National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to Host Freedom 55: Freedom Lecture Series with Charles Cobb

Contact: Will Jones
Marketing and Communications Manager
(513) 333-7558
(513) 802-7355
wjones@nurfc.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to Host
Freedom 55: Freedom Lecture Series with Charles Cobb
Author to Discuss the Book, “This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed:
How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible”

CINCINNATI, OH (February 20, 2019) – The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will host Freedom 55: Freedom Lecture Series with Charles Cobb on Thursday, March 14 at 6:00 p.m. The lecture is sponsored by John and Francie Pepper and The John A. Schroth Family Charitable Trust, PNC Bank. The lecture is a continuation of the Freedom 55 programming series that includes screenings, book signings, lectures and musical performances throughout 2019 commemorating the 55th anniversary of Freedom Summer. The program is free and open to the public. RSVPs are required.

Excerpts from the book This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible written by Cobb will serve as framework for the lecture that Cobb will deliver. The lecture will discuss the impact of peaceful protesting throughout the Civil Rights Movement and how that framework set the tone for movements of today.

Cobb was a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Mississippi Delta. He originated the proposal for Freedom Schools that became an important part of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. Cobb is a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists and a co-founder of AllAfrica.com, a news service aggregating news and information about Africa and now the world’s largest daily internet source of such information. Cobb has also worked as a journalist for WHUR Radio in Washington, DC, PBS FRONTLINE, and National Geographic magazine. Cobb co-authored Radical Equations, Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project with civil rights organizer and educator, Robert P. Moses. In June 2018 Cobb was the recipient of a Carnegie Fellowship in the category of Democracy to complete his current project, a book to be published by Duke University Press on today’s young movement for black lives.

“Freedom Summer was one of many crucial components of the movement during the 60’s that made the Civil Rights Act of 1964 possible,” says Jacqueline Dace, deputy director at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. “Cobb sharing his perspective on the successes of the Civil Rights Movement will give guests an opportunity to reflect on their own activism and what they can do to advance the rights of everyone in our community today.”

Freedom 55: Freedom Lecture Series is a series of discussions commemorating the 55th anniversary of Freedom Summer, a 1964 voter registration drive, also known as the Mississippi Summer project. The goal was to end the prevailing discriminatory and segregated voting system through increased voter registration of African Americans. In preparation, hundreds of student volunteers gathered for two, one-week orientation sessions from June 14 to June 27, 1964 at Western College for Women (present day Miami University) in Oxford, OH.

Freedom 55: Freedom Lecture Series with Charles Cobb sponsored by John and Francie Pepper and John A. Schroth Family Charitable Trust, PNC Bank is Thursday, March 14 at 6:00 p.m. at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. This program is free and open to the public. RSVPs are required. For more information and to RSVP, visit freedomcenter.org.

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