2007 Civil Rights Education Summit
Here is a partial list of speakers and presenters for the 3rd annual Civil Rights Education Summit in Oxford, Mississippi, on June 27-29, 2007. This list will continue to be updated as we receive more information:
Click here to download a printable PDF file with information on speakers and workshop presenters
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Keynote presenter:
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Dr. John Hope Franklin served as chairman for the advisory board of Bill Clinton's One America: The President’s Initiative on Race. He is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, and for seven years was Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke University. He is a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. He received the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Harvard University. He has taught at a number of institutions, including Fisk University, St. Augustine's College, North Carolina Central University, Howard University, Brooklyn College, and the University of Chicago.
Dr. Franklin's numerous publications include The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, Reconstruction After the Civil War, and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Ante-bellum North. Perhaps his best known book is From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, now in its seventh edition. His Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 1976 was published in 1985 and received the Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize for that year. In 1990, a collection of essays covering a teaching and writing career of fifty years, was published under the title, Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988. In 1993, he published The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century. Professor Franklin's most recent book, My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, is an autobiography of his father that he edited with his son, John Whittington Franklin. His current research deals with "Dissidents on the Plantation: Runaway Slaves."
Click here for a biography of noted historian Dr. John Hope Franklin.
Click here for an online interview with Dr. John Hope Franklin.
Panelists and Speakers:
- Dr. James T. Campbell is an associate professor of American Civilization, Africana Studies and History at Brown University. His research focuses on African American history and on the wider history of the Black Atlantic. Campbell has been involved with a range of public history and curricular projects, including projects focusing on race and the American Revolution, the history of the Rhode Island Slave Trade, and the Civil Rights Movement. He has collaborated with Susan Smulyan of Brown's Department of American Civilization and Ernie Limbo of Tougaloo College in creating "Freedom Now!,", a website exploring the history of the Mississippi Freedom Movement. Campbell recently chaired Brown’s Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, which was charged to investigate and to prepare a report about the University’s historical relationship to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. His book Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History.
- Dr. James Loewen is a sociologist and best-selling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, and Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University, and he taught race relations for twenty years at the University of Vermont.
- Michael R. Wenger, of Mitchellville, Maryland, is a program
consultant with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies,
the nation’s pre–eminent research and public policy analysis
institution focusing on issues of race. He also is an adjunct professor
in the Department of Sociology, specializing in race relations, at The
George Washington University. From September 1997 to October
1998, Mr. Wenger served as the Deputy Director for Outreach and
Program Development for President Clinton’s Initiative on Race. He
was responsible for the development and implementation of
programs designed to broaden public support for President Clinton’s
vision of One America in the 21st Century—a more just, inclusive and
unified America that offers opportunity and fairness for all Americans.
He is the co–author with Dr. Sidney Simon of Window Pane Stories: Vignettes to Help You Look At and Beyond Your Experiences, a
frequent speaker on race relations, and the author of numerous
articles on race relations and on rural economic development. He
was educated at Queens College of the City University of New York,
where he was a leader in the civil rights struggles of the early 1960s.
- William F. Winter was the fifty-eighth governor of Mississippi from 1980-1984. He is most well known for his role in leading the charge for publicly-funded primary education during his term. His governance echoed his belief that all people, regardless of race or class, should be entitled to the same rights and privileges as the most privileged enjoys. In a substantial way, Governor Winter's accomplishments were honored in 1997 when President Bill Clinton initiated "One America," an unprecedented national conversation on race. Winter served on the board of One America, helping to bring the only deep–South public forum to the University of Mississippi. President Bill Clinton has called Winter a "great champion of civil rights." He continues to practice law with the Jackson, MS, firm of Watkins Ludlum Winter & Stennis, P.A.
Workshop Presenters:
- Jennifer Abraham is director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University. She has been working in the field of oral history for a decade and has conducted hundreds of interviews with people from a variety of backgrounds, has led dozens of how-to workshops, and acts as a consultant for various project collaborations. She began her training at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage in 1996 and has been with LSU’s Center for Oral History since 1998. As director of the Williams Center, she manages over 45 collections comprised of over 3500 interviews, steadily increases collection development, and conducts public outreach on a regular basis in order to train and collaborate with students, teachers, community groups, and researchers in the methods and uses of oral history. Particular areas of interest for Abraham in regards to oral history are women’s history, the use of oral history in the classroom, accounts of men and women in military service, diverse local community narratives, human and civil rights history, the history of politics and activism in Louisiana, environmental history, and the utility of oral history in archaeological studies.
- Dr. Nancy Bercaw is a history and southern studies professor at the University of Mississippi. She has written a book about the transition from slavery to freedom in the Mississippi Delta called Gendered Freedoms: Race, Rights and the Politics of Household in the Mississippi Delta. She teaches courses on slavery, southern history, and what "the South" means today.
- Margaret Block is a native of the Mississippi Delta and was active in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly in 1964. She lived in California for 31 years but returned to Mississippi and now lives in Cleveland.
- Dr. Joseph Crespino is an assistant professor at Emory University in Atlanta where he teaches courses on twentieth century American political history. He is the author of In Search of Another Country: Mississippiand the Conservative Counterrevolution, which was published in March 2007 by Princeton University Press. Crespino is a native of Noxubee County, Mississippi. From 1994-1996, he taught 11th grade U.S. history at Gentry High School in Indianola as part of the Mississippi Teacher Corps.
- William Dickerson–Waheed is a videographer, Producer/Director of public access television programs, print journalist, and public relations marketing consultant. He has been in the field of community development for the past 30 years. He has managed and supervised the construction, servicing, and financing of housing projects; developed innovative loan programs for neighborhood residents; developed adult and youth community based organizations; and produced a documentary to raise awareness and funds for a community based-HBCU project. His film Rivers of Change: The Legacy of Five Unheralded Women in Montgomery and their Struggle for Justice and Dignity is about the struggles of five unknown women that were instrumental in starting and ending the Montgomery bus boycott. He also produced a companion curriculum guide to the film called &quo;More than a Bus Ride.&quo;
- Peggy Jeanes is editor of Mississippi History Now, the online publication of the Mississippi Historical Society in partnership with the Mississippi Department of Education, which hosts the site. She has edited the publication since its launch in August 2000. The publication was awarded the 2004 Chair Award for “outstanding achievement in the humanities,” by the Mississippi Humanities Council, a sponsor of the site. Previously, Jeanes was an editor and writer for Entergy Corporation in Jackson and New Orleans, and was employed for 10 years at Harper & Row Publishers (now HarperCollins) in New York City, where she reached the position of managing editor of the Trade Division.
- Jennifer Jones–Clark is a Senior Associate and Director of Special Projects for Facing History and Ourselves and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Facing History and Ourselves is a non-profit national and international educational and professional development organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. Jennifer designs and facilitates historical based social justice workshops, institutes, and other professional development programs for educators, students, corporations and community organizations throughout the United States, South Africa, and Israel.
- Sarah Kreckel is a Curriculum Writer with the Choices Program and a Research Associate at the Watson Institute for International Studies. Choices develops teaching resources on historical and current international issues, provides professional development for classroom teachers, and sponsors programs that engage students beyond the classroom. Before joining Choices in 2002, she was a project coordinator and teacher for a college awareness program in the Boston Public Schools. She has also been a middle and high school English and history teacher in Providence, RI and Philadelphia, PA. She holds an AB from Princeton University in anthropology and African studies and an Ed.M from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
- Deborah Menkart is the executive director of the Washington DC–based organization Teaching for Change. In her 16 years as executive director, Menkart has developed a catalog that over 40,000 educators from across the country rely on for progressive teaching materials, and she has served as coeditor of Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K–12 Anti–Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development and Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching.
- Georgette Norman is director of Troy University Rosa Parks Museum. She also works as an independent consultant in the arts, education, program design and implementation, and she conducts workshops in creativity and cultural diversity. She earned B.A. in History at Fisk University and an M.A. in Education at Hampton Institut, and she holds a certificate in Humanistic Education from the University of Miami. She has taught reading, creative writing, history and government in public and private schools on the US mainland and on St. Croix, USVI, and introduction to theater, interpersonal communications, group dynamics, and pubic speaking at the College of the Virgin Islands St. Croix Campus.
- Dr. Deborah Duncan Owens has served as a Barksdale Literacy Teacher in Mississippi schools for two years. She previously taught at Philadelphia Elementary School in Philadelphia, Mississippi. She recently completed her Ph.D. at Mississippi State University and will join the faculty of Arkansas State University in the fall.
- Karla Smith is department chair of the social studies department at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Jefferson Davis Campus, and in February the school named her a 2007 Instructor of the Year. Smith designs lesson plans for Mississippi History Now. Before joining the faculty at MGCCC, she taught in the Biloxi Public School System at Fernwood Junior High as an instructor of U. S. history, world geography, Mississippi studies, and world history.
- Lillie Gayle Smith teaches at Mississippi University for Women in the Department of Education. She taught two years at Delta State University and worked in Ohio almost twenty years as a high school English teacher who infused Holocaust and African American literature into the curriculum. She attended a Holocaust seminar in Israel and taught African American literature at a summer English language camp in Poland. She is completing her dissertation at Kent State University in Foundations of Education with emphasis in Multicultural Education. Her dissertation topic is "Black Mississippi Delta Teacher Education Candidates’ Experiences with and Perspectives on Acting White."
- Priscilla Smith is an arts educator and performer from Atlanta. She is co-chair of the Arts and Remembrance Committee of the Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot.
- Chandra Williams is an artist and educator. She specializes in teaching drawing, one of the foundational skills in visual arts. Ms. Williams receive a BFA in Printmaking and Education in Informal Settings as an Ervin Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis. Since moving to Mississippi in 2001, she honed her instructional skills by traveling to schools across north Mississippi. She is now the owner and operator of The Brilliant Easel Art School in Oxford.
- Dr. Nan Woodruff is a professor of African American and Twentieth Century US History at Pennsylvania State University. She recently published a book entitled American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta. She is currently working on a book on violence and African American Memory and efforts to achieve truth and reconciliation around these issues. She is the National Coordinator of the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project, which seeks to provide teachers with ways to teach the slave trade and its legacy, with the goal of achieving understanding and reconciliation.
- Dr. Colleen Doyle Worrell received her PhD in American Studies from the College of William & Mary in 2005. While working towards her MA/PhD, she taught English, American Studies, and Social Studies at public high school in Massachusetts. Currently, Dr. Worrell is a part–time college lecturer in Massachusetts where her teaching focuses on issues of race, gender, and social justice in 20th–century American history and culture. Through both teaching and research, she strives to make connections between campus and community emphasizing, in James Farmer's words, that historical knowledge is meaningless unless it's used to bring a more humane society into being in this country. Her research interests include neo-slave narratives, slavery and public history, memory and the civil rights movement, and contemporary social justice activism.