Black Revolution on Campus: History, Allyship and Implications. 

Join us for a talk on the Black activism movement on college campuses. Lafortune will discuss this movement's history and its implications as well as the role allys played.  This challenging and inspiring history has lessons for all of us that bear continued relevance.

Lafortune's  talk will be partially based in  material from The Black Revolution on Campus by Martha Biondi:

"The Black Revolution on Campus is the definitive account of an extraordinary but forgotten chapter of the black freedom struggle. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Black students organized hundreds of protests that sparked a period of crackdown, negotiation, and reform that profoundly transformed college life. At stake was the very mission of higher education. Black students demanded that public universities serve their communities; that private universities rethink the mission of elite education; and that black colleges embrace self-determination and resist the threat of integration. Most crucially, black students demanded a role in the definition of scholarly knowledge." https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520282186/the-black-revolution-on-campus

No need to read the book before attending! All teens and adults welcome!

Image credit: April 16, 1967: From the hood of a car, Stokely Carmichael preaches Black Power to students at Tallahassee's Florida A&M University. (Photo courtesy of AP Photo/STF, Associated Press/Wide World Photos)

Please bring your questions to the chat!

Joanne Lafortune is an Upper School English teacher at the Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island, who is passionate about education and social justice. (She enjoys sparking curiosity in young minds.) Joanne is also the founder of Life Focus, a program that teaches critical reading and writing skills to underrepresented youth in her community. Joanne received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Rhode Island with a certification in Biotechnology Manufacturing. She is currently completing a graduate degree in Boston University’s African American Studies program. When Joanne is not fully immersed in the world of education, she is exchanging laughs with close friends and family—or concocting organic oils for natural hair, in her kitchen.