LEWISTON – A sociologist and professor of education at Harvard University will discuss her mother’s extraordinary life in a lecture at 7 p.m. Monday at Bates College.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot will present “Balm in Gilead: On Love, Justice and the Word,” in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

Lawrence-Lightfoot will tell the life story of her mother, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, the first African-American psychoanalyst and the first African-American woman pediatrician to be certified to practice in this country.

The daughter of an Episcopal priest and schoolteacher, Lawrence was raised in Mississippi. In the 1930s, she attended Cornell University, where she was the only Negro undergraduate, was barred from the dorms and served as a maid in professors’ homes. She went on to medical school at Columbia University, where she was the only African-American and one of 10 women in her class.

Lawrence-Lightfoot’s lecture will focus on the emotional, spiritual and political landscapes of her mother’s extraordinary life.

and on the power of storytelling as she forged her identity.