Two events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the launch of the 1960s civil rights protests:
The Long Origins of the Short Civil Rights Movement
The Launch of 1960s Civil Rights Protest: The 50th Anniversary of the Greensboro Sit-Ins and the Launch of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
On 1 March (6.00 p.m., room G22/24) Steven Lawson (Rutgers University/Cambridge University) will deliver ISA’s 2010 Harry Allen Memorial Lecture on The Long Origins of the Short Civil Rights Movement. This explores the historical antecedents of 1960s protest, the gradual emergence of a civil rights movement in the first half of the twentieth century and the hesitant response of the US federal government to this development.
On 2 March, 10.00 pm-5.00 pm in the British Library conference centre, ISA and the British Library’s Eccles centre are co-hosting a conference: The Launch of 1960s Civil Rights Protest: The 50th Anniversary of the Greensboro Sit-Ins and the Launch of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]. This examines the development of the student protest in Greensboro, North Carolina against segregated lunch counters at the local Woolworth stores and other restaurants, and the consequent development of the SNCC as a forum of youth protest for civil rights.
Leading UK students of 1960s black civil rights will present papers at the conference on the development of the local protest, the national significance of the SNCC in the achievement of the civil rights revolution and the consequences of the organization’s post-1964 radicalization.
The following will deliver presentations: Simon Hall (Leeds), John Kirk (RHUL), George Lewis (Leicester), Peter Ling (Nottingham), Sharon Monteith (Nottingham), Joe Street (Northumbria), Steven Tuck (Oxford), Clive Webb (Sussex)
Each event – the Harry Allen Memorial Lecture and the ISA/EC conference – is a stand alone event and it is possible to attend just one of them. Taken together, however, they offer a unique opportunity for UK students and scholars to attend both events as together they constitute a major exploration of political developments that fundamentally shaped modern American history.