The American civil rights movement will be the focus of a University of Louisville project over the next five years through the school's largest undertaking on the topic called Project Progress.
U of L Pan African Studies chair Ricky Jones says when he pitched the idea to university administration it was just going to involve one department. But he says U of L wanted to make it school-wide. Now, for example, U of L’s Law School is sponsoring the first lecture on Oct. 22 called “Before Bombingham and Beyond Trayvon: America’s War of Terror," at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium. Jones says there will be two to three main "signature" events focusing on the civil rights movement each semester during Project Progress and subsequent events or projects will also take place during that time. Jones says a decade could be considered a long time to look at this period in U.S. history, but for those who have studied the movement, it could be not considered long enough. “We just don’t want to rush it. We want to show that there’s a serious university investment in it, in a longitudinal way, that understand the gravity of this and we hope that others understand the gravity of it too," he says. The project’s launch will be at the University Club on Monday at 5pm.
