Praising Lorde

Poet and activist Audre Lorde LS’60’s name now graces Multicultural Affairs’s home in Alfred Lerner Hall; the dedication marks the first time a space on the Morningside Heights campus has been named after a black woman.

The Audre Lorde Community Space, a resource for both College and Engineering students, will establish a home for identity-conscious community building. Lorde — a graduate of the School of Library Science (which closed in 1992) — was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” Born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents, she had her first poem published in Seventeen magazine while a student at Hunter College H.S. Throughout the 1960s Lorde was a librarian in New York City public schools, and went on to be a professor of English at John Jay College and Hunter College, as well as poet laureate of New York State (1991–92).