The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, in partnership with Delta State University and the Sunflower County, Mississippi Civil Rights Organization will host the 2nd Annual Civil Rights Movement and Oral History panel at 6:30 p.m., Sept. 22 at the Capps Archives and Museum on the campus.
The panel features prominent scholars and community organizers who have participated in and studied the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Panelists will discuss the past, present, and future of the Black Freedom Struggle in the Delta with an eye towards teaching about the historical legacies and unfinished agendas of the movement.
The panel is part of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program’s annual research trip to the Mississippi Delta. A team of eleven University of Florida undergraduates and graduate students, under the direction of Associate Professor of History Paul Ortiz, will interview veterans of the civil rights movement in Mississippi. The students’ interviews will become part of a digital archival collection shared by scholars, teachers, and contemporary social justice activists seeking to understand the origins, tactics, and philosophies of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Panelists include:
Margaret Kibbee, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi in the 1960s and member of the Sunflower County Civil Rights Organization.
Curtis Austin, associate professor and director of the Center for Black Studies, University of Southern Mississippi and author of “Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party.”
Dr. Alan Bean, executive director and founding member of Friends of Justice, a nonprofit organization that works to uphold due process for all Americans in the criminal justice system. Bean has served as a minister for Baptist and United Methodist Churches.
Arlene Story Sanders, professor of Political Science at Delta State University. She has participant in the Citizens Engagement Workshop, America Reads Mississippi, and the Fannie Lou Hamer Legacy Committee. Her courses include “Black Political Thought” and “Women and Politics.”
Akinyele Umoja, associate professor at Georgia State University in the Department of African American Studies. He is the author of “From Malcolm X to Omowale Malik Shabazz: The Transformation and Its Impact on the Black Liberation Struggle.” He teaches courses on the Black Power Movement and African American Social Movements.
For more information, contact Sanders at 662-846-4095 or e-mail asanders@deltastate.edu and Ortiz at 352-392-7168 or e-mail portiz@ufl.edu,
