WASHINGTON — The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees is planning to propose adding President Trump’s name to the facility’s exterior in recognition of his saving the building from its “precarious fiscal position,” according to a new court filing in a suit aimed at blocking the move.
It’s the latest development in the case revolving around adding the president’s name to the exterior of the cultural and arts facility that sits along the Potomac River in Washington and reflects the Trump-aligned board’s efforts to honor the president.
The new information came out of a court filing made by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex-officio member of the board. Beatty, who has led an effort to block Trump from putting his name on the building, said in a filing she was alerting the court to the proposal because it could implicate a pending decision before the court.
Both the court and the Kennedy Center board are expected to hold meetings Tuesday.
Beatty’s filing includes two exhibits. One is a draft vote to shut the center down, asserting the building is unsafe for occupancy. That assertion incorrectly cites a consulting group’s finding, “which expressly disclaimed providing any such opinion,” according to Beatty.
The other document asserts the center faces dire financial straits. It specifically calls for Trump’s name to be placed in marble beneath the name of the center on the building’s exterior. It offers 10 options for a possible inscription, including “Renovation and endowment overseen by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.” Another proposes: “With Gratitude for Support from President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that President Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” the board wrote in the proposed resolution.
Trump has spent much of his second term reshaping Washington, demolishing the East Wing of the White House to make way for a ballroom and planning a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery as well as a renovated golf course along the Potomac River.
The Kennedy Center has been a stumbling block in that effort after a judge ruled in May that Trump’s name was added to the building illegally, ordering it to be removed.
Trump and his allies, however, have continued to fight the ruling.
The board voted last month to inscribe his name on the venue’s facade to read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”
If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading: “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
It’s never too late to go back to school. But after years of deferred admission, can a new generation of students at Hillman College score high at delivering a compelling, modern take on the groundbreaking sitcom “A Different World”?
The foundation for an updated version of the popular sitcom set at a historically Black college was set three decades ago. In the 1993 series finale, the show’s central couple — smart, bespeckled math whiz Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and high-maintenance Southern belle Whitley Gilbert-Wayne (Jasmine Guy) — were embarking on their next chapter as newlyweds, relocating to Japan and expecting their first child. Before their departure, a professor jokingly quips to Dwayne: “I can’t wait to have your child in my class in the year 2014.”
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But plans for a revival — the original series itself was a spinoff of “The Cosby Show,” centered on the Huxtables’ free-spirited daughter Denise (Lisa Bonet) — to suit that time frame were in limbo for years. Producer and director Debbie Allen, who joined the original series in its second season to help it better reflect the HBCU experience, actively pitched and tried to relaunch “A Different World” in the early 2010s, but those efforts were derailed by the highly publicized sexual assault allegations against the show’s creator, Bill Cosby.
“It’s very difficult,” Allen told The Times. “The biggest difficulty, just being totally transparent, was people’s hesitation to work with Mr. Cosby; to have anything to do with him. [But] we were so independent. He kind of put us on a boat and said, ‘Go.’ And that’s what we did. And he was happy to know that we were going on our way.”
In early 2023, another push began to revive the series while also distancing itself from Cosby. Now, its decades-long gap year finally complete, a new incarnation of “A Different World” is starting up classes this fall at Netflix. And it hopes to carry on the legacy of its predecessor, which was celebrated for its depiction of Black culture and life in a higher education setting during its six-season run on NBC, from 1987 to 1993, bringing HBCUs into the mainstream.
Rashida (Alijah Kai), left, Deborah (Maleah Joi Moon) and Hazel (Kennedi Reece) in Netflix’s “A Different World.” After years of trying to tell the story of a new class at fictional Hillman College, Debbie Allen, who returns as an executive producer and director, says the sequel arrives at the right moment: “If there’s any voice we need to hear from right now, it’s young people.”
(Daniel Delgado Jr. / Netflix)
Billed as a sequel series premiering Sept. 24, a Wayne offspring is our anchor for the freshman class at Hillman College, the show’s fictional historically Black college based in Virginia. Deborah Wayne (Maleah Joi Moon) is an aspiring artist forced to attend her parents’ alma mater on academic probation after her NYU acceptance is rescinded. As the youngest Wayne child, she continues the family’s legacy at the school: her older sister — the child Whitley was pregnant with at the end of the original series — and an older brother are both alums.
She’s joined by a mix of first-gen and legacy students: star quarterback Shaquille Johnson (Cornell Young IV), who is the only child of original character Ron Johnson (Darryl M. Bell); criminal justice major Rashida Duvall (Alijah Kai); psych major Amir Rodale (Jordan Aaron Hall); Ghanaian-Nigerian fashion merchandising student Kojo Achebe (Chibuikem Uche); and small-town pastor’s daughter Hazel Henry (Kennedi Reece).
Some of the show’s original creative team join Allen as executive producers, including Tom Werner, and original series writers Reggie Rock Bythewood and Gina Prince-Bythewood. (Mandy Summers of “That ’90s Show” is also an executive producer.) To shepherd this reimagined version of the sitcom, Allen enlisted her former “Grey’s Anatomy” colleague Felicia Pride, who was most recently part of the writing staff on “Bel-Air,” the dramatic reboot of ’90s comedy “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” It was a dream call for Pride, who as a kid living in Baltimore recorded and rewatched episodes — namely, the one involving a step competition that she obsessively watched after school to learn the routine. But she was reluctant.
“I love the show so much,” Pride said, seated next to Allen inside a Netflix conference room in Los Angeles on a recent day. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to be the one to mess it up.’ But she [Debbie] was so adamant that the time was now to hear from young Black America — and that, I could get with.”
Allen remembers it this way: “I don’t have an ego. I begged her. It’s the truth. To get this show back up, we’ve tried for years. But this is the time that’s right … We had inspired all these kids, not just Black kids, all young people to go to college. This was a peep into college that had never happened before, where you saw young people being responsible and living their lives and being crazy, but still dealing with what is happening in this world. If the young people in the country don’t have a voice, that country is dead. And if there’s any voice we need to hear from right now, it’s young people.”
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1.The original “A Different World”: Dwayne (Kadeem Hardison), left, and Ron (Darryl M. Bell).2.Jaleesa (Dawnn Lewis), left, Freddie (Cree Summer) and Whitley (Jasmine Guy). With Netflix’s modern take, showrunner Felicia Pride wanted the series to be intergenerational: “That’s why I’m so glad that we were able to have the legacy cast in the show — I wanted it to have the heart.”(NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
The show has been credited with boosting enrollment at HBCUs. While overall HBCU enrollment rose by 26% between 1976 and 1994, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, much of that increase occurred during the stretch of the show’s run.
Pride said she rewatched the original series, paying particular attention to the shift that materialized in Season 2 when Allen was brought on to overhaul it, as a starting point. Allen had a document of ideas detailing the types of characters she wanted to see depicted, including a star athlete, the first out queer character in the show’s universe and an African student. One major detail was a nonnegotiable: Allen wanted the show to revolve around Dwayne and Whitley’s daughter. (How they arrived at the character’s name — Deborah (pronounced Deb-OR-ah), which also happens to be Allen’s first name — is fuzzy. Pride remembers the name already being set by Allen; Allen recalls being amused upon seeing it on the page, thinking Pride had chosen the name.)
And just as in college, legacy matters on TV.
“I wanted the show to feel of now,” Pride said. “I also wanted it to be intergenerational. That was important to me, and that’s why I’m so glad that we were able to have the legacy cast in the show — I wanted it to have the heart … These [characters] were like my friends. I felt comfort in them. I felt like I could be them. It was also culture in a way that I hadn’t seen before, represented by people who look like me.”
Several familiar faces from the original make their way into the sequel, some taking on the mentor role of the older characters from the original, others representing how one gives back to the community that shaped them. Hardison and Guy lead the cast from the original series who reprise their characters, along with Bell, Cree Summer as Freddie Brooks, Charnele Brown as Kimberly Reese Boyer, Ajai Sanders as Gina Deveaux, Karen Malina White as Charmaine Brown, Jada Pinkett Smith as Lena James, Jenifer Lewis as Dorothy Dandridge Davenport and Allen as Dr. Langhorne.
Several original “A Different World” cast members reprise their roles in the new version of the series, including Charnele Brown, left, Jasmine Guy, Kadeem Hardison, Darryl M. Bell and Cree Summer.
(Quantrell Colbert / Netflix)
“They were so happy to be back,” Allen said. “There was a day they were all together —”
“That was the day where I felt like, ‘Oh, this is history,’” Pride added.
“In between takes, it was just chaos,” Allen continued. “They just laughed and acted up. It was just wonderful.”
To make the new characters and their stories resonate in a deeper, more contemporary way required as large a commitment to reflecting HBCU life as the original had under Allen’s guidance. The creative team assembled two paid student councils from various HBCUs — one to advise the writers’ room on storylines and campus issues; the other worked on the show’s Atlanta set, with students hired as production assistants that had working schedules tailored to their classes. The background performers filling up scenes in the quads, classrooms and parties feature 59% HBCU students and grads. And some key characters are portrayed by HBCU alumni who bring their lived experience to the screen, including Reece, who went to Howard University.
The freshman season will explore issues that Gen Z is grappling with such as financial insecurity, learning struggles, activism in the age of social media and matters of mental health, as well as bigger systemic issues like uncertainty around funding for HBCUs and immigration enforcement. The series also doesn’t shy away from its real-world backdrop — while it doesn’t explicitly mention President Trump by name, there is reference to the state of affairs under his administration.
Actors Jordan Aaron Hall, left, Cornell Young IV, Chibuikem Uche and Dasan Frazier are part of the new class of students at Hillman College in “A Different World.”
(Eli Joshua Ade / Netflix)
But this version of “A Different World” departs from its source material in its narrative format and tone. The original series was a multi-camera sitcom taped in front of a studio audience — and Allen initially thought any sequel of it would follow that same blueprint. But when the new series found its home at Netflix, it became a 10-episode single-camera dramedy. (Allen directed three episodes in the season, including the premiere, which set the cinematic style of the series.) As if to signal this iteration hasn’t completely deviated from its roots, in the show’s opening moments, Deborah Wayne coolly flicks the iconic flip-up frames made famous by Hardison’s Dwayne. And its memorable theme song that had versions from Phoebe Snow, Aretha Franklin and Boyz II Men hasn’t gone anywhere: Brandy was tapped to give a fresh spin on it that helps straddle the line between generations.
Now, Allen and Pride are on the cusp of seeing how this long-gestating idea will fare in the streaming world.
“You play the cards you’re dealt,” Allen said. “It took a while, but it was right for it not to happen until now. Right now is when we need it. Young people are struggling to find hope and inspiration and guidance, connection …”
Allen’s hope is that the show will have enough seasons to let the characters evolve: “On Netflix, not too many shows go past three, maybe four [seasons],” Allen said. What’s the goal? “At least three.”
Pride isn’t thinking ahead to graduation just yet. She’s still thinking about surviving the first day of school with this different (but familiar) show made for a different world.
“I came to understand we can never re-create the original show, and … even trying to pursue that is just not the thing to do,” Pride said. “It was a different time. It was a different everything, and it should stand on its own. What I wanted to do, personally, was just [focus on]: How can we capture that spirit and hopefully have a show that young people today can see themselves in, and that people [who watched the original] can also enjoy and be proud of?”
Chris Hansen has not seen “Primetime,” the A24 film in which Robert Pattinson plays him, and he probably won’t anytime soon. He walked out of an Aug. 20 screening arranged for him at the studio’s Manhattan offices after refusing to sign a nondisclosure agreement, which he believed would prevent him from raising any legal objection to the way he is portrayed.
But Hansen’s company has purchased preshow advertising in theaters showing “Primetime,” which opens Sept. 25. The spots promote TruBlu, the subscription streaming platform where the former “Dateline NBC” correspondent presents his current sting operations under the title “Takedown.”
“It’s a movie that uses my name, image and likeness,” Hansen told The Times in a recent interview. “Why not direct people to what the real Chris Hansen is doing? Here’s where you can see it.”
Moviegoers, in other words, will be asked to have a seat twice.
The film revisits one of the most provocative and scrutinized franchises in the history of TV news. “To Catch a Predator,” which ran as a periodic “Dateline” investigation from 2004 to 2007, exposed men who used online chat rooms to solicit sex with minors. It accelerated the popularity of the true crime genre while raising lasting questions over journalistic ethics.
Directed by Lance Oppenheim in his narrative feature debut, “Primetime” is based on Luke Dittrich’s 2007 Esquire article “Tonight on Dateline, This Man Will Die,” about the suicide of a Texas prosecutor targeted by one of the stings. It premieres Sept. 5 at the Venice Film Festival.
Hansen, 66, is ready to ride the wave of notoriety the film is bound to generate. He is still pursuing online predators and a new generation of fans have found him on TruBlu, his YouTube page and on social media. “I’ve got to be the only 66-year-old man in America with 1.1 million TikTok followers,” he said.
Hansen first heard from A24 regarding “Primetime” when an executive reached out to him in late May to ask whether he would participate in promoting the film, according to emails obtained by The Times. Over the two months that followed, the journalist and his business partners repeatedly asked to see the film or a script before making any commitment. They also raised the possibility of compensation or a production credit, although Hansen said no formal request was made.
Hansen and his partners repeatedly raised concerns that he had never been contacted about the use of his name and likeness, even as a courtesy, before production was completed. The studio said it wasn’t necessary.
“Chris’s work was an important inspiration for ‘Primetime,’ which is a dramatized film inspired by true events,” according to an Aug. 8 email from A24. “While the film didn’t require individual consultation or permission during production, we’d love to have Chris’s support of the film to the extent he feels comfortable. If not, we certainly understand.”
An A24 representative declined to comment for this story. A person involved with the film who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly said the nondisclosure agreement Hansen was asked to sign is standard for a movie screened ahead of release, so that viewers do not reveal plotlines or spoilers.
The trailer, released earlier in August, has generated buzz in media business circles for the appearance of Jeff Zucker, former NBCUniversal chief executive, who appears as himself in a small role as a ratings-hungry network executive. Pattinson’s Hansen is later seen in the trailer screaming, “I’ll be bigger than ‘Lost’!” in reference to the ABC hit.
Robert Pattinson in a scene from A24’s “Primetime.”
(Sinna Nasseri / A24)
Hansen said he is not looking for a payout from the filmmakers. But he would like a clearer statement that the film is fiction rather than “inspired by true events,” as it says in the trailer, and perhaps a financial contribution to organizations for victims of child predators.
“I want some recognition that they used my name, image, and likeness in a largely fictional story,” he said. “They used my name, my colleagues’ names and some family members. Based upon what I know about this, it’s an insult to the thousands of people who work diligently, often at great risk, every day to protect children from predators.”
The conflict is hardly the first involving a living celebrity objecting to a fictional depiction. But legal challenges are often futile.
“You don’t own your life story,” said Domenic Romano, managing partner at Romano Law. “If you’re a celebrity, the filmmaker doesn’t need your permission to dramatize it. Even if you’re alive and you don’t like how you’re being portrayed, the 1st Amendment gives broad protection.”
Actor Olivia de Havilland went to court in 2017 over the FX series “Feud: Bette & Joan,” claiming the portrayal of her as a vicious gossip damaged her reputation. The court ultimately ruled in FX’s favor.
Actor Daryl Hannah took a different route, publishing an opinion piece in the New York Times in March objecting to her depiction in FX’s “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.” Hannah, who dated Kennedy before he married Bessette, wrote: “In the weeks since the series aired, I have received many hostile and even threatening messages from viewers who seem to believe the portrayal is factual.”
“When entertainment borrows a real person’s name, it can permanently impact her reputation,” Hannah wrote.
The rise and fall of “To Catch a Predator” provides enough drama for a big-screen treatment.
During his run at NBC News, Hansen was an Emmy Award-winning correspondent delivering hidden-camera investigative stories on such topics as identity theft and sex trafficking. But his “Predator” franchise, which used online decoys in chat rooms to draw men seeking sex with minors into police stings turned him into a global sensation, albeit a polarizing one.
NBC News conducted the investigations with the help of a civilian watchdog group called Perverted-Justice and local police in the towns and cities where the stings were set up. The suspects arrested and convicted included a rabbi, a teacher and a doctor.
Decoys posing as young teens lured the men to sting locations, mostly set up at private homes in quiet communities. Hansen would then enter and confront the men with his signature line: “Have a seat.” After a chat with the correspondent (“You see how this looks, right?”), the men were arrested by local police, while a camera crew captured it all.
The tableau of Hansen going face-to-face with suspects seated in suburban kitchens became so familiar it was spoofed in a comedy sketch that opened the 2006 Emmy Awards.
“Predator” remained a giant hit until a November 2006 sting in Murphy, Texas, went awry. Bill Conradt, a Rockwell County assistant district attorney, had been exchanging online messages and photos with a decoy posing as a 13-year-old boy. Unlike other targets, he never came to the sting house. Police obtained warrants and a SWAT team came to his home with a “Dateline” crew in tow. He shot himself to death after law enforcement entered.
Conradt’s family sued NBC, which settled out of court. The incident sharpened the debate over Hansen’s tactics, and as the “Predator” franchise became more popular, he was criticized in journalism circles for collaborating with police and an outside group of private citizens in his investigative work.
There have been many accolades as well. Law enforcement organizations credited the program for shedding light on a new form of criminal activity in the then-emerging internet age. Over the years, Hansen has helped promote advocacy groups and legislation protecting the rights of sexual abuse victims.
“Dateline” continued producing “Predator” investigations for another year after Conradt‘s death, airing its final installment in December 2007 before NBC retired the franchise in early 2008. Hansen has long maintained that the show simply ran its course. The library of his episodes continued to air on cable news channel MSNBC, now called MS NOW.
Hansen left NBC News in 2013 after the network declined to renew his contract. He continued to orchestrate the sting operations on a short-lived syndicated series, “Crime Watch Daily.” He also became one of the first well-known TV journalists to use a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to produce his own work to present on web platforms, which eventually led to the TruBlu site he has now. He also has a podcast series distributed by Red Seat Ventures called “Have a Seat,” a true crime podcast where he interviews figures in law enforcement.
Dolly Parton has been laid to rest in a private ceremony.
The immediate family of the country western star who died last week gathered at Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Nashville on Friday morning.
Parton was buried alongside her husband of almost 60 years, Carl Dean, who died in March 2025. The bronze crypt plate mounted at the mausoleum had the star’s name engraved on it before she died, alongside her husband’s name and a depiction of her Tennessee home.
In a social media post, Amelia Young from Nashville’s NewsChannel 5 shared photos of Parton’s burial site and said that the cemetery had set out velvet ropes and guest books so fans could visit Parton and pay their respects.
“Dolly’s fans and friends from around the world are encouraged to pay tribute to Dolly on social media tagging @dollyparton,” according to the cemetery’s obituary. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to be made to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum is Nashville’s largest cemetery, where many other country western stars have been interred including George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Eddy Arnold, Marty Robbins and Porter Wagoner — Parton’s former mentor, for whom she wrote “I Will Always Love You” as a professional farewell when she went solo in 1973.
Parton’s great-niece Lainey Parton shared a tribute following the funeral, writing on Instagram, “This is a really hard post for me to make. I wanted to wait until after my granny was laid to rest yesterday before I tried to put any of this into words.
“From the time I was little, my granny always had a way of making me feel like I was enough. She never made my dreams feel too big or made me feel like I couldn’t do something. She believed in me before I even knew how to believe in myself.
“Most people can think of at least one bad memory with everyone in their family. I honestly can’t think of one with her.
“Because she couldn’t have kids of her own, she always made us feel like we were hers. She loved us that way, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.
“One memory I’ll always hold onto is when she asked me to sing with her on her @smokymountaindna album. I was a freshman in high school and SO nervous. But she had a way of making me feel like nothing bad could happen. She made me feel safe, confident, and like I belonged right there beside her. …
“She didn’t just tell me to chase my dreams, she helped me get there.”
Parton died peacefully last week, her nephew Bryan Seaver announced in a news release shared with The Times. Seaver also announced her death in a video shared to the singer’s Instagram page. Parton was 80.
In a statement, a representative for the country music icon said: “After bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dolly departed her Earthly life today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center surrounded by loved ones.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as “Lake America” in the United States as he exacerbates his trade war with Canada.
The Republican president signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to update the lake’s name in the U.S. geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.
Trump has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the U.S. announced it was imposing 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down. Trump has been needling America’s northern neighbor since he returned to the White House last year, suggesting the ally with whom the U.S. once had warm relations instead should be absorbed as the 51st state.
Canada responded to Trump’s import taxes this week by imposing retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment.
Trump, who signed the order as he was sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, had a large sign behind him propped on a stand with a map of the Great Lakes. Over Lake Ontario, in big red letters, the map read “Lake America.”
On the other side of the president was another map with the words, “MAKING THE GREAT LAKES EVEN GREATER.”
The lake is one of multiple Great Lakes that the U.S. and Canada share borders along.
The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There is no single international body that determines names of international bodies of water, and Trump has wide latitude over how the U.S. government recognizes geographic places and landmarks.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has traded insults with Trump, this week brushed aside the prospect of Trump changing the lake’s name as “a lot of rhetoric.”
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Huron Indigenous people’s word “oniatarí:io,” that means “lake of shining waters.” The province of Ontario, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake.
Trump said that while his action was not meant to send any particular geopolitical message, “Canada’s been ripping us off for a long time” on trade and military issues.
“They wanted to be treated like a state and they’re not a state,” the president said. “We just can’t do that anymore.”
“We love the people of Canada,” Trump added. “I don’t think their representatives do an appropriate job. Maybe they’ll change. I really don’t know. It doesn’t make much difference.”
The move is reminiscent of his move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
Trump scribbled his name with a Sharpie pen on the executive order, then held it up for the cameras, offering, “And we filed all the necessary papers, documents, everything else.”
“We’ve notified all of the various people that we have to notify. So, we’ve done everything that you have to do,” he said. “And this is official, effective immediately.”
The executive order Trump signed shows that the changes, in fact, are supposed to be made within 30 days.
He also suggested his push to rename bodies of water may not be finished.
“So, if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean,” Trump said. “So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them.”
Price and Weissert write for the Associated Press. AP writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
“Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‘the book lady.’”
Dolly Parton wore the moniker like a badge of honor, and she earned it too. Through her Imagination Library program, launched by the Dollywood Foundation in 1995, she put more than 330 million books into the hands of children across America, Canada, the U.K., Australia and the Republic of Ireland.
The program is rooted in a childhood of poverty and illiteracy — roots that those who knew Parton said she never denied or abandoned.
Parton, 80, died Tuesday after a brief battle with cancer. And although the country western superstar collected accolades — including 10 Grammy Awards, a National Medal of the Arts and two Academy Award nominations — across her storied career, Parton said her contributions to children’s literacy were most precious to her.
In 2023, the American Library Assn. awarded the singer-songwriter, book lady and philanthropist its highest honor — lifetime membership — to recognize her lasting impact on literacy and inspiring a love of reading in children.
“Dolly Parton represented the very best of America,” ALA President Maria McCauley told The Times on Tuesday, adding that, like people all over the world, she’s been playing Parton’s music since news of her death broke, particularly the song “I Can See the Light of a Clear Blue Morning.”
“That song has so much resonance right now,” she said, noting its lyrics capture a theme of resilience and faith in overcoming dark times.
“We want to make sure that Dolly’s vision, that reading is for everyone, becomes a reality. That’s something that we can all carry forward in memory of Dolly.”
Parton’s Imagination Library gifts a book a month to children signed up for the program from the time they are born until they are 5 years old. Parton described the program best when speaking with librarian Carla Hayden in 2018. “We send the book in the mail with their name on it. It’s not in the care of Mom and Dad — it’s got their little name on it, and they love to think, ‘This is mine.’ They wait at the mailbox. They get their little books, and to them, it’s personal.”
Parton understood the novelty of owning your very own book. Growing up in the Great Smoky Mountains town of Sevierville in east Tennessee, Parton was the fourth of 12 kids. Her father, a tobacco sharecropper, couldn’t read or write, and the family lived in a one-room cabin with no electricity. There were no books in the home, aside from the Bible.
The singer’s upbringing, particularly her father’s illiteracy and his shame around what he considered a shortcoming, was what inspired her to launch the Imagination Library. With the help of her dad, they set out to foster a love of reading in the kids of Sevier County. Reading, she believed, was the gateway to dreaming, and dreaming, the first step in the path toward success.
By 2000, the program had expanded beyond the Smoky Mountains and into a nationwide movement. By 2003, the Imagination Library had mailed 1 million books to budding readers. After the United States, the gifting initiative launched in Canada in 2006, then the U.K. in 2007, Australia in 2013 and the Republic of Ireland in 2019.
The program operates on a shared funding model split between the Dollywood Foundation — which manages the central overhead, administration, and global book-selection strategy of the Imagination Library — and local community partners including businesses, school districts, small or large organizations, or individuals who share in the mission.
Selina Brown, a U.K. author whose book “My Rice Is Best” was selected by the Imagination Library this year, said that 14,000 copies had been distributed across the U.K. to children in underprivileged areas. “To know that my book has gone into the hands of young children across the U.K. is absolutely incredible,” she told The Times.
Brown said that public figures often make shallow promises and vanity moves, but “with Dolly Parton, you can actually see her work manifest, and it really makes an impact. In the U.K. alone, there are children who do not have books in their house, and because of Dolly Parton, they now have their own library.”
Canadian author Melanie Florence, who penned “Sarabeth’s Garage” — another of Imagination Library’s picks — also grew up in a small town, with no bookstore, during a time with no online retailers. “If that had existed when I was a kid, being gifted a book that you get to keep, it’s a big thing, especially for a kid like I was, who just lived to read,” Florence told The Times.
“I think that’s such a beautiful legacy,” Florence said, “her music and this spirit of generosity.”
But it’s also a working legacy that Parton built to last, according to Dollywood Foundation’s president, Jeff Conyers.
“Dolly’s legacy was never meant to be something we simply preserve or look back upon,” Conyers said. “She built things that could keep doing good in the world.”
Conyers said the foundation was set to “make certain the love at the heart of her work continues reaching children, families and communities long into the future.”
Although the foundation is heartbroken after Parton’s death, he said, “the mission she gave us is as clear today as it has ever been, and we will carry it forward for generations to come.”
Dolly Parton marks the 100 millionth book donation by her Imagination Library to the Library of Congress collection in 2018.
(Andrew Harnik / Associated Press)
Washington, D.C., Councilmember Charles Allen said he was visiting family in east Tennessee more than decade ago when his 2-year-old niece went tottering off toward the mailbox. When her parents brought her back in, she was holding a book with her name on it. Allen said his brother had signed her up for Parton’s Imagination Library at the hospital just after she was born — “right then and there.”
Allen said he was inspired by “the joy on my own niece’s face when she opened up a book with her name on it” to write a D.C. law called “Books From Birth.”
“We basically borrowed that program and then partnered with them,” he said. “And now every child in D.C. from the time they’re born ’til they’re 5 years old gets a free book delivered.”
Allen said that the program is now 10 years old, and 4 million books have been distributed to about 100,000 kids: “It’s made a big impact.”
Allen met with Parton years ago and said she never forgot her roots.
“Watching her own parents struggle with literacy and kind of hiding it, she realized very quickly the power that she had as this just massive cultural and musical star,” he said, adding that she was going to use that power for something that would outlast her. “It’ll outlast me. It’ll outlast everybody.”
Children of D.C. “they know Dolly Parton,” he added. “They know she’s the lady that delivered the books. I have all the confidence in the world that she is smiling somewhere, knowing that so many people think of her as the book lady. That she was going to battle illiteracy, one kid, one family, one household at a time.”
In 2018, Parton donated her 100 millionth book to the Library of Congress.
During the ceremony Hayden, the librarian, asked the country star if she ever thought she’d be known so widely as “the book lady.”
Parton responded with her signature self-deprecating wit and wisdom: “I never thought about being the book lady — the painted lady, yes. The overexaggerated, overdressed lady — yes. But that just goes to show you that you can’t judge a book by looking at the cover, right? Or even a 100 millionth book by looking at the cover.”
In September, 336,004,951 books will have been distributed through Imagination Library. More than 3.6 million families have been registered globally.
The Justice Department’s latest salvo in the battle over the future of the Kennedy Center claims President Trump’s “efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” according to a Monday court filing, which also threatens a possible demolition of the historic building.
Without the president’s interventions, says the filing, “the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site.”
The filing by the administration’s lawyers came in response to the efforts of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) to block the Kennedy Center board from adding the president’s name to the building. The 21-page document argues that the “prestige” afforded by such an addition is both necessary and warranted.
“The Board also underscores, and the undisputed evidence demonstrates, that without the prominent recognition of The Trump Administration, and President Trump’s efforts, the donors will not contribute, and the Center will continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral,” the filing reads. “The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.”
The filing also suggests what could replace the center if the building were to be torn down: “a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River … has been proposed, by some, for many years.”
“Such a replacement will fail to adequately honor President John F. Kennedy, but would be simpler and more economical to build, operate, and maintain,” the administration’s lawyers wrote in the filing.
Such a tear down would face enormous legal pushback, but preservation groups are already on high alert after Trump’s swift demolition of the White House’s East Wing, which was completed before a challenge could be fully mounted.
The Kennedy Center has been mired in controversy since Trump fired its board and had himself appointed chairman in the early months of his second term. Artist and staff defections became common after that, but the question of the center’s survival came into stark relief in early February when Trump declared his intention to shutter the center for two years of renovations.
That decision came after the Kennedy Center board voted in December to add Trump’s name to the building. Both the closure and the renaming were halted in a May ruling by Federal District Court Judge Christopher R. Cooper who is still overseeing the legal back-and-forth over the center’s fate.
Cooper originally gave the administration until mid-June to remove Trump’s name from the building. The administration complied by placing a tarp over the sign, which has remained ever since.
The most recent court filing claiming the center’s survival rests with Trump is in stark contrast to a recent Washington Post investigation that found the center’s revenue plunged after Trump’s name was added to the building.
