Thirty-five years after the release of a scrapbook of African American history, called 'The Black Book,' a panel of scholars and journalists will discuss the historic compilation of its striking images, sheet music, commercial advertisements and obituaries.

Panelists scheduled to discuss "the powerful and visceral history'' that spring from the pages of 'The Black Book,' include Dr. Roscoe C. Brown Jr., president emeritus of Bronx Community College and a former Tuskegee Airman; IIyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X; Touré, author and contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine; and Dream Hampton, a journalist and activist.

"Now, 35 years later, the material can still enrage, can still excite a reader enough to want to share it with a friend and still break a heart with love and pity,'' Nobel Prize-winning author, editor and professor Toni Morrison writes in the foreword. "Its new life is more than a welcome gift; it is a requirement for our national health.''

The re-release of the book, which lays bare black and white history and all of its scars, comes at a pivotal time in America, which a year ago elected its first black president. Published in 1974, the book came to fruition after Morrison and four memorabilia collectors, led by Middleton A. Harris, compiled more than 500 archival documents, articles and photographs, chronicling the black experience in America from the first Africans' arrival on colonial shores through the beginning of the civil rights movement, according to a news release.

"This extraordinary ethnographic collection includes documents such as 19-century slave auction notices, proclamations by celebrated abolitionists, photos of war heroes regal in uniform, scores from Hollywood's golden age of films and patents registered by black inventors,'' the news release says.