Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries

Frankie Welch (1924-2021) was an American designer and entrepreneur best known for producing thousands of custom scarves. Born in Rome, Georgia, she spent most of her career in Alexandria, Virginia, where she established a dress shop—Frankie Welch of Virginia—that was open from 1963 to 1990. She introduced her first scarf design, the Cherokee Alphabet, in 1967, quickly followed by her Discover America scarf for the White House and prominent political designs for the 1968 presidential election.

Join the Russell Library for a panel featuring Drs. James C. Giesen, Associate Professor of History and Grisham Master Teacher, Mississippi State University, and Derek Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee. Discussion will include the social, cultural, and economic impact of notorious pests such as the boll weevil and kudzu in modern Georgia. Dr. Brian Drake, Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of Georgia, will moderate the event. 

About the speakers:

Digital libraries of primary sources enrich our understanding of the sheer diversity of the American experience.

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is a historian of early America and the early modern Atlantic world and is currently completing a book about knowledge and governance in the early modern British empire.

2021 Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inductee Pearl Cleage will be in conversation with Valerie Boyd, Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence and Associate Professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. A Q&A will follow the conversation. 

Clarence Major, one of the 2021 inductees to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, will read selections from two works, The Lurking Place and Dirty Bird Blues (2022). Following the reading, Major will be in conversation with author John Beckman, who wrote the introduction for Dirty Bird Blues. A Q&A will follow. 

Access the livestream here, pinned to the top of our Facebook page: 

https://www.facebook.com/RusslibUGA

In 2026, the United States will mark the 250^th anniversary of its founding. In anticipation of this event, the University of Georgia Press has developed the Georgia Open History Library: From Colony to Statehood in the New Union. This resource provides free digital access to 45 out-of-print volumes focused on Georgia from the colony’s founding through the American Revolution.  

Join us on Facebook Live to celebrate the launch of two new digital exhibits by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting: "Exploring Public Media in the Peabody Awards Collection" and "Native Narratives: The Representation of Native Americans in Public Broadcasting."

To mark the 75th anniversary of the signing of the National School Lunch Act, join the Russell Library for the second annual Food, Power, and Politics lecture examining the origins, evolution, and current trends in school lunch.

Panel includes: