September 24-25, 2009
This year sees the one hundredth anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the United States' oldest, most durable and arguably most effective African-American civil rights organisation. From its inception, it has contributed consistently to the ongoing black freedom struggle in America through its hard-fought campaigns against lynching, discriminatory housing, disfranchisement, unequal employment and, most famously, segregated public schools.
Until recently, however, the NAACP has followed a stranger career in the historiography of the civil rights movement. Scholars have paid less attention to the organisation than they have the non-violent direction action of Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's emphasis on grassroots organising.
Hosted by the Marcus Cunliffe Centre for the Study of the American South at the University of Sussex to mark the NAACP's centennial, the two-day "NAACP: A Centenary Appraisal" conference will explore the organisation's complex, evolving and always surprising history by bringing together leading scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. Working at the cutting-edge of civil rights historiography, these scholars will discuss and debate the NAACP's first 100 years and map out new areas for study beyond 2009.
Speakers include: Professor David Garrow (Cambridge), Professor Manfred Berg (Heidelberg), Professor Carol Anderson (Emory), Professor Peter Ling (Nottingham), Professor Greta de Jong (Nevada-Reno), Stephen Tuck (Oxford), Erik Gellman (Roosevelt), Jarod Roll (Sussex), George Lewis (Leicester), Simon Wendt (Heidelberg), and Jenny Woodley (Nottingham).
Location: The White Hart Hotel, 55 High Street, Lewes, BN7 1XE
The NAACP: A Centenary Appraisal Conference programme [DOC 34.50KB]