The Long Struggle for Civil Rights and Black Freedom

This event was part of the May 2016 conference The Future of the African American Past, co-hosted by the American Historical Association and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The conference opened with a roundtable conversation about the last half-century of African American political activism. In this video, scholars and activists, including a member of the Little Rock Nine, give personal reflections on the circumstances in which they entered the civil rights movement and examine how the movement both stimulated and was shaped by scholarship on African American history. An activist from Black Youth Project 100 puts recent struggles into historical context.

Speakers

• Barbara Ransby, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago (chair)
• Clayborne Carson, Stanford Univ.
• Sara M. Evans, Univ. of Minnesota
• Jessica Pierce, Black Youth 100 Project
• Terrence Roberts, Terrence Roberts Consulting
• Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Morgan State Univ.

Resources

• NEH “Created Equal” film project on civil rights