Dr. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is coming back to Peoria on Aug. 11, her first visit to the city since 1978, for a Museum Conversations event at the Peoria Riverfront Museum. The evening starts at 6 p.m. and will include a discussion and book signing centered on Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me.
The timing matters because the museum is still using the series to honor Richard Pryor’s legacy, and this appearance gives that effort a public face. For Peoria readers searching now, the date is fixed, the place is set and the reason is clear: Dr. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor will be in the city for one night to speak about a book tied directly to one of its most famous names.
Everley Davis called the moment “huge,” saying it has been a long time coming for the city to embrace Richard Pryor’s life. Davis also pointed to the harder parts of that story, saying he had a complicated life, including drug addiction, and that “nobody’s perfect.”
That complexity is part of why the event has drawn attention beyond a simple book signing. Davis said Dr. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor brings academic depth as a professor of African American History at Smith College with scholarship on the history of the N-word, while also carrying the layered perspective of being raised Jewish and Black and the daughter of Richard Pryor. Davis said she is “really mining the ideas” and exploring what the word means, how it gets used and how it fits into a larger social conversation.
So the next thing to watch is not whether the event happens. It does, on Aug. 11 at 6 p.m. at the Peoria Riverfront Museum. The question is what the city takes from a return that has been 46 years in the making, and whether this conversation becomes a larger part of how Peoria tells Richard Pryor’s story from here.
