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Rise of Black Power and Activism in Chicago to be Topic of October 22 Lecture at Roosevelt University


Helgeson

CHICAGO–(ENEWSPF)–October 15, 2014.  Jeff Helgeson, author of Crucibles of Black Empowerment: Chicago’s Neighborhood Politics from the New Deal to Harold Washington, will lecture on the topic at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23 in Roosevelt University’s 10th floor library, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.

The former director of the Chicago Center for Working Class Studies’ Labor Trail project and assistant professor of history at Texas State University, Helgeson will discuss the unique political culture of African Americans in Chicago, a place that he calls both the “capital of black America” and “one of the most segregated and unequal places in the nation.”

As the final lecturer for this fall in Roosevelt’s St. Clair Drake Lecture Series, Helgeson is expected to focus in part on the role that Roosevelt University played in shaping Chicago’s black nationalist movement, which is included in his new book that was just released.

“Jeff Helgeson’s latest book on the empowering of Chicago’s African Americans since the 1930s is groundbreaking scholarship. We look forward to welcoming him to Roosevelt where black nationalism began developing, along with the University itself, during the 1940s,” said Erik Gellman, associate professor of history at Roosevelt and organizer of the event.

Made possible with generous financial support from Rose and Robert Johnson (BA, ’58), the lecture is free and open to the public. For more information on the event or Roosevelt’s St. Clair Drake Center for African and African American Studies, contact Erik Gellman at [email protected] or 312-322-7138.

Source: roosevelt.edu


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