The Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University will host its annual lecture series in honor of Black History Month. The series features lectures that are free and open to the public.
The lecture, “From Slavery to Segregation: Reckoning with White Supremacy in the American South,” by Southeastern Associate Professor of History Keith Finley, is scheduled Tuesday, Feb. 11, at 12:30 p.m., in the Student Union Theatre.
“Dr. Keith Finley will draw on his new book to explore key features shaping southern politics in the 19th and 20th centuries as explained in the South’s defense of its racial systems,” said Department Head of History and Political Science Bill Robison, “treating slavery and segregation as parts of the same whole rather than discrete institutions rooted in different periods uncovering the origins of its states’ rights philosophy and the unfortunate persistence of a culture dominated by calls for white supremacy, highlighting the broad overview of southern racial and political thought, and underscoring the larger American struggle with racial injustice, which, although most pronounced in the South, afflicted the entire nation.”
The next lecture, given by Ashley Tarleton of the Hammond Downtown Development District, is titled “An Ambiguous Estate in Life: Free People of Color in Louisiana’s Rural Florida Parishes,” is scheduled Tuesday, Feb. 18, at 11 a.m. in the Student Union Theatre.
“Most studies of Louisiana’s free people of color center on New Orleans or other regions outside of the Florida Parishes,” said Robison. “Here, however, Ashley Tarleton, Southeastern alumna and former research assistant in the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies, will focus on East Baton Rouge, East and West Feliciana, St. Helena, Livingston, Washington, and St. Tammany parishes (Tangipahoa was not established until 1869), using New Orleans as a comparative base to show how various global influences shaped the Florida Parishes and the policies of successive regimes affected the growth, experiences, and status of free communities of color there.”
“Barack Obama and Civil War Memory,” the last lecture of the series, is scheduled Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 11 a.m., in the Student Union Theatre. It will be given by retired LSU History Professor Gaines Foster.
“The Civil War Sesquicentennial occurred with the first African-American President of the United States in office. He faced criticism for continuing the tradition of laying a Memorial Day wreath on the Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery and for not attending the Gettysburg Address anniversary celebration,” said Robison. “Dr. Foster will argue that his response reflected his interpretation of the Civil War’s meaning, one rooted in traditional African American memory and his personal fascination with Abraham Lincoln, but also his larger vision of the meaning of American history.”
For more information about Southeastern’s Black History Month lecture series, contact Robison at 985-549-2109 or [email protected].
