From Martin Luther King, Jr. to Black Lives Matter: 50 Years of Struggle
A day-long symposium in produced in collaboration with the Vanderbilt Divinity School, the Vanderbilt Law School, Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, and the Vanderbilt Graduate School, The Vice-Provost for Inclusive Excellence and the Vice-Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
Registered participants were furnished lunch as Vanderbilt University’s “triple dore” alumna, Dr. Menah Pratt-Clarke, the Vice President for Strategic Affairs and Vice Provost for Inclusion and Diversity at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) delivered the lunch keynote address. She is also Professor of Education in the School of Education in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, with affiliations in Africana Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Department of Sociology. Dr. Pratt-Clarke will sign copies of her most recent book, A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor: Lessons about Race Class, and Gender in America.
Each sponsoring school presented a panel discussion at the day-long symposium wrestling with the theme. The Divinity School panel featured, Eddie Glaude, Princeton University, Anthea Butler, Universty of Pennsylvania, Eboni Marshall Turman, Yale University and Vicki Crawford, Morehouse College. The Law School Panel featured Sameer Ashar, UCLA School of Law, Rocío Alejandra Avila, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Llezlie Green Coleman, American University Washington College of Law and J.J. Rosenbaum, Global Labor Justice, Peabody College’s panel featured Ebony McGee, Donna Ford and Nicole Joseph of Vanderbilt’s Peabody College together with Nic Stone author of Dear Martin. The Graduate School’s panel featured Gilman Whiting, Frank Dobson and Camille Burge of Vanderbilt University. These are the four schools of Vanderbilt that were the first to admit Black students—Divinity (1953), Law (1956), Graduate (1955), Peabody (1955).
Each school’s panel focused attention upon the specific aspects of the King legacy that find expression in our present political climate. This trans-disciplinary day-long symposium is the vision of Emilie Townes, Dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School. The four-person Divinity School panel focused on the public theology and racial justice implications of the death of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in light of the current cultural situation in which the racially charged deaths of Blacks at the hands of police, quasi-police, and other hate-groups is voluminous in order to focus the discourse towards exposing the evils inherent in the systemic responses to those deaths, and second, to motivate participants to envision new strategies for eradicating racial injustice illuminated by the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
