Professor Raymond Arsenault discusses the Freedom Rides of 1961, in which participants rode public buses into the South to protest transportation segregation. He focuses on the personal stories of the Freedom Riders.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch discusses the final years of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, focusing on King's attempts to move the Civil Rights Movement into protest of the Vietnam War and King's calls for broader social and economic justice.
Video and audio options are available.
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. The presentation includes footage of Lewis's 1963 speech at the March.
Hubie Jones, assistant to the Urban Affairs chancellor at the University of Massachusetts, provides an overview of the issue of race, and, in particular, the status of African Americans in Boston over the past 50 years.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Du Bois Institute at Harvard, discusses the African and African-American experience from W.E.B. Du Bois to John Coltrane in a comprehensive study, with an emphasis on Du Bois's concept of the "Encyclopedia Africana"—an encyclopedia of all Black culture and history—as a weapon against racism.
Art historian Abaigeal Duda looks at the work of African-American artist Lucy Cleveland (1780-1866), whose textile sculptures provide a record of the abolition movement prior to and during the Civil War.
Professor David W. Blight examines the character and legacy of fervent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879). Blight looks at his private character and his public image, and how his ideals and technique might be received, used, and remembered today.
Audio and video options are available.
Julie Winch discusses the highly successful African-American Remond family and their business of catering lavish parties in Boston and Newport in the 1800s. Winch focuses on the Remonds as free African Americans and supporters of abolitionism during the era of slavery.
This lecture discusses African-American social organization and antislavery activism in Antebellum Boston.
Professor Gary Nash discusses the conditions of the fifth of the population who were African American during the Revolutionary War and in its aftermath. Nash explores the escape of slaves to join the British and the conditions African Americans faced in the colonies after the war. His presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.