The Use and Misuse of Civil Rights History
Join the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights as Jeanne Theoharis, Brooklyn College, explores how the civil rights movement has been misrepresented and compromised through myth-making. Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and author of A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.
Listen to the Episode
Wednesday, June 26, 2024 12:00 pm
The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘antiracist.’ What’s the difference?
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’
The Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights presents Building an Anti-Racist Vocabulary, a podcast from the lecture series and associated course presenting preeminent scholars, thought leaders, and public intellectuals to guide our community through topics necessary to an understanding of systemic racism and racial justice. The series is self-consciously an entry point, designed to provide intellectual and moral building blocks to begin the transformative work of anti-racism in our students, on our campus, and in our broader communities.
Join the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights as Jeanne Theoharis, Brooklyn College, explores how the civil rights movement has been misrepresented and compromised through myth-making. Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and author of A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.
Listen in to hear the latest episode from the Building An Anti-Racist Vocabulary podcast to released here on ThinkND.
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MoreMeet the Speaker: Jeanne Theoharis
Jeanne Theoharis is the author or co-author of eleven books and numerous articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements and the contemporary politics of race in the United States. Her biography The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks won a 2014 NAACP Image Award and the Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. The book was turned into a documentary directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen and executive produced by Soledad O’Brien now streaming on Peacock where she served as a consulting producer. The documentary was awarded a 2023 Peabody Award and a Television Academy Honor Award. Her book A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History won the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, The Nation, The Atlantic, the Intercept, the Boston Review & the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Prof. Theoharis’s expertise: 20th-century African American history, civil rights and Black Power, the contemporary politics of race and gender, social policy and urban studies, post-9/11 racial politics and civil liberties.
Recommended Resources
Jeanne Theoharis recommends reading or watching the following if you would like to know more:
Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation, Matthew F. Delmont
Documentary: The First Rainbow Coalition (PBS)
The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee, Patrick D. Jones
Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn, Brian Purnell
Investigate your local civil rights history.
For more resources from Building an Anti-Racist Vocabulary, please visit their Hesburgh Library Guide.