Broadly speaking, the traditionally conceptualized mid-twentieth century Civil Rights Movement and the newer #BlackLivesMatter Movement possess some similar qualities. They both represent dynamic, complex moments of possibility and progress. They also share mass-based movement activities, policy/legislative advocacy, grass-roots organizing, and targeted media campaigns. Innovation, growth, and dissension—core aspects of movement work—mark them both. Crucially, these moments also engender aggressive, repressive, multi-level responses to these assertions of Black Humanity. From Rights to Livescritically engages the dynamic relationship between these two moments of liberatory possibility on the Black Freedom Struggle timeline. McKinney and Hamlin invite the contributors to take up what we can learn when we place these moments of struggle in dialogue with each other. They grapple with how our understanding of the postwar moment shapes our analysis of #BLM and wherein lie the discontinuities, in order to glean lessons for future moments of insurgency.
During the week of the online roundtable, Black Perspectiveswill publish new blog posts every day at 5:30AM EST. Please follow Black Perspectives (@BlkPerspectives) and AAIHS (@AAIHS) on Twitter, like AAIHS on Facebook, or subscribe to our blog for updates. By subscribing toBlack Perspectives, each new post will automatically be delivered to your inbox during the week of the roundtable.
About the Participants
Marcia Chatelain is currently the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, she was a Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a Reach for Excellence Assistant Professor of Honors and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. She completed an A.M. and Ph.D. in American Civilization at Brown University. She is a scholar of African-American life and culture, and her first book South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration (Duke University Press, 2015) reimagined the mass exodus of Black Southerners to the urban North from the perspective of girls and teenage women. Her latest book, the Pulitzer Prize winning Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright, 2020) examines the intersection of the post-1968 civil rights struggle and the rise of fast food industry.
