Forum Network

Theda Perdue, Professor of Southern Culture at the University of North Carolina, discusses her book *Race and the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition of 1895*. The book examines the world's fair held in Atlanta, where white organizers - in order to attract business to the area - hoped to demonstrate they had solved problems of race in the city. The exposition featured American Indians, African Americans, and other racial, ethnic, and gender communities as part of the event's installations. Perdue finds that this turn-of-the-century performance of race played out in surprising ways, particularly in terms of the voice this event gave to the minorities who took part.

Mr. Julian Bond and Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., as they participate in an intimate conversation during the first MLK Leadership Breakfast. This a rare opportunity to hear these thought leaders in civil rights and diversity management.

The Georgia Nonprofit Summit presents Marc Freedman as he discusses changes and transformations affecting our work, our communities and the world. Civic Ventures is a think tank and an incubator, generating ideas and inventing programs to help society achieve the greatest return on experience. Founded in the late 1990s by social entrepreneur Marc Freedman, Civic Ventures is reframing the debate about aging in America and redefining the second half of life as a source of social and individual renewal. Through research, publishing, conferences, and media outreach, Civic Ventures reports on the growth of the experience movement. Civic Ventures brings together older adults with a passion for service and helps stimulate opportunities for using their talents to advance the greater good.

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, a native North Carolinian and the C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, discusses her revealing new book, *Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950*, which looks at forgotten black and white southern activists, whose courageous work in the face of Jim Crow segregation laws, helped lay the foundation for the later civil rights movement.

Pulitzer Prize winner **Taylor Branch** discusses the final years of Martin Luther King Jr's life, when King and America stood "at Canaan's edge." In the third and final volume of his three-part biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., _At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968_, Branch paints a vivid picture of American society in the mid-20th century. As the war in Viet Nam and social unrest at home began to fray the nation's optimism and faith in the future, King sought to expand the Civil Rights Movement into protests of the war and calls for broader social and economic justice. Within a few short years, his commanding and prophetic voice was silenced. (Photo: [Wikipedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Civil_Rights_March_on_Washington,_D.C._(Dr._Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._and_Mathew_Ahmann_in_a_crowd.)_-_NARA_-_542015.tif ""))

A discussion on the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision with a VIP panel that includes Harvard's Charles Ogletree, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Caroline Hoxby, and Lani Guinier, as well as Georgetown professor Sheryll Cashin and Abigail Thernstrom of the Manhattan Institute.

Ernest C. Withers talks about his photojournalism career, which took him on travels with Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and other figures in the civil rights movement. As a freelance journalist for African American newspapers, he captured on film the momentous events of the 1950s and 60s as they unfolded. Withers shares his experiences and images of events that altered the course of American history in a memorable Martin Luther King Jr. Day presentation.

This discussion centers around the screening of a film by Robert Drew, founder of cinema verite. The time was June 1963, when two black students tried to gain admission to the University of Alabama. The film, entitled *Crisis*, looks at the White House's handling of the event and simultaneously traces the actions of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. The film was controversial when first released. Although now recognized as a major piece of work, at the time, *The New York Times* editorialized against it claiming, "Under the circumstances in which this film was taken, the use of cameras could only denigrate the Office of the President. To eavesdrop on executive decisions of serious government matters while they are in progress is highly inappropriate. The White House isn't Macy's window." Today, because of this film, we have a remarkable historical record of what led to the integration of the University of Alabama.

On the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, this panel discussion considers the topic "18,190 Days of (de)Segregation: How Far Have We Come?" with Angelo Ancheta, Mitchell Chang, Vanessa Siddle Walker, and Charles Willie.

A distinguished panel discusses the impact of Brown vs. the Board of Education, 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision. Moderated by Carmen Fields, director of media relations, KeySpan Energy New England, the panel includes Margaret A. Burnham, associate professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law; Nancy Gertner, US district court judge for the District of Massachusetts; Jonathan Kozol, author and activist; Charles Ogletree Jr., Jesse Climenko professor of law at Harvard Law School; Robert V. Ward Jr., dean of the Southern New England School of Law; and Dianne Wilkerson, state senator of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was particularly fitting that the Museum commemorate the landmark Brown decision given the historic significance of its site, the Abiel Smith School, which was a the center of the first school desegregation case filed in the United States, Roberts v. the City of Boston (1850). The Abiel Smith School, located at 46 Joy Street on Beacon Hill, Boston and opened in 1835, was the first public school in the country to be erected specifically as a segregated school for African American primary and secondary school-aged children. Prompted by a gift from white philanthropist Abiel Smith, the City of Boston opened the Smith School on Beacon Hill. However, the building lacked the adequate space and equipment for a quality education. Benjamin Franklin Roberts, a black printer, sued the city after his 5-year-old daughter, Sarah, had been denied admission to the primary school closest to her home in the West End and was told to go to the Smith School, more than a mile away. In 1850, the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided against Roberts stating that the Boston School Committee had fulfilled its obligation to provide a "separate but equal" educational program. Forty-six years later, the US Supreme Court relied principally upon this rationale in establishing the "separate but equal doctrine", announced in Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896). This doctrine was unanimously reversed 58 years later by the US Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).