Prof. Cassandra Jackson, TCNJ English Department

Professor Cassandra Jackson, Professor of English at TCNJ, will discuss “The Death of Black Boyhood,” at  the fourth annual Gloria Harper Dickinson Memorial Lecture on April 17, 2013 at 4 PM at the TCNJ Library auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

The presentation’s title is taken from Prof. Jackson’s June, 2012 Huffington Post essay, in which she argued:

“The construction of black boys as men has meant that like black men, they must navigate the complex amalgam of being feared and targeted at once. Thus, the very characteristics that we so often find tolerable and even desirable in white male adolescents — exuberance, willfulness, and impulsivity — could get a black boy killed. There is no such thing as black boyhood in American culture, and black boys’ imaginary manhood is being used as an excuse to bully and brutalize them.”

Jackson’s essay engaged current controversies surrounding the treatment of black males, such as the Feb., 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and the New York City Police Department’s controversial “stop and frisk” policy, which has disproportionately targeted young African-American and Latino men.  However, the issues surrounding violence against black males are

Tony Gleaton’s “Un hijo de Yemayá (A Child of Yemaya), Hopkins, Belize,” is part of the 2011 “Wounding the Black Male” exhibit curated by Prof. Jackson and Sarah Cunningham.

not new to her.  Her 2010 book, Violence, Visual Culture and the Black Male Body (Routlege) analyzes representations of violence against black boys and men in music, art and literature.  She also collaborated with curator Sarah Cunningham on a  complementary photography exhibit,  ”Wounding the Black Male, Photographs from the Light Works Collection,”  was staged at TCNJ’s Art Gallery in 2011.

The Gloria Harper Dickinson Lecture Series honors the legacy of Dr. Gloria Dickinson, a founding faculty member and former chair of the African American Studies Department, past president of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH) and former International Director for Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. (AKA).

The 6th Regiment United States Colored Troops Reenactors Inc.

Daniel W. Crofts, a renowned historian of the American South and professor of history at TCNJ, will discuss current scholarship and popular understandings of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in a lecture at The College of New Jersey, February 6, 2013

The original Emancipation Proclamation

at 7 pm in room 115 of the Education building. Crofts’ lecture will be preceded by a color guard ceremony performed by the Trenton-based 6th Infantry USCT (US Colored Troops) re-enactors. The event is free and open to the public. The TCNJ Black Student Union is co-sponsoring the event.

Crofts says that for more than 40 years, his scholarship has been dominated by two overarching concerns, “the persistence of racial inequality a hundred years after emancipation, and the paradox of using unlimited collective violence to pursue supposedly just ends.” He has explored these questions in four critically-acclaimed books on 19th-century American history, Reluctant Confederates, Old Southampton, Cobb’s Ordeal,  and A Succession Crisis Enigma. A fifth book, Upstream Odyssey, explores his grandfather’s experiences as missionary in China between 1895 and 1944. Since 2011, Crofts has been a contributor to the New York Times’ Dis-Union blog, established to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declared freedom for slaves in the rebellious Confederate states and allowed African Americans to enlist in the war effort. The 6th Regiment Infantry US Colored Troops Re-enactors  conducts educational programs recreating the deeds of the “authentic 6thRegiment United States Colored Infantry, an African-American battle-tested regiment with local historical ties to Trenton and the Delaware Valley.” The men of the 6th Regiment USCT were part of an estimated 209,000 African American troops who fought in the Civil War.

National Park Service Photo of 4th US Colored troops

Winnifred Brown-Glaude speaking at the TCNJ Politics Forum, October, 2011. Photo by the TCNJ Signal.

Read the TCNJ Signal’s report.

Dr. Piper Kendrix WIlliams confers the kente cloth stole to Tamara Ibezim ’12, upon her completion of the African American Studies minor.

Read the archived chat and share your thoughts!

The AFAM Salon: What the Trayvon Martin case means for us

Hosts: Winnifred Brown-Glaude and Piper Kendrix Williams

The February 26 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin has provoked visceral responses across the US and around the world, even as the focus of the case turns from protest’s marches to prosecutorial maneuvers. In this episode of the AFAM Salon, TCNJ professors Winnifred Brown-Glaude and Piper Kendrix Williams will lead a community conversation about the issues that this and other recent killings of unarmed black men at the hands of either police or people taking the law into their own hands. The chat will take place in this space April 18, from 8-9 PM EST.

Among other issues, we’ll discuss:

• “The talk” that many parents of color have with their sons about how to interact with police and other authority figures.
• The use of the “violence card” in the public debate about race and crime
• The rise of “stand your ground” laws,reportedly  promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council and the NRA

The AFAM Salon is an occasional series of online chats on topical issues, led by members of the Department of African American Studies,

Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade has incited protests by standing for a third term. By Roosewelt Pinheiro/ via Wikimedia Commons

This online chat took place about the election crisis in Senegal took place Feb. 25, 2012 from 11 am-noon  EST. It was moderated by TCNJ professors Dr. Moussa Sow and Dr. Marla Jaksch. Enjoy the archived chat and add your comments below.

Senegal, long considered one of Africa’s most stable democracies has been rocked by protests against the effort of 85-year-old incumbent Abdoulaye Wade to win a third term as President in elections scheduled for Sunday. The outcome of this weekend’s events could have grave implications not only for that country, but also for the United States’ relationship with a key ally in the region. More background on the election crisis is here:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/02/2012218202131269337.html and information about Senegal and its relationship to the US is here:

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2862.htm.

This online chat is the first offering of the AFAM Salon, an online chat series hosted by TCNJ’s African American Studies that will serve as a discussion forum about topical issues, scholarship and enduring questions related to Africa and its Diaspora.

Click Here to open chat in a pop-up window

Courtesy of Robert P. Moses

Dr. Robert P. Moses, who played a key role in the drive for voting rights in the 1960s and who has been a leading voice for culturally responsive mathematics education since the 1980s, will spend the day at TCNJ Feb. 2, 2012. He will address the campus community at 4 pm in the Mayo Concert Hall of the Music Building. The event is free and open to the public.

As the former leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Mississippi Project in the 1960s, an architect of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, and a Harvard Philosophy PhD, Dr. Moses has a wealth of experience in civil and human rights. Since the 1980s, Dr. Moses has converted those experiences into a program of innovative approaches to education for underserved and distressed communities in the United States and abroad. Dr. Moses’s efforts resulted in the creation of the Algebra Project in 1982, an initiative designed to create “sustainable, student centered models” for school reform that builds “coalitions of stakeholders within local communities, particularly underserved” populations. (Algebra Project history)

The Algebra Project, which emphasizes math skills and pedagogy, has gained national recognition as a community-based,

Robert Moses during the Freedom Summer campaign

bottom-up approach that is innovative and sensitive to vagaries of state and local budgets. Dr. Moses has captured many of the ideas for the Algebra Project in his acclaimed 2001 co-authored book, Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project that Princeton Professor, Dr. Cornel West, described as “the definitive book on one of the most important projects of youth empowerment and citizenship of our time.” His articles on improving mathematics education have appeared in such influential journals as Social Policy, Phi Delta Kappan, and the Journal of Mathematical Behavior.

Dr. Moses’s presentation will invite the TCNJ community, local citizens, and state leaders to discuss the prevailing challenges to education and consider creative solutions that draw upon our strengths.

“Today, I want to argue, the most urgent issue affecting poor people and people of color is economic access. In today’s world, economic access and full citizenship depend crucially on math and science literacy. I believe the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered Black voters in Mississippi in 1961″

Robert P. Moses, Radical Equations: civil rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project, Beacon Press, 2001

Sponsors: Department of African American Studies, Black Student Union, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Science, School of Education, Department of Mathematics, Department of Women and Gender Studies, Allen Dawley Center for the Study of Social Justice, Committee for Cultural and Intellectual Community. Supported by Student Activities Funds.

Selected Learning Resources for Dr. Moses, Freedom Summer and the Algebra Project

Books

(Note: Dr. Moses’ books will be on sale in the TCNJ bookstore. He will sign books at the end of his presentation.

• Robert P. Moses and Charles Cobbb. Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project. Beacon Press, 2001
• Theresa Perry, Robert P. Moses, Ernesto Cortesis, Lisa Delpitis, Joan T. Wynne, eds. Quality Education as a Constitutional Right: Creating a Grass-Roots Movement to Transform Public Schools. Beacon Press, 2010

Websites

• The Algebra Project
• The Robert Moses Archive
• Images of Hate and Hope: Historic Images from Freedom Summer in Newseum’s Collection
• Robert P. Moses speech on Freedom Summerat Stanford University, April 23, 1964
• Civil Rights Movement Veterans Website
• Eyes on the Prize Interview transcripts
• Interactive version of the Alabama Literacy Test created by Scott Hoover, TCNJ alum ’07, as part of the 2004 Brown v. Board of Education 50th Anniversary Digital Archive
  

  Videos

  Visionary Project interview, Freedom Summer, Part One
  

  Part Two:
  

  The Algebra Project:

  Th:

   

  How the Algebra Project works

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  Baltimore Algebra Project march for Jobs and Education:

Bridget McManus recieves an award for academic achievement in African-American Studies, October 21, 2011

Dr. Deborah Gray White

On November 30, 2011, Dr. Deborah Gray White, Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University will  deliver the third annual Gloria Harper Dickinson Memorial lecture entitled, “The Personal is Political But Not Entertainment:  A Non-Fiction Look at “The Help.”

White will speak at 4 pm in the Mayo Concert hall at The College of New Jersey.

White’s books include  “Ar’nt I a Woman?  Female Slaves in the Plantation South”, and “Too Heavy a Load:  Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894 -1994.”

White is also member of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), which issued an open statement in the summer of 201i criticizing the depiction of black domestic workers in the popular book and film, The Help. Dr. White’s talk will engage members of the TCNJ community in a discussion on the realities of African American women and their history of domestic labor and its Hollywood portrayal. It will allow students an opportunity to critically think about race, stereotypes and labor in US history, popular culture and media.

The Gloria Harper Dickinson Memorial lecture was established in 2009 as a tribute to the life and work of Dr. Gloria Harper Dickinson, past chair and professor of African American Studies at The College of New Jersey, former president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). This event is co-sponsored by the Department of African American Studies,  the Department of Women and Gender Studies, TCNJ Office of Academic Affairs, the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the TCNJ Black Student Union.