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LEE HAGAN AFRICANA STUDIES CENTER
Celebrating 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

Theme for Academic Year: “LIVING EMANCIPATED LIVES” 2012-2013

October 10th: 12:00-2:00 pm Screening & Discussion of Film “The Road to Brown: Charles Hamilton Huston” GSUB 129
Description of film: “The Road to Brown tells the story of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling as the culmination of a brilliant legal assault on segregation that launched the Civil Rights movement. It is also a moving and long overdue tribute to a visionary but little known black lawyer, Charles Hamilton Houston, "the man who killed Jim Crow."

The Road to Brown plunges us into the nightmare world of Jim Crow that robbed former slaves of the rights granted by the 14th and 15th Amendments. Under the "separate but equal" doctrine of the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, black citizens were denied the right to vote, to attend white schools, to get sick in white hospitals or to be buried in white cemeteries. Those who objected were liable to be lynched.

Charles Houston, the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, dean of Howard University Law School and chief counsel to the NAACP, launched a number of precedent-setting cases leading up to Brown v. Board of Education. He strategically targeted segregated education as the key to undermining the entire Jim Crow system.

Interviews with his associates recount how Houston, eschewing the limelight himself, energized a generation of black jurists including future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to wage the struggle against segregation. He taught: "A lawyer is either a social engineer or he is a parasite on society."

Houston died of a heart attack in 1950, just four years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision validated his strategy. In a moving climax, the film recapitulates the arguments before the Court, Justice Warren's opinion striking down Plessy, and the jubilant reactions of black America. Other legal victories followed.

But Charles Houston had warned, “There’s a difference between law on the books and the law in action.” We witness how it was the civil rights movement, organized in the wake of Brown, that gave teeth to the new laws.

Moving from slavery to civil rights, The Road to Brown provides a concise history of how African-Americans finally won full legal equality under the Constitution. Its depiction of the interplay between race, law and history adds a crucial dimension to courses in U.S. History, Black Studies, Constitutional Law, Law & Society, Social Movements and Government. It opens up a discussion of the true significance of the Brown v. Board decision on the path towards racial equality. The example of Charles Houston's persistence and determination will inspire today's students to take America further down the long road to social justice.” (http://newsreel.org/video/THE-ROAD-TO-BROWN)

Wednesday, October 17th, 1pm-3:00 pm, Multipurpose Room: A “Gender, Women & Activism”: Tynesha McHarris, Newark Trust for Education & Thenjiwe Tameika McHarris, Amnesty International, (presented by Women’s & Gender Studies; Hagan Center co-sponsor)

Description of event is 1) to examine the soci-political, economic and cultural challenges women activist face in issues important to women; 2) to explore the tools women employ in their grassroots work, and 3) to examine how women activists build coalitions (local, state, national and global) and form community.

November 1st, 10:00 am-12:00 pm GSUB, MPRA, “Race, Obama and the White House”, Tara Dowdell will engage in a conversation on how race has affected the Obama presidency and his bid for the White House. Should African-Americans support Mr. Obama because of race? Why or Why not? How have African Americans faired with the leadership of President Obama?

Tara Dowdell is a highly accomplished business and political strategist. She is the Founder and Principal of the Tara Dowdell Group, a strategic consulting and marketing firm focused on helping socially-conscious businesses, organizations and institutions grow. Propelled by Tara’s work ethic, passion, and extensive network in government, the private sector, and the media, the Tara Dowdell Group has cultivated an impressive list of clients ranging from an award-winning “green” real estate development firm to a local government agency that offers programs to help small business owners.

In addition to her consulting practice, Tara is a respected television commentator and speaker. She appears regularly on CNN, the Fox News Channel, and the Fox Business Network where she provides progressive insight and analysis on a range of political, government, and business topics. She can also be seen and heard often on Fox 5’s Good Day New York and Hot 97 Street Soldiers. Tara’s proven expertise, unique insight, and engaging style have also made her a sought-after speaker. She has addressed several major conferences and events this year such as the Big Ideas in Higher Education Conference, NYU MLK Week Commemoration, NYU Stern School of Business Women in Business Conference, the Rutgers University Leadership Conference and the Center for American Women in Politics Ready to Run Conference to name a few.

Tara Dowdell has an extensive background in government having previously served as the Senior Manager of Government and Community Relations for the international shipping division of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In this capacity, she was responsible for directing the government and public relations strategy for the multi-billion-dollar redevelopment of the Port of New York and New Jersey. Prior to joining the Port Authority, Tara served as Director of Appointments in the Office of the New Jersey Governor. She was appointed to this position at age 25, making her the youngest person and the first African American to serve in this high level role. As Director of Appointments to then Governor James E. McGreevey, Tara managed the selection, nomination and appointment of individuals to over 550 statewide boards and commissions. She began her career in government serving as a District Representative to Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr.

Aside from her work in government, Tara has a wealth of political experience. She has served in senior positions on several high profile federal, state, and local campaigns. Additionally, she managed an issue-advocacy campaign for Emily’s List, one of the largest Political Action Committee’s in the nation.

Tara’s accomplishments have not gone unnoticed. In 2005, after being selected out of over a million applicants, she had the distinction of competing for a job with real estate mogul Donald Trump on the third season NBC’s show, “The Apprentice.” In 2010, she was selected by the American Swiss Foundation to attend their prestigious Young Leaders Conference in Basel, Switzerland. Tara was only one of twenty-five Americans chosen to participate in the conference, which was hosted by pharmaceutical giant, Novartis. Tara has also been honored by the NAACP, the New York Times, the Political Action Committee, BALLOT, and the child advocacy nonprofit organization, Project Re-Direct.

Tara is also very active in her community. She serves on the Steering Committee for the Center for American Women in Politics “Ready to Run” Conference and is a Trustee on Board of the Partnership for a Drug Free New Jersey. She is also a member of Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. Tara is a graduate of the University of Virginia where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government.

Monday, December 3rd, 12-2 pm “The History of White People” by Nell Painter
Nell Irvin Painter was born in Houston, Texas but she moved with her family to Oakland, California, while she was still an infant. Painter attended the University of California at Berkeley, deciding to major in anthropology after spending the summer of 1962 in Kano, Nigeria, with her parents. As part of Project Crossroads Africa, she helped to build a school for the indigenous people. Painter returned to Africa after graduation, this time to Ghana, where she discovered a love for history. She attended the University of California, where she received a master’s degree in history in 1967, and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1974. Painter’s first teaching appointment came in 1964 from the Ghana Institute of Languages, where she was employed for a little over a year. Painter’s contribution to the historical depictions of black Americans throughout the Progressive and Reconstruction Eras in the United States have gained her widespread recognition. Two works in particular, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction, and The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South, have drawn much attention. New York Times Book Review contributor Joe Klein has said that Painter “seems to have a knack for finding the more curious nooks and crannies of the black experience in America.” Painter has received various awards and fellowships throughout her career as a historian. She has been presented with the Candace Award, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, and the Coretta Scott King Award from the American Association of University Women. She has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. At Harvard University, she received the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she was a fellow in American history through the National Humanities Center. She was also an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, as well as an associate professor of American and Afro-American history. In 2005, Painter published Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. It won the Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Award in 2006. Painter’s most recent book is entitled The History of White People, which was published in 2010. In this book, Painter examines how whiteness is socially constructed and is used as a “defining characteristic” of race. According to literary critic Anthony Pagden, The History of White People does not focus on the actual history of white people, but rather delves into discussing how “white people invented the concept of whiteness.” (Contemporary Authors Online)

In regards to her writing process, Painter says, “My books begin with a puzzle I can't solve. For The History of White People, it was 'why are white people--white Americans--called 'Caucasian?' ...visual imagery turned out to carry a great deal of weight, as much as facts and events. Then I draft and revise and draft and revise and revise and revise and revise.” Furthermore, Painter never ceases to be surprised as a writer, as shown when she says: “The most surprising thing I have learned as a writer is how tenacious established notions are, even in the face of sound scholarship. Even though The History of White People is all about ideas about the white races, reviewers and readers referring to it persist in discussing race as black.” (Contemporary Authors Online). According to her website, Painter has a forthcoming publication through W.W. Norton Press called Personal Beauty: Biology or Culture? She currently teaches at Princeton University as an Edwards Professor of American History. Some of her writings include:

December 6th 5:30 pm- 7:30 pm, GSUB 129 Art in Motion: Part I: Young artists (performance, visual, literary) share their thoughts and works on how art emancipates their lives.

January 23rd, 2013 Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Luncheon, 12-2:30 pm (Tickets $30)

February 4th, 2013, 11:45 am-12:00 pm, Front Lawn Hepburn Hall, Opening Ceremony Black History Month

February 4th, 2013, 12:00- 2:00 pm, Hepburn Hall 202 Black History Month Opening Lecture, “Civil Rights More Pressing Than Ever”, Barbara R. Arnwine, Esq., President & Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law,

This event will examine recent efforts to roll back civil rights gains of African Americans and poor people and explore historical and cultural landmark decisions in the fight for civil rights.

Barbara R. Arnwine President & Executive Director of the Lawyers’ for Civil Rights Under Law since 1989, is internationally renowned for contributions on critical justice issues including the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1991. A graduate of Scripps College and Duke University School of Law, she continues to champion civil rights issues nationally and internationally in the areas of housing, fair lending, community development, employment, voting, education, environmental justice and more. A prominent leader in the civil rights community, Ms. Arnwine also continues to fight for the preservation of affirmative action and diversity programs.

In Addition to Ms. Arnwine's instrumental work leading to the passage of the 1991 Civil Rights Act, she has served in numerous other prestigious capacities, including international civil, human and women's rights matters. Under her leadership, the Lawyers' Committee continues to participate in monitoring treaty compliance and responding to reports written by the United States regarding the requirements of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination following the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review, which last occurred in November 2010. In 2001, Ms. Arnwine represented African descendants from the Americas in helping to draft provisions of the program for action of the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa.

In 2000, she convened the third national conference of African American Women in the Law in Washington, D.C. Some 250 participants in 15 workshops provided input into the preparation of a Report and Action Agenda for advocacy before the UN General Assembly Special Session on Women.

In 1995, Ms. Arnwine served as the national convener of the National Conference on African American Women and the Law held in Washington, D.C. and subsequently led a delegation to the UN's NGO Forum and Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Her efforts there contributed to a UN Platform for Action that provides protection for women who confront multiple forms of discrimination. Ms. Arnwine is a prominent leader of Election Protection (EP), the nation's largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition, launched in 2004 to assist historically disenfranchised persons to exercise the fundamental right to vote. In 2008, EP involved more than 10,000 volunteers and the EP hotline received more than 240,000 calls. For the 2010 General Election, the Lawyers' Committee recruited, trained and deployed over 2,000 legal volunteers in 25 jurisdictions and received over 20,000 calls from voters seeking assistance or reporting problems to the 1-866-OUR-VOTE and1-888-Ve-Y-Vota hotlines which were located in 17 call centers across the country; 13,350 reports were collected through the Our Vote Live database (www.OurVoteLive.org).

Ms. Arnwine has received numerous national, regional and local awards. In October 2011, she was one of five recipients of the prestigious Gruber International Justice Prize for her excellence in defending and promoting civil rights and gender equity throughout the U.S. In April 2011, the National Bar Association bestowed upon Ms. Arnwine the esteemed Gertrude E. Rush Award and in March 2011, she received the National Black Law Students Association's prestigious Sadie T. M. Alexander Award. In 2009, Ms. Arnwine received two prominent awards: the Washington D.C. Freedom's Sisters Award (sponsored by Ford Motor Company, the Smithsonian Institution and Cincinnati Museum Center which honors contemporary leaders who have fought for equality for people of color) and the Keeper of the Flame Award from the Boston Lawyers' Committee.

In 2008, she was selected as a prestigious Rockwood Institute Leadership Fellow. Ms. Arnwine is also the recipient of the National Bar Association's Equal Justice Award and the C. Francis Stradford Award in 2007, the highest honor bestowed by that organization. In 2002, she received the Charlotte E. Ray Award from the Greater Washington Area Chapter, Women Lawyers Division of the National Bar Association. Ms. Arnwine is a featured columnist with Trice Edney News Wire and the Theodore and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute's New Deal 2.0 Blog site. A frequent conference orator, she has also penned numerous articles and is regularly quoted and featured by media outlets such as the American Bar Association's (ABA) Human Rights magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC Network News, U.S. News & World Report, Jesse Jackson's "Keep Hope Alive" radio show, "The Santita Jackson Show" on Chicago's WVON radio station, McClatchy Newspapers, Sirius Satellite Radio, the Michael Baisden Show, BET, TV One, Radio One and other major national and local media, including many African American newspapers, magazines, radio stations and Web sites. She is a member of the ABA's Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities and a Board Member of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Equal Justice Works.

February 12th, 2013, 10 am -12 noon GSUB 129, Screening and Discussion “We Have Come this Far By Faith” (Episode Two: “God is a Negro”)
“After Emancipation, minister-turned-journalist Henry McNeal Turner used his faith in the will of Providence and the power of the black church to encourage political participation in the south. Turner, a popular preacher even before the Civil War, became the Union Army's first black chaplain once President Lincoln mustered black regiments. After the war, Turner, helped organize the Georgia Republican Party. Elected a state representative, but never allowed to serve, Turner's emphasis on black nationalism gradually alienated him from mainstream leaders but made him popular among the masses. Outside of politics, he and other church leaders put their efforts into church organizations. Grammar schools and universities, banks and insurance companies, printing presses, nursing homes and hospitals are all examples of institutions founded and maintained by black religious communities denied access by the society at large. Henry McNeal turner eventually became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His philosophy and teachings encouraged followers to find God from within, thereby raising their opinions about themselves and the black race.” (PBS)

February 12th, 7:00 – 9:00 pm GSUB 129, “Religion: Bondage Maker or Freedom Pathway?” Lecture by Professor Rev. Nigel Cole.
Professor Cole will examine the positive and negative historical, cultural and spiritual role religion has played in the lives of freed and/or enslaved African peoples. Coles has taught at New York Theological Seminary and studied at Caribbean Union College.

Wednesday, March 27th 2013, 12:00 pm-2:00 pm, Hepburn Hall, Room 202 (Gothic Lounge)"Emancipation and Redefining Black Manhood". Invited Panelists: Professor Darnell Moore (writer) Eric Talley II (artist) and Gerald Cameron, NJCU student. Invited Keynote Speaker Dr. Kirk Harris, Esq.

Darnell L. Moore is a writer/activist who lives in Bedstuy, Brooklyn. Darnell is presently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University His writing/activism generally concerns itself with the interrogation and dismantling of intersecting forms of social, economic, and spiritual oppression. He is emboldened by anti-racist, feminist, queer, and anti-colonial thought and advocacy. He is a member of The Feminist Wire Editorial Collective and hosts a co-authored column on Huffington Post with Wade Davis, II on black manhood titled "Tongues Untied". His writings have also appeared on NewBlackMan, A&U (Arts & Understanding), Lambda Literary, TheBody.Com, Mondoweiss, Hyacide Magazine, Ebony.com, and Mary: A Literary Quarterly. In addition, his scholarship has been published in several peer-reviewed journals. . In January 2012 he visited Israel and the Palestinian territories as a member of the first US LGBTQ Delegation to Palestine.

E Talley II, a native of Michigan (Detroit Metro), performs in a wide array of musical theatre productions, television shows, independent & feature films, concerts and dance presentations throughout the East Coast. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Music & French from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He also earned his Master of Fine Arts degree as a Hilberry Repertory Theatre Fellow from Wayne State University in Detroit. His many artistic credits serving as Choreographer for the dramatic piece A Love Like Damien’s at the WOW Theatre in Manhattan; producing the 2009 Evening of One-Acts at The 28th Street Theatre @ Broadway, also in Manhattan; singing in the Showtime cable series The Big C; playing “Trevor” in the musical Double V at the South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC); acting in television shows such as Blue Bloods, Person of Interest and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, among several others. He also continues to lead very lively Line Dancing Sessions on alternate Wednesdays at Bethany Baptist Church, Newark, NJ.

In addition to serving as Church Flutist at Bethany, he also plays flute with the Psalm 150 Gospel Jazz Ensemble based in New Haven, CT.

Thursday, April 11th 2013, 11 am- 12:30 noon, WEB DuBois Lecture, Hepburn Hall 202, Gothic Lounge

Tuesday, April 23th 2013 5:30 pm- 7:30 pm, GSUB 129 Art in Motion: Part II: Newark born artist Jerry Gant will share his thoughts on how art emancipates the lives of African American and will explore various forms of urban art as a statement about culture, power and identity.