Rescheduled “Created Equal” program set for Tuesday, February 24th

The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement in Contemporary Times
February 24, 2015
5:30pm
R.E. Hunt Museum & Cultural Center

Flonzie Brown Wright has been involved in the Civil Rights Movement since 1963. Her presentation will examine the role of youths in the movement, the importance of women in the struggle, the impact of slavery and lessons learned and the impact today of obtaining the right to vote. Ms. Brown recaps the Civil Rights Movement and the lessons learned, and examines current strategies for achieving more community involvement, participation and proactive involvement. She stresses the importance of continued voter registration and education, chronicling and preserving our history, getting out the vote and increasing community awareness, interest and involvement.

During the Civil Rights Movement, Ms. Wright helped register thousands of voters in Mississippi. She was the first African American female elected official in Mississippi post-Reconstruction. She is a best-selling author of Looking Back to Move Ahead, which chronicles her journey growing up in a small Mississippi town through her work in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. She worked directly with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many other humanitarian activists, both locally and nationally. Her experiences are documented in a 1997 film entitled Standing on My Sisters’ Shoulders.

Curator Karen Utz Explores the Convict Leasing System in Alabama

Join us for our next Created Equal program “The Role of Convict Labor in the Industrial Development of Birmingham, Alabama” tomorrow Thursday, February 12 at 12:00 noon at the Columbus Public Library.

Curator Karen Utz will discuss the story of Alabama’s convict leasing system, in effect from 1866 to 1928 (last state to outlaw this horrific system). Robert Patton, Alabama governor in 1865, declared that the state’s felons, rather than being housed in the penitentiary, should be “leased.”

This presentation will focus on early state and local laws enacted by Alabama politicians to justify their use of convict labor. Attention will also be paid to the horrendous working conditions, as well as to similarities between the institution of slavery and the convict leasing system. Copies of documents, contracts and photographs add to the overall significance of the lecture.

Utz will also be showing clips from the film “Slavery by Another Name”.

Karen Utz is the Curator at Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark and an adjunct history instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Sponsors include the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and the Mississippi Humanities Council.

Local partners include the Rosenzweig Arts Center, the R. E. Hunt Museum & Cultural Center, and Mississippi University for Women.

This event is free and open to the public. Snacks will be provided.

For more information about the Created Equal series call 662-329-5300.

Explore “The Loving Story” Supreme Court Case this Thursday

Don’t miss out on our next “Created Equal” program titled “In the Matter of Thought: State Law and Interracial Marriages in ‘Loving v. Virginia'” this Thursday, February 5th at 5:30pm at the Columbus Public Library!

In this talk Dr. Stephen Middleton, from Mississippi State University, will look at and interrogate the reasons behind state laws that banned interracial marriages.

Guests attending this talk will be asked to consider the idea that the passage of the laws that banned interracial marriages had nothing to do with African Americans. It had everything to do with the belief systems of the legislators that passed the law.

Dr. Middleton will also be showing clips from the film “The Loving Story”.

“The Loving Story” documents the landmark 1967 Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage. The case involved Richard Perry Loving, a white man, and his wife Mildred Loving, a woman of African-American and Native-American descent. Married in Washington, D.C., upon returning home to Virginia they were arrested for violating the state’s Racial Integrity Act.

Sponsors include the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and the Mississippi Humanities Council.

Local partners include the Rosenzweig Arts Center, the R. E. Hunt Museum & Cultural Center, and Mississippi University for Women.

This event is free and open to the public. Snacks will be provided.

For more information call 662-329-5300.

 

Next program will explore the role of “Black Mississippians in the Civil War”

Join us tomorrow, January 29th, at the Columbus Public Library for the presentation “Black Mississippians in the Civil War” at 12 noon in the Meeting Room.

The third program in the “Created Equal” series, Dr. Max Grivno’s presentation will examine the experiences of black Mississippians in the Civil War. He will reconstruct their views of the conflict and how they used the chaos of the war to seize their freedom.

By rising against their masters, flocking to northern lines, supplying intelligence to federal soldiers and shouldering arms in the Union army and navy, the enslaved sapped the foundations of the southern economy and military.

The presentation draws heavily from Union and Confederate military records, newspapers, interviews with former slaves and records of Mississippi’s wartime government.

This program is in conjunction with the documentary “The Abolitionists” that will be available for check out soon after tomorrow’s event.

Sponsors include the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and the Mississippi Humanities Council.

Local partners include the Rosenzweig Arts Center, the R. E. Hunt Museum & Cultural Center, and Mississippi University for Women.

This event is free and open to the public. Snacks will be provided.

For more information about the Created Equal series call 662-329-5300

 

Freedom Riders Topic of Tuesday’s Event

The next program in the Created Equal series is “Freedom Riders and Civil Rights in Mississippi”. It will be this Tuesday, January 20 at 5pm at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library.

Dr. Robert Luckett will discuss the events surrounding the integrated band of college students who, en masse, traveled on a segregated Greyhound bus bound for the Deep South. Known as the Freedom Riders, these students brought the nation face to face with the challenge of correcting civil-rights inequities. Dr. Luckett will show clips from “Freedom Riders” and lead a discussion surrounding the film.

Hezekiah Watkins

Also, Hezekiah Watkins will be there to give his first hand account of his arrest at a Greyhound bus terminal at the age of 13 on July 6, 1961 because he wanted to see a Freedom Rider. After his arrest, Watkins was placed on death row at Parchman because of his support of the Freedom Riders and Civil Rights.

As a Civil Rights historian, Dr. Luckett’s expertise is on the modern Civil Rights Movement and the African-American experience. As director of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, Dr. Luckett has become an expert on Walker’s life and her experiences, especially as they related to the Black Arts Movement of the 20th century.

“Created Equal” opening at Rosenzweig Arts Center on January 13

The opening event of the Created Equal programming series will be “Savoring African American History through Stories and Poetry” at the Rosenzweig Arts Center on January 13 at 7:00pm.

Audience members will be taken on a story walk through the eyes and feelings of African Americans from slavery to the mid-seventies.

Barbara Jones Clark, Storyteller

Using award-winning literature via stories and poetry, attendees will experience plantation life and escape, life view of a 110-year-old supercentenarian, living with Jim Crow during a motor trip down south, death of Emmitt Till poetically immortalized, feelings of interracial children (Black and Jewish) during the ’70s and some experiences of outstanding African Americans (George Washington Carver, Gordon Parks and Mary McCloud Bethune).

A recently retired school administrator and professional storyteller, Barbara Jones Clark presents programs that combine her love of literature with her diverse educational background. She holds an undergraduate degree in education from the University of Memphis and a master’s degree in library science from the University of Michigan.

You can learn more about Barbara Jones Clark at http://www.barbstory.com

Free and open to the public. Limited seating so reservations encouraged.

For more information visit http://columbus-arts.org or call 662-328-2787.