Campus Events

"The eruption of mass protests in the wake of the police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City have challenged the impunity with which officers of the law carry out violence against Black people and punctured the illusion of a postracial America. The Black Lives Matter movement has awakened a new generation of activists. In this stirring and insightful analysis, activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation."--Provided by publisher.

Introduction : is America a nation of cowards or has Attorney General Eric Holder lost his mind? -- The teaching moment that never was : Henry Louis Gates, Barack Obama, and the post-racial dilemma -- "I know what's in his heart" : enlightened exceptionalism and the problem with using Barack Obama as the racial litmus test for Black progress and achievement -- The audacity of Reverend Wright : speaking truth to power in the twenty-first century -- Setting the record straight : why Barack Obama and America cannot afford to ignore a Black agenda -- Pull yourself up by your bootstraps : Barack Obama, the Black poor, and the problems of racial common sense thinking.

Reporter Sally Sara takes to the streets of Baltimore and Chicago to investigate a reawakened civil rights movement that's fighting to stop the killing of black Americans.

Episode guest: Khalil Muhammad, author and head of New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
"Bill opens this weekend's Moyers & Company with thoughts about the origins and lessons of Independence Day. We should remember, he says, that behind this Fourth of July holiday are human beings, like Thomas Jefferson, who were as flawed and conflicted as they were inspired, who espoused great humanistic ideals while behaving with reprehensible racial discrimination. That conflict -- between what we know and how we live-- is still a struggle in contemporary politics and society. No stranger to the contradictions of history and their racial touchpoints is Bill's studio guest Khalil Muhammad. Head of the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Muhammad is the author of The Condemnation of Blackness, which connects American histories of race, crime and the making of urban America to modern headlines. Muhammad and Moyers discuss the importance of confronting the contradictions of America's past to create a stronger present"--Program's website.

In Westchester County, New York three unarmed black men were shot and killed by the police between 2008 and 2012. This is the story of one of those killings, and of the fight for justice for all the victims who came before and all who have come after.