We are excited to announce a children’s storytime event on Saturday, July 26, at 10AM, at the Vernon County Museum and History Center. Torrence Chester from the Enduring Families Project will be here to read a chapter from the new book, A Long Way to Find a Home: George Edwin Taylor as a Child. The Enduring Families Project (EFP), which is based in La Crosse, focuses on preserving and sharing African-American history in the Coulee Region, primarily through children’s stories. EFP began several years ago as an effort to create public theater based on the stories of early African-American settlers to La Crosse County, and also to Cheyenne Valley here in Vernon County.
The reader for the storytime, Torrence Chester, is one of the performers with EFP. Another performer, Darrell Ferguson, wrote A Long Way to Find a Home. The book is about a little boy named George who survived alone on a wharf in Illinois for three years in the 1800’s. He then made his way north to La Crosse, where he was adopted by a Black family in West Salem. When he grew up, he became the first Black man to run for U.S. President, in 1904.
Children attending this free event will receive a free coloring book about George Edwin Taylor, and families will have the opportunity to buy the storybook. You can learn more about the EFP’s children’s book project from their website, https://efpcs.org/