The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRCM) is closing out 2019 with a bang.

On Saturday, Dec. 14, the museum in downtown Greensboro will host a poetry reading and book signing with Jacinta V. White, the author of “Resurrecting the Bones,” a book of poems. That will start at 2:30 p.m. with a poetry reading. The book of 37 poems, according to promotional materials for the event, is “the result of White’s journey visiting African-American churches and cemeteries in the rural South.” The book “conveys the impressions White absorbed while traveling through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas.”

That event is free and is open to everyone.

The following Saturday, Dec. 21, at 2:30 p.m. the civil rights museum will show the film “The Black Candle” – an award-winning documentary narrated by Maya Angelou and directed by M.K. Asante. The movie looks at “the struggle and triumph of the African-American family, community, and culture, using Kwanzaa as a vehicle to celebrate the African-American experience.” It also explores the growth of the holiday out of the Black Power Movement over a half century ago to become the global and popular holiday it is today – now celebrated by over 40 million people worldwide. Attending the showing will cost nothing.

The day after Christmas – Thursday, Dec. 26 – from 5:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m., the museum will host the 2019 ICRCM Kwanzaa Celebration.

The museum is inviting everyone to come out to celebrate Kwanzaa with festivities that include the Kuumba Dancers and Drummers of Danville, Va., storytelling with Mr. Fred Motley, and a whole lot more. The event is free and dinner will be served to attendees.

In December, the museum will continue it’s Children’s Saturday Story Hours at 11 a.m. on, well Saturdays of course. On Saturday, Dec. 14, the story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger will be recounted. On Saturday, Dec. 21, also at 11 a.m., the featured story will be “Seven Candles for Kwanzaa,” by Andrea Davis Pinkney, which introduces kids to the traditions of Kwanzaa. On Saturday, Dec. 28 at 11 a.m. the story hour will continue that theme with “A World of Holidays: Kwanzaa.”