A series of free lectures and films offered through October aim to provide historical context for the national conference “A New Insurgency: The Port Huron Statement in its Time and Ours,” Oct. 3-Nov. 2 at U-M.
The Port Huron Statement, drafted by Tom Hayden, former editor of the Michigan Daily and a civil rights activist, emerged from a meeting of Students for a Democratic Society at the United Auto Workers Retreat in June 1962 on Lake Huron. It became a legendary document of the New Left movement of the 1960s and its call for participatory democracy still resonates with today’s activists.
The Preview Lecture and Film Series features seven speakers, mostly U-M faculty, who will explain background to the Port Huron years. “The series introduces members of the campus and community to some of the fundamental historical conditions from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, which inspired an age of dissent still echoing in American memory,” says Howard Brick, the Louis Evans Professor of History and conference organizer.
The series continues from 4-5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Room 1014 Tisch Hall with Thomas Weisskopf, professor emeritus of economics. He will discuss a dimension of scholarship that came out of New Left movements, in part under his influence: the dissenting field of radical political economics.
For more information on series lectures and films, go to www.lsa.umich.edu/phs/events. Sponsors are LSA, the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Office of the Vice President for Research and numerous academic departments.
Civil Rights leader on campus
The Rev. Bernard Lafayette Jr., co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and associate of Martin Luther King Jr., will be on campus Thursday through Saturday.
Lafayette was a core leader of civil rights movements in the early and mid 1960s, and was appointed by King as national program administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and national coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.
He will speak at 4 p.m. Thursday in Auditorium A, Angell Hall, on “Race, Voting Rights, American Politics: The Civil Rights Era and Today.” The talk is followed at 6 p.m. with the film “Freedom Riders,” in which Lafayette is featured. He will lead a discussion and answer questions following the film.
Lafayette’s visit is sponsored by the Michigan Community Scholars Program, Office of the Senior Vice Provost, National Center for Institutional Diversity, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, the Residential College, The Program on Intergroup Relations, Community Action and Social Change, and the Global Scholars Program.
