Lehigh University's Kenner Lecture on Cultural Understanding and Tolerance offered the large crowd in attendance a moving and memorable introduction to the Race Card Project, which was founded in 2009 by Michelle Norris of National Public Radio. Norris joined NPR in 2002 after almost 10 years of reporting for the Washington Bureau of ABC News. As one of the hosts of NPR's All Things Considered, Norris has interviewed prominent newsmakers, including American presidents, Nobel laureates, Oscar winners, military leaders and astronauts.

Norris's Race Card Project came out of her 2010 family memoir, "The Grace of Silence: A Memoir." In researching the book, Norris, who is African-American, employed her considerable investigative skills to explore her family's racial history, which had been largely concealed. Discovering her family's racial secrets led her to ponder the nation's complicated racial history and that, in turn, resulted in the Race Card Project.

The project is an online wall of cards submitted by thousands of people sharing their thoughts about "race, ethnicity, and cultural identity." Submissions are a six-word sentence expressing the contributor's thoughts, experiences, or observations about race. As Norris puts it, contributors "take something complex and distill it." This is followed by an explanation of the sentence.

The point of the project, she explained, is to "start a conversation about race rather than shut it down." Responses have come from people in fifty countries in addition to the United States.

The Lehigh program on Jan. 30 began with a cast of four actors recounting stories from the Race Card Wall. One of the most notable was the one submitted by Peggy Wallace Kennedy, daughter of the late Alabama Governor George Wallace, whose politics she did not endorse. She recounts his "stand in the schoolhouse door" to prevent African-American students from integrating the University of Alabama and his change of heart after he was wounded by a would-be assassin.

Stories from the Race Card Project were interspersed with readings from her poetry by Sonia Sanchez, who writes plays and children's books as well as poetry.

The second part of the program was a question and answer session. Questions were posed first by Professor James Peterson, director of Africana Studies and associate professor of English at Lehigh, and then by attendees.

In response to the questions, Norris explained that her book title was inspired in part by her father's having kept his experience of being shot in the leg by a white policeman from the rest of the family because he "wanted their path forward to be clear" and not burdened by his experience. Likewise, her mother had not revealed that her mother had been, in Norris's words, "a traveling Aunt Jemima."

Norris exhorted her listeners to "ask your family members about their stories. Go home with your laundry and come back with your history."

Norris' family was the first black family to move to a white neighborhood in Minneapolis. She recounted how her family went to extraordinary lengths to "blend in." Like her father before her, she wants her family to live in a world where "they're not on display." But, she added ruefully, when her son walks into a store with friends, "he is the one who is followed."

The Kenner Lecture, held in Lehigh's Zoellner Arts Center, is an annual endowed series of programs. It was established in 1997 by Jeffrey L. Kenner, a Lehigh graduate and former member of the Lehigh Board of Trustees. He has funded numerous projects at the University.

Visit the Race Card Project at http://theracecardproject.com/