TCCL News & Events

Join Dr. Dexter Voisin, associate professor at the University of Chicago, for the program “Man Up: Violence, HIV/AIDS and Young Urban Males.” Dr. Voisin will present two programs at the Rudisill Regional Library, 1520 N. Hartford.

• Sept. 2, 6-8:30 p.m., featuring Marvin Blades, Coalition of 100 Black Men
• Sept. 3, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

Prior to his current position at the University of Chicago, Voisin worked as a social worker and health counselor in Atlanta and New York City. While interviewing young men from these areas, he found most shared a common link of tragic childhoods filled with violence, abuse and abandonment. Too often, they shared the link of being infected with HIV through unprotected heterosexual sex.

“We know that living in a violent community affects young people in terms of their mental health, school achievement and gang involvement,” said Voisin. “But no one had looked at the relationship between violence and sexual risk-taking.”

Voisin began studying why children from violent communities would be more prone to engage in unprotected sex. Through his focus groups, he found that many chose to believe the statistics for HIV/AIDS cases were inflated.

In 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that black adolescent males were approximately eight times more likely to become infected with HIV compared with white males and three times more likely than Latino males.

Voisin found the qualities that were helping the young black men cope in tough neighborhoods — desensitization to violence, being vigilant and suspicious in assessing friend or foe — were placing their lives in jeopardy when it came to preventing HIV.

“I think there is still so much silence and secrecy around AIDS and HIV,” Voisin said. “When you look at some of the biggest socializing structures in the black community — the church is one — there are still conservative attitudes and misinformation that this is a gay disease, when heterosexual transmission is the fastest-growing proportion of HIV cases in the black community.”

Located at the Rudisill Regional Library, the purpose of the African-American Resource Center is to collect, preserve and provide access to resources honoring and documenting the experiences of people of African descent. The Center is devoted to providing the community with current and comprehensive resource materials and professional reference materials on the culture and history of African-Americans.

Man Up! is sponsored by the Coalition of 100 Black Men of Tulsa, Tulsa Health Department, Red Cross STAY Program, Tulsa Library Trust and the African-American Resource Center.

For more information on Man Up! and other library programs, call the AskUs Hotline, 596-7977, or visit www.tulsalibrary.org.

Join Tulsa City-County Library’s Genealogy Center on Saturday, Sept. 18 for an all-day workshop featuring nationally known genealogy lecturer and author Paula Stuart-Warren.

The free workshop, sponsored by the Tulsa Library Trust, is from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hardesty Regional Library, 8316 E. 93rd St.

Stuart-Warren will address the following topics:

• “The WPA Era: What It Created for Genealogists”
• “Genealogical Goldmine: The Records of Old Settlers Organizations”
• “Organizing Your Genealogical Material”
• “Railroad Records and Railroad History: Methods for Tracking”

Stuart-Warren speaks regularly at the National Genealogical Society and Federation of Genealogical Societies conferences as well as at the annual Salt Lake Institute. She serves on the Federation of Genealogical Societies board, and has written articles for all of the major genealogical magazines and journals.

For more information about the workshop, call the Genealogy Center at 746-5222 or visit the center at 2901 S. Harvard.