degree student posed the following question to our Professional Development in Teaching class: ‘Did anyone in class have an African American teacher during any of their PK-12 years?’ Only two raised their hands: the African American female student posing the question, and I, a middle-aged, female, Caucasian professor,” Lash shared. “The class discussion revolved around the topic of the relatively few teachers of color who grace our public schools. It also left me with lingering questions of how and why an educated and talented African American teacher had taught me in eighth grade in my predominantly European American community on the northern edge of Appalachia during my school years in the 1960s and 1970s.”

On Feb. 15, Rev. Stephen Wright, the first African American graduate of Linsly, will be at Lunch With Books along with a panel of other Black Linsly graduates, including William Gummer, Dorian Lee, Jeff Potts and Scott Allyn Thomas, to discuss their experiences.

Wright attended Linsly Military Institute from 1968 to 1972 and worked as a steelworker with Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. from 1973 to 1985. In 1969, he was elected the first vice president of the West Virginia Baptist State Youth Convention. He has a bachelor of arts degree from Washington Baptist Seminary, and since December of 1998 has been the pastor at First Baptist Church of College Park, one of the oldest African-American congregations in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

The series will conclude on Feb. 22 with the third installment of the Ann Thomas Memorial Lecture Series — sponsored by Bordas and Bordas — featuring Dr. William H. Turner, author of the new book from WVU Press, “The Harlan Renaissance: A Memoir of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns.”

In the book, Turner reconstructs Black life in the company towns in and around Harlan County during coal’s final postwar boom years, which built toward an enduring bust as the children of Black miners, like the author, left the region in search of better opportunities.

Turner has spent his professional career studying and working on behalf of marginalized communities, helping them create opportunities in the larger world while not abandoning their important cultural ties.

The namesake of the memorial lecture, Thomas was Wheeling’s first African American registered nurse. She migrated with her mother to Wheeling from North Carolina as a child. Ann grew up during Wheeling’s Jim Crow era and became one of the first African American students to leave segregated Lincoln School for Wheeling High School after Brown vs Board was decided in 1954. She thereafter became Wheeling’s first African American nurse. Her husband, Clyde, was a great football player for the semi-pro Wheeling Ironmen and the only African American elected to Wheeling’s City Council in the modern era.

Thomas was well known as a wonderful, optimistic, courageous and genuinely kind woman, as well as a dedicated patron of the library and library programs. After she passed on Feb. 22, 2019 (having bravely battled cancer and endured suffering for many years), library officials decided to create an annual memorial lecture series at the library in her honor.

Lunch with Books is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. Patrons are invited to bring a bag lunch and enjoy presentations by authors, poets, historians, musicians and a variety of other people.

Complimentary beverages are provided.

Though the library is now fully opened and in-person programming has returned, each program is offered as a live streamed broadcast for those who are unable to attend programs at the library.

Call the library at 304-232-0244 for more information.