[This past
weekend, I had the opportunity to attend my first Southern Historical Association
annual conference, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Thanks to a We’re History piece of mine, I was invited by Elaine Frantz
Parsons to take part in a wonderful panel on the Reconstruction-era KKK. In
this series I’ll follow up both that panel and other takeaways from this great
conference!]
Every SHA panel
I attended both engaged with and challenged my perspective and ideas. Here are
quick takeaways from the talks and histories featured in three exemplary such
sessions:
1)
Campuses, Classrooms, and the Struggle for
Racial Justice after 1965: In Professor
Shirletta Kinchen’s talk on student and community activism at Memphis’ Lemoyne-Owen College in 1968, I was particularly
struck by her details about The Invaders, a
local Black Power group with one of the most clever names I’ve ever
encountered. Professor
Michelle Purdy’s talk on the first black students at newly integrated
private and independent secondary schools modeled an interdisciplinary
approach, weaving together oral histories, educational histories, and engagement
with institutional and governmental efforts such as the National Association of
Independent Schools and the Higher
Education Act of 1965 to tell this compelling story. And Professor
Jill Ogline Titus’ talk highlighted a complex example of a Civil Rights era
educational initiative, the Southern Student Program
through which the American Friends Service Committee
(a Quaker activist organization) placed Southern African American students with
Northern white host families and secondary schools.
2)
Law and Activism in the Long Civil Rights
Movement: Professor
Melissa Milewski’s groundbreaking research has discovered and analyzed more
than 1300 appellate court civil cases featuring black and white litigants in 8
Southern states between 1865 and 1950; most strikingly, she has discovered that
the black litigants won nearly 60% of those cases, making these legal efforts a
vital site of civil rights progress and possibility in the era. Professor
Stephanie Hinnershitz is working on a topic of particular interest to me,
the lives and legal battles of Asian American immigrants in Southern states in
the early 20th century; she focused in particular on the Arkansas case of Applegate vs. Luke, but highlighted
a number of related historical and cultural questions that I can’t wait to
learn more about it. And graduate student Emily Senefield shared her
ongoing research into Tennessee’s
Highlander Folk School, and especially the ways in which music and labor
activism there in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s helped move toward the Civil
Rights Movement’s use of Freedom Songs.
3)
Roundtable on the Association
for the Study of African American Life and History’s 100th
Anniversary: To celebrate 100 years of Carter
G. Woodson’s unique and vital organization, and the Journal
of African American History that it has published for nearly all those
years, this roundtable featured a trio of scholars whose work has contributed
immensely to the association and journal: Pennsylvania State Professor of Labor
and Employment Relations James
Stewart, UCLA Professor of History Brenda
Stevenson, and University of California Riverside Professor of History V.P. Franklin (the
journal’s current editor). Besides reiterating the essential role that the
association and journal have played in American scholarship, education,
activism, and society throughout the century, this roundtable also reminded me
of the ways in which scholarly conferences and organization can offer and model
community in the best sense, and can both rejuventate our own perspectives and
efforts and give us opportunities for important next steps in our careers and
lives.
Next SHA follow
up tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
No comments:
Post a Comment