Athens, Ga. – Earl Lewis, the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Emory University, will discuss the civil rights movement at a lecture at the University of Georgia on March 6 at 3 p.m. The lecture will be held at the Georgia Museum of Art in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium.
Lewis’ presentation is part of series of lectures, hosted by UGA’s School of Social Work, that has brought leaders and historians to campus to discuss the civil right movement. The series is a part of the spring semester class “The Civil Rights Movement and the Practice of Social Work,” being taught by Obie Clayton Jr., the inaugural Donald L. Hollowell Professor of Social Justice and Civil Rights Studies.
Lewis, who also is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of History and African-American Studies at Emory, has held various academic positions across the country and has received numerous national awards for his academic achievements. He earned degrees in history and psychology, is an expert in African-American history and has published books, articles, essays and reviews on the subject. He holds an honorary degree from Concordia College and was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.
Lewis is the author of In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in 20th Century Norfolk, Virginia, and the award-winning To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans. Between 1997 and 2000, he co-edited the 11-volume The Young Oxford History of African Americans. Lewis co-authored Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, published in 2001. He is co-editor of The African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present and the award-winning book series American Crossroads. He is co-author of Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan.
The School of Social Work established the Donald L. Hollowell Distinguished Professorship of Social Justice and Civil Rights Studies in 2010 to honor the late civil rights attorney and lead counsel in Holmes v. Danner, the landmark case that secured admission to UGA for Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter, the first African-American students to register for classes at the university in 1961.The professorship is the first distinguished one named for an African American at UGA.
For more information, see http://ssw.uga.edu/civilrightslectures.html.
The lecture is a blue card event for UGA students.
