Founders Day: An Evening with A’Lelia Bundles and Tyrone McKinley Freeman

Mark your calendars for this year’s Founders Day: An Evening with A’Lelia Bundles and Tyrone McKinley Freeman on Thursday, October 17.

A’Lelia (Madam C.J. Walker’s great-great-granddaughter and biographer) and Tyrone (IU’s Glenn Family Chair in Philanthropy) will discuss the importance of the IHS’s collections in preserving and illuminating the rich history of Indiana’s people, places, events and communities. Both will focus primarily on the Madam C.J. Walker Collection, which provided the research foundation for their award-winning books — On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker and Madam C. J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy during Jim Crow.

Tickets will be $100 per person for the program; $150 per person for the program and the dessert meet-and-greet with A’Lelia and Tyrone after the program. Funds raised from the event will support IHS’s collections and conservation program.

A’Lelia Bundles is a board member of the March on Washington Film Festival, Columbia Global Reports, Indiana Landmarks and the ReThink Coalition of Indianapolis. She also serves on advisory boards of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, BIO (Biographers International), the Digital Encyclopedia of Indianapolis and the Indiana Historical Society. She is a former vice chair of Columbia University’s Board of Trustees and a former chair of the board of the National Archives Foundation. In 2021 she was named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 Impact List. In February 2022 she was named the inaugural Center for Africana Studies and Culture Prestigious Fellow in the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.

Dr. Tyrone McKinley Freeman is an award-winning author, teacher and scholar who serves currently as the Glenn Family Chair in Philanthropy at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. He holds appointments as Adjunct Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Research Associate at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Previously, he was a professional fundraiser in community development, youth and family social services, and higher education organizations; and Associate Director of The Fund Raising School where he trained nonprofit leaders in the United States, Asia, Africa and Europe. His research focuses on the history of philanthropy, philanthropy in communities of color and philanthropy in higher education.