Pulitzer Prize Winner on Campus

The Richard B. Russell Library and Partners Present Pulitzer Prize-winning Author and Journalist Douglas Blackmon on campus January 28, 2010

The Russell Library and partners are pleased to share two special opportunities to meet and hear acclaimed Atlanta Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Blackmon on Thursday, January 28, 2010.

Blackmon is a passionate advocate for history and research as a tool for social justice. He has also applied the most painstaking and rigorous standards to his research and his quest for sources. To construct a more complex history of forced labor African Americans after the Civil War, Blackmon embarked on an exhaustive search through county records, legal files, oral history, family histories and even historical archeology. In the end his research yielded an unparalleled detailed account of the “tens of thousands of African Americans who were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. . . [who were] sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations.”

From 2-3 p.m. in the Russell Library Auditorium, Blackmon will discuss his approach to research as a journalist and as scholar working to reconstruct a fragmentary history of forced labor of African Americans in years between the Civil War and World War II for his award-winning book, Slavery by Another Name, The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II. He will also be glad to entertain questions and ideas from those in attendance. This program should be great chance for the campus community to compare notes, share ideas with one of the country’s preeminent journalists and authors. The 2 p.m. program is free and all are welcome, but seating is limited, so please contact me to reserve a space for the program by calling 706-542-5766 or emailing your rsvp to jsevern@uga.edu

From 4:30-6ish in the Reading Room on the 3rd floor of the Miller Learning Center, Blackmon will also present a more formal free lecture entitled, “A Persistent Past: Reckoning With Racial History in the Era of Obama." The Miller Learning Center is located on the northeast corner of Baxter Street and South Lumpkin Street. Parking is available in the adjacent Tate Center Parking Deck (entrance via South Lumpkin Street). University of Georgia and Athens-Clarke County City Buses stop in front of the Tate Center, which is next to the Miller Center. (No r.s.v.p. for this program is necessary—Just come!)

Both of these programs are presented by the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies and cosponsored by the following units of the University of Georgia: University of Georgia Libraries, the Office of Institutional Diversity, the Civil Rights Digital Library, Department of History, and the Institute for African American Studies. For more information please contact Jill Severn at 706-542-5766 or jsevern@uga.edu

To learn more about Blackmon and his book, visit: http://www.slaverybyanothername.com
To learn more about the program or to register, please contact Jill Severn at 706-542-5766 or jsevern@uga.edu