Program in the African American Experience
Speakers on African American History, 2007-2008
Peter Kolchin, the Henry Clay Reed Professor of History at the University of Delaware, is author of First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama’s Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (1972); Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (1987); American Slavery, 1619-1877 (1993); and A Sphinx on the American Land: The Nineteenth-Century South in Comparative Perspective (2003). Winner of the Bancroft Prize, the OAH Avery Craven Award, and the Southern Historical Association’s Charles Sydnor Award, he is currently working on a comparative study of emancipation and its aftermath in Russia and the U.S. South, a sequel to Unfree Labor.
Wilma King holds the Strickland Professorship in African American History and Culture at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her most recent work, Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America (1995), won the Outstanding Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. She is presently working on two studies of free black women and African American children.
For the past four decades, James Brewer Stewart has studied the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement. He has published biographies of four very well-known enemies of slavery—Joshua R. Giddings, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and Hosea Easton—as well as several additional books and a large number of articles and essays. His Sisterhood and Slavery: Transatlantic Antislavery and Women’s Rights, co-edited with Kathryn Kish Sklar, is forthcoming. In these writings, as in his teaching, his foremost goal is to address historical problems of racial injustice in ways that faithfully portray the past and speak to the present.
David Blight is a leading expert on the life and writings of Frederick Douglass and on the Civil War in historical memory. His book Frederick Douglass’s Civil War (1989), and his edition of Douglass’s Narrative and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk are widely taught in college courses. Blight has appeared in several PBS films about African American history and works extensively with museums and other public history projects. His most recent work, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, 1863-1915 (2001), won a half-dozen prizes, including four from the Organization of American Historians (OAH).
Speakers on African American History, 2004-2005
Parrish Kelley
August 5, 2004 (Old Main 203)
At the age of 18, Parrish Kelley (center) became a foot-soldier in a pivotal event of the civil rights movement--Freedom Summer of 1964. He will speak about his Quaker forebears, growing up in Buffalo, New York, and Dallas, Texas, and registering African Americans to vote in Ruleville, Mississippi, where he worked with Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the legendary figures of the movement. His recollection will focus on the dangers of fighting segregation on the frontlines, the friendships forged in such trying circumstances, and the stigma of being white as civil rights organizations began ousting nonblacks. His presentation will conclude with remarks on how the movement changed his life and others.
Lillian Serece Williams, PhD
“Buffalo and the Great Migration”
Tuesday, October 19, 2004, 7:30 p.m. (Lyons Hall 313)
Lillian S. Williams, PhD, is associate professor and chair of the African American Studies Department at SUNY Buffalo. Her publications and consultancies have focused on Girl Scouting, the YMCA and YWCA, the National Urban League, the Mary Burnett Talbert house and the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. She is best known for her highly regarded study entitled, Strangers in the Land of Paradise: The Creation of an African American Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940. At SUNY Albany and Buffalo, she has been recognized for her teaching excellence and distinguished service. The Niagara County Black Achievers selected Williams for its lifetime achievement award in 2000.
Neil McMillen
“Jim Crow Stories”
October 20, 2004, 7:30 p.m. (Richard E. Winter '42 Student Center)
Neil McMillen is a nationally-known professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. As an expert in southern history, he has written four books, including Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow Reconstruction, which won the Bancroft, Gustavus Myers and McLemore book prizes and was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. He has been a consultant for several documentary films and served as an expert witness on civil rights for the U.S. Department of Justice. His current book project is Hard Times Mississippi: Blacks in the Great Depression and War. In recognition of his teaching excellence and notable scholarly publications, McMillen was appointed distinguished alumni professor of the humanities. His presentation at Canisius is entitled, "Jim Crow Stories: New Meaning in Old African-American Narratives."
Shawn Lay
"Buffalo's War on the Ku Klux Klan"
November 9, 2004, 7:30 p.m. (Regis South)
Shawn Lay, chair of the history department at Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina, is a leading authority on the second Ku Klux Klan. Among his publications are three influential books. He is most well known for Hooded Knights on the Niagara: The Ku Klux Klan in Buffalo, New York (1995), which will form the basis of his presentation at Canisius. He has received many teaching awards, including the Governor's Distinguished Professor, Master Professor of the Year, and Outstanding Honors Professor.
Celes Tisdale
The works of Harlem Renaissance poets, including Langston Hughes.
November 16, 2004, 6 p.m. (Old Main 210)
Celes Tisdale is assistant professor of English at Erie Community College. He has taught English at the State University of New York at Buffalo and in the Buffalo Public School System. Tisdale also taught creative writing at Attica State Prison and published an anthology, Betcha Ain’t: Poems from Attica as well as We Be Poetin,’ We the People.
Macy Favor and His Jazz Quintet
Tuesday, November 30, 2004, 7:30 p.m. (Palisano Pavilion)
Macy Favor is a master of the jazz musical idiom, leading his own big band and serving as a past president of Buffalo’s Colored Musicians Club. Each Sunday evening at 9 p.m. he hosts the “Jazz Favorites Hour” on WBFO FM radio. The Buffalo News recently recognized Favor as one of the leaders of the local African American arts community.
Irene McVay
"Jim Crow Education"
February 1, 2005, 4 pm (Old Main 310)
In 1951, Irene McVay was a student in the all-black Robert R. Moton High School, which was located in rural Prince Edward county, Virginia. Compared to the area's white school, Moton High lacked basic facilities, including a cafeteria, auditorium, gym, or infirmary. Some classes were held in tar paper shacks that leaked when the rains came. Weary of such inequities, McVay's best friend, 16-year-old Barbara Johns, led a dramatic and unparalleled two-week strike of their 450 classmates. Their courageous action led to a lawsuit against the white school board that became part of the famous Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision.
Barbara Ransby
"Women in the Black Freedom Movement"
February 4, 2005, 7:30 p.m. (Grupp)
A specialist in black feminism, Barbara Ransby is an associate professor in the History and African American Studies departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her prize-winning monograph, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, is a biography of a key civil rights figure who firmly believed that grassroots organizing is the only effective way to reform society. Ransby writes regularly for the Progressive Media Project, which syndicates her articles on a range of subjects, including African American politics and history, women’s issues, popular culture, multiculturalism, and strategies for social change.
Rev. Charles Sherrod
"The Albany Movement"
Tuesday, March 15, 2005 / 7:30 p.m. (Regis South)
The Rev. Charles Sherrod, a dynamic Baptist minister from Petersburg, Virginia, was a pioneering member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which he helped found. He is best known for spearheading SNCC's efforts in the contentious Albany Movement of southwest Georgia that led directly to Martin Luther King's campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. It was in Albany in the early 1960s that the civil rights movement first organized an entire community, employed the jail-no bail tactic and sang many of the songs so identified with the cause of civil rights. True to the spirit of grassroots organizing, Sherrod became a part of the local community and indeed has never left. In the years since the freedom movement, Sherrod has continued his organizing work, developing farm cooperatives, serving as an elected official, and, currently, working as a chaplain in local prisons. He was featured recently in a PBS documentary, This Far by Faith.
Lawrence Guyot
"Organizing Freedom Summer"
Thursday, April 14, 2005 / 7:30 p.m. (Room 107, Horan-O'Donnell Science Building)
Lawrence Guyot is a native of Pass Christian, Mississippi and attended Tougaloo College, a historically black institution near Jackson. An activist in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - the "shock troops of the civil rights movement" - Guyot received a particularly brutal beating at the hands of the police as he tried to win the release of Fannie Lou Hamer from a Winona jail. During the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 (Freedom Summer), which he helped organize, Guyot was stationed in Greenwood, which was ground zero of a dangerous voter registration campaign. The campaign culminated in the biracial Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which Guyot chaired. MFDP demanded and eventually won an integrated state delegation representing all Mississippians. Guyot now lives in Washington, where he leads a group that advocates statehood for the District of Columbia.
David Garrow
"The Political Evolution of Martin Luther King Jr."
April 20, 2005, 7:30 p.m. (Regis)
Winner of the Pulitzer prize, David Garrow is a preeminent historian of the civil rights movement. Currently Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, Georgia, Garrow is the author or editor of a dozen books, including Protest at Selma, the FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the acclaimed Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Garrow served as senior advisor for the classic civil rights documentary, Eyes on the Prize.
Speakers on African American History, 2003-2004
Bernard LaFayette, Jr.April 30, 2003, 7:30 p.m. (Grupp Lounge)
The Rev. Dr. LaFayette was part of the stellar Nashville Student Movement. He participated in the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Ride through the Deep South, and the Selma (Alabama) voting rights campaign. In Selma, he was viciously attacked by a club. He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the major organizational arm of civil rights activism among young people. He was national coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign to promote economic justice. Dr. LaFayette has held a wide variety of positions, including pastor of the Progressive Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee; dean of the graduate school at Alabama State University in Montgomery; principal of Tuskegee Institute High School in Tuskegee, Alabama; and president of his alma mater, American Baptist College. Holder of a Harvard doctorate, he is currently distinguished scholar-in-residence at the University of Rhode Island and director of its Center for Nonviolence. In this latter capacity, LaFayette has traveled the world over, spreading the gospel that love conquers hate.
C.T. Vivian
July 9, 2003, 9 am (Old Main 223)
The Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian was a pioneer in the civil rights movement, participating in sit-ins shortly after World War II. He was part of the Nashville Student Movement, helping to train a generation of young people to embrace nonviolent resistance as the key to social change. He was a rider on the first “Freedom Bus” into Jackson, Mississippi, and worked on Martin Luther King’s executive staff in campaigns involving Birmingham, the March on Washington, Danville (Virginia), St. Augustine (Florida), Selma, and Chicago. Featured prominently in the acclaimed Eyes on the Prize video documentary, Vivian is best remembered for being punched down Selma’s courthouse steps by the tempestuous sheriff, Jim Clark. Speaking to a civil rights class at Canisius, Vivian will recreate his remarkable experiences in the movement. The public is welcome to attend.
Dr. Bruce Dierenfield with C.T. Vivian
Philip Morgan
Thursday, September 11, 2003, 7:30 p.m. (Regis South, Winter Student Center)
Dr. Morgan is Harry C. Black Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, and the author of the acclaimed, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry. (1998). He has edited the William & Mary Quarterly, the standard journal in early American history, and has won numerous prestigious fellowships, including a Guggenheim. He will speak at Canisius on his ground-breaking research on slavery in colonial America. To read a review of the book, click here.
Performers from Buffalo's Langston Hughes Institute will perform authentic west African dances that will be accompanied by two drums. Dance instruction will be provided. All are welcome. For more information on the Langston Hughes Institute, click here. To see a gallery of photos from this event, click here.
Milton Sernett
Thursday, September 25, 2003, 7:30 p.m. (Regis North, Winter Student Center)
Dr. Sernett is professor of African American studies and history and adjunct professor of religion at Syracuse University. He will speak at Canisius on his new book, North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. This is the story of the remarkable transformation of upstate New York’s famous “Burned-over District,” where religious revival sparked a powerful abolitionist movement that was spearheaded by such notables as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Gerrit Smith. His talk and accompanying slide show will feature Buffalo and western New York. To read his curriculum vitae in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format, click here.
Janine Carter
Monday, September 29, 2003, 6 p.m. (Lyons Hall Room 311)
Carter’s off-Broadway play, “What Light from Darkness Grows,” a period piece set in 1858, starred Gloria Rubin and Carter. The play is now being performed as a serialized historic radio drama, which stars Harry Lennix (Titus, The Matrix II & III) and Lisa Gay Hamilton (Beloved and The Practice). The piece, hosted by actress Phylicia Rashad, won the 2003 NFCB Golden Reel Award for Best Drama and the Gracie Allen Award for Entertainment/Drama. To read more about her, click here.
Karima Amin
Monday, October 6, 2003, 7:30 p.m. (Old Main 225)
Karima Amin is a full time professional storyteller who has shared tales with audiences throughout the United States and Ontario, Canada. She is one of the founding members of "Spin-A-Story Tellers", a group that promotes the art of storytelling in Western New York.
Thursday, October 30, 2003, 7:30 p.m. (Grupp, Winter Student Center)
A longtime chaired history professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Levine is one of the profession’s most honored scholars. He was one of the first historians to receive the MacArthur “genius” prize and has served as president of the Organization of American Historians. A specialist in American culture, he is best known for his study of African American folkways during slavery. In his seminal book, Black Culture and Black Consciousness (1978), Levine analyzed black culture by investigating black songs, folk tales, proverbs, aphorisms, verbal games, and the long narrative oral poems known as “toasts.” To read more about his book, click here.
Douglas Egerton
Tuesday, November 18, 2003, 7:30 p.m. (Regis South, Winter Student Center)
Dr. Egerton has become a leading authority on slave revolts in the American South. He has written or edited four books, including Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (1993) and He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey (1999), and given expert commentary on several television documentaries, including the PBS series, Africans in America and This Far by Faith. He is presently chair of the History Department at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. To read a review of the book, click here. To read his curriculum vitae in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format, click here.
James M. Lawson, Jr.
Wednesday, February 4, 2004, 7:30 p.m. (Regis, Winter Student Center)
One of the real pioneers in nonviolent resistance, the Rev. James Lawson went to jail rather than fight in the Korean war. He later studied Gandhi’s nonviolent formula in India for three years. Lawson subsequently helped organize the largest and most successful of the sit-ins during the civil rights era. Among his associates and protégées in these early days were C.T. Vivian, John Lewis, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Bernard LaFayette. Lawson was also a close friend of and adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., and served for twelve years as president of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A committed activist, Lawson has campaigned against violence of all kinds, demonstrated for equal rights for every group, and worked to promote community diversity and solidarity. Lawson retired recently after pastoring a large Methodist church in Los Angeles, California. Since then, he has held endowed lectureships at Harvard and UCLA. 
Dr. Bruce Dierenfield with James M. Lawson, Jr. 
Links:
- To read more about Lawson, click here, or here.
- An interview with Lawson from the Los Angeles Times, click here.
- A story on Lawson and his expulsion from Vanderbilt's Divinity School, click here (© Vanderbilt Magazine, Fall 2002, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN).
Melba Pattillo BealsWednesday, March 31, 2004, 7:30 p.m. (Grupp, Winter Student Center)
As a 15-year-old student in Little Rock, Arkansas, Melba Patillo found herself enmeshed in a civil rights battle that rocked the country and changed her life forever. In September 1957, she and eight other black teenagers faced angry mobs as they tried to enter Central High School, which the U.S. Supreme Court required. A demagogic governor ringed the school with National Guardsmen and renegade police, forcing president Dwight Eisenhower to send combat-ready paratroopers to enforce the law of the land and to protect the lives of these brave students. For their courage and self-sacrifice, the Little Rock Nine received America’s top civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal. Her best-selling memoirs include Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock Central High School (1994) and its sequel, White is a State of Mind: Freedom is Yours to Choose (1999). A former television reporter, Beals is a dynamic, inspirational, and humorous speaker. To read more about Beals, click here.
Linda Brown Thompson & Cheryl Brown Henderson
Friday, April 30, 2004, 7:30 p.m. (Montante Cultural Center)
A half-century has elapsed since the U.S. Supreme Court decided the landmark school desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education (May 17, 1954). The Brown sisters—Linda and Cheryl—were the children involved in the case, and their personal story will bring this historic case to life in a presentation that is informative and motivational. To read an interview with the Brown sisters from USA Today, click here.