Flashback
70 years ago
Carl Sandburg speaks at UB
Established in 1922 with a gift of $25,000 from the children of the late James Fenton, the James Fenton Lecture Foundation has been instrumental in bringing speakers to UB for more than 85 years. The terms of the gift call for the speakers to be “men and women of distinguished rank in art, literature, science, industry or the public service.”
Seventy years ago, one of the Fenton lecturers was the internationally renowned poet, writer and folk singer Carl Sandburg. Sandburg was known and appreciated for entertaining university audiences with poetry readings and American folk song performances. Prior to his visit to UB, Sandburg had established himself as a poet with the publication of “Chicago Poems” in 1916 and with “Abraham Lincoln: the Prairie Years” in 1926 as a popular biographer as well.
Sandburg followed other distinguished speakers sponsored by the Fenton foundation, including Robert Frost (1927), Bertrand Russell (1929), Percy Grainger (1931), T.S. Eliot (1933) and Arnold Toynbee (1933). As part of a six-month lecture tour, the poet Vachel Lindsay spoke at UB on Nov. 5, 1931, only a month before his suicide.
Today, the Don Davis Auto World Lectureship Fund, the James Fenton Lecture Foundation and the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration bring distinguished speakers to UB throughout the academic year.
—John Edens, University Archives
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