Mary Frances Berry, the noted author, University of Pennsylvania history professor and former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, brought her "labor of love" to downtown Buffalo on Thursday.

Fresh off last month's publishing of her latest book, "My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations," Berry, along with five other distinguished African-American professors, held a two-hour panel discussion of her work at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo.

The hotel is serving as host to the 90th annual convention of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History through Sunday.

Berry's book details the life of Callie House, a little-known but important leader in the struggle for civil rights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. House, who lived from 1861 to 1928, was born into slavery and went on to found the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, which campaigned for federal pensions to be provided for ex-slaves as compensation for their unpaid slave labor.

House was eventually convicted of mail fraud when her grass-roots organization grew larger and attracted the ire of government and post office officials who looked to stifle the movement, professors said.

Berry told the audience she first learned about House more than three decades ago and felt compelled to research and shed light on the woman's mostly undocumented life and accomplishments. "I just decided I was going to take some time to piece this woman's life together and who she was," Berry said. "This work was a labor of love, but this work was hard, folks."

Turn-of-the-century information about a poor, widowed African-American washerwoman from Tennessee, Berry said, was hard to come by.

She said nearly all of the accounts of the day - even in the African-American press - chronicled the efforts of middle-class or elite black Americans and issues such as education, citizenship or voting rights.

Berry uses the voices of ex-slaves, court records and other government documents to piece together House's life.

"It changes what we know about black people and what they were about in that period," Berry said. "Huge numbers had something else on their minds."

The panelists offered praise.

"It's a work of historical recovery," said Darlene Clark Hine, African-American studies and history professor at Michigan State and Northwestern universities, who credited Berry's determination to give "a voice to those who were silenced." "She pieces together the fragments of House's existence."

Berry is trying to secure a pardon for House on her mail-fraud conviction and is lobbying to have her declared a "heroine" by the State of Tennessee.