Seventy-five years after Catlett’s Hillside High School teaching days, retired educator Eddie Davis will discuss the role that the city may have played in the development of Catlett’s art and the influences that she might have had on the city.

The discussion will be at 3 p.m. today at the Durham County Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro St.

Catlett created sculptures of the human form that reflected her deep concern with the African-American experience and the struggle for civil rights.

In 1958, she became the first female professor of sculpture and head of the sculpture department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, School of Fine Arts, San Carlos, in Mexico City.

Catlett was 96 years old when she died in Mexico earlier this year. Her career spanned 70 years, and she continued to make art into her 90s.

Davis is the former president of the North Carolina Association of Educators and was the first practicing classroom teacher to hold a full voting position on the State Board of Education.

He retired from teaching English at Hillside High School in 2008 and now explores his interests in little-known areas of Durham history. This is his third discussion at the library.

This program is made possible in part by Durham Library Foundation. For more information, contact Joanne Abel at 919-560-0268.