Thursday, April 5 - Saturday, April 7, 2001
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

The Planning Group for the NEH Deep South Regional Humanities Center at Tulane University invites you to attend a three-day conference on "Freedom Struggles in the Atlantic World." The conference looks comparatively at the southern civil rights movement and social justice and anti-colonial movements throughout the Atlantic world. Sessions will address the themes of reconstructing, assessing, and remembering the struggles, including such topics as the role of violence in the struggles, performance as a means of protest, Black Power and black nationalism, school desegregation, affirmative action, and the Freedom Riders.

The conference is free. All are invited to attend.

The conference will be held at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

For further information, email canders3@tulane.edu.

The conference schedule follows below.

RECONSTRUCTING THE STRUGGLES


9:00-10:30
Session 1: The Global Context

a. Winston James (Columbia University) "The Wings of Ethiopia: The
Caribbean Diaspora and Pan-Africanist Projects - from John B. Russwurm
to George Padmore"
b. Kim Butler (Rutgers University) "Freedom Struggles in the
Afro-Atlantic Diaspora"

BREAK 10:30-10:45

10:45-12:30
Session 2: The Civil Rights Movement in the Southern Seaboard Cities

a. Adam Fairclough (University of East Anglia, England) "Politics and
Politeness: The Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans, 1948-1968"
b. Stephen Tuck (Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge,
England) "The Most Desegregated City South of the Mason-Dixon Line"
c. Nahfiza Ahmed (University of Kent, England) "Black Power and the
Politics of Liberation in Mobile, 1968-1975"

12:30-2:00 - Lunch

2:15-3:45
Session 3: The Role of Violence in Freedom Struggles

a. Aline Helg (University of Texas, Austin) "Freedom Struggles in Cuba"
b. John Lonsdale (Trinity College, University of Cambridge, England)
"Authority, Violence and Adulthood: The War Within Kenya's Mau Mau's
Fight for Freedom in Kenya, 1950-1960"
c. Akinyele Umoja (Georgia State University) "Eye for an Eye: The Role
of Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement"

BREAK 3:45-4:00

4:00-5:30
Session 4: Black Power and Black Nationalism

a. Nan Woodruff (Pennsylvania State University) "Black Freedom Struggles in the Arkansas Delta"
b. Anani Dzidzienyo (Brown University) "Putting Africa Back into
Afro-Brazilian Struggles"
c. Alejandro de la Fuente (University of Pittsburgh) "Black Nationalism
and the Cuban Revolution"


April 6
ASSESSING THE STRUGGLES

8:30-10:30
Session 1:  Commemorating and Critiquing a Generation of School
Desegregation

a. John Kirk (Royal Holloway College, University of London, England) 
  "An End or a Beginning? African American and White Expectations of Brown in Little Rock, Arkansas"
b. James T. Patterson (Brown University) "The Legacy of the Brown v.
Board of Education Case"
c. Marie Tyler McGraw (National Park Service) and Pat Sullivan (DuBois
Institute/Harvard University) "History, Money, and Memory: The National
Park Service and the Civil Rights Movement"

BREAK 10:30-10:45

10:45-12:30
Session 2:  Integration, Affirmative Action and Economic Development

a. Tim Minchin (St. Andrew's University, Scotland) "The Color of Work:
The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, 1945-1980"

b. Nancy McLean (Northwestern University) "Race and Economic Development
in the Post-Civil Rights South"

12:30-2:00
Lunch/Speaker:  Performance as Resistance
Joyce Jackson (Louisiana State University) "Political Ideology in
African American Gospel Music"

2:15-3:45
Session 3:  Comparative Issues

a. George Reid Andrews (University of Pittsburgh) "Freedom Struggles in
Afro-Latin America"
b. Jacqueline Klopp (Political Science/McGill University, Canada)
"Electoral Despotism in Kenya: Land, Patronage and Resistance in a
Multi-Party Context"
c. Hilary Beckles (University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica) "A
Nation Imagined: The Labour Movement and Cricket Culture in the West
Indies, 1927-1947"

4:00-5:30
Session 4:  Comparative Politics

a. A. J. Badger (Paul Mellon Professor of American History, Sidney
Sussex College, University of Cambridge, England) "The Dilemmas of
Biracial Politics: The American South since 1965"
b. Edmund T. Gordon (Anthropology/University of Texas, Austin) "Black
and Indigenous Social Movements in Central America"
c. Michael West (African & Afro-American Studies/University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill) "The U.S. Civil Rights Movement in Pan-African
Perspective" (Zimbabwe, South Africa, Trinidad)

7:30  Music, Art and the Movement:  A Lecture Performance The music of
Hannibal Lokumbe, composer in residence at the New Orleans Contemporary
Arts Center, is featured in a concert. Various local and national
musicians will present "Fannie Lou Hamer," and Charles Barzun of the
Tulane Department of Music performs "John Brown and Blue." Celebrated
sculptor John Scott will join Lokumbe in a pre-performance artist talk.
This event is presented in partnership with the Contemporary Arts
Center, Amistad Research Center, Street Academy Charter School,
Christian Unity Baptist Church, and the Louisiana Philharmonic
Orchestra.


April 7
REMEMBERING THE STRUGGLES

9:30-11:00
Session 1:  Memorializing the Civil Rights Movement

a. Dell Upton (University of California, Berkeley) "Memorials to the
Second Civil War: Commemorating the Civil Rights Movement"
b. France Winddance Twine (Department of Sociology, University of
 California, Santa Barbara) "Memory as a Transnational Political Resource in
 the Black Americas"

11:15-12:30
Session 2:  The Freedom Riders:  A 40-Year Retrospective
Moderator Raymond Arsenault (University of South Florida, St.
Petersburg) Leads a discussion with veteran freedom riders Diane Nash,
John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, Jim Zwerg, and Hank Thomas.