WATCH: The fight for academic freedom and free speech during the civil rights movement
The struggle to reform higher education and kickstart social change in the South during the 1950s and 60s continues to hold lessons for those working for educational justice today.
During the inaugural event of the 爆走黑料鈥檚 Banks Center for Educational Justice on Oct. 26, 爆走黑料 Professor Joy Williamson-Lott discussed her new book and its connections to contemporary issues involving academic freedom and free speech.
鈥淚t reminds me that we need to remain vigilant in the current context,鈥 Williamson-Lott said during her talk. 鈥淲e take these kinds of rights and freedoms for granted that they will always be around.
鈥淭hose gains made during the middle 20th century 鈥 were dearly bought and protecting them not only honors the activists of the past, but it ensures institutions of higher education remain vital and vibrant spaces to sustain democracy.鈥
Watch the entire event, including Williamson-Lott鈥檚 dialogue with Michelle Purdy, an education historian from Washington University in St. Louis who has published multiple works analyzing racial history in education, below.
In 鈥淛im Crow Campus,鈥 Williamson-Lott shares a narrative of how the activism of students and faculty alike overlapped with struggles for Black freedom as well as opposition to the Vietnam War and connects the radical racial changes of the mid-20th century to the potential for deep influence existing in higher education today.
Williamson-Lott鈥檚 research focuses on the influence of social movements and institutions of higher education on each other. Her previous works include 鈥淏lack Power on Campus,鈥 which explores student-administration interactions from 1965-75 that led to today鈥檚 campus support systems, and 鈥淩adicalizing the Ebony Tower,鈥 which examines issues of institutional autonomy and the relationship between historically black colleges and the civil rights and Black Power movements.
The Banks Center for Educational Justice is a central location for partnerships, program development and collaborative research with early childhood through university educational settings that sustain Native, Black, Latinx, and Asian and Pacific Islander young people across Seattle and Washington state. .
The event was co-sponsored by the UW's and Department of American Ethnic Studies.
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