Click the headings below for details.
Featured Guest Speakers
General Colin Powell
Wednesday, February 4
Kraushaar Auditorium, 8 p.m.
Retired Gen. Colin Powell will be speaking on campus as part of the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Visiting Professorship Series. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell was born in Harlem in 1937 and was raised in the South Bronx. He later became the 65th secretary of state and the first African American to hold the position. The New York Times bestselling author has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to advance economic and social development worldwide. His talk is titled “Diplomacy: Persuasion, Trust, and Values.” $10 general admission; two free tickets are available for Goucher students, faculty, staff, and alumnae/i.
Freeman Hrabowski
Thursday, February 26
Kraushaar Auditorium, 8 p.m.
Freeman Hrabowski III, the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County since 1992, will speak as part of the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Visiting Professorship Series. Hrabowski is a prominent educator, advocate, and mathematician who recently was named by President Obama to chair the new Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
CANCELED: Tuesday, April 14
Kraushaar Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor and essayist for The Atlantic, will speak as part of the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Visiting Professorship Series. Known most recently for his essay titled “The Case for Reparations,” Coates writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle.
Due to personal health issues, Ta-Nehisi Coates has had to cancel tonight’s presentation. If it is possible to reschedule in the fall, a further announcement will be made.
Michelle Alexander
Monday, April 20
Kraushaar Auditorium, 7:30 p.m. lecture, 9 p.m. book signing and reception
Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator, legal scholar, and New York Times best-selling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, will speak about her observations on race and incarceration in America. Following the presentation there will be a book signing. This event is part of the Roszel C. Thomsen Lectureship series.
Events and Exhibitions
“for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.”
A performance of Ntozake Shange’s groundbreaking play
Friday, February 27
Mildred Dunnock Theatre of Goucher’s Meyerhoff Arts Center, 7 p.m. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $5.
In honor of Black History Month, Goucher College is presenting a performance of Ntozake Shange’s groundbreaking play “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.” The evening will open with a performance of excerpts from “I Can’t Breathe, But I Can Vote,” a new original work-in-progress by members of the Goucher community.
Both pieces will be performed starting at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 27, and Saturday, February 28, in the Mildred Dunnock Theatre of Goucher’s Meyerhoff Arts Center. The college’s Theatre Department is partnering with Umoja, Goucher’s black student union, for these productions. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $5.
For reservations, email dunnockboxoffice@gmail.com or call 410-337-6512. For more information, contact the project’s faculty adviser, Assistant Professor of Theatre Alvin Eng, at alvin.eng@goucher.edu
Organizing for Justice in Baltimore: A Conversation
Monday, March 2
Kelley Lecture Hall, 7 p.m.
Marisela B. Gomez is a physician scientist, author, public health professional, and community activist. She received a Ph.D., MD., and M.PH. from the Johns Hopkins University and spent 17 years as an activist/researcher or participant/observer in East Baltimore during and after training at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Public Health. Past and current writings address social determinants and health, social capital, and urban health disparities in mental health care in incarcerated populations; disparities in substance use treatment; mental health care in the primary health care setting; community organizing and development; and mindfulness practices in organizing. She spends her time between Baltimore City and County.
Dayvon Love is the research director of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. Love was a policy debater for the Towson University debate team. In 2008, he and Deven Cooper won the Cross Examination Debate Association National Championship, the first time in history that an all-black team won the tournament. He has been an active participant in the Baltimore Algebra Project and Baltimore CAN. He has given numerous speeches and led workshops around Baltimore to give insight into the plight of the masses of Baltimore citizens.
This will be the first of four events organized by Peace Studies to coincide with a campus-wide, semester-long exploration of the theme of civil rights.
Debating for Democracy (D4D) on the Road™
Saturday, March 7
Buchner Hall, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Are you passionate about political and social issues but not sure how to make a difference?
Learn to have an impact on pressing public policy issues like Climate Change, Access to Education, Marriage Equality, Prison Reform, Gender and Racial Equality, and Social Justice.
Goucher College, in partnership with Project Pericles, will host the Debating for Democracy (D4D) ™ on the Road workshop on Saturday, March 7. This daylong workshop will provide both novice and seasoned activists with the tools and tactics they need to get their message across to policy makers, community leaders, and the public. Project Pericles is delighted to work with John Gilbert, who is the National Field Director for Enroll America. John worked most recently as the statewide Field Director for President Obama’s reelection campaign in Florida, and has worked as the National Training Director for Organizing for America.
Enrollment is limited to 40 participants, and is free of charge. A light breakfast and lunch will be provided.
The workshop is open to all students, faculty and staff. To sign up for the D4D workshop, please use the following link and respond by Friday, February 27th:
Questions? Please reach out to Cass Freedland (cass.freedland@goucher.edu) or Emily Perl (eperl@goucher.edu)
Breai Mason-Campbell
“Dancing White: Race, America, and the Black Body’s Role in Political and Liberative Discourse”
Tuesday, March 10
Buchner Hall, Alumnae/i House, 7 p.m.
This talk is a part of the Peace Studies Speaker Series.
Breai Mason-Campbell is a Baltimore native, artist, teacher, and community activist. She holds a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard, where her master’s thesis explored the role of hip-hop and dance as a religious and moral touchstone for African American youth. She has directed and performed at the Reginald
F. Lewis Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Mechanic Theater, and the Hippodrome; and she founded her own theater company, Guardian, in 2003.
The New Black
Movie Screening and Discussion
Wednesday, March 11
Kelly Lecture Hall, 7-9:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.
The New Black is a documentary that tells the story of how the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over civil rights. The film documents activists, families, and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar – the black church – and reveals the Christian right wing’s strategy of exploiting this phenomenon to pursue an anti-gay political agenda. The New Black takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets and provides a seat at the kitchen table as it tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the black community.
Rev. Merrick Moise, a Baltimore ordained minister, writer, community activist, and teacher will lead a follow-up discussion.
Rev. Merrick Moise is an ordained minister, writer, community activist and teacher living in Baltimore, MD. This native New Yorker is a graduate of Morgan State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and a minor in Spanish language. Rev. Merrick was one of the first Black people ordained within the Old Catholic Movement in Baltimore. He was also the first Black field organizer for Equality MD, MD’s LGBT civil rights organization. Rev. Merrick was a co-chair of Creating Change 2012, the National Conference on LGBT equality founded and produced by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He was vice chairperson of Baltimore Black Pride in 2012, the first Black transman to hold that position in the 11 year history of Black Pride in Baltimore. Rev. Merrick is currently the Baltimore Coordinator for Groundswell, a clean energy nonprofit headquartered in Washington, DC.
Jared A. Ball
“Malcolm X, the Mixtape, and Obamamania”
Wednesday, March 25
Batza Room, Ungar Athenaeum, 7 p.m.
This talk is a part of the Peace Studies Speaker Series.
Jared A. Ball is an associate professor of communication studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Ball is the author of I MiX What I Like: A MiXtape Manifesto (AK Press, 2011) and co- editor of A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X (Black Classic Press, 2012). Ball hosts and produces radio with WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC, and WEAA 88.9 FM and hosts segments with The Real News Network, both in Baltimore.
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs
Movie Screening
Wednesday, April 1
Kelley Lecture Hall, 7 p.m.
Grace Lee Boggs, 98, is a Chinese American philosopher, writer, and activist in Detroit who has developed a thick FBI file while serving 75 years in the labor, civil rights, and Black Power movements. She challenges a new generation to think creatively and redefine social movements and revolution for our times.
The documentary film, American Revolutionary: The Evolution Of Grace Lee Boggs, plunges us into Boggs’s lifetime of vital thinking and action traversing the major U.S. social movements of the last century.
This event is sponsored by the Goucher Asian Student Union, in collaboration with Peace Studies, Umoja, and FEMCO. Admission is free; $2 contribution toward the Grace Lee Boggs Trust is suggested.
Dr. Stephen Thomas
“Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: How Innovative Cultural Tailoring can Help Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities”
Thursday, April 2
Kelley Lecture Hall, 11:30 a.m.
Rescheduled from March 5.
Jenny Lenkowski, assistant professor of biology, will be hosting a talk with Dr. Stephen Thomas, an expert on race and health disparities from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health. Thomas is a professor of health services administration and the director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity.
Eddie Conway
“A Panther’s Perspective on Black Power and Incarceration”
Wednesday, April 8
Location to be announced, 7 p.m.
This talk is a part of the Peace Studies Speaker Series.
Marshall “Eddie” Conway was the minister of defense of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party. Conway spent 44 years behind bars in Maryland as a political prisoner and remains active with prison issues. Friend of a Friend, an organization Conway helped to found while he was incarcerated, works with young men to reduce institutional violence through conflict-resolution training.
Courses
ANT 392.001: The Anthropology of Resistance
Rory Turner
Mondays and Wednesdays, 7-8:40 p.m.
ENG 105: Academic Writing II: Writing Civil Rights
Angelo Robinson
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:55-11:10 a.m.
ENG 372: Seminar in African American Literature: The African American Novel
Angelo Robinson
Thursdays, 1:30-4 p.m.
HIS 111: American Society and Culture: 1865 to the Present
Matthew Rainbow Hale
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
HIS 238: Special Topics in Comparative Colonialism: Decolonization in the Twentieth Century
Chelsea Schields
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
HIS 273: African American History II
James Dator
Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30-3:10 p.m.
HIS 320.001: The Long Civil Rights Movement
James Dator
Mondays, 7-10:20 p.m.
PCE 148: Nonviolence
Ailish Hopper
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m.
PCE 231.001/WS 250.001: Haitian History and Culture of Resistance as Expressed Through the Arts
Jennifer Bess and Irline François
Wednesdays, 12:30-3 p.m.
PCE 231.002: Black Geographies: Gratuitous Violence and the Freedom Drive
Yousuf Al-Balushi
Thursdays, 7-10:20 p.m.
PCE 305: Peace and Rewriting Race
Ailish Hopper
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:55-11:35 a.m.
PSY 219: Cultural Psychology – Black Psychology
Nyasha Grayman-Simpson
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1-2:50 p.m.
RLG 355: Black Religious Thought II
Kelly Brown Douglas
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:55-11:10 a.m.
SOC 280.001: Social Movements
Jeffrey Dowd
Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, 10-10:50 a.m.
WS 226/LAM 226: Women, Peace & Protest: Latin American Women & Search for Social Justice
Irline Francois
Mondays, 12:30-3 p.m.
WS 232: African American Women’s History
Mel Michelle Lewis
Tuesdays, 1:30-4 p.m.
WS 300.001: Sexuality and Civil Rights
Mel Michelle Lewis
Wednesdays, 9-11:30 a.m.
While not dedicated entirely to Civil Rights issues, the following courses will touch on the theme:
ART 201/COM 202: Basic Photography
Laura Burns
Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30-3:20 p.m. or Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30-4:20 p.m.
LAM 268/HIS 268: Latin American History: Pre-Columbian to the Present
Florencia Cortés-Conde
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:10-2:50 p.m.
PSC 342: Seminar in Presidential Politics
Nina Kasniunas
Mondays and Wednesdays, 7-8:40 p.m.
Further Study
Civil Rights Timeline
The Civil Rights Past/Present/Future Theme Semester Spring 2015 showcases materials from Goucher College’s Special Collections & Archives curated by Nakpangi Ali ’17, Micah Connor ’16, Yabsera Faris ’17 and Nicole Wise ’16 under the supervision of professor James Dator and Goucher College Library staff
Goucher Library Resources
A guide to Goucher Library resources on the Civil Rights Movement and African American history more broadly can be found here:
http://libraryguides.goucher.edu/civilrights
Further Reading
The follow is a list of monographs on various aspects of the Civil Rights Movement and related issues and struggles. This list is by no means exhaustive; it concentrates mostly on the literature published in the past decade but also includes some classic works.
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2010.
Boyle, Kevin. Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. New York: Henry Holt, 2004.
Branch, Taylor. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
———. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
———. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
Carroll, Tamar W. Mobilizing New York: Aids, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
Carson, Clayborne, ed. The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle, 1954-1990. New York: Viking, 1991.
———. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Cobb, Charles E. This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible. New York: Basic Books, 2014.
Collier-Thomas, Bettye, and V. P. Franklin. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women inthe Civil Rights-Black Power Movement. New York: NYU Press, 2001.
Countryman, Matthew. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
D’Angelo, Raymond N. The American Civil Rights Movement: Readings & Interpretations. Guilford, Connecticut: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2001.
Davies, Philip, and Iwan W. Morgan. From Sit-Ins to SNCC the Student Civil Rights Movementin the 1960s. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012.
Feldstein, Ruth. How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Ferree, Myra Marx, and Beth B. Hess. Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement across Three Decades of Change. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Hamlin, Françoise N. Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
Hanhardt, Christina B. Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.
Holsaert, Faith S. Hands on the Freedom Plow : Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Jeffries, Hasan Kwame. Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Jones, William P. The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights.New York: Norton, 2013.
Joseph, Peniel E., ed. The Black Power Movement: Re-Thinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.
Kelley, Robin D. G. Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. New York: Free Press, 1994.
King, Martin Luther. Why We Can’t Wait. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
Lau, Peter F. From the Grassroots to the Supreme Court: Brown V. Board of Education and American Democracy. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
Lee, Sonia Song-Ha. Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
Levy, Peter B. Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland. Southern Dissent. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.
Maeda, Daryl J. Chains of Babylon : The Rise of Asian America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011.
———. Race, Reform and Rebellion : The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1982. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1984.
Marable, Manning, and Leith Mullings, eds. Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance,Reform, and Renewal. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
McAdam, Doug. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Montejano, David. Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.
Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Murch, Donna Jean. Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Russell, Bertrand, and Stokely Carmichael. SNCC and the Struggle for Black Power. London: Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, 1967.
Shaw, Randy. Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the Ufw, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Singh, Nikhil Pal. Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Sitkoff, Harvard. A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue: The Depression Decade. Thirtieth anniversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008.
Sullivan, Patricia. Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: New Press, 2009.
Theoharis, Jeanne. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Boston: Beacon Press, 2013.
Thornton, J. Mills. Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002.
Tyson, Timothy B. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Random House, 2010.
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1955.
X, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. The Autobiography o(Malcolm X. New York: Grove Press, 1965.
Zinn, Howard. SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.