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Making Freedom Dreams Reality: Black Activism, Constitutional Rights, and the Ongoing Struggle for Liberation
Tuesday, June 20, 2023, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
Fordham first celebrated Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and Emancipation Day, in June 2020. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when the announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army General Gordon Granger proclaimed African Americans’ freedom from slavery in the state of Texas, roughly two months after the official end of the Civil War.
According to our featured guest, historian Allison Dorsey, Ph.D., the true value of Juneteenth lies not in the idea of the “celebration” of freedom, but in the way the story of Juneteenth captures the tension between Black freedom dreams and the violent actions by white citizens, bolstered by the state, to deny those dreams. The Juneteenth holiday also offers everyone an opportunity to learn about Black hopes and aspirations—and equally important—Black actions to secure liberty during Reconstruction, and throughout the 160 years since President Abraham Lincoln first issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
About the Speaker
Dorsey is professor emerita of history at Swarthmore College, where her research and teaching interests include the history of African Americans, the 20th-century Civil Rights Movement, African American film, and food history. She is the author of numerous publications, including To Build Our Lives Together: Community Formation in Black Atlanta, 1875-1906 (University of Georgia Press, 2007), “The great cry of our people is land! Black Settlement and Community Development on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, 1865-1900,” published in African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee (University of Georgia Press,2010), and “We’ve Taken Old Gods and Given Them New Names’: The Spirit of Sankofa in Daughters of the Dust,” published in Writing History with Lightening: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth Century America (Louisiana State University Press, 2019).
Dorsey is professor emerita of history at Swarthmore College, where her research and teaching interests include the history of African Americans, the 20th-century Civil Rights Movement, African American film, and food history. She is the author of numerous publications, including To Build Our Lives Together: Community Formation in Black Atlanta, 1875-1906 (University of Georgia Press, 2007), “The great cry of our people is land! Black Settlement and Community Development on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, 1865-1900,” published in African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee (University of Georgia Press,2010), and “We’ve Taken Old Gods and Given Them New Names’: The Spirit of Sankofa in Daughters of the Dust,” published in Writing History with Lightening: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth Century America (Louisiana State University Press, 2019).
Dorsey was also founding director of the Swarthmore Summer Scholars Program (S3P) from 2014 to 2017, and has returned to research on black freedmen along the Georgia seacoast.
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