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The Power of Protest Images in the Black Freedom Struggle – Virtual

--Adult Events

Wednesday, February 23rd at 7:00pm

Since World War II, African Americans’ fight for civil rights, social equality, and equal justice has increasingly unfolded through visual media. The question of black freedom is consistently put before the public through photographic and video images. Americans in the 1960s saw footage of civil rights marches, sit-ins, and boycotts in newspapers or on the nightly news. In the twenty-first century, social media and smartphones make it such that news organizations no longer control which images of black protest or black suffering circulate widely. This past spring, the nation erupted after a video of Minneapolis police killing George Floyd went viral. Many have pointed to the resulting images of protest as evidence of something: the question is what. This talk explores the power of black protest images – past and present – as representations of black life in the United States and as tools in African Americans’ ongoing quest for freedom.

Dr. Brenna Wynn Greer is an Associate Professor of History at Wellesley College. She is a historian of race, gender, and culture in the twentieth century United States, who explores historical connections between capitalism, social movements and visual culture. Her first book, Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined African American Citizenship (University of Pennsylvania Press), examines the historical circumstances that made the media representation of black citizenship good business in the post-World War II era. A recipient of several teaching awards and major fellowships from the ACLS, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Professor Greer’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Nation, Daily Mail, Enterprise & Society, and Columbia Journalism Review.

This program will be held on Zoom. We will send an email with the Zoom link on the day of the program.

CONTACT: Brendan  978-373-1586, x608  programming@haverhillpl.org