2024 ISC

Intersectional Futures: 

The 2024 Intersectional Studies Remote Conference at  SC State

The theme for this year is "Intersectional Futures: Representation and Social Justice in a Globalized World." What does representation in a global society look like and who gets to determine this? What disparities still exist between those whose voices are represented and those whose voices aren't?

The conference is free but registration is required.  All registrants will receive conference access information one week before the conference.

The 2024 Keynote Speaker is Dr. Say Burgin, Dickinson College.

Keynote Address: "Organizing Your Own: How and Why White People Fought for Black Power in the United States."

In the mid-1960s, as the politics of Black self-determination gained steam, Black activists had a new message for white activists: Go into your own communities and organize white people against racism. While much of the media at the time and many historians since have regarded this directive as a "white purge" from the Black freedom movement, I argue that it heralded a new strategy, racially parallel organizing, which people experimented with all over the country. Indeed, a wide cross-section of white activists took direction from Black-led groups like the Northern Student Movement, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. They mobilized support for Black self-determination in education, policing, employment, and labor unions. It was a trial-and-error effort that pushed white activists to grapple with tough questions – which white people should they organize and how, which Black-led groups should they take direction from, and when did taking Black direction become mere sycophancy. The story of this white fight for Black Power thus not only reveals a broader, richer movement, but it carries great insight into questions that remain relevant.

Say Burgin is a historian of the 20th century US focusing on social movement and African American history. She is an assistant professor in the Department of History and contributing faculty to Africana Studies at Dickinson College. Her first book, Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit, will be published by New York University Press in April 2024. It provides a new way of understanding the Black Power movement's relationship to white America. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights, Women's History Review, the Journal of American Studies, The Nation, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She has helped to develop numerous lesson plans and open-platform materials that allow educators to teach the fuller, more radical history of Rosa Parks and the Black freedom movement. Follow her on Twitter @sayburgin.  

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