Marching Forward: A Research and Scholarship Symposium

As part of the U-M Fall 2017 Marching Forward series, we invite you to engage across disciplines, generations, and communities to advance research and scholarship that explores political, social, and economic injustices, and/or advances strategies for effective social justice mobilization.

Through this symposium, we aim to engage the U-M community and the public in further understanding critical historical topics and fostering an intellectual community to explore the civil rights issues of today.

Agenda and list of presenters

This symposium takes place two days after the anticipated visit of Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell to the University of Michigan (Nov 27th, Hill Auditorium). Their acclaimed graphic novel trilogy, March, recounts Lewis's experiences throughout the Civil Rights Movement. In protest marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, John Lewis and 600 other marchers drew attention to the importance of voting rights for all African Americans. The marchers were brutally attacked by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. John Lewis and the marchers did not abandon their cause, but instead propelled the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

This event is co-presented by the International Institute’s Conflict and Peace Initiative, Department of Psychology, National Center for Institutional Diversity, and the Rackham Program in Public Scholarship. For questions regarding the symposium, please email MarchingForward@umich.edu.