Q: What is the concept behind this book and how did it come to be written?
A: In May 2011, when I was directing the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, we hosted a major conference that sought to center the Pacific Coast in the study of race and politics, in part because the American West tends to be ignored in conversations about race. (more…)
U faculty and leaders reflect on the historic day and its aftermath
Fifty years ago, on August 28, 1963, a young preacher delivered a speech that would go down as one of the most important and powerful in all of American history. “I Have a Dream” became the cornerstone of the March on Washington, a march which galvanized a people and energized the civil rights movement. One year later, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.
Seven months earlier to the day, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech to a crowd of about 2,000 on the U of M campus in Northrop Auditorium. The cover of January 29, 1963 Minnesota Daily read, “Much Remains in Path to Freedom—Dr. King.”(more…)
As part of its YouthSpark initiative to create opportunities for youth, Microsoft welcomes 15,000 students to We Day at Seattle’s KeyArena.
SEATTLE — March 27, 2013 — At the age of 12, while looking for the morning comics in the newspaper, Craig Kielburger stumbled upon a news item about a 12-year-old boy killed in Pakistan for speaking out against child labor. Outraged by the story, he desperately wanted to do something to help. After a number of phone calls and attempts to contact nonprofit organizations, Kielburger realized it wasn’t so easy for kids to get involved with social activism. That’s when he got an idea.
That same year, the young Canadian founded his own nonprofit, Free The Children, to pave the way for kids to help other kids around the world. Twelve years later, in 2007, Kielburger took his organization to the next level, launching the We Act program in schools across Canada and creating a more widespread approach to helping youth make a difference. As part of the program, Free The Children hosts a celebration in each participating city called We Day. (more…)
Award-winning journalist, activist, and author Charlayne Hunter-Gault told a packed audience at Yale that lessons learned from the civil rights movement still have relevance for current and future generations.
Hunter-Gault delivered a lecture titled “Social Justice, Equity, and Public Health” during a Branford College master’s tea on Feb. 5. (more…)
History has long denied the political genius of the Black Panther Party. At worst, its members have been cast as unconscionable criminals. At best, such seminal figures as party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and early supporter Stokely Carmichael have been portrayed as outlaw folk heroes who, propelled by the progressive winds of the late 1960s, dared to take on the establishment.
But a UCLA graduate student in sociology who worked alongside former Panthers a decade ago as a community organizer in Oakland, Calif., didn’t buy the conventional wisdom. (more…)
UD sociologist writes book about ‘betrayal’ of African American veterans
For the University of Delaware’s Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, research for his new book Disposable Heroes: The Betrayal of African American Veterans was uncomfortable and disquieting.
An associate professor of sociology, Fleury-Steiner spent months interviewing black veterans of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan in the back streets of Wilmington, Del., to learn more about their service to their country and their experiences upon returning home.
The topic had long been on Fleury-Steiner’s mind, himself an Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm who had ducked Scud missiles in Saudi Arabia. (more…)
*Ayanna Gregory celebrates heroes of civil rights movement*
Wearing a mauve-colored dress with flared sleeves that flowed with each dance step, soul singer, educator and activist Ayanna Gregory celebrated the history of the American civil rights movement with an evening of song and spoken word before an enthusiastic audience on Wednesday evening, Feb. 15, in the Gore Recital Hall of the University of Delaware’s Roselle Center for the Arts.
During her performance, “Daughter of the Struggle,” Gregory recalled what it was like growing up as one of 10 children of Lillian and Dick Gregory, the standup comedian who used his comic skills to tell Americans that segregation and racial bigotry were no laughing matter. (more…)
Welcoming the guests filling Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, President Robert J. Zimmer began the University’s Jan. 12 Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration Celebration by reflecting on King’s first major address in Chicago. It was in Rockefeller Chapel that King spoke 56 years earlier.(more…)
