Emory faculty experts on race and difference are available to talk about the impact of the 1963 March on Washington and its legacy today.
Civil Rights, International and Domestic Public Policy
Carol Anderson, an expert on public policy issues of race, justice and equality, says the March on Washington aimed to help craft a new narrative about America. "Too often these battles [for civil rights] were seen as isolated, regional," she says. "Suddenly you had 250,000 people on the Mall in Washington as this visual symbol of the struggle for democracy." Anderson, associate professor of African American studies, is the author of "Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955."
Email carol.anderson@emory.edu.
March on Washington, American Policy and Foreign Affairs
Mary Dudziak, an expert on the relationship between international affairs and American legal history, says the international outcry during the March on Washington helped push President John F. Kennedy toward reform. “Countries around the world would say, 'America, first of all, don't tell us how to run our own governments if you're treating your own people this way,"she says. “But also, what is so great about democracy if within the world's leading democracy people of color are treated like this.'"Dudziak, Candler Professor of Law and director of the Project on War and Security in Law, Culture and Society, is the author of “Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy."
Email mary.dudziak@emory.edu.
Racial Climate 1963 vs. 2013
Former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver sees parallels in the current racial climate with the situation that produced the original March on Washington 50 years ago. "The people who put the march together were shocked by the death of Emmett Till," she says, pointing to the similar reaction in the wake of Trayvon Martin's death. Cleaver, senior lecturer at Emory Law School, has spent much of her life in the struggle for human rights, and was communications secretary for the Black Panther Party from 1967-1971.
Email kcleaver@emory.edu or phone 404-727-0350.
African American Young Men
Gregory Ellison, author of the new book, "Cut Dead but Still Alive: Caring for African American Young Men," speaks and writes about issues related to adolescence, hope, marginalization, and the muteness and invisibility of African American young men. A faculty member of Emory's Candler School of Theology, he is the co-founder of Fearless Dialogues, a grassroots community empowerment initiative bringing together representatives from city government, religious and nonprofit sectors, education, and neighborhoods to have conversations and create changes in the ways we interact with young African American males in our communities.
Email Gelli01@emory.edu or phone 404-727-7291.
African Americans and the Media
Nathan McCall, a faculty member in the African American Studies department, is an award-winning author and former newspaper reporter for The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other publications. He is the author of two nonfiction works, "Makes Me Wanna Holler" and "What's Going On?" and most recently, the novel "Them," an examination of the conflicts and challenges of gentrification in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward. He has commented extensively on the representation of African Americans in the media and other cultural issues around race.
Email nmccall@emory.edu.