Events

NOTE: Events will be held at either the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library, Rosenzweig Arts Center, or the R.E. Hunt Museum & Cultural Center.  Each event notes its location.

All events are free and open to the public.

Savoring African American History through Stories and Poetry
January 13, 2015
7:00pm
Rosenzweig Arts Center

Take a story walk through the eyes and feelings of African Americans from slavery to the mid-seventies. Using award-winning literature via stories and poetry, the audience 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.

Freedom Riders and Civil Rights in Mississippi
January 20, 2015
5:00pm
Columbus 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.

Black Mississippians in the Civil War
January 29, 2015
12:00 noon
Columbus Public Library

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.

Dr. Max Grivno joined the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi in 2007 after completing his doctorate at the University of Maryland. Dr. Grivno is the author of Gleanings of Freedom: Free Labor and Slavery along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790-1860. He is currently working on From Bondage to Freedom: Slavery in Mississippi, 1690-1865 and a third book tentatively tilted Bandits, Klansmen, Rioters and Strikers: Violence in the Alabama-Mississippi Black Belt,1830-1917. Dr. Grivno’s teaching interests include the Old South, slavery, labor history and Mississippi history.

In the Matter of Thought: State Law and Interracial Marriages in Loving v. Virginia
February 5, 2015
5:30pm
Columbus Public Library

In this talk Dr. Stephen Middleton will look at state laws that banned interracial marriages. He will interrogate the reasons for the state outlawing interracial marriages. He will suggest that it was not simply a matter of the rule of law; it was a matter of the belief systems of a majority of whites at the time. 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. From this trajectory, Middleton invites us to examine all of our relationships and challenges that exist today around race, religion, and sex. Once we recognize that the problem stems from our belief system, we can question our thinking to determine if what we think is true. Middleton advances the idea that only recognition of our sameness—our oneness—will we be able to overcome the problems that plague us. Dr. Middleton will also be showing clips from the film “The Loving Story”.

Stephen Middleton received his B.A. degree from Morris College, the M.A. degree from The Ohio State University, and the Ph.D. degree from Miami University (Ohio). He completed the first-year curriculum in law at New York University School of Law. His research interest is race and the legal system. His new book is entitled, The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Ohio, 1787-1860 (2005) and he is currently working on Robert Heberton Terrell, an African American judge in Washington, D.C.

The Role of Convict Labor in the Industrial Development of Birmingham, Alabama
February 12, 2015
12:00 noon
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.” His rationale was that blacks, rapidly becoming the penitentiary’s majority population, did not regard confinement as punishment, and should “feel the hardship of labor in iron and coal mines.” 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.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement in Contemporary Times
February 17, 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.

African American Heroes
February 26th
10:00am & 3:30pm
Columbus Public Library

All children are encouraged to come dressed up as their favorite African American hero during Mother Goose’s Story Time. They can share what they know about their hero as part of Goose’s “Show & Tell” portion of Story Time. Heroes can include famous African Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, or President Barak Obama. It could also include influential, but not as well-known individuals such as Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman, Lewis Howard Latimer, or Elizabeth Freeman.

Discovering Our Past with American Girl Dolls
February 28th
2:00pm
Columbus Public Library

This program is intended for school age children, boys and girls, who are interested in learning more about Lowndes County and Columbus’s past. Participants will enjoy a short photo presentation of Columbus and Lowndes County through the years and interactive activities highlighting signature American Girl Doll time periods from our past. American Girl Dolls highlighted will include Marie- Grace and Cecile Rey (both of 1858) among others. In an effort to give our children a stronger sense of our historical community, this Created Equal program seeks to help them form real world connections between our past and our future.