Pulitzer Prize Winning Author and Esteemed Historians Speak at ENC

Fall 2009
History Department Lecture Series

Thur, Sept 17, 7:00pm, Gardner Hall, Rm 26, Eastern Nazarene College: Heather Cox Richardson (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), "Wounded Knee: Gilded Age Economics and the Road to an American Massacre."  Free and open to the public. Richardson is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her Ph.D. in 1992 from Harvard’s Heather Program in the History of American Civilization. She is the author of a variety of essays and books, including The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War (Harvard University Press, 1997); The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (Harvard University Press, 2001); and West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2007).

Richardson's talk at ENC will be based on her forthcoming book, Innocence Lost: American Politics and the Road to Wounded Knee (Basic Books, 2010). Richardson argues that the massacre of the Sioux in 1890 in South Dakota dramatically illustrates how political rhetoric, designed in this case to drum up voters for an upcoming election, can devastate the lives of individuals far away from the seat of power.


Fri, Oct 9, 7:00 pm, Shrader Hall: Hank Klibanoff, "The Race Beat: Then & Now." Free and open to the public.  Hank Klibanoff served as managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution until 2008 and was the Deputy Managing Editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he worked for 20 years. He was also a reporter for the Boston Globe.  His book, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, co-authored with Gene Roberts, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History.

Klibanoff summarizes his topic as follows:

Today in the American South, scores of civil rights murders remain unsolved, uninvestigated, unprosecuted, untold. Those two legacies of violence and silence still haunt the region and continue to damage race relations in the United States.

Many histories have been written about the struggle for civil rights; many documentaries have been made about the movement and the resistance that rose up against it. But the history of the South and of the United States still has huge, important holes where myths and mysteries reside, threatening to undermine the nation’s goal of putting racial conflict behind. 

The Cold Case Truth and Justice Project is an unprecedented collaboration bringing together the power of investigative reporting, narrative writing, documentary filmmaking and multimedia development to reveal the long-neglected truth behind unsolved civil rights murders, and to facilitate reconciliation and healing.

Our reporters have produced extraordinary information in high-profile cases that prosecutors have used to build criminal cases against killers and conspirators who had walked free for more than 40 years. To date, every civil rights murder case that has been reopened and successfully prosecuted was the direct result of an investigation initiated by a journalist.

That will continue. But the greater goal and ultimate hope of the project is that the stories we tell, even about cases that can no longer be prosecuted, will bring reconciliation for individuals, for communities and for the nation.


Tues, Oct 13, 7:00pm, Shrader Hall: Bruce Schulman (Boston University) "Thunder on the Right: The Rise of Conservatism in Postwar America." Free and open to the public.  Professor Schulman is the author of From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980 (1991); Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism (1995); and The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (2002). In 1989-90 he was director of the History Project in California, a joint effort of the University of California and the California State Department of Education to improve history education in the public schools. In 1993, as Associate Professor at UCLA, Schulman received the Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award and the Eby Award for the Art of Teaching. From 1997 to 2002 he was Director of the American and New England Studies Program at Boston University.

Schulman's talk is part of the ENC History Department Public Lecture Series, which is made possible by the generous support of ENC alums. Students and faculty are also invited to a pizza dinner with Schulman in OC rm 107 at 5:30pm on Oct 13. 

Past ENC History Dept. Lectures

The James R. Cameron Center for History, Law, & Governrnent  | Eastern Nazarene College | 23 East Elm Avenue  | Quincy, Massachusetts 02170  | Phone: 1-617-745-3000  |  email: r a n d a l l . s t e p h e n s @ e n c . e d u


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