Who is the Black Madonna? Why is she Black? Why does her Blackness—both racially and mystically—matter today? In this lecture, Dr. Christena Cleveland, author of The Black Madonna: Icon of Resistance and Nourisher of Souls and founder of the Black Madonna Freedom School, will share some of the most humorous, miraculous and memorable historical anecdotes of the Black Madonna that reveal her as a unifying figure of refuge, resistance, and renewal, and illuminate why our society desperately needs to be revitalized by her subversive life force today.