Angela Davis, the Rev. James Lawson, Houston Baker, Richard King, Bob Moses and Ruth Turner Perot are among the scholars and civil rights activists participating in Vanderbilt University’s “We Speak for Ourselves: A Poet, a Prophet and Voices for the 21st Century” conference on April 4, presented by Vanderbilt’s Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.
Davis, professor of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz, will give the opening presentation titled: “We are Not Now Living the Dream: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Human Rights in the 21st Century” at noon at the Vanderbilt University Law School. Later that evening at Fisk University, The Rev. Lawson,
Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt, will present the keynote speech, “Allowing a Living Past to Compel a Pregnant Now.”
Both presentations highlight an unprecedented meeting of people interviewed by the late Pulitizer Prize-winning author, poet, and Vanderbilt alumnus Robert Penn Warren for his 1965 book Who Speaks for the Negro?
Interviewees as well as representatives from the next generation of intellectuals and activists will gather at Vanderbilt University on the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Through a series of presentations and panels, they will examine the issues raised in Who Speaks For the Negro? in the context of that time, as well as in the 21st century.
A panel presentation and discussion related to Who Speaks for the Negro? featuring Houston Baker, Distinguished University Professor of English at Vanderbilt; Richard King, professor of American intellectual history at the University of Nottingham; and Warren interviewee Ruth Turner Perot, executive director of Summit Health Institute for Research and Education, is also planned in the afternoon at the Vanderbilt University Law School, and a rarely heard audiotape of Warren interviewing King will be made available.
These events are free and open to the public.
“This extraordinary gathering of minds will continue the much-needed conversation on justice and community, to which Warren the poet and writer lent his voice, and to which King the prophet gave his life,” said Mona Frederick, executive director of Vanderbilt University’s Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. “We feel confident that the time is right to begin this much-needed national conversation.”
Warren traveled across the South in 1964 recording interviews with Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He talked to a wide range of people, from the first registered black voter in a small town in Mississippi to the movement’s leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and the Rev. James Lawson.
The transcripts of his interviews became Who Speaks for the Negro?, which C. Vann Woodward of The New Republic called, “The most searching exploration of the thought and emotion, the tensions and conflicts of the greatest American social upheaval of this century.”
The reel-to-reel tapes that Warren recorded have been digitized for the first time by the Vanderbilt University Jean and Alexander Heard Library and the University of Kentucky. These historical conversations in their complete and raw form, including the interview with King, will be available on the Internet on April 4.
For a complete schedule and a listing of attendees, visit http://www.vanderbilt.edu/rpw_center/.
“We Speak for Ourselves” is part of a series of special events titled “A Place for the Humanities” in celebration of Vanderbilt University’s Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities 20th anniversary. It is presented in association with the Heard Library and Fisk University.
The center promotes interdisciplinary research and study in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Because cooperative study in higher education is crucial to the modern university and the society it influences, the center is designed to intensify and increase interdisciplinary discussion of academic, social and cultural issues.
A Web cast of portions of the conference will be available after the event on VUCast, Vanderbilt’s news network, www.vanderbilt.edu/news. For more news about Vanderbilt University, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/news.
Media Contact: Missy Pankake, (615) 322-NEWS
missy.pankake@vanderbilt.edu