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FN_CIVIL_RIGHTS_SERIES_08.04.2023
Crowd of people participating in anti-racism protest. Focus is on black woman with raised fist.
drazen_zigic Envato Elements

Civil Rights Movement Series

Lectures examining the Civil Rights Movement from Brown v. Board of Education to the civil and human rights initiatives today. The American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) refers to reform movements in the United States aimed at abolishing public and private acts of racial discrimination against African Americans. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power Movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged and gradually eclipsed the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority. Several scholars refer to the Civil Rights Movement as the Second Reconstruction, a name that alludes to the Reconstruction after the Civil War. Timeline: Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956 Mass Action Replaces Litigation, 1955-1965 Tallahassee, Florida Boycott, 1956-1957 Desegregating Little Rock, 1957 The Kennedy Administration, 1960-63 Freedom Riders, 1961 Council of Federated Organizations, 1962 The Albany Movement, 1961-1967 The March on Washington, 1963 The Birmingham Campaign, 1963-1964 Race Riots, 1963-1970 The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 1964 Selma and the Voting Rights Act, 1965 Black Power, 1966 Memphis and the Poor People’s March, 1968 Gates v. Collier Prison Reform Case, 1970-1971

  • **Marian Wright Edleman** delivers the keynote address for the first symposium organized by Trinity Church, convening people across the city to come together to learn, be inspired, and be moved to take effective actions towards facing, healing and ending racism. The symposium was organized by members of the Trinity Anti-Racism Team, as part of the recognition of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for his commitment to a better America. The The Reverend Samuel T. Lloyd III, Rector of Trinity Church, introduces the symposium saying, "With the recent events in Ferguson, Cleveland, New York, and in our own backyard, this discussion sadly is more urgent than we had imagined. We pray that the day’s conversations will speak powerfully to participants coming from many different perspectives, and that it will inform and inspire effective new initiatives in the long journey we walk on together towards truth and reconciliation."
    Partner:
    Trinity Church
  • "Kenneth Mack discusses his book *Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer*. *Representing the Race* tells the story of an enduring paradox of American race relations, through the prism of a collective biography of African American lawyers who worked in the era of segregation. Practicing the law and seeking justice for diverse clients, they confronted a tension between their racial identity as black men and women and their professional identity as lawyers. Both blacks and whites demanded that these attorneys stand apart from their racial community as members of the legal fraternity. Yet, at the same time, they were expected to sympathize with African Americans. This conundrum, as Kenneth Mack shows, continues to reverberate through American politics today. Mack reorients what we thought we knew about famous figures such as Thurgood Marshall, who rose to prominence by convincing local blacks and prominent whites that he was'as nearly as possible'one of them. But he also introduces a little-known cast of characters to the American racial narrative. These include Loren Miller, the biracial Los Angeles lawyer who, after learning in college that he was black, became a Marxist critic of his fellow black attorneys and ultimately a leading civil rights advocate; and Pauli Murray, a black woman who seemed neither black nor white, neither man nor woman, who helped invent sex discrimination as a category of law. The stories of these lawyers pose the unsettling question: what, ultimately, does it mean to 'represent' a minority group in the give-and-take of American law and politics?"
    Partner:
    Harvard Book Store
  • Congressman John Lewis, who at 23, spoke at the 1963 March on Washington as chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, leads a discussion on the planning, implementation, and effect the first March on Washington had on the country.
    Partner:
    John F. Kennedy Library Foundation
  • Political activist Angela Davis talks about abolitionism and human rights in the United States.
    Partner:
    Harvard Du Bois Institute
  • WGBH hosts a preview screening of part one of the *American Experience: Eyes on the Prize* series and a panel discussion with Coolidge Corner Theater audience members. The evening also includes a special performance by a group of Berklee students who welcome the audience with "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," the theme song for the series. American Experience: Eyes on the Prize is an award-winning 14-hour television series produced by Blackside and narrated by Julian Bond. Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, the series covers all of the major events of the civil rights movement from 1954-1985.
    Partner:
    GBH Forum Network
  • Host of the book review show* Between the Lines*, Valerie Jackson and Juan Williams discuss his involvement with *Eyes on the Prize* and his new book *Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead End Movements, and Culture of Failure that are Undermining Black America and What We Can Do About it*.
    Partner:
    PBA
  • Hank Klibanoff, lecturing from his book *The Race Beat*, tells the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the South, and the brutality used to enforce it. Klibanoff discusses how the nation's press, after decades of ignoring the problem, came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into the most significant domestic news event of the 20th century.
    Partner:
    Margaret Mitchell House & Museum
  • Morris Dees Jr. discusses the founding of the Southern Poverty Law Center and talks about his experience with this group. **Morris Dees Jr.** is famous for his crusade against white supremacist hate groups, and known for his landmark cases, which forced groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Neo-Nazis to disband. Dees' work has been fictionalized in a 1991 movie called *Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story*, as well as in numerous books.
    Partner:
    Georgia Perimeter College
  • Michael Thurmond delivers the Holmes-Hunter Lecture, which honors Charlayne Hunter-Gault and the late Hamilton Holmes, the first African American students to enroll at UGA. Lecture speakers focus on race relations, black history or aspects of higher education with implications for race relations.
    Partner:
    PBA
  • Georgia Perimeter College Professor Shawn L. Williams leads a slavery symposium discussion on The Willie Lynch Syndrome: Consequences of Mythologizing History. The Willie Lynch Syndrome has been devised to explain the psychological problems and disunity among black people. Williams debunks the myth of Lynch's existence and urges careful analysis of history for understanding the impact of slavery and white supremacy on African Americans.
    Partner:
    Georgia Perimeter College