2017. USA/France/Belgium/Switz.
Dir: Raoul Peck. Documentary. 93 min.
This urgent doc illuminates the words of James Baldwin, one of the most influential voices of the Civil Rights movement. Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House forms the foundation for the images, archival footage, newsreel clips, and interviews brilliantly interwoven by Peck and underscored by Samuel L. Jackson’s evocative narration.
Tonight / 8 p.m. / Goldsmith Family Cinema / Free
Dawanna Butler ’15 writes in:
This is a panel presentation and discussion to explore various
perspectives on the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and New York to commemorate the life, civil rights and social justice legacy that Dr. King has left. Come to listen, share, and try to understand these different viewpoints.
Date: Friday, January 30th
Time: 3:15-6:00 PM
Place: Memorial Chapel
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In the summer of 1964, over 1,000 volunteers from across the United States – many of them college students – traveled to the Deep South as a part of Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, to assist local civil rights workers in getting black Mississippians to the voting polls. Despite intimidation and violence from the white population, police, local authorities, and the Ku Klux Klan – including the murder of at least three activists – Freedom Summer organizers increased voter registration among African Americans, called attention to disenfranchisement, and influenced the course of the Civil Rights movement.
2014 marks the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, and Wesleyan welcomes the community to celebrate the occasion together with a weekend of music, panel discussions, reflections from alumni, and more. Details after the jump:
About two months ago, President Michael Roth sent out an email to the entire campus announcing the honorary degree recipients for 2014, as well as the commencement speaker for the Class of 2014. This year’s commencement address will be given by Theodore M. Shaw ’76, a leading proponent of civil rights, previous Wesleyan trustee (twice!), and also a prior recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Wesleyan. You can read the entirety of Roth’s email below.
Shaw’s dedication and work to civil rights and human rights is indeed impressive. Currently a professor at Columbia University, where he also received his J.D. in 1979, he was previously an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for over two decades. What’s most notable about Shaw’s work—that perhaps most directly affects us as college students—was his involvement in creating University of Michigan Law School’s controversial affirmative action policy in the early 2000s, something that has been controversial again just last month.
Jalen Alexander ’14 writes in about a community conversation taking place this Saturday, focused on Civil Rights activism and innovative ways to cross generational divides among black and Latino males:
BluePrint Roundtable is a community conversation moderated by acclaimed actor Delroy Lindo, star of Romeo Must Die and Malcom X. When filming Question Bridge, the creators of the project encountered a compelling question and answer exchange between a younger participant and an older Civil Rights Activist. The Question: “Why didn’t you leave us a blueprint?” sparked an attempt for multi-generational roundtable discussions.
Hence, Blueprint Roundtable was born. The Invisible Men BluePrint Roundtable invites established and emerging black and Latino male leaders in the local community to discuss the question of a “blueprint” in an attempt to dismantle boundaries between black and Latino males across generations. The program aims to identify communication barriers and facilitate the transfer of information between men; and to isolate local issues that require leadership from the next generation, uncover lessons learned, and highlight principles that can be passed from one generation to the next.
Brought to you in collaboration with The Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships.
Date: Saturday, April 13
Time: 1-4 p.m.
Place: CFA Hall
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Earth House and X House are hosting a debriefing of Dr. Robert Bullard’s keynote address at today’s MLK Memorial Service:
Join us to discuss Dr. Robert Bullard‘s keynote address on environmental justice and civil rights. The student-lead discussion will be a space for dialogue, clarification, and inter-disciplinary exchange. Dinner from Iguanas Ranas, Main Street’s new Taqueria, will be provided.
Date: Tuesday, January 27th
Time: 6:30 pm (20-30 minutes after Dr. Bullard’s address)
Place: Basement of Malcolm X House, 343 High St. (corner of High and Washington St.)
Cathy Lechowicz, Dir. of Community Service & Volunteerism, writes:
As part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration on campus, the MLK Jr. Planning Committee created storyboards of significant people, events, and successes of the Civil Rights Movement. We want to add to that collection and would love for students to submit events that they feel are significant to the Civil Rights Movement.
If you would like to propose a topic, please email the topic and a brief summary of what the storyboard would include to clechowicz@wes by Dec. 8. The MLK Jr. Planning Committee will review all topics submitted and select up to six. Those selected will be asked to submit the content for the storyboard—up to 750 words—by Jan. 15.
Please visit the website for information about this year’s celebration and our keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Bullard. The website also has all of the current storyboards posted.
This Thursday (9/27), there will be a rally/vigil/meeting on Middletown’s South Green (if you’re going down Church Street, it’s the big grassy area right before Main St. with a monument and some apple trees). Wesleyan students will be meeting at 4:45 in front of Olin to walk down together. The vigil is from 5-6. Bring signs, ideas, and everyone you know. This is a chance to work together with Middletown folks on an issue that we all feel strongly about, and they’re counting on us to show up in numbers.
Details on the Jena 6 case here.
Date: Thursday, September 27th
Time: 4:45pm
Venue: In front of Olin
Toxic children’s toys, dangerous seafood, defective tires, poisonous medicine, incredible amounts of pollution, thousands of shady executions. They’ve killed your pets. They’ve got some weird hybrid of Communism and capitalism and a government rife with corruption. They’re propping up unstable governments in Africa in exchange for their natural resources. And now they’re tracking everything about you. Or, rather, everything about the Chinese in Shenzhen:
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips […] will be issued to most citizens.
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
Woohoo, civil rights! Personal freedom! Personal privacy! Communism!
Here’s to hoping the Justice Department (or P-Safe) doesn’t think this experiment is a good idea.
