Distinguished women from Greater Boston will be recognized for their community leadership at an awards ceremony on Saturday that’s hosted by the Greater Boston Section of the National Council of Negro Women.
Survivors of gun violence, lawyers, and educators are among the six women receiving a Women of Courage and Conviction Award, while two other women will be honored with vision and president awards.
All will be honored at a luncheon at Venezia, a Boston restaurant, with the theme “Telling Our Stories, Shaping Our World.”
“I am disheartened by the treatment of some of our librarians and the effort to purge library shelves of a well-rounded history, much of it, Black history,” Lisa Braxton-Reid, the council’s president, wrote in an introductory letter in the luncheon program.
Carmen Fields, a longtime Boston journalist and public affairs specialist, is the keynote speaker at the 28th annual ceremony. Fields recently published “Going Back to T-Town,” a memoir of her late father’s big band career.
Sheena Collier will be presented with the Liberating Vision Award, alongside Rose Marie Tucker, who will receive the President’s Award.
An entrepreneur, Collier is the founder and chief executive of two Boston-based businesses that foster connections for the Black community, The Collier Collection and Boston While Black.
The Liberating Vision Award is given to someone who “upholds the spirit and the vision” of Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of the national council, who was also an educator and civil rights activist.
Like Bethune, Collier “built community by connecting people to the right spaces and motivating them to take action,” Braxton-Reid said.
Tucker, a 27-year member of the council, is receiving the President’s Award for the second time. She currently serves as a chaplain for the council. The award is given to a council member “who gives of their time and efforts to the section in an outstanding way,” Braxton-Reid said.
The Women of Courage and Conviction Awards will be presented to recipients in a variety of fields.
Denise Cosby and Fay Rackley co-founded the Just-In-Time Initiative after Cosby’s son was shot and killed in 2009, as well as Rackley’s grandson 2010.
Cheryl Clark, a doctor and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, is the first executive director for the Institute of Health Equity Research, Evaluation, and Policy for the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers.
Sophia Hall is the deputy litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit legal organization based in Boston. Tiffanie Ellis-Niles is a lawyer and founding partner of Lyles and Niles Law, based in Randolph. Kyera Singleton is the executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters, a historic site in Medford that was home to the largest slaveholding family in Massachusetts.
Maeve Lawler can be reached at maeve.lawler@globe.com. Follow her @maeve_lawler.