Carol Spencer, a longtime Sag Harbor resident, remembers walking into a bookstore in New Orleans in 1985 and seeing — for the first time — a whole section dedicated to books by and about black people. Ms. Spencer, who worked as a university librarian for many years, said it changed her perspective on reading.
Fast-forward 35 years, and Ms. Spencer regularly promotes African-American literature as the owner of a traveling bookstore called Diaspora Books. Her “claim to fame,” she said, was giving Colson Whitehead his first book signing, for “The Intuitionist” in 1999, at the Azurest Annual Art Show in Sag Harbor.
And on Tuesday she led the Hayground School’s annual African-American Read-In, in which students and faculty members select short stories, passages from fiction and memoirs, essays, poems, folk tales, and children’s books to read aloud.
“It’s important, because black people don’t see black people in books,” Ms. Spencer said, “and in the history books they are always slaves.”
In 1991, Ms. Spencer read a newspaper article in The Amsterdam News about the second annual National African-American Read-In. She cut the article out of the paper and tucked it into a folder; she still has the clipping. That was the year she founded Diaspora Books. This year marked the 23rd that she has had the book sale and read-in at Hayground.
Mbachi Kumwenda’s class, one of the school’s “middle groups,” kicked off the read-in by singing “Lift Every Voice,” known as the black national anthem.
Julie Fanelli-Denny, also a teacher of the middle group, chose “How to Read a Book,” a children’s story by Kwame Alexander.
Under the watchful eye of Toni Morrison, whose floor-to-ceiling, black-and-white portrait is a main feature at the school, Erin O’Connor, an early-childhood teacher, read a book called “Peeny Butter Fudge.” It was co-written by Ms. Morrison, who died last year, and her younger son, Slade Morrison, who died in 2010.
Vivian Denny, Jazmyn Charlton, and Indigo Wainhouse, all Hayground students, shared poems by Langston Hughes.
Liz Bertsch, who teaches the senior learners, read from a memoir by Jacqueline Woodson. Marybeth Pacilio, another middle group teacher, read “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats. According to a Jan. 13 announcement by the New York Public Library, that book is its most checked out of all time.
For the finale, Ms. Kumwenda was joined by Jon Snow, a founder of the school, and Arjun Achuthan, a faculty member, in acting out a folk tale called “Jack and the Devil.” Mr. Snow donned a red tail and hat that said “The Devil,” Ms. Kumwenda played Jack, and Mr. Achuthan was the narrator. Afterward, they led a discussion about the significance of folk tales.
“There were many people who didn’t know how to read, but they were still able to participate in stories” through oral folk tales and fables, Mr. Snow explained. Ms. Kumwenda said storytelling also took the form of songs, quilts, and hair braiding.
Marcelle Langendal, the school’s faculty chairwoman, said the teachers, students, staff, and parents look forward to the annual event. “Because a tenet of Hayground’s mission is to deliberately help our students to see life through the lenses of different perspectives, the intentional readings of literature and nonfiction texts by and about people of color are a mainstay of [our] daily curriculum,” she said. “This annual gathering of our community sharing some of these texts in an afternoon simply underscores how important that commitment is.”
Milla Jaccard, a student, said her favorite book of the afternoon was “The Snowy Day.” “I liked all the stories. They sounded very interesting,” she said.
Cayenne Echavarria, another student, said the readings reflected an important message: “The goal is not to treat anyone differently because of their looks. On the inside, we’re all the same.”