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Roosevelt University Marks Black History Month with Civil Rights Conference Feb. 25 – 27


CivilRights

CHICAGO–(ENEWSPF)–February 19, 2016.  Roosevelt University and other area institutions and organizations will mark the history of the nation’s Black Freedom Movement and look at today’s continuing struggles against racial injustice and other inequalities during a Feb. 25-27 Black History Month conference.

The conference entitled “Come Let Us Build a New World Together: Fifty Years after the Mississippi Summer Project” begins on Feb. 25 at Benedictine University in Lisle where teachers, social workers, health professionals and others working with African American populations are expected to gather for opening discussions.

Then on Feb. 26 and 27, the conference moves to Roosevelt University’s second-floor Congress Lounge, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, where veterans of the nation’s civil rights movement and some of today’s leading activists will be joining together for an inter-generational civil rights experience.

“We will be exploring how activists organized during the mid-1960s and also will be discussing our many current struggles in the movement against police brutality, racism and economic inequality,” said Erik Gellman, a Roosevelt history professor and one of the organizers of the event that is sponsored at the University by Roosevelt’s St. Clair Drake Center for African and African American Studies and is supported by Roosevelt’s Center for New Deal Studies and the Department of History and Philosophy.

One of the highlights of the three-day event will be an appearance and lecture on Saturday, Feb. 27 at Roosevelt by Bree Newsome, the activist who took down the Confederate flag in Charleston, S.C. following last year’s mass murders of African American worshippers at a Charleston church.

Other highlights include: a panel discussion on police brutality led by young activists involved in current campaigns against police violence and attorney Stan Willis, who took on Chicago police and former commander Jon Burge over repeated police torture; a lecture by lifelong civil rights activist and well-known Chicagoan and Roosevelt alumnus Timuel Black; music by the Freedom Singers and the Mark Durham Trio; and appearances by veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who will be telling their stories and engaging in discussions with some of today’s leading young activists.

The conference is open to the public at a cost of $10 per day. To register, visit http://tinyurl.com/new-world-together.  Roosevelt University students, faculty and staff can attend for free by contacting Erik Gellman at [email protected]

Source: http://www.roosevelt.edu


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