This year marks The Nation’s 150th anniversary, and we’ve got big plans to celebrate. There’ll be a quintuple-length special issue, an Oscar-winning filmmaker’s documentary, daily excerpts from our 150-year-old archive, and events of different types live-streamed from cities coast to coast.

Our kick-off event, taking place on January 15, will be hosted by the venerable Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the world’s leading research facilities dedicated to the history of the African diaspora, which is marking its own illustrious ninetieth birthday in 2015.

The event will explore the critical need for a Third Reconstruction in the United States in the face of the shameless litany of new Jim Crow efforts to restrict the rights of Black Americans. Moderated by the Schomburg’s Director, Khalil Muhammad, the forum will feature Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson, Nation columnist and Columbia law professor Patricia J. Williams, Nation editorial board member and DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University Eric Foner, Nation contributing writer and blogger Mychal Denzel Smith and award-winning author and essayist Darryl Pinckney.

Watch the conversation here live on January 15 at 6 pm EST.