KU News Release

Langston Hughes Center to host symposium on history of NAACP

LAWRENCE — The Langston Hughes Center at the University of Kansas will host “Fight For Freedom: A Century of the NAACP and the Struggle for Racial Equality” from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 13, at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

Marking the centennial of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and honoring Langston Hughes’ 1962 history of the organization, this symposium investigates the NAACP and its legacy for a dawning new century. It also will provide a powerful entry for larger conversations on race and racism in America today.

The keynote address, “The NAACP: Myths and Realities,” by John H. Bracey Jr., professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, will examine the existing gap between several realities about the NAACP and its history and the myths that still tend to influence much of the recent scholarship on the civil rights struggles of the 20th century. For nearly 25 years, Bracey has co-edited the papers of the NAACP for the microfilm series Black Studies Research Sources. He is also the author and editor of numerous books and articles, including “Black Nationalism in America,” eight volumes in the series “Explorations in the Black Experience” and “African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to the Twenty-First Century.”

Other featured speakers include Patricia Sullivan, professor of history and African-American studies at the University of South Carolina, on “Black Lawyers, the NAACP and the Foundation of the Civil Rights Movement”; Carol Anderson, professor of African-American studies at Emory University, on “Allies of a Kind: India and the NAACP’s Alliance to end Racial Oppression in and from South Africa, 1946-1951”; Christopher De Santis, professor of African-American and American literature at Illinois State University, on “Langston Hughes and the NAACP”; and Gretchen Cassal Eick, professor of history at Friends University, on “The Young Turks’ (Almost Successful) Challenge to Roy Wilkins: A Turning Point in the Movement.” Eick’s presentation is based on her award-winning book “Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72.”

The symposium is open to the public with a $30 registration fee, which includes lunch. Following the symposium there will be a reception and book signing. For more information, see the Langston Hughes Center symposium Web site or contact Shawn Leigh Alexander at 864-5044 or lhcaas@ku.edu.

To register for the symposium visit the Continuing Education Web site.

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