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Asch to present Delta States 13th Annual Sammy O. Cranford Memorial Lecture in History

By February 11, 2010General

Chris Myers Asch

 

 

 

Chris Myers Asch will present Delta State University’s 13th Annual Cranford Lecture entitled "Plantation Mentalities: James O. Eastland, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the Long Reach of Paternalism," on Monday, Feb. 22, at 7 p.m. in Jobe Hall Auditorium on the campus.

A native of Washington, D.C., Asch is a graduate of Duke University with a Ph.D. in American History from the University of North Carolina.

Asch taught elementary and middle school for three years in Sunflower, Mississippi, as part of Teach for America/AmeriCorps and one year in Taejon, South Korea, with the William J. Fulbright program.

He co-founded the Sunflower County Freedom Project in 1998 and served as Executive Director until launching the U.S. Public Service Academy in 2006.

He won the 2007 Eli Segal Award from AmeriCorps Alums and became a 2007 Echoing Green Fellow.

His book, “The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer,” was published in 2008 and earned the Liberty Legacy Foundation Prize from the Organization of American Historians and the McLemore Prize from the Mississippi Historical Society.

He currently serves as the Coordinator of the Center for Urban Education and the Co-Director of the Honors Program at the University of the District of Columbia.

Asch is married to Erica Seager, and the couple has two daughters.

The 2010 lecture is presented with special support from the Year of the Arts and the Institute for Community-Based Research.

The lecture, established to commemorate the life and work of Delta State history professor Sammy O. Cranford, is free and open to the general public, as is the reception following.

For further information, contact the Delta State History Department at (662) 846-4170.