Held March 10, 2022 — watch event video here:
Jeff Jackson talk video 31022 from Edmund T Gordon on Vimeo.
Black Power at Ole Miss, 1848-2021: Reckoning with African American History and Achievement at a Southern Public University
At the inaugural Campus Contextualization Seminar Series lecture, Jeffrey T. Jackson, PhD, Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Mississippi, explored one sociologist’s experience with the paradoxes associated with commemorating black achievements at a public university with a deeply embedded history of white supremacy and anti-black oppression. How is it that an institution can both support and resist such work at the same time? The presentation explored the conflict between institutional forces wanting to “make the university a more inclusive and diverse place” and the forces of resistance to such changes. His talk reviewed significant moments in UM history, from the 40th and 50th UM commemorations of James Meredith’s achievement of integrating the university in 1962 to the 2020 formation of the “Black Power at Ole Miss Task force.” He also discussed UM’s 2016-2018 efforts to contextualize buildings and monuments on campus connected to the Confederacy and the 2013 formation of the UM Slavery Research Group.
Dr. Jackson is the author of The Globalizers: Development Workers in Action (Johns Hopkins University Press 2007) and received his BS from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and his MA and PhD from The University of Texas at Austin.
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The new Campus Contextualization Seminar series explores histories of race, gender, and power at The University of Texas at Austin. Speakers present research and new frameworks for analysis concerning the ways in which US universities continue to address these issues.