Gene Nichol, LCRM conference panelist and Board of Consultant member among many other roles, was recently on WUNC’s The State of Things to discuss his life and his position as Director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC. You can listen to the interview online here and get a chance to meet Gene Nichol.
Archive for the 'Related News' Category
Meet Gene Nichol
Published by Russ Damian on November 18, 2009 in Related News and SOHP. 0 Comments Tags: Board of Consultants, Center on Poverty Work and Opportunity, Gene Nichol, LCRM Conference, Long Civil Rights Movement Conference, UNC Law School.
The SOHP at OHA
Published by kotch on October 20, 2009 in Related News. 0 Comments Tags: conference, oral history association, SOHP.
From Southern Oral History Program Acting Director David Cline …
The Southern Oral History Program and the Long Civil Rights Movement project were well represented at the Oral History Association conference in Louisville, Kentucky last week, October 14-18. Acting Director David Cline attended sessions, met with potential collaborators, and conducted six new interviews about Louisville’s busing history; Outreach Coordinator Beth Millwood presided over a session devoted to Institutional Review Boards; former Associate Director Kerry Taylor presented work on his oral histories of the Obama campaign and black political networks in South Carolina; and former LCRM student research assistants Jennifer Dixon and Rachel Martin presented on their research about Charleston’s 1969 hospital
workers’ strike and school desegregation in Tennessee, respectively. All told, it was a fine showing for the Long Civil Rights Movement project!
At the Long Civil Rights Movement conference, Tom Sugrue asked where the definitive history of the NAACP was. Is Lift Every Voice and Sing by Patricia Sullivan, released on the 100th anniversary of the organization’s founding, the one?
There are several exciting events in October for those interested in the Long Civil Rights Movement. Here’s a quick summary of the upcoming events from our event calendar:
- Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present – Type of event: Book Signing – When: October 1
- Diaspora Film Festival Double Feature – Type of event: Film – When: October 7
- We Shall Not Be Moved – Type of event: Exhibit – When: October 8 – February 5
- We Shall Not Be Moved Reception – Type of event: Reception – When: October 20
- Black and Blue Tour – Type of event: Guided Tour – When: October 28
- “Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales” – Type of event: Performance – When: October 29
- What Does It Mean to be an Educated Woman? – Type of event: Symposium – When: October 30 – 31
For more details on these events, please visit our events calendar or the event’s website.
If you have an event you would like to see posted on the calendar, please send us an e-mail.
New Cultural Tourism Handbook
Published by Sylvia Miller on September 21, 2009 in Related News. 0 Comments Tags: American Indian, American Indian Center, cultural tourism, handbook, manual, organizing, public history.
The American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has released a manual to help communities recognize and develop their potential for cultural tourism. The Center has sent it to a number of American Indian communities and made it available as a pdf download on their website.
The publication, entitled “A Handbook on American Indian Cultural Tourism in North Carolina,” contains useful information gleaned from a workshop on cultural tourism that the Center held in June 2009. It identifies types of cultural tourism, offers guidance on resources and best practices, and presents step-by-step advice on planning, marketing, and funding a tourism project.
I find the “Sample Community Inventory” (Appendix E) especially interesting. This list will remind communities of all the valuable assets in their areas that might merit protection or promotion. The activity of prompting community members to recognize the value of the landscapes, languages, architecture, cultural events, and other assets in their own backyards reminds me of the work of civil rights activists and public historians who encourage people to recognize the power and value of their own voices and memories. (See “My History Is America’s History” and “Bitten by the Public History Bug.”)
The Netflix Prize and Collaboration
Published by kotch on September 21, 2009 in Related News. 0 Comments Tags: civil rights, crowdsourcing, death penalty, m. watt espy, netflix.
A while back, Netflix announced a $1 million award for improving the DVD-by-mail service’s recommendation service, which suggests films to its users based on their ratings of films they’ve seen. The service provides enough of a challenge to Netflix users, who have to make hard choices about their ratings. Do I give The Curious Case of Benjamin Button one star? What about Duplicity? Both terrible movies, but generally the kinds of movies I like created by filmmakers and actors I like. I wouldn’t want to miss out on Children of Men because Netflix thinks I don’t like Clive Owen, or The Game, because it thinks I don’t like David Fincher.
I likely just revealed how little I know about Netflix’s rating system, but may also have illustrated the kind of foolishness lots of smart people are dealing with as they seek to make the recommendation system work. And if these smart people could improve the system by 10%, a $1 million prize would be theirs. It seems they have.
What’s the point to the LCRM community? The successful efforts of an international team speak powerfully to the possibilities of crowdsourcing, sharing expertise and data to answer formerly unanswerable questions. The Times article linked above suggests applications in the sciences, but crowdsourcing has a role in the humanities, too. We do it all the time, such as when we send questions to a listserv. One result and possibility for the future is the Espy File, the massive collection of data on the history of the death penalty that was built mainly by one man, M. Watt Espy (who recently passed away), but has since been taken on by other historians. The Espy File reveals both the power and the potential for crowdsourcing history data–what if everyone working in the area contributed what they learned about, say, the races of victims in these crimes. A remarkable history, one with real relevance to today’s civil rights-inflected discussion of the death penalty, could emerge that would go much deeper than names and dates.
But, as the article suggests, crowdsourcing has its pitfalls, too. After all, most of the teams competing for the prize did not win.
W. Horace Carter, Anti-Klan Crusader
Published by kotch on September 21, 2009 in Related News and Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: activist journalism, horace carter, KKK, tabor city.
W. Horace Carter, the journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for standing up to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s, has died. He spoke to the SOHP in 1976.
Carter remembered the Klan motorcade that announced a more aggressive posture in Tabor County.
You see, up to then everything had been under cover, but when they come up with a motorcade, then you know that all these things you’ve been hearing are real. You realize that they are organizing and that they are gathering strength. And this did antagonize us, because at that time the way those motorcades worked they had these lighted crosses on the front car; they had the dome lights burning in all the other cars, with people in them with the masks on and the robes, disguised obviously. And what they did then is, they came up and down our main streets, but primarily they went up and down through all of the black section of town—then that was known as “The Bottom.” That’s what they called the Negro section, and they went up and down through these sections and tried to, more or less, intimidate these people. And, you know, I just felt it was wrong, that’s all.
Remembering the people of Tabor County’s relationship to the Klan:
The majority didn’t want to be on either side. The majority wanted to be just quiet about it; they didn’t want the Klan after them, and they didn’t want the people who were anti-Klan to know just where they stood either. So I’d say that the overwhelming majority were neutral, at least openly were neutral. But there was a lot of sentiment for the Klan. I continue to say, though, that the bulk of the people who were in the Klan itself were in there because of the adventure involved; not because of the moral aspects of it, but because they saw in this a chance to exert some power. And I think they were adventurous types, and I think that was the bulk of the people. Generally, though, the man on the street wasn’t for the Klan nor was he anti-Klan; he just didn’t care much. He just wanted to stay out of it, because they had some fear. I think the man on the street had some fear; as the floggings kept up they ran into numerous reasons why it was a litle bit risky for them to say anything either way.
WUNC’s remembrance of Carter …
The New York Times obituary …
Learn more about Carter at the Carter-Klan Documentary Project …
And listen to the Southern Oral History Program interview with Carter at Documenting the American South …
Crystal Lee Sutton, the “Real Norma Rae”
Published by kotch on September 15, 2009 in Related News. 0 Comments Tags: crystal lee sutton, long civil rights movement, norma rae, organizing, textile industry, unions.
On Friday, September 11, 2009, Crystal Lee Sutton passed away after battling several years with Meningioma, a form of brain cancer that is usually benign. “I call my cancer a journey,” she said in a June 2008 interview with The Burlington Times-News, “and it is interesting to see where it goes. It reminds you to live each day to the best you can.”
The spirited hope and courage with which Sutton approached her fight with cancer was matched only by her commitment to the fight for justice and respect for workers. Her activism on behalf of workers and the poor began in 1973 when Sutton was working at the J.P. Stevens textile mill in Roanoke Rapids (taken over by a Georgia-based company in 1988) and became involved in the Textile Workers Union of America’s unionization campaign. After copying down an anti-union notice posted in the mill by management, Sutton was fired and arrested for disorderly conduct. Her moment of defiance before she was forced from the mill, standing atop a table holding a “UNION” sign high above her head, was immortalized in the 1979 Academy-award winning movie Norma Rae.
Sutton’s activism took many forms and connected struggles for unionization with the women’s movement. In 1974, she appeared in the pilot episode of PBS’ Woman Alive!, featuring Gloria Steinem and Lily Tomlin, and articulated the need for union representation to protect working women and promote gender equity. In 1980, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union of America (ACTWU) sent her on a speaking tour to promote the union’s boycott of J.P. Stevens’ products. As the “real Norma Rae,” Sutton travelled across the country and even to Canada and the Soviet Union in support of workers’ rights to organize for better wages, fair treatment, and safe working conditions. In 2007, she donated her personal papers to Alamance Community College, a place “where the working poor can come… and get a new start to life,” she maintained. During her illness, she vocalized her own struggles with the health care industry.
On Friday, the world lost a steadfast advocate for social justice, but her contributions and commitment will not be forgotten. The story of Crystal Lee’s thirty-five years of campaigning for a more democratic society will continue to inspire activists, workers, and scholars.
Joey Fink is a graduate student in the History Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The AP story …
Robert Nathan and Jo-Ann Mort in The Nation on the invisibility of the working class in film …
The Institute for Southern Studies notes that her insurer initially refused to cover her treatment …
Alamance Community College’s Crystal Sutton Collection (h/t ISS) …
Call for Papers on Southern Activism
Published by kotch on September 11, 2009 in Related Events and Related News. 0 Comments Tags: call for papers, student activism.
The University of South Carolina, Columbia, is hosting a conference on “student activism, southern style” in March of 2010 and is soliciting papers. More here …
With a new semester beginning, we are resuming our events round-up posts. The following events will take place in Septmember:
- The Art of Protest – Type of event: Exhibit – When: All month, last day of exhibit Sept. 30
- Premeditated: Meditations on Capital Punishment – Type of event: Exhibit – When: On display until mid-Sept., Closing event on Sept. 16
- Racial Profiling: The Effects of Distrust – Type of Event: Panel Discussion – When: Sept. 1
- Hutchins Lecture: “Build the Wall . . . Save the Castle: Southern Baptists and Race Relations” – Type of event: Lecture – When: Sept. 1
- “Undocumented Immigrants in America: Access to Higher Education” – Type of event: Panel Discussion – When: Sept. 10
- U.S.-Africa Relations in the Era of Barack Obama – Type of event: Lecture – When: Sept. 10
- Diaspora Film Festival: “My Name is Albert Ayler” – Type of event: Film – When: Sept. 16
- Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide – Type of event: Lecture – When: Sept. 17
- Race, Visuality, and Suspension – Type of event: Lecture – When: Sept. 21
- Human Rights Film Series: “At the Death House Door” – Type of event: Film – When: Sept. 29
- Diaspora Film Festival: “13 Months of Sunshine” – Type of event: Film – When: Sept. 30
- Race, Religion, and Politics: Mentioning the Unmentionable – Type of event: Lecture – When: Sept. 30
- “Exposing Invisible Fences: GIS in Civil Rights Litigation” – Type of event: Lecture – When: Sept. 30
Please visit our event calendar or the event’s website for more details on these events.