Events Calendar
Presented by Jennifer Conner, Brookshield Laurent, Anne Cafer, and Meagen Rosenthal
In this SouthTalk, University of Mississippi professors and co-directors of the UM Community First Research Center for Wellbeing and Creative Achievement, Anne Cafer and Meagen Rosenthal, moderate a Q&A Sept. 9 at noon with Jennifer Conner and Brookshield Laurent of the Delta Population Health Institute. Their discussion expands upon the work of the Delta Population Health Institute shared in the prerecorded talk.
During the prerecorded talk, Conner and Laurent present on how their training has taught them how to listen to the stories of our bodies, which inform their work in population health in the Delta. Conner and Laurent explore how the interconnectedness of place, time, and health are expressed in our bodies and can serve as the pathway for holistic healing for self and communities.
Jennifer Conner was instrumental in launching the Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention and has achieved many policy, system, and environment changes along the southern US region to improve community resiliency. In 2019 Conner was named a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader finalist and led her hometown of Lake Village, Arkansas, in being named a RWJF Culture of Health Community Prize finalist.
Brookshield Laurent is the founding chairwoman for the department of Clinical Medicine at NYIT-COM at Arkansas State University and the founding executive director for the Delta Population Health Institute. Anne Cafer is an assistant professor of sociology, and her research focuses on improving community-level resilience by integrating food and healthcare systems for better. Meagen Rosenthal is an associate professor of pharmacy administration, and her research focuses on developing systems to integrate health research evidence into practice faster and more effectively.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. As a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events.
“Why Dystopia Now? Exploring the Place, Value, and Necessity of Speculative and Dystopian Themes in Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow”
Presented by Maurice Ruffin and Hilary Word
In this SouthTalk, Southern Studies MA graduate Hilary Word and 2020–21 University of Mississippi Grisham Writer in Residence, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, sit down to discuss Ruffin’s latest work, the dystopian-satire novel We Cast a Shadow. Word and Ruffin expand upon their prerecorded conversation on Ruffin’s book in this live Q&A. The prerecorded conversation is below.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s novel We Cast a Shadow was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Prize, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of creative writing at Louisiana State University. His forthcoming book of short stories, The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, will be published in 2021.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, but raised in both Georgia and Mississippi, Hilary Word now proudly claims Jackson, Mississippi, as her home. She completed her undergraduate education at Tougaloo College, where she obtained a BA in history in May 2017. She entered the Southern Studies MA program in the fall of 2018 and graduated in May 2020. Word’s thesis, “Post-Soul Speculation: An Exploration of Afro-Southern Speculative Fiction,” earned her the Sue Hart Prize for outstanding paper at the intersection of Southern Studies and gender studies.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. As a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events.
LISTEN TO A SAMPLE FROM WE CAST A SHADOW
Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University, and her lecture will be available to watch via Zoom at https://olemiss.zoom.us/j/99815767328.
Also on Oct. 13, Anderson will lead a “Black in the Academy” virtual discussion at 4 p.m. for graduate students, (click here for registration form) facilitated by Shennette Garrett-Scott, UM associate professor of history and African American studies. Anderson’s contributions to the ongoing Twitter conversation “Black in the Ivory,” created by Sharde Davis, amplify the voices of “Blackademics” to speak truth about racism in academia.
Her lecture is “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy.” She is the author of Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955, which was published by Cambridge University Press and awarded both the Gustavus Myers and Myrna Bernath Book Awards; as well as, Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960, which was also published by Cambridge.
Her third book, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide, won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and is also a New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times Editor’s Pick, and listed on the Zora List of 100 Best Books by Black Woman Authors since 1850.
Her most recent book, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy, was Long-listed for the National Book Award in Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Galbraith Book Award in Non-Fiction.
Her young adult adaptation of White Rage, We are Not Yet Equal was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
In addition to numerous teaching awards, her research has garnered fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, National Humanities Center, Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
She is a regular contributor to The Guardian and advisor for it yearlong series on voting rights.
Organized through the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the African American Studies Program, Center for Civil War Research, and the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History, the Gilder-Jordan Speaker Series is made possible through the generosity of the Gilder Foundation, Inc. The series honors the late Richard Gilder of New York and his family, as well as UM alumni Dan and Lou Jordan of Virginia.
As a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events.
Journalist and educator W. Jelani Cobb writes about the enormous complexity of race in America. As recipient of the Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism for his New Yorker columns, Cobb was praised for combining “the strengths of an on-the-scene reporter, a public intellectual, a teacher, a vivid writer, a subtle moralist, and an accomplished professional historian”—qualities he brings to his gripping talks.
Jelani Cobb joined Columbia University’s Journalism School faculty in 2016. He has contributed to The New Yorker since 2012, and became a staff writer in 2015. Before coming to Columbia, Cobb was an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut where he specialized in post-Civil War African American history, 20th century American politics and the history of the Cold War. Dr. Cobb is also a recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations.
Dr. Cobb is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress as well as To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. His articles and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic, Essence, Vibe, The Progressive, and TheRoot.com. His collection The Devil and Dave Chappelle and Other Essays was published in 2007, and he is the editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader, published in 2002. Born and raised in Queens, New York. He is a graduate of Howard University and Rutgers University where he received his doctorate in American History.
This event is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture as part of the Future of the South Initiative and the Voting and Community Activism events this fall. Other sponsors include the Division for Diversity and Community Engagement, the College of Liberal Arts, the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, the School of Law, the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History, the Department of English, the Sociology and Anthropology Department, Department of Political Science and the School of Journalism and New Media.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. As a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events.
“You Asked for the Facts: Bobby Kennedy at the University of Mississippi”
Documentary Film discussion and Q&A with Mary Blessey and W. Ralph Eubanks
This event is a partnership with the Oxford Film Festival. Screen the film and join the Q&A here: https://watch.eventive.org/oxfordac/play/5f60f719ed263d0098d405b7. The film is free to the first 100 participants. It will change to a pay what you can model after receiving 100 viewers.
In 1966, four years after the historic enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, students devised a plan to get around Mississippi’s “Speaker Ban” and bring Robert F. Kennedy to the university to reveal the truth about phone calls with former governor Ross Barnett.
Ralph Eubanks will discuss the film with director and alumna of the University of Mississippi, Mary Blessey.
Mary Blessey is an independent documentary filmmaker based in her hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi. She attended Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi and earned her M.A. in Southern Studies and an M.F.A. in Documentary Expression from the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. She recently produced and directed the historical documentary film “You Asked For the Facts: Bobby Kennedy at the University of Mississippi,” which premiered its first advance screening at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in December 2019 and has been chosen as an official selection at the March on Washington Film Festival, the Montclair Film Festival, The San Diego International Film Festival, and several others. “You Asked For the Facts” is Blessey’s first feature-length documentary.
Ralph Eubanks is a visiting professor of Southern Studies, English, and the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College. Eubanks is author of The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South and Ever Is A Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi’s Dark Past, which Washington Postbook critic Jonathan Yardley named as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. He has contributed articles to the Washington Post’s Outlook and Style sections, the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, The New Yorker, and National Public Radio. He is a recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and has been a fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the University of Virginia and served as director of publishing at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., from 1995 to 2013.
In early 1960 Black students across the nation launched nonviolent direct-action campaigns in more than seventy cities across the nation, challenging Jim Crow segregation and violence. These students took courageous action knowing they would face arrest, expulsion, or even lose their lives. So why did they do it? Anthony Siracusa argues that the political philosophy of religious nonviolence was a key motivation for many. Siracusa excavates the history of this idea in his forthcoming book, Nonviolence Before King: The Politics of Being and the Black Freedom Struggle, and explains how what he calls a “politics of being” came to occupy a central place in the Black freedom struggle.
A historian of modern America and a civic engagement professional in higher education, Anthony Siracusa works at the intersection of the community and the academy. He has written extensively about nonviolence and the Black freedom movement, and his first book, Nonviolence Before King: The Politics of Being and the Black Freedom Struggle, will be released by UNC Press in June 2021. He teaches a variety of courses on African American history, religion, and politics in addition to community-based learning courses. He also develops and administers projects and programs in partnership with communities beyond the campus to enhance student learning and strengthen community impacts. Siracusa is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, and lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
In this talk, Edward L. Ayers narrates the evolution of southern history from the founding of the nation to the present day by focusing on the settling, unsettling, and resettling of the South. Using migration as the dominant theme of southern history and including Indigenous, white, Black, and immigrant people in the story, Ayers cuts across the usual geographic, thematic, and chronological boundaries that subdivide southern history.
Ayers explains the major contours and events of the southern past from a fresh perspective, weaving geography with history in innovative ways. He uses unique color maps created with sophisticated tools to interpret massive data sets from a humanistic perspective, providing a view of movement within the South with a clarity, detail, and continuity we have not seen before. The South has never stood still; it is—and always has been—changing in deep, radical, sometimes contradictory ways, often in divergent directions. Ayers will be in conversation with Ted Ownby, professor of history and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.
Edward L. Ayers has been named National Professor of the Year, received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama at the White House, won the Bancroft, Beveridge, and Lincolns Prizes in American history, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, served as president of the Organization of American Historians, and worked as the founding chair of the board of the American Civil War Museum. He is executive director of New American, dedicated to sharing innovative work in words, maps, audio, and video with broad audiences and the nation’s schools. He is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond, as well as a former dean of arts and sciences at the University of Virginia.
Ted Ownby is William F. Winter Professor of History and Southern Studies, coeditor of The Mississippi Encyclopedia, and author of Hurtin’ Words: Debating Family Problems in the Twentieth-Century South and other works.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
Chuck Ross’s “Protests in Pro Football, 1965–2020” talk examines both the events leading up to the 1965 American Football League All-Star game protest and the events that led to Colin Kapernick’s 2016 NFL protest. Ross will also discuss the legacy of Kapernick’s actions in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the different responses by professional sports leagues and teams in America.
Chuck Ross is a native of Columbus, Ohio, and currently is professor of history and African American studies at the University of Mississippi. He holds a B.A. in history from Stillman College. He has an M.A. in Black studies, an M.A. in history, and a Ph.D. in history, each from The Ohio State University. He is the author of, Mavericks, Money, and Men: The AFL, Black Players, and the Evolution of Modern Football, which was published by Temple University Press in 2016, and Outside the Lines: African Americans and the Integration of the National Football League, which was released by New York University Press in 1999. His teaching interests include twentieth-century US history, African American history, and sports history. He has appeared on ESPN’s Outside the Lines and on ESPN Radio.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
Frank X Walker will read from and discuss his latest collection of poems, Masked Man, Black: Pandemic and Protest Poems. The poems document in real time the myriad of challenges presented by the multiple pandemics of Covid-19 and racial injustice. They also offer edifying pockets of solace as the poet shares his family’s survival tips, strategies, and discoveries in midst of so much loss, while properly laying blame at the feet of the administration that unnecessarily politicized, misled, and further complicated this country’s response to the virus. University of Mississippi associate professor of English and African American studies Derrick Harriell will facilitate the Q&A portion of this event.
Frank X Walker is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. He has published eleven collections of poetry, including Masked Man, Black: Pandemic and Protest Poems and Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Voted one of the most creative professors in the South, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and cofounded the Affrilachian Poets. He is the founding editor of pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture and serves as professor of English and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
Derrick Harriell is the Otillie Schillig Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi. His poem collections are Cotton (2010), Ropes (2013, winner of the 2014 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award in poetry), and Stripper in Wonderland (2017). His poems, stories, and essays have been published widely.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
Daphne Chamberlain’s talk highlights the role of children as leaders and participants in the Mississippi civil rights movement between 1946 and 1965. This presentation also offers a new perspective on the origins of the civil rights struggle and gives credence to how instrumental young people were to engaging in radical protest and grassroots activism in Mississippi.
Chamberlain completed her undergraduate studies at Tougaloo College in 2001 and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Mississippi. Before returning to Tougaloo as a faculty member, Chamberlain was the founding director of the COFO Civil Rights Education Center at Jackson State University. In 2013 Chamberlain returned to Tougaloo College, where she is an associate professor of history and the associate provost and vice president for academic affairs.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
American children are living in a world of ongoing public debates about race, daily displays of racial violence, and for some, an increased awareness of inequality. Based on two years of ethnographic research with affluent white kids and their families, Margaret A. Hagerman’s talk examines how white kids learn about race, racism, inequality, and privilege in the contexts of their everyday lives. This talk explores how white racial socialization is a process that stretches beyond white parents’ explicit conversations with their white children and includes not only the choices parents make about neighborhoods, schools, peer groups, extracurricular activities, and media, but also the choices made by the kids themselves.
Margaret A. Hagerman is an associate professor of sociology at Mississippi State University and is a faculty affiliate in the African American studies and gender studies programs there. She is the author of White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (2019), and she is a nationally recognized expert on white racial socialization. Her research can be found in publications such as the Journal of Marriage and Family, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Ethnic and Racial Studies, among others. She has visited a number of schools and communities across the country to share her work with parents, teachers, neighborhood associations, school administrators, and young people.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
The Original Peoples of the Southeast differed culturally, politically, and linguistically from other tribes across North America. The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole Nations were forcibly removed from their traditional homelands and relocated to Oklahoma. In her talk, Dwanna L. McKay will examine some of the unique cultural practices and diverse histories of Indigenous Nations originally of the southeastern woodlands from precontact to current day.
Dwanna L. McKay is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and an assistant professor in the race, ethnicity, and migration studies program at Colorado College. McKay holds a PhD in sociology, a graduate certificate in Indigenous studies, an MS in sociology, an MBA in management science, and a BA in political science. Raised culturally within the boundaries of her tribal nation in Oklahoma, McKay centers her teaching, research, service, and activism on an overall commitment to social justice. Her research focuses on social inequality and Indigenous identity, and has been published in numerous scholarly journals, including Sociological Compass, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, American Indian Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and the European Sociological Review. She has also authored multiple book chapters, poems, essays, and opinion editorials. McKay currently serves on the national advisory committee for the Native American Student Advocacy Institute and previously held an appointment as Secretary of Education for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
Arts in Barnard Lecture: “Traditional Crafts of Coastal Louisiana” with Maida Owens and Janie Luster
In the talk “Traditional Crafts of Coastal Louisiana,” Louisiana state folklorist Maida Owens will talk about the crafts made by the many traditional cultures found on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Some are made from native plants, such as the Spanish moss crafts, decoy carving, and boatbuilding, while others, such as embroidery and cloth dolls, are crafted from traditional textiles. All of these cultures are endangered as a result of increasing population movements due to land loss. Houma Indian Janie Luster will talk about her family traditions of using garfish scales and palmetto basketry. She studied museum artifacts to revive the half-hitch weave.
Maida Owens has been with the Louisiana Division of the Arts since 1986 and manages the state’s folklife program, where she has worked with hundreds of traditional artists and their communities and curates the program’s Folklife in Louisiana website. The program’s current project is the Bayou Culture Collaborative, which helps to sustain the cultures of coastal Louisiana.
Janie Luster is a master palmetto basket weaver and cultural preservationist of the United Houma Nation. Hailing from the community of Bayou DuLarge in Terrebone Parish, Luster comes from a long line of traditional healers and is a tribal advocate.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
In the last six years, B. Brian Foster has talked with hundreds of Black Mississippians about race, the blues, politics, memory, community, and more. In this talk, he shares with us some of what they’ve shared with him, and he considers what it all might mean both now and for the future. Some of that work is included in his new book, I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life, in which he considers the value of non-affirming sensibilities like pessimism, frustration, and exhaustion for how we think about Black identity and lived experience.
Brian Foster is a writer and storyteller from Mississippi. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently works as assistant professor of sociology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. Foster also serves as coeditor of the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and is director of the Mississippi Hill Country Oral History Collective.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.
Black students have struggled to reimagine the university. That struggle is one still worth fighting for. In the 1980s, when the rightward momentum shook the world to its core, Black student movements offered an alternative vision. Joshua M. Myers’s presentation will look to Howard students during that era as a model for what we still might do with the university.
Myers’s book, We Are Worth Fighting For, is the first history of the 1989 Howard University protest. The three-day occupation of the university’s administration building was a continuation of the student movements of the sixties and a unique challenge to the politics of the eighties. Upset at the university’s appointment of the Republican strategist Lee Atwater to the Board of Trustees, students forced the issue by shutting down the operations of the university. The protest, inspired in part by the emergence of “conscious” hip-hop, helped to build support for the idea of student governance and drew upon a resurgent Black Nationalist ethos.
At the center of this story is a student organization known as Black Nia F.O.R.C.E. (Freedom Organization for Racial and Cultural Enlightenment). Cofounded by Ras Baraka, the group was at the forefront of organizing the student mobilization at Howard during the spring of 1989 and thereafter. We Are Worth Fighting For explores how Black student activists—young men and women— helped shape and resist the rightward shift and neoliberal foundations of American politics. This history adds to the literature on Black campus activism, Black Power studies, and the emerging histories of African American life in the 1980s.
Joshua M. Myers is an associate professor of Africana studies in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. He is the author of We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989 (2019) and the editor of A Gathering Together: Literary Journal.
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel after each live event. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date-information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events in order to receive the webinar link.