The Intersection of Democracy and Hard History Through the Lens of Primary Sources

Speakers:

• 

  Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries

  Associate Professor of HistoryThe Ohio State University

  Hasan Kwame Jeffries is associate professor of history at The Ohio State University where he teaches courses on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement. Hasan is the author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, which tells the remarkable story of the African American freedom movement in Lowndes County, Alabama, the birthplace of Black Power. He is also the editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement, a collection of essays by leading civil rights scholars and teachers that explores how to teach the Civil Rights Movement accurately and effectively.

  Hasan’s current book project, In the Shadow of Civil Rights, examines the Black experience in New York City from 1977 to 1993. It connects key political and cultural events, such as the youth rebellion in the South Bronx, to the evolution and implementation of public policies that changed Black communities forever, such as those that undergird the war on drugs.

  Hasan consults regularly with school districts on developing anti-racism programming. This work includes conducting professional development workshops for teachers, speaking to student assemblies, and developing inclusive curricular centered on social studies.

  In the classroom, Hasan takes great pride in opening students’ minds to new ways of understanding the past and the present. This has led him to push the very boundaries of what we think of as a classroom, including taking small groups of undergraduates to James Madison’s Montpelier, the Virginia plantation home of the nation’s fourth president, to explore the history of race and racism in America from slavery through the present.