Avery Research Center Lecture: “Charleston in Black and White: Race and Power Since the Civil Rights Movement,” Steve Estes, Sept 17, 6:00 pm - College of Charleston Libraries

Lecture: “Charleston in Black and White: Race and Power Since the Civil Rights Movement,” Steve Estes, PhD, Sonoma State University, Avery Research Center, McKinley Washington Auditorium, September 17, 6:00 pm
Co-sponsored by the Department of History at the College of Charleston
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre at Emanuel AME Church, the national media has shined an intense spotlight on race relations in the Lowcountry. Often missing from this media coverage is a deeper historical context. In his recent book, Charleston in Black and White, and in this public lecture, Steve Estes examines the ways Charleston responded to the twentieth century civil rights movement, embracing some changes and resisting others. Based on detailed archival research and more than fifty oral history interviews, Estes addresses the complex roles played not only by race but also by politics, labor relations, criminal justice, education, religion, tourism, economics, and the military in shaping a modern southern city. Despite the advances and opportunities that have come to the city since the 1960s, Charleston (like much of the US South) has not fully reckoned with its troubled racial past, which still influences the present and will continue to shape the future.

Steve Estes is a Professor of Modern US History at Sonoma State University. His recent book publication is entitled Charleston in Black and White: Race and Power in the South After the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).