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University of Florida Oral History Program co-sponsors 3rd Annual Civil Rights Movement and Oral History in the Mississippi Delta

By September 15, 2011General

The University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program will hold its 3rd annual Civil Rights Movement and Oral History in the Mississippi Delta panel discussion on Delta State’s campus. The event is scheduled for Wednesday, September 21, at 6:00 p.m., in the Jacob Center Conference Room in Ewing Hall. The panel features prominent scholars and community organizers who have participated in the Civil Rights Movement in the Mississippi Delta and beyond.

The theme of this year’s panel is, “Civil Rights History: Where Do We Go From Here?” In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his final book. Titled Chaos or Community: Where do We Go From Here? Dr. King chronicled the arc of the civil rights movement and suggested the need to refocus the movement on issues relating to economic justice, democracy, and a deeper understanding of American history, particularly African American history. This year’s panelists will address these themes.

Panelists include Rose Turner, a recipient of the Fannie Lou Hamer Award. Turner was recently honored by the Mississippi State Legislature in an official resolution recognizing her as a “tireless advocate for the rights of workers and supporter of their human right to organize [who] for more than 20 years, as director of organizing for the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union Local 1529 has championed the cause of workers’ rights on behalf of catfish, poultry, nursing home and supermarket workers.”

Mayor Diana Freelon-Foster, the first African American and female mayor in the history of Grenada, Miss., who states, “I was 16 years old when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came into Grenada by way of the Meredith March. Out of this the Grenada Freedom Movement was born. I was one of the students who integrated the all white high school in the city. It was a violent integration and we were beaten by white men on our first day of school.”

Dr. Charles (Chuck) Westmoreland, an assistant professor of history at Delta State University. Westmoreland received his Bachelor of Science degree at Ferrum College in 1998. He earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Mississippi in 2008. At Delta State he has served as history coordinator for the Master of Education in Secondary Education. He has written essays on society and religion as well as the role of sports in the politics of the 1960s.

Lawrence Guyot, one of the original members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. In 1964, Guyot directed the Freedom Summer Project in Hattiesburg, Miss. That same year, he was elected chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MDFP’s actions in the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J. ultimately led to the DNC desegregating future conventions and the party itself.  In 2004 Guyot co-authored “Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching,” a resource guide for K-12 classrooms. He has been featured in documentaries, including Eyes on the Prize, Making Sense of the Sixties, The War on Poverty and Tales of the FBI.

Paul Ortiz, director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and associate professor of history at the University of Florida. He is the author of Emancipation Betrayed and worked as volunteer labor organizer with the United Farm Workers of Washington State and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in North Carolina. He is a recipient of the Lillian Smith Book Prize, the Carey McWilliams Book Prize, and the Harry T. Moore and Harriette V. Moore Book Award.

Co-Sponsors include the Sunflower County Civil Rights Organization and Diversity Advisory Committee at Delta State Univesity

Contacts: Arlene Sanders asanders@deltastate.edu, 662-846-4095. Paul Ortiz, portiz@ufl.edu, 352-392-7168.